'Why Don't You DO Somethin'?'

'a perfect day a perfect night - tell me all those perfect lies and lie back in the garden 'til it's dark'

(The Lightening Seeds)

ruffled feather, ruffled soul, ruffled hair and ruffled whole

'you're the queen of the superficial - how long before you tell the truth?' (Muse)

Yesterday I made what can only be described as a pilgrimage of excessive suffering (no - I didn't Google Map it - I relied on my mother for directions...) to a hospital down some leafy Southern road - after a great many other roads which could have lead anywhere - after giving up on a slow set of traffic lights, after missing a bus, after somewhat unkindly calling my mother a cripple for walking so damn slowly, after only a few hours of sleep becuase I had been so terribly terribly nervous - I had the first of what will hopefully be quite a few sessions of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Quite intensive CBT. Medium-Intensity CBT. (I wonder how intensive High-Intensity CBT would be...?!?) I sat in a chair and basically admittedly to a quite stunning litany of faults. And felt I must say rather brave for doing so - ungarnished with any self-defences apart from the occassional high-pitched laugh. I held on to the arms of that chair very tightly at times... Without going in to any great detail (you don't need to know the exact details, world, of my malaise, do you?) I was very impressed by the amount I got through in that hour. I have hated drifting aimlessly around continual failure. Recounting how horrible it all is. Without energy and without the sense that anything is going to happen about it - that I can do anything about it. This wasn't like that at all. Thus far, the lady with whom I am working seems exactly the sort of therapist I need. A happy medium between the sort of person who will accept my elaborate and devious excuses for the perpetuation of my own self-destruction (which is amusing and flattering for me - but not very helpful) and the sort of person who will completely stamp on my very soul (so to speak). I was faced with a whiteboard of my own complex schemes and subterfuges. A tricky sight. I cannot, at any rate, not claim not to know what I am doing... But the point is can I possibly be brave enough to stop? The very idea makes me hyperventilate. A cold ice seems to spread across my lungs. It's - horrible. But invigorating. Having been described (which both amused me and seemed tragically apt) as 'a wounded animal' (very Wilde falling onto his family's doorsteg 'like a wounded stag') - what am I to do? Lie down and be devoured? To acknowledge sheer terror is to make it rather uncomfortable to go on living with it...

Yes - yesterday afternoon and this night I have pulled my hair out... Of course I have. What did you expect? An immediate miracle? It has been made quite clear to me that I am not to expect that. But I have thought about it more. I put away the tweezers after I got my pain-high. Sometimes I cannot align myself to the Wilde-ism 'nothing suceeds like excess'. What about excess of will? But then I come up against Ruskin... Ruskin, Ruskin, Ruskin... I'm not sure I understand you. Anyway. Hair. I need to enjoy the wig-wearing process as much as possible while it last - and then? It has been pointed out to me (again) that it is not entirely my duty to be an image of static perfection (though it would be nice, sometimes...). To some extent, then, FUCK PERFECTION. Imperfection is so... decadant. (Tho by that I do not mean self-destruction... Of the difficulties of these extremities of thoughts!)

I am am to be self-created - this is relevant:

'...no great man [or woman] ever stops working till he has reached the point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution [one of the earliest and most dreadul lessons I ever learnt], and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he [or she] will always give the inferior portions of his [or her] work only such inferior attention as they require, and according to his [or her] greatness he [or she] becomes accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he [or she] can do, that is moments of lassitude or anger with himself [or herself] he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also.' (Ruskin, 1853/2004:26)