i almost called today. how’s that for breaking news, eh?
moving on, people. man, whenever i say that i miss mr jones. but no man’s dead while his name is still spoken.
i had the worst day at work today
i seriously haven’t felt like this since my boss at fiu spent 45 minutes detailing how he wanted to kill me and the various ways he would do it if he could.
and then i get home and i realize:
oh shit
they hired me because of my political suaveness i’m fucked
aside: i found a transcription for martin simpson’s “betsy the serving maid”. it’s not bad. (power tab format on ultimate-guitar if you’re interested) and no fucking wonder i coudln’t figure the goddamn thing out, i was trying dropped-D and DADGAD and it’s in some weirdass G tuning (DGDGCF# — seriously, what the fuck). also capo on V. aside to the aside: no actual clips of martin simpson on youtube, but here’s some dude who learned some of his stuff. aside to the aside to the aside: martin simpson is one of my mixtape secret ingredients. no one expects it. my top four songs that you should download (but i will unhelpfully not provide for you, because the man earns his money,) are: “the company you keep”, “betsy the serving maid”, “lord gregory” and “dreamtime”. I actually learned ‘the company you keep’ and ‘dreamtime’ but still kinda suck at them (actually dreamtime I got not too bad at…). if you buy an album (and you should, he’s seriously omfg great), i highly recommend his 1996 LIVE AT OXFORD album above all others (although “when i was on horseback” is a good 2nd).
Title from Fad Gadget’s “I Discover Love”, but I can’t find that on the web, so you get Fad Gadget’s video for “Collapsing New People”. I’m kind of surprised that Marylin Manson hasn’t covered FG yet.
The buddhist idea that desire is suffering always made sense to me, but I don’t know if I believe that the way to nirvana is by getting rid of desire. Might be my inner catholic, but reining desire in and putting it towards constructive use makes more sense than subjugating it or denying it or what-have-you.
I mean, hummingbirds don’t know that they burn through calories and need high amounts of sugar to keep their inner reactors going. They just know that the sweet stuff in plants is mmmmm mmmmm good. Draw your own parallels with sex, drugs, rock and roll, whatever gets you off. That they get pollen on ‘em and fulfill their raison d’etre is well beyond what they know. This bullshit self-awareness and torture makes us special, different.
Then again, the idea is not to kill desire, but to move beyond it, accept things the way they are. Nam myoho renge kyo.
So are you a slave to your desires? Does your happiness control you? Are you a slave to yourself?
Bill: “No man or woman is ever worth your tears, and the one that is will never make you cry.”
What utter bullshit.
Pat: Sounds like good (general) advice to me. By the time it stopped being relevant you wouldn’t be taking general relationship advice anyway.
Steven: No, it’s terrible advice. There are only two types of people who can make you cry—those that are completely worthless pieces of shit and those who make a true connection with you. I guess it’s possible for one person to be both types at once, but the second type is the type that you should want to make a relationship with even if they break your heart once or twice along the way.
‘Struth. Still haven’t had leaky eyes. I don’t know if that means I’m broken or that I’m not.
You know, postsecret is a truly genius idea. It fulfills a certain voyeuristic thrill at seeing others’ secrets, it encourages art and beauty in the world, it works as a release valve for those holding secrets in and those viewing them as well, and finally, it holds a mirror up to those viewing them. That’s a lot of spinning plates.
I saw the exhibit and it was moving, and then it was Sunday and I saw the updated page and the postcard here, and for the first time ever since then, I felt like that again. It is heartbreakingly sad and beautiful and it took my words away.
I love that bridge postcard. I wish I’d sent it in.
Rose left. Been speaking to the Little Trouble Girl, playing guitar by myself and drinking wine. Hung out with the Crafty Witch, made my world-famous (that’s not an exagerration) grilled cheese sammiches, tried her tapenade, watched “The Wicker Man” and played guitar and got to meet her friend Sunny and then we discussed relationships and love and marriage. I don’t know. I think she’s ugh about marriage because the commitment is just a big scary thing and feels dishonest to say “forever, you and only you” especially about love, because the heart is such a fickle fucking cat. But I never really thought that marriage was about that, at least not by the time I got to thinking about that. I don’t know that I got across that I didn’t think that marriage had to be about that, but it was like she just didn’t want to think about marriage not being about love forever and every monogamy. Which, I’m no advocate for polyamory specifically, in whatever flavors it comes in, but from what I know of her specific feelings about monogamy, and the legalities of marriage, it sounds like the only way she could have a relationship (not specifically marriage) for a longer period of time and not get all heartbroken and insane.
But then again, consider my folks’ marriage. I dunno. Dysfunction vs just putting up w/ it?
Buddhism’s suffering-stems-from-desire totally makes sense, especially when viewed in the context of relationships: every relationship problem I’ve ever even heard of has been the result of what A wants and what B wants differing and that not being made absolutely clear because communication between them having been less than clear. A good friend of mine broke up with his fiancee because he wanted kids and she absolutely didn’t and thankfully they realized this before that marriage happened, and they broke up and he found another chick muuuuch more well suited to his temperament and humor. And she does want kids. So there you have it.
The more I consider it, the more I think that marriage should not be about capital-L Love but about lowercase-l love and a recognized partnership. Comrades-at-arms, with fucking and love. Not some romantic idiocy of the twue-wuv variety thinking that things will always be wine and roses. Part of what makes the joyous moments so sweet is that there are the bitter moments to contrast them against. It can always be so much worse, you know? You hold on to the good and you let go the bad and when it gets really bad you go back to the good and weigh it and decide whether it’s enough to stick around for. And part of that marriage thing is just a promise to try really fucking hard. Sometimes you promise yourself, and sometimes you promise the other person, or God, or a judge or whatever. As serious as you make it, man, just like anything else.
