erosanova-blog

[erosanova-blog]

The Good Ol’ Days

There’s a magic here, but unlike any other. It’s not the infinite youth of Peter Pan or the waving wand of Harry Potter, it’s just a feeling.

 It’s easy to see if you’ve been on both sides of the spectrum, but the time spent here amidst peers and lovers will be the most challenging part of your life. After all this fades into the wrinkles of time, the biggest difference between then and now is the amount of effort and passion you’ll see. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone will fall off into lethargy as they senesce, but the tendency to follow the path of less resistance increases exponentially.

 Here girls spend hours on their hair and makeup; they spend days shopping for just the right outfit for that first day of classes and triple check their hair before heading out the door like it’s their wedding day. People want to be desired and desirable-they are peacocks searching for a mate. The guys may spend weeks at the gym in preparation for their (re)introduction onto the school scene.

 Then it happens: that first indelible day back. The smell of the classroom is akin to a big pink eraser being worn down to its grayish stub. New kids are all nerves, eager with their notebooks, backpacks and first weeks’ worth of homework done. They are the sprinters, the greenhorns. They start out hard and go fast but wear out quickly. Then you have the (majority) of veterans. They sit there, hair partially brushed and a hint of breakfast on their face. They’ve begun the slip into slavery. They are the marathon runners, expressing the same amount of effort throughout the semester.

 When you’re a child, your aspirations are always grandiose. This tends to last until a little past your sophomore year, when you realize the major you’d hoped to pursue either 1) doesn’t actually make any money, 2) has too many other (sometimes more) qualified participants or 3) you can’t put enough effort in, whether it be due to your (work) schedule, your cognitive ability or something to do with your family/relationship status.

 So the veterans are either hopelessly exhausted from chasing their dream for four (or more) years and are stressing about job placement or they’ve accepted their less-than-grandiose fate and are pursuing a degree that they may or may not want, need, or use after graduation. They are the people with grey faces in traffic, that can’t even muster a smile for the goofy guy with the sign dancing on the street corner.

 You’ll never forget the beauty of the environment, both because of the extensive maintenance on the property but also the inhabitants.

 So, in my final semester I have some words for you.

Don’t ever give up who you are, or what you care about even if your dreams are placated, dashed or put into (permanent or temporary) dormancy.

 Always smile.

 Always try to do your best, only you can define what that is, there is no gray area in your own mind (metaphorically). There are no grades after these years. There are promotions, demotions, hiring and firing, you will be the master of the spectrum you’ll lie on.

 Never burn any bridges. You never know how many times you’ll see your favorite (or least favorite) Chemistry T. A. on campus, and to quote Mr. Churchill, “to build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

Don’t let a single moment define your life--stay on track and stay on task.

In addition, Jay Z once said, “Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.”

 Instead of starting several projects at once and attempting to finish all of them, focus on one at a time. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

 If your heart tells you to do something, do it. (within reason)

 My biochemistry professor mentioned that two people can never fall in love if they don’t meet, just like two molecules can’t be attracted or repelled unless they come in (fairly) close proximity. Take a chance. You’ll never know unless you try.

 Don’t be afraid to do something as a hopeful romantic. Even if it’s embarrassing or (slightly) illegal or against the rules, people tend to forgive if it’s done in the name of sincere romance.

 *************Follow your butterflies where they take you and life will never be dull. **************

 You’ll always remember the little happiness, but in the end it will be as dear to your heart as all the pain and struggles you went through. Enjoy your experience here, it’s unlike any other.

[erosanova-blog]

Have you ever sat in a diner by yourself, eating your eggs over hard, your bacon crispy and your waffle covered with fruit and whipped cream? (Hold on let me finish.) Do you ever put your fucking phone down and listen for a second? Not to any conversation in particular, that would be morally reprehensible; no not eavesdropping. Just listening.

I laugh at people that sit on their phones when they’re sitting down for a meal, ESPECIALLY if they’re paying for it and ESPECIALLY if they’re with friends or family. The beauty of eating out is you don’t have to clean everything up and you can enjoy the pleasure of your company. Not check your fucking Instagram and post pictures of your damn eggs Benedict. Yeah we get it, we’ve all fucking seen it I don’t care if its some sort of wide-eyed variation, its the same shit. Put your phone down and eat your fucking meal. It’s atrocious and rude.

Anyways, back to my rant. Listen for a minute. The clatter of cutlery on china, the soft moans of ecstasy of a hungover group of friends enjoying their first cup of hazelnut coffee. Delight in the smells, even close your eyes for a minute.

Whatever you do, don’t quiver. Don’t let your lip start to tremble as you see the old man sitting by himself in a booth next to you and you think, “that’s me in sixty years.” Alot of people would kill for the lifestyle that I have, not that I’m a celebrity, but I feel appreciated by acquaintances, I love dancing and I don’t care what I look like doing it, and I generally tend to hang around some pretty amazing people and some fairly fetching females. Yeah. That’s an alliteration. Some people say that it’s weak to use in your writing but I say they can fuck right off and I’ll do what I want, this blog is for me not for them.

Back to the rant at hand, see how easily I get distracted? Anyways, lets return.

Sit there... muster a smile. Be polite and clean up your mess after your meal. Charming, witty conversation with the waitress or waiter, and always leave a big tip. Just don’t let your lip start to twitch or it won’t stop. You’ll think why you’re there by yourself in the first fucking place. Why you’ve poured your heart and soul into everything you’ve ever done, and in the end wearing your heart upon your sleeve is a terrible place to fucking wear it. You know how much you bump into shit over the course of the day? People are clumsy as fuck, and your extremities are the first to go.

You don’t even have to keep your eyes open. Often it helps accentuate the softer conversations and hold back the floodgates of your eyelids. Don’t let them see your smile droop when the acquiescent server leaves and you’re left alone with your thoughts once again. That is one thing most people never lose until the end, their inner monologues.

Try not to look at the happy couples holding hands, the pregnant wife and hubby, or even worse the single mom with the five fucking kids catapulting peanut butter towards the window as she pulls the remaining hair out of her nervously-chewed upper lip and wipes the boogers from the other’s nose while her ex-husband is off fucking some girl with single-digit I.Q. And it’s not her fault and it’s not his fault. Their ignorance is bliss. They can brush off the fact that she usurped a happy home and he threw vows into the trash like so many discarded prophylactics. After all, a contemporary American marriage is essentially a fucking tax write-off that you can liquidate at any given moment, for any given desire... real love is few and far between, it’s more like what people feel compelled to do or feel by society and then a general progression (through proximity or various chemical signals produced when a person feels affection towards another) to what people think is love. It’s not. It’s fucking not. If it was, this tattoo on my ribs that says forever would actually mean forever. It doesn’t. It mean’s I’ll remember it forever, an ephemeral phase of typically the end of a happy era, as I usually just received ink to equalize the inner pain with some outer pain. Did it work? I’m still here.

The lines are so blurry anymore... you have to wonder who is telling the truth and who is out to manipulate you.

Try not to look... try not to make eye contact. Just sit and enjoy the sounds of happy people, or just people in general. Disconnect from your Facebook and think of how it would be to live in someone else’s shoes that’s sitting across the room looking at you with the same haunting expression.

Don’t think about the fact that you woke up next to a woman you informed of your love every day, but that had stopped saying it after a short while. Try not to think about the fact that you have to let her go... because watching the sunrise alone, crying, but together, was too much for your 30th birthday. Try not to think about the fact that one day, even though you had to break it off because you wanted her to be happy but never stopped loving her... one day someone would come along and she wouldn’t want you coming around anymore. She wouldn’t respond to any of your messages. Seems like a dreary outlook doesn’t it? Let me ask you this, how many times do you touch a hot burner before you learn it really fucking hurts? 

But that’s what happens every time. You put yourself up against the impossible: someone who doesn’t want to be in a relationship, someone who doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you, someone who buckles under the pressure, someone who doesn’t actually see you as that amazing “catch” that they claim you are (if you were such a fucking catch why weren’t you caught?) and wind all the way down into Self-deprecationville. Because it’s easier to blame yourself sometimes; it’s realistic. If they tell you its not you its them, its definitely you. You’re not right for them, they just want to break it to you softly so it feels like you’re winning, like you’re coming out on top of the haystack; well that’s just not the fucking case is it? In reality you’re losing everything. Everything your life consisted of from how you wake up in the morning to how you eat to how you picture someone’s face to push you through the day.

Many have pushed mine, but then fall back or I shove them off. I think my mind wants me to suffer. When I suffer I write like this, I workout like a superhero and I work on myself for once. So all these women that pass me by because I’m not muscular enough or tattooed enough or I don’t have enough pigment in my skin (or I have too much), because I’m not successful enough or whatever. But then when I get there, and I’m alone, is that happiness? Because at that point your success and wealth are as attractive to some people as your character, charm, personality or even looks. So you have to wonder, unless they started from the bottom with you, are they a schooling fish or just another remora suckering at your underbelly?

If I really meant that much,

you wouldn’t have walked away

If I really meant that much

you would've listened to what I had to say.

But no, not you, you just turned and walked out, like I didn’t even matter. If you really cared like you said you did and saw this going somewhere then a little hiccup wouldn’t deter you from the one who “treated you like a queen, “ “touched you like nobody ever has before,” makes not your day or week, but “makes your world.” You wouldn’t just leave if you think I treated you the way you deserve to be treated.

Maybe I didn’t arrange the flowers or the notes properly, maybe you didn’t get the message as intended... maybe you just weren’t the one. It hurts me so much to walk away from a force that was so attractive it took me from hanging out with several girls to effectively breaking it off with all of them (because I wanted to and because we were hanging out so much I didn’t have time, or didn’t want to make time for them to being all alone, with all of them potentially upset with me.

And you won’t even say more than a few words. None of them will. And at this point I don’t want to go to others and complain because it will chase them off too, even if they’re only friends. The point of the story is you can’t show people your vulnerabilities because then they don’t see you the same way. You’re suddenly weak and inferior if you complain. So just keep your mouth shut and your lip in line. You’re a man, act like one. Don’t snivel in your bed after three hours of sleep because you just realized that you have a hard time tolerating people for long periods of time because sooner or later you discover how truly ugly they are on the inside, despite their exterior appearance.

Just keep to yourself and write. Write away the pain. Write because the keys will listen even if the audience isn’t there. Write because thinking too much is what gets you into all those messes in the first place... and if you could just sequester them somehow and push them into some far region only accessible by a donkey and an AR-15. Lock it away. If they really cared as much as they said they did, they would read ever page in your book before just discounting it as a failed endeavor and moving on. But chances are, and I hate to be gloomy here but, chances are... they won’t come back. They were never yours. Accept it.

You’ve fought for your love before, either verbally or by taking action (usually a romantic notion). Why fight? How much are they fighting? Do they really want to fucking be with you? If you like someone, you like them for who they are at that point in time... planning a future is silly because everyone changes-- society demands it. So, instead of starting some big stupid fucking argument about wanting a little more that just a fwb or similar arrangement... write a little. Let your thoughts cycle through before you throw it all away.

Some words cannot be taken back, and some feelings cannot be retrieved. This goes out to all the girls that I gave pieces of my heart to, that walked out the door carrying it in a little glass case with their future husbands. I guess... I’m sorry I wasn’t what you’re looking for. I hope at least one of us is happy, and since I always (generally) put others before myself, it might as well be you.

What’s fucked is I’m not necessarily talking about one girl. Although the majority of this post is directed at a girl I was just recently involved with, alot of my relationships have ended this way. Me wondering what if...

What if I didn’t bring it up?

What if I didn’t give you those flowers?

What if I didn’t spoil you rotten?

Would it have changed anything? If this concept of “True love” exists, wouldn’t at least one of them have actively fought instead of just non-nonchalantly rearranging their lives to function without you in them.

And the worst part is... all you can do is walk away, be polite and thank them for the memories. And, if history repeats itself, you know that this will most likely be the last time you really even interact, and soon they will just fade away into another tattoo. Sweet dreams world.

[erosanova-blog]

Frankenstein

"Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous." (Shelley)

Saturday nights are always interesting at Sundance. There aren't alot of familiar faces, just a horde of senescent people twisting in circles. Its reading between the lines that really tears that heart off your sleeve. Yes, some may look foolish, and some had too many drinks... but you see it in their eyes. That look, again. It's piercing.

The older generation is interesting to watch. Generally as people age, they tend to care less and less about their appearance, and more about the things that truly matter in their lives. At first I assumed that all of these couples were married for years, then I remembered the divorce rate in America is astronomical, and chances are some of them were on their second or even fifth marriage. But life changes alot as you age.

I used to make fun of people that were thirty (and above). I remember thinking, "What a douche, I'm never gonna get old and lame like that!" when I was in middle school and high school. To be perfectly honest I never thought I would live this long, and didn't make alot of life goals early on. We used to party hard... really hard. I also was obsessed with speed and anything with extra boost, and I've definitely had my share of near-death incidents. Now that I'm here I can feel kids doing it to me behind my back. Luckily people always tell me I look young for my age, so I haven't been alienated completely since returning to college. But it's amazing what those two (or one or three but... lets just keep shit simple) little digits can define you as a person. People say it doesn't matter and age is just a number. They're fucking liars, of course age matters. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't exist; it wouldn't be a defining characteristic.

As I continue to get older I learn more and more, watch more people and their interactions. I love watching how people treat each other when they know nobody is looking. It can be the sweetest, gentlest notion from the most abrasive looking person in the room or it can be spitfire from someone you expected to be extremely inverted. Going back to a previous post... I think too much. That's why I don't sleep.

[2:15 am]

"Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself), was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe" (Shelley)

I think in cycles, and it's best to let them run their course. There are many things that [most observant] people will learn about themselves throughout their life cycles that will help them get through many obstacles. I still cannot figure out why I fall so hard like I do, it's inexplicable. Or why I sit up late at night pondering absurdities while other people pump out the z's.

"This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation--deep, dark, deathlike solitude" (Shelley)

" I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine." -Chapter 9

"

And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before every other gift of fortune, suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror; lest at that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her.

Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe: the very accents of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die--was but a type of me.

Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations." Chapter 9

Shelley, Mary. "Frankenstein." n.d. literature.org. 29 April 2017. <http://literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/index.html>.

[erosanova-blog]

Vacillation

This is a follow-up to the previous post. You ever have some magnificently romantic idea that you think is just outstanding and nothing could ever keep that person from you after you've done it? And then something goes completely wrong, either in delivery or message itself... My life in a nutshell.

My first infatuation was in seventh grade. I started writing poetry to this girl I liked under (what I assumed was secret) an abstract email account name. She loved it, and we began talking quite a bit. [Background: I was a SUPER NERD, 120 pounds (soaking wet, on a good day), very little muscle tone or athletic ability, dorky glasses, red hair, and even terrible Wal-mart clothing; the whole spiel] Well she began asking who I was, and of course she was optimistic at first, listing a bunch of the jocks and other popular guys, not that I would tell her anyways. I felt like she really liked me, but wasn't sure if she would like my appearance as much as my personality, so I didn't tell her who I was. The defining moment was walking from break/recess to class and hearing her and my friend talk behind me,

"Hey somebody keeps sending me this poetry and I can't figure out who it is." She said.

"Oh hey let me take a look at that... hashsmoker69@yahoo.com? [quaint email address right? Told you I was a miscreant] Oh that's [insert my name here]’s."

I froze. It's like that feeling when you know you're getting pulled over after speeding or doing something illegal. "Fuck," I thought. But nothing happened. Not until the next recess period... she took all the poems I had written her, threw them down on the ground and slapped me. She slapped me because I wasn't who she wanted to write them for her. (naturally, this was unspoken, but I knew. I knew it was because I wasn't popular or cool or athletic, that I wasn't good enough for her--at least, in her eyes.) Now when there's about 75-100 people in your class, it's kinda hard to live something like that down.

My second infatuation was my friend's girlfriend's little sister. I discovered how to properly hold hands with her, after being berated for doing it wrong by her psychotic older sister. She then went somewhere south for spring break, while I stayed and worked, and was sick the whole time. The entire week I couldn't wait for her to get back and then when she did, I got a call from one of my friends telling me he thought she was going to break up with me. She later did. The reasoning? One of my friends wanted to date her and she liked him more than me; or perhaps it was because instead of giving/receiving my first kiss the day before she left, I gave her a big bear hug. Nice right?

My first love portrayed herself as a naive girl, but in reality she was quite devious. She would date me for a week then sneak out and hang out with my partner from weightlifting class. Then when she was dating him (consequently broke it off with me), she was sneaking out with me! At one point she called and asked me for a ride from the middle of nowhere... she said she'd been drinking heavily with this guy and things started getting heated. A little frustrating, considering [at least I thought] we were dating at the time. I remember sneaking off from a event my senior year to go take vague pictures of the place we used hang out from an extremely far distance--so far they barely turned out. I wasn't hanging on to the person she was at that time, I was hanging on to those little moments of bliss where it was just her and I and a flip-down screen in the back of my white Chevy Blazer. Our only worry was getting her home before her dad woke up (she snuck out). I remember the mornings/days after I would drop her off at 4:30 am and float home in my '97 Firebird, hitting record speeds on county roads and just feeling very content in my sleep-deprived bliss. It wasn't even from sex, at that point we weren't having it, it was just happiness that someone so beautiful would take a chance on me. She's married with kids now, I know because it's all over my news feed.

One time I shoveled seven inches of snow (multiplied by the area of a parking spot) next to my parking spot with the hopes a particular girl would come over. She did. Things got hot and heavy, then I probably said something stupid over the phone later in the week and she said she wanted to be just friends. I got to watch her flirt with (and take home) several guys from the bar that weekend. Good times.

Once I had my landlord's daughter grab me and make-out with me like she was suffocating and needed every little bit of oxygen out of my lungs. Little did I know, her friend liked me and had informed her of this, so when she walked in on us and freaked out I was so incredibly confused why I was even chasing her down, because I didn't know why she was mad! (why was I the one chasing her again? This I cannot say,  I feel as if her friend probably should've done that).  I had to borrow contact cases and her room absolutely reeked like cat litter. She said she needed somebody to sleep (actually sleep) with. So... while she slept I stayed awake for the most part and rolled around, again, overwhelmed by the smell, lack of cleanliness and lack of respect (the longer I thought the more I disliked it) for her friend's feelings. My roommate told me this girls parents were fine with her doing whatever in her personal life, so I stayed the night. I felt overwhelmed with strong emotions from them in the kitchen that morning, so I left quickly. We went on one date.

One time I met a girl, did the typical day-by-day relationship. She was very open sexually and told me she didn’t want a relationship and it was okay for both of us to hook up with other people as long as we did it with consideration to the other’s feelings-- don’t make it sloppy or obviously. I looked over the bar fifteen minutes later and she was sloppily obviously sticking her tongue down some guy’s throat and her hands down his pants. I was a little frustrated with this and informed her. So she decided to have sex with one of my friends. Seems logical. Then broke his heart a few weeks later by doing basically the same thing.

One time I met a girl, spent the night with her (not overtly sexual, calm down) and then went to visit her several hours away the next weekend. A little background here: We were kicked out of the Jehovah's Witnesses when I was 9, at which an abrupt stage of the utmost debauchery occurred, which left me with somewhat of a skewed perspective on religion. Anyways, almost went to church with her but ran out of time. Yes, I was willing to step outside the box and revisit the ideals I previously abandoned. The next weekend she came back and I asked if she just wanted to stay with me (I really liked her and wanted to date her). No response. No response til I got to see her later wearing something super scandalous, being very flirtatious with all the guys and then having a rough, frank conversation about what I was in relation to her. She's married now, happily; I know because we're friends on facebook :|. Oh and I might've punched a table at some point and began bleeding all over. That was the last time I put myself through physical pain to try and rid myself of the pain inside (other than tattoos, but lets be honest that's more just artistic therapy).

One time I spent a lot of time with this girl, she was a friend, but I always wanted something more with her. She would joke and flirt and casually tease when we would go out together. One time we went to Denver together for New Years with a few other friends. Turns out she really liked the guy I came with, and when he decided to hook up with this other girl she got really depressed and started crying. Then somehow I began to tear up because here was this girl I'd hung out with for quite a while, who I always got along with really well (and we gave each other a bunch of good-natured shit), crying because she can't be with the guy she wants to be and I was just sitting there... like chopped liver. She later ended up breaking up a marriage by hooking up with this lady's husband while on her period  (his wife found the evidence). One night sticks in my memory though... I walked her home like a gentleman, she had been kinda flirting with me all night and we were sitting there watching TV. If you've ever gone in to kiss someone and have them completely pull their lips inside their mouth to avoid it, you've felt my pain.  She is now married with a kid, and her husband looks... almost exactly like me. Even her best friend was shocked.

One time I met a girl and passed her a note on a fateful March day just before Spring break. She was amazing, and we hung out quite a bit. She had a boyfriend, but ended up breaking up with him. Naturally she told me she didn’t want another relationship right away so I backed off. Then she was trying to rekindle things with him and sent me a text saying, essentially, that we could never speak again. We continued to see each other, rendezvous in the bedroom were a fairly common occurrence. Then she started giving me rainchecks on hanging out, and ghosting me more and more. I casually started seeing someone but was reluctant to dive in because I already had a preexisting relationship going and i didn’t want to ruin it. We spent a night together and then she left to go hang out with another guy she’d been seeing. I received a text that next day about how they were now dating, he was her “main” and if we wanted to continue seeing each other I would have to meet him and have our love triangle be open. All of the sudden she went from not wanting to date anyone to being in a relationship; this felt all too familiar and it didn’t take much self-deprecation to realize that she just didn’t want to date me. Our relationship died down, but we would still leave little notes around for each other complaining about our significant others. Eventually she broke it off with him, and coincidentally I broke it off with my girlfriend at about the same time. We hooked up, but it wasn’t the same. It was good for her but in the back of my mind I felt reluctant...  she had shattered my heart twice before this... should I even entertain the idea of going back? We hooked up several times but I my heart wasn’t in it, and red flags were flying up like gravel on a dirt road so I retreated. Now we hardly talk anymore... and I feel nothing.

My girlfriend during that time was pretty amazing, but from the start she stated that it wasn’t a lasting relationship, and that we weren’t meant to be. I did things she didn’t agree with and that was a huge part of our incompatibility and several fights. Also, her manager who liked her for a long time kissed her several times at a party when we first got together, and she did nothing to stop it--- the source of alot of my distrust in her throughout the relationship. She also lied about planning to hang out with one of her ex’s and her roommate caught her up in that lie in front of me--a further setback in the trust tree. I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want anything serious from me. But I liked her companionship; she always wanted to do things with me and usually went out of her way to hang out with me. We had amazing sex, before and after the breakup because I felt comfortable with her. I felt like she was actually there with me, present in the moment, and she wanted to be there. I fell in love with her, and she said she loved me too. After a while, she stopped saying it. After a while, it became clear that I was the only one in love, and it was one-sided. She didn’t want to be in a relationship for her final semester of college and, since all i wanted was her happiness, in the middle of a deluge of tears i broke it off with her. I didn’t want her to feel trapped and I didn’t want her to despise me because I kept her in a relationship. When i finally broke it off I was miserable. I spent nights and mornings in tears and then one day I told her it felt like I was taking it harder than her. She agreed. She said she needed some space. All I wanted during our relationship is her happiness, and if being with me was causing her to be unhappy, all she had to do was voice her opinion. But she didn’t. She remained by my side, unhappy. But at least she stayed. Eventually the sex died down, and it drove me a little crazy; after you’ve had something so good it’s hard to limit yourself-that’s why we have addicts. We were down to negotiating for sex every week. I essentially had to beg for it, and I didn’t want to live my life that way. I distanced myself further, and about a month later she contacted me basically because she wanted to fuck and that’s it. Oh the irony... and i felt so used. I brought it up, started a big fight and we distanced ourselves again. Lately I’ve been so depressed I keep thinking about all the good times we had, despite the bad times that were the cause of the breakup. The other night I went over there and we hooked up. She was reluctant, but I suddenly felt as if it wasn’t because she was worried about me getting attached, it was something else. Then she left all weekend to go to her hometown and tells me she had a “late night and early morning,” “not with her parents,” and “at a drive-in.” So naturally I assumed its with a guy she’s interested in and... for some reason that cuts through me like a hot knife through butter. I guess I always liked that adage of “if you love someone set them free, if they return they were always yours; if not, they never were,” and its starting to feel like she never was, like none of them ever were. In fact, that adage is being falsified more and more by the day. She said she didn’t make out or anything (and I believe her) but the fact of the matter is making out and sex would be the least of my worries. Let me put it this way: If you were married (not like we’re even in a relationship but stick with me here), would you be more perturbed to know your significant other had meaningless sex with someone or stayed up all night talking and cuddling with them? Well either way my prying nature and soft-accusations pushed her to the point of not talking to me again. We were supposed to hang out today (sunday) but she decided to take another trip to her hometown at the last minute, which further attributes to my paranoid delusion that she’s seeing someone. And I really have no right to be angry or paranoid; god knows I’ve hooked up with way more girls since we broke up than she has guys (at least I think so... I have no clue anymore).

Okay I have to skip a few until I have more time, so I'll tell you about the most recent.

One time I was falling for this girl. She had everything I dreamed about in a girl, but she was reluctant because we were at different places in our life. Instead of just chilling out, taking it one day at a time like I've done with the majority of my relationships, I decide I want more. Naturally, the cyclical motion of my thought is enough to drive anyone insane, myself  included, so at the end of the night she turned her back and walked away from me. I knew in that moment it would never be the same. I was having trouble because when I want to be with someone, I don't want to be single. If I know what i want then why would I want any other options available? I'm not going to lie, I talk to(and hang out with) some pretty good looking girls. But that's not what it's about, I rarely even ask for a girls name after we dance because I don't come there to pick up girls. I come there to have fun. I didn't intend on realizing how amazing she was after we started to hang out. Anyways we basically stopped talking all week, but I get this crazy idea to get a potted plant, get a stake with her initials (made from reflective mailbox letters that I drilled holes into, put all this work and planning and effort into making her morning special... and she didn't even see it. I thought she was just playing dumb, but when I tipped the dj to play the song I had included on a note (with a link to a youtube video) and her eye's didn't light up I kinda figured something was up. And now she's pulled back to just friends. But I feel this incredible pull to be in a relationship right now... with somebody. I just don't want to be alone anymore. I've been alone in relationships before (no, not self-love, just the only person in it), and I just want something [somewhat] normal for once. Being able to hold a girl's hand and kiss her in public, or tell my friends "this is my girlfriend ....," not "This is ..., she's my kinda sorta... pseudo... friend with benefits but without benefits." But now I feel myself at a crossroads: go on as friends, get to know her better even though our schedules are both crazy, and that will limit my time to date or see other people. Again, not that I would want to or actually find someone I want to be with, but if I have someone that is really interested, and they want to hang out quite a bit and do crazy things and go visit my mom and sister.... I feel as if our friendship would slip through the cracks. She says if she tries to actively pursue a friendship and they blow her off she has no problem walking away. Well what happens if I find somebody? What then? She just walks away, wondering if it was the right decision, as I go on doing the same thing? It's not fair.

We've both been in really shitty relationships and now that we have a chance to be in one we are limited by a fucking number. I always knew it would come back to math. Or maybe its just that I... need to accept my fate as a lone wolf and give up on all these romantic shenanigans. But there's a part of me that loves it... loves it so much that I can't give it up. But there aren't many people out there that complain about getting spoiled with surprises on a regular basis....

There are quite a few more instances, and I'll keep adding when I remember. If you really want to get to know me, read what I write. Somewhere in the ramblings you may find some sort of cogency, but if not I'll give you a tiny tidbit today: I'm the guy who knows when another guy is interested in a girl that is showing interest in me (this other guy could hardly even be considered a friend to me, it doesn't matter) and so I'll (typically) back off and give them a chance. One would think, that with the amount of time I spend thinking about being considerate to others I would have a lot of really loyal friends. In reality, I have a lot of acquaintances, but very few friends.

Sweet dreams, it's officially 4:11 am.

I can't. I can't fucking do it. Blame my prescription, it's not. It's my smile, it's stopped.

I can't fucking sleep and I can't fucking see,

Eyes red and they pulse with my heart beat.

Stop it, it's not me, put that plastic smile on and just agree,

be heard and not seen

or seen and not heard

fuck that's what I mean.

All I've ever wanted for any girl I'm with is to give them the world with a smile. The thing about that is people get paranoid about free shit, and salesmen always smile right until the don't ask for consent to pile-drive you. I guess they don't get it. I don't want to fight, I just want somebody to give the world to... I don't want anything else. I guess I'm one of the few individuals anymore that has spent the majority of his life wanting to have a family some day. I want to be the dad that my father never was. It's not glamorous, I know what parenting is all about I watched my sister raise my nephew for many years. Glamour is not being covered with a mixture of vomit and snot at 4 am when you have work at six. But consider the alternative: Is loneliness happiness? Sure I am free to stay out as late as I want, take bong hits of crack bowls or worship satan in my little basement apartment (not that I do either of those things, and you probably shouldn't either, let's be real homie. Can I call you homie?) but at the end of the day you have kids that will hate you most of the time, but if you do a good job, will love you forever. My mom is my best friend because she knows how to listen to my circular logic. And although she is compelled to listen because we are related by blood and she is a virtuous mother, she's always been there, she never left, at least, not recently. Same with my sister. She's my other best friend. We joke about being... whew... we joke about being together forever because we both tend to have relationship problems. Together forever, with our cats and our plants, just two crazy old siblings. We both give give give give give and are too timid to even ask to take. So when someone comes along and actually gives we are so incredibly amazed that we jump on it. What happens when a cat pounces on a mouse? A morbid analogy occurs, but more importantly the mouse typically runs. Instinct is fight or flight when you're being chased and backed into corners. I don't blame them at all, but the real key to emotional survival is self-deprecation. If you don't think you deserve to have it, it opens up even more of a possibility for a big payout, and much less of a chance of... well... the tears welling like they are now.

So many songs come to mind when you fall in and out of love. Any other time... they are just notes. When you're in love, songs interpolate you. They're written for you. Or at least parts of them.

okay.. 445. I've officially been up for 24.25 hours now. To think 24 hours ago I was leaving a flower that wouldn't have any effect-we'll call it a placebo effect-it works if I believe it works.

I keep losing a bit of trust in people. I guess that's why people are so bitter when they're super old... they've seen the evil in humanity grow for years and years. Can you imagine? When the worst thing you have to worry about is greasers with funny hairdos and switchblades to now, people carrying a fucking shotgun and handguns into a movie theater and shooting the fuck out of innocent people. Seriously bro? And I love guns, don't get me wrong. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Go ahead, put a gun on your couch. Anything happening yet? Is it plotting an assassination? No you moron its a fucking conglomeration of metal and a mixture of modern and ancient chemistry. People are fucked up what do you want me to say? It's not like a bunch of guns are hanging out in the middle east shooting people. There are fingers pulling those triggers with minds behind them. They may be really clean minds (brainwashed, get it? :)), but they are controlling the appendages that control the chemical reaction that fires the bullet towards the person. You don't blame the acid for melting somebody's face, you blame the fucking person that threw the acid! People are ridiculous. What was I ranting about again?

Right right... anyways... its almost 5. Roommate isn't home but it doesn't matter...

Alright if I have any hope of passing this semester I'd better get some sleep.

Sweet dreams... whoever you are.

Axel

______________________________________

 “Updated Losses.”

I left another flower with a link to a video (which I thought) was centered more on a casual relationship and just hoping she’s happy. This time I realized that if anything, I hoped to at least hold on to the friendship between this girl and I. I don’t think she wants anything to do with me anymore and it kills me. It kills me because I can’t even talk to her anymore, I can’t even be her friend or invite her to breakfast without her thinking I have some ulterior motive, or worrying that I will get attached when she doesn’t want that kind of thing with me. I can’t goof around and send her a stupid joke or be a sarcastic asshole (in a funny way, not typically mean) because she won’t even respond and that will likely push her further. That Zac Brown song, “As she’s walking away” keeps ringing through my head. All the things I wish I could’ve done, all the feelings I wish I could’ve held back... so many regrets. But the worst of all is I don’t even get to be around her. I’m not privileged enough to see her smile because I had to be greedy and go for all or nothing. Right now I would prefer anything... it is really hard to walk away from someone I feel/felt so strongly for. But with a heavy heart and an occasional tear, I have to back off and (potentially) say goodbye forever.

The older I get the more I realize how much I overthink things. But the older I get the more I realize that I need to overthink them more before I open my mouth to change them. I’m stuck between wanting to scream out my feelings and knowing that if I do so, everything will dissolve, even further than it’s already gone. Because once you contaminate a petri dish, there’s no going back to sterile agar.

The most excruciating torture is not in crimes of war, but crimes of love. The pain of having a million things to tell someone and knowing they won’t even listen to one often feels worse than being drawn-and-quartered by a billion snails, pulling you apart from every angle.

I’ve made my bed and now I must sleep in it.

Casa Nova may have guests, but ultimately he sleeps alone.

[erosanova-blog]

Don't Pluck Petals

The nerves! They creep up on you like a mountain lion on prey, sneaking over the boulders of your shoulders and up your spine... claws prickling. Should I do it or shouldn't I? Not that I usually do, but I feel as if tonight I won't get much sleep... my stomach grumbles and churns like an old automobile firing up. Over and over it turns with a broken rhythm--with even the slightest hint of my "devious" little plan pangs through the neurons in my brain, a little fuzzy with the onset of nighttime and, as aforementioned, lack of sleep.

Why does this always happen around finals? I have an exam tomorrow and instead of studying as much as I should I've been planning some overly elaborate scheme that may or may not 1) make me look like a fool or 2) make me lose someone. What would you do? I suppose I'm given to benevolently blatant public affection or, alternatively, making an ass of myself in public for all the right reasons. I don't want to be that neighbor screaming at his wife or throwing his Shih tzu "Rex" out the screen door, I want to be the guy leaving cute notes or having a blast on the dance floor and not caring what I look like to the crowd. I guess it all goes back to my childhood.

Growing up I had this obsession with romance, especially fanaticism therein. Romeo killed himself because he thought Juliet was dead and then when she awakens to find he's ingested poison she then not only kills herself, but stabs herself with a dagger. STABS. The thought of taking your own life because you can no longer see the one you love was intriguing--not that I would ever do it, but it was fascinating. Could one person care about another that much?

We've all had those friends that are together and it's almost sickening to be around because they're so intertwined with each other; they have the look in their eyes. It's sickening because in reality we're jealous. We're jealous that they're so infatuated with each other they're not afraid to show it publicly (we're not talking sucking face here, just being cute). There have only been a few instances where I felt like people envied the relationship I had, not that it is the best quality, but to an extent everyone wants a spouse they're proud to be with, and who is proud to reciprocate.

I started watching these stupid movies and cliche romantic sitcoms and they all seemed to have the same common style: complication, resolution, slightly bigger complication, final resolution (usually a happy ending, depending on what channel you were watching or the genre of movie). I never experienced it this way.

The order I usually experience things goes as follows:

I meet a girl, mutual interest

We hang out casually, usually either one of us is right out of a relationship, not ready for a commitment, etc etc.

Its all good, day by day

Feelings start to get heavier, either on both sides or just one

The desire for commitment so you can try to find that crazy love and irrationally lock it down comes in

Heavy conversation

Heavy conversation

Heavy heated conversation

Makeup

Everything is fine for a week or two

Start internal spasms/conflict either wanting to be in deeper or wanting to get out or some sort of crazy cyclical never-ending thinking-out-loud. More heavy conversation

Some sort of slightly irrational expectation, typically on my end

Heavy conversation, usually late at night

Say goodbye

Realize how much I can't live without her, even if I wanted out before

Some sort of audacious [what I believe to be] extremely romantic notion (like something my brain conglomerated from watching way too many sappy films and shows, as aforementioned) that I plan and plan to try to show how much I truly care, even if they don't. At all. Even if they've told me they just want to be friends. My brain finds a way.

Here's where one of two things happen (typically):

They either reiterate that they want nothing to do with me, but are gracious for the notion (usually don't talk to each other for a long time, if ever again)

They were slightly interested but my "crazy love" notions were so intense that (even though most girls talk and talk and dream of finding something like it when they see it in a film or sitcom--trust me, I've been sitting right next to them) they have to sever our relationship, or at least maintain a distance. If they were already waiting at a distance, it may push them further.

So it does kind-of follow the format, if the style of movie you enjoy watching is drama, or a goofy romantic comedy with a weird off-putting ending that leaves you thinking, "What the fuck just happened?" Unfortunately for me, Cinderella ran away too many times so I quit trying to find that perfect girl to fit her shoe. A lot of my hopeful romanticism metamorphosed into hopeless romanticism when the clock struck midnight. I don't remember the exact saying but it's something like with every love I give a little piece of my heart and I'm running out of pieces to give? Super gloomy right? Cheer up champ, don't let the gloom-birds roost for the night. Remember: you have an important day tomorrow. Everybody that knows you is going to be waiting to see you, so don't give up.

So why do I keep doing it? What drives my incessant crazy-train of exponentially growing over-elucidation and [usually unnecessary] planning. These time-consuming, unnecessary contraptions and plans to show my affection... pardon my profanity but it seems pretty fucking ridiculous.

But a lot of things in my life seem a little ridiculous. I went to work every day (typically five days a week) for almost nine years after high school. Day after day, I kept going. A little background: I don't know how many jobs my dad has had in his lifetime (not like he's really been in my life at all) but I can tell you that he has a hard time holding on to them. I go to work and feel weird when I'm standing there talking casually to someone for more than a minute or two. I have something driving me that I can't quite explain.  It's pushed me to get the best job I've ever had where my foreman and coworkers treat me with respect and I actually (usually) want to go to work every day! (sometimes... ugh... you know... you just have a bad day)

Enjoy that analogy? Well my point is, even though my heart gets shattered over and over again; even though my hopes get dashed and all my hard work [may or may not] goes unappreciated or underappreciated, and I end up alone with time and (usually, but not always) money wasted, I still do it. I still do it because of a driving force that I cannot explain, because some day one of these little projects, these thoughtful little contraptions built upon what the girls have told me about their lives or an event related to our relationship... won't go unnoticed. It won't go unappreciated or underappreciated.

[On a side note, I don't know how many kids or marriages my "dad" has been in, but some day, I hope to be everything that he never was for me. I may be getting hurt, but at least I'm trying (usually really hard) not to hurt anyone. I've stayed in relationships that I don't want to be in because it's too hard for me to cause someone pain; it's too hard for me to break someone's heart]

One day... (these may be the thoughts of an extremely hopeful old fool trying not to give in to his quivering lip) ... she'll be overwhelmed. Overwhelmed that someone could care so much about her to do something like this; overwhelmed like Juliet to Romeo. And all that shit that separated them, all those excuses or hindrances or complications or hesitations or [unnecessary] precognition... on both sides... that shit wouldn't matter. All that would matter is they would be crazy about each other; and that look, that ember,  that smoldering fire lashing out at each other's eyes... that wouldn't fade. Because they would die for each other, if they couldn't live. Don't read into that too much; again, I'm just rambling like I usually do.

Someday my Juliet will be overwhelmed...

I've heard the flavus Lilium asiatic are particularly striking this time of year. Wish this hopeful romantic good luck. I don't care what happens, the planning, the last minute alterations, the nerves, the rush of adrenaline... ahhhh! Its all worth it, whatever the outcome.

There are chances in life where you can choose to leave an impression at great risk to yourself or sit back and do nothing. What would you do?

The most shocking surprises are those you probably shouldn't be doing... lets just consider it bending the rules with good intentions.

Go... go make somebody smile. Go make somebody's day. Take a risk... maybe one day it will pay off.

Carpe Noctem :)

[erosanova-blog]

The Magic Hour

Warning: Explicit Language. Mostly nonsense.

I want the reader to know that I am not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, merely lost in a lack of sleep. Ahhh the painful insomniac. Didn't I wake up at 4 yesterday...? Wait was that today..? I haven't slept who knows? But what else is a man to do on a Saturday night?

2:58 a.m. This is where the magic happens. The lonely writer types, chewing on a minty flosspick while the African Dwarf Frogs(Hymenochirus curtipes) echo in the background, undoubtedly heckling each other and their tank mates, the ghost shrimp(Paleomonetes sp.). Why am I still awake? Is it a result of an obsession with social media? Perhaps, my thumbs have been rather sore as of late. But let's get down to the real nitty-gritty; why not we're all mostly insane friends here right? Shit I just hit the number lock. At this time of night, you really have to wonder what an esoteric button like that even does.

Oh the lucidity. Shhh quiet Frog and Toad! Yes I named them. Why not? The ghost shrimp are Casper and Glassy wtf do you want me to do about it? Glass Shrimp is synonymous with Ghost Shrimp as far as common names go. At this hour, you have to wonder if I really have to capitalize a common name. And I say yes, they are my fuckin' pets bro, they're important to me. But enough of that nonsense. Back to the nitty-gritty, as aforementioned.

The real reason why I'm probably awake is I tend to think too much. That's what got me into this mess. That's what gets me into a lot of messes. I pity the simpleton that can go through life complacent and detached. I'm not saying I'm a damn genius, far from it, but I think constantly. My mind comes up with (sometimes a bit on the... creative side) the depths of unfathomable consequences and possibilities... permutations if you will. I'm not a psychic, I just tend to think ahead. Thinking ahead is like driving too fast on a mountain pass: you can't always accurately predict what's on the road ahead. Wow what a life lesson. HA!

3:20 a.m. It's cold in this basement apartment. I have the heater on economy mode... meaning it works half the time. It's like buying juice and you think you're getting a fucking deal and then it's 17% juice. Thanks for the overpriced water assholes.

Do you see now? Have you begun to understand the nonsensical bullshit I can come up with at this hour? I MISSPELLED TOO BACK THERE! Can you believe that? Luckily I caught it but... whew.. close one. Fuck. (shh that definitely wasn't a sentence fragment and those little red lines under my fucking shh back there (and apparently right there), those obviously don't exist(imaginary, like the tooth fairy or... another... fairy (Easter bunny maybe? Think about that, a fucking rabbit that shits chocolate eggs. What if it switches over from chocolate to regular and you don't know it and then one day... ohhh nooo... wait am I really doing this? Longest paragraph in multiple-parentheses ever!) so don't get too carried away bro... can I call you bro?)-By the way I learned how to do all those parentheses correctly thanks to Calculus... Thanks CSU... Thanks Newton... Leibniz..

Well instead of insulting deceased mathematical theorists I should get down to the real nitty-gritty. Regret. Sometimes all this excess thinking makes me say things to people I care about, perhaps accusations, that are sometimes ridiculous. The problem with opening Pandora's box is once it's open, everything is unleashed.

Humpty dumpty in real life? Fuckin dead. A fuckin omelet bro. Its true google it. I may be lying. Alright my eyelids have begun a slow shutter speed so I should probably get to bed but I have a few final notes for the reader, if anyone is actually reading this. This may get preachy so if you want to start sending me hate mail... just shut the hell up I'm not trying to influence anybody just speaking my personal opinions, which is protected under the Bill of Rights.

Being in a relationship for money, power or fame is fucked up. Make your own way, pave your own path, and find your passion in life. Be a fucking legend, don't live like a sidekick.

It takes two (or sometimes three... or more... fuck idk people do what you want damn its a free country for the most part) people to make a relationship work. You have to stick together, and be honest. It's the hardest thing to do but it goes the farthest. If you don't want to be with them, tell them... don't break their fucking heart like a mirror on the freeway, be gentle, but be fair.

It is NOT okay to hit a woman. Or drug a woman. Or touch a woman without her permission. Actually you probably shouldn't be doing that shit to anybody, what the fuck is wrong with people? All this talk I hear of the date rape drug being back in circulation... what is this the seventies?! For fuck's sake people... have some respect. Have some fucking morals. Quit living YOLO like nothing fucking matters. IF YOU DRUG A GIRL AND HAVE SEX WITH HER SEMI-CONCIOUS BODY THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES. That's not a threat, it just needs to be said. Yeah you think its funny now, yeah you get off the hook with the law and all big fucking whoop. But guess what? Thirty years down the road, (if you're not still a total piece of shit that lives in a bowling alley and drinks turpentine) you're going to regret it. I hope it eats at you... the best punishment is one's own mind (funny how I came back to that huh? But I generally try to do good :))

Getting married to save your relationship won't save you're relationship. It will subject you to a mass amount of turmoil, paperwork, bullshit and red tape. If you get married, make sure it is the one that gives you a look that's a combination of digesting you with their eyes (in a good way, not a Jack-the-Ripper-hooker way. A feeling like you're almost tempted to rip their clothes off right then and there-with consent! see above!) and a look that says they want to spend their life in your arms. A look like them tearing up at the thought of you leaving... almost at the brink, the cusp, but too strong to let the tears flow... maybe a quivering lip).

Respect your parents, at the very least, respect your mother. You realize what giving birth is like right? I don't give a damn if it's a C-section or natural or fucking water birth you were once a baby coming out of her. Ouch. Respect that. There are circumstances in which a parental figure abuses a child. ALSO NOT OKAY! Yeah I was spanked as a child, and yeah, most of the time I deserved it. But my mom never raised a fist to me... She never brought out the belt (though she had this wicked paddle that somehow disappeared in a mysterious driveway fire...) out and she always encouraged me to find happiness.

Find happiness, find your passion. Am I rambling again? What is this a Sunday sermon? Holy shit its Sunday... that's blasphemous... no offense everybody religious! Fuck. Walking on eggshells around here. Find your happiness, find your passion and quit taking offense to everything Americans, you're making us look bad. Shit man we're the whiners of the world, and we're going downhill because of it. Instead of complaining about the piece of trash on the ground reach down and pick that fucker up! (I think that's from an old commercial).

I don't care who you are, sex, race, religion, gender, sexual preference etc etc etc etc etc... respect your country. I didn't say you have to agree with your leaders, I'm not stating my political preference because I'm not a fucking whiny baby that doesn't stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance. I stand up because my grandpa, for which I have a deep respect, fought in the Korean War. He fought for our country. This gentle man, who taught me how to care for animals of all different kinds (not specifically just how to approach, etc) killed people. You think he knows why he killed them? Probably something they amped him up on at the time, but regardless, he had a red right hand for his country. So you can sit in your Mercedes with your Starbucks and play your PS4 (I love Mercedes and Starbucks. I have no preference for video games) on a bright sunny day in summertime without being murdered or raped.

3:59 a.m. Last one for tonight... wrote way more than I should've anyways, and probably enough to piss some people off if they ever read it.

If you find that person with that glimmer in their eye when they see you... and you feel it too... don't let it go.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I had to add these quotes today, 4/23/17 at 4:15 p.m because I can't stop thinking about it, ..., last night...

"I wanna die where the sun sets, where there's no rain clouds... floating beneath my wings... floating beneath my wings. And if I had one reason... to stay right here... it would be all for you... it would be all for you.

...

And on the other hand, if I woulda stayed, maybe we could fix it all, maybe it would change. Or maybe not, or maybe not today but if we both want it bad baby there's a way. I say we should have no worries, we could be together now, no hurry. You ain't gotta quit, I ain't gotta leave. We could move slow, baby, we ain't gotta speed. I'm not quittin'... never ever, I... pinky promise. If your hand gets cold then I put a ring up on it. I... cook you noodles when your tummy don't feel right... that's how I kill nights... because it feels right... yeah... because it feels right... it ain't real love if there ain't real fights... work it out yeah we still might... we ain't perfect... but... this is real life.

... And if I had one reason, to stay right here... it would be all for you, it would be all for you." -"Where the Sun Sets" -Ryan Caraveo

[erosanova-blog]

Star-crossed or Simply Cross?

(Reader's note: This is a paper originally submitted to a CSU class Fall 2015, I simply posted it for your entertainment. I believe the original requirement for page length was 5-8. This paper was 18 pages. Only minor changes have  been made, mostly formatting for the blog's sake. I may update it as necessary.)

“WELCOME BACK TO 98.99 F.M., THE TORNADO! UP NEXT WE HAVE BLAKE SHELTON’S HIT SINGLE “God Gave Me You.” THIS ONE GOES OUT TO ALL THOSE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS OUT THERE, SO GRAB YOUR HONEYBEE AND PUT YOUR BOOTS TOGETHER!”

“I've been a walking heartache I've made a mess of me The person that I've been lately Ain't who I wanna be

But you stay here right beside me Watch as the storm blows through And I need you

'Cause God gave me you for the ups and downs God gave me you for the days of doubt For when I think I've lost my way There are no words here left to say, it's true God gave me you

There's more here than what we're seeing A divine conspiracy That you, an angel lovely Could somehow fall for me You'll always be love's great martyr I'll be the flattered fool And I need you

God gave me you for the ups and downs God gave me you for the days of doubt For when I think I've lost my way There are no words here left to say, it's true God gave me you

On my own I'm only Half of what I could be I can't do without you We are stitched together And what love has tethered I could never undo

'Cause God gave me you for the ups and downs God gave me you for the days of doubt God gave me you for the ups and downs God gave me you for the days of doubt For when I think I've lost my way There are no words here left to say, it's true God gave me you, gave me you Gave me you.”

(Shelton, 2011)

Easy to grasp but often impossible to feel; sometimes invisible to the eye but apparent to the mind; it sends you into the depths of the ocean and the height of the clouds, but eventually everything comes back to its final resting place. It’s easy to say but difficult to be sincere, it’s easy to taste but hard to digest, it’s held in high regard to some but stomped on and spit at by others.    It will take both a juvenile woman and a grown man to his knees, and it controls the very world around us. Love. Merriam Webster defines it as

“1a (1):  strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <maternal love for a child>

(2):  attraction based on sexual desire:  affection and tenderness felt by lovers                       (3) :  affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates>

b :  an assurance of affection <give her my love>                                                                        2:  warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion <love of the sea>”

(“Love,” merriam-webster.com)

Also, according to this website, “love is currently in the top 1% of lookups, and is the seventh most popular word on Merriam-webster.com.” However, if you look up “true love” there is no definition. So what is true love, and how does this ideology skew our perspective on the world? Who benefits from this given version of the truth, how are the material benefits socially distributed? The answer should be obvious: profit-seeking corporations. In the search for revenue firms leave no stone unturned, and even if an anti-Valentine’s-Day-day were proposed by those willing to fight the system so many fall into, businesses would find some way to squeeze every penny from their pockets, from T-shirts to billboards to chandeliers, nothing is sacred. As income goes up on the individual level, higher expectations of monetary dispersion often arise-the richer a person becomes, the more is demanded of that person from their spouse or partner. Instead of buying fifty cents of construction paper and using an old rusty pair of shears to compose something beautiful, Americans find it necessary to throw paper and plastic down in the name of love, even more so when they believe it to be true love. Newsflash: companies like Hallmark, FTD flowers and Cadbury own true love, and in order to discover it, you will most likely need to make an investment towards their capital. There is no way to storm the proverbial Bastille, and people will remain serfs to Cupid’s arrow. Sonja Foss defines an ideological critique as “looking beyond the surface structure of an artifact to discover the beliefs, values, and assumptions it suggests” (Pg. 209).

The concept of true love affects everyone, whether they know it or not. Click your radio on to any given frequency (maybe not a public broadcasting station, unless someone is truly passionate about politics) and chances are you will encounter a song about love or true love. Some claim that the country music genre contains more songs about heartbreak and true love but UP NEXT ON 102.7 F.M., THE POPSICLE, WE HAVE MAROON 5’s NEW HIT, “Sugar,” SO SNAP OFF YOUR SNAPBACKS AND KICK OFF THOSE SKINNY JEANS!

“I'm hurting, baby, I'm broken down I need your loving, loving I need it now When I'm without you I'm something weak You got me begging, begging I'm on my knees

[Pre-Chorus:] I don't wanna be needing your love I just wanna be deep in your love And it's killing me when you're away, ooh, baby, 'Cause I really don't care where you are I just wanna be there where you are And I gotta get one little taste

[Chorus:] Your sugar Yes, please Won't you come and put it down on me? I'm right here, 'cause I need Little love, a little sympathy Yeah, you show me good loving Make it alright Need a little sweetness in my life Your sugar Yes, please Won't you come and put it down on me?

My broken pieces You pick them up Don't leave me hanging, hanging Come give me some When I'm without ya I'm so insecure You are the one thing, one thing I'm living for [Pre-Chorus:] I don't wanna be needing your love I just wanna be deep in your love And it's killing me when you're away, ooh, baby, 'Cause I really don't care where you are I just wanna be there where you are And I gotta get one little taste

[Chorus:] Your sugar Yes, please Won't you come and put it down on me? I'm right here, 'Cause I need Little love, a little sympathy Yeah, you show me good loving Make it alright Need a little sweetness in my life Your sugar! (sugar!) Yes, please (yes, please) Won't you come and put it down on me?

Yeah I want that red velvet I want that sugar sweet Don't let nobody touch it Unless that somebody's me I gotta be your man There ain't no other way 'Cause girl you're hotter than a southern California day)”

(Maroon 5, 2015)

“WELCOME BACK TO 95.7 THE WAVE, YOUR SOURCE FOR THE MOST COMPLACENT SONGS OF ALL TIME! UP NEXT WE HAVE “Here Without You,” BY THREE DOORS DOWN. SO SLIDE OUT OF THOSE GRUNGY LEATHER PANTS AND TORN FLANNEL SHIRT AND HOLD ON TIGHT!”

“A hundred days have made me older Since the last time that I've saw your pretty face

A thousand lies have made me colder And I don't think I can look at this the same

But all the miles that separate They disappear now when I'm dreaming of your face

I'm here without you, Baby But you're still on my lonely mind I think about you, Baby And I dream about you all the time I'm here without you, Baby But you're still with me in my dreams.”

(Three Doors Down, 2002)

“Change it.”

“…didn't have to cut me off Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing And I don't even need your love But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough No you didn't have to stoop so low Have your friends collect your records and then change your number I guess that I don't need that though Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now you're just somebody that I used to know Now you're just somebody that I used to know.”

(Gotye, 2011)

“That’s horrible too *tears welling,* please change it.”

“…if you love me, let me go. And run away before I know. My heart is just too dark to care. I can't destroy what isn't there. Deliver me into my fate - If I'm alone I cannot hate I don't deserve to have you...

My smile was taken long ago If I can change I hope I never know

I still press your letters to my lips And cherish them in parts of me that savor every kiss I couldn't face a life without your lights But all of that was ripped apart when you refused to fight

So save your breath, I will not hear. I think I made it very clear. You couldn't hate enough to love. Is that supposed to be enough? I only wish you weren't my friend. Then I could hurt you in the end. I never claimed to be a saint...”

(Slipknot, 2009)

“What the hell is wrong with the radio today?!” *Click*

“… See a Robin weep, When leaves begin to die? That means he's lost his will to live. I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star, Lights up a purple sky. And as I wonder where you are, I'm so lonesome I could cry. I'm so lonesome I could cry.”

(Cash, 1958)

“Awful! Terrible! If one more station tries to proselytize me I’m turning the radio off!”

“Try the Oldies station!”

“… if your baby leaves you And you have a sad tale to tell Just take a walk down Lonely Street To Heartbreak Hotel And you will be, you will be, you will be lonely, baby You'll be so lonely You'll be so lonely, you could die

Well, though it's always crowded You still can find some room For broken-hearted lovers To cry there in the gloom And they'll be so, they'll be so lonely, baby They're so lonely They'll be so lonely, they could die.”

(Presley, 1956)

“That’s it! I can’t take it anymore!” *CLICK*

*GPS chiming in* “If you want to avoid a steep cliff, take an immediate right. Take an immediate right. Take an immediate right. Immediately take a U-turn to return to County Road 18.”

Note the parts in bold and their applicability to my argument. As you can see, no station is safe from the resounding break of a heart, and songs about heartbreak are equally as likely to generate revenue to corporations as songs about true love, and equally as likely to make or break someone’s day. From modern day to the classic rock of the 1950’s, people have always been subconsciously pulled into the waiting arms of a mythical romance, whether it ends badly or not. All of these songs represent love, whether it be true, “normal” or inexplicably absent, from several different genres in a multitude of time periods. Blake claims that a “divine conspiracy” brought a true love to him- but if the story is based on real life occurrences consider his recent divorce from Country singer Miranda Lambert (Shelton, 2011). Maroon 5 claims, “You are the one thing, one thing I'm living for,” which seems to have a slightly morbid inference, and also, “when I’m without you, I’m something weak” (2015). What would the average music-lover in modern America procure from these lyrics? That some divinity scribbled their name next to another's and they were meant to be, and if they lost them or couldn’t find them life wasn’t worth living? That seems like a rather depressing interpretation, but the fact of the matter is our speakers shout these ideas into our subconscious, segregating the lucky few from the unlucky masses. The ideology that star-struck lovers exists causes emotional, physical, and monetary distress. It is an unnecessary idea based loosely on consumerism and false attraction, and the artifacts of this misconception are ubiquitous in our daily lives-they can surround and strangle at any given moment.  They also lie in popular music, television, movies, and are even embedded in the scriptures we peruse on Sunday mornings. This epidemic is present throughout the ages as well. Notice the references to heartbreak or losing “the one and only” in the 1950’s rock classics by Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. The minute differences are songs like “Sugar,” and “Somebody I Used to know” disguise disheartening lyrics with buoyant beats, distracting the listeners from the real message being conveyed.

How about a little micro-narrative to further illustrate my point? Her lips taste like summer strawberries still on the plant, so sweet and growing sweeter by the day. Her eyes are lonesome brown caves echoing with curiosity, reverberating blandishments to every snooping spelunker.  Her hair cascading like a muddy spring waterfall, twirling down over soft pink lobes and semi-precious stones; its autumn leaves welcoming a fall frolic with growing humidity. Her skin is a light olive, mellifluous, clean, and delicate. She was different, this was meant to be… forever. She is the epitome of perfection, and their paths were scribbled in the stars- inscribed in twinkling incandescence.

Who believes it? Almost everyone who wears a heart on their sleeve, even if they’re wearing camouflage to disguise it. Although the target audience for a lot of these songs are monogamous straight couples, anything can affect a person who wears the right set of ears; who has suffered or embraced extreme forms of love. This drivel is churned out by the bucketful, spooned onto everyone’s plates, from infant to elder, and it controls nearly everything. There are several different kinds of love, let’s begin by defining those. There is familial love, which is, shared between members of a group or family, is purely platonic (sorry Oedipus). Then there is love as companionship, that is, the love between two good friends or the love between a human and a pet. There is mutual adoration, such as the love between spouses or partners, or the love of childhood friends-this is stronger yet similar to love as companionship.  There is self-love (no not a teenager’s sticky copy of Marie Claire he keeps under his mattress), that is, caring for yourself, a fathom before narcissism. There is sexual love or attraction, which is based on personal preferences and sensual satisfaction. There is romance, which can be similar to sexual attraction, only embodied with more slow rhythmic music, candles and rose petal breadcrumb trails. Then there is adoration, like the look I’m currently receiving from a red-merle dog named Barley; this can be similar to companionship, or it can be the initial stages of mutual love. Then  there is one-sided love, that is, the love of the person sitting in the bushes outside your window at night (not like Romeo calling to Juliet on a balcony, more like an astronaut driving cross-country in diapers so she doesn’t have to stop to go to the bathroom), or a unrequited love. To clarify, many different types of love exist and are very apparent in most everyone’s lives, but true love, destiny, fate, or providence subsists only in fairy tales.

True love seems to be a fallacy spewed by corporations to take our every penny. A man is supposed to spend three month’s salary on a wedding ring… who came up with this idea? You’re supposed to buy flowers, candy or gifts for Valentine’s Day… Why? Granted, this is hardly applicable to penurious individuals or homosexual/transgendered couples (not sure about the intricacies of who buys the ring, or who spoils who in those situations). If true love exists it shouldn’t need material goods to prove its worth, it should be alive and well based on its own merit. If you don’t give a gift on that particular February day, does it mean you don’t love that person? This perception can make some feel gifted while others feel the cold sting of rejection-all based upon the sum of the monetary value collected. The concept that true love could be embodied in chalky red-lettered hearts is borderline imbecilic, yet we waste our money and dental health, buying them up by the millions. What is your love worth?

While some choose to find perfection wherever they can, others settle for less, idolizing the fallacy that true love exists and they are in the midst of it. The cliché that “ignorance is bliss,” can adequately describe at least half of the relationships in existence today. The rationalization that you let your partner get away with lying, infidelity and other sinful activity based upon the fact that you love them and “love conquers all” is a blissfully unaware delusion, and a good example of one-sided love.

Hardened, callous individuals often reject the slightest notion of love, while gushy, love-seeking teenagers desperately obsess over finding it immediately, which usually ends in a less-than-desirable situation. If there are over seven billion people in the world, and there’s only one “true love” out there for each individual, the chances of finding that person are astronomically low. Some people may devote all of their time, money, sweat and tears in the search and still come up empty handed. People buy expensive vehicles and houses, they go as far as buying drugs and alcohol, and they give their social security numbers away on dozens of websites created to find your “perfect match.” Nobody is perfect. If true love existed then two people wouldn’t care about each other’s flaws, they wouldn’t necessarily care about common interests or similarities, they would simply exist to care for each other, unwavering, until their time was up.

The play “Romeo and Juliet,” by William Shakespeare was based on star-crossed lovers from rival families who found each other and died for each other… this is the concept we’ve impressed on our society, that true love is worth dying for. But if true love existed, one partner would want the other to go on living even after their death-to think that they would commit suicide because the other did is simply selfish. However, if two star crossed lovers from rival families can come together, how about two star crossed lovers from different social classes? You rarely hear of real life stories of a janitor marrying an heiress do you? Because of the stratification between classes, finding similarities between one another may be difficult. Sure, there can be a physical attraction, but that only takes the love boat so far; to find a permanent dock here is a rare occurrence.  So if the chance of finding true love is one in seven billion, and we rule out all the social classes other than that specific person’s, you’re eliminating at least seventy five percent of the possibilities around the world.

Consider life in the 1950’s; why is the concept of soulmates so much more important now than it was back then? Because people were realists. They were willing to settle for the girl with the prettiest bow or the guy with the sharpest moves at the local barn dance. They came together and took their wedding vows seriously-in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, in good times and bad-they stuck together like glue, they didn’t run off with the pool-boy with the nice posterior or the secretary with a bountiful bosom, with the exception of unusual cases. There was no eternal search for the greener grass on the other side of the fence. People today can barely commit to a monogamous relationship, they prefer polyamorous, which some may consider an eloquent way of saying they want to whore themselves out all over town. Back then, your soulmate was who you cared about the most, you didn’t have to search through seven billion people to find them-they just stood out in the crowd more than the rest. Back then, the criteria for true love was who could provide for a family, not who could spoil you with the richest calories and prettiest petals money could buy. Yet somehow, in the modern era, we have put a price on love.

It is rather difficult to write an essay like this with an unbiased opinion without seeming jaded or spiteful. We are all in search of Sehnsucht (roughly translated as “a pleasurable yearning for some utopian thing or place” (Tokumitsu, “In the Name of Love”). Personally I’ve been repeatedly assaulted almost my entire life with the idea that there is one person who I was meant to be with somewhere out there. And yes, I am fairly jaded, but also exceptionally observant when the plane of true love crashes down into a smoky mass of melted metal and crumpled plastic strollers. When I believed I was in love, and it was true, the radio caused a foot-tapping, smile-starting sensation that inspired goosebumps on every facet. When tragedy struck, the frequencies haunted me, and I found my fingers flicking presets to isolate a few notes that didn’t force my heart into my throat and bugs in my eyes. Tokumitsu goes on to say, “You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do” (“In the Name of Love”). So what if you don’t love what you do, but force yourself into copulation because you believe it will force the lump out of your throat? Many people believe the quickest way to get over someone is to get under someone else, and this cliché is responsible for many undesirable situations; it can force one sided love into matrimony with one broken contraceptive, it can force people to do ghastly things with their bodies to move on, or get over the fact that their “true love” ran off with their best friend. Some days you are searching the summit for a higher point with none in sight, others you are tapping relentlessly at a keyboard, hoping the strokes will bring them back to the place where you once threw flowers from overhead to brighten their studies.

And for those with a poetic air swirling about them, this doth proveth that true love is impressed upon thee from the remote reaches of thy kingdom, with heart in sleeve and love on lips:

“Two of the faintest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O that I were a glove upon that hand

That I might touch that cheek!”

……

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse they name,

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (Shakespeare/Hankins, pg. 45).

So let me get this straight… Romeo briefly meets Juliet at a party then decides to go wait outside her window, spies on her and wishes he was something she was touching? Creepy! Then Juliet decides that if Romeo denounces himself from his family or she leaves hers they can be together? I suppose that’s what makes this story a tragedy, the fact that something must be sacrificed for true love, but in the end everybody commits suicide in the name of it. The modern day reality? Sorry honey, the contemporary Romeo decided it was easier to fornicate with his main squeeze down the block; it was easier for him to assuage the woman of cavalier attitude than to chase the dream of forbidden star-struck love. In his prowler-style brain you may be his “main,” perhaps you’re the exception to his adulterous rules, but he is still with someone else. The brief glimpses you shared at the ball did nothing to waver his bigamous intent. One day he may be willing to die for you but somewhere on the other side of town Mary will be concerned the next day when Romeo doesn’t show up for his morning fellatio. Sound vulgar? Welcome to love- the driving force for many cultures-sometimes even greater than money or power. You ever been “snipe hunting?” “Friends” drive you out into the woods in search of a mythical creature (that simply does not exist), then desert you in the darkness, where you sit and wait until a sense of abandonment creeps in. This epitomizes a lot of the relationships in modern society. Waiting around for something good until you grow impatient and realize everything you believed in was a lie.

Not every example of love, or true love, is as depressing as this essay may make you believe. For example, scientists uncovered two skeletons in Leicester, England who were buried together and apparently holding hands. Although this article makes a lot of inferences, the idea that two people died with each other in each other’s arms seems to be the epitome of true love. In a vast world wide web, corrupt with gossip of celebrity divorces and opinionated arguments, there are a few examples of truly compassionate devotion. Vicki Score, a University of Leicester archaeologist even claimed they, “have seen similar skeletons before from Leicester where a couple have been buried together” (Keller, Mic.com). Also, if we turn to the animal world,

Carl Zimmer claims, “Less than 5% of mammal species live monogamously, with males and females staying together beyond mating, and fathers helping mothers care for babies. We humans aren’t the most monogamous species of the bunch, but we’re closer to that end of the spectrum than the other end, where mating is little more than ships bumping into each other in the night,” and the author goes on to explain that, “It seems that for prairie voles, love is a drug. When male prairie vole mate, their brains release a chemical called vasopressin (National Geographic.com).” There are many examples of monogamy in the animal world, like wolves, Gibbons, swans, black vultures, French Angelfish, and Albatrosses just to name a few. So if true love and monogamy can exist in the animal world, why can’t it exist for humans?  We are, after all, animals; some more than others.

The ideology of true love has been commercialized by musicians, corporations and authors to bleed your checkbook dry. Love undoubtedly exists in several forms but the American public could benefit by disregarding this fatuous myth that star-crossed lovers exist, particularly the starry eyed younger heterosexual couples that corporations love to bombard with this sort of propaganda. My suggestion? Don’t let yourself be affected by the hype, and most importantly, embrace the cliché of following your heart, not your wallet. The greatest love you can find may not be at the expense of your checkbook, after all, (to toss in another cliché) it’s the thought that counts. The next time a love-struck holiday comes around, or an anniversary or even a wedding proposal, don’t buy into it-make your feelings count, not your pennies. If your spouse, partner, or even your pet truly loves you, the best proof of this is time spent together, not money. Don’t spend your whole life gazing at the greener grass on the other side of the fence when the blades on your side only need a little time, upkeep, and maybe a sprinkle of fertilizer (I realize that this is a rather gross analogy of sprinkling a certain something to provide necessary sustenance, just keep your minds out of the gutter!). My mother always told me to do whatever made me happy. The irony is, while I was writing this paper, I told her I met someone new, someone who was almost unbearably sweet to me. She responded with “maybe it was meant to be.” I had a good chuckle, then realized how much I love my family, and how lucky I truly am. Sure, we may not be the embodiment of a textbook household, but we deeply care for each other. So instead of walking into the leg hold trap greedy corporations set in your search for true love, take a moment and reflect on your life. Is being star-struck really that important? Or is caring for those you do love held in higher regard?

Works Cited

Elvis Presley. Heartbreak Hotel. RCA Victor, 1956. MP3.

Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. Print

Gotye, and Kimbra. Somebody I Used to Know. Gotye. Samples 'n' Seconds, 2011. MP3.

Johnny Cash. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. Columbia Nashville Legacy, 1958. MP3.

Keller, Jared. "Archaeologists Just Discovered the Proof That True Love Really Exists." World Mic. N.p., 17 Sept. 2014. Web. 01 Oct. 2015

Maroon 5. Sugar. Interscope Records, 2015. MP3.

Shakespeare, William, and John Erskine Hankins. "Act II, Scene II." The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1969. 45. Print.

Shelton, Blake. "God Gave Me You" Blake Shelton. Warner Bros., 2011. CD. From the Album "Red River Blue."

Slipknot. Snuff. Roadrunner Records, 2009. MP3.

Three Doors Down. Away From the Sun. Universal Records, 2002. MP3.

Tokumitsu, Miya. "In the Name of Love." Jacobin n.d.: n. page. Web. 2 Oct. 2015. <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/>.

Zimmer, Carl. "Love Is A Virus." Phenomena Love Is A Virus Comments. National Geographic/Phenomena, 16 June 2004. Web. 02 Oct. 2015. <http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2004/06/16/love-is-a-virus/>.

Update:

They say the search for love is blind, that if you look for it love will pass you by. In my first semester at CSU, a philosophy professor loosely defined love as something you seek but can never attain. They also say you should stick to your guns and be persistent and resilient. I have one question: Who the fuck are THEY? Why are we letting society define what will make us happy or not? If all is fair in love and war then why the fuck do we have rules for both?

The truth is it's not fair. Sometimes you have to be devious and underhanded to succeed, but is that really success? If a man fishes all day and catches one is he happier than a deckhand who throws his nets and catches 50 in a day? Certainly. But contemporary romance resorts to guerilla tactics, a war of attrition to burn every bridge before cutting the last string. We don't break up with people anymore, we break people. Why? If there are so many possibilities for love out there why do we cause others such torment instead of moving on?

Because its fucking hard to move on that's why. One day you spend every moment with a person, from dawn to dusk, from pillow to pillow; the next... you wake up staring at an impression in the pillow, the one lingering remnant that they even existed. You try to throw everything away or give it back, every little knick knack or scribbled library love note, but you can never get rid of it all... it's like the glitter of a relationship.

And you try to move on but you can't. Just like every other transition in America, there's a waiting period. It's a period where nobody wants to hang out with you for fear you're "on the rebound." It nips notions of relationships in the bud; you're lucky to even get a coffee date. Everyone has their guard up: they either don't want to be ridden hard and put away wet, don't want to go out with you because they like you and it would eliminate any possibility for a future relationship, they just plain don't like you, or they're already taken or interested in someone else. There's this fucking dating limbo we get stuck in after breakups. It's bullshit. We need to end the cycle.

It has taken me years of jealousy, forgiveness, acceptance, hatred, and a multitude of other emotions to get where i am today. I've been thinking alot recently and I think I know why so many relationships fail. Consider a monarchy: one person in power. In most relationships, there is a dominant person and a submissive person. We've been teeter-tottering like this for the last century at least. So this is the idea I've been toying with, although it is extremely controversial and I'm sure I'll be attacked for it: a tripod or table is much stronger and more stable than a bipod. Now I'm not condoning polygamy, because I don't necessarily believe in marriage; marriage in America has become more about tax write-offs than love. It's become about saving relationships, not strengthening them. If you don't believe me consider this: I used to dj weddings and was once hit on by a bride whose husband just returned from serving in Afghanistan.

Because that is the norm, that is what is expected. People wait for others, people put themselves through misery and torture because they think it will look good on Facebook. They have to capture every little fucking emotion to prove their existence. "I think, therefore I am," not, "I post to social media, therefore I am." But the rant on how technology has spoiled romance will have to wait for a later date.

Back to my primary point: when we invest so much in one person, and suddenly that person is gone, our world is upside down. We are fucked, we cry, we sob, we get depressed, and we spend lots of time alone. Why? Most likely an argument in which both parties were too passionate or stubborn to give up and make amends. There is no mediation, and if there is, it's done by a third wheel that is not really involved enough to give a valid opinion. If there were three or more, if one person disagrees with another, the third can mediate or take sides if necessary. I think most political science majors will agree that an oligarchy is much more stable than a monarchy. With an equal dispersion of power and influence, success is more likely.

So why hasn't this happened before (I'm sure it has, but I'm trying to distinguish between a tripod and polygamy)? Well until recently, the ability to be free and open about your sexuality was repressed. When I say a tripod, I don't mean the guy would have two girlfriends (or however you want to configure it with people of different sexes or the same sex), there is a lack of ownership and titles. A couple doesn't always have to mean two. I'm talking about a quid pro quo of caring, love, and even fidelity. Each party cares about each other equally, and shows their love in such a way.

So attack me if you want, this is just a hypothetical rant from a man who has been broken so many times by traditional relationships he's beginning to feel like Humpty Dumpty (which I just realized has an interesting interpretation if you have a mind residing in the gutter). I'm not trying to reform relationships, I'm not trying to force ideas on anyone or offend anybody. I'm just a man in search of happiness, that's why my mother taught me.

Regardless of what you think of my opinions I hope you, the reader, finds happiness, finds (whatever you define as) love, and finds someone (or several) you can grow old with. Even if it's just a number of feral neighborhood cats and whatever plants spring up naturally in your yard. :)

[erosanova-blog]

Feral

(Reader's note: I wrote this awhile back, but wanted to share it... enjoy)

It’s a smile, a scent of perfume, a slight similarity. It’s a trigger-effect on a hostile heart. She walks by, hair luminescing under the fluorescent lighting. If only for a moment it takes you back. Back to the days where life was nothing but a lapse between smiles, where she cuddled up on your lap instead of going out because she had her monthly cramps; and you wouldn’t change any of it, not that you could anyways. It’s funny how a memory can be triggered by something completely unrelated. Some parallel growing out of the woodwork; from a familiar flick of hair to a bat of long black eyelashes… she had you from the very beginning.

There are many opportunities you miss on a daily basis, many you jump for in the heat of the moment only to fumble, and many you finally grasp as yours, tangible but transparent.

In the space of a few months it was there and gone; in the space of a few thousand hours you became a different person. You became what you are now, and there’s no going back. It is what you are and guides what you do-it becomes your perspective, your prospect, and your posture.

There are certain signposts you pass, red flags unwavering in the winds of imagination. But you strive forward, blissfully unaware of the approaching precipice.

And you think, for a moment, how it would feel to kiss her again. But you’re looking at someone else, you’re observing the unknown with a known in mind. It might’ve been the hint of an old perfume, a toothy white smile that fit perfectly in its mouth, or perhaps the horn-rimmed glasses that levitated above her nose. You make inferences for that which you haven’t explored, and you dream. Dream that one day it could be you and her, that one day her lips could meet yours, and her head could lay on your chest.

There you go again, projecting your fantasy onto reality.

But it isn’t her… she’s gone. It’s someone new… for better or worse.

And you amble on, from day to day, making these comparisons, placing a face on these vacillating apparitions, denying what you know is true.

It’s easy to deny the past, until its right there next to you, in your face, as you imagine it to be; staring at you, auburn orbs interpolating you to the very core, casting feral glances through the Savannah grass.

Now she’s everywhere, in everyone, doing everything. In this sense you will always be together, while forever being apart. You find yourself for a Bohr-model-style social interaction; always searching the places she’s known to orbit. It always seems like you’re one step away, that she was just there a minute before from hints and traces or resonance. Her area of probability is much harder than finding plums in pudding.

She’s the light in the morning sun sprinkled upon unsleeping eyes, and tormented with a full day of labor. She’s that one spot on campus that you’ll never forget, that will never be the same as when you were both there, a part of it, and a part of each other. She’s an open window in a crepuscular setting; she’s the sound of monsoon season on a tin roof.

She’s flies high as the moon, as bright as the sun and as silky as puffy white clouds, wet with the impending tempest.

You would follow her Ad coelom, in good times and bad, sickness and health.

She’s that fall breeze, abscissing leaves waving goodbye to the good times. She’s knowing that once they fall, the plant will wither and die; not for the season, but forever.

You knew all along, all you wanted was her.

[erosanova-blog]

The Struggle is Real

By Axel Anderson

(Readers note: this was originally submitted Spring 2015 to a 20th Century Fiction class at Colorado State University, I just wanted to reblog it and share it with the world. I apologize some of the formatting didn't transfer over, and I sincerely hope all the references are correct. The original assignment called for a minimum of 8 pages, but the professor refused my 52 page paper, so I condensed it to 22 pages. Enjoy!)

You wake up late, in a half-inebriated state; eyes crusty at the corners and the knowledge that a term paper is due in a few hours that you have yet to begin. It’s raining outside, and you’re dreading the walk to the bus station. A half an hour away to the university, and your eyelids are drooping into their sockets. You show up at the computer terminal, shoes wet and socks sopping.  You’re wet to the core and have no way of drying off except the hand dryer in the bathroom which does a shoddy job of even drying your hands. You perch one leg on the counter, trying to dry your soggy clothing, but then slip and fall. You’re lying on your back in a pool of urine and lavatory floor water; to think all this started with a desire to further your education. You walk out of the bathroom looking (and smelling) like the victim of a sewage plant hurricane. You saunter over to the desk to work on your term paper and suddenly your mind goes blank. It’s only until fifteen minutes from your deadline does it pick back up, and out of nowhere your hands have a mind of their own, dancing and flickering lambently on the keyboard. No pauses, no breaks, a speed of light approach that leaves even you in utter amazement. The following day the professor announces that it’s the best paper he’s ever read, and you silently recite the teenage colloquialism, “the struggle is real.”

There’s a kernel of justice in the idiom of a child getting a lollipop at the doctor’s office after an “oh-so-agonizing” vaccination. Over the centuries, scholars have come to the conclusion that suffering is often the root of happiness. Pain, both emotional and physical is a transitory state between childhood and adolescence; between ignorance and epistemology. Throughout the course of the class "20th Century Fiction," taught by Thomas Conway, I have both read of anguish and experienced it firsthand in my personal life- it's easy to tie together the strings of similarity; it is also easy to relate to something that correlates with personal experience. With age comes wisdom, imparted by the indelible sickle of a fresh wound, which, once healed, imparts a valuable lesson. We rarely scald the tips of our fingers twice, out of curiosity, on a hot burner.  Louis Erdrich's Love Medicine, Don Delillo's White Noise, and J.M Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, all include instances where suffering was essential for maturation, but in the interest of time and space (and since it is frowned upon to submit a forty-six page paper when the requirement is four to six) the primary focus is with Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Don Delillo’s White Noise and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. Often the sweetest apples are those which have weathered the harshest storms, and throughout this lengthy term paper, I intend to prove that not only is suffering necessary for the stimulation of plot in a narrative, but a driving force for societal maturation.

In the short story Araby by James Joyce, the protagonist is a young boy, naive in the ways of love and unaware of the intricacies of the world outside his little village. Developing a crush or obsession with an object of desire is often unhealthy, the tendency is to become a martyr of urgency. From under the umbrage of innocence, a man is born; for when he walks into the rain his back becomes wet, his bones chill, and his desire for the looming face of the familiar replaces his desire for the obscure. But what is wet will dry, what is cold will warm, and the need to unveil the unfamiliar will be replaced an accomplished effort.

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." (Araby, Joyce, pg. 5)        In the end the boy discovers all the taboo and aberrant desires are not what they seem-that the path to adulthood is paved in suffering. Though his eyes may burn, he will soon become hardened and accustomed to the sensation, until one day his need for it will overwhelm the possibility of lament.

Sometimes we saunter the earth as broken men(or women), having fallen off the cliff of a crush and tossed into a sea of sharks with the blood of a lamb tossed upon us; and what goes up will undoubtedly fall to the earth at some point-such is the nature of gravity. Like a scar, ink injected into the dermis is a constant reminder of the prominent stories in the tome of someone determined to decorate their natural temple; it is a chronological depiction only capable of reminiscence by their own minds, to any outsider these imprinted Rorschach tests may appear to be the wallpaper of the human canvas, like a mantelpiece decoration- but to the individual, they are rife with meaning. When Gabriel learns of Gretta's long lost love in James Joyce's The Dead, he falls into deep introspection.

The "vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer, as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world. But he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued to caress her hand. He did not question her again, for he felt that she would tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not respond to his touch, but he continued to caress it just as he had caressed her first letter to him that spring morning."(The Dead, Joyce pg. 21)

which leads Gabriel into the next stage of emotional transition,

"So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul." (The Dead, Joyce, pg. 21)

But through the five stages of grief Gabriel is finally able to digest his wife's admission, and is a better person because of it, when,

"He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love." (The Dead, Joyce, pg. 21)

It is clear that Gabriel is forced into acceptance through adversity, and he emerges from the watery depths of paranoia and an unfounded sense of deception onto the shores of an epiphany. Death is a struggle in itself, and more often than not positivity exudes from a closed casket, but sometimes a negative spin corrupts the bowling ball before the strike: “Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. (Kundera,pg.3)

Betrayal is a common occurrence in many people's lives, but in this case Gabriel feels betrayed from lack of elucidation; which brings about an interesting point: is betrayal withholding information because of awareness of the consequences of revealing such information? When people feel betrayed, they suffer. But if they never knew about this betrayal, would they ever suffer, hence would they ever grow? Jeffrey Nealon and Susan Searls Giroux state, "Like texts, expressions or clues or golf courses don't simply speak for themselves; they don't simply contain a meaning. Rather, we must always interpret them......... Everything is in need of interpretation, nothing is merely self-evident."(pg. 22)

Would you feel betrayed if this happened in your life? Or is there bliss in ignorance, is there peace in the unknown? If the end of the world was tomorrow, would you rather be aware of it or completely oblivious of the impending oblivion?

Reminiscence is both fortuitous and tortuous at the same time. Murray claims, “I don’t trust anybody’s nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It’s a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence.”(Delillo, pg. 246)

So we should learn from our suffering, but we shouldn’t grasp it tightly to the point of suffocation. Even if the river is flooding, let the sticks and brambles flow past instead of focusing on how scathed and bloody the skin becomes.

In Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, when King and Lynette destroy the pies carefully constructed for the family, Albertine repairs the damage as best as she can claiming,  "Once they smash there is no way to make them right." (pg. 42)

In this abstract quote about pastries, she seems to also be referring to the marriage between King and Lynette. Once scars are laid, there is no way to forget, they are a constant reminder of a harsh memory- the priceless vases which contain our fragile lives sometimes crash to the floor, and we are left to pick up the shattered pieces in introspective silence. But often after the loudest crash comes the softest silence; sometimes the suffering is so great the possibility for growth is non-existent. Even though King and Lynette proceed to make up and make love under the foggy windshield of their car, the readers are left wondering about the integrity of their relationship-since they are only given a few brief glances into the near future throughout the text, the summation of this relationship is obscure. Lulu Nanapush gave up her life of relative comfort to travel somewhere everyone warned her about- to live with Moses on his wild island full of feral felines and simple needs. She found happiness in the forbidden, even when she became pregnant in an uncivilized place, with the child of a man who she was loosely related to; she says, "I knew that this baby, still tied to my heart, could drag me under. And yet, each morning, light rose in the trembling mica, and I turned away, to the darkness in his arms." (Erdrich, pg. 83)

Even though this man represented everything she shouldn't be pursuing, she couldn't help but give in to the ultimate chase: the desire for love. Sometimes despite the biggest warnings we seek the best rewards-better to aim high and fall low than aim low and hit your feet. There is a prevailing benevolence and a dispiriting malevolence in any given situation, but as Nealon and Giroux state, “You never know because the future remains open; meaning never stops or rests simply in one interpretation." (pg. 28)

When Beverly and Lulu give in to their passion following his brother's death (Lulu’s husband), their union is anything but sacred, but it propagates from passion. Sometimes suffering leads wandering strangers down the wrong paths, slipping into a forbidden creek of lust. Although it is not always positive growth, it does provide positive introspection:  "He was more of a man than he'd ever been. The grief of loss for the beloved made their tiny flames of life so sad and precious it hardly mattered who was what." (Erdrich, pg. 116)

Sometimes we are forced to feel emotion because we are products of our environments, other times we choose to ignore emotion; we become numb. Only until we find ourselves in another epiphany can we pull out of this downward spiral. Nector Kashpaw shares a tryst with Lulu as well, another forbidden chance for personal growth. Secrecy is often the greatest thrill, and their love labors behind closed doors and in cars sitting on the horizon with melting packages of butter. Nector craves the forbidden, hence Nector enjoys suffering; it is not easy to live a double life. He finally comes to his senses and decides to terminate their rendezvous, but is immediately filled with regret, saying,   "And that is what the suffering and burning set in me with fierceness beyond myself. No sooner had I given her up than I wanted Lulu back." (Erdrich, pg. 135)

Some things in life will always change, too often we wade into the river and expect it to be the same. Heraclitus proposed that you can’t step in the same river twice- there is truth in this, the world continues to revolve around and only when you step out of your comfort level, only when you burst forth from your bubble will the world acknowledge your presence, otherwise you are just another boulder in the stream. There are certain consequences that always haunt a person, but in those consequences a seed often sprouts. We infer from our mistakes what actions will guide us through the next set of difficulties with the minimal amount of collateral damage to our selves. But oftentimes, we neglect to take a lesson from our mistakes, we look at hardship as having a detrimental effect rather than a positive one.

Now and again the trauma in our lives causes us to grow sour and weaken, rather than toughening up like ice-hardened steel. Sometimes the struggle becomes too great or too incredibly destructive; sometimes the struggle is a tornado in a trailer park-those trinkets and cardboard yard art will never be able to be replaced to their former glory (I’m stereotyping and being facetious, for this I apologize).   Obsession and paranoia have very few positive effects, if any. Oftentimes we allow ourselves to hurt by exposing our lives to the outside world, very similar to people refusing to use hand sanitizer to strengthen their immune systems or getting flu shots to prevent the inevitable sickness of the season. Marie Kashpaw (formerly Lazarre), “ate dust for one reason: to introduce herself to death. She now was inhabited by the blowing and the nameless.”(Erdrich, pg. 143).

When she finds out her husband is cheating on her, the struggle suddenly becomes real, but there is bound to be rebels in a rebellion, there is almost always opposition to an opposition. She claims, “I would not care if Lulu Lamartine ended up the wife of the chairman of the Chippewa Tribe. I’d still be Marie. Marie. Star of the Sea! I’d shine when they stripped off the wax!”(Erdrich, pg. 161)

For Nector, the sugar in his life (Lulu, the voice of temptation) often needs balanced with the salt of his life (Marie, the voice of reason and obligation). He is torn between the two, and even though he develops diabetes later on (Lulu always fed him hard candy even when he wasn’t supposed to eat it, while Marie forced vegetables on him) from an excess amount of sugar, he still salts his wounded pancreas and keeps the shaker by his side. With Lulu, there is a lightness in his being; with Marie, a heaviness, but he is bound to his shaker, though he continues to sneak sugar when he can. His struggle is real, but it is detrimental for all the parties involved. However, sometimes life is best lived at the tip of a risk that in the shelf of the pantry, because (following the attempted homicide of the man providing Babette with placebos and infidelity by Jack), “Is it better to commit evil and attempt to balance it with an exalted act than to live a resolutely neutral life” (Delillo, pg. 299). Jeffrey Nealon and Susan Searls Giroux continue with, "No matter which side you favor in such a discussion, it's much too simple to say that one is inherently good while the other is inherently bad. It's the consequences that are good or bad, not the signifiers." (pg. 27) Jack was subject to positive growth following this experience, so the gray line separating good from bad is rather obscure.

People crave turmoil like a desert craves the rain; there is a reason why so many episodes of Gossip Girl exist and why the ratings on dramatic reality television series are so high. What makes for a good story is the possibility of the protagonist going through a series of trials and errors with penultimate strife prior to the denouement. Jeffrey Nealon and Susan Giroux claim, “After all, there’s no point in being “unique” unless people know it! Perhaps the easiest way to state this point is to say that we are social animals, and one of the things we want from each other is recognition.”(pg. 43)

On occasion we expose ourselves to unnecessary hardships for the sake of personal growth. I am currently pursuing a major that makes me struggle, not only because I enjoy a challenge, but I approach it with an air of Machiavellianism. I often choose girls I know will hurt me eventually, because it was in my human nature to want what I can’t have and there is no sport in hunting an injured fox. I would rather strive to be the best I can be and hope that a woman will someday accept me for who I am than giving in to a moderate desire. In White Noise, the man known as Murray, for example, chooses to live in “a rooming house. I’m totally captivated and intrigued. It’s a gorgeous old crumbling house near the insane asylum. Seven or eight boarders, more or less a permanent one for me. A woman who harbors a terrible secret. A man with a haunted look. A man who never comes out of his room. A woman who stands by the letter box for hours, waiting for something that never seems to arrive. A man with no past. There is a smell about the place of unhappy lives in the movies that I really respond to.”(Delillo, pg. 10)

Murray surrounds himself with turmoil because he enjoys watching it; he is content watching the mayhem around him because it allows him to reflect on the important things in life, rather than focusing on the white noise that envelopes. There is an almost unhealthy obsession with death and dying in this novel as well; death being the end of all suffering and the summation of a man in a requiem,                                                                 “Dying is a quality of the air. It’s everywhere and nowhere. Men shout as they die, to be noticed, remembered for a second or two. To die in an apartment instead of a house can depress the soul, I would imagine, for several lives to come” (Delillo, pg. 38).

When we think of drama in cinema, particularly war movies, it is often a man’s last escaping words that tie the whole story together or provide plot or motive for it to continue. Why are we, as a society, so humbled by this concept? Even if it doesn’t cross the mind of a normal person, eventually the obsession with the thought of dying will present itself. When that ugly fact is finally faced headstrong with acceptance, the weight lifts from our shoulders like Atlas losing his globe. In Love Medicine, Lulu begins thinking of her regrets and the notion that carrying the burden of suffrage wasn’t worth crying over, but was worth holding on to:                                                                                    “There were so many things I never cried for. I knew if I started now I would have to waste all the rest of my last years. Besides that, there weren’t tears in me. I was incapable.” (Erdrich, pg. 292)

In the modern world we tend to categorize our memories using technology. The problem in doing so is we are too easily enabled to go back and relive our strife. It is too easy to remember the good times, but also too easy to block out the bad, as reflected in White Noise: “I made virtues from her flaws because it was my nature to shelter loved ones from the truth. Something lurked inside the truth, she said” (pg. 8). And in Love Medicine, a similar theme surfaces for Lulu when she is pondering the regrettable actions of fooling around once more with Nector Kashpaw in the retirement home:      “And yet here again I was making my one big mistake in life over again for the sake of illusion.”(Erdrich, pg. 290)

In any given instance, people as consumers are subject to white noise. Unbearable advertisements and subliminal voices invading our subconscious, and we are not necessarily stronger for it. We tune everything out, consciously ignoring advertisements but subconsciously integrating them into our being. We are the product of our technologically advanced environments, getting weaker and weaker by the day because of our augmented reliance. Too often do we rid ourselves of anxiety or fear of the struggle by the use of modern medicine; with the ingestion of placebos and prescriptions we hope will cure the distress created when life happens. Jack claims, “And I was not a believer in easy solutions, something to swallow that would rid my soul of an ancient fear”(Delillo, pg. 201). Sometimes the side effects of these drugs are worse than the problem for which they’re prescribed. Suffering through the pain is often more beneficial than artificially overcoming problems.

In spite of the fact that I have been hurt time and time again, I still have the desire to walk the plank of fortune; I can’t let the mistakes of the past allow me to throw a blind eye to the possibilities the future can bring. Even though it seems hopeless in my dissertation, the hope comes from scribing it- there is resolve in venting, and this was one of the few ducts through which I exhaled. Jack says to Babette, “Sometimes I think our love is inexperience. The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future. Simple things are doomed, or is that a superstition?” (Delillo, pg. 15)

In the end, resilience is key. The ability to stand back up after being beaten to the ground is admirable and necessary. A pampered person is able to grasp any object of my desire on a whim or with a neatly written check from an overflowing bank account, and life often seems pointless. Sometimes things obtained through hard work define you as a person, and define the objects that you crave as having some insurmountable worth. Lipsha struggled through a lifetime of surrogacy, searching for his father, searching for the meaning of life, and searching for resolution following June’s death. In the end, he drove on, wheels spinning, over the river that binds society: “It’s a dark, twisting river. The bed is deep and narrow. I thought of June. The water played in whorls beneath me or flexed over sunken cars. How weakly I remembered her. If it made any sense at all, she was part of the great loneliness being carried up the driving current. I tell you, there was good in what she did for me, I know now. … The thought of June grabbed my heart so, but I was lucky she turned me over to Grandma Kashpaw. … I’d heard that this river was the last of an ancient ocean, miles deep, that once covered the Dakotas and solved all our problems. It is easy to still imagine us beneath them vast unreasonable waves, but the truth is we live on dry land. I got inside. The morning was clear. A good road led on. So there was nothing to do but cross the water and bring her home.” (Erdrich, pg. 333)

People watching, or sociology on a macro level, is entertaining. Sociology is the reason we read books; novels provide a glimpse into another life without having to leave the comfort of your chair. Celebrities often disguise themselves in public, for fear of being noticed or treated differently.  Being a public figure disallows you from people watching, you belong to the upper echelon of society and may have a hard time candidly observing a couple at the supermarket or thrift store. A lot of celebrities hire personal assistants and personal shoppers to eliminate their need to interact with common folk; they’re completely isolated to lives in the spotlight of decadence. Is their struggle a healthy one? Sure we could all live without being sneezed on at the grocery store, or having beer spilled on us at a rock and roll concert, but is being on the stage capable of producing any personal growth? A celebrity’s struggle for privacy is rarely beneficial. When Jack talks to the chancellor about furthering his career, he suggests, “If I could become more ugly, he seemed to be suggesting, it would help my career enormously. ……I am the false character that follows the name around.”(Delillo, pg. 17) Celebrities struggle because they are defined by their actions, and, unlike the actions of the common folk, they are in the spotlight. This suffering, this struggle, is sometimes unbearably negative. Though they may be full of fortune, their lives lie in the limelight.

When we are hurt, we occasionally gain disillusionment in our surroundings; we begin to question everything. We question both what brings us pleasure and what provides pain, and begin doing a cost-benefit analysis. So corrupted by the notion of being hurt once again, oftentimes, “What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation,” (Delillo, pg. 31) and we willingly exclude ourselves from activities that hold a potential for harm. The tendency to attack previously accepted benevolent anecdotes or nuances becomes apparent, and the world surrounding us seems to loom overhead before dropping; we pick it apart like a hungry hyena devouring a week-old kill.

The concept of growth through suffering is often negated; sometimes the harshest storms topple the boughs of even the most sturdy apple trees. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, “Her mother took her out of school at the age of fifteen, and Tereza went to work as a waitress, handing over all her earnings. She was willing to do anything to gain her mother’s love” (Kundera, pg. 44). This suffering lead nowhere, except leaving Tereza with a feeling like she needed to escape her wretched hell. So when six fortuities happened and Tomas appeared, she ran to him. He was all she had, even though he was a complete stranger.

“Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.”(Kundera, pg. 48) Suffering sometimes leaves it up to coincidence to rid ourselves of anguish. “Necessity knows no magical formulae-they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi’s shoulders” (Kundera, pg49).

Another example of this benevolence gone awry lies in the ugly truth that Tereza’s real father died because her mother left him for another man and he was so depressed he made appalling statements to the communist police. “The most manly of men became the most downcast. … The most downcast of men died after a short spell behind bars, and Tereza and her mother went to live in a small town near the mountains with her mother’s swindler” (Kundera, pg. 43). So suffering in this instance didn’t nullify or create a callous, it only exacerbated the pain. Tereza is no stranger to this notion, however, she even suffers in her early childhood, “Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of a man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas’s hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training for it since childhood.”(Kundera, pg. 55)

Perhaps the most appalling quote to come from this book, (in my personal opinion) which reflects a lack of growth as a product of suffering, “To assuage Tereza’s sufferings, he married her”(Kundera, pg. 23). Too often I observe these legally binding trysts that seem to be a desperate attempt to fix something that is incapable of repair; a bond fabricated for all the wrong reasons. People settle into the foundations of crumbling mortar and creaking floorboards because they are afraid; afraid to strive for something greater, afraid of rejection. Then they suffer because of their poor decisions-hence, they suffer because they have not suffered enough. But the people in this type of situation often reach the point where they cannot live without one another, even if the yin doesn’t converge with the yang perfectly. When Tereza leaves Tomas and he is overwhelmed with happiness, but shortly thereafter he realizes he can’t live without her, even though hiding his infidelities is quite sufferable, “For seven years he had lived bound to her, his every step subject to scrutiny. She might as well have chained iron balls to his ankles. Suddenly his step was much lighter. He soared”(Kundera, pg. 30).

However, “…necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inexplicably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value”(Kundera, pg. 33).

Tomas is stranded between the lightness of being and the contentment therein, and the necessity of the everyday struggle. He is also a creature of consideration, he can see the damage he’s causing in Tereza’s life, he can see the agony that he is imparting, “In languages that derive from Latin, “compassion” means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, “pity” (French, pitié; Italian, pietà; etc.), connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer” (Kundera, pg. 20). Tomas is awash in a tidal pool of guilt and pity the moment he discovers his unbearable lightness, “The realization that he was utterly powerless was like the blow of a sledgehammer, yet it was curiously calming as well. No one was forcing him into a decision” (Kundera, pg. 29).

Our bodies leak when we are in pain-whether it be blood or tears (or maybe if we have to urinate extremely badly), what’s inside is bursting forth for the world to see. Sometimes we cannot hide it, sometimes we don’t want to. Sometimes we are so caught up in the search for perfection that we discard everything but perfection. Disney movies established what true love should be like, they personified white knights and evil witches and provided us with an unhealthy distrust of apples. Sometimes over-analysis is debilitating, sometimes the best approach is ignorance; the unthinkable is only torturous if it manifests into a thought. Babette claims, ““My life is either/or. Either I chew regular gum or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum or I smoke. Either I smoke or I gain weight. Either I gain weight or I run up the stadium steps.” “Sounds like a boring life.”     “I hope it lasts forever,” she said”(Delillo, pg. 53). The majority of little choices we make in life most likely won’t matter because in the end they are often deemed inconsequential. Life is one small struggle at a time, the easiest way to get through them is stand up straight and hold on to the handlebars. After all, “You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.” (Delillo, pg. 217)

Without suffering and the change that lies therein, what do we have on our deathbed? Would we grow without suffering? Heinrich grows when the family has to abandon their house and run to a shelter, and Jack’s connection with him grows as well. When Jack observes him speaking with a crowd about the disaster he decides not to interrupt to, “Let him bloom, if that’s what he’s doing, in the name of mischance, dread and random disaster” (Delillo, pg. 128).

Babette’s father, Vernon, is the epitome of how suffering forces growth. We are often required to compensate when our lives begin to break down, we are often forced to deal with problems as they approach; rather than wallowing in misery we are forced to think positively: ““A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I’m getting away with something. Let the Mormon’s quit smoking. They’ll die of something just as bad. The money’s no problem. I’m all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don’t have to worry about that. It’s all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don’t worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It’s only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy shakes is pretend its somebody else’s hand. Never mind the sudden and unexpected weight loss. There’s no point eating what you can’t see. Don’t worry about the eyes. The eyes can’t get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. So don’t worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering’s all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain”” (Delillo, pg. 243-244).

Vernon brushes the suffrage off his shoulders, weakened with age. My grandma once told me not to hold grudges that life was too short to worry about injustices done to your honor. Vernon is blissfully aware of his baggage, but doesn’t let him affect his upturned attitude; he is more worried about his car falling apart than his body and mind. Even dressing differently makes people’s perception of you change, with designer clothing you are suddenly the member of the upper class, as least, in appearance.

Religion spreads like an epidemic, but at the end of the day if a person spends their entire life trying to do what’s right and true by their fellow man and there is no ethereal resting place, was their suffering all for naught? Clearly faith skews our perspective of the world, and allows for another layer of personal suffering to exist; a suffering that doesn’t necessarily end in a substantial reward. What if the religion you’ve been following since childhood is suddenly denounced as a cult? All of those layers of suffering become worthless, your whole life may spiral into depression and remorse. Marie Lazarre experiences growth through the pain of religion, a foreshadowing at the beginning of her chapter says, "So when I went there, I knew the dark fish must rise. Plumes of radiance had soldered on me. No reservation girl had ever prayed so hard." (Erdrich, pg. 43) Though she was viciously tortured at the hands of Sister Leopolda, she ran away from the fountain of knowledge with a canteen brimming with experience.

The struggle for love is real, often too real; so real people take their own lives when they think they’ve lost it-paralleling Romeo and Juliet. Murray says to Jack, “It’s bad enough to fear the unknown. Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn’t there. Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system”(White Noise, pg. 272). Most hope to obtain love on a familial level and personal level, though some may never find it. Some settle for the norm, that greenhorn level of happiness. However, social Darwinism states that only the strong survive in society; if we don’t suffer, we won’t survive, and we won’t find the ultimate love we are searching for. Arguably, those who settle with the “it’ll do” attitude, those who settle for what’s safe and easily obtained, have not suffered enough. We suffer through shitty relationships, going through a lot of crap with the hopes of changing someone. Some remain unchanged and in these cases suffering proves to be fruitless. A plane’s approach to the flight deck of love takes many different routes, and is bound to engage some turbulence. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines love as:

Love (noun) 1a (1):  strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <maternal love for a child> (2):  attraction based on sexual desire:  affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3):   affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates>

b:  an assurance of affection <give her my love>

2:  warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion <love of the sea>

3a:  the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration <baseball was his first love>

b (1):  a beloved person:  darling —often used as a term of endearment (2) British —used as an informal term of address

4a: unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another: as (1):  the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2):  brotherly concern for others

b:  a person's adoration of God

5:  a god or personification of love

6:  an amorous episode:  love affair

7:  the sexual embrace:  copulation

8:  a score of zero (as in tennis)

9: capitalized Christian Science:  god.  (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love)

Some people see love as living, “…with nothing between us and the stars. We would have made any concession, had we only known what, to go on living here. This was paradise on earth” (Coetzee, pg. 154).

There are many different ways to express it, many of which involve religion, which has been previously defined in this dissertation as something some people believe is worth struggling for. In The Incredible Lightness of Being, love is a suffrage which doesn’t necessarily reflect personal growth, “For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes” (pg. 31). In all of the novels we read throughout this course, the characters have struggled with the concept of love-either struggling to find it (Araby, Love Medicine, The River Between, The Incredible Lightness of Being), struggling to define it (The Dead, Love Medicine, The River Between, The Incredible Lightness of Being) or struggling to let it go (The Dead, Love Medicine, The River In Between, The Incredible Lightness of Being). I (obviously) struggle with this as well as made evident in That Which Remains Unspoken-The Things I Cannot Tell Her. As time passes we often fall into the in the heart of a growth chamber. At first all of my writing had a certain depressing hopeless quality to it. Suddenly a hopeful spark found its way into the kindling of my life, but be sure to watch for the spark that initiated the fire in which I’m currently bathing.

“A twirl of smoke whisks off her hair, caught on an updraft and twisting towards the starlight beaming down on us. The air coming off the lake is chilly, it impales us even under several blankets. We talk for hours, caught up in each other. Often when I look at her nothing else seems to be around-I'm a stranded pilot on a desert island staring into the brown of her eyes, watching her dimples perk up with every joke and fade with every lamentable hindsight. I tell her everything and she reciprocates, her mind edacious and her eyes fixed. They shine with the gleam of a wild child, that little spark of fire by gasoline, and I am engulfed.

When I was younger I used to dream of a white picket fence with a creek running nearby, two or three mischievous children scampering around the yard chasing a fuzzy little dog. The wind rustling through the lilacs, tulips and lilies in the garden, and no neighbors within several miles. Chickens clucking, perhaps a cat or two eager to play with anything that caught their fancy. A brown haired woman waiting on the porch swing with a cold drink and a blissful smile, one that remained in place from day to day, never fading or growing sour with age. I dreamt of walking the children down to the bus stop on those icy winter days, huddling together under a woolen blanket until they went away to further their education. I envisioned the welcoming hug and kiss when I came home, a hot pot of coffee percolating in the kitchen and homemade biscuits still cooling on top of the oven.

We all have our version of the perfect person, one that makes our days seem like minutes and makes the world collapse when we look at them, weak in the knees and drunk off their kiss-not a bad drunk, that slight inebriation where you feel warm inside and everything seems just right. These are the things which I cannot tell her. I cannot tell her that she fits my every criteria, that she is the one I have been searching for my entire life. I can't tell her that despite her warnings, telling me not to fall for her, that I already have. That I'm closer to love than I've ever been in my life. I can't tell her because I don't want her to know, I don't want her to run, but I don't want to be forced to give up the greatest present I've ever been given-one that trumps all the Christmases and Birthdays put together. I can't tell her because she won't see it the same way I do, or I'm not sure if she will. I've been in a similar situation before, I've given everything I've had, walking the plank into the mouth of hungry white sharks- only to feel that pang of rejection, that "I'm sorry but this is too soon" beginning to a fresh knife wound into my soft underbelly. I've seen what love does to people, I've watched reality television (which, ironically, is a horrible representation of real life) and sappy lifetime movies- I know what I shouldn't do because of what society defines as too soon. At the turn of the century it was uncommon to be unmarried after age twenty, and common to start at family at fifteen or sixteen. As society changes, so do the concepts of "normal" relationship behavior. Society gives us notions like the "two-three day rule for calling/texting after you get someone's number," and I never really cared for that. I suppose it's because I have an urge to rebel against the norms of society, I have an urge to be aberrant and abnormal-what many would label as "unique." If I want to call someone, I call them. If I want to jump, I jump, if they reciprocate it was meant to be, if not it wasn't.

She is fresh out of a relationship with the world at the tip of her fingers, why would she choose me? I'm just a silly farm boy with delusions of grandeur-not grandeur in the sense of fancy dinners of Rolls Royce's- delusions of a happy family sitting around the fireplace being read to as they sip hot chocolate on those cold winter days- archaic delusions. Does this really happen anymore? Or am I stuck in the past, am I too old fashioned for my own good? A silly farm boy displaced into city life with the hopes of being able to provide for that wife and kids (and immediate family) with the right kind of education.

She has travelled all over the world and I have yet to leave the United States. She talks of foreign countries and sunrises in Africa; I have seen beauty all over my home state, but nothing as diverse as what she has perceived. She makes me want to be a better person, for her, but not because she demands it, because I want to be one for her. With every narrative she serenades me with new concepts, she changes the composition of my beliefs without even knowing.

She looks into the night sky, my little selenophile. She doesn't realize how beautiful she is in this light, the flickering of them flames lambent on her eyes. She never complains, even when her feet go numb from the cold. She is always smiling, and slowly we creep towards each other like climbing vines. I am always pushing my boundaries, like a river swollen in the height of monsoon season. But it isn't sexual, at least, that's not what matters. I am content in being lost in her raven eyes, listening to her every word and digesting it; trying to keep those thoughts hell bent on telling her how wonderful I think she is, telling her how close I am to falling for her completely. But I don't want to, I try to resist like a child wanting to play with that sticky community toy at the local Pizza dive, that his parents tell him to resist because it's not safe, but he just can't seem to manage; I can't. I'm stuck.

I don't want to become that person I so often embody. My last relationship purged me of jealousy... Only to suffer because of it. Once the bond of trust is broken, it is nearly impossible to get back. She tells me one night, "Once you crumple a sheet of paper, it is very hard to flatten back out to perfection.” And she's right. She's always right. Even when she's telling me not to fall for her she's right. Even when she tells me that she has a fire in her eyes and I should stay away or be burned... she's right.

But I am a pyromaniac, and a rebel. Tell me to stay away from the flame and watch me chase it. I can't stand the man I start to become. I can't take the jealousy... and that's why I should resist. I should call it off before it goes too far and I'm too attached, too drawn in. I should run away.

But I simply can't. When everything you've ever wanted wanders in front of you, a product of fate and a few simple sticky notes placed at the right times, in the right places... it's almost like fate tapped on my shoulder and then hit me in the face with a brick; an indelible ebb and flow of events I can't seem to shake.

I don't want to toss and turn anymore, not like last time. I don't want my stomach to boil up and overflow with grief, I don't want to worry about where she's at or who she's with. It is so hard to cage a fire; and I don't want to hold that wild animal down I see bounding behind her brown ovals.

So it comes down to this... either give up on everything and walk away from what could be my soulmate, my true love, the Juliet to my Romeo, the yin to my yang, the inhalation to my exhalation, the north to my south, the other hand grasping another, my wolf, my penguin, my gibbon, my swan, my French angelfish, my albatross, my queen termite, my prairie vole, my Schistosoma Mansoni worm, my bald eagle, my turtledove (in case you were wondering what these animals have in common, may I suggest a little research? :)), the thorn on my rose and the kindling to the fire that both of us burn inside.

If a winning lottery ticket was placed in front of you, would you sit there and think of the consequences of sudden wealth? The fact that most lottery winners go crazy, bankrupt themselves, and get used by friends and family until the cash flow runs dry... would this echo in your mind? Would you take it without thinking, anxious to cash it in a quit your job to retire in the lap of luxury? Or would you give it all up, knowing it probably isn't worth the grief that a lump sum like that brings? It's an interesting analogy, but you already know the answer. How many people would refuse a multi-million dollar lifestyle; how many people could refuse a scenario like mine, suddenly plopped into complete and utter contentment, but not being able to elaborate your feelings with the person you desire? Pop culture (and Shakespeare) tell us that soulmates exist, that there is one person out there for everyone which is a perfect fit. However... I can't help but wonder will this romance be like a Lady Gaga song, a Shakespearean tragedy or a Disney fairytale.

Its torture, its torment, but isn't everything? Love is a series of mistakes that lead to true love-but not everybody finds true love. Some people simply settle because they don't want to be alone, they make sacrifices and remove the criteria they held in such high regard when they were growing up because they get tired of searching. Then years later their relationships collapse when they think they've found that person somewhere else, that they could be much happier there than here, and they throw it all away on a whim. I melt like candlewax when I'm around her, I'm dizzy and oblivious. I could walk into a wall staring at her, I could burn in a building set alight listening to her stories, enraptured by that twinkle in her eyes. I listen to her tales of hardships as a child, I patiently await anything else she has to tell me- any anecdotes or theories she has glowing and reverberating in that brilliant mind of hers. I can't stop thinking about her, and even when I do it is only out of necessity, to breathe, to study, or to fall asleep.

She is my sunrise and my moonlight, and I feel naked without her.

That's what scares me the most.

Losing her would be tragic. And I don't even have her yet, perhaps I never will. How's that for conflict?

So these are the things she doesn't need to know, that which remains unspoken but I can't keep from my mind, can't keep from ripping through my soul. That I'm falling for her, that I'm dreaming it's her sitting on that piney porch swing in the warm summer breeze, with the fire in her eyes slightly dampened with age and happiness, but still burning bright as a magnesium flare. Whenever she's around I want to kiss her and hold her, it's been like this from day one, and I have begun to believe that the cliché of love at first sight might actually exist. I am torn between the happiness of having her, and lamenting over ever having to let her go. But society dictates that I cannot say these things, I shouldn't fall so easily in love, I shouldn't chase that which cannot be caught... but I am thrilled with the chase, I am content with following the carrot barely past my nose like a stubborn donkey, because it gives me direction, it gives me purpose and hope. It has turned me from a hopeless romantic to a hopeful one, it has made me realize how I may actually fall into one of those sappy love stories I see on television and movies, where everything inexplicably falls into place with a smidgeon of magic, and a pinch of luck. Maybe I'm crazy, but aren't we all?  Maybe I'm reading between the lines and seeing what I want to see; maybe she doesn't feel the same way at all and I'm a delusional fool following an angel around like a little puppy dog.

I feel like I've known her my entire life, and I have never been more comfortable with anyone. When she tells me her ex cheated on her, I am blown away. That would be like someone taking spray-paint to Mona Lisa, or carving their initials on Michelangelo's David. What sort of an ignorant person would even dare? The grass is always greener on the other side, but you're a fool for crossing the tracks because the train comes often and without warning, and leaves you with nothing, in a desolate place slowly forgetting that coy grin on her freckled face. Maybe the whole notion of staying together for a lifetime is dead to the world, like chivalry or Elvis Presley. Maybe my grandparents, whom I admire more than anyone in the world, maybe their marriage of 65+ years and counting is a dying breed. Maybe people today can so easily file a divorce and move on to what they assume will be greener pastures than make any attempt at working out their problems. I once asked my grandmother how she did it, how she stayed with the same person for so many years. She replied, "I just take it day by day," and I had to giggle a little. That such a strong relationship could be held together by such a temporal bond. That's the problem with taking things day by day... one moment you're lofting in the clouds high above everything else, the next you fall to the earth. Leaving so much in the air generates a lot of potential energy, the possibility for eminent disaster is always looming overhead, like a rain cloud when you aren't a pluviophile, and you neglected to bring your umbrella.

All I know is as much as I hate to admit it... I'm falling in love with her, after only a short time. These are the things I cannot tell her, because I do not want her to run away. She's like a shy yet soft wild animal you can almost coax in, but may bound away at any time, galloping into the wind, brandishing her auburn hair in the waning sunlight. Maybe she's perfect... maybe perfection is subjective and I'm the subject. She says she trusts me more than she should, she says she thinks she can tell me anything... and the feeling is mutual, but I can't tell her this. Some things have to remain unsaid. Maybe on the inside I'm trying to talk myself down from that ledge before I fall, maybe I'm stuck between jumping off and hoping she'll be there to catch me and walking away. But for now, all I can do is hope, and pray-and I'm hardly the religious type- I question everything. I have never caved so fast, I have never jumped off that cliff so easily without a parachute. She sets precedents and standards. When I look at other girls now I feel like someone who has just eaten a large amount of candy, sipping sweet tea and thinking to myself, "wow this isn't sweet at all." I have no desire and little attraction, they are ash in my mouth. She is everything to me, and I want nothing else. As much as I cannot tell her these things, I hope she finds this one day and realizes how fond of her I was from the start, if we last. Wish me luck. I'm taking it day by day, I'm taking that chance and hoping for the best. She turned me from a hopeless romantic to a hopeful one, and I love it, I love every minute I'm with her. I awaken with thoughts of her in the morning and fall asleep remembering everything she's said to me throughout the day; or the way she looked in a certain light where I had to stop and ask myself, "Is this real? Is this happening? How did I get so lucky to have this wonderful woman come into my life?"

*****

The day by day theory I proposed earlier was absolutely correct. Funny how perceptions can change in the blink of an eye, how I can be one person four hours earlier, hopeful and constantly planning new adventures, and then on the brink of an emotional breakdown in the present moment. I should be studying for my Calculus exam, because it is of the utmost importance, but how can I when I have so much on my mind? Maybe it was the way I said things, the way I explained myself or the simple fact that I am not "the one" for her, or she needs time. They all need time. I need time away to soak my wounds in saline solution.

You cannot cage a wild dove, or at least you shouldn't; it simply isn't right. So I sit here typing, trying not to let a tear leave my eye, trying my best to keep them from rolling down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone for fear they may see how watery I've become. No, I don't have something in my eye, I've simply lost something I cannot find again. The essential problem with being a hopeful romantic is you leave yourself open for your dreams to be dashed, and now that all the women are like ash in my mouth and my taste buds have gone flaccid from too much premature pancreas-destruction, nothing else matters. I roam the world with a melancholy look on my face, or hide everything with the facade of a "genuine" smile. My friends won't understand why I passed up such a golden opportunity, but I do. I cannot peer into the depths of heaven and then remain outside, I cannot take the wild bird from its environment and surround it with bars-its beauty won't be the same and its magnificence will wither and erode. She knows where I am, apparently I am that transparent-apparently I make a bad habit of telling someone everything about myself and giving in too easily to distractions. I should put up another brick wall again, but it's better now than when I'm in the trenches and have nowhere to form a barrier, no stony guise or rocky outcropping to hide behind. So I will take this rejection, although it isn't her rejection necessarily, but mine rather. If the bird chooses to return to me, I will gladly bask in its beauty, but I will not hold it down.

So I'm doing what I should've done in the first place, what not many people would do; I'm resisting the temptation of the winning lottery ticket and walking past it, aware of the possible destruction that lies within. I could be rich but hollow, always trying to fill the void, or I could fall back to the barracks and lick my wounds clean. I must maintain focus, I mustn't let myself be caught in the web. I'm caught in the glimmering of the waning sunlight, the orange and blue hues that we once shared are contemptible when covered with clouds, an artic wind blowing in from the north, lifting skirts and invading the nooks and crannies on the light spring jackets of people passing by outside. They don't know who I am, what I'm going through. They cannot see the shine gathering on the brink, they cannot hear the tremor in my voice as I'm walking away trying to avoid contact.

What do I do now? Cover my tongue with ash? Indulge in a bland, flavorless sweet tea? I write. That's all I have. Maybe one day, if the bird flies back to me, it will fix its gaze over my shoulder and know where I've been and what I've gone through to reach this conclusion. The feelings subside into the keyboard. I am growing stony again, hopeless, just like before that fateful day with those silly little notes. My hands try to send the message to her, conveying the fact that we should end it, but I can't seem to press the button. Maybe I'll just avoid it completely, avoid my patterns and sit different places in the library from now on. Ignore any messages I get, or change my number. If she wants me, she can find me. "If you love someone let them go, if they return they were always yours, if they don't they never were." Sage words of advice. The sunlight is fading and so am I. Soon it will be lost to the world, the world will forget today and the sun will rise on a new one. Gooseflesh runs down my spine as the violin piercing my ears finds a familiar feeling.

It takes a lot for me to give up on this, who knows if I'll actually go through with it. She is my kryptonite, and I was trying to hold her close, blissfully unaware of the poison creeping under my skin. I wanted to hold on for as long as I can but it burned... it burns like my eyes are burning still trying to cap the emotional well billowing up from underneath. Maybe the fire in her eyes was too hot for me to handle, maybe she was right. She's always right. Maybe sometimes you have to let go of what you think is true love to make way for true suffering, the real motivator in life. Think of a man in love-he lets himself go. He begins to neglect his appearance because he knows, or thinks, that his love will always remain the same. Now imagine the down-trodden man, the one who finds his best friend fucking his girlfriend. He spends all his free time at the gym, he spends his nights eating as much random sugar as possible trying to forget, trying to find that one morsel that will outdo or undo the pain that she caused, so he can rub in her face how much better he is now, how much happier he is without her, and how much she missed out on by letting him go.

Imagine a rich man, resting his uncalloused feet every day by his personal pool, margarita in hand. What is his motivation? Maids to clean his house and butlers to bring him fresh drinks, all with the ring of a bell. His wife wears the brightest pearls and diamonds, with a plastic smile and an enhanced chest, designer clothes because Gucci knows best. Imagine a child growing up in the poorest neighborhood in town, watching the rich man drive by every day in his brand new Ferrari (his drive to the office inexplicably led him through the ghetto, it's possible he's a member of a major drug cartel); hoping, dreaming, turning his eyes to the sky and praying. He struggles through life, selling drugs on the side, committing small crimes, then major ones-working his way to the top of the ladder. Until one day he is poolside with the rich man, whose skin sags from alcoholism and drug use, muscles atrophied from lack of exercise. The poor boy takes position as right-hand man, and is soon seduced by the rich man's wife and her saline implants, allowed to take over the entire empire because the rich man let himself go. This is a modern-day Scarface.

This is but one small tangent I have become stuck on. Now that my hopes are dashed, the little notes are nowhere to be found and the potential deluge has subsided through my fingertips, I should be that motivated farm boy once again. But I am a coward. Afraid to start an altercation, but afraid too that there won't be one at all-that she will simply acquiesce to my decision, knowing how much we have in common and how sweet it tastes when we kiss. Maybe she didn't enjoy me listening intently to her every word... maybe I should just be an asshole like all the other pretentious pricks around here, socializing with loose sorority girls and calling themselves "real men" in their suede boat shoes and khaki pants, product smeared in their full head of hair like they just climbed through the grease trap at a local fast food place. Yeah we get it dude, sweet Mohawk; that fad NEVER grows old. All the inconsiderates sneezing and coughing into their hands, not even washing them after they use the bathroom.

I gave all my secrets away, all but two, which nobody knows about-and at this rate, nobody will. I will write them in my will and have them plastered on my headstone-how could I be embarrassed if I'm dead? It's completely logical, and I think people should adopt this practice. Then walking through the graveyard may at least bring a smile to someone's face- to bastardize the final resting places with Jersey Shore antics. Perhaps I will have my dreams plastered on there as well, in case they never come true. I never give up hope, I just sacrifice standards, and I give up my distorted views of perfection. "Not today, maybe never." What would you put on your gravestone?

I'm still hiding behind my cowardice, maybe I'm hoping she will come swooping out of left field with a kiss even the shortstop couldn't predict- or something like that... shit... I don't watch sports you tell me if it's accurate.

The sun is gone, and the fluorescents are humming in the parking lot. I've lost an hour of my life into the keyboard with no resolve, except I feel slightly better. My belly is still yellow, and will most likely remain that way for the next few days. I cannot respond... I cannot force that lottery ticket out of my hands, maybe it was never in them to begin with. Maybe it was fate that I resist.

I guess time will tell.

I made the mistake, or rather, I took the opportunity to read this to her, my Cinderella, that freckle faced girl with the bright smile who waltzed into my life that fateful spring day. I didn’t run like I planned on, I didn’t send that fateful text message ending everything because I didn’t have the willpower, I couldn’t discard that winning lottery ticket. I read it to her because she found something that scared her-affection-and I knew she was running anyways so I might as well elucidate my true feelings. She isn’t ready, and into this convivial keyboard I can announce that I don’t think I am either. It seems every novel we read has an interesting take on love.

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.” (Kundera, pg. 5)

Oftentimes people get caught up in fate. They desire something so greatly they force it upon themselves like it was “meant to be,” or “written in the stars,” because of a few simple fortuities that make an event seem to be a product of fate. Similarities lie where the mind desires them. When peering into a Magic Eye puzzle, some see what their mind allows them to, while others falsify their vision. The concept of “Es muss sein!” is both beautiful and sickening, “We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the “Es muss sein!” to our own great love” (Kundera, pg. 35).   This is a truly remarkable notion, whether the reader chooses to believe it is up to their interpretation.

Perhaps my life isn’t all that bad, perhaps it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either. As an American, I was been born with a placenta of complaint-screaming and crying immediately after leaving the warmth and comfort of the womb. Yes, I have suffered, some of which was unnecessary for my personal growth; but there are people on this earth that writhe in more unnecessary hardship in one day than I have experienced in a lifetime. In this way I resemble the magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians, “I have lived through an eventful year, yet understand no more of it than a babe in arms. Of all the people of this town I am the least one fitted to write a memorial. Better the blacksmith with his cries of rage and woe” (Coetzee, pg. 155).

The magistrate takes the girl back to her people, and by doing so he sacrifices power and is tortured and humiliated, so he can obtain personal growth- to feel better about himself as a person, and to prove to himself that he isn’t selfish. I often do the same, living for others while torturing myself. But because of this, to a lot of people, I have gained a general reputation of being unselfish-whether or not this is a merit is in the eye of the beholder.

They say literary analysis shouldn’t contain a lot of personal pronouns, but the desire to tell the world about my struggle is too great. The struggle is that last kiss before watching her walk away. The struggle is wanting to hold her hand when walking on the square or in the library lobby and not being able to. The struggle is biting your lip so it won’t quiver in front of her when you know she’s running away from you. The struggle is reading all of your stories aloud and without revision while she watches you with those chocolate eyes. The struggle is making her laugh, knowing that it will be the last time you hear that laugh for a while. The struggle is walking away… the two paths diverging in the yellow wood that Robert Frost portrayed. “If I resolved to ride out the bad times, keeping my own counsel, I might cease to feel like a man who, in the grip of an undertow, gives up the fight, stops swimming, and turns his face towards the open sea and death. But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference and annihilation. I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering”(Coetzee, pg. 21).

The struggle is kissing her as the rain floods off the roof, failing your exams and having your boss yell at you for being tired at work-because you were with her, because you sacrificed every minute you could just to hold her for another sixty seconds. The struggle is not caring as the rest of the world falls apart as long as she’s in your arms… the struggle comes when she’s gone.   “But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.” (Kundera, pg. 75)

The struggle changes from day to day, and so do the stories. Sometimes the best labor is that which remains behind closed doors, in the deepest annals and the darkest corners of the cerebellum. Sometimes this toil, when made public, can ruin or incite a real connection or a sudden change. In White Noise, Jack said, “But when I say I believe in complete disclosure I don’t mean it cheaply, as anecdotal sport or shallow revelation. It is a form of self-renewal and a gesture of custodial trust. Love helps us develop an identity secure enough to allow itself to be placed in another’s care and protection. Babette and I have turned our lives for each other’s thoughtful regard, turned them in the moonlight in our pale hands, spoken deep into the night about fathers and mothers, childhood, friendships, awakenings, old loves, old fears(except fear of death). No detail must be left out, not even a dog with ticks or a neighbor’s boy who ate an insect on a dare. The smell of pantries, the sense of empty afternoons, the feel of things as they rained across our skin, things as facts and passions, the feel of pain, loss, disappointment, breathless delight. In these night recitations we create a space between things as we felt them at the time and as we speak them now. This is a space reserved for irony, sympathy and fond amusement, the means by which we rescue ourselves from the past.” (Delillo, pg. 30)

From the moment we’re born, the struggle becomes real. No longer are we able to rely on the nutrition our mother masticates and digests, we are forced out under the spotlight with a violent push of placenta and glory-the glory of breathing air for the first time, the glory of the sun upon our skin, the glory of life. We all struggle through growing up, through the river of politics and religion, through the currents of opposition from the natural world, and through the concept of love. In the absence of suffering sits a man on a plush padded throne, growing fat and weary with everyday life. He does not have to move, he has wheels for that; he does not have to remember, he has technology for that; he does not have to clean, he has maids for that; he does not have to adjust his diet, he has nutrition specialists for that; he does not have to love, where money reigns, desire drains. Often people focus on eliminating the strife and struggle from their lives, neglecting to acknowledge that it is this very concept that constructed who they are and who they will become as time goes by. Knowledge, desire, hope, and a forward drive walk hand in hand with suffering. Never try to remove this blessing in disguise, the world depends on it, as Murray tells Jack, “I’m saying you can’t let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-faced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor. You’re growing in prestige even as we speak. You’re creating a hazy light about your own body. I have to like it.”(Delillo, pg. 271)

And we are often left with the feeling of helplessness, like in Waiting for the Barbarians,  “Even though the overbearing weight of suffering often debilitates our minds and bodies,” and, “Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere,” (Coetzee, pg. 156) Often our growth is in the knowledge of the inevitability of suffering. It is something we cannot stop, and if we try, we cease living. Suffering is the driving force of societal and personal maturation.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York: Penguin, 1982. Pg. 21, 154, 155, 156. Print.

DeLillo, Don, and Richard Powers. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 2009. Pg8, 10, 15, 17, 30, 31, 38, 53, 128, 201, 217, 243-244, 246, 271, 272, 299. Print.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. Newly Revised Ed. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009. Pg. 42, 43, 83, 116, 135, 143, 161, 290, 292, 333. Print.

Joyce, James. "Araby." Blackboard Learn. Web. 13 May 2015. Pg. 5. <https://ramct.colostate.edu/>.

Joyce, James. "Blackboard Learn- "The Dead"" Blackboard Learn. Web. 13 May 2015. Pg. 21. <http://ramct.colostate.edu/>.

"Love." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 12 May 2015. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love>.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Deluxe Ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Pg. 3, 5, 20, 23, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 43, 44, 48, 49, 55, 75. Print.

Nealon, Jeffrey T., and Susan Searls Giroux. The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. Pg. 22, 27, 43. Print.