The Sickness Unto Death (Not.)

And, lest you all think I am so holy and attuned to the wishes of my brethren that I am going to follow this gentleman's urging and end my life because I don't like Billy Joel, here is my reader's guide to the personal weblog, or at least to this one, and here is where I (uncharitably) address prospective and actual readers' concerns over the quality and content of this thing. I know I'm not Proust, but unless you have the very worst teacher in the world and this blog is assigned reading, it's kind of unskillful to waste time pouring out hatred when you can just click a button and go elsewhere. It does seem a bit silly to read stuff you hate, doesn't it?

"'There is no man,'

[Elstir] began, 'however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man--so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise--unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded....We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.'" (Proust, Within a Budding Grove)


I pray to God it is not that I am 'growing accustomed to,' or acquiescing in, or failing any longer to notice, the winter such that I can no longer naturally and effortlessly be as splenetic as I have every right to be. After all, it is only the beginning of February, I am nearly at the 49th parallel, and thus there are many, many more weeks of short, dark days made darker by an unremitting low-hanging grey sky. I may have plenty to be thankful for, but there is still much to lament. At least for another eight weeks or so. And while I think equanimity in the face of some hardship is a hallmark of maturity, I think the Dylan Thomas approach is perhaps the sanest when choosing one's coping mechanisms for Northern winters. It may not perceptibly change objective reality, but you'll feel more alive after screaming in the snowy woods, and the slight elevation in blood pressure may help warm you up a bit.

Mature? Perhaps not; perhaps so. I think denial is in the main unduly demonized. Yes, we need a scapegoat, clearly, for the world's ills, but I remain unconvinced that it has to be the one that lets the individual get on with life! Rage, rage, fine; play a little hockey, hit the heavy bag, burn off some angst and cabin fever snowshoeing or sitting on a foreign beach pretending it's not still dismal where you're heading back to in 6.5 days 4 hours and 36 minutes -- and then go back to work, get back to living and resume waiting for April. Nothing is solved, obviously, but scant little generally is, and still somehow we manage to put our boots on the right feet again and get out the door.

That perhaps is the true model of maturity: getting on with it. Accepting that at times it truly is every bit as wretched as it seems and still having the courage and audacity (and, I will maintain, 'denial,' as it is popularly used) to put the boots on once more and head out into it. Certainly existentialists, whether of a Christian or atheistic bent, would stand with me there. Taking the nihilo, sticking an ex- in front of it, and finding within oneself what can be made of it.

Still, as Proust reminds us, we were not always wise, and if we have attained to any measure of wisdom now we might well look back on one or two habits or inclinations of our youth and wince. I was reminded of this today in a conversation about some film now out, which I thought I remembered as having Jeremy Irons in it - Jeremy Irons, who was once something different, or so I like to believe, but who has now become to films of the Double-Aughts what Michael Caine was to films of the Eighties and early Nineties: to wit, the scrubby, middle-aged Englishman who will take any part in any American film, no matter how bad the part, no matter how meritless the film.

I wouldn't care were it not the case that Jeremy Irons, along with Charlie Rose, Sartre, and William F. Buckley, were my Deep Dark Crushes of middle high school through early college. I adored that Buckley loved and wrote passionately about words despite all his other interests and careers; I loved that Rose's interviews were longer and more in-depth than the norm but that he was always even-tempered and polite; Sartre is an obvious and not uncommon one; but in contrast to all those I suspect that my Irons crush was based solely on the fact that regardless of role he was always effete, etiolated, and wan. He could take any part he wished, and still look and act completely morbidly tubercular in it. For me that was sufficient base for an abiding passion at the time.

Now of course, the stages of my psychosexual development having passed through such 'fatuous or unwholesome incarnations' as the foregoing, I must admit I do indeed feel quite mature by comparison in my quest for the six-foot Jesuit-schooled, Indian-riding, multilingual, finish-carpenter sailboat-racing poetry lover with a thing for Stravinsky, skirts, Mastiffs and Malagasy prosimians...

Woes which Hope thinks infinite

Dating is hell. Strike that: dating is an unappealing and tedious proposition from which few emerge fully intact, and Internet dating is hell.

I'm well past being concerned about whether it is some weakness in me which I should be compelled to abhor and exorcise that makes me imagine I might like to be in love. I have come to accept that I am a human, and thus a primate and a mammal, and that makes it perfectly excusable that I should at times want to be near others of my species, or even to form especial bonds with some. I've stepped down off the ego-stretching machine I had initially bought for a weak-willed and insecure boyfriend and admitted that in a previously unimaginable number of respects I'm just like everybody else.

So I shouldn't feel bad about wanting to couple, partner, bond, reproduce, marry, or whatever. Just because something is prosaic doesn't mean you shouldn't ever do it: I can eat lasagne from time to time and still remain exceptional -- can't I? Just because I own pointy boots doesn't mean I read women's magazines -- right? A few average habitudes does not an average person make. Well, necessarily, at any rate, I tell myself: there is cause there for caution.

And beyond that, one has to be reasonable, as well. If I can manage to accept that my desire for an exceptional, fulfilling, challenging, sublime and transcendent connection to/relationship with someone else does not inherently condemn me to a life of mediocrity in every possible arena, then I have to be reasonable and accept as well that there are steps I should take to find this. I am as likely to be stricken by a romantic coup de foudre while redecorating my apartment again or making a nice paella for Kirkland arrivistes as I am to be pulled over for driving while confident.

Which leaves me few options other than dating. I thoroughly despise being 'hit on' while out. If I want to have a glass of wine by myself and bring along a portable Proust, it is not a plaintive and desperate invitation to discussions of literary theory or why Americans cannot enjoy Loire reds. Given my predilection for answering such come-ons with monosyllables when possible (as with 'Good book?' as a shudderingly convenient example) and with the unbecomingly catty 'I'm not here to make new friends' when not, I cannot depend on Chance to render unto me the Übermensch I so richly deserve.

This leaves friends of friends, friends of relatives, friends of clients, friends of students, and friends of fellow volunteers. Scratch all of them, because whether anything does or does not work, it's far too tangly and I like my things silky. I do rely on referrals, connections, goodwill and guanxi in other areas, and tremendously value the imprimatur of a trusted friend on almost anything. But not as regards his good friend Joe.