Unmean Unreds
reading and responding to bill's blog, we're discussing the future. in his case, how to plan for what appears unattainable. in my case, how to start seeing a vastly different one with the same old eyes but a revamped heart.
i started talking about they way i felt in terms of an "unpanic attack."
in the same way i sometimes get overwhelmed with anxiety, i've lately felt overwhelmed with possibility. i open my eyes and think: gah! look at all the things that could happen to me, things i've always wanted but never really could focus on in any tangible way. ideas that were abstract but which now resonate when i tap them with my finger. solid. possible. happening. overwhelming.
what do you call that?
it's not ecstacy. it's not a panic attack. it's not, as holly golightly would say, the mean reds ("when you're afraid but you don't know what of"). it's the unmean unreds. it's...
(ladies and gentlemen! we attempt to coin a phrase!)
um.
blah!
uh.
the nth serving?
the chocolate high?
an overflowing mailbox?
these all, clearly, suck. so let's just use the first one to avoid this being a fun-with-words distraction instead of an examination of the future/now.
when i get the nth serving, i see spread before me so much that i want but more than i can possibly fit in my mouth at once. there is a finite amount of space in my stomach and yet, here is all this gorgeous, delicious, piping-hot food that i've ordered (so so so long ago) and i'm afraid if i don't eat it all now it will go cold. be put in some styrofoam container and stuck in the back of the fridge until it grows green fuzz and even the dog won't touch it.
so that's the nth serving. good stuff offered when you've got so much good stuff in you that you can't really deal with much more. but yet, you want all that good stuff. crave it. fear letting the table be cleared as it might never be set again.
ah so! it's not the nth serving. the problem is gluttony. i am a glutton. or perhaps more accurately, covetous. i covet my future imagined life.
holly golightly gets the mean reds (and i do too), but my dilemna is what to do with the fact that i'm jealous of whom i could be.
so i've got temporal self-jelousy. i'm a future-addict. i've got a me-later jones.
this, as my father should say, should be the least of my worries.
seems like buddhists would say that you worry too much. i think nike would too.
perhaps. although desire too much might be more accurate.
nike would probably say i don't buy enough shoes.
what makes you think that all that food will go bad in the back of the fridge if you don't eat it now? if you eat it all now, you may end up with a really sore stomach. you could, instead, savor the flavors for days and days. take your time with them. and then you could learn how to make the dish yourself so that you can always eat it.
what was the topic of discussion? i seem to have been distracted by an insatiable appetite.
and one more point: the dog will always eat the food, no matter how disgusting it is. mmmm... street chicken.