It happened oh so soon I didn't want to know
Does [s]he really have to go
(You mystify me, you mystify me, you mystify me)"--from an old Cranberries song
Winter is a time for cocoons, I suppose. A time when one realizes that the movie is playing through a gauze filter. Sometimes it's even a time when the case opens, and one realizes that one is a drab moth. I remember in college being sad about someone not wishing to date monogamously, and losing a good bit of my Spring productivity in the process. I was better as a caterpillar than when the chrysalis broke open.
I think that sometimes when the bandages come off, the scabs show. I always feel bashful, personally, at any failure to use aplomb and flair in any emotional interaction. I don't mean necessarily the 'palme du perspire' (to make up a faux phrase) of the teen romance, although I feel those cacti prickling my internal ankles even yet.
I mean instead the sheer humiliation of exuberance misplaced, whether in a friendship, in a business setting or even in a family setting. One says what one thinks and feels, as if the world depended on one's words. But the situations change, the context gets wrong, the words ring like flat notes on an untuned piano.
I suppose that's why I admire people of few words. They don't make the mistakes I do. Sometimes I shudder to think of silly things I've said. I hate the worst when I say something I would never say, but for the enthusiasm of the moment.
I like the Snow lawyer character Getliffe, who says what he believes, and believes all he says when he says it. The problem, of course, is that as the moment changes, so do his beliefs. He's not insincere--he's just dynamic. But it all works out wrong.
Maybe the key is to not say anything at all. The religious sisters in the story "Babette's Feast" boiled bland fish for their diet as their day to day regime. Maybe silence is the bland boiled fish which preserves the soul sometimes.
I suppose I've come to realize on LJ that being dropped by anyone is not something to fret over too much. It prickles a bit, certainly, sometimes (sometimes it is a mild relief), but I've come to realize over time that I am not a universal taste. If I were, I'd no doubt have pledged a fraternity, run for elective office, and married (or what have you) a cheerleader. I don't live my life regretting cheerleaders, though. The thought would never occur to me--until it just did.
But I do think back sometimes on things I write here and on things I say elsewhere (unlike some, my LJ largely reflects who I am, only I am more boring and even less attractive in person). When I have those thoughts, I sometimes feel sheepish. But sheepish is not all bad. I can learn from sheepish.
I believe that the mind is a roving thing, and it goes to places I do not have fully mapped, and sometimes I open my mouth to describe them, and gasp, and then wonder who I am.