For no real reason, aka all the usual ones, I have fallen way behind on this Prince project I was embarking on. Work, the gym, marijuana, napping with Jacob, wanting to watch crap tv shows and funny movies, wanting to watch things that I could laugh at, could giggle at, usually in a giggly state. I wrote about the first two albums and have only listened to the first five ones. I got a bit stuck on Controversy, listened to it over and over again for a period of several days, mainly the titular track, which I keep on trying to understand why I love so much.
Maybe tonight, if I'm not too drunk after eating dinner with my family, I'll try to pick up the pieces and salvage what I can of my intentions.
It is Thanksgiving and right now I am sitting by myself in my kitchen, again listening to the Controversy album. Jacob worked the overnight shift and is asleep in the next room. I've got my headphones on. He is soon going to be transitioning off the overnights, which I am excited about because it will mean that our house will hopefully be less sleepy, quiet, that we will be awake during similar hours.
In a couple of hours, we are going to go eat dinner with my family at Freeman's. My mom said she didn't feel like cooking dinner this year and wanted to eat in a restaurant again. We did this last year and I found it fairly depressing. I thought it might be a one-off thing but it seems that she has now thrown in the towel on trying to cook Thanksgiving dinners. People keep asking me what I am doing for the holidays, them telling me what they are doing, these days bringing out the sentimentalist, the family man, in every person seemingly. I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for a bit this morning, under this day's spell. I am sad that I am not in someone's house with a lot of other people helping to prepare food and drinking beers, a loud TV on in the other room, the noise of human beings gathered together. Next year, maybe I'll try cooking dinner for my family since the rituals of the day are what I really enjoy about the holiday, not just eating a meal around a shared table. I like the preparation, the time in the kitchen, that goes into that meal. It just feels false, like I'm not even partaking in this day, by eating in a restaurant, even though I at least persuaded my mom to allow me to choose the restaurant if we had to eat at one.
Our neighbor's apartment was broken into earlier this week, people breaking in through the fire escape that we share with them. We realized our window did not lock and have since been harassing our awful landlord to fix our window and install some sort of lock on it. The charms that this apartment held when we first moved on are becoming less and less charming. That the apartment is sinking into the ground, that it has no insulation, really old windows, a bathroom with no sink - all of these things are becoming less and less charming, an accent at first I found sexy but which now I find more and more grating.
I could also complain about my job, but I have done that for a couple years now, and it is really time to put up or shut up, to actively look for other work or embrace this current job. It is Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful, however in Facebook postings especially, but also in everyday conversation, this expression of gratitude can easily come of as boastfulness, as pride. Like I am really happy that your life is so great, that your job is great, that your hair is so fucking great, that you piss gold, or whatever it is you are so happy about, but your giving thanks for these things in such a public way can veer off into self-promotion, a non-sexual exhibitionism (the worst kind), that it is insecurity seeking a recognition that your life is, in fact, as great as you want to claim it is. But maybe it's not. Maybe that's okay. Maybe it's gray and cold outside and you aren't feeling it. And, yes, I am alive and that alone is something to be insanely thrilled about. And, yes, there is such a large amount of Prince recordings that you could spend years finding new pleasures among them. And I am happy in ways and unhappy in probably even more ways. There are things I need to change and the first among those is my need to quit talking about doing things and just do them.
No comments:
Post a Comment