The Morning After: The Indulgence

I’m forcing my French press to do hard time; manual labour. The coffee is fabulous. And so is the morning.

My depression lifted Saturday night and I’ve been enjoying myself ever since. Depression’s a bitch, but when you get on the other side and see positives in how you handled yourself, it’s a wonderful thing. I celebrated with this fabulous (oh, so) coffee and a couple chocolate chip-peanut butter banana muffins. With butter, no less. (That’s the celebration part.)

My ass feels like it’s in its own zip code thanks to its whole separate world of pain. I’ve been cycling a bit for the past while – I live in a very hilly town, you know. Anything longer than 20km, I generally view as a chore. I’d rather do 4 or 5 20km trips in a week than 2 50km trips. Yesterday was 35km, with 20km about 12 hours before. Duh. Add to that the terrible influence of my big brother, who had me smoking up at 10am (like I’ve never done that before) while I barbecued us burgers. Big ol’ burger before the ride? Oh, ho, ho. Silly Steff. But it was SO good! Bacon and cheese! And we worked it all off, as the pain constantly reminds me. I really must stretch more.

With my morning indulgence, I’ve been carrying on with A Weekend Presented by Cameron Crowe. Today’s offering is Singles. I’ve not seen Elizabethtown, but it strikes me as lacking. Almost Famous was fucking awesome. I, unlike the rest of the female world, it seems, have not drunk the Orlando Bloom Kool-aid. I mean, please, people, he looked goddamned effeminate in Lord of the Kings. Give me men. Men of broad shoulders and facial hair and thick necks and muscles. Not little poncy girlie boys.

I do digress. Singles. The movie of My Generation. The sound that changed our times, pre-Cobain-meets-shotgun. We were angry at George Bush, we were pissed at the overstay of the Me Generation, and we felt like saying so. We wore plaid! We had LONG hair. We turned the phrase “Never Mind” into the creed of a whole demographic. We became slackers.

And Cameron Crowe nails it again. I really should own nearly all of his films, I’ve always loved the voice he creates in, and it always speaks to me. Just one of those guys. My guy’s a Cameron fan, too, but we’ve not talked about him much beyond the statement that we essentially disagree with this movie, and with what his best work is. I say Almost Famous, he says Vanilla Sky. Whatever.

Singles, though, is a better movie than it seems, but it has aged terribly. It’s why they always say to shoot television that can be timeless. If you cater to trends, you wind up having a TV show that looks way too old fashioned even by the time it hits syndicated reruns. That’s why Singles just looks horrible. So lame.

Still, the content is good. Campbell Scott, as always, is a god. (If the world fails to someday soon recognize the greatness of Campbell Scott, I tell ya, I’m finding a belltower, man. People will pay.)

The movie is, in many ways, about lies. The lies we tell to keep the good times rolling.

I do not favour lies, and I despise liars. There is nothing quite so stupid as failing to tell the truth. Someone who lies to me gets my angst and my sympathy. Why are you so uninteresting, I wonder, that you needed to lie? Are you so weak? So scared? So cruel? What justifies it?

There are lies that sometimes need to be told. “I’m fine” is one we all tell daily, but most of the time, we’re wishing the bank was more flush, that the nagging pain on our right side would settle down, that our boss was less of a dick, that the sky was a deeper shade of blue today, that the ringing in our ears would settle down. We’re anything but fine.

Life’s too short to tell the truth in those instances, so “I’m fine” really means “Well, I could tell you a few things but the ratio of inconvenience versus moaning isn’t in balance, thus, yeah, I’m getting by.”

This is why when I say I’m fine, I’m usually not. When I say dandy, keen, happy, good, or groovy, you can take me at my words. So, “fine” isn’t a lie, merely a code. Therefore, I still tell the truth.

I’m sure someone wiser and better than me has previously stated that lies are toxin. They build up in us, and the more lies we hear (or tell), the more we’re fit to burst. There comes a time when we get all lied-out. Telling lies is hard. You need to keep the stories straight. Hearing them is harder. We get sucked in. We lower defenses. We get fooled, and invariably, we become hurt. Worse yet, we become skeptical.

And that is the true crime of the liar. They change us. They change us for the worse. We lose our ability to trust. We lose our faith. We become disbelievers.

I remember who I used to be, the person before all the lies and hurts I’ve run into, undefended, in back alleys and backseats. The lies that have driven me to this person who silently judges those around her.

I’ve realized recently that I’ve become less of that person, though. I’ve become more trusting, more believing. Less cynical. It’s refreshing. Not just in the realms of love and like, but in all areas of my life. Not naïve, by any stretch. I called someone on something just a couple days ago. I have my honorary inner-New Yorker still in tact. In general, though, I’m more accepting.

I’m wondering now if it’s because of changes I’ve made in myself. Changes towards consciously trying to open up more, and towards initiating trust. I’m finding that life’s richer in a lot of ways… give a little more of yourself and you’ll be surprised what you get in return.

I never want to be blindly trusting. I’ll always search for clues in people’s behaviours, which I have become quite gifted at, but I never want the search to distract me from who they are, at the same time. It’s a difficult balance, but one I’m becoming better at attaining.

I have to say, I prefer this life. The life of the trusted and the trusting, it really isn’t so bad. It’s easier, less complicated. It takes less energy to be open to things than to be fighting them, that’s for bloody sure.

I don’t know why, but I felt like writing. This. So, there you go.

Anyhow, bondage is getting written when I get some serious food into me at lunch, after a walk. GayBoy has entrusted Kitty to me. I must go feed and bond with cat; ie: taunt it mercilessly with string. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…”

But I may tease you and delay you when it comes to things like the bondage piece, but I always, always deliver. I just take my own damned sweet time, is all. It’s coming, though. It always comes.