Tender is the 2am Insomnia

Dear the not-forgotten,

A few of my friends had very nicely reminded me of my absence from my blog. So this is for you. My excuse this time is that I didn't want to distract my schoolmates from their studies. Hope you all passed with flying colors, or at least C's for "continue."

The nighttime is when I have my deepest thoughts. It is also unfortunately when I go to sleep, so I lose (or return) those thoughts to my subconscious. If there was a woman who would listen to my nonsense and play it back to me in the morning and make me sound really smart and froody, I'd marry her this instant! But I should think such an angel would be driven mad after a short while. I might just learn to use the recorder function on my phone, and it would likely be much cheaper than buying a shiny bauble.

Tonight (or this morning) I'm reflecting on the tumult of emotions during the past fortnight (and considering how to bring back the word 'fortnight'). And I'm realizing that such heady reflections are best done without the backdrop of South Park on the CW at 1:30AM. Though some television is art, even high art at times, syndicated reruns of pre-pubescent bathroom humor probably doesn't make the cut. And that's not an insult of South Park; it's just a statement of general truthiness.

One of the few good things about Twitter is that it limits your narcissism to 140 characters or less, so even Ashton et al are forced to curb their self-enthusiasm (though I don't see why you can't just serialize your tweets, but I have a feeling multiple tweets in rapid succession would somehow violate Twitter etiquette if there happens to be one). I am thankfully not bounded by such artificial caps though I probably should be, considering the length of some of my posts.

And tonight there's a jumble of things in my mind I need to straighten out. There are some good ideas, some random ones, some stupid ones, some funny ones, and even some romantic ones. And by romantic, I don't mean the stuff that leads to the horizontal tango.

So here's something 'romantic' I'll put out there, which hopefully won't cause me to lose too many man cards:

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald is rapidly becoming one of my favorite novels. At times my homophobia flares when I think about how a dead man can move my emotions so much through clever placements of words. It's sickening how good the prose is. Sure, Jane Eyre made me tear up a little (-1 man card), but Bronte was like one of those really good one-pitch pitchers: elicit sadness, elicit joy, and repeat with increasing levels of absurdity* (think about the overall plot of Jane Eyre and tell me that isn't as contrived as Days of our Lives).

And as I think I might have written previously, I enjoy books which I can relate to (and thus, I'm writing my memoirs because I think many people can relate to my story). The more the story resonates with my own, the more it enthralls me into submission. And I am completely under Mr. Fitzgerald's mercy in a romantic but hopefully not a horizontal-tango kind of way; I am in love with Fitzgerald as the male characters are in love with Dr. Diver (who is a dude) in the novel.

My favorite paragraph thus far:

The truth was that for some months he had been going through that partitioning of the things of youth wherein it is decided whether or not to die for what one no longer believes. In the dead white hours in Zurich staring into a stranger's pantry across the upshine of a street-lamp, he used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in.

That describes my last few weeks perfectly: figuring out what is truly important in my life, the clarification of wants vs needs, whether or not my values are my own or have been borrowed from others, the nature of love and if I am capable of it, and the realization that I will fall short of my grandiose expectations of myself. But I shouldn't ruin perfection with my further commentary, so I'll leave it at that.

I'll try to be humorous the next few posts, but no promises. Please excuse my nonsense--it's late and I haven't found the one who will make me sound good. I'm taking applications for the position, but the job pays very poorly (and may come with a prenupt unless the applicant makes more than me of course).

--
*not used in a derogatory sense