Posts tagged with "emotion"

Things are changing, day by day

Edit: Wow, I found an old pho­to I took in 2004 of the CD in Trolley’s CD play­er.

Thumbnail: Float On

Modest Mouse used to be the best kept indie rock secret. Then they let Gravity Rides Everything be used in a Nissan com­mer­cial. Then they did Saturday Night Live. Then they did The O.C. (Really, Modest Mouse? REALLY?). Then they appeared on Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour, and now I won­der if they were just sell­outs doing it for the mon­ey to begin with.

But before all that hap­pened, or per­haps as it hap­pened, they came out with Float On.

This was the song of 2004. It defined the year for me. I was pick­ing myself up off the floor after a tor­rid rela­tion­ship, and set­tling down alone, find­ing my own lit­tle bit of peace.

That was six years ago, and I’m back there again. I had an odd moment of seren­i­ty as I left the stair­case to the Tai Chi stu­dio tonight, and walked into the frigid, calm air. Sort of like I had no hope, but that did­n’t mat­ter because I did­n’t need hope; I had my hands, my sens­es, my wits, and my cam­era, and that was good enough.

I’m sure the fact that I’ve start­ing work­ing from home four days out of the week has some­thing to do with it. I can work on projects with my music loud, and my pjs on. I don’t get inter­rupt­ed, so my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is great.

Okay, so I’ve been avoid­ing any movies or TV shows with dat­ing or romance. I’m stick­ing strict­ly to Babylon 5 and The Sopranos. It’s been work­ing, because I’ve been feel­ing bet­ter about myself and my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Thinking: “Maybe I’m a nice secret right now”.

I'm the hero of the story

(This first. Listen to the clar­i­ty of the low­er octave notes that Regina adds in waves and waves at the end of the cho­rus; you can tell it’s a qual­i­ty grand piano just from how those notes res­onate — an upright would sound much mud­di­er at the low end. This is the song that plays on day (408) and it’s fuck­ing per­fect. Also, title from the lyrics.1)

It would appear that some­one made a movie of my last rela­tion­ship, and (500) Days of Summer is to #8 as Eternal Sunshine was to #4. The inter­est­ing part is that it was released ear­ly last year, dur­ing the rela­tion­ship, and I won­der if it would have changed any­thing on my end, had I seen it then. And if she saw it now, would she under­stand things from my per­spec­tive? Or does she under­stand already? And if oth­er peo­ple saw it, would they under­stand how one could unwit­ting­ly get their hopes up when things are so clear from the begin­ning?

I’m so glad Marc Webb, the direc­tor, treat­ed the mate­r­i­al with such grace. You can tell it was based on expe­ri­ence because the ten­der moments come from a real place (co-writer Scott Neustadter admit­ted Summer was based on a girl who “returned his kiss­es but not his ardor”). In an inter­view, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said, “I’ve had my heart bro­ken before. Truly, tru­ly bro­ken. But when I look back at me in my heart­bro­ken phase, it’s pret­ty hilar­i­ous, because it felt so much more extreme than it real­ly was. One of the things I love about (500) Days of Summer is that it does­n’t make light of what we go through in romances [empha­sis mine], but it is hon­est about it and shows it for what it is, which is often pro­found­ly fun­ny”, and I com­plete­ly agree. I also appre­ci­ate the fact that they don’t vil­lainize Summer because she nev­er takes advan­tage of Tom2, and at the same time, it does­n’t make the ago­niz­ing days he goes through any less sig­nif­i­cant or dif­fi­cult. In a pro­found way, it brings jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to every­thing I was (or am) going through. I sup­pose I’m just wait­ing for the punch­line.

Hah.

Watching it has left me feel­ing emo­tion­al­ly dev­as­tat­ed late­ly, almost as if I’ve regressed, and lost months of progress. Perhaps it’s because see­ing it was like see­ing her again, reliv­ing the entire thing from day one, from when we had met in the office. Like a recov­er­ing alco­holic falling off the wag­on and tak­ing his first sip in 5 years. That does­n’t mean I don’t appre­ci­ate the mes­sage, and as well as the rec­om­men­da­tion to watch the movie from Darren.

Even though I’ve tried to com­plete­ly for­get and move on, I’ve come to learn it’s not that easy. It’s almost as if you have to accept the all the mem­o­ries, both good and bad, as much as you accept your own qual­i­ties and flaws.

The days, months, years you spend with someone significant will inevitably change and shape you. To deny them is to deny yourself.

I found it fas­ci­nat­ing to trace the plot devel­op­ments to parts of my own sto­ry. The entries I’ve writ­ten over the last two years echo the sen­ti­ments so strik­ing­ly in dia­logue, songs, and voice-overs.


Things in block­quotes are either nar­ra­tor voice-over or direc­tors notes. I list­ed the events lin­ear­ly too (even though the film is pre­sent­ed in non-lin­ear fash­ion) for the sake of clar­i­ty. It’s also inter­est­ing to see how the cal­en­dar title cards change back­grounds, from bright and sun­ny, to red and sim­mer­ing, to grey and bleak.

(1)

This is a sto­ry of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen, of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believ­ing that he’d nev­er tru­ly be hap­py until the day he met “the one”.

From my entry The Penultimate Letter — “My whole life, I looked for some­one like you. Someone who was capa­ble of rais­ing me to my poten­tial, some­one who was wor­thy of the love I have to offer. But even then, I nev­er knew I was capa­ble of a love that res­onat­ed so deeply in my per­son.”

Continue read­ing “I’m the hero of the sto­ry”…

  1. Or is it? []
  2. Ironically, the gen­der roles are reversed, and it’s Tom’s date who’s the voice of rea­son here. []

Where Am I Now?

It’s been a par­tic­u­lar­ly try­ing week. I’ve been feel­ing so jad­ed. Broken. Helpless. Undefined.

Both the cause and the con­se­quence is that I’ve been sleep­ing ter­ri­bly late­ly. Next week I’m going to try to have a more self-con­trol and stay on a strict sched­ule. Bring some order into my life.

I tried to make an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist, since I have $300 men­tal health cov­er­age with my work per cal­en­dar year (although this only amounts to two ses­sions). Unfortunately, I need a refer­ral from my fam­i­ly doc­tor to claim the cov­er­age, because refer­rals are only good for one year, and it’s been that long since I saw him.

I think of how judg­men­tal my dad was when I told him I was see­ing a psy­chol­o­gist. But then I real­ize that he’s prob­a­bly the only per­son I feel like I can real­ly talk to right now (my ther­a­pist, not my dad). I wish I could talk to my friends, but my thoughts are either too embar­rass­ing to admit to them, or too com­pli­cat­ed for them to under­stand.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to some qui­et, som­bre stuff late­ly. Trying to acquire a taste for Leonard Cohen’s mid­dle years, when he trad­ed in his gui­tar for horns and vio­lins, even some Depeche Mode. Depeche Fucking Mode. It has­n’t been help­ing.

I just don’t know what to do with myself late­ly. But I’m pret­ty sure I real­ly need to cry right now.

When Will The Devil Take Me?

It has­n’t stopped rain­ing since I woke up this morn­ing, and now it’s dark, with only the street­lamps and their reflec­tions in the pud­dles for light. It’s cold out­side.

This is a good thing.

I feel like the epony­mous char­ac­ter in Onegin. Sitting on the bal­cony in the dead of win­ter, wait­ing for a let­ter. His ser­vant, hand­ing him a stemmed glass of vod­ka, asks him to come inside because it’s cold. “I like the cold” he replies, as he resigns him­self to his fate.

He walks down the streets of Saint Petersburg, and his motif comes in on the piano, fol­lowed by strings. FADE TO BLACK.

A sto­ic face to the world. Can I say sto­ic? I like sto­ic.

These titles are get­ting hard­er and hard­er to write.

And I want to say that I’m melan­choly, but I’m not. But I’m not gid­dy either. My emo­tions aren’t black and white. They’re a mix­ture of ups and down. I don’t know what to say when I don’t know what I’m feel­ing or what comes next.

I’m just wait­ing. Passive. Yielding.

Flirting With Disconnection

I had been writ­ing non-stop for weeks. I’m not sure if it was rest­less­ness, or if I had too much to get off my chest, or what. Sometimes I wrote two or three entries at the same time, because my mind went off in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It’s always been a habit to over-ana­lyze things.

Then at some point, the world stopped mak­ing sense. My mind went blank, leav­ing me with noth­ing to say. It’s like my brain had giv­en up on try­ing to fig­ure it all out. I guess it’s bet­ter than think­ing too much.

I feel so dis­tant from every­thing now. A strange numb­ness, unlike any­thing I’ve felt before. The things that used to mat­ter don’t seem impor­tant any­more. Or maybe I just stopped car­ing.

Every now and then, I get a surge of emo­tion, and I’m unsure of whether I should fight it or embrace it.