Sometimes the truth isn't good enough; sometimes people deserve more
2008-08-03 19:46:20 ET

This entry is from July 24. Entry on the trip to come.

"From what I have come to understand of life, this...is as close as we got to that ultimate mystery. I throw death aside. Death is not mysterious. We all understand death far too well and spend chunks of life resisting, ignoring, or explaining away that knowledge.
But this real mystery I have never touched, never scratched....I suspect that, even if I had begun as a norm, the saw-toothed yearning that whirls in me would bend me and spin me colorless, shrink me, scorch every hair from my body, and all invisibly so only my red eyes would blink out glimpses of the furnace thing inside."
- Geek Love

I saw The Dark Knight. It was pretty good. They're (the Christopher Nolan Batman movies) - especially the second one - a better kind of superhero movie. Darker, more realistic. More fleshed-out characters. With some semblance of a philosophy. But still with a kind of cheesy, comic-book, stylized feel, an atmosphere. The superhero story is essentially moral and idealistic, in a simple way. I really liked Harvey Dent. It was so strange to compare him to the Two-Face of Batman Forever, where he's just kind of silly and not that dark and you don't know much of what happened to him. This Harvey is so much darker and more developed, so much more agonized and disturbing, so much more likable.

I saw a guy in a Joker mask in a parking lot the other night. He must have made it himself, unless they started manufacturing them already. I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, me, oh, my, all that’s happened to me.

I want to see Watchmen. There are so many superhero and end-of-the-world movies lately. They're kind of interesting, but neither of them (the two kinds) is very deep. It's just nice to think about - apocalyptic-movie situations and all that... That kind of mind-set, the mind-set of righteousness and morality, is absorbing yet restful. Entertainment of the second degree.

I'm going on a trip to Montana for a week starting on Saturday. I really just want to go somewhere and get away from things for a while. I've had that idea in my head for a while, of wanting to go places, just to go. That I'd really like it. I guess there's not really much of the typical "trip" allurements there, but there'll probably be some nice scenery and it'll just be...nice. We'll do nice things, since I have been so unnice lately. Like closing your eyes on a day that relaxes you and stretches out your stiffness, bleaches out your anger.

Hopefully I'll finish Geek Love soon. And then I'm going to read/finish Lolita and then start The Brothers Karamazov - by Dostoevsky (why can I never pronounce that name!). Just like I can never spell Nietszsche. Nietzsche.

Nic’s (no k) baby (two-year-old son) made me feel like crying a little. Why should he suffer? He’s so young. And he manages to look troubled in his sleep while, I am convinced, I never look anything. I wondered if I would look sad in those photographs... I doubted it. But I was looking at them and maybe I do; maybe it shows a little. Maybe I can see it, a little bit. Lately I am easily moved by things, even cheaply sentimental things. I recognize it in the same moment. Anything can trigger it. It’s probably just me growing old.

I feel like a megalomaniac sometimes. I have that attitude. "Above the sun and all the people." Like, sometimes I just think, "I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I am above you." With an image of me, thrust up, above all the weight of the world. The reason for everything not really mattering is just that I am me. Who I am. I think, "Aren’t I selfish? Aren’t I uncaring? But it doesn’t matter; I am me. I am beyond God. I can do and be whatever I want." I don’t care to change myself at all, or even to care that I am certain ways.

So I'm sure this will be fascinating to you, but I got another job at the UW School of Nursing Academic Services office. It's good-ish. Better than my other one, anyway.

Long quote, but it's really beautiful!:
"One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought. It is one of the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance sounded. Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having picked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil… That was civilisation….Perhaps it was morbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulance with its victim inside… Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more – fatal to art, fatal to friendship. True. And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell could be heard down the next street…chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It had been his undoing – this susceptibility – in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why, Heaven knows. Beauty of some sort, probably, and the weight of the day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one’s breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box…"


"There was something solemn in it - but love and religion would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul. And the supreme mystery...was simply this: here was one room, there another. Did religion solve that, or love?"

Lachrymosa
2008-06-15 21:32:26 ET

"'Do you remember the lake?' she said, in an abrupt voice, under the pressure of an emotion which caught her heart, made the muscles of her throat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as she said 'lake.' For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, 'This is what I have made of it! This!' And what had she made of it? What, indeed? sitting there sewing this morning with Peter."
- Mrs. Dalloway

I did my second photo shoot a few days ago, with this great guy named Alex. He had me wear that slightly more formal but kind of tattered gown with the matching wrist gloves I wore to the masquerade ball and Cabaret and a gorgeous long coat (not together) in front of a red-and-black painting as a backdrop, and also had this idea of seminude stuff: haha, he got on a little stepladder and poured water on my hair and we gathered it up and draped it around my neck and fanned it out across my chest. It was a nice idea; kind of dark and atmospheric. I went totally sans makeup this time. I got along with him better than the first photographer.

There's been some drama lately with Nick and me. (Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise.) Actually, it's pretty horrible. I was sad and depressed and morbid and sick and dreading. I've really been bad this time. And I am so selfish and uncaring, and untouched by anyone in a way. I don't even understand why myself sometimes.

Reading and loving Mrs. Dalloway.

I like ice cream. That's really what's nice about living. Just eating ice cream or sitting in the sun or something. Everything else is more complicated, even if a better kind of joy.

I registered for ENGL 284: Beginning Short Story Writing, ART H 380: 19th- and 20th-Century Art, CLAS 430: Greek and Roman Mythology, and PSYCH 357: Psychobiology of Women for autumn quarter. I'm not sure about the last one and want to switch into MATH 111 (Algebra with Applications, heh; if I have to take a math course, I'll take the easiest one possible).

I always notice that crack in the concrete in the little alcove before the bus stop. It looks like a vein of the ground laid open or something.
5 comments

Lisa gets a modeling gig!
2008-04-29 20:03:33 ET

*My first ever. Well, I've got one this Friday which is more of a goth/alt fashion shoot, and one next week which is more of a "natural," lying-in-the-tall-grass, artsy kind of shoot, I suppose. I've thought about how it conflicts with my beliefs, etc., but I still would love to model. It's so strange how my disgust of my physical appearance/body has metamorphosed and developed into something else, something much more mixed and positive, I think. And I've thought about, like, won't I just feel horribly awkward and shy and inadequate and unlovely? But I want to do it. And then I'll actually have some pictures to post on MySpace - j/k. I don't believe in posting pictures of anything other than your cat. And I know that it's customary and makes a lot of sense to wear makeup for photo shoots, but I still don't really like it. I still feel like I'm giving up something of myself in wearing makeup - but isn't that the point of photo shoots and of artifice? And I wish they would just see me as I am. 'Cause I kind of like that I'm totally natural and have never really worn makeup. I know that whatever beauty I might have isn't added or enhanced by it. I have high ideas about everything and incredible self-doubt and lack of self-confidence, which maybe makes it kind of weird that I'm considering a shoot in the first place. Anyway, I'm having fun thinking about what outfits to wear for the fashion shoot. Wish me good luck, guys!

*I wrote this two days ago. I feel a bit differently about it now.
4 comments

My baby journal
2008-04-22 18:58:56 ET

Yayy, my Subcultures account is born! I can't say I liked the "Explain Why You Are an Interesting Person in a Couple of Paragraphs" application box, though. Anyway, I found this site through my boyfriend/malecompanion, SuhleapDevil (don't worry, he's not as boring as he seems; though I suppose it doesn't matter how interesting he is outside that if that's all you hear of him). This will mostly be a version of my LiveJournal and MySpace, for the edification of my boy and whoever else considers it so.

Speaking of subcultures...
I guess I should say all this now. I identify most with the goth subculture. I definitely don't consider myself part of it, or part of any culture for that matter (like I said to "Moxie" and "Vasa"). But I love and sympathize with its aesthetics, which is probably its most important aspect. Its fashion, of course. And I have, more or less, or relate to, the "gothic mentality" or "personality characteristics": that is, the aestheticism, the love and melting eye for beauty, finding beauty in dark things, a kind of romanticism; the individualism; the intellectualism; the sensitivity. But I think it's still, above all, a delicious taste. And I'm also kind of disappointed in the subculture, simultaneous with my admiration for it, which is also something I can't really help. I still don't really know what goth is or what goths are or why I should like them better than other people. I think they can be mean and insular in a way, like members of any subculture. I just like...truly interesting individuals. I guess I kind of expect goths to be ideal in a way: tasteful, interesting, highly individual and intelligent, emotional, passionate, creative, beautifully dressed, serious, introverted, melancholy, warm and cold, witty, eloquent, contemplative, insightful, deep, kind of dark people - and kind of distant and unattainable in a way because of their "edginess" - which is probably the only common thing they are. But I know this about them: "Being goth" doesn't necessarily make their personalities better than "normal" people's; they can be stupid and small-minded, they sound cheerful like normal people, they pretty much talk and think like them, they do all the things normal people do, they dance and drink, except they, you know, go to clubs where they can show off their gothiness to each other, they have and love and are excited about their children (baby bats), they probably even go to the bathroom and are most of them really conformists when they think they aren't. But it still appeals to me. My kind of sad cousin whom I love and am slightly ashamed of.
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