What a strange experience; hopefully this isn’t one of those entries that reek of ‘things which happen in my world and have no real bearing on anyone else’s life’ which contaminates so much of the blogosphere, (you know what i’m talking about). In truth there is a fairly significant portion of my mind that doesn’t want to share the event that I am preparing to report, but in the interest of continuing to consider myself an enlightened human who isn’t afraid to admit anything, I present the following tale; take from it what you will.

Yesterday I had a bit of a hangover (yes, I can hear the gasps of disbelief echoing out from all those reading), at any rate, I went about my daily business more or less as usual, just a little bit slower and with the occasional wince when the pain in my head struck an especially keen note. Thinking nothing much of it, I went to work, and in the interest of taking care of the headache, poured myself a cup of coffee, figuring such to be just the thing needed to rid my brain of this nasty pain which tormented it. It wasn’t.

My workplace is fairly loud and more than a little obnoxious, and about an hour into my shift I realized that there was simply no way that I was going to survive the night. Bidding my co-workers a subdued and pained good-bye I staggered off towards home. Hardly had the door been shut behind me when I found myself on hands and knees in my bathroom . . . ‘nuf said.

Seeking to distract myself from the less then marvelous circumstances that were suddenly my lot I instructed my computer to present me with a movie, Contact.

Before I continue, I feel like I ought to provide a little bit of background information regarding my somewhat odd relationship to this particular film. Despite my occasionally foray into the pretense that I’m a typically cynical, jaded, uberpost-modern human, I am at heart just a sentimental fool and hopeless romantic, and this movie always gets to me, something about the whole concept of coming into contact with an alien intelligence tugs at some deep, pre-intellectual portion of my psyche and . . . cue the harps and violins, the damn film just moves me ok. (everyone who feels inclined to comment on the relative merits of this movie vis a vis its generally dreadful status as another piece of hollywood garbage with a really lame ending - can keep such thoughts to themselves thank you)

So there I am, lying in bed, shivering under the covers with an aching noggin and a swirling gut, and at the moment when the signal makes its first appearance (you know, the radio noise from outer space, those of you who’ve seen the film may recall that the signal makes its appearance in the midst of a tasty little speech about modern humanity’s isolation. Again, hollywood hokum, but to the sick sentimentalist in bed; dreadfully effective), I lost it; just broke down and sobbed. I haven’t felt so futile in years, all the little fantasies that I keep as a buffer between myself and reality crumbled. I wept because I’m basically an agnostic who would love to have faith; I wept because I’m tired of living in a world where jaded cynicism is fashionable and the thought of admitting honest emotion (i.e. posting about a little weeping in bed) gives me pause; I wept because I have a thousand plans that all scare the shit out of me and instead of pursuing them, I tend to wind up hiding behind various bottles of cheap booze; I wept because I want to believe in the essential goodness of humanity and the effort has worn me out; I wept because I was a lonely human, sick in bed.

I could keep coming up with perfectly valid reasons for those tears, but the ultimate truth was that I had myself a nice little pity party, but what surprised me was that the headache started to fade, I fell asleep and when I woke, I felt a thousand times better, I made myself a glass of iced tea (and not the long island variety) and decided to write this post. I could go on for some time regarding the various resolutions I’ve taken from this experience, but I won’t bore you further; the big one is that I was once again shown that I’m still hiding behind any number of foolish pretenses, and I’m tired of them. The person I most want to be is completely honest, and while I’d not go so far as to wish a dark night of the soul on any of you, I do have to say that the experience has done me some good.

- musical enjoyment (should you have enjoyed it) was provided by The Flaming Lips from their spectacular album The Soft Bulletin, which is a marvel of heartfelt, earnest rock and roll

- if after reading this you think I’m a fool, even then I’ve succeeded, I do after all call myself the jester, and a man’s gotta be honest

to everybody, a heartfelt wish of peace, love and fulfillment

- finite

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 1:22 am and is filed under indiscriminate, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.