February 16, 1998.
Oh, but I'm sick today. So sick. So very sick. I'm at school, and you're probably wondering why that would be, since I just very deliberately spent three poorly constructed sentences to trying to emphasize the fact of just how sick this boy is today. I didn't quite make it to semantics this morning, and for that I feel wretched. We have a mid-term on Thursday and it really would have done me good to attend that pivotal "pre exam" class so that I'd have some greater idea, readings aside, of what I'd be getting myself into. Nevertheless, there I was this morning, freshly awake and ready to cover my genitals with clothes and bound out the door, when nausea and cramps and bloating and everything else that could make me want to run for the nearest washroom hit me. I'd say that I was conceivably menstruating today, except... well... I won't get into the details. So I missed the bus that would have taken me to school early enough to get a seat in the class, and then I got ready to go, and then I got sick again so I missed the bus that would have taken me to school just in time to get to semantics. Then I felt sick again so I missed the bus that would have deposited me fashionably late for class, and we went straight for the bus that got me to school just in time to avoid throwing up on the bus and running for another friendly drain pipe of whatever sort. By that point, the likelihood of showing up for semantics at all didn't look very good, and this is why I'm here, in a lab, (tentatively) typing. I get to be here all day, too. That's the really tragic part. I'm starving, but I can't eat anything lest the dark forces of regurgitation lead me astray, and I can't go home because I'm blessed with a guilty enough of a conscience that in a house where ten people on two floors are pretty much using the same bathroom, I'd feel guilty for the extremely compelling nausea I'd experience every fifteen minutes that would necessitate me pretty much staying in the washroom all day. I have an important philosophy class at 2:30, which I musn't miss, and which I must be early for, so that I can demonstrate to my philosophy professor (he's my favourite professor in the world. I've had him for two years, and he'll never know that I'm among his star students because I never, ever contribute anything to the in-class discussions, I'm frequently running past him with great shame after walking into class late, and I always hide in the back to disguise my quiet awe of his lectures.. despite this I've never gotten anything less than an A with him, thanks to my big fat juicy blueberry of a brain) that I've changed my evil slackerly ways and wish only to bask in his MIT PhD. genius.
I have Cognitive science at 6 tonight, and this is the class I
absolutely must attend due to the fact that the professor holds a
fiendish quiz at the beginning of every lecture. I mean, this is an
especially interesting class to me as well, but I'm feeling so unwell that
I'll only be suffering through it, utterly incapable of absorbing
anything, lucky to recall enough to earn my typically nifty quiz scores.
Bleah.
Anyway, my weekend was restful; I got some small amount of
work done (at the expense of Snivels... sorry), and finally retouched a
certain logo that's been causing me so many difficulties. I shall
endeavour to create more of a certain poster soon, but it hinges on
precisely how much free time I'll actually have this week, and I sincerely
doubt it will be altogether that much. Mid-terms, don't you know. And I
mean, I know today's Snivel is mundane, but I should also mention that I'm
debating growing a beard. "Debating" in the sense that I haven't shaved
yet, and with each passing day it becomes increasingly obvious that I
probably should. By the end of the week I'll have more of an opinion on
whether I deserve (or am truly capable of) excessive facial hair or not,
but if you have any opinions as to whether or not I'd be a dork to try,
you would be best advised to
let me know.
In any case, my blithering must cease for now. My next class is imminent, and I feel sound enough to make the trip. I apologize for the fact that you're probably left bored and unsatisfied by my unadventurous day, but consider also that I'm feeling much the same way myself. And I get to suffer from sickness, too.
Oh but I ramble when I'm fevered. Anyway, what can I say on my behalf except that I'm my usual, high-strung stressed-out whiny self?
Actually, no. I'm feeling better now. I've been pacing around my room, and while it was just minutes ago that my eyes were puffy and heavy and I was feeling sick and weak, I'm finding that being angry really gives me strength. Like the Dark Side of the Force. There you are, crippled by viruses and exhaustion, and then you're shooting lightning bolts of pure hate at people on the street and deflecting laser bolts with a wave of your hand.
See, for weeks, I've been debating the relative possibilities of putting together a tirade about my friend Clorinda; the factor that holds me back is the lack of time I seem to have for careful, well-thought-out commentaries, and a sense of objectivity. As well, she's been in a state of fluctuating moods, and (as well I know) reading someone's cheeky, perhaps even insolent, amateur analysis of your life is an arduous task that requires ridiculous amounts of inner energy to perform. With that in mind, I was still rummaging through some old letters I'd received from her during this past month, and I got engrossed in reading them. And from there I grew to a state of being downright cantankerous, and even (as I'm feeling now), bloated and delusional with my personal brand of irate indignation. I mean, don't misinterpret me; I'm not mad at Clorinda. What's making me angry is my (of course biased, and of course, exaggerated) perception of the people in her life who seem perfectly capable of hurting her, and upsetting her, and foiling her plans for a grand and glorious regime of contentment and self-fulfillment.
Far be it for me to name names.
Clorinda is a wonderful human being. I simply cannot overstate
this absolute fundamental fact of the universe, even if I do tend
to actually repeat it more than ought to be grammatically
essential.
One almost expects footnotes.
You've read about her
on my page, and possibly (hopefully... (grim tapping of feet) ) you've
even read her website, which of course has a link somewhere in this
crazy manifesto of
mine. She's brilliant, and clever, and sardonic, and beautiful. Of all
the brilliant, clever, sardonic, beautiful people in my complicated life,
I believe hers are the opinions I fear and cherish the most. This is
because her friendship, unlike those of all the people I love, is relative
and tenuous, and strained with distance -- for you see, she lives entirely
too far away to be at all affected by my patented and
ingenious "Hypno-Ray of Absolute and Utter
Mesmeronic Affection and Blinding Bedazzlement".Essentially this means that I can do stupid things, and she
won't let me get away with them. Lousy ray.
Now, obviously, and unfortunately, I have certain deep-running feelings for Clorinda. Don't, however, be tempted to even think for a second that my opinions don't count for this reason. Just like poetry will tell you (and you must always believe poetry; especially my poetry... in fact, when you're done with this, why don't you go read them all over again?), ideally when you care about someone, what you really care about is his or her happiness; and your own be damned if it gets in the way (so if I ever complain about being unhappy, just cuff me against the skull and be heard to mutter: "Take it outside, loveboy"). Whenever Clorinda takes the time to write my most unworthy self a big long letter, or actually anything, I'm at once delighted and horrified, because while obviously I'm happy to be in the most fortuitous position of having just received word from one of my favourite people in the world, she generally tends not to say too much unless she's extremely unhappy about something. Typically, one of two people is most capable of upsetting Clorinda. I'm pretty good at it, because when I write to her, or about her, my opinions are often disagreeable; but increasingly I get more and more mentions about her boyfriend of these past months.
I don't believe he gets a name. *
I'm wearing women's clothing today. I'll be a bitch if I want.
"Love" is a word I'm essentially disgusted with. I think we need another noun. People misuse the word 'love' all the time. I'm excellent at it. I can usually focus on events on retrospect and say, "Wow... that wasn't love.. that was lactose intolerance! And now it's gone! More milk for me!" Not always, but I seem to be as poor a judge of what love is as anybody else is. This being the case, if anyone tries to analyze what I personally call love, and then proceeds to try to convince me that it's not really what I'm feeling, be warned that I will have to bite you. Because we're even worse judges of each other than we are of ourselves. People use 'love' as an expression to convey entirely too many different things, and most of them are corruptions of the legitimate feeling or state to the point of being just cinammon-scented pencil shavings.
Clorinda's boyfriend loves her. I think she even loves him. I get the impression though, that her boyfriend doesn't really understand love. Or he doesn't understand her. He seems to have a need for her without actually being properly capable of appreciating what a treasure he has. This is my opinion. I've met him once. I'm sure I said all of twenty words to him. He lives on the other side of the continent, in a different country. I may never see him again. Clorinda, again, tends to write most when she's upset, so usually I get to read about the dumb things he does, as opposed to the (what I'm sure are) infinite sweet happy boy things he also does in a day to make her happy. So. My opinion, given all these pretexts and biasing factors, is that I really don't think he knows what kind of a great person he has on his side.
Aside from Clorinda, one of the other things this person likes best in the world is to smoke up. Clorinda most definitely does not share this opinion. She hates it when he does it. She really doesn't like chemicals, and this is a viewpoint I happen to share based on my own past experiences. I won't presume to guess what Clorinda actually feels inside, but my own experiences with stoners is that they're mellow, goofy, hungry folks capable of extremely entertaining antics (as quality films like Dazed and Confused and the many adventures of Cheech and Chong have taught us), but they can also be exceedingly selfish. I used to date a hash pig. She was really nice, and she was beautiful, and funny, and clever, but she was obsessed with immediate rewards. She didn't wait around for her actions to have consequences, didn't really think things through, and wound up hurting a certain person (typing to you now with a sore head) rather deeply. She liked partying a whole lot, and she liked me a whole lot, but I fought the party and the party won. Also, she believed in God and I was merciless to her about it, but let's pretend it was all the Party's fault, yes?
Anyway, it bothers Clorinda terribly that her boyfriend is so fond of partying, but she's made the concession that so long as he doesn't smoke up when she's around, it's all good. But he still does. One one occasion, she was chatting with him on-line, and she told him how unhappy and unimportant it all made her feel, and his replay was "That's no good" .. "I'm sorry you feel that way, but there's nothing I can do about it." Which is, I hope you'll agree, the wrong thing to say. I'm not sure what my exact reaction would have been if I were in his place... it's bothersome when someone you care about wants to change your ways, but I think it's important to hear them out. I couldn't force Broken to stop smoking, for example (at least, not being the person I am), but everytime I cough she feels really bad about it and tries to quit. And I know that someday, she'll probably succeed. I seem to have the ability to gradually change people into vegetarians, at least to a degree. Caira considers herself a 'Porkivore,' but she eats less meat than many.
I think 'compromise' is a really big, expensive fat word for our lexical centres to assimilate properly, but it's a word I like a lot. Clorinda's boyfriend seems to have no interest in anything of the sort. And to some, that would be a small issue, but obviously for her it isn't, and people's feelings, for good or bad, are something you have to take into consideration when you try to engage them in affairs of love. She feels excluded when he smokes up, and usually he's not inclined to do anything at all while he's cuckoo for cannabis, except hang out with his best friend and play video games. And many a Nintendo widow there is in the world. Just walk past any arcade, and you'll see the lost, forlorn, patient, foolish, girlfriends. He also happens to not be especially good about money. He doesn't work (which must be looked at subjectively... I mean, hey, I made a habit out of it for a really long time), and he can't usually pay his own way. Let alone hers. She often feels drained of money, and she's very forgiving about the fact that he usually can't pay her back, but it stands that it's really nice when people occasionally make sacrifices to do nice things for you, and from my (again, subjective) perch I haven't heard of many cases of this. But more on that later.
Clorinda has been miserable, and angry, and destructive. Sometimes she cries, and sometimes she screams, and sometimes she cuts herself. She doesn't seem to know why, and I certainly don't know why. I worry about her all the time now; it keeps my mind of my horrible year at school and my desperate attempts to pull in straight A's this term and how tired I am and how depressed I am, and everything else blah blah blah. I can't do anything to help at all. This is more of a regret for me than almost anything. While I'd still very much like to have my own time machine to fix all my past regrets, I also wish I could fly or be carried by something that can fly (in particular, one of my squadrons of flying death-bots) so that I could have a presence that actually meant something beyond the abstract to her life. But I can't do anything. I can care, but that doesn't really matter to anybody, now does it? I can't just Care Bear Stare someone's wounds away.
In any case, perhaps this stress has been the impetus for an act of closure that Clorinda attempted a few weeks ago; she broke up with her boyfriend. I think this was more of an ultimatum, of course, than action, since she didn't (understandably... she cares about the lug) especially want to end things... but he seemed genuinely affected and upset by the idea, and I think the understanding came into existence of "If you don't shape up, there isn't going to be a happy ending," and in the presence of such finality, they attempted to get some time apart with the condition that if he worked certain things out, they could get back together. I was initially shocked and worried when she first talked to me about this, but it became so surreal and baffling when these deep-running scars and issues were magically smoothed over with promises that previously had never seemed forthcoming. Perhaps he wasn't capable of seeing that he was hurting her, or perhaps it was easier to hope the problems would go away given enough time. I don't know. I can't say if I'm even optimistic or cynical. I think, tentatively, they're back together right now. Clorinda recently began talking to a counsellor who seems to be doing some good (at least, compared to the first one), but she went on a trip for two weeks, and Clorinda didn't especially want to be single and without anybody to talk to, so she's given her boyfriend free reign over his domain until the counsellor gets back. And then, I suppose, he has to make some hard choices about his lifestyle as they pertain to Clorinda. I don't know how I feel about this in terms of quantifyable words. I think I'm worried that she'll make more concessions, and he'll keep on treating her like she's not the most important thing in his world. And she'll continue being miserable, and she'll keep on hurting herself, and he won't be helping her in the way she needs because every now and then he'll keep on doing the things that make her more upset, and more unhappy, and feeling more rejected and hurt.
I'm probably wrong. But this is the way I feel.
I have problems dealing with Valentine's Day. We all know that it's simply a day contrived to make you
Which brings us back to "Do."
I have many sweet friends, and
anytime anything happens to make them feel in any way a state that could
be described as 'negatory' I naturally have to resent the cause. In most
cases but Clorinda's (another regret, but such are the limitations of
space and time), I'm charged with a certain amount of mending duties that
prove necessary when girlfriends, boyfriends, old friends, ex-friends,
pirates, or co-workers upset the people I like best. It's my pleasure to
be there for people, but it doesn't mean I like them to be unhappy,
and it certainly doesn't mean I think much of whatever has made them
unwell. So I'm not thrilled with her boyfriend right now, and you'll have
to forgive me for rampaging through the skyscrapers of the internet with
my monstrous ire and flaming fingers (I wish I had a tape of myself typing
an entire Snivel... I bet it's the creepiest sound in the world). I
really care about Clorinda, and in my opinion, someone is consistently
hurting her feelings, and that's like a sin in my whiny bible.
You can e-mail any opinions you've had on the previous Snivel to me. I'll forward them to Clorinda.. I'd put in her address, but I think you really need to find out her true identity that easily.
Anyway, I'm sure tomorrow I'll be cowed into guilty submission because, remember, I make Clorinda angry almost as often as her boyfriend does, but until I apologize tomorrow, I'll just maintain that I rant because I care, and if these aren't necessarily my objective observations, they at least come from a perfectly well intentioned friend who worries.
As a postscript, I should mention in all fairness that Clorinda wrote me back and told me that she actually thought I'd written rather an... hm... entertaining? Snivel. Something. She liked it. I spent a lot of time, as I'm sure you've noticed, metaphorically bracing myself for conflict, and covering my tracks with charitable disclaimers like "I don't really know him..." and things, because I don't think that until the present have I actually gone on a large exposition about Clorinda without somehow upsetting her (perhaps because I talk too much). Although she clarified that I don't upset her nearly as often as her boyfriend does, I was waiting for her inevitable response with a lot of anxiety. I really didn't want to upset her; I really didn't want to start a fight, because I knew I was touching some sensitive areas, because I was sharing some opinions with all sorts of unsavoury chracters (them being you) that frankly suggest I think her much-loved boyfriend is, among other things, a twit. I do worry about her though, and everytime he hurts her, I feel this incredible sense of intense dislike check another square off on a heavily marked piece of paper on its little clipboard as if performing a million-point inspection on the flaming wreckage of a space shuttle disaster when it really didn't like that particular space shuttle to begin with. Basically I was super defensive because her opinion is paramount to me, and if she were to become angry at me it would be more than I could bear. I'd be a crushed little boy with very little to feel good about, and -- trust me -- I wouldn't have been good conversation about it for a couple of weeks. When I'm miserable about most things, I complain about them reasonably well for your entertainment, but I wouldn't have wanted to talk about a fight with Clorinda.
Happily, it's not like that's something I have to worry about.
| * -- If you're very, very clever, this asterisk denotes not only an opinion, but a reference to puzzle over. |
Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.
Return to days past for more Classic Drivel.
Back to Purple People Eater Town.