am I angry?
Nobody likes an angry guy... well, at least I don't. And I am not just finger-pointing; I really don't like myself much, either. Yes, I realize that angriness is not good for the liver, or the soul, and yes, I am well aware that it is my choice whether I am angry or not. Indeed, anger's feature of being completely choosable makes of misery a breathtakingly beautiful gown, painful and restrictive, and by some considered foolish and suffocating. 'Choosability' is anger's sole desireable function. If suicide were made mandatory, nobody would ever freely choose it again. The same applies to anger. If the human psyche were assembled in such a way that angry people could not choose to change, they would always want to.
cheryl is leaving tomorrow. How can I presume to get misty? I have in the past successfully evaded emotions which were far more overwhelming; my father's death, El's death, the loss (rather, the discarding by me) of several 'close' friendships. I have chosen to be numb even when there was an alternative. (I don't recall ever a time when there wasn't an alternative.)
I always had a choice. Tonight, my head is swimming in the Eighties, in the 'classic rock' of WZLX,
'ZLX hotJock,
Patrick Murray
music we never appreciated so much then as now. Discardable moments, played against a soundtrack made of music like Running on Empty, Against the Wind, The Wall... People like me have such a hard time letting go because, for some unfathomable reason, we are acutely aware of exactly the feeling we failed to embrace. Probably we're just hyper-sensitive. Maybe we appreciate the things we have lost more than the things we possess. Maybe we're just afraid to get too close.
On a beach down the Cape in 1983, a cute young man was making-out with his girlfriend. I never got closer than thrity feet, but I was excruciatingly attentive to their situation. He pulled a brown paper bag to his lips, and cast an unfocusable glance toward me across the sand; I tossed a fry up to the gulls hovering in the wind overhead. His awareness was neither here, where I stood on the porch of the snackbar, or there where he writhed in skimpy frottage with his girl. But my awareness was totally there, with him.
It's safe to be aware of significant things, at a distance.
Jackson Browne and Bob Seger and Pink Floyd
updated
