Up and down.
Mar. 20th, 2007 04:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleJeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" is playing in my ear, and I'm tuning in to that and the music of the keys under my fingertips. I can see C.J. wandering Times Square in shock and horror and loss, crying, and I remember the same emotions from Buckley's fans when he drowned so young.
I had a talk with someone a few weeks ago about the transience of happiness. Much like the seasons, the good comes, then goes, then comes back. Or, in my mind, the good goes, then comes back, then goes again. The old glass-half-empty thing. I've discovered in my heart in the last week a well of anger and sadness I keep thinking has dried up. Now I find I don't know how deep it goes.
Maybe it's just that I don't know where it wells up from. Part of me knows it's a distraction. I don't have to look inwards if I have something beyond me to be angry about. I can rationalise and intellectualise and point at my father and speak of Electra and Jung and Bill and Jeff Buckley. But I can still feel the rattling parquet floor of my old apartment beneath my knees as I sank down and sobbed.
"Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."
And emotions can be ripped apart and thrown out into the light to shrivel or grow. But they'll still hurt. They'll still lift you up and get you drunk like a 2am party girl, or grind you like third-world millstones. And sometimes, all the intellectualising and dissection in the world won't help you until the pain just wears slowly away. Those of us who don't decide one day to get over or forget or forgive or move on or whatever everyone says we should do have to wait, patiently or impatiently, for the sharp edges to dull themselves, or the skin to shine up and harden with scar tissue.
It's not just the obvious things. I find, for example, I miss Leah now more than I did. Part of me has started to wonder why it's been so long without her calling me. Part of me has started to reach out, and pull back in bewilderment that she's not there. I'm frightened of that. I'm frightened of the repeating pattern of loss that overwhelms me each time it washes over me. I shocked myself last night: a friend of mine laughed at me when I said yes, I missed going to Hawai'i with my parents, but they'd bring me pictures.
"Pictures! That's not the same," he said.
"No, but a picture I can keep forever."
Have I really gotten so afraid of things I can't hold on to I'd pass up an experience for the tangible evidence of it? Would I rather have the photo than the trip?
I just can't seem to find the bottom of the well.
I had a talk with someone a few weeks ago about the transience of happiness. Much like the seasons, the good comes, then goes, then comes back. Or, in my mind, the good goes, then comes back, then goes again. The old glass-half-empty thing. I've discovered in my heart in the last week a well of anger and sadness I keep thinking has dried up. Now I find I don't know how deep it goes.
Maybe it's just that I don't know where it wells up from. Part of me knows it's a distraction. I don't have to look inwards if I have something beyond me to be angry about. I can rationalise and intellectualise and point at my father and speak of Electra and Jung and Bill and Jeff Buckley. But I can still feel the rattling parquet floor of my old apartment beneath my knees as I sank down and sobbed.
"Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."
And emotions can be ripped apart and thrown out into the light to shrivel or grow. But they'll still hurt. They'll still lift you up and get you drunk like a 2am party girl, or grind you like third-world millstones. And sometimes, all the intellectualising and dissection in the world won't help you until the pain just wears slowly away. Those of us who don't decide one day to get over or forget or forgive or move on or whatever everyone says we should do have to wait, patiently or impatiently, for the sharp edges to dull themselves, or the skin to shine up and harden with scar tissue.
It's not just the obvious things. I find, for example, I miss Leah now more than I did. Part of me has started to wonder why it's been so long without her calling me. Part of me has started to reach out, and pull back in bewilderment that she's not there. I'm frightened of that. I'm frightened of the repeating pattern of loss that overwhelms me each time it washes over me. I shocked myself last night: a friend of mine laughed at me when I said yes, I missed going to Hawai'i with my parents, but they'd bring me pictures.
"Pictures! That's not the same," he said.
"No, but a picture I can keep forever."
Have I really gotten so afraid of things I can't hold on to I'd pass up an experience for the tangible evidence of it? Would I rather have the photo than the trip?
I just can't seem to find the bottom of the well.