Posts tagged with "memories"

Charge

How odd that the themes of my writ­ings have most­ly shift­ed in one direc­tion. I always won­der what peo­ple think of what I say. I would imag­ine that peo­ple think I’m being melo­dra­mat­ic, that I’m look­ing for some sort of pro­tag­o­nis­tic pathos, or that I’m being some pre­ten­tious fuck.

It’s as if a sin­gle inci­dent has shift­ed my mind­set, that I just can’t seem to com­plete­ly get over what has passed. The hurt­ing has stopped, to be sure, but the think­ing isn’t done. I still get inspired by mem­o­ries, ideas, emo­tions, almost any­thing I’ve expe­ri­enced through this.

I was once scared that I would nev­er fall in love again, and I used to be emo­tion­al­ly numb. Perhaps all of this was sim­ply a result of a life of stag­nan­cy, of bore­dom. Now I can write again, I have things to think about, I have emo­tions to expe­ri­ence, I seem to have things to look for­ward to.

Can heart­break be so ben­e­fi­cial? I know that I can feel. I don’t need to force my artis­tic writ­ing. My mind seems to be filled with new end­less thoughts. I can even appre­ci­ate cer­tain music on anoth­er lev­el now. This com­plex­i­ty, this mys­te­ri­ous­ness is so inter­est­ing.

My only wor­ry is that this new vital­i­ty will lev­el off into noth­ing­ness.

Why, Vera?

I just fin­ished read­ing A Hero of Our Time again. It’s the book I’ve read the most in my life, and I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve gone straight from cov­er to cov­er through var­i­ous trans­la­tions. Every time I’ve read it for the last eight years, I’ve grown a lit­tle more. Certain parts that I may not have under­stood before become clear and relate­able.

One par­tic­u­lar pas­sage struck me this time; Vera’s final let­ter to Pechorin.

For three hours now I have been sit­ting at the win­dow and await­ing your return…But you are alive, you can­not die! The car­riage is almost ready…Farewell, Farewell! I am lost — but what of it? If I could be cer­tain that you will always remem­ber me — I say noth­ing of lov­ing me, no — only remember…Goodbye! Someone is coming…I have to hide this let­ter…

I now ful­ly under­stand Vera’s final wish, hav­ing since wished the same thing myself. Yet it’s some­thing I can­not explain, even when I myself share this feel­ing. Why this need to not be for­got­ten? Why does remem­ber­ing mean so much?

Is it the need to know that I am impor­tant to some­one, even if it was some ephemer­al rela­tion­ship or some per­son­al mis­take? Is it so that I can believe that I was so spe­cial as to be unfor­get­table, an ego­tis­ti­cal or per­haps inse­cure shroud to fool myself? Is it to give my life mean­ing, a sort of pur­pose to know that I can indeli­bly change the lives of oth­ers? Or maybe it’s to know that the feel­ings I expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er bathet­ic or affect­ed, mean some­thing to some­one. I usu­al­ly pride myself in being able to per­fect­ly under­stand the feel­ings I go through, but this idea has left me at a loss. I won­der if oth­ers have ever felt the same way. I remem­ber not under­stand­ing this desire in myself at the time, but believ­ing that I would even­tu­al­ly.

Now I’m not sure if I ever will.

The Nature Of It All

I have to get this down before I lose it.

The new Starsailor album is out this month, and I’m not sure if I’ll buy it. There’s some­thing about the gen­er­al sound of Starsailor songs that evoke an almost inef­fa­ble emo­tion in me. I nev­er even knew they exist­ed until last month, but for some rea­son, their 2001 Love Is Here album cov­er is odd­ly famil­iar. Every time I see the sun-washed tracks falling into the hori­zon, I get an odd sense of déjá vu.

As one who rarely has such an ephemer­al, mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, this strikes me as a extreme­ly poignant thing. I feel as if I know this album, that I’ve seen it before, even had emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it. It’s some­thing I can’t explain, and whether the emo­tions are good are bad, I can’t recall.

Their music moves me nonethe­less. The chord pro­gres­sions are unpre­dictable yet dul­cet, bit­ter yet sweet. I can’t decide if it’s sun­set or sun­rise music, and the album cov­er serves to empha­size this equiv­o­cal­i­ty. I can’t even tell if the music makes me hap­py or sad.

And so remains my prob­lem. Do I want to lis­ten to this music or not? I always find it odd that some­one would not want to think about or expe­ri­ence some­thing sim­ply because it makes them sad. Doing so seems to be so cow­ard­ly, as if one is run­ning from one’s self.

Yet the prob­lem remains, with oth­er music as well, and as clear as this log­ic is for me I find it dif­fi­cult to queue up cer­tain songs. Listening to The Postal Service brings back so many amaz­ing, unfor­get­table mem­o­ries, but so many painful thoughts as well.

I choose not to ignore either, and end up being emo­tion­al­ly torn, unclear in my heart and in my mind.

The Summer Nights Alone

It’s night and I don’t feel like sleep­ing. My eyes tell me I’m tired, and my mus­cles empha­size the point. My cat is asleep under my bed, hud­dled behind the skirt, wait­ing for me to give her the chair. A night show is play­ing on the Aborigal Peoples Television Network, some small bud­get­ed pro­duc­tion host­ed by a pho­ny man with an imper­a­tive voice. The cur­rent act, a group of three women with ban­shee-like voic­es, bang on the sim­ple drums they hold as they sing quick mov­ing melod­ic lines. My room glows blue from a sin­gle Candela perched atop my desk.

I’m in an odd mood. Not quite con­tent, not quite lone­ly. I try to remain sto­ic nev­er­the­less. Sometimes it feels as if the night is the only thing that accepts, the only thing that under­stands. Can I express my mind to you, the silent ora­tor?

Perhaps I’ll fall asleep to some Portishead, a rem­nant of some pleas­ant mem­o­ries.

Unfamiliar pil­lows with unfa­mil­iar sheets.

I Need To Tell You

I won­der if I come off as a per­son with emo­tion­al bag­gage. One of the (very few) things that I pride myself in is my “self-aware­ness”, the abil­i­ty to see myself objec­tive­ly, but this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic that I am unable to deter­mine with­in myself. Has my past made me a per­son of fright­en­ing, unper­son­able dis­po­si­tion? Do peo­ple think of me as some­one with deep root­ed emo­tion­al issues?

I won­der if my his­to­ry even mat­ters to oth­ers. I real­ize that it’s when I let my his­to­ry inter­fere with or affect my rela­tion­ships that it becomes a prob­lem. I’m afraid, how­ev­er, that I let things become affect­ed more than I’d like, more than I under­stand.

The past is some­thing that I rec­og­nize as being sig­nif­i­cant, and I try to keep it only as that. It is some­thing that I learn from, some­thing which can affect me and my deci­sions today, but not some­thing that I should present­ly be deal­ing with.

So, is it?

Well, I’m not com­plete­ly sure. On a night like tonight, when the mid­night sky burns bright enough to illu­mi­nate my room, I can’t help but feel unheard, unheard in some­thing I wish to express. What becomes this need to be under­stood?

It’s a voice I wish to have, to bring me clo­sure, to let me be free.

It has tak­en me three hours to write this final thought, along with the resur­fac­ing of many dis­tract­ing mem­o­ries. Things still feel unre­solved, of course, but I have suf­fi­cient­ly quelled my mood until there is a more appro­pri­ate time to express myself.

When I see you again, you will under­stand what I’ve become, and what you’ve done to make me this way.