Cold & Calculated Romance, Idealized & Selfish Love

I do not believe in marriage.

That is to say, not that I think it is bad or not worthy of its place in society.

No, I mean that my generation is a disaster in love, not understanding compromise or commitment to anything. There is no such thing as waiting, everything is taken and given NOW. Our world is one of convenience and speed and efficiency. It's a constant flow of the next best thing and the grass is greener and instant gratification and relentless entertainment. So few people know how to be alone, let alone how to be alone without something to occupy them. Our homes are filled with people who read, watch TV, listen to music and eat dinner all at the same time. And through all of the media around us we are taught to ask for perfection and grand sweeping tales of epic dramatic romance. We have no comprehension of how to act when things happen outside of our realm of neatly cut story lines.

When we say "I love you" it means "I love you at the moment", "I love you for now", "I love what you can do for me", "I love how you make me feel about myself", "I love that I am not alone", "I love that someone is pretending to care about me as much as I care about myself", "I love you until something better comes along"...

There are those of course who do know what it is to sacrifice and put someone else before themselves and ask for little in return. But finding those people seems like a Holy Grail search.

No wonder we are unsatisfied. We are a generation that fully embraces sexual liberation and experimentation and independence above all else. In our capitalistic upbringings, we ask for more, we want it all and it is just so we can feel as though we get everything we feel we deserve just for existing, just because we can. We are spoiled and ungrateful. I count myself among them. It seems as though every day I ask myself what I can do to make myself happier. And while there is nothing wrong with wanting to better oneself or seeking contentment, in light of a much bigger picture and events that matter so much more, it should be an afterthought and not the main goal.

We ask for partners that have no flaws and mold themselves to OUR agendas. We go through relationship after relationship, date after date looking for "the one" when we never are willing to give people a chance. I am the worst of these offenders, though for reasons that shall remain unlisted here. There are more than one soulmate for each person in the world and they come in many different forms, romantic and otherwise.

Put down your romcom movies and romance novels and porn films and idealized stories from history and look at the flesh & blood human condition. See the birthmarks and annoying habits and asymmetrical features and the scars and the baggage and realize that maybe those very things are what make love worth having.

Once we can appreciate what is right in front of us, once we ask less of others for our own gain and more of ourselves for the good of others, maybe then the institution of marriage will mean something again.

Film Exit Music

The air around me feels like it is crackling with energy. I have no idea what has brought it about or how others have been noticing its charge.

I see hunger flash in their eyes, a voracious and deadly quiet stalking of my movements. It is always condensed into a small season, not predicted by weather but by indifference or some unexplained explosion of confidence.

It leads me to want to be around anyone, everyone, constantly... to inhale the desire up from the ground, to expend a fueling satisfaction to the space above me and watch it do a hot/cold struggle for stratic positioning in magnetic & expelling layers. Instead of an aggravating tug of war for power, it is a constant cycle of take and pouring out, of give and soaking up. And then falling into place.

It's becoming this intoxicating sorcery, using nothing but soft words and even softer movements. The seduction of the masses, the public, the few that have maintained their part in the plot.

How I wish you did not feed it. It's getting to my head. My body is begging for more of the verbal high.
The static, socially acceptable grazing of visible skin, the eyes gracing that which is covered and begging to be revealed. I want nothing more than to make you want me more. I plan to do nothing with it but bask in the warmth. But oh how I love to watch you squirm and twitch, your eyes rolling back in mock exhaustion.

You men, you fickle spoiled men, former Don Juans and Casanovas in your mind alone... I feel as though I may remind you what it's like to be on the other side, with no ill will. Perhaps you should run to preserve your pride or perhaps you should stay and linger awhile...

Call Me An Idealist, But You Were Thinking It Too...

I do not blame my father or mother.
I blame their generation. And the generation that came before.
We have been taught how to live too well and been shown how to not love well enough.

When I say "live too well", I do not mean living life to the fullest.
I mean by living life beyond what they were able.
Decades of people preferring to appear to have money than to live within their means.
Years of people preferring to have thousands in debt than to go without.
Always being told that we need to have more, buy more, be more... but having to become a slave to a job that make every good part of a person shrivel up by the time retirement came around, all the while the retirement age getting pushed further and further away so that there was never really a time to enjoy what was left of life.

And by "not love well enough", I mean that no one knows how to wait for it or to savor it once it is there. No one knows what commitment means. Divorce is commonplace, even expected. We have lost our ability to fight for what we want. We have grown selfish and callous and defensive. Love is left to be a fairytale that becomes a nightmare as childhood passes to adulthood. We have not been given the tools to handle conflict. We bolt at the first signs of tension and we don't understand how our feelings have waned because we have not invested or worked enough to sustain it.

My generation may be apathetic... some lazy, some cynical. But how else should we view things when all we know has been left in disrepair? Our world is in shambles - politically, emotionally. After decades of technology we are just beginning to see the reprecussions of what we have created. Our need for instant gratification has lead to debts upon debts, so much so that even our government cannot help us as they cannot even help themselves. Our homes are filled with strangers clinging to therapy bills and secret vices.

Fuck all of your idols. They are not mine.

I do not want a job that chains me to a chair and bathes me in flourescent light.
I do not want a mate who slowly learns to hate me while I withhold my trust.
I do not want a car that leaves me in fear of its theft & destruction because it costs almost as much as my house and I cannot afford to replace it.
I do not want a home filled with things I do not need.
I do not want a world that tells me I must do and be and act as I am told, just like everyone else is and should.
I do not want the next 70 years to leave the future generations to clean up the mess that mine makes.

Rambles in the Tumbles

There is a dividing line between the familiar and the strange. And we, as humans, have this tug of war between intense curiosity for all things unknown and a craving for routine.

It's hard to admit that though people see me as forward thinking or daring at times, I have small versions of nervous breakdowns when change hits too fast or too hard. It all seems so silly that so much of my confidence is wrapped up in what I can control or in what I have set out for myself.

Comme il faut. Comme je veux. Comme j'ai besoin.

I am too scared to take many risks and yet when I finally do, it is one more reason why I don't want to do something like it ever again. I don't have a lot of serious regrets. Mostly youthful follies.

There are a few choices, however, that although I am not sure they can be classified as regrets, were so destructive & difficult to get through that I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn't followed through with them. I know how much they have shaped me and though I am surely wiser, I also know whatever traces of innocence & naivete I had left in my early 20s were shattered.

So while I still maintain my innate sense of romanticism, I have not the drive nor the trust to enter into anything reflecting that side of me.

But this week, with my safety nets down, I've been left vulnerable in a very humbling way. I feel like any pride I had has been stripped out. I am acutely aware of the flaws in myself and the flaws in others. The ugliness of society. The beastly manners of my generation.

I know something better, something brighter exists however and just eludes me for now. Despite any sighs of discontent, I am still hopeful that I am not alone. There are others who see past the literal and mundane acts.

The Downward Spiral (Our Soundtrack)

I feel like some sort of Victorian-era wife. I allowed you your indiscretions. I even encouraged them for your happiness above all. I turn my eye. I turn the other cheek. But I am bound in some antiquated system of ties and restrictions.

You somehow encourage me still to be more like you. And the more you do, the more I hold fast to my frigid ways. The smallest touch seems like the greatest betrayal.

I hate that after all of this time, I do not belong to you anymore... I haven't for so long. But my body and my brain have not received the message yet. I have a mental shut down, a physical freeze up.

I wish I could be the me before I met you. I have all of this ancient baggage I am dragging around with me. It is heavy as hell. I keep warning others not to try to help me take it on. So many have tried. But after a few groaning steps, they can't continue.

I am so used to waiting for your whim that I am completely comfortable in my solitude. I pass the time with sleeping and creating and living inside my head. It has made me calmer and quieter than I used to be. And alternately, much louder when it is warranted. I have screamed at your ghost in the empty, rain-lit streets during too many whiskey-boiled nights in my evenings best, my eyeliner creating little black fractures on my pale face.

Today it was a morning cocktail of the bends and almost-tears. I've decided I must be poison. No good has come from my pursuits in years. I attack, I inhale, I spit out in disdain... disdain for the act, for the taste, for the thought of the destruction at my hand. I got to the point to choose between nothing and everything... so I taught myself how to become a glutton of affection, drowning in sensuality. But never allowing satisfaction.
No, I am far too calculated at this point. Mixed with my Puritanical upbringing, I deprive like I was born to do it.

All because I couldn't break you down, I am compelled to break everyone else down around me.
But truly... I am just a shaking, fragile wreck.

Power Shifts and Balances

It did not wreck me to see you. I was so surprised that I felt so little towards you.

You, the one who can shake me faster than anyone else, left me without tears or anger this time.
Oh, how I still wanted you... But I did not NEED you.

But then it preyed on me last night, subtly nibbling on my nighttime wounds, laid bare by romanticism and unhealthy doses of media soaked in nostalgia and un-reality.

I rarely am affected anymore, but it strikes always when I expect it least. I cried a little. Not for you so much as for the death of the dream that I once had when I was young, the murdered youth of us all as we age.

We all have to lose our starry-eyed expressions and naivete as we gain experience. And for the better, I think. There is a certain calm that comes with knowing truths and lies that previously eluded me.

It is hard to think of how cruelly life worked against us in our paths and choices more than anything.
I either perhaps will always love you or maybe never really did. I'm not sure that one can tell the difference.

There only two things left to dwell upon at this point. Should I allow one last time of exploration? And also, why does my dissatisfaction only come up when I am trying to move on with someone new?

I am quite at ease and happy on my own. But every time I try to venture into a new relationship or even just a flirtation, it is the trigger that sends my emotions to scatter and I bolt. I can't help but leave them as quickly as I found them.

I do not fear the pain that is possible with romantic couplings. I fear the intimacy. I hate letting men see my flaws and inner self. I hate working past the awkward first stages. I hate giving up my independence. I hate compromising. I know that I am selfish for it. But how I love my solitude...

You taught me so much. You woke me up. But now I am lingering, dormant and apathetic. It is such a waste. But perhaps just a season...

You Bring Out The Whiskey In Me

I am so tired of being cold. So exquisitely cold. I just want to crawl into your lap and let you envelop me.
The winter is far too long and far too bleak without our little haven. I sometimes imagine that you're there on mornings when it is as though I cannot bear to be without you.

Some days it seems as though I will not be able to stay upright. That my knees will buckle and my feet will come out from under me. That perhaps my bones will give way and be consumed by my skin and blood until I am one boiling river of flesh growing ever hotter as you advance towards me.

How can I bear to think of another? The idea of giving up even the thought of you feels impossible. Like it is against the laws of nature. How can I give myself to another and stay faithful to you as I know I must in some twisted way? And how can I be faithful to another and still want to give myself only to you?

I know you are mine in spirit only now. But our artistic souls are soldered together and cannot manage to split themselves apart. You still call to me in the night and I know you feel me when I am still far from you. You always know when I becoming happy again, when I am trying to start over and forge a new chapter with someone else. You told me today that it was just a matter of time before we could be together, before we could have a night all to ourselves. But I do not want to be one of many.

I am so frightfully aware that I will lose my mind if it happens and will most assuredly wither away if it doesn't. My entire body has the compulsion to fling itself into your grasp, your strong callused hands claiming what has always been yours. But my mind. My mind rebels at the thought of giving in. I cannot succumb, it screams out.

But do you offer me the world, all freedom? Or do you offer me prison and most certain spiritual death?
I cannot conceive of the thought of never having you again. You are all consuming and a heady brew.

Goldilocks Complex

I am surprised sometimes at my capacity to feel nothing at all. I am not sure if it is out of a newly created defense mechanism or a hazard of my current trade.

I feel like I have a deep ability for empathy. In fact, I enjoy helping others... lending an ear.
But there are some days when I am appalled at how little something of importance can affect me.

It seems as though I have this On/Off switch. I either feel entirely too much or not enough to feel human.
I have even noticed that I actively avoid certain situations and triggers so that I don't have to be affected, whether negatively or positively.

Music has a strong sway over me and I have been either wholeheartedly avoiding certain songs and artists or I have sought out multiple of those that make me suffer in a row. Even though as I am doing it, I know that it makes me miserable.

Most days, it is as though I cannot connect with another human being on any level other than friend. And even then, at times, it is very difficult to do even that.

I am so sure that something is very wrong with me in the fact that I can be alone for so long and not feel lonely. All the people my age are going out and meeting new people and starting relationships. But there is nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than the idea of romantic vulnerability. Intimacy on any level is frightening to me. I know it is because the one and only time I allowed myself to embrace vulnerability, I was shattered. But it still astonishes me that a need or desire to couple up is low and easily overturned.

I keep meeting interesting people but my attention wanes so very quickly and the idea of letting them in, letting them see, having some sort of obligation or overly familiar routine is... too much.
I'm starting to panic just thinking about the vague notion of it.

And yet I expose my inner thoughts to you far too often and even though it is on a lesser scale than it used to be, my interest is still held, my mind is delicate and feeling in your hands. And with you, all of the above fears don't seem so bad. But I know it won't work. I know we want different things.

So what now? If I can think of you and no one else in that sense, but we are so very fractured, then should I just embrace my solitude?

I don't mind it, really. I'm not sad about it. I enjoy my freedom. I just don't see how to move beyond this crippling doubt of others...

Tap Your Vein, Shoot Up My Name

I am so hungry for beauty. I soak it in and drink it down as fast as I can. I should probably slow down and take my time to really, truly enjoy it.

Beautiful words. Beautiful colors. Beautiful people. Beautiful thoughts. Beautiful ideas. Beautiful sounds.

And no, not in a sentimental way. There is no beauty in that which is in abundance or has no "flaw" or point of unique interest. In continuing with one of my previous posts, it is the fragile and violent that strike us dumb.

Sometimes there are experiences that are so sublime, it is almost painful to enjoy them. It's an almost uncomfortable pleasure. Like it's so awe-inspiring, it makes one's body ache just gazing upon it.
Though it is a mystery as to whether it is a jealous fit or a deep appreciation that shakes one down to one's innate instincts.

It makes me want to act on my artistic tendencies, but I feel as though those will betray me beyond what I already allow.

You, my dear, are a beautiful experience. One of the most euphoric and shattering ones of my young life.

I have one part of me that says I would do whatever it took to have it again and another that is screaming caution like a piercing alarm.

I am of the persuasion that there are very few times in life when one's emotional, physical, spiritual and mental sides are all fed and flourishing simultaneously. And if one is lucky enough to have such an occurrence, then one may spend the rest of their life seeking to have it again.

What you do to my head... my sensually-charged mind. You stalk me down in my subconscious. And I wonder how much more I can handle seeing your face without it being a reality.

There is this terrifying connection that leads us to know what the other is thinking and doing even when we have so little contact anymore. I always know when you are thinking of me or needing me. You tell me aloud as though it would be some great revelation to me. But I always know. I get shivers down my spine.
Sometimes I think I must be communicating with a ghost through a spiritual world instead of a human at all.

I want to, love... but I can not let you destroy me again. I can not let our addiction for each other rule us.
I've been through withdrawals so many times already. Oh, but how my veins ache for you.

Will we resist each other? I fear that if we don't this time, I won't recover.
I refrain from reclaiming it not because I don't care enough, but because the severity of the wanting is so crushing.

The Sum and The Parts

I am so deeply moved by those with profound visions. And those who leave behind resonating effects.

It makes me want to be so many things all at once. It makes me want to be so many people at once, all my sides and influences.

I want to be infectious and inspiring like Edie.
I want to be elegant and sophisticated like Anais.
I want to tough and raw like Brody.
I want to be honest and forgiving like Patti.
I want to be fierce and feverish like Sylvia.
I want to be androgynous and grungy like Alison.
I want to be subtly deep and sneakily poetic like Emily.
I want to be revolutionary and risk-taking like Chanel.

I realize that I am none of these things and quite possibly all of these things, depending on how I feel about the day.

As I age, I know that there is no purpose or good that can come from direct imitation.
And all the best new things come from the best small aspects of each big thing to accumulate into something entirely its own.

This thought process today is mostly distracting me from what I'm really trying not to think about.

But it is nice to remind myself that I can constantly reinvent myself and I can take on any aspect as a new character or costume and acclimate it into what is true, what exists in reality and nature.
And that maybe through all of these things that draw me in, I'll have some good stories along the way.

January and June

Oh this body.
This lovely body.
This wretched, insatiable body.

I am everlastingly tired, but so achingly wired in a halt and lurch circle of cause and effect.
I am not sad, though. No, only disappointed. And cold.

The only way I can describe my state of being is a word used to communicate a lack of heat.
It is not an emotion, but it seems so invariably linked to my waves and beats.
No matter the season or occasion or weather, I just feel cold.
But it is a beautiful thing in it's on way. An icy, light-inducing melancholy. Like a cold, sunny winter's day.
Everything goes numb, but everything is clean and crisp. It is like a blank canvas to throw your new year's paint and oils on. Let's see what we can create in the coming months. I have a feeling it could be the change we have been waiting for.

I am constantly in a state of change. I wish to make myself better.
Not in an American "can-do" kind of way. But in the deepest ways.
Taking long, inhaled gulps of indulgence while exercising self control with a deft flick of the wrist. Appreciating beauty not only in luxury and fine strokes but in the common & base aspects as well.
This is something I must learn. To be violent and grotesque when is suited for the call and then to be delicate and graceful on the other side of it.
That is the ideal. Violent delicacy. Striking, but with the least offensive of objects.
Eyes that snag the soul. A voice that ensnares the heart. A saunter that kills as easily as it resurrects. A curve leading into a harsh line and back again into the swooping half circle.

I want the harmony between poetry and the dirt that creates it. So few are up to the task.