Saturday, September 20, 2008

there's a tree pressed up close to the window by my bed. on particularly breezy days (or when the squirrels scamper up and down it during a game of squirrel-tag) the branches scratch the glass. i was afraid that, come fall, the tree would prevent the rain from making that soothing patter sound of raindrops falling on glass. but although fall doesn't officially start for two days, it is raining in bellingham right now, and my underlying anxiety is being rocked to sleep by not only the sound of rain on my window, but by the sound of water running down the rain gutter. it is the sound of restoration. the sound of maybe-everything-just-might-be-okay.

at the risk of sounding like a freshman in sociology 101, working at a law firm has reawakened my almost dormant disdain of societal structure. it's hierarchical to the extent that in the mailroom, the attorney's boxes are on top of the assistant's boxes "so they don't have to bend over as far." i could never be an attorney for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because i would find that shit embarrassing.

sometimes it seems like society is made up of slots. and that people spend their early-adulthood shaping themselves
into forms (often cutting off ideological limbs) that will fit into them. and then they dutifully take up their places and create an identity out of ideas like:

i am a lawyer.
i am a democrat
.
i am a christian
.

but we were born into a world where these things already existed. it's one thing to select a pair of pants out of a catalog, but i think it's extremely limiting to select our spiritual, moral, and, social values out of an existing set of options. and i guess that's why
i've always hesitated to identify. and i guess that's why i always feel lonely. not in an everyday sort of way. but in a way that makes me unable to take most people seriously, and therefore, get to know them in any meaningful way. my mom always says, christina, there's never a crowd on the leading edge of thought, and narcissistically, it makes me feel better.

i try not to think about this too much though. anais nin says the inner chambers of the soul are like the photographer's darkroom. one cannot stay there all the time or it becomes the solitary cell of the neurotic. i've found this to be true. its been eight years since my high school photography class. but i remember how good it felt to walk through the revolving door of the darkroom and lose an afternoon under the amber lights. it's easier to create when it everything is dimly lit, when the edges of everything are softened. but eventually you must come out to breathe clean air and rinse away the sharp, bitter taste of the developer that somehow always ends up in your mouth.

oh, and i really, really want a peahoodie.

1 comment:

Tim said...

Two things: 1) get the pea-hoodie. You know how I feel about pea-coats. And 2) Anais Nin wrote the preface to my copy of Tropic of Cancer. Apparently Henry Miller said her unpublished (as of 1960) journal is "one of the masterpieces of the twentieth century".