Don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, babe
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

I was at J’s last night – we had a rather intimate gathering, counting down till New Year’s and was it me or was everyone tense at the count of 10? Where did all the wine bottles go? My lips were prune from glass after glass of red red wine, and just once, I prayed for a hangover to tide me over the new day. The chimes woke me up to snuggly weather. The cat peered and yawned mockingly at me, and started thrashing about in heat. I had Buckley’s New Year’s Prayer ringing in my head, read a little thrash, ate some, threw up more, watched Talledega nights on HBO, laughed mirthlessly and sat in front of the laptop wanting to write something insanely smart and honorably witty to 2008’s aplomb but from the looks of things it’s going to be an overwrought juvenile scrawl.

I can go on in this watershed vein and most probably look back on this years, maybe months later and go berating myself from the lack of emotional censorship. And I do this all the time. Entries written back are packaged under the metal section:2001, or indie 2003, only to be unearthed and gagged upon, for similar reasons. Maybe the writing has improved, maybe I use bigger words, but the bad grammar is still there and once emo, always will be.

Someone once brought to my attention to one of Becket’s plays : Krapp’s Last Tape and how the protagonist (I know, I know.. It’s a bleeding monologue!) was an allegory of me.

The play began and centered around Krapp’s sixty-ninth birthday and, as customary, he would record and recapitulate events that has happened the past 12 mths. After doing so, he’d go back to previous tapes made and would woe and betide the (for lack of better word, since I’ve not read it yet) idealistic notions of youth, and the other criticisms in later years of that fallen self in all other recordings. In the end, all he had to call for memories were self flagellations and nothing else.

That struck me. I have been looking back and berating myself over foolhardy choices, (and composing cliché poems that leave a bad aftertaste) while not knowing that I’ve been canvassing a realistic caricature of myself: a fool.

So. Hence the question. Will I just back off and allow myself to just be? Will my philosophical decision on Self be polarized this 2008? Kant or Satre – intention or action?

This is where I come in after smoking a pack of cigarettes and say: fuck it. Back to where we left off: my self martyrdom and how I want the entire voyeuristic world to feel my pain. I’ve been tiring myself out every day –going out, drinking, and then back. Couldn’t sleep, so I read what chick lits I have left, get online, youtube, gawk at amateur porn stars giving nasty blowjobs and getting cum all over their pretty faces (make pretty good late night facial ads– would you take the, pun unintended again, load of that flawless skin?!) and jaunt on other people’s public domain because I was terrified of sleep. And when the lights are off, the sleep won’t come. I kept seeing that white room, with retro porn outfitting, me reading Murakami and turning to see him sleeping peacefully on those pristine white sheets. So peaceful I placed my book down, snuggled next to him and slept, hoping I’ll never wake up. It broke me, because for that infinitesimal of a second, I could bask in that perfect scene and kid myself that it was all real and not some botched attempt at make belief. And then, right back in my room on the other plane without my Sputnik, I’d curl up, gnash my teeth and force the tears so I can cry at the non sense and absurdity of it all and hope that’ll reduce me to a blubbering but tired self finally surrendering to sleep.

It’s not a good start when you just spend the first day of the year just bursting into tears at every point. It wasn’t a good start last year too. If you ask me to get right back up on my feet, I can’t. Strangely enough, miss-very-together can’t get a grip on herself. At this point, it just feels so much better to lie down and cry.

Anyway.

There’s not much else to say – there’s only so many times you can say crap, cry, tears in a single entry without it making look too whiney than it already is. To that someone who introduced me to Krapp, thank you. It’s so much cathartic writing all this down, knowing that in the next few months, I’ll reread this entry and forgive myself for being an emotional, idealistic twat.

Happy New Year. Here’s to better writing, Dylan, Satre and of course, Krapp. Your 69 years did filter sense, and it was not for naught.