Fools Like Me.

Dear reader:

I've been working on a new book lately, and it's been interesting to think about what it means to have the power to destroy someone else's life. In my current work-in-progress, one of my characters has a significant advantage over the other, and has all the necessary information and evidence to put an end to the other, rather permanently. Some would even argue, in the context of the situation, that she should.

So I've been thinking a lot about love, and about trust, and about vulnerability. Because I feel like it must take either great trust or great stupidity to put yourself in that position. Some people would probably call it idiocy or naivety, but to me, it seems like something else.

Are you sure you've got the right number?
Is it me you wanna talk to tonight?
Everyone in town's got your number.
Everbody's got you pegged right.
Is that why you got in touch with me?
Oh I guess you must be, running out of fools.

It's a vulnerability and that, in itself, when the person is completely aware of what they're doing, of the kind of power they're handing the other person, requires a kind of faith. It's a form of trust. And to give someone everything they would ever need to turn your world upside and leave you with nothing more than the wasted, smoking ashy ruins of what you had before has to require a special kind of belief in that other person, a willingness to believe they won't simply nuke you from orbit just because they can.

Marni and I talk about this a lot, both in terms of our work and in terms of our lives. We debate whether it is worth it to take that chance. We both tend to be big-hearted people who are quick to embrace newcomers and make a home for them in our lives, in our hearts. We've both been pretty deeply screwed over in the past as a consequence.

One could presume that, as writers and therefore necessarily also students of human nature, we'd both be a little more cynical. Both personal experience and media would tend to teach us that this is, frankly, a stupid way to live a life. That we could be the kind of cool, level-headed, disaffected heroines we tend to like if we could just take a step back and see people for who they are, not for whom we hope they will be.

You left me there without a warning.
Your goodbye was even colder than ice.
Didn't bother you I was crying.
Now you wanna break my heart twice?
Is that why you got in touch with me?
Oh I guess you must be, running out of fools.

Instead, I think we are true romantics. We both, regardless of previous pain, are willing to remain open to the possibility of love, friendship, kinship, and closeness with new people as they come along. We both believe that it is simply better to take that risk than be closed off to any possibility whatsoever.

Sure, we can mentally play just about storyline all the way through to the end, arranging and rearranging the pieces of a person's life and their relationships like so many chess pieces on board.  You put enough pieces in play, and you can see what the ending will look like -- take you opponent's queen off the board and they're vulnerable, move a knight to intercept an unwanted encounter and shore up your player's current position, leaving them better off than before.

But just because you can see a potential ending coming doesn't mean you can avoid it. It doesn't even mean you shouldn't try playing out the line just to see, even if it reads very clearly, right there in your crisp new edition of Modern Relationship Opens, "slight advantage to opponent."  Sometimes the point of playing is the pain; sometimes that is how a person has to learn and grow.

You got back to my name in your little black book.
Tell you what – I bet you forgot how I even look.
Yes you did.

People are not like a national park.  You can't pack in and pack out of someone's life, changing little, doing no harm on your way.  Your life ends up scattered with the debris of someone else's passing regardless of their intent.  Nobody comes into your life and manages to avoid stepping on the moth; time is linear, and when they step on those details in your lives, it's like stepping on the butterfly -- it changes your future inexorable, permanently, and forever.

To quote the ever popular John Green, "You don't get to decide whether or not you get hurt in this life. But you do get to decide who hurts you."

If I have to choose between being trusting and taking a little pain in exchange, I'll do it. I'd rather have the good things you get in exchange than nothing at all.

So go ahead with all your sweet talking,
go ahead for all the good it can do.
Have yourself a dime for the talking,
then I'm gonna hang right up on you,
'cause this time, you're not getting through to me.
Oh I guess you must be, running out of fools,
even fools like me.
~ “Fools Like Me,” Neko Case

As Is.

You can't hide behind social graces,
so don't try to be all touchy-feely.
'Cause you lied to my face of all places,
but I got no problem with that really.

There is something profoundly heartbreaking about people who don't know what they want. I remember being like that in my youth when I was lost and scared and desperate to be loved, but sometimes I think that's just part of growing up. We're all scared and weak and vulnerable and afraid as kids.

Then we grow up and get to know ourselves and our own minds, and we break our bodies and our things and one another and we learn from all that. We learn to know when we really want something and when we're just being selfish. We learn, in other words, how to be build the life we want through our own choices, with all their attendant consequences.

What bugs me, is you believe what you're saying,
and what bothers me is you don't know how you feel.
And what scares me is while you're telling me stories,
you actually believe that they are real.

As an adult, I usually know what I want. I may not always be right that I'll like it when I get it, but there's no part of me that doesn't just fundamentally recognize when I am intent on getting my way or accomplishing something.

There's very little I have tried to do in my life that I haven't been able to accomplish despite significant, multi-layered, ongoing obstacles. Maybe that's why I've never had much of a problem with all this. When I decided to to college, I wasn't willing to settle for the Big U down the street, and a lot of people told me that going far away from home to a small, expensive liberal arts school was beyond my reach. It took two years of research and applications, two schools and five years with time of during my second year because I ran out of money, but I did it. The same was true for law school, particularly the school I wanted. Jobs, relationships, personal goals like the year I decided to watch all of the AFI top 100 films of the twentieth century – I always just sort of push through whatever is in my way – lack of time, lack of money, personal fears.


On those occasions when I start things and don't end up finishing them, I usually find that if I go back and really examine my choices and decisions, I see that I simply didn't want the thing enough to dedicate myself to having it. I wasn't willing to put in the time or money or energy, wasn't willing to prioritize whatever I had to in order to get what I wanted. Whether I know it at the time, that's a choice. As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at calculating whether or not I really want something enough to pursue it. If not, I just don't bother.

Just give up, and admit that you're an asshole.
You would be in some good company.
And I think you'll find that your friends would forgive you,
but maybe I'm just speaking for me.

So I'm always confused by people who don't know their own minds, people who are self-deluding, people who can't look at their own choices and see the potential outcomes and then factor that into the choices they're making. How does a person do that? How do they not calculate the loss into their gain: opportunity costs, potential pain for them or someone else, economic hardship, loss of relationships? How do they wake up and lie to themselves and the people around them about what they want, about why they're unhappy, about what its going to cost them to do what they need to do to have the life they want?

I always know what I want, even when I determine the costs are too high to make pursuing them worthwhile. If I can't be honest with myself, I'll never be capable of being honest with anyone else. If you can't have what you want, you should at least be willing to admit to yourself why you can't have it, what it is that is stopping you, what you're unwilling to sacrifice to have it. And if you're not going to try, really try, then I often think it's better to accept that than engage in a lackluster, half-assed pursuit. You waste your own time, energy, and money as well as that of everyone else involved.

'Cause when I look around
I think, “This? This is good enough.”
And I try to love whatever life brings.
'Cause when I look up, I just miss all the good stuff.
And when I look down, I just trip over things.

I'm not saying you should be afraid to challenge yourself or try new things, things that scare you. But I think if you're going to, then you have to really make a go of it. You can't decide you're going to give it your thirty-seven percent. No one ever accomplished anything that way. Even if you have to limit the amount of time you put into something, at least be committed to it when you're doing it.

Once you know you want something, and you've determined it's worth the other risks or costs involved, don't be afraid to give anything your all: all your time, your energy, your heart, your love. Even if you can only give it that one hundred percent commitment for an hour a day, that one full hour of effort will get you further than ten times as much time spent only being partially committed.

I'm writing about this, about this kind of committing to getting what you want for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm working on pitching while I'm here on vacation, and also trying to finish but a couple of projects that have been sitting around, wanting attention. Pitching is terrifying, but basically a necessity to the next step in my writing career, and something I have been avoiding because no one loves rejection. But you know what? As you've probably picked up from my latest updates, I am determined to stop being afraid of my own life. Instead, I am embracing the motto of the British Special Air Force: "Those who risk, win."

It is hard, being in a country where information is controlled and we're mourning a genocide while everything is bursting with life simultaneously, not to think a lot  about honesty and living life to the fullest, about what it means to see the real beyond the fake veneer, about the ways we all have to recognize that what people say is not the whole story, and how important it is to be honest with ourselves. I also keep being reminded that sometimes life just goes on in spite of everything, that sometimes there's just too much pregnant possibility in the world for anything to stop it -- not fear, not oppression, not death.

I will be like this flower, braving
the razor wire in pursuit of life.

Everyone needs to be more honest with themselves, me included - about what they want, about what's stopping them from being happy or what they want to achieve. Then they have to be willing to fix, and really commit to fixing it, to trying to change, to making things happen. Change may be scary, but it's better than the north death of a thousand paper cuts.

Embrace the Aido Annie of it all: “With you, it's all or nothing.” FN1. I say, why not all or nothing? If it isn't worth all of you, it probably wasn't worth it in the first place. And if you're not trying because you're afraid? Well, to quote Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing, “God, Jeb. Then I don't even wanna know you.”

And I've got no illusions about you.
Guess what? I never did.
When I said, “I'll take it,”
I meant as is.
~ “As Is,” Ani DiFranco

______
FN1. Though, hilariously, "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No," is strangely more appropriate for me.

Do you like American music?

I was talking to some people about perfume and blogging recently. I've had a private personal journal for seven years, and this is one of the few times I've found the need to split one of my interests off into a separate journal.

One reason is that perfume is a new hobby for me, and one I really enjoy. I love trying new perfumes and I love writing about them, but most of my regular readers would be bored to tears by it. For me, though, thinking about and writing about perfume is like having a permanent writing prompt. Perfume is hard to put words to; learning the vocabulary required to describe smell is like learning a foreign language. I like the challenge and that the world of perfume presents, literally, more possible prompts that I have money or time for. And given that right now, law school continues to suck all the creativity out of my daily life, having something bto write to/against is really hope inspiring.

The other reason I split off from my regular journal is that I intend this blog to be an open writing experiment, one that I invite public readership of. The other projects I have going are narrowly focused on their respective topics and my private journal has evolved over time to be something that just is not for public consumption. But writing, my writing,is something I want read, at least some of the time. I've been at it for so long, and I spent so much of my angsty teenage life keeping all of it private, but like a teenager, yearning to have it read. So now I have this medium and a create-your-own-forum, things that were not available when I was young, and I want it to be read.

Hence this blog. When I first saw Memory & Desire, I thought maybe I would merge my love of modern American poetry and perfume. But when I smell perfume, I hear music in my head. Pop music. Rock music. Indie music. Country music. All kinds of music, but still, music. So that's the crux of my blogging I think. Music and perfume.


Okay, back to my law school finals.

I like American music.
Don't you like American music, baby?