admission,
i've been feeling anxious since arriving back at school. not anxious, really. uncomfortable, more. insomuch as everything is ALMOST right, and yet not. i'd almost rather it be completely wrong than this half step midway so close to almost. all weekend you'd find me, bored, unmotivated, "luxuriating", and yet not, leaping from the shower in a panic that i'd left my bedroom door open and the cats were devouring my bird, rewashing my sheets, painstakingly reorganizing my newly renovated bedroom, intent on arranging my food just so..

something needs to be examined.
what am i talking about?!

this is about vulnerability and the feeling of uncomfortableness that accompanies it. about sitting across the kitchen table from armani sunday morning with my knees pulled to my chest "i just feel so tender, all the time" i hush, almost embarassed. about needing to listen to pulse this morning as I left the gym, about curling up in my new cozy bed and never wanting to leave. its UNCOMFORTABLE to truly feel things. i lean my head back against my bed "if you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing."

i spent all day yesterday, from morning til sleep reading Civilization and its Discontents, by Freud. although I can't say I agree with many of the conclusions he drew, his initial observations of the human psyche were very intriguing, and it was the first time in a while i can say that I honestly couldn't put the book down and i've been craving to find someone to TALK to about it. its all what I've been going through this year, the parallel of individual development to cultural development and whether or not human nature is good or bad and what its like for an individual to become civilized, introduced into the world of others. for thats what happened to me this year, after all. i was plucked from my haven of isolation and thrust into this world of needs and wants and desires and everything is so different and so varied and so demanding and for a girl so full of love i tried to love everything equally and maybe thats not the point, really.
"the first time we hear "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself", we shall be unable to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment. why should we do it? what good will it do us? but, above all, how shall we achieve it? how can it be possible? my love is something valuable to me which i ought not to throw away without reflection. it imposes duties on me for whose fulfilment i must be ready to make sacrifices. if i love someone, he must deserve it in some way. he deserves it if he is so like me in important ways that i can love myself in him, and he desereves it if he is so much more perfect than myself that i can love my ideal of my own self in him. but if he is a stranger to me, and if he cannot attract me by any worth of his own or any significance that he may already have acquired for my emotional life, it will be hard for me to love him. indeed, i should be wrong to do so, for my love is valued by all my own people as a sign of preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if i put a stranger on par with them."



but i knew that, already. or was starting to come to that realization myself, or knew it all along and yet chose not to live it. either way, what was most entrancing about this book...
(flashback. its summer. armani and i are in the park by copper beech, having taken a hit of acid each and at this point, i'm tripping quite hard, in all honesty, and i don't know where to go, what to do. i lie on my back in the grass, closing my eyes, let it take me where it will. while i don't remember the specifics of what happened out there, under the trees, buried in the foliage, i know that one by one, i faced each twisted aspect of myself, one by one, examining all my faults in their nuances and letting them fall away, one by one. destruction. i emerged from that park, bettered, changed. )
what am i talking about?
this is about guilt. about repression of ones instincts. about, at its basis, love and death.
how do i describe this?
"That is to say, as well as Eros, there was an instinct of death. It was not easy, hoewever to demonstrate the activities of this supposed death instinct. the manifestations of eros were conspicuous and noisy enough. it might be assumed that the death instinct operated silently within the organism towards its dissolution, but that, of course, was no proof. a more fruitful idea was that a portion of the instinct is diverted towards the external world and comes to light as an instinct of aggressiveness and destructiveness. in this way, the instinct itself could be pressed into the service of eros, in that the organism was destroying some other thing, whether animate or inanimate, instead of destroying its own self. the two kinds of instinct seldom - perhaps never - appear in isolation from each other, but are alloyed with each other in varying and very different proportions, and so become unrecognizable to our judgment"
scribbled in the back blank pages of the book, i wrote; the dual instincts of myself are revelaed in their true character, experienced to the extent. death and eros. and it is now, that i've been witness to them both, that i can properly align and balance them in order to make use of the varying and intense powers of BOTH of them.
my favorite song last spring, my favorite song still, is the remix of Radiohead's Faust. so i suppose, in the spirit of full circle, i'll use Goethe's word, from the songs namesake poem.
[for all things, from the void
called forth, deserve to be destroyed...
thus, all which you as sin have rated -
destruction - aught with evil blent -
that is my proper element]
[from water, earth and air unfolding
a thousand germs break forth and grow
in dry, and wet, and warm, and chilly
and had i not the flame reserved, why, really,
there's nothing special of my own to show].

this is not about elimination, but AWARENESS. my relationship with alex was a reflection of my own destructive drive. we balanced each other so well because he was death, i, eros. but in the end, we had pushed each other so far to our opposite poles that it became impossible to relate to remain together. with the split of our relationship, i became responsible for the full burden of BOTH drives, something i had never yet experienced, and which was bound to be disconcerting. spring 08 was eros in its full bodied glimmering form, while fall 08 was my destructiveness diverted from relationships and turned on myself.
so here i am, outset.
empowered by the forces of both.
"men know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. and now it is to be expected that the other of the two 'heavenly powers' , eternal eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary. but who can foresee with what success and with what result?"

i'm sitting on my side porch, smoking a cigarette, watching the clearest sunset i've seen in ages, allowing a cool breeze its interplay between my glimmering blonde curls and gray scarf wrapped around my bare chest. full circle.