Today made me wonder if any of it is actually worth it. Any of this shit we call our human lives.
At least if I were a zebra, threats would be crystal clear and my wants and needs would be perfectly in sync. I would want to be alive and be free and have enough to eat and make new zebras. Everything would be so, ahem, black and white.
Even my end would likely be clean and nourishing, not some slow financial and physical decay drawn out for decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I find myself so disconnected with the raw, terrible and lovely struggle for survival. The powerful bond of the family and the community has been lost. I am preoccupied with stupid, idiotic details that don't mean a damn thing and I'm fucking sick of it. I'm lost, sometimes. This time. Almost always.
Yūgen. This is a Japanese word that, according to Wikipedia, is "used to describe the subtle profundity of things that are only vaguely suggested." The term "suggests [something] beyond what can be said, but is not an allusion to another world. It is about this world, this experience. All of these are portals to yūgen. It is a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe and the sad beauty of human suffering."
There is no sad beauty to my suffering. Am I suffering because wrong has been done to me? I am suffering because I feel like everything I am and want and do is just a path to lack of rightness. A path away from what is pure and clean and ethical and close to deity.
Maybe there is beauty to be found here, as deep as anything. Just because I am a privileged, educated white woman in a developed democracy doesn't mean that I can't feel profound, real, existential pain. I never give myself enough credit to acknowledge that yes, what I am feeling is true, it hurts, and it it pushing me towards something that is not the norm. Something dramatically simple.
But what is it?!
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Still Unmoved
We postponed one week and I'm going bonkers. I am seriously tired of being unmoved.
Tired of the piles and walls of boxes and the kitties ricocheting off of them in the middle of the night. Tired of not being able to find the proper cooking implement even though it feels like I've packed, unpacked, cooked with, washed and repacked all of them already since I started packing three weeks ago.
Tired of not having a place to be that's not full of shit other than my office. I just want to be able to finally sit down in an environment that's ordered the way I want it to be ordered, a clean place with everything where it should be.
My mind is so chaotic and full of things that without an ordered, organized and squeaky clean environment, I can't function for long. I think we're starting to pass that limit.
I'm tired of not having access to that stupid, beautiful, stainless steel contraption that waits for me to insert dishes and soap, wait awhile and take them out again sparkling clean and dry without me having to don my rubber gloves and scrub. The mythical dishwasher. I just think the word and rays of heavenly light illuminate my path, a path blessedly free of scrubbies and sponges and day-old oatmeal residue.
Every day for the past week, I've visited the new place, examined every lovely, modern inch of it, measured its three wall-sized windows for double-sectioned roman blinds that I will design and sew myself. I've scrubbed every nook, washed every cranny, bleached every bleachable surface. Appliances have been dragged out and floors and walls scrubbed and rendered sterile. I spent three whole hours one evening washing all of the baseboards and the closet walls.
It is marvelous. It has birch floors and stainless steel appliances and a sandstone kitchen floor. The toilet has two flush settings and looks like a porcelain Porsche. The walls are slanted in the bedrooms, lending a snazzy air to the place while making it more difficult to fit furniture. There's a wall-mounted AC with remote control that I can operate from bed. Come visit, my friends, explore this beautiful city.
I feel like the world is my oyster, we've found success and strangeness and have and dug out our little niche here. I have the most beautiful, loving, intelligent, most feminist, most caring and hilarious husband in the universe. He secretly sneaks truffles into my lunches.
I can't wait to be in our new place place, with all of my happy little things arranged around me, many of them the work of my hands. I have two chairs that I finished and upholstered myself, the kitchen table that was hand-finished by yours truly. The pillows, the curtains, all designed by me. Almost every piece has been changed to suit my tastes, some of them from my parents, who acquired them when they were young and irresponsible and silly. I like that.
And St-Henri? What a lovely and colorful neighborhood. It's the new Plateau - the place where all of the artists in Montreal are moving because it's now too expensive to actually live in the Plateau. There are oaks and verdant lawns and streets of iconic Montreal townhouses with steep staircases leading up to the second floors. Lots of weird little places to eat that are likely fabulous.
The squirrels are fat and happy and the stray cats sit on fence posts, begging for pets at eye-level.
Tired of the piles and walls of boxes and the kitties ricocheting off of them in the middle of the night. Tired of not being able to find the proper cooking implement even though it feels like I've packed, unpacked, cooked with, washed and repacked all of them already since I started packing three weeks ago.
Tired of not having a place to be that's not full of shit other than my office. I just want to be able to finally sit down in an environment that's ordered the way I want it to be ordered, a clean place with everything where it should be.
My mind is so chaotic and full of things that without an ordered, organized and squeaky clean environment, I can't function for long. I think we're starting to pass that limit.
I'm tired of not having access to that stupid, beautiful, stainless steel contraption that waits for me to insert dishes and soap, wait awhile and take them out again sparkling clean and dry without me having to don my rubber gloves and scrub. The mythical dishwasher. I just think the word and rays of heavenly light illuminate my path, a path blessedly free of scrubbies and sponges and day-old oatmeal residue.
Every day for the past week, I've visited the new place, examined every lovely, modern inch of it, measured its three wall-sized windows for double-sectioned roman blinds that I will design and sew myself. I've scrubbed every nook, washed every cranny, bleached every bleachable surface. Appliances have been dragged out and floors and walls scrubbed and rendered sterile. I spent three whole hours one evening washing all of the baseboards and the closet walls.
It is marvelous. It has birch floors and stainless steel appliances and a sandstone kitchen floor. The toilet has two flush settings and looks like a porcelain Porsche. The walls are slanted in the bedrooms, lending a snazzy air to the place while making it more difficult to fit furniture. There's a wall-mounted AC with remote control that I can operate from bed. Come visit, my friends, explore this beautiful city.
I feel like the world is my oyster, we've found success and strangeness and have and dug out our little niche here. I have the most beautiful, loving, intelligent, most feminist, most caring and hilarious husband in the universe. He secretly sneaks truffles into my lunches.
I can't wait to be in our new place place, with all of my happy little things arranged around me, many of them the work of my hands. I have two chairs that I finished and upholstered myself, the kitchen table that was hand-finished by yours truly. The pillows, the curtains, all designed by me. Almost every piece has been changed to suit my tastes, some of them from my parents, who acquired them when they were young and irresponsible and silly. I like that.
And St-Henri? What a lovely and colorful neighborhood. It's the new Plateau - the place where all of the artists in Montreal are moving because it's now too expensive to actually live in the Plateau. There are oaks and verdant lawns and streets of iconic Montreal townhouses with steep staircases leading up to the second floors. Lots of weird little places to eat that are likely fabulous.
The squirrels are fat and happy and the stray cats sit on fence posts, begging for pets at eye-level.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)