Thursday, July 27, 2006 // 10:14 PM

sucker that i am

and all i want is to sit and dream, to look at the sky. i got to eat the haagen daz fondue today, and i wish. i wish for nights like these, nights that might have nothing on my mind. i just want to sit down and talk to people for hours, upon hours. inhale a copious amount of decadent sweetness.

it is a selfish thing to say, but i want more Interesting People to talk to. it is not that i am not interested in the lives of my friends as it is, it is not that how are you doing is in any way small talk. it is just me so badly wanting to prod at the world with my fingers, to toss it back and forth in words with someone else who might offer me a new kind of perspective. i want someone to open up my mind and make me think, i am. a little tired of being the one to make people think, all i want right now is to be. completely bowled over. i want to be pushed beyond myself, i want to be allowed to be a full myself, to not have to put everything in simple terms. sometimes. sometimes i like the complication. before the point of noise and chaos and drunken stupor.

and there really is a difference, between being intelligent, and being able to speak the jargon. i like what dennis said that day, after spinning some very grown-up sounding yarn with my parents about business/the economy/___________, the i don't know what i'm talking about, i've just learnt to speak the jargon. even though i don't actually believe in his cluelessness. but i thought about __________ and her apparent taste for the intellect, now, and the disdain she has for a previous bimbotic self, and part of me just wants bend over and laugh, because how much of it, really, is just a lot of pretentious jargon. there are two movies everyone who wants to pretend to be an intellectual artsy shit should watch: Requiem For A Dream and American History X. i don't actually do much media consumption, as much as i enjoy it, but in the most inane way, i've found that these two movies give you a lot of mileage, in the sort of pretentious intellectual small talk that people like to have to show that they aren't brainless. these are seriously good movies, by my bet, but it really does make me laugh, to think of how typical we are, how easy it is to pretend at least superficially that you're some kind of intellectual. how typical and how stupid and how predictable, how inane, how classic, in our rebellion against the selves that we would hate to be (and why, tell me. why?). it's the same as the stereotypical high school popularity catfight, it merely looks more intelligent.

i thought about you and how you speak in poetry. clever, and in a slow and soft voice. charm me, because, the smoothest talking is so much more than just the right words, at the right time. this is me, hooked like a sucker, sucker that i am.

and i've been thinking about the people who think i'm interesting to talk to, and how that half flatters me, and yet half makes me really really sad. to think that i have to keep up. well sometimes i do think i'm an interesting person (though certainly not now when i am not being the bookish drone that i am right now), firstly because being myself i have fashioned myself to appeal to my own tastes by exposing myself to media and influences which i find interesting, and secondly because other people seem to think i'm interesting, which i'm gratified for, but i don't think any relationship has ever survived on being interesting. interesting are the people i hardly talk to, the conversations i have every once in a blue moon, i find them interesting, but it's not possible to function like that. because ultimately if you're looking to be entertained sooner or later this is going to get old, and mundane, and mind-numbingly boring. and i've hopped from friend to friend to friend on that basis of being interesting, and i have resented myself for it, slightly, it really is quite selfish. kwanie said to me, you want to conquer the world, ella, and it's true, i have a lot of intrigue, a whole lot of enthusiasm for a lot of things, which also means that i leave a lot behind, very very regularly. and so interesting feels like self-gratification all over again, interesting feels like exploited friendships left behind. i think about. the people who i have been close to, the people who i have had these madly interesting conversations with. i thought about you and what it would be like to talk to you regularly, and the more i think about it the less and less i can see myself being like that, all the time. it is tiring business, being fascinated, or not tiring, but absorbing, consuming, distracting. but you know during these times these plain vanilla feet-on-the-ground details don't appeal to me at all, and all i want to do is pursue this. this piqued interest.

and yet sometimes, it is: even if i could hear what you said, i doubt my reply would be interesting for you to hear. because i haven't read a single book all year, and the only film i saw, i didn't like it at all. so, so give me this much: i'd rather dance with you than talk with you.

i have learnt something, at least, this time, and that is that i too am a person, i too am more than a collection of ideas, a certain way to be. i have realised how different i can be, this time, from the next time, from the previous times. for all i have said before, all i said about people and about myself, it is a reminder i still need, to be yourself, no matter what they say. it is not even any more about they say, it is all about this What You Want To Be, and Why You Want To Be Something That You May Not Really Be, Inside. so now, looking at myself through your eyes, i think about how all this while i pretend to be someone i am not, about how i offer up this hypocritical simplicity, this wholesome package of a person who is really in many ways not what i am inside at all. and at the end of the day i realise that there is no one particular me, at all, it is ideals some time and whim and fancy another.

and i think. i am the sort of person who does something, about the Whim And Fancy. once when stability was the point of things, for me, i would have fought against this.

the song playing on my computer says will you find out who you are too late?

and i can put myself away, for a while, when it is convenient. i am. astounded at how madly utilitarian i can be. do you think, i will lose myself? this is how i will lose myself: i will stop believing that there was ever a myself worth keeping, at all. and who, really, who is to say the right and wrong, who is to say where i stand, when there is no Correct Answer, to questions like well okay then so who the heck am i at the end of all this useless talking?

and i'm a literalist, you see. once when you said, you're everthing to me, i thought about what everything means (noun, all things, entirety, absolute, the sum total), and i laughed at you for saying it, laughed myself out of believing. for all i may have been and tried to be. this is all bullshit to me, sometimes.

i want to feel safe. i feel safe when i'm close to someone, when i'm in confidence. sometimes i feel like i have betrayed you, in my need to be honest, all the time, with you and with other people. the way i quote people all the time, saying things so deeply personal, it is not that i intend betrayal, neither is it that i value your honesty flippantly. i have this thing about giving due credit, i can't pretend that things are my idea when they really aren't. like my stubborn refusal to read literature commentaries, which will definately have to cave someday. it is why i spin so much elaboration in my trying to make simple points, it is a homage, really, to the memories, to the various people from whom i've garnered wisdom. i respect ideas that much. shumay seemed genuinely surprised that day, when the answer to then where do your ideas come from, if you don't read was uh, my head. and perry is convinced that i need to read to prevent my mind from stagnating, and honestly, it is something i can feel happening, already. and so after my a's i am determined to read, all the books i have always wanted to, i am determined (somewhat) to wrestle my laziness down to the ground. for more than the spurt of adrenalin required to study for exams.

someday. i am likely to regret, take back, all this cockiness. but even if this is stupidity, let me at least admit that these thoughts have gone through my mind.

i will be troublesome, this time.