Saturday night
So I find if I keep myself insanely busy I forget to notice this gnawing emptiness that starts in the pit of my stomach and pervades my entire being. This has been the case this last week, at least.
More lunches and dinners and conferences and simultaneous interpreting and elbow rubbing than my poor little brain can handle. This was evidenced in my decided lack of wit upon being pulled over by a barely post-pubescent official for, supposedly, failing to fully stop a stop sign. It was dark. I stopped, as far as I knew. There were certainly no cars, bikes or pedestrians in the vicinity. But heck, just goes to show you that when one is due for some bad luck, one is due.
The last time I was pulled over I had a panic attack. This time I was cool, calm and collected. -Have you had anything to drink this evening?
-Yes, one glass of wine, with dinner.
-Are you sure it was only one?
-Quite
-So, where did you go out drinking.
-I did not go out drinking. I went out to dinner, and had a glass of wine with my meal. (You fucking lousy American, conservative, snot-nosed, blond crew-cut, sporting punk-ass shithead. thought, not said)
So he makes my eyes follow a pen without moving my head, but my eyes hurt so much from being pulled past the edges of comfort and I want to cry, but, no, not really, I just want to go home because I am tired, and I don't need this shit. That's why ultimately, when I am refusing to sign the ticket in a legitimate act of resistance, because it states in very clear legal language something to the contrary of what I know to be true, and they are threatening with throwing me in jail, I only make them stand there for an extra 5 minutes while I read the entire ticket, front and back, and resignedly purger myself due to their coercion.
And mysteriously my proof of insurance had evaporated from my registration envelope.
He thinks I should be grateful or something just because he didn't add lack of insurance to my ticket. Fucker. He admits to having seen my brakelights, but then says I blasted through the stop sign at 10-15 mph. Highly unlikely, as I take the same path home every night, past the university. I'll have to change my routine though that may be difficult. He tells me that everything was recorded on sound and video, and I say, "good." still hostile, but in that icy pleasant way. One could even say I was "cross" but it may have more to do with being accosted by the crazy movie watcher who was verbally attacking me and calling me a "little fascist" the day before, because I got reserved seats at the front of the auditorium before going on stage for the Q&A, than any other rebellious inkling. Who knows.
But Mario Bellatin and I are later laughing about this, post-Thai food haze. Before I give him a kiss and send him scuttling off, such a beautiful liar, before I am alone again, we are cruising in my car, desperately trying to get him to the Airbus and I am lost, lost! of course I am lost. Santa Barbara, only the city, has this treacherous habit of demagnetizing me, and I drive in frantic, stupid circles down dead-end cul-de-sacs... heart beating and with us both laughing to the point of near tears, I skid into the stop at the MarMonte behind a Cy-Borg trash removal truck that is blocking the path to the bus which is about to leave, on time! even though we called and said we were on our way, even though the other day, leaving LAX my bus was supposed to leave at 6 and it was 6:58 and the cheery bus driver, the one who talks far more than any human should be allowed to address a captive audience was still babbling on about something or other, and I was waiting for the phone call that didn't come.
Tonight it came, but only briefly, and after, I just felt lonelier. That is the problem with hyper-activity. I taxed my poor little head to the most extreme end of its capacities and then I wonder why everything in my body feels like it has been twisted up in knots and yanked in seventeen directions. So. Fernando Solanas was incredible, and inspiring, and I might even buy myself another video-camera and start filming things again, even though I probably shouldn't spend money I don't have for hobbies that I don't intend to develop properly. It matters very little. So I can't complain, because I have laughed and laughed, almost to the point of tears, probably had more intense and extended engagement with others than I have had in months, but... as soon as it is over, and I am back in my own home, my own shell? I just feel isolated, pathetic, lonely. I know, I know, soon enough I will have all the attention I can ask for and more. But I can't help thinking that it will end too, and then I'll be alone again, and I don't really want to live in this country any more, but living anywhere else doesn't make a whole lot of sense either, because being a single parent in a place whose rules don't make complete or even partial sense to me seems like an overwhelming task.
Breath. This is what I do. I feel lonely and so I fill up the empty space with fruitless conjecture, speculation about theoretical realities, possible denouments. There isn't much fun left in the world, I say this, but even as I say it I know it isn't true. These are the low moments, I've had them for as long as I have memory, but I don't really believe that they are true. I just wish that I didn't need other people in order to feel like I had some sort of purpose. Or that their inclement, permanent, persistent lack didn't destabilize me with the mere invocation of their spectral presences.
So I went to the movies alone last night, and I went again tonight, and I like the space of the theater, I don't care what anyone says about their obsolescence, for me, there will always be a different experience to be had in the theater as opposed to watching on some lame shiny computer screen, much like the one that is staring me in the face right now, as I lamely try to talk away my loneliness for no one in particular, or no one at all, to be more precise.
But I do it, again. I will likely always be compelled, and this ridiculously facile format presents itself as some pseudo-salve for the dry cracking aching aloneness that permeates our modern existences. Shit. I am sounding more and more apocalyptic, and my underwire bra is about to pierce my sternum, so if no one minds, I'll just stop to get undressed now, and distract myself with other activities, equally lonely.
More lunches and dinners and conferences and simultaneous interpreting and elbow rubbing than my poor little brain can handle. This was evidenced in my decided lack of wit upon being pulled over by a barely post-pubescent official for, supposedly, failing to fully stop a stop sign. It was dark. I stopped, as far as I knew. There were certainly no cars, bikes or pedestrians in the vicinity. But heck, just goes to show you that when one is due for some bad luck, one is due.
The last time I was pulled over I had a panic attack. This time I was cool, calm and collected. -Have you had anything to drink this evening?
-Yes, one glass of wine, with dinner.
-Are you sure it was only one?
-Quite
-So, where did you go out drinking.
-I did not go out drinking. I went out to dinner, and had a glass of wine with my meal. (You fucking lousy American, conservative, snot-nosed, blond crew-cut, sporting punk-ass shithead. thought, not said)
So he makes my eyes follow a pen without moving my head, but my eyes hurt so much from being pulled past the edges of comfort and I want to cry, but, no, not really, I just want to go home because I am tired, and I don't need this shit. That's why ultimately, when I am refusing to sign the ticket in a legitimate act of resistance, because it states in very clear legal language something to the contrary of what I know to be true, and they are threatening with throwing me in jail, I only make them stand there for an extra 5 minutes while I read the entire ticket, front and back, and resignedly purger myself due to their coercion.
And mysteriously my proof of insurance had evaporated from my registration envelope.
He thinks I should be grateful or something just because he didn't add lack of insurance to my ticket. Fucker. He admits to having seen my brakelights, but then says I blasted through the stop sign at 10-15 mph. Highly unlikely, as I take the same path home every night, past the university. I'll have to change my routine though that may be difficult. He tells me that everything was recorded on sound and video, and I say, "good." still hostile, but in that icy pleasant way. One could even say I was "cross" but it may have more to do with being accosted by the crazy movie watcher who was verbally attacking me and calling me a "little fascist" the day before, because I got reserved seats at the front of the auditorium before going on stage for the Q&A, than any other rebellious inkling. Who knows.
But Mario Bellatin and I are later laughing about this, post-Thai food haze. Before I give him a kiss and send him scuttling off, such a beautiful liar, before I am alone again, we are cruising in my car, desperately trying to get him to the Airbus and I am lost, lost! of course I am lost. Santa Barbara, only the city, has this treacherous habit of demagnetizing me, and I drive in frantic, stupid circles down dead-end cul-de-sacs... heart beating and with us both laughing to the point of near tears, I skid into the stop at the MarMonte behind a Cy-Borg trash removal truck that is blocking the path to the bus which is about to leave, on time! even though we called and said we were on our way, even though the other day, leaving LAX my bus was supposed to leave at 6 and it was 6:58 and the cheery bus driver, the one who talks far more than any human should be allowed to address a captive audience was still babbling on about something or other, and I was waiting for the phone call that didn't come.
Tonight it came, but only briefly, and after, I just felt lonelier. That is the problem with hyper-activity. I taxed my poor little head to the most extreme end of its capacities and then I wonder why everything in my body feels like it has been twisted up in knots and yanked in seventeen directions. So. Fernando Solanas was incredible, and inspiring, and I might even buy myself another video-camera and start filming things again, even though I probably shouldn't spend money I don't have for hobbies that I don't intend to develop properly. It matters very little. So I can't complain, because I have laughed and laughed, almost to the point of tears, probably had more intense and extended engagement with others than I have had in months, but... as soon as it is over, and I am back in my own home, my own shell? I just feel isolated, pathetic, lonely. I know, I know, soon enough I will have all the attention I can ask for and more. But I can't help thinking that it will end too, and then I'll be alone again, and I don't really want to live in this country any more, but living anywhere else doesn't make a whole lot of sense either, because being a single parent in a place whose rules don't make complete or even partial sense to me seems like an overwhelming task.
Breath. This is what I do. I feel lonely and so I fill up the empty space with fruitless conjecture, speculation about theoretical realities, possible denouments. There isn't much fun left in the world, I say this, but even as I say it I know it isn't true. These are the low moments, I've had them for as long as I have memory, but I don't really believe that they are true. I just wish that I didn't need other people in order to feel like I had some sort of purpose. Or that their inclement, permanent, persistent lack didn't destabilize me with the mere invocation of their spectral presences.
So I went to the movies alone last night, and I went again tonight, and I like the space of the theater, I don't care what anyone says about their obsolescence, for me, there will always be a different experience to be had in the theater as opposed to watching on some lame shiny computer screen, much like the one that is staring me in the face right now, as I lamely try to talk away my loneliness for no one in particular, or no one at all, to be more precise.
But I do it, again. I will likely always be compelled, and this ridiculously facile format presents itself as some pseudo-salve for the dry cracking aching aloneness that permeates our modern existences. Shit. I am sounding more and more apocalyptic, and my underwire bra is about to pierce my sternum, so if no one minds, I'll just stop to get undressed now, and distract myself with other activities, equally lonely.
posted by ilana at 9:47 p.m.
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