Shabby as a Harlot's Painted Face at Noon

Part Un: Panegyrics

I'm in a very strange, yet positive, mood. I'm fairly certain it's because I'm wearing pants.

I had forgotten how pleasant wearing pants can be. Also: pockets! My hands have their own personal blankets! Pockets are a very useful invention. That being said, I don't think I want to wear pants more now; it's possible that the pants were (I took them off) pleasant to wear because I don't wear them very often, or, really, at all.

Or, and check this out: maybe it was the specific pair of pants. Maybe this pair of pants puts me in this strange mood. Maybe a different pair of pants will put me in a bad mood. I wonder if, someday, when I am displeased with the mood of that time, I could slip on those pants and everything would be okay. I wonder if, after today, I could condition myself so that that could actually be possible and not fucking ridiculous, like it sounds. I wonder if, eventually, I could just think about wearing that pair of pants and my mood would be automatically ameliorated. That would be useful. More useful than pockets, really. If pants can change your mood, then what the fuck? Really. I should be able to look at my goddamn curtains and think about how life is wonderful. Maybe now I will. I think the Pants Effect (...actually has a ring to it...) is wearing off. Or I could just be on my period.

I bet you're wondering how this fits in: cats don't wear pants either.

Part Deux: Calumnies

I realized yesterday that, in a nutshell, food courts inspire me to reflect on my life. That's really not true. But what is true is that it is in food courts (and food courts alone, it seems) that I really get just where the hell I am. I am the most cognizant of the fact that I am in Vietnam when I am in one. Most of the time, it strikes as a dawning, slightly upsetting revelation. What the fuck have I done? How have I knocked my life off-kilter? When did I wind up in Asia? Better yet, how did I forget? Can you imagine if I (you) had to spend all my (your) life in a food court? (Stu: I was with Hien. I had Wrap 'n' Roll; it wasn't good. She had Lotteria. We had an incredibly depressing conversation, not at all inspired by the roll of beef fat in my cold bun thit nuong.)

That same day (not a good Vietnam day), I ventured to the 4th floor to buy a Christmas card. It was like being in a film. As I recall, it was a horror film:

Bam! Hit 'dem little crackas with a freeze-pop!

Shop attendants (of varying degrees of same-ness) are standing in the empty aisles in front of their empty stores not talking to each other. IMAGINE IT. Every 5 feet is another Asian person, facing forward, staring off into oblivion, ignoring the person 5 feet away from them, not twiddling their thumbs, humming, or even attempting to entertain themselves. Either there's a cult leader in the back sitting in a swivel chair, smoking cigars, and watching them on a giant security camera, or they've all just lost the will to live because of their propinquity to the food court. Someone put them there in the morning and someone will dismiss them at night. Living, breathing mannequins daring you to spark them to life with your dong. I got my Christmas card and I got the fuck out.

Part Trois: Threnodies

I take a break from my conveniently-removed, pseudo-cognoscitive anecdotes to give you this timely excursus into topics with hopefully more pertinence and lesser fugacity:

And yet with jaundiced eye I gaze upon all the beauty and wonder about me, and with jaundiced brain consider the pitiful figure I cut in this world that endured so long without me and that will again endure without me.

-- Jack London, John Barleycorn

I've sat here for the past five minutes attempting to put into words what it was I really came here to say. I've fiddled around with loose metaphors, vague aphorisms, blasé attempts at honesty -- all of which fail to encapsulate the way I promised myself (and maybe certain bald-headed friends of mine) I would write. I figured this recent string of events would be convenient for this purpose and this purpose alone; alas, I seem to be wrong. With the arrival of one thousand emotions comes the perspicacity of none. 

Yesterday, this little boy I had never met before stared at me for a long, long time. He stared at me unfettered and unabashedly, content with saying nothing. Unlike all the other children who divert their gaze when they don't know an answer, he stared at me happily and I more than happily stared at him back. It brought tears to my eyes that awkwardly rested in my eyelids, like so many have been wont to do lately. When's the last time you bathed in someone else's naïveté? When's the last time you stared at someone else without pretense, without shame, without worry? When's the last time you sat across from someone and simply thought about how they were alive? Why does this strike me as so beautiful? Is it my lack of intimacy with others that makes these small moments so quietly powerful?

Maybe Stu was wrong and there should be no conclusion. We never really conclude our days; we simply go to sleep. We never really conclude our thoughts; we simply partake in and get distracted by new ones. We never really conclude friendships, we never really conclude ideas or philosophies, or even selves, though those, too, often come to an end. 

Maybe my conclusions are questions. Charlie and Stu are always quick to tell me that I'm still in that phase of my life where I do that a lot; I sort of resent that. I don't know if it's because I yearn to stop questioning and to start knowing or if I think they're feigning wisdom (eat it, suckers) and I believe that one should never stop asking questions. I'm not sure if 'knowing' even really exists. There're a lot of questions in that paragraph that I didn't pose as questions, I know. That's either meta or just plain ol' irritating. I'd stop if I could/wanted to.

So, I guess I'll leave you with this: when's the last time you allowed yourself to feel what you wanted to feel? (Why didn't I phrase that as, "when's the last time you allowed yourself to feel how you felt?" Those are two very different questions.) When's the last time you wanted something and didn't want to want something? When's the last time what you thought would make you happy made you happy and what you thought would make you sad made you sad? 


Huh?
 

Such a beautiful word for such a disastrous thing.

xoxo.


J