"Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity"
EARLY MORNING:Self Pitying Rant done!WARNING: Self pitying rant
(Ah, you heeded not my warning! . . . plunging deeper . . . ) I'm blue, filled with self-doubt. All my grandiose illusions are just crap. I'm really just an insecure girl (yeah '40', and I still feel like a weak girl. . .) with an abundance of vain hopes like a drug to which she's addicted. My words are just ordinary, only perhaps laughable because of all the pathetic pretensions. If I got rid of the pretension, what would be left? Would ANYTHING be left? That's what I need to find out. I need to scrape away all the vanity and get down to what REALLY is. The theistic illusions got blown to poof. Next to go are these dreams. Or can I figure out what I need to do to have a chance of achieving those dreams? Is there such a chance? That's what I'd like to know.
What if there isn't a chance? What if I'm a pitiful writer? What then? I seem to be enjoying this solo ride none the less. All my vain self preenings are amusing me. Is that enough? Yet, it will have to be.
But I don't like it, and so I sulk.
LATE AFTERNOON:
Still so awful depressed. I glanced at the last section in ATTWT. What was missing that could have been there? There seems to be something, but I don't know what it is. Am I at the birthing of new growth in the future? Is that what this pain is all about? I'd like to think so. (It sure beats thinking I'm just nuts . . . )
(Or could I be suffering from an allergy to MILK, as my Aunt June thought I was? I sure did have LOTS of cheese today. I went through the past month. On no other day did I have nearly as much cheese. It's worth a thought.
We did have a great day yesterday. The three of us went to see the movie "Patch Adams". Robin Williams did well in depicting the true life story of a doctor who is attempting to bring the human touch back to medical practices. He uses humor in helping to heal. Not only that, he is building a "Gesundthit" Clinic, which will be a free clinic. It was very inspirational. The breaking point, time of 'rebirth', is when Patch was in a mental institution. He discovered he could relate to the other patients, and in making them feel better, he forgot his own problems. It was then he found his life's direction and chose the medical profession. I know I'll be a lifetime learning from that movie.This movie is in my very top eschelon of movies, along with "Dead Poet's Society", (also starring Williams), Field of Dreams, Powder, Enemy Mine, and I couldn't omit . . .Rocky Horror Picture Show! I must also include "The Fisher King", "The People" , and "Elephant Man." There may be a couple others, but can't think of them right now.
I've been filling my mind with all sorts of thought provoking sources lately. For instance, this snippet I found in my web travels today.
"THERE never was a more intensely egotistical diarist than W. N. P. Barbellion. He tells us that as a child he considered himself a prodigy and was bitter with those who insisted on regarding him as normal. ‘I can remember wondering ...’ he says, ‘if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was.’"Oh, I sure can relate. Barbellion might have held the prize for egotism in his short (1889-1919) life, but as soon as Joan Lansberry entered the world, she yanked it right out of his cold dead hands. For I often have wondered "if I were a young Dickenson, Sappho, or Whitman, and secretly deciding that I was." Not so secret anymore. I must find a copy of his pages and have a look.
I found the earring! More of those thoughts on vanity:
Oh, what a fragile thing ego is! It is like a balloon that stretches so wide, but with mere air, for a tiny pin prick of doubt, and the shinking, sinking thing crashes.
- Moi!
"The most learning for me comes with nonsense doodling . . . I learn more when I'm not creating 'art' "That is the approach I'm taking to 'Weighty Matters'. I put the sort of thing I'd never dare to put in my serious journal. I wouldn't confess to such a mean stinking depression as I had yesterday. I wouldn't put silly pictures of "fruit tits" up. But maybe that's why this place is becoming such a fun release for me. I need a place to let my hair down. And in the process, I may learn more.- Gary Simmons, "Techniques for Artists", pg 99
I wonder if it's more fun for the reader, as I'm not 'trying so hard'? Yet, I still like the approach of the other journal. Perhaps both are equally valid.
I woke up at 6:45am, wondering how Laura did at the exercise place. She went yesterday for the first time, and 45 minutes on the treadmill and an exercise bike really beat her up. She had to put liniment on last night. I rubbed her back, and she howled with pain. I wasn't even rubbing hard. I stumbled out into the darkness of the living room, to find Laura on the sofa. She wasn't all dripping with sweat, as she'd been yesterday. But she was wearing her sweats. After a battle with her conscience, Laura decided the wisest thing was to give herself a rest. Twenty minutes on our tame stationary bike was enough. She can hardly walk.
So we cuddled there on the sofa in the night that is somehow morning, watching TV. Independent film channel. "Citizen Ruth" and a short about a restaurant called "Dresden" in Los Angeles. Interesting 'slice of life', that. The owner bought it in the fifties. The aging, husky voiced people who've worked there for years tell about how they're a family. The owner proudly shows his photos of stars who've eaten at this landmark. I wonder how much longer it will exist. Before the next showing, some quotes appeared:
Talent does what it can,
Genius does what it must.Didn't catch who said it. Anyhow I chewed on its meaning, along with the rice pudding. I'm not sure I've quite digested it. Anyhow 8:06am, and the darkness of the not-morning,yet morning has brightened. I guess it will be another day of sewing for me. Julia has an early doctor's appointment. Then she goes back to work at noon. Laura has went somewhere with James. I'll send this up, and check my neglected mail . . .
. . . I was in the middle of neglected sewing, as Bryn Terfel serenaded me. One of the Handel arias has this line over and over:
"And why do the People imagine a vain Thing?"
"Because we're VAIN!",
I answer back.But not as vain as the character in the Polyphemus" aria:
"...Thou trusty pine,
Prop of my godlike steps, I lay thee by!
Bring me a hundred reeds of decent growth,
To make a pipe for my capacious mouth,
In soft enchanting accents let me breathe
Sweet Galatea's beauty and my love."GODlike steps?
Oh brother!
With that, I shall take my very mortal size 7 1/2's (37 on the Birkenstock scale) feet back in the sewing room . . .
Not just yet... Time for a 'joke'.
One atheist to another:
"I'd believe in God, but the trouble is, He's just too damn conceited!"
If humility is such a fine virtue for humans to aspire to, why shouldn't it also be good for the gods?
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A strange mystery. I've lost two days in this log. December 18th and 19th are GONE! I looked at the library computer, which hardly ever gets updated, to see if an old version of "dl121598" was there. There was, all right: a version dated 12-17-98! I'm not sure how it happened. I even looked at old yellow scratch pads, trying to find some scribblings from those days. Nada. Sigh. Those two days efforts were all in vain.Go Forward...