This is an imitation of a diary … a journal … a blog.
This evening while Ms. S. took a nap (so she could go to work at 11) I returned to my computer and continued importing a number of old blogs (Feb. 20 to May 26, 2007 … about) from one old platform to another. Along the way I tagged them, which meant I had to skim them, and in form(at) and content they differ from much of what I write these days.
After these 2007 entries I at some point became more formulaic, at least at one site where I posted. These days I am less … bound to form. And those form-centric posts from the in-between-years are not usually very personal; but these ones I perused this evening, while in no way ‘private,’ do function as diaries of a sort, or at least as daily journals logging events, encounters, and reflections.
It’s also hard for me to read them and not think, “I was living more … then.”
And that’s not a bad thing.
That I was ‘living’ more then? Meaning less now? Yes … bad. But that I recognize it and it troubles me? How is that anything but positive? This is a preemptive response to someone who would wonder about the ‘utility’ (a word I usually despise so much that I must put it in air-or-scare quotes) of revisiting such old material … especially when there is new to cover. And it’s because it is a shock. Because day to day we do not notice changes, but over the course of five or more years (even less, of course) we are forced to confront chasms and lacunae.
I hate the frog-in-a-pot-of-water story … because it is false. Because if you put a frog in cool water and heat the water slowly, the frog will jump out. Yet even though the metaphor is incorrect when judged by matters of truth, it still seems to illustrate something that might be true about our lives.
But, to use a common expression: I digress.
I look at those entries and see all the things I was doing and seeing and thinking. Being out and about. And I look at my life now and see only blank spaces, not even wide open blanks waiting to be filled, but pitiful blanks, not the open spaces of an abandoned parking lot of shopping mall but the strictures of a confined self-storage-unit. A claustrophobic minimalism to life, such as it is, the kind of small scale in which a successful recipe can be celebrated, not merely for what it is, but as something significant.
Which it never is.
And this is where this entry could devolve into melancholy and self-pity.
Instead, I like to think, the past as a reminder can serve as inspiration. Not only of better times, an indication that there was better, so there can be better, but also as a kick-in-the-pants, a stirring of the passions.
A cold shower.
Concluding pop-culture asides:
- Ms. S. and I began but did not finish “Sophia,” aka “Assassin’s Bullet,” an absolutely terrible (yet reviewed!) “movie” featuring Christian Slater, Donald Sutherland, and Timothy Spall. It’s the type of fare that makes you wonder, (1) what went wrong in their lives that they felt making this was a good idea (it’s not Ralph or Liam making ‘Clash of Titans’ so as to be able to do ‘artsy’ projects, it’s not just ‘slumming’ it …), and (2) what sorts of vices or habits must they have that they need *this* in order to feed and fund them? The two are probably related. But I can say this: even though we have 35 minutes to go (Ms. S. needed a nap), already I wish we had more Donald Sutherland … he seems to understand what sort of move he is in. Timothy Spall insists on classing-it-up while at the same time sleezing-it-up … I applaud him.
- Earlier we watched Ralph in ‘Coriolanus’ … and that was spectacular. Gerard Butler has, perhaps, never been better. Plus there’s Brian Cox. And so on. Part of me wants to claim, “It’s Timon meets Richard III” … though that’s not all.
- On a related note, I’ve always loved Beethoven’s ‘Coriolan Overture,’ and as this move reminded me of it, I felt the need to listen to it today.
- We took in one episode of ‘The X-Files’: “Young at Heart” (season 1) … while it’s an x-file, it’s a rather materialistic, not-too-cloak-and-dagger sort of science fiction monster-of-the-week episode. No aliens or cryto-zoology, not ghosts or ‘souls’.
- Tonight, after doing some cleaning around the apartment? “Resurrection Ship” part 1 (‘BSG’) … I think. Ah, Cylons.
Speaking of simulacra … or?
