* I have another song named Paradise too. Is that okay? Actually Paradise is one of my favorite words & I am thinking I might write a bunch more songs with this name if it doesn’t present practical problems….
It has been impossible to write on this blog recently, because I have fallen into wife consciousness.
Around a year ago, probably due to James’s inaccessibility, I started connecting my emotions to the faceless glob of possibility known as “The Public.” I enjoyed connecting with these invisible people on an emotional level and somehow felt they were my friends.
But then, around a month ago, a change of heart caused me to seek emotional fulfillment through James instead. This only led to my disappearance as an individual. After all, James is absorbed in technical things 99% of the time. Trying to connect with him by discussing feelings & relationship issues is a recipe for disaster (although he is great at helping me solve problems that don’t involve him).
Females connect by sharing negative feelings & problems. Men interpret this as criticism or a demand to fix something. So you open yourself up to receive empathy but instead get anger and defensiveness. Now you feel more needy and alone than before which makes you try still harder to connect. Before long it turns into a degenerative cycle with all your energy going into a circuit that returns pain.
Whereas with The Public, I can be more real. I can share feelings and always receive soft love in return- even if only in my imagination. The public is the moon- gooey, silver, magical, reflecting you back to yourself until you feel you exist.
But still- the thing about me is I am REALLY into being a wife. It is an unhealthy obsession. I don’t know how to give up on having a perfect ultimate connection and settle for something brisk, sporty and casual. But when you are too idealistic, it causes things to crash.
Plus, I just feel guilty about investing myself emotionally in any other direction. I feel guilty seeking fulfillment through writing a blog post or a song. It feels like I am giving up on love.
And wife consciousness makes it hard to express yourself anyway. While I am ok with making myself look bad- I sort of expect it- the idea of reflecting negatively on James feels like committing triple homicide.
And realistically there is little you can say beyond “Everything is Wonderful! I am so happy!” that doesn’t potentially cloud your husband’s reputation. If you say “Nice dicks, boys!” that could reflect badly on him. If you say “I hate my life- I am so miserable.” that could reflect badly on him. If you say “I love idiots!” that could reflect badly on him.
So I really don’t know what to do. As an artist, I have to straddle the crack between Stepford Julien & being real. Of course, James says he doesn’t want me to make him look good- he doesn’t care about that- but this is hard for me to believe. Making men look good is the whole reason society is fake, isn’t it?
If it was just women, we would be talking about our insecurities & failures all the time, but men- being soldiers- don’t do that. And so women- caring about men- become fake as a way of protecting them. That is why there are only Stepford *wives* & no Stepford singles.
If I was single, I could be transparent, but since I am married I must be opaque, like men are. I WANT to be opaque and fake to make James look good. As an expression of love. But I also need the moon juice that comes from transparency.
Even just writing this could make James look bad.
There is no way out.
I am doomed.
Ps. I hope I am making sense & there aren’t too manny spelling errors. My brain is pretty tired, due to the new dog, Patton, waking me up in the morning, while James’s schedule keeps me up into the wee hours of the night.
The new dog- Patton. I sort of wish I had named him Hazel because it sounds more vicious. But you shouldn’t switch beds midstream. He is a good dog but very demanding.
This is a poem and normally I don’t care that much for poems. Nonetheless, I have heard that gardens grow most vigorously when they are 3% weeds, and since I now have about one hundred songs in here, I thought I should sprinkle in a couple of poems to keep things healthy.
The reason I generally don’t care for poetry is because poems tend to be flavorless, hard to chew, and lacking in digestible matter. Like grass. Maybe the good ones are like vegetables and aromatic herbs. But rarely like candy.
Once I tried giving up candy for a few months and only eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, and other “natural” foods. I was inspired (or probably hypnotized) by a book called “Detox” that claimed if you ate this way your body would become so pure that your skin would be transparent. This seemed like an irresistible possibility, especially since I was due to get married soon and worried about looking my best for my big day.
The main problem with this diet was that it required me to eat literally all day long just to survive. Every moment I wasn’t eating was spent driving around buying strange foods like liquid chlorophyll which Detox required me to drink nightly mixed with olive oil and apple juice. I had to stop painting because there was no time to do anything but eat, and no money either (natural foods are expensive.) My healthy diet was consuming all my time and money, and even some of my friendships too, which had once revolved around going out for pizza and ice cream.
Maybe it would have been worth it if my skin had become transparent, but it remained as opaque as ever. In fact, no matter how many cauliflowers I ate I seemed to look exactly the same.
What is the moral of the story? That if you eat too many vegetables it may detract from fulfilling your life’s purpose. That’s why I like songs- they are like cookies, easy to digest and full of fun and accessible calories. They give you the nutrition you need without detracting from your modern, 0n-the-go lifestyle.
