The sermon for Jan. 25, 2003 is: and may they forever be damned
4:47 p.m. Oh my, I'm being manic-depressive. This is my depressive entry; if you've missed my earlier mania mania mania mania entry, ah lass or laddie, don't lose composure or equilibruim from an inchoate vertiginousness. Depression follows mania follows depression; it is dependable as the dreariness of seasons and the sameness of roses and Gertrude Stein's stutter.
Clues that I'm manic-depressive:
A couple nights ago I spent a thousand dollars on books and DVDs at Borders. I bought L.P. Hartley's "The Go-Between." I bought the Criterion "Withnail & I." Plus I bought the complete "Musicals" DVD shelf and the entire "Kevorkian" self-help bookshelves. At the cash register I suddenly became overwhelmed by a wave of utmost resignation. It is foolish to blow one's savings on a collection of novels and DVDs that one does not expect to live long enough to experience, just as it is foolish to buy all this now; it is just as foolish, I pondered as I studied the cashier's half-expectant, half-bewildered smile before me, to hold on to this money as safeguard against imaginary monsters like "tomorrow" and "the future" and "401(3)k." I was disappointed that the cashier, after spending half an hour struggling with all the alarm-keepcases on the DVDs (tearing off one of those strips, apparently, was equal to neurosurgery in concentration, effort, schooling and physical stamina) and ringing up my receipt -- $1,045.00 American, puh-leez! -- did not lower the lights, fire the confetti cannons, and rush me from behind the counter along with her whole cashier corps, dressed in straw boaters and striped vests, twirling sparklers in their hands, and hoist me upon their sturdy Borders-burdened shuolders, and sing that song from Citizen Kane,
There is a man A certain man Who just now's spent A cool one grand.
I was also disappointed that, when I came outside and morosely started stripping the wrappers off my swag, that once upon I time I used to gleefully shoplift this much stuff in lieu of sexual gratification. Where is that Jonathan of yesteryear? I thought, gloating nevertheless over Le Million, A Nous La Liberte, Manhattan, Singin' In The Rain, etc., etc., etc. Where are the snows of Kiliminjaro?
I sleep for at most 4 hours of the time. The rest of the time I spend watching DVDs and reading The Go-Between.
Except for last night, when I suddenly decided to improve my life. I will go to the dentist! I will go to a doctor! I will go to a psychologist! I will go to the DMV and get a driver's license and stop driving illegally! I will build a playhouse for children who are in need of a house to play in! I will file my taxes! I will open my mail and look for my W2! I will build a carriage for Valerie, and lasso ten thousand hummingbirds to pull it! I will make ten thousand little lassos! I'll contact every person whom I've ever met and tell them that they are not forgotten, they are not alone! I'll live in my car! I'll become a hobo! I'll survive by surreptitiously eating table decorations and ivy!
I lay awake all night and surreptitiously wrote all this down in the dark, while beside me Valerie complained resignedly in her sleep and ground her teeth (an alarming thing, as witness the seismic jumps in my otherwise regular, serial-killer handwriting).
I'm pretty sure this counts as manic.
Och y fi, as that Nogood Boyo repeatedly tells himself under milk wood-- this was supposed to be my depressed entry.
Why was I depressed? Oh, nothing; I was catching up on diaryland and eagerly looked up what astonishments, marvels and new ways of forgetting what one has always known seastreet had for us today. I was impressed with his four-still distillation of Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, a movie I'd seen once in a sex workers assistance program. Anna Karina is beautiful, so beautiful: couldn't one argue that from Le Petit Soldat up until Pierrot Le Fou, Godard's cinematic thesis can be summed up as, "My wife is pretty! My wife is pretty! I've got a fancy, pretty wife!" I submit that the answer is yes. Anyway. I just watched "Vivre sa vie" click by, showing different sides of Anna Karina (is there a homage at work, by the way, in the similar montage of shots of Jeanne Moreau and that hideous statue in Truffaut's Jules et Jim? anyway) when I suddenly thought: my god, Stephanie Gyure looks like Anna Karina.
My insides, which were already pulsating sickly with rotten mania and stinking depression, started to churn and make rotten-mania-stinking-depression butter.
Damn you, Seastreet! I said in the best William Shatner I could rouse up under the circumstances (e.g., impending death by heartbreak). Damn you Jean-Luc "Cinema" Godard! Damn you, memory and the invocation of memory, the burst dam of hurt held in reservoir. Damn you George Eastman and Bear Kodak and Thyppe Daguerre!
Oh wait, I'm manic again, hold on.
(While we wait, let's talk about my belt buckle and what's written upon it. "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate." Discuss.
Oh, and for those who do not know who Stephanie Gyure is, suffice it to say that she looks just like Anna Karina. Please don't ask me to explain any more.)
Okay, I'm depressed again. Yay.
Perhaps I should go to bed. It's 5 pm here. Valerie's in Los Angeles. I'm alone with my bad thoughts and my pingponging emotional state. And where are you, dear Diary?
Et in septernam pereant.
the Funny Show
agriculture poem
my life in the ghost of Bush
time-lapsed (part 1)
unreconciled
Images are taken without permission from the fine and trusting folks at Folk Arts of Poland; please purchase something from them. Background music stolen without permission from Epitonic, Basta Music, and just about everywhere else my unscrupulous hands could grab something. No rights reserved.
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