Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

Last night after I got home from work and conked out in a brief nap with all my clothes and even my shoes on in the style of Marty McFly at the close of Back to the Future, I went to the Mercury Lounge down on sixth street to attend this open mic thing George had suggested. It was nice to get out and do something I wouldn’t normally do. Much of it was entertaining, but I’m afraid I wasn’t in the highest of spirits. I was simultaneously indulging in and fighting one of those black moods I’m prone to. I got to meet Prentice Riddle, a guy who has one of those nice eclectic blogs I enjoy, but I faltered and unloaded my black mood in the form of a petulant, cynical opinion or two lobbed into a conversation on Afghanistan I had not even been a part of. It’s almost as if I impulsively decided at that moment to externalize my bad feeling and to recklessly violate rules of propriety with people I barely knew. This would have been sufficient to make me feel out of control and shitty, but then it just reminded me of how far I have to go and how I seem to be repeating myself and never learning from past mistakes.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite writers from history, Michel De Montaigne. One of those with the stoic, prudent, and composed attitude I admire and envy. In this essay he captures that feeling, the surprise and familiarity you experience when you behave in those ways you hate yet are prone to.

‘Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such famous impressions commonly, proceed. This it is that obstructs information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends, worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight by their littleness. And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not prepossessed. To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand myself.“

On the way back to my car I argued with someone very close and special to me on the phone, someone I punish for caring about me, only adding more and more and reminding me of my crimes and misdeeds and selfishness and the way I’ve involved unsuspecting people in my problems. The word for the day, for the year, is opprobrium.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2003 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.