September 28, 2006

• One biography of Earl Warren describes him as a man who was fond of trite ideals that many others professed were their sources of guidance.  Warren was different because he actually believed them. 

  "Funny" is a word that means many things to me.  Like a placeholder that I use out of laziness when another adjective would be more apt, if only I'd invest the emotional and intellectual energy to produce it.  That said, it's a funny thing to have such a sarcastic streak, to deride those who take themselves too seriously as a whole, only to take some of my own views too seriously.  "Too" seriously because they're naive sounding; views whose ordinariness cuts against my proudly embracing them.  They aren't ordinary in the sense of being widely held.  Rather, by ordinary, I mean not particularly original. 

  Can deep feeling about something compensate for the inadequateness, the unremarkableness of the thing that's the object of the feeling?  Can feeling be what separates something special, something worth valuing, from Bill O'Reilly... spouting off bullshit machismo.  What gets me about O'Reilly is that I can't imagine he seriously believes what he professes seriously believe.  Supposing he did, I'm not sure how that would change my view of him. Sincerity of belief is a plus; but ridiculousness of the belief's content may more than outweigh that. 

  I hate traditional gender roles.  They seem so pronounced in law.  The men act like alpha males.  The women act like alpha males.  And then there's me.  Me, the product of two parents who love me as much as any child could hope to be loved, but who can't quite find it in him to return the favor.  Is love an entitlement or something you earn?  I don't know, but the answer to that question wouldn't change anything for me.  Loving something or someone is a natural part of you, a part you can't control. 

  You can't control who you love, but I think you can pick people to not love, or fall out of love with.  There's no paradox there.  Nature narrows down the field of all humanity; it presents you with a limited number of options.  But after that, it's up to you.  You don't control what offers you get, yet you retain the power of acceptance.  Well, you do and you don't control what offers you get.  What kind of person you are determines how others respond to you, so that's going to have an impact on the "natural" selection of who loves you back.  But it's not a one to one correspondence -- you only have so much control over what you project, and you often can't fine tune the output signal enough to predict the response of others with great accuracy.

  I've tangled up the distinct questions of how people come to love you and how you come to love them.  Maybe I've done so because they aren't so distinct.  There are two ways to go -- you either love people because they love you back and it's this feedback cycle of mutual adoration and co-dependence or you love people that don't love you back because that love represents some hole in yourself and if only you could make them love you and fill the hole their lack of reciprocation creates them maybe just maybe you could fill that internal hole in yourself.  We don't love in some vacuum, penned up in a lonely room thinking about someone out in the world.  Or we do.  But the latter type of love isn't as interesting.  It's compelling in this fucked up way, compelling because anguish is supposed to be compelling, to be character building, and what's more anguishing than feeling alone in the universe, in love with someone who doesn't know you exist.  But it's probably a ridiculous way to go through life, a realization you come to years later, having finally broken out of it.

  Every last thing before I go Every last thing before I go Every last thing before I go Every
  last thing before I go I will kiss you I will kiss you I will kiss you forever 

  • 5:31 pm
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