This is a strange time for me. Historically I never did much on New Year’s Eve, and the night just could not pass quick enough. I like to tell myself that maybe, perhaps it’s because holidays present a kind of paradox for certain people.
I suppose it’s difficult for those who possess more abstract modes of thinking we’ll call them, to immerse themselves in the strange, insular artifice of the holidays.
“No, no, not to worry things are GREAT!!! Happy New year, WHOO!!!”
…
But they aren’t.
Peddling this contrived mantra pushes the expectancy to be HAPPY on the rest of us, and for me it’s always been one I could never meet. It’s another way I'm reminded of being impossibly behind the curve.
I'm not a miser, really, far from it. It’s not as though I can’t have fun. It’s not as though I can’t enjoy simpler things, like a good old fashioned night of debauchery…
…Or of just forgetting myself for a while. Turning the volume in my head to low and the volume outside on high, and having a good time, connecting for a night with those around me, because apart from the corporate and economic-driven components that’s the most functional thing the holidays present us with, and God knows we live much of the year’s remainder, in my opinion, estranged from one another
Maybe it’s ME putting the pressure on myself.
There are things…There are always things, tangible or otherwise. Each December 31st we stand on the precipice of a new stage, an idyllic tabula-rasa, (that means “clear slate”, in the scholar’s tongue dontcha know…) whereby all of our shortcomings, failures, misgivings or mistakes the previous year are forgiven and forgotten in place of a new blueprint of productiveness. But last year’s incongruous tablate is still ever present cognition, and I puzzle over it: speckled with foggy sketches and caricatures; with good intentions, strong attempts and attempted "do-overs"; otherwise, quite incomplete.
I’ve never had much of a problem keeping promises to others, though in recent times I’ve squelched on showing myself the same courtesy.
2009 had its interpersonal ups and downs, and one thing I’ve noticed about each trend for me: when it rains, it pours.
I surprised myself on several occasions. I surprised myself with my ability to shine the way I’ve wanted to, and in front of certain people. Then as soon as it seems like it can’t get any better, the bottom falls out, and I find myself wading through the same quicksand I thought I left behind. There were propositions I made to myself, and ultimatums I therefore presented afterward: Research grad schools. Get a job. Take GRE’s. Write. Read. Write some more. Get something published. Get into a grad school. Meet someone…
…Ok. Cut your losses, Make money, write as much as you can, and at all costs, get the hell out of here…
Christmas and New Years respectively, also comprise the time when abstract thinkers are known to have…flare-ups. But with the level of alcohol, other depressants and stimulants alike flowing as they typically are, this is one of the most chemically imbalanced nights of the year anyway.
So, pulled between the options of going toe to toe with a slightly older and no less boozy crowd tipping champagne back until either the ball drops or they do, getting behind the wheel tonight and wandering the roads in search of life (and thus effectively taking mine into my own hands), or hunkering down somewhere with the network of friends and colleagues I’ve sadly never had in this glass-shop I acknowledge as where I grew up, I’m left to wait it out at home like some twenty-four hour bug with a book for company.
(hmm…what is a 95-word proclamation of pathetic?)
...
I imagine Dave Sedaris must have several stories to tell of New Years Eves spent alone: one near penniless, commonly drunk young man floating solo through life-limbo, between big cities and less than lucrative jobs during that pre-success, pre-Hugh Hamrick stint.
I’ll try and look for one…
At any rate, I hope everyone has a happy new year. My scope isn’t limited to the next few hours, rather I speak of the next 365 days and my hope for you all, like the hopes I have for myself, is that you accomplish at least a few of those things you need to; to do something NEW, and artistic or expressive in some way this upcoming year. To try at least one thing new you wouldn’t normally have. Expand your stages, and therefore your parts in the world. Add a few new dimensions to your life. Apply to a school. Or to a job, both of which you may have previous lauded as higher than yourself and hopelessly out of your reach. None of it is. I hope you find love. If you already haven't. I hope your year is full of it; for others and yourself.
(My blog was saturated with this philosophy in 09...)
Start tomorrow. No one will hold it against you for sleeping in.
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Friday, January 1, 2010
Monday, October 5, 2009
Strands of Memory
In the past year or so I started noticing a small, almost indistinguishable spot of thinned out hair at the northern most pole of my head. At the front, a peninsular hunk of hair juts forward, while at the sides it seems to be retreating ever so slightly. When styled, my hairline comes to a point at the center of my forehead. I was told by friends that the term for this is a “Widow’s Peak.” Naturally, I googled it, horrified to learn I share the same ill-fated hairstyle as Eddie Munster. I had held out hope that this development was simply the result of a bad haircut, and in four weeks time I’d be back to my old head.
…
Only in a memory.
That head is long gone. I had always had full, healthy hair that grew like wild grass and at only twenty-three, the change was…unexpected.
I’m not actually losing my hair, I tell people, but rather it’s just retired from the stress and grind of my head, and relocated to my neck and upper back. Thankfully I don’t boast any of those reclusive strands that seek the privacy of my ears.
I’ve also thought often about the reaction I’d get if I told people that my hairline receding is actually news to me, that in all likelihood, it’s merely retreating back in disgust at the sight of their face.
…
To experience hair loss is to go through the five stages of grief. I think the above illustrates anger fairly accurately, especially since most people have the good social tact and decency not to mention anything to you, and you say it anyway. Depression entails thumbing through all the bogus hair restoration creams, shampoos and realizing you’re too poor for the surgeries, whereupon you bargain with every mirror in your house good enough to listen, saying, “If I could just keep most of it in this area….”
Denial is a comb-over. That stands pretty well on its own I think. Possibly even bolder on a t-shirt.
It all rounds out with biting the bullet, shedding a tear and then shaving your head.
*Sigh…* Acceptance.
The thought of shaving my head horrifies me. On the one hand I’m lazy, and I’d find the amount of effort it would take to run a razor over every nuance of my scalp every few weeks or so tedious and exhausting. Farther along that hand, I think it may hurt too much to watch what’s left of it go every time. I see it like pulling a plug over and over, or maybe putting a pet to sleep. Did I mention there isn’t a stylish enough hat in the world that could cover the shame of my big, hairless gourd?
Actor Ed Harris in decline, very, very few people can pull off the “balding look.” Where having gray hair can sometimes add an aura of experience, or seasoned maturity to a man, turning a blind eye to balding after a while is like walking around with a giant red-wine stain on your shirt, a widening tear in your pants, or a square of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe that doubles every few steps.
“You’ve got, you have…a little something, there…RIGHT THERE, yeah. You gonna…? (Is he ever going to DO something about that?)”
One of the chain-links in my family’s DNA, both sides, must clearly be labeled “Monk Balding Gene”. It is that series of nucleic formulae that ensures a nice visible patch of cranium in the middle of our heads by the age of thirty. The affected area spreads into a kind of crater, until stepping out from the shower in a brown colored bathrobe you may be mistaken for a lost Benedictine friar.
A hairpiece is both desperate, and out of the question. They are very easy to spot, and call just as much attention to hair-loss as, well, hair loss. While some of them are actually twined together out of real hair, they have to be replaced after so long, which would leave me a kind of second string cousin of the Vampire, preying on humans for their hair. I see it now:
In my struggle to function and fit in the human world, I would try and turn elsewhere for my epidermal lust. Neighbors will undoubtedly become suspicious when their dogs and cats return home in the wee hours of the morning completely shaved, while I walk out my door every few days with a new hair color and style.
Monday: Shaggy, shoulder-length retriever blond
Thursday: Short, business-like Labrador black
Saturday: Dalmatian salt and pepper. (There’s that seasoned look…)
A shy, emotionally repressed girl whose beauty is kept in check by thick reading glasses and a purple cardigan will take a strange liking to the provocative “chameleon man.” The image of her long, strawberry blond locks will pervade my dreams. I breathe deeply of her hair when we embrace, though I promise myself I will not make her my next human victim. Out of love and shear force of will, I struggle, conflicted…
I smell a series somewhere in all of this.
The Japanese top-knot was elegant and quite dignified but, much like the Jerry curl or the Flock of Seagulls haircut, relegated to a novelty of another generation, and unlike bell-bottom jeans or strawberry shortcake shows no sign of resurgence. And even if I did go with the neo-Samurai look, it sadly requires a certain amount of hair on the top and back, a weak spot for me, reducing it at best to a top-nub.
Looks like I will be recycling my kimono and hakama to the back of the closet rotation once again this season.
Damn…
Perhaps I should just let go now to save myself future aggravation and anxiety. After I shave my head, maybe I’ll take to rubbing beef brine on my face for that rawhide feel, file my teeth down by biting caps off beer bottles, and resign myself to spitting wads of Skoal into the empties, with a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes rolled up in my sleeve.
Or, with little time left, I suppose it’s as good an incentive as any to get out there and project my current youthful appeal. I’ve had friends who dreaded losing their hair until it was finally gone, from the first strands lost to their shower drains to the final clumps shaved off with their razors. They spent their last full days with it lamenting its loss, grieving with their heads down and covered for something that hadn’t gone yet, rather than enjoying what they had left.
How much different am I really with a little less hair? Will women really view me in a diminished light? Will I stop being me? Will people stop reading my blogs and stories? Will it stop me from writing and dreaming things up—from imagining? If the answer to that one is no, then the rest will fall in line accordingly.
…
Only in a memory.
That head is long gone. I had always had full, healthy hair that grew like wild grass and at only twenty-three, the change was…unexpected.
I’m not actually losing my hair, I tell people, but rather it’s just retired from the stress and grind of my head, and relocated to my neck and upper back. Thankfully I don’t boast any of those reclusive strands that seek the privacy of my ears.
I’ve also thought often about the reaction I’d get if I told people that my hairline receding is actually news to me, that in all likelihood, it’s merely retreating back in disgust at the sight of their face.
…
To experience hair loss is to go through the five stages of grief. I think the above illustrates anger fairly accurately, especially since most people have the good social tact and decency not to mention anything to you, and you say it anyway. Depression entails thumbing through all the bogus hair restoration creams, shampoos and realizing you’re too poor for the surgeries, whereupon you bargain with every mirror in your house good enough to listen, saying, “If I could just keep most of it in this area….”
Denial is a comb-over. That stands pretty well on its own I think. Possibly even bolder on a t-shirt.
It all rounds out with biting the bullet, shedding a tear and then shaving your head.
*Sigh…* Acceptance.
The thought of shaving my head horrifies me. On the one hand I’m lazy, and I’d find the amount of effort it would take to run a razor over every nuance of my scalp every few weeks or so tedious and exhausting. Farther along that hand, I think it may hurt too much to watch what’s left of it go every time. I see it like pulling a plug over and over, or maybe putting a pet to sleep. Did I mention there isn’t a stylish enough hat in the world that could cover the shame of my big, hairless gourd?
Actor Ed Harris in decline, very, very few people can pull off the “balding look.” Where having gray hair can sometimes add an aura of experience, or seasoned maturity to a man, turning a blind eye to balding after a while is like walking around with a giant red-wine stain on your shirt, a widening tear in your pants, or a square of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe that doubles every few steps.
“You’ve got, you have…a little something, there…RIGHT THERE, yeah. You gonna…? (Is he ever going to DO something about that?)”
One of the chain-links in my family’s DNA, both sides, must clearly be labeled “Monk Balding Gene”. It is that series of nucleic formulae that ensures a nice visible patch of cranium in the middle of our heads by the age of thirty. The affected area spreads into a kind of crater, until stepping out from the shower in a brown colored bathrobe you may be mistaken for a lost Benedictine friar.
A hairpiece is both desperate, and out of the question. They are very easy to spot, and call just as much attention to hair-loss as, well, hair loss. While some of them are actually twined together out of real hair, they have to be replaced after so long, which would leave me a kind of second string cousin of the Vampire, preying on humans for their hair. I see it now:
In my struggle to function and fit in the human world, I would try and turn elsewhere for my epidermal lust. Neighbors will undoubtedly become suspicious when their dogs and cats return home in the wee hours of the morning completely shaved, while I walk out my door every few days with a new hair color and style.
Monday: Shaggy, shoulder-length retriever blond
Thursday: Short, business-like Labrador black
Saturday: Dalmatian salt and pepper. (There’s that seasoned look…)
A shy, emotionally repressed girl whose beauty is kept in check by thick reading glasses and a purple cardigan will take a strange liking to the provocative “chameleon man.” The image of her long, strawberry blond locks will pervade my dreams. I breathe deeply of her hair when we embrace, though I promise myself I will not make her my next human victim. Out of love and shear force of will, I struggle, conflicted…
I smell a series somewhere in all of this.
The Japanese top-knot was elegant and quite dignified but, much like the Jerry curl or the Flock of Seagulls haircut, relegated to a novelty of another generation, and unlike bell-bottom jeans or strawberry shortcake shows no sign of resurgence. And even if I did go with the neo-Samurai look, it sadly requires a certain amount of hair on the top and back, a weak spot for me, reducing it at best to a top-nub.
Looks like I will be recycling my kimono and hakama to the back of the closet rotation once again this season.
Damn…
Perhaps I should just let go now to save myself future aggravation and anxiety. After I shave my head, maybe I’ll take to rubbing beef brine on my face for that rawhide feel, file my teeth down by biting caps off beer bottles, and resign myself to spitting wads of Skoal into the empties, with a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes rolled up in my sleeve.
Or, with little time left, I suppose it’s as good an incentive as any to get out there and project my current youthful appeal. I’ve had friends who dreaded losing their hair until it was finally gone, from the first strands lost to their shower drains to the final clumps shaved off with their razors. They spent their last full days with it lamenting its loss, grieving with their heads down and covered for something that hadn’t gone yet, rather than enjoying what they had left.
How much different am I really with a little less hair? Will women really view me in a diminished light? Will I stop being me? Will people stop reading my blogs and stories? Will it stop me from writing and dreaming things up—from imagining? If the answer to that one is no, then the rest will fall in line accordingly.
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