May 2015
I don't think I know how to love people. At least not in the traditional sense. But what is traditional about love, except for the sheer mortality of it? There is no consistency, no textbook definition for how to act when faced with the wide spectrum of emotions that are evoked when you believe that someone finally fits your skin, even after all the holes you've burned
into it.
There are so many holes in my body.
"I've found you, I've found you,
I've found you."
"Now stay in me."
Consistency is the hard part. We are fast-paced creatures, going through lovers like cigarettes and knowing all too well that they'll burn out. Everything is a fix for boredom and this is why we never hold hands for long enough. Oscar Wilde wrote that life imitates art. Art is a form of creation, produced by it's very antithesis, destruction. Whether we are creating something that is intangible, such as ideologies, or building homes with our elbows deep in the wet earth, history has proven that we always have to destroy what came prior to it.
We are always re-creating ourselves. It is at the very basis of growth, and the overbearing weight of our crushing mortality only pushes us to do it as often as we can. It may seem as though we have not done enough, have not seen enough, have not been enough, but the inconsistency in our way of life only ensures that every new experience is a way of re-creating ourselves in fragments that are searching to become a whole. Now, you might be wondering, where does destruction come into play? Let's face it, there's no sugar coating the fact that we encounter far more dreadful experiences than favorable ones. Some are even so mundane that we'd rather not call them experiences at all, and thus end up forgetting that they ever occurred. But they did. And now I'm going to bring up the holes I mentioned earlier. The ones that get so large sometimes it feels as though you're going to slip right out of your skin. And that's what you want, but you know you can't do that literally (even though it sounds pretty on paper). These are the holes that make you use people without even realizing it. Or maybe you do, and you're sitting on your porch at night with a glass of wine and it's raining really hard out and it's too dark to see but you're writing about holes because you think you'll be able to make sense of them (tip: you won't). Whatever the case, I want you to imagine the following:
You meet a person and you find yourself leaning closer every time they speak, hoping that the sound of their voice will stay fixated in your brain if you listen hard enough. It's similar to the way we behave when we're trying to learn the lyrics to a song (reminder: you will get sick of this song and probably hate it if you listen to it enough times). Next thing you know, you're comparing their voice to the sound of soft rain or your favourite Drake song or whatever. And then their hands are so gentle you can hardly believe they're touching you, let alone making you *** or having you shout some really embarrassing stuff you'd be ashamed to admit to later on. Now you're both doing some really lame stuff like going for walks in the park or going grocery shopping and it just feels a lot less lame because they're there (tip: it's probably not). Then one day you get a text from them and you put it off for a few hours. This keeps happening until eventually the phone stops ringing and you don't miss the sound of it anymore. You don't think you know what happened, there are no hard feelings, but if you read enough books you know exactly what put a halt to that once-marvelous feeling that had you producing more metaphors for their skin than any of your high school English teachers could have prepared you for.
Life.
That's right, that terrifying, looming thing that's there to constantly remind you of your mortality. Life, that imitates art. Life, that encourages destruction in order to create. "Burn holes into your skin" it whispers, and there is no master of seduction like the threat of mortality. You know, just as I do, that if you would have stayed with that person who fit your skin so well you'd have no more holes left to fill.
Boredom is the Devil's play thing
I dislike quoting without reference almost as much as I have a distaste for human nature, but it is very late and I am at a loss for a better way to explain how it is deeply rooted inside of us, how it's in our wiring, to use other people as tools to fight off boredom. We, as a species, have always been bad at consistency- dissatisfied with routine, but experts at burning holes only to fill them again and again. We will **** to be reborn until mortality extends it's looming arm, and even then we will flirt with death for the sole purpose of having something to do.
into it.
There are so many holes in my body.
"I've found you, I've found you,
I've found you."
"Now stay in me."
Consistency is the hard part. We are fast-paced creatures, going through lovers like cigarettes and knowing all too well that they'll burn out. Everything is a fix for boredom and this is why we never hold hands for long enough. Oscar Wilde wrote that life imitates art. Art is a form of creation, produced by it's very antithesis, destruction. Whether we are creating something that is intangible, such as ideologies, or building homes with our elbows deep in the wet earth, history has proven that we always have to destroy what came prior to it.
We are always re-creating ourselves. It is at the very basis of growth, and the overbearing weight of our crushing mortality only pushes us to do it as often as we can. It may seem as though we have not done enough, have not seen enough, have not been enough, but the inconsistency in our way of life only ensures that every new experience is a way of re-creating ourselves in fragments that are searching to become a whole. Now, you might be wondering, where does destruction come into play? Let's face it, there's no sugar coating the fact that we encounter far more dreadful experiences than favorable ones. Some are even so mundane that we'd rather not call them experiences at all, and thus end up forgetting that they ever occurred. But they did. And now I'm going to bring up the holes I mentioned earlier. The ones that get so large sometimes it feels as though you're going to slip right out of your skin. And that's what you want, but you know you can't do that literally (even though it sounds pretty on paper). These are the holes that make you use people without even realizing it. Or maybe you do, and you're sitting on your porch at night with a glass of wine and it's raining really hard out and it's too dark to see but you're writing about holes because you think you'll be able to make sense of them (tip: you won't). Whatever the case, I want you to imagine the following:
You meet a person and you find yourself leaning closer every time they speak, hoping that the sound of their voice will stay fixated in your brain if you listen hard enough. It's similar to the way we behave when we're trying to learn the lyrics to a song (reminder: you will get sick of this song and probably hate it if you listen to it enough times). Next thing you know, you're comparing their voice to the sound of soft rain or your favourite Drake song or whatever. And then their hands are so gentle you can hardly believe they're touching you, let alone making you *** or having you shout some really embarrassing stuff you'd be ashamed to admit to later on. Now you're both doing some really lame stuff like going for walks in the park or going grocery shopping and it just feels a lot less lame because they're there (tip: it's probably not). Then one day you get a text from them and you put it off for a few hours. This keeps happening until eventually the phone stops ringing and you don't miss the sound of it anymore. You don't think you know what happened, there are no hard feelings, but if you read enough books you know exactly what put a halt to that once-marvelous feeling that had you producing more metaphors for their skin than any of your high school English teachers could have prepared you for.
Life.
That's right, that terrifying, looming thing that's there to constantly remind you of your mortality. Life, that imitates art. Life, that encourages destruction in order to create. "Burn holes into your skin" it whispers, and there is no master of seduction like the threat of mortality. You know, just as I do, that if you would have stayed with that person who fit your skin so well you'd have no more holes left to fill.
Boredom is the Devil's play thing
I dislike quoting without reference almost as much as I have a distaste for human nature, but it is very late and I am at a loss for a better way to explain how it is deeply rooted inside of us, how it's in our wiring, to use other people as tools to fight off boredom. We, as a species, have always been bad at consistency- dissatisfied with routine, but experts at burning holes only to fill them again and again. We will **** to be reborn until mortality extends it's looming arm, and even then we will flirt with death for the sole purpose of having something to do.
