I am happy. Simply. So what must I do to counter-balance this horror of hyper-intensity? I must savage my appearance as a sort of compensatory measure. Possinly to remind myself that I am able to endure it if and when unhappiness descends. To the music of Wagner. If and when the rainstorm dashes against the Nietzsche-built-mountain-sides of my... soul? self? s...
I have not been good. But there is something so exhilarating about tearing myself to shreds like a silken scarf - like the silken scarf in Wilde's poem - 'Symphony in Yellow'. 'It's a bitter-sweet symphony, that's life...' 'I'm a million different people from one day to the next...' Yes I am, and some of them are far more sensible than to destroy themselves on a daily basis.
Perhaps I need a natural predator. My life is too easy for me. I am too... content. Some black-clawed thing like the long-limb-ed ravens I was fascinated with years and years ago - self-constructed nightmares. Or the terrible spider I was convinced was crawling up a silken thread last night - half-dream - so much so that I hollered for light and reassurance that there was indeed no terrible spider. Yes, my life would be so much better with nightmare-ravens and nightmare-spiders she said with just a trace of irony...
It is such sweet sorrow, this tearing apart of myself. But it is also a search for the purity of the essential. A disdaining of the unneccesary. But - Carrie! Hair is neccesary, don't you think...? You are human and need only endure ordinary human sufferings. That is sufficient evidence of your durability, surely? Or perhaps you shout stand on a mountain and shout at the gods - I can endure your beautiful lightening for I am inhuman and subhuman and superhuman and require a showdown!
I have not been good. But there is something so exhilarating about tearing myself to shreds like a silken scarf - like the silken scarf in Wilde's poem - 'Symphony in Yellow'. 'It's a bitter-sweet symphony, that's life...' 'I'm a million different people from one day to the next...' Yes I am, and some of them are far more sensible than to destroy themselves on a daily basis.
Perhaps I need a natural predator. My life is too easy for me. I am too... content. Some black-clawed thing like the long-limb-ed ravens I was fascinated with years and years ago - self-constructed nightmares. Or the terrible spider I was convinced was crawling up a silken thread last night - half-dream - so much so that I hollered for light and reassurance that there was indeed no terrible spider. Yes, my life would be so much better with nightmare-ravens and nightmare-spiders she said with just a trace of irony...
It is such sweet sorrow, this tearing apart of myself. But it is also a search for the purity of the essential. A disdaining of the unneccesary. But - Carrie! Hair is neccesary, don't you think...? You are human and need only endure ordinary human sufferings. That is sufficient evidence of your durability, surely? Or perhaps you shout stand on a mountain and shout at the gods - I can endure your beautiful lightening for I am inhuman and subhuman and superhuman and require a showdown!
I remember wishing I had a monster.
ReplyDeleteA dragon to slay.
I wanted it because it was simpler.
I had all of this conflict going on inside myself and I didn't know which side was in the right and which was in the wrong and I wasn't sure which parts were coming from me and which things were the little voices that lived in my hindbrain. I knew I had to work it all out and fight something. But it was such a tangled mass.
One straight, physical fight with some great roaring monstrosity, no matter how easily it could have destroyed me, would have been so much simpler.