The last three seconds

Sometimes I feel I have been thrown into a hole and can't climb out. And sometimes I wish someone would care enough to lower down a rope ladder and pull me out, and other times I get my pitons and say fuck it and climb a few more inches up. Sometimes a piton springs out and I fall back down a few more feet, and I curse myself for how weak I am, as though I could somehow have flown if only, if only.

I am not going to die down here because I am determined that my last three seconds I will not spend crying.

I feel tired of feeling that everyone is entitled to judge me, to weigh me in scales of their own devising and discard me because I don't measure up. And none of the people marking me down has done anything to deserve the privilege. I realise, when I think about it, that having a good heart is the quickest route to getting that heart broken, but I don't want to be a coldhearted arbiter of others, enforcing my black and white view of how it should be.

Because what good did that ever do us? To break each other on the wheel of our whatever. What I need is a friend who cares more about me than they do about how much they care about me. It is not too much to ask that someone finds something golden in me because I have something golden in me. I do not believe you if you say I don't. I will not love you for harsh judgements. What good did that ever do us? I do not judge you harshly.

Here's something really good from Beach House. I am dedicating it to Mrs Zen because I don't think she has ever known that I loved her truly and she burned it for petty jealousy. For something I don't even feel, so alien was that to me. To punish me for liking someone. If I had ever had the chance to make account for myself, I would have explained that having a heart big enough to love her meant having one big enough for others. But she wanted something wizened and small like her own, and I didn't get that chance: she destroyed our marriage instead. Still, she deserves something this good--everyone does, and I feel bad about not expressing that I did, do, love her:



When I meet people, I know that it will be them who decide. I will try to find ways I can like them, and they will weigh me in a balance and, it seems, mostly find me wanting. I think it is a virtue to be want to find something in a person to like, even if it's not always possible. But it means I am always the one battered at the end of the night, a week later, when it breaks down.

It feels painful to be putting myself on the line, always saying "like me" to strangers. I don't mean I put on an act. I wouldn't even know how. I just quietly hope someone will.

This next is from JJ's new album. This is for K. It's hard to pick something for her because our tastes do not coincide. But here's the thing. They don't have to. I am lost in a world where people feel you have to have a shitload in common before you can like each other, but in fact, you can just like each other and the rest of it takes care of itself. So I hope she likes it, but if she doesn't, I'll like it twice as much for her:




Sometimes I wish I was somebody completely different, that I wasn't lame, ugly, stupid, whatever. Then I stop and realise, no, I just want to be loved for who I am and most of the lameness, ugliness and stupidity is just accretions, and if you know that, you will not need me to change.

Here's something from Four Tet's excellent new album. It's for anyone who wants it:

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:01 pm