Monday, January 22, 2007

Moving on

Talk to me softly
There is something in your eyes
Don't hang your head in sorrow
And please don't cry
Guns 'n Roses - Don't cry

I get so sick of metaphors, and double meanings, and multiplicity, although I love the words. I feel like I've become an accomplice to ambiguity, an accessory to aesthetic alliteration. I'm moving on, struggling a little to keep imposing meaning on things I've already assigned and deprived of meaning at my convenience so many times before. I know this is all real, or none of it is real, and it really doesn't matter. But it has to matter to me, because I need something to propel me out of bed every morning (or afternoon). The afternoon talkshows tell me we do everything for a reason. I hate tautologies. My life is in boxes now, or not my life, but my earthly belongings. I wonder what's happening to my uneartly belongings, and what they are. They could be things I carry with me always, like a bad mood in the morning or a shadow in the dark. They could also be the things I lose most often, despite carrying them around with me, like memories of song-fragments I wanted to look up but never did and forgotten phone-conversations with old lovers. Some philosopher whose name I cannot recall (perhaps Hume, but I don't want to burn myself here) said that human beings are nothing but bundles; bundles of perceptions of memories and experiences. No wonder we fall apart so much. I need to organise my bundle, but it makes me feel boxed-in, aware of the limiting dimensions of my mind and its cheap cardboard walls. There's nowhere to pull away to. Everywhere I look are memories and choices, and worse, the realisation that I cannot even summon my own memories or choices. Try closing your eyes and moving them from left to right in their sockets, you'll see what I imagine are green eyes of the memory-monster lurking in the back of your head, feasting on the things he pulls from your brains, the unearthly things you'll then forget. Sometimes he throws you a bone, but you're at his mercy for melancholy. Sometimes he bullies you by taking away adjectives or expressions, names of highschool crushes, where you left your keys; leaving you helpless and frustrated until he tires and relinquishes the information. We live vicariously through him, not vice versa. But I'm moving on, leaving nothing behind, carrying with me the same old belongings and the same old boxes. I won't be clawing for common ground, either.

1 comment:

Hannah_Savannah said...

I would also guess that was Hume.

There is also a connection.

My earthly belongings are still packed away in some ten boxes in an attic in another city. And I like them there, I don't want them near me. They were clogging my package. Without the earthly, I feel unearthly, free-floating. My unearthly belongings know where to locate me now, and I think that's the only way to possess them, - they find me when I need them.