The Living Centrifuge

The question I so abhor that others ask me, I am now asking of myself. What is wrong with me? I am prone to these massive shifts in mood. Last night I felt fantastic. I was talking with my best friend, we were having fun, my foot was feeling better, I was compulsively listening to Bali Hai, laughing, having a gay old time. And today, I'm desperately low. I feel like nothing could go my way. I spoke with Ben briefly, and he was tired, so went away from the computer, but then later I logged on to Manhunt Dot Net and he was online. Why wouldn't he want to talk to me? Then I think, he doesn't want to talk to me. He doesn't much care for me any longer. Matthew, maybe he just left Manhunt Dot Net on, and is actually having a nap. Why would he lie? BECAUSE HE DOESN'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU, BECAUSE YOU'RE THOROUGHLY UNLIKEABLE. Oh, that's true. All of the people in my life who can, leave me. Vito, Nick, Mel, My mother, M.John, Grant, the Vancouver boy (I think it's going that way). If my father wasn't so bound by his beautiful sense of duty, I'm sure he'd go too.

I wish I could be a civilian, and just have a normal, unexciting swing of emotions. There's something very attractive in being satisfied with a cubicle and biannual trips to Cuba and Mexico. Why can't my life goal be to purchase a loft in Yaletown? Why does it all have to be about truth and beauty and love? These impossible things? Why is it so hard? And it all comes with the concomitant guilt of being middle class and from North America and knowing that almost everyone in the world has it way way worse than me. Oh, you get to be upset about truth and beauty and love? Oh you poor thing. You have it so hard. It's so difficult for you. How do you make it through the day?

ps, I found a quotation from a religious group that calls Christ the living centrifuge of history. That's kind of uncanny. My own image of the living centrifuge was a little more internal, but there you have it.