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Political and Personal Doubt I've been doing some reading this morning, catching up on the Patriot Act, thinking about how I'm going to manage 90 days of political commentary leading up to Election Day, when hopefully, the lying scoundrel currently living in the White House will be forced to start packing his bags, and I'm not sure I can quite manage that many issues on which I want to thoroughly roast the current administration. I may have to scale down to 60, or even 45. That many I'm sure I could manage. And I have to wonder why I'm doing this anyway, screaming into the void, where it's entirely possible no one will hear, simply for the sake of asserting my right to scream. What do I really want to accomplish? Dare I be so hubristic as to think that I might change people's minds or more thoroughly set them, that I might make a difference? Of course, I'm reminded that there ARE actually people who believe that Kaiser Shrub's presidency (if you can call it that) has been a GOOD thing. What The Fuck?! I guess it's important to me to explain to them, even if they aren't listening, how and why they're wrong. The trouble lies in the fact that I spent so much time living out that Suzanne Vega lyric, "'Walk on the blind side' was the answer to the joke / It's said there isn't a political bone in her body" and now, I'm being bitten on the ass by its latter half: "She would rather be a riddle / But she keeps challenging the future with a profound lack of history," so I need to do quite a lot of research. Apparently, I fancy myself a writer, and research is something good writers MUST do. Spring, in other news, does seem to have sprung, once again. I have this habit of railing against that which I want but perceive as being denied me. Shiv and her lad are moving in together; Hayden seems to be dating someone; Mitch meets people everywhere, and they go out on dates. I am terminally alone. I know that I told a terrible lie on Valentine's Day, and I WOULD like to have someone else taking up some space in my life. I know, too, that I must not become involved with anyone at the School, regardless of desire and/or potential. My rule about not fucking where one works is well-grounded in experience. It would look bad, and the potential would exist for either or both of us, but more likely me, to end up looking like an ass. Students of any sort, by their very nature, are engaged in a different mindset than I. They function in a world where I am not. And why is it always that when I show the slightest, vaguest interest in anyone, I find, "Oh, I'm not looking for anything serious; I mean, at least, not with you. I mean, you're fun to hang around with, and you're a good guy, and you're certainly a lot of fun in the sack, but you're not what I had in mind for the long-term." In the art gallery across the street from my apartment building, there was an installation which included hundreds of small slips of paper tacked to a white wall and a booth with a curtain, into which one could go and write, in pencil, anonymous confessions on other such slips of paper. I wrote the following: "I'm only here today because I slept with one of the artists, and I wanted to see what his work was like. It is beautiful and wonderful and fascinating, as I'd expected it to be...as he is. I find it disconcerting, though, that I seem to connect with all of these interesting people, and they seem to be interested in me, and then they disappear. Oh, well...At least the sex was good." Maybe I bring it on myself by being...a bit slutty? But maybe it's just that Bukowski was right, at least for him, and for me: "To make art is to be crazy alone forever." Yeah, so fuck spring. It's still winter here in my world. r
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