b e h n d i n g

So, it’s officially a go in Boston.  I start working October 1st, which doesn’t leave me much time to make the move.  Even though I’ve been expecting word, it felt sudden, unanticipated.  There’s an interesting relation between the expectation of an event and its fulfillment.  It’s the loss of continuity in the moment the event unfolds, in which expectation is annihilated (the connotations of brute violence and utter destruction are intentional) by the very thing it foresaw.  It’s a jarring transition the mind need make in that instant, from being in control to relinquishing it.  Less like a transition, more like a sharp, 90 degree turn.  And to think that all this drama unfolds under the radar, subservient to the significance we attribute to the event in itself.

I found this old post, so I’m posting it for the sake of its livelihood.  And I mean to do as my title suggests.  I really think this bout with vocabulary has been a healthy and edifying mental boot camp.  We’ll see how long this flurry of motivation lasts.

gerontocracy – n. government ruled by old people

misogamy – n. hatred of marriage

While typing the definition for malinger, I accidentally spelled duty “doody.”  I think these vocab cram sessions are getting to me.

Yesterday morning I happened to catch a glimpse of the sun’s sluggish but graceful ascent above the masts and lines of the Atlantic City harbor.  The minutes passed by slowly, I think for two reasons: the placidity of the scene and my sleepless exhaustion.  My ears were simultaneously tuned to an amusing symphony of sounds rising steadily like smoke from the ten quiescent bodies surrounding me in the hotel room.  Throaty, rhythmic snores at various octaves, the trill of light gurgling, the suspense-driving teeth grinding, and the staccato fart that unexpectedly pierced the morning air.  The juxtaposition of sight and sound at that moment was odd, but it worked.  Such moments do end, indeed this one yielded to the back of my eyelids not fifteen minutes after it started (when I perceived its existence), but really, why how can one expect such treasured moments to last forever, to extend ad infinitum?  I think the best we can do is try to preserve the truth of the moment by rejecting sentimental fancies or romantic whims we may wish to tack on after the fact (one of the bad bourgeois habits I am often guilty of), and then hope they return to us like boomerangs in memory form.  I’m reading a book delves into the notion of eternal return, and I feel like this thought is somehow related to or brought about by that.

In the film version of V for Vendetta, you might recall that Natalie Portman’s character Evey is secretly imprisoned by V in order to expunge her fears of the government.  He later justifies the staged imprisonment and mistreatment in quoteworthy terms, telling her “only when you have no fear are you free.”  During this period, Evey is spurred on by the notes she receives from the prisoner next door, one Valerie, whose life unfolds on the series of toilet paper sheets slipped between the cracks of the prison wall they shared.  Valerie wasn’t writing specifically to Evey; she just wanted to tell her story to someone, anyone, before she died.  I believe this is a fundamental human desire, to share ourselves, one that is so fundamental that on some level it doesn’t even matter who we are sharing ourselves with.  I believe this blog is part of me trying to share myself.  I don’t know who reads it, but I have to believe that at least one person does, and if that is the case, then this blog will sustain me.  In an ideal world, we share our lives with people who matter.  In a world above ideals, they partake of that journey along the way.  For Valerie, whose world was stripped with her freedom to love, it didn’t matter who was reading on the other side.  A blog, arguably all blogs, are attempts to share ourselves with the outside (of our bodies) world.