langer:

meaghano:

You know, and burn me at the stake and call me Joan of the antifeminist narrative arc for saying this, but, I talk to so many men about a similar horror. That cringe factor you get when calling to mind a self-righteous teenage self or a college self who found the clitoris and thought they knew all there was to know— it seems men, or it seems a masculine characteristic, a proclivity I suppose (at least in the men I speak to, and believe me, I’m aware that that is a special set/sect), to want to die when they think of the mistakes they have made or the fools they have been, but why?

Oh I don’t know, Meaghan.

I’m thirty-years-old and I still have no idea where the clitoris is, and pleasuring a woman is always kind of like trying to work the clutch on a manual transmission you’re unfamiliar with, this sort of trial-and-error thing where you just go up and down until things start moving and then pray you don’t stall out when you hit the gas (and—HA!—seeing as I’m single and I can’t talk to girls and I live in a city with a great public transportation system which has relieved me of any need to ever use a car I end up dealing with both sides of this metaphor with almost identical regularity [read: never]).

And I absolutely loathe the person I was at various points in my life, and not because I wasn’t fucking enough girls or doing enough partying or whatever else it may be that was available to me then but off limits to me know—but simply because I was doing it without the knowledge I now have, the knowledge that every minute of your life will be looked back upon from some distant point in the future with sentimentality and longing, and that if you don’t live it right you’re going to end up regretting it.

And I think about Yeats saying “That is no country for old men. The young/ in one another’s arms” or Pascal saying “We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight”.

And then I think about how I went to college kind of late and when I was a grizzly 26-year-old sophomore I was walking through campus one day with this 18-year-old kid I’d befriended and I said to him something along the lines of “If you don’t hate who you are right now when you’re my age then you’re doing it wrong”, and then I think about how much I hate the guy who said that—but not because he was wrong, but simply because I don’t think he realized just how right he was.

if you would have asked me this question when i graduated college i would have said “I’m such a different person now than i was then.”  But the older i get, the less i believe this.

I think we get better a coping with life’s ups and downs.  i think if we saw ourselves as a pendulum, we can become more centered as we age, but the range of motion in our character is set early on.  and the swings in our past are still a part of us.  delete the old blog posts.  burn those journals.  it does not matter.  it is a part of you whether you care to deal with it or not. 

i do think at the core, people are not changeable.  their essence.  but i think they can make a conscious decision to act in contrast to their nature, like a recovering alcoholic. an almost impossible task to accomplish without losing your sense of self, which most people come to terms with in mid-life.  how much conforming you do, whether to break a cycle of violence, or to just fit in, is your choice.  how much can you live with?

you may be done with the past, but the past is not done with you

if a man is obsessed with me, should i be flattered or call the cops? children's literature says the former.

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.  So he said to his mother, “I am running away.” “If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny, I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.” 

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother, “I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.” 

“If you become a fisherman,” said the little bunny, “I will become a rock on the mountain, high above you.” 

“If you become a rock on the mountain high above me,” said his mother, “I will be a mountain climber, and I will climb to where you are.” 

“If you become a mountain climber,” said the little bunny, “I will be a crocus in a hidden garden.”

“If you become a crocus in a hidden garden,” said his mother, “I will be a gardener. And I will find you.” 

“If you are a gardener and find me,” said the little bunny, “I will be a bird and fly away from you.”

“If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said his mother, “I will be a tree that you come home to.” 

“Shucks” said the bunny, “I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.” 

Thats fucked up you guys.

when people get sloppy it means they want to get caught.