Harold and Maude

It's six AM. I can't sleep. Again. I feel like I swallowed a bowling ball and I still have to shit it out (or, hopefully, throw it up). I thought maybe sharing some of my hatred for the world, while the sleeping pill kicks in, would help me calm down a bit. Yes, I had to take another sleeping pill. Yes, I'm getting addicted.

I watched Harold and Maude tonight. I wish I hadn't, but I owed it to a friend. I don't know why I always give people a chance, in the end they always suggest bad movies and I always end up feeling compelled to watch them, not to let my friends down. How can such a bad movie have 8.1 out of 10 rating? I tell you what: you take your watch and set it 91 minutes into the future. Congratulations, you've lost 91 minutes of your life doing something more productive than bearing with this movie running time.

No, seriously, Harold and Maude reminds me of those amateur theater classes we all attended to when we were in college, when we all felt we were doing something so deep and emotionally involving and we were feeling so good with ourselves, and we were all Actors, with capital A, we felt towering above everyone else, we thought we could perceive a deeper layer of reality that was out of the others' grasp. Useless to say we were wrong: we just believed we could live life to its fullest without trading anything off. We didn't learn the world yet. We thought we were living something special, or that by doing that we were actually special, but we definitely lacked any kind of taste. And so were the seventies.

This is an ode to mediocre people. Go ahead, you can be all you want, even if you have no talent! Please, do be a piano composer, sir! Oh, thank you madam, why don't you try being an opera singer, you'll definitely become an established one, even if you have not a fucking passion for anything! But, above all, let's all have exaggeratedly onomatopoeic reactions about everything we live or feel, so the others know that we're fully enjoying it.

There is almost no plot, save a random succession of events that are loosely connected to each other. The characters are as deep and complex as a washing machine. There's no consistency in their behaviors throughout the development of the film. But, above all…

SPOILER WARNING

Why did she have to suicide in the end? She was finally really happy after a eighty years' search and she fucking kills herself? Are you fucking kidding me? This is like nullifying the message you tried to convey with the movie: we can manage to get and be what we want, but then we are so stupid to throw it all away.

END OF SPOILER

I give this Harold and Maude a three out of ten. One star because I like Harold's rebel spirit and his uncommon obsession with death. One star for the auto-saluting prosthetic arm (you'll know it when you see it). And the last star for the picture posted above.

Message of the day: The human being is inherently flawed, accept it and you'll need almost no defense mechanisms. You can always be honest and objective with yourself.

Unexpected message of the day: "When you take a plane, you have to rely on its pilot. I hope you don't go up there thinking that you are in control, because otherwise you're definitely schizophrenic and with delusions of grandiosity."

Starting anew

I shaved my head almost completely last night. Down to 1 millimeter. This is so trite and common and cliché that it sickens me. It's so damn obvious. I'll be soon starting a new life, change of life change of haircut. But there's something else and it's even worse.

Actually it all began when I went to a hairdresser friend of mine and got back with a ominous haircut. More than sinister, it was like the typical get-a-life never-will-be Hollywood star haircut. Then, I made the unforgivable mistake of telling a friend of mine that I was thinking about shaving my head. He was drunk. He proposed to everybody to shave their head, in my honor. I accepted reluctantly, but if they're happy with it I don't care. I just want to be cowardly left alone. I don't care who I have to please or how, to get rid of a burden. If it's something expendable, it's not worth to keep it. And so is my hair.

We got home later and shaved our heads.

I hate this testosterone-driven rituals that are supposedly aimed at strengthening the bond between human beings, especially men. One of them even swore to me that he won't have his hair cut until my return. I tried hard to be pleased about it, but in the end I always think: get a life, losers! What is it that you need so much from me? Can't you try to be real men for once and realize it's not that easy for me to leave you all behind? That I'd rather not be reminded, every time I go out and I just want to enjoy my last moments here, that our ways will soon part. Maybe forever. Don't you understand that the more you try to keep me here, the more I'll crave to run away? Don't you understand that I not only have to abandon you all, but also start anew? I'll be facing the unknown and all you can egoistically point out is that it's my fault if you feel like that. Fuck, life is short, I don't want to end up like you, stale in some place, letting time slipping through your mind and life living you. There's much to see and very little time to do it. I'm sorry. No I'm not.

We oftentimes get the opposite of what we want, if we let ourselves be guided by our fears. You have to tame your fear, then use your reason to obtain what you need. And, above all, try not to think only about yourself. Think ahead. If I'd stayed here, life would be worse for me and consequently for you all. I'm sick of this place, I need a change, a change that has forced me to face one of my worst fears: the fear of flying. How can you all be so selfish?

I need to start anew. That initial thrill you feel when you meet someone new, when you discover someplace new, has waned away. I'm back to my inertial self, the self that takes over between one unexpected discovery and the other. The in-between self. The boredom self. I'm not the self I like. I need to change, both inside and outside, and I don't feel like explaining the reasons behind my new behavior to the people around me. Nor I need to justify it. And, even less, I need to be filed as "already known" under a certain number of behavioral patterns. I need new people to be my new self, new people that have no previous image of me.

I needed to get rid of all this, along with my hair.

Fear of Flying

The day I’m leaving is closing in. I am afraid of flying. Terribly. In fact, I have an unbelievable fear of flying, there’s no way I can control it once I’m up there. It’s totally overwhelming. I can’t breathe normally, I start to sweat, all my muscles become rock-hard, the back of my head feels numb and the same happens to my hands and my toes. My brain functions are totally impaired, I can’t reason normally and I can only utter brief meaningless sentences. I can’t focus on one subject for more than a few seconds at short intervals. I wish I could fall asleep, or at least calm down a bit, but as soon as the plane shakes a even a few inches, I become suddenly alert again, eyes peeled, ears open, heart throbbing, quick breathing, dashing forward. And then it takes a while to relax again, hours perhaps. Once the plane lands, I feel sick for two days. My muscles are all in a sore and so are my joints. I feel strong shocks of pain inside my bowels and I can’t sleep. This is my fear of flying. And my flight will last twelve hours.

I can’t even sleep normally these days and the flight is more than two weeks away. I keep tossing and turning in the bed for about two hours, before I manage to get some sleep. The other day, the doctor prescribed me some downers, but they’re not strong enough. They do relax me a bit, but I can easily keep doing almost everything while the drug is supposedly at its “peak” effect. Fuck it. I want to fall asleep up there and this drug can’t even knock me out down here? There’s no way I can risk a panic attack in mid-air. Do they have a medic on board by the way?

I have other fears as well. Mostly the fear of the unknown, knowing what I’ll leave behind and knowing not what I’ll find. I feel I’m already living in my past, like I’m watching a movie of myself shot before my departure. Once this movie ends, my flight takes off and all that I have now will be gone, probably forever. Sure, I’ll keep in touch with my friends, but it won’t be the same as sharing the same roof with them. Sure, I’ll have my cats sent sooner or later, but it won’t be the same as having them here, right now with me, accustomed to this house. Sure, I’ll give a ring to my family every now and then as I usually do, but I’ll find myself five time zones West of them.

And I’ll be alone. No matter whom I think I know in Argentina. No matter who I am in touch with, right now. No matter whom I daydream I’ll get to know. I’ll be alone, and away. Again.

All fears can be normalized down to two basic fears: loosing something or being in pain. I want to live. I don’t want to be in pain. All the rest is expendable.

Why

I'm not into writing. Really. Nor I want to become an established writer. As Orson Scott Card says, in the preface of one of his books…

Being a writer means expecting people to be willing to pay for what you write.

I could never expect something like that. So why am I writing in the first place? Well, these are times for a change, I'll be moving to Argentina shortly and I'll probably be alone for a long time, so I need some place to give vent to my feelings. I'm not writing for anyone in particular out there, I am writing for myself. I'm only publishing it here because it's safer than on my hard drive and because maybe some people will find some comfort in knowing what is it like to leave almost everything you know and set course for a new life.

Now that I mention it… There are only three people who know the day of my departure and for merely practical or emotional reasons. My friends know that I'll be leaving shortly, of course, but I don't want them to grow gradually sadder each day, so they don't know that I'll be leaving way sooner than they think. I just told them a cliché like "Let's live every day together as if it were the last one we lived together". But who believes that shit anyways? And if you really believe it, can you actually do it? I'll be frank: the truth is I don't want them to bother me. I'll give them a one week notice. Seven days are more than enough to bear with the excruciating and pathetic feeling of separation.

I think I explained why I write. What I write? Everything, well I'd like to. I've never really been fond of writing and it's a real effort for me, but my memory is not too keen on storing many details of my life I want to retrieve in the future. It's always been like that. I have a strong memory, but for some reason my life isn't important to it. So the more I set my feelings on "paper", the easier it'll be to dwell on some mental flashback when the need arises.

When I'll write? I hope soon. And where? Probably starting from South America.

Who am I? I'm afraid I can't tell you.