:: intellectualized ::

Groove: Badu’s Love of My Life

So bad that this fool here shoulda stay locked in his room, in bed, under the covers, the curtains pulled down, playing Coltrane records. It started with a bad nightmare around 6:00 a.m. A dream so ugly that the one above was thanked when the alarm clock went off and interrupted its dark and moody plot. Every night recently has been the same: one night it is a nightmare about a friend getting killed in a rather graphic manner; the next one it is about this weblog’s writer being chased by some large rabid dog, in the midst of nowhere, surrounded by a rather chilling darkness; others are too strange to describe, sort of a Fellini movie combined with a bad Marilyn Manson video. And they haven’t been caused by scary films or spooky reads; they’ve just come along and played for free in the mind’s cinema without much of an announcement or purpose. No popcorn to be enjoyed, and no clear happy ending to satisfy the viewer’s taste. Go figure…

Such lack of proper sleep causes the body to act sluggishly, the mind to be slightly incoherent, the mood to swing in quite snappish ways. These characteristics were clearly manifested at the office and school. At the former there was frustration due to mediochre performance, tension caused by impending changes and a loved one who knows how to push the wrong buttons at the wrong time, and an ugly argument with a co-worker; at the latter there was a presentation that was performed so poorly it deserved an F minus, if such a grade existed. And this is not the time of the semester, or the career for that matter, to be screwing up. The former is needed to pay the overwhelming amount of bills, to keep the mortgage in good shape, to allow the cable, cell, and other secondary samples of mad consumerism to not be interrupted. The latter is important to maintain the sanity, to escape the hell of corporate life, to aspire for a life surrounded by scholastics and research, to see some meaning to that euphemism for existence that the world calls life. Failure sometimes amounts to loss of confidence and an increasing sense of hopelessness. One feels like a penny with a hole in it; nobody cares for it, not even the self.

But there’s always a bitter cherry on top of certain rancid pies… And sometimes those pies sit at the window sill of one’s own home. Yeah, home sweet home they say… one needs to wonder whose home that was, ’cause this one is a theatre of anger and blame. This house serves as a scenario for some of the most hurtful fights ever staged in the history of that nucleus of society called family. A perfect evening, cool like only the Miami nights can be in October, was ruined by a list of accusations longer than last Sunday’s grocery shopping receipt. And then there was a hint of violence. The first object at hand was grabbed… a broom was directed towards this ungrateful son’s body, or maybe his head, for his stupid mind dared speak what it contained. The reaction was non-violence, for it further infuriates the attacker, and ’cause it is an axiomatic truth that such actions lead to nothing good. But there were words said that will not be easily undone; there were truths and realisations that denial had managed to shield him from so far. It is clearly time to move on, to separate oneself from the bloody ties that bind. Wash those ties till the fiber can be seen again, free from anger, guilt, and love of that kind that looks like hate. Like Virginia Woolf once said, it is time to seek “a room of one’s own” (definitely not the same context but the feeling is somewhat parallel). Even a corner of one’s own would feel good tonight. Very few times “home” has felt so much like some downtown shelter.

Loneliness and guilt feel like a bad mix of cheap wine and Valium tonight… Sometimes one truly wishes to be able to turn back time… But these damned physicists can’t seem to figure that one out yet…