One last update for the night (I hope this is the last one, since I will hopefully actually fall asleep on this next attempt): Arnold uses the line “I’ll be back” in Terminator (and sequels), Commando, and Running Man. I need to go and re-watch some other movies to see if he uses it in them as well. Does anyone know if he says it in “Total Recall,” “Kindergarten Cop,” “Twins,” Junior,” or any of his other movies?
Dreams: I continue to have upsetting dreams. They aren’t so much nightmares in the traditional sense, but rather that in every dream I find myself trapped in a situation of helplessness. The situation changes in each dream, but each time, I find myself just stuck in a situation that never ends because I am the only one who knows how to end it and no one will listen to me. It’s sort of a sensation of being half-awake while dreaming. Not quite lucid dreaming, since I can’t control the dream, but more like being paralyzed. It’s the same sensation that you might have if you could see, hear, and sense everything going on around you, and you were aware of everything but could not move a single muscle. I often wake up with the situation unresolved. Perhaps this is why I haven’t been feeling well lately?
Do you ever play a song, and it affects you so much that you feel like you are about to convulse, have a seizure, have an aneurysm, have a cardiac arrest, vomit, and cry all at the same time? I have been having trouble sleeping (surprise surprise), so I decided to listen to some old songs that I have not listened to for awhile. One of them just so happens to be a song that makes me feel as though I am on the verge of doing each of the aforementioned things simultaneously. Even having only listened to the first few seconds was enough, and now my skin is tense and hurts, and I feel evenmore exhausted than before. Fuck.
I have been feeling a lot better this past month than I have in a long time. Things haven’t really been much better than usual, but my outlook has been improving and somewhat less pessimistic. Part of it is forcing myself to interact with others. Part of it is forcing myself to close certain chapters of my life and move on. Despite my better overall condition, I still have my moments of misery. Most evenings, unless I am out with friends, I find myself falling into despair and loneliness. I used to use art or writing to help distract (or at least, in some manner, relieve) me from these feelings. For awhile, I used to work on my car to do this as well. I have done all that is practical for my car, and so the only work that I do on it now is maintenance, which is still rewarding but not very effective at relieving my tension. This fall, I used my Halloween costume to accomplish this on a smaller scale. I have a few ideas for paintings to start on, but I keep putting them off for one reason or another. Very soon though, I hope tp have a new distraction with the 1958 Volvo. Assuming that I don’t go completely broke in the process, there are almost endless things to do which will let me forget my troubles and focus on something more meaningless.
I want to be a superhero. I want to be a “man.”
I have realized one more of a number of reasons why I am pessimistic that I will ever get married. I feel like I am trapped in the body of a child. I am not tall enough. I am not broad enough. I can’t grow a beard. When my parents introduce me to people that they know in TX, everyone thinks that I just graduated high school.
I am almost in my mid-20s.
I sometimes feel like I am going to transform directly from teen to geezer, bypassing adulthood. And the thing is: women don’t want to marry a boy. Women want to marry men. I have this iconic vision of man as superman–stong but gentle, resolute, persevering, proud, standing on a pedestal, admired by boys and girls, desired by women. Not all men get to ever completely fulfill this ideal, but most can fulfill it in part; I fear that I cannot, even in part.
It’s days like today that make me want to disappear.
let it all go by
looking at the sky
wondering if there’s clouds
in hell
Well, it was a pretty decent Halloween weekend. I went to Spanky’s annual Halloween costume party on friday night and got completely smashed. Emily and some other people took pictures, so I am hoping to get copies of those sometime soon. I won the secret costume contest and got a couple bottles of fine Polish “luxury” vodka (Belvedere and Chopin) in a boxed set. I also politely declined an offer to take a ride in a police cruiser (I think they just wanted to have some fun driving around with me in the car, but I figured I would be better off playing it safe and staying on the porch). Saturday I nursed a lovely hangover for most of the day, had lunch with Eryn and some other kids that I went to Concord with, and then headed up the hill for another costume party. A few local bands were playing, including my friends, Librarians, and the place was fairly well packed. I saw a few people that I knew, and lots of people complimented me on my costume. I spent the majority of the night standing out in front of the house because my costume made it difficult to move around inside. There were a lot of really cool and really good costumes at the party. The only part of the night that really worried me was the walk home. Some people had strange reactions to my costume–most people were pretty friendly, and I actually got invited to join a couple parties, but some people were rather violent. Some girl started yelling and asking someone to give her a beer bottle to throw at me. :-/ And then a group of drunk guys on a porch kept yelling at me, apparently thinking that my costume was “a box of blowjobs” (???), and for a moment I thought they were going to chase me down and jump me. But eventually I made it home OK, and all was well.
“It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.”
Excerpted from The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O’Brien)
While I agree with the initial analysis of the situation, I do not agree with Camus’s conclusions that “The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory” and “There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.”
