A Luxury I Have

I am in one of my weird dark moods. Not completely opaque mind you, there is a light. I see the light. Well, I don’t actually see it, but I can feel it’s warmth. It is a good light and it sustains me. It is Friday night, the house is quiet and I am tired. I am looking to write myself out of this shallow hole. Problem is I have little focus or patience for anything resembling an idea or any direction. This is where I am:

I am listening to Elliott Smith, and I wrote this 26 minutes ago.


It’s all I got. I know it is not much, and I should just close the laptop, grab a book and just relax, but I find value in documenting even the malaise and minutia.

Am I alone here? Do you ever just wake up in the morning, shuffle your feet in the darkness to the bathroom, look into your exhausted empty eyes and drop your head with the weight of disappointment and frustration when you are greeted by the same face you have been staring at your whole life. The same monologue begins to play in your head, and you know that you will be forced to listen to that incessant voice in your head for another day.

Having said that, I firmly believe that our lives cannot be photo albums filled only with smiles and celebrations. Sometimes we wallow, we grope, we struggle and we move on. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I like the dark tunnels; down here on my stomach scratching at the floor looking for a way back up is where I have learned the most about myself. Down here in the darkness is where I regain faith in myself. It is where I am reminded that the voice I complain is boring me, is the only voice that has been there since the beginning, and it will be the last voice I hear.

image by ckaroli

I know what you are thinking. This poor sap is suffering from self-loathing and low self-esteem, but believe me, as any reader of this blog or friend of mine can tell you, there is no lack of love for self here. Or maybe there is, how do I know I am no therapist. All I know is that I am pretty confident and usually make a pretty good go of it, but sometimes I allow myself to be carried away by the funk. I ride the waves of angst and let them carry me where they will. The result is most often a cliché trope of bourgeoisie angst that not even I will want to read in twenty minutes, but alas here it is.

The music has changed to Built to Spill and I can already see the clouds moving. You see maybe just a few words running along the sentence lines of this blank page are all we need to help make a seismic shift in attitude. Maybe we don’t need a new body. New eyes. New hair. A new outlook. New opinions and ideals. New core beliefs.

Maybe all we need is to allow the passage of time and a new song:

by the way the guitar at the end of this clip is off the hook

…and you better not be angry
and you better not be sad
you better just enjoy the luxury of sympathy
if that's a luxury you have
and you know no private bad
you know that that's the meaning of you're done
in a world that's not so bad