“I’ll catch you with my death bag.”
—Killer BOB, from Twin Peaks (1990)
“He slimed me.”
—Peter Venkman, from Ghostbusters (1984)
Dear diary,
I’m writing this on the morning after Valentine’s Day. I could not care less about that holiday. I know people who have not yet found an help meet for them and who therefore hate this day because it adds insult to injury. I myself never cared exceptionally about love, but love found me – it nabbed me; it caught me in its death bag; it slimed me. In other words: I am blessed with it and possess it and enjoy it. However, I side with the valentine-less folks against this official glorification of love. Why? It’s hard to say, but I’ll try:
When one truly breathes love as one’s everyday element, one realizes that it’s not something to cheer about, but rather something for which to feel profound regard – unlike commemorating the winning of war, which makes rabid tribalists hoot and rave, it’s rather like benefiting from physical health or peacetime: love is confidently serene. The overt celebration of love is vulgar.
So I’m not love-crazy. Then what does turn my crank? What I really desire is fame and riches. But I’m completely unknown and apparently destined to stay that way. And although I’m not destitute, I’m only one notch above it: I have barely enough money to keep me housed; I have barely enough of a house to give me shelter; I have barely enough clothing to keep me warm; and I have barely enough food to keep me alive. But I have love in abundance.
Yes, the one thing I never cared about is love, and that’s all I ended up with in life: true love.
§
So, being satisfied on Valentine’s Day but not caring one fig about it, what did I do? Let me see if I can recall how my holiday went . . .
I woke up and wrote thoughts against God. Then my sweetheart and I breakfasted together on oatmeal. Then we read a few tales from the Brothers Grimm, and a few poems from Arthur Rimbaud, and a couple chapters from the prophet Isaiah, and poem about turtles by D.H. Lawrence. Then we bundled up in our snowsuits and walked through the woods to the library, to return this week’s materials and pick up next week’s.
When we got back home, we ate lunch: mashed potatoes and green beans. Then we read John Milton’s “Lycidas.” Then we took a nap.
Once we woke, we spent the rest of our afternoon on our separate interests – I worked on revising and proofreading some of my writings, and she prepared for her upcoming music lessons.
Then we ate supper: black beans and brown rice. Then we played a card game, watched a movie – Brink of Life (1958) – and went to sleep.
That’s it. The only bad part of the day was that, at one point, somebody sent me an instant text message. This meant that I had to use my mobile phone to read it. I hate mobile phones.
One final note: If you speak to me, don’t tell me about all the places that your family members are visiting. I don’t care that your brother is in Florida, and your sister is in Jamaica again, and that you yourself took a trip to White Bear Lake. Wherever you go, your mind is still with you. You can change your surroundings, but your brain remains: it is still trapped inside the same skull. What I care about are your thoughts: your inward pizzazz, not the external world.
Your thoughts keep flowing, whether you choose to relay them or not. They’re like an ever-bubbling wellspring in your head. They happen automatically for you – or by you, or to you, who are their audience and supposedly their producer. But, in order for others to know your thoughts, you must bother to translate them. Put them into words. This requires effort, the expenditure of energy. And it’s a strange action, rendering one’s thoughts into a shared language: it is dishonest, to a degree, by nature; because words are a game that we all sort of half-agree to play – a game of equivalencies – and the rules are hazy, and every aspect is an approximation . . . the concept of “When I make this mouth-noise, you dream such-and-such” fits better in the realm of absurdity than of truth. That’s why I love participating in articulation.
Error is ongoing, incessantly multiplying and augmenting itself. And then sometimes it coalesces into One Big Lie, which we all stand before with reverence. Ooh, look: God! Ah, behold: Love! These are very good playthings, and I cherish them dearly.
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