Our Own Little Curses

Observation Notes #1

I decided to try out some of my ideas in a format that would help me stay productive and encourage me to write more. So these are my "Rumination Notes", a way to get some ideas and concepts out that aren’t explicitly political but that I still think are worth putting pen to paper. I may make this a bi-weekly thing where there’s something new every other week that’s not political or focused on geopolitics, but your feedback would be much appreciated.

Now, let’s get started.

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She will be fine, but never happy.

Those are the words from an anonymous friend of mine, offering some thoughts on a mutual friend of ours and her ongoing artistry. She’s on the local arts council in my area, an arts teacher, a mother, and a damn good painter. It’s a struggle, despite her good work and accomplishments, our shop-talk went back to the hard, cold reality that despite success and fame, the idea of being satisfied with oneself is very hard to come by. Especially if you are in any kind of artistic endeavor, I have found it hard to find really any happy artists, writers, or performers. Like any addict, you're constantly in search for the next high of applause, misunderstood derision, or a glowing review of the work you’ve accomplished.

I am no artist, but I can certainly relate to the fact that one wants the rush of ripe élan that comes with feedback from an elder colleague saying that the work I’ve done is good. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t get the obvious out of the way when it comes to these kinds of pithy observations. Especially because my friend and I are both in the same parish, and I had never heard him speak like this before, but with him being the Godfather of one of her sons, maybe he knew something I didn't. However I couldn't help but think;

"This is all just projection."

There’s a nugget of truth in that, but in any situation where you know someone personally or intimately, it will certainly not be at the top of your mental family feud scoreboard for what the survey says. Perhaps more than anything, it is just commiseration, wherein fellow travelers remark on their own journeys and screw-ups just to feel a little bit better about themselves. After all, he is a tradesman, his art is literally buildings, decks, and masonry.

Often there is discussion on the power of words, how words can hurt, and the whole discourse around stochastic terrorism these last few years. Yet the one that has been sent to the dustbin of self-help books and Lean In feminists has been the impact of words on the self. I try my hardest to avoid bouts of depression, although they inevitably come to any human being living in this day and age. Time spent outside and in prayer help in this regard, as does being productive. I tend to write my best work when I’m depressed, which I fear is a common trope for most writers. However, we can curse ourselves with the self-fulfilling prophecy by employing tropes or themes or aspiring to be a character who is "literally me."

I told my friend that I felt like you just cursed her. It was a curse on her to be constantly at work but never truly happy. There are of course, personal and extenuating circumstances that might lead to such a conclusion but nonetheless, it felt like the words were now just fait accompli.

Will they be? Only time will tell. Perhaps he is merely using what data points he has on this individual and making an educated guess based upon her personality and work ethic. That seems to be the likely case, but who knows. I of course for the purpose of making conversation may have said what I said to keep the discussion going from a rather damning conclusion but that conclusion did indeed feel like a curse.

This little back and forth was of course what led me to write this short little piece and reflect on my own life, and the curses I have wrought upon myself but also the words from others. I had a girl break up with me, a song was associated with the moment, and the band is awful, but the song is good in the way this particular song ends.

She hopes I'm cursed forever to sleep on a twin sized mattress in somebody's attic or basement my whole life. Never graduating up in size to add another and my nightmares will have nightmares every night, every night.

For those of you who looked it up, yes, it is from one of the gayest bands in last twenty years. Nevertheless, this particular song (a banger that it may be) has had me in the summer months drive down the road with the window down blaring it loudly as I belt out the final lines in harmony. It feels good, although it only enables the worst of our secular views of relationships. Without any purpose to it other than assigning values to something that happened years ago, you find yourself wondering why the hell are you miserable still? I’m clearly not the same person from nearly a decade ago. (I am getting to that age now where I can say that and not exaggerate which feels weird.) Nevertheless, in my time alone, and still sleeping on a twin sized mattress, I can’t help but chuckle. I am not nearly as moody, hormonal, or angsty as I was back then, and still I cannot help but look back and feel while I try to figure out my life now.

I think curses are very much a real thing. Not in the Wiccan or Goth GF putting a curse on her ex as so often parodied, but we curse ourselves into the fetishistic desire for our own misery. Yet they aren’t curses put upon by others, but by giving those words the power to be a curse on ourselves because we want to fulfill that prophecy.

While I find his position on immigration to be the world’s worst position (Open Borders Libertarian), the comic artist Zach Weinersmith has this old bit about Charlie Brown of Peanuts fame about grief:

How many of us are the lampooned Charlie Brown? How many people go out of their way to ignore the titular "You’re a Good Man" to just let it be as they wallow within themselves, a sign of a much greater malaise that we cannot yet fully comprehend because we have consigned ourselves to our own caves where the shadows cast by the flames give us the pretty illusions we want to believe?