Sometimes it's difficult to figure out where I end and my imagination begins. It's increasingly hard to avoid how my aspirations tend to taint my perceptions. I think I expect too much of people. There's no way for me to think of that without reflecting it on myself. My expectations for myself are ... perhaps inhuman.
Where I see dishonesty, I want truth. Where I feel injustice, I want righteous action. When I hear discord, I want harmony. To some extent this would be corny platitude, but it applies to myself first. I'm dishonest. I'm unfair. I'm chaotic. My efforts to accomodate or straight rectify these aspects of myself are matched only by my expectation of others to do the same.
The other day someone remarked on my drinking habits. Alcohol, of course. I responded, "I need something to help me sleep ... alone." as a joke. I'd be hard pressed to decide if I was joking or not. Realistically, I don't think there is a drinking problem, at least insofar as my physiology is concerned. Like most, I drink as an escape from relentless awareness.
Back when I was utterly involved in psychotropic drugs, I laughed at people who used alcohol. It made them numb. Stupid. Tired. Violent. I reveled in how aware and awake I was, and not even in comparison. Even in retrospect I'm not sure if I would have appreciated the irony of using alcohol to neutralize that very hyper-awareness.
If there were a synopsis of my adult life it would have to include a heartfelt description of my forced acceptance of things I was utterly against in my younger days. There are things that are better left unsaid. There are things better left unthought. Freedom is anything but free. One can too much - everything. I'm sure I would have laughed at who I am now, back then.
Nonetheless, the manifest reality of my existance bears the weight of my existential doubt. I'm here. I feel and touch and love and hurt. Hell, I write drunken poetry. I think about what my children will think of my blog. I imagine, what with the changes of the past decade, what I'll think of who I am now in ten years. I'm sure it will be just as astounded and condescending.
It's impossible to avoid the awareness of how lonely I am. Yet, it's equally impossible to avoid the pride I feel in existing despite it. Masochistic? Maybe. I've yet to be convinced it's possible to keep ones eyes open to as much truth as possible without bearing the weight of the horror it neccessarily carries. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Posted by Matt at February 5, 2005 02:14 AMMore. I want more bloggy.
Posted by: Kim at February 14, 2005 07:06 PMI think dad probably still has them. Somewhere. I also had a big box of tapes (I think I still do somewhere) I made of stuff I recorded during the 80's. Utterly talked over. I hate that.
Posted by: Matt at February 7, 2005 02:02 PMHey
I forgot to tell you when you called the other night about something I was going to call you about. I was listening to the radio - one of those top forty stations - KROCK or Z100 - and the DJ reminisced about when you would tape songs off the radio. He was introducing a new song and he said that he hated it when there was a DJ voice over the beginning of the song or you ended up with part of the next song. So, he prepped the audience to start the tape and then paused at the end of the song.
Man, I would do anything to get one of those tapes we made when we were kids.
Anyway, the song was Louis XIV - finding out true love is blind. It was pretty good.