Up and running!

Why blog? Or, in my case, "Why write?"

The answer is simple (with due apologies to Nietzsche): to celebrate, rant (occasionally--hopefully), and lament.
So this blog was created to vent. There, there I said it. Let it be.

It has been 12 weeks since the end of a long, tumultuous but intense and very loving relationship. The fallout from the end wasn't dramatic at all. Like T. S. Eliot's nightmarish poem, it ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Maybe the banality of it makes the pain more difficult to bear. Drugs help. (Prescribed drugs for you anal-retentive fucks out there). Although I must admit the first time a break up of this magnitude happened in the Fall of 2000, I was drunk and stoned beyond my senses. Trust me on this: it doesn't work. But a good bong, lots of vodka, and Moby blasting in a dark college apartment deep in the forest of Kresge College, UC Santa Cruz, is a trip to remember though. But I digress. The antidepressants numb you, allowing the passage of time to create an illusion of a chronological barrier that not-so-subtly hints at you that you should have gotten over it by now. Going through life numb is dangerous though. You might say politically-incorrect things. And I am ALREADY politically-incorrect to begin with.

To cut short a tale of woe (apologies to the voyeuristic audience, but trust me, there will be plenty more to come), I re-visited my ex-gf's blog today and in her blog, she prayed for the Almighty to heal her broken heart. My heart, which was already broken, was broken again. But how can you heal that which was already broken. How does one reconcile the heart with the head? How many times do you want to try again and again, exhausting each other, and hating or hurting each other more, with each fight; disrupting each other's lives and forgoing more precious opportunities with each break up? How? How many times before you call it quits? When does "having faith in each other" (and thus, trying again and again) become "gluttons for punishment" or emotional masochists? In the words of the former president of Ecuador, the Honorable Jamil Mahaud, "It is often said, 'No pain, no gain,' but consider this, does pain guarantee gain?"

And so, I come to words, logos, for some sort of relief. Some sort of balm. To at least tide me over until mass tomorrow. This is what made me realize that sometimes unchanging tradition is good. It provides a sense of stability for those whose lives are in flux, or chaos.

Do we really get over a failed relationship, or the death of a relationship?
Or do we merely fall in love with someone else and hide behind--distract ourselves with--the new love?
How do we know if it is a real love, or a rebound?

Even the master of despair, Nick Cave is optimistic, "Sorrow has its natural end."

On days like these, it is nice to pretend one can see forever:



This place holds many memories for me...