blandly going where...

four weeks now. still can't completely taste anything i eat. it's not like it's life-threatening or that it leaves me significantly disabled, but it's unbelievably frustrating and annoying.

saw ESotSM again and i'm convinced that i'm in love with this movie. i file it into the very solipsistic category of "showing up in my life when it is most needed/relevant".

when i lived in boston, settling into myself after the silly, idealistic, romanticized notion known as "college", i spent a lot of really good time by myself. i would take the T into the city and explore, wander around for hours. i'd have my headphones on, listening to whatever suited my mood. me at 22. god, i was such a baby--it feels like lifetimes ago. but these moments were and are so valuable to me because they are the world as it is most beautiful, the world on my terms. lately i've been looking for those moments again. i can't tell if it's some sort of retreat into what feels best or a regression into what feels safe and insulated. it may be that both are true and neither is bad. the other day i was walking through rittenhouse square on my way to the gym and this group of young parents were guiding their small children through a game of t-ball. it was the loveliest thing i've ever seen.

i'm not really sure where i'm going with this, but ESotSM puts me in that place. i have this favorite emotion, and i know it's kind of lame to have a favorite emotion, but i love feeling enchanted, but in a heartbroken and melancholic way. like "famous blue raincoat" by leonard cohen or "trains across the sea" by the silver jews. like that gustave courbet painting _waves_. it's this feeling that casts the perfect light on how fated and transient and broken we all are, but also is able to celebrate that very vulnerability. ESotSM falls in that category. so does _magnolia_.

i told stean the other night, as i was crying myself silly, that i feel like the velveteen rabbit. like i'm going to be thrown away because i'm full of sickness. stean reminded me that the velveteen rabbit was made real because of that experience. the weird thing is, i believe that will happen to me, too. but i have to get through this whole thrown-away part before i can make it to the resurrection. and it feels like i have a long way to go before i get there.