I am waiting for my temples to go gray. They may have already and I just haven’t noticed, but I don’t think that’s yet the case. With my head shaved, it is hard to tell. There does not appear, at nearly 32 years old, to be any gray in my beard or my hair. I don’t know why I am waiting for the gray. I suppose that in my mind the gray hair is connected with wisdom, or perhaps more accurately, the appearance of wisdom. In my mind’s eye, the vision I have for the man I want to be, or the man I want to appear to be, I imagine that once I go gray, a patina of silver glinting in the stubble at my temples and my chin, that I’ll approximate in some way Brett Favre or The Most Interesting Man in the World: a weathered, handsome visage across which wisdom and experience are elegantly scrawled in silver script. Okay, I’m pushing it; wisdom may never be one of the things that’s written on Favre’s face, but there is something captivating, and handsomely grizzled in his appearance that I desire in mine.
Archive for June, 2011
All the Bureaucracy of Heaven – A Review of the Adjustment Bureau
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011There are a lot of things to like about the Adjustment Bureau. For one, it’s hard not to enjoy spending 90 minutes with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. They are likeable actors who seem so comfortable on screen and with each other, and both turn in the bankable performances that they’re known for. Damon and Blunt have an easiness with each other that’s instantly accessible, an casual way with humor that’s not funny so much as comforting and, though the roles aren’t challenging, they manage them well.
Solve et Coagula
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011I have been reading back over my writing from the past few weeks (‘my writing from the past few weeks’; let the phrase echo, and linger over its bitter-sweetness). It is not bad writing, but it is not good writing either. It is rushed, fevered, pouring out of me with a desperation that I admire. It babbles like a child who needs to be heard, but is afraid that she will not be believed. It has the sour tang of fear, the sharp smell of anxious sweat, and I like that. I like the need in the pieces, I like the raw edge of the voice held captive for so long it is unused to speaking, uncomfortable forming the words and piecing them together in phrases and paragraphs.
Write to Live
Monday, June 20th, 2011I just got off the phone with a friend to whom I said, “I have to write everyday or I will kill myself.” That is not a literal truth, but neither is it a huge exaggeration. When I don’t write, when I spend my days avoiding writing, for whatever good reason, and let a string of days go by without stopping to record something, without stopping to reflect on my life I begin to lose faith, to doubt myself. The crisp image I have of myself, the firm identity I draw from writing, from being a writer, a storyteller, a scribbler and a poet, begins to dim, begins to fade from the page, and I am left with very little to believe in. And that is what I need on a daily basis, to believe in something, to believe in myself, to believe that I exist and that what I do matters somehow. I can’t tell you in words why what I write matters more than what I draw or what I design, but it does. On a metaphysical level I need these words to exist.