![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Quartz Contentment
Nov. 16th, 2007 11:51 amI woke up this morning and thought, "I'm so tired, I feel hung over." Then I realized that I am probably hung over. And also tired. I missed the rushes of my latest cinematic attempt (although I hear they were very good), and my second-to-latest cinematic attempt (I hear it wasn't bad). I did turn in my family-of-ratcatchers-in-1303 script on time. In a couple of hours, I have to head to callbacks for a TV show I'm directing an episode of.
I think I'm relatively happy; I haven't left myself much time to think about it. So long as I have no money and things with Ciro are up in the air, I think the unexamined life is the safest one, in sanity terms.
A couple of days ago was Aunt Caroline's wake, which was apparently a lot of fun and at Oline's. I continue to get reports that Max is devastated and Scarlett is a badass, but I haven't managed to talk to either of them (phone troubles, time zone troubles, long work days). Val and Trick attended as my representatives and give me most of my intel.
My emotions on the subject are complicated. I feel guilty about not being there for Scarlett, who was my best friend until high school, and my roommate for years after that. It's dumb, because there isn't anything I could say or do that other people aren't already saying and doing better than I am. I couldn't really afford to fly home for this, and I've been in the middle two shoots plus preproduction on two other films, in all of which I play key roles. Nobody asked me to come; it was assumed I couldn't. But I feel embarassed that I'm not the sort of person who drops everything to be with my family and rage against the dying of the light. I get angry lately when people call me controlled and careful, even though it is always said with admiration and relief. Even though when it comes to my extended family, and Aunt Caroline especially, my main job has always been to remain respectable, accomplished, and capable, just so there will be one person who is not entangled in obvious drama. Any time I put myself in context of my family, I feel ashamed, and I don't always know why. Maybe that's how it is for most people; I don't know.
I also feel pretty strange about the fact that Val and Trick were there, even though from what I can tell, they've been doing a great job, and their presence makes perfect sense - they've been involved with my family for many years, and in essence are my family. But they also aren't. It's fractured. Or they are family, but because they are family attached to me rather than attached to my family without me as a link, they will always be seen as emblems of me, regardless of the fact that they've only seen me for one week in the past year and three months, and that I sometimes have trouble identifying with the older in-cold-storage version of me. I don't like to think about it, because it draws my attention to my increasingly disassociate sense of identity.
And then there's an emotion I don't know how to name, which centers around the fact that Trick and Val were there and Ciro wasn't, because I didn't know it was happening and they couldn't reach him and it would have been strange anyway - we've been together for a year and a half, but only 8 months of that have been in the same city instead of inter-continent, and only 2 months of the 8 have been in Dallas. We were friends for four years before that, all of them in Dallas - but friends who were always out doing stuff instead of sitting down to dinner with the family. Except to Chad and James, and maybe Ashley, we-as-we don't exist to anyone I know in more than an abstract sense, and not even that for most of them, even though I try hard. I don't know how to express the absence of something. I feel like I live my whole life in mime.
--
"This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow"
-Emily Dickinson, "After Great Pain"
I think I'm relatively happy; I haven't left myself much time to think about it. So long as I have no money and things with Ciro are up in the air, I think the unexamined life is the safest one, in sanity terms.
A couple of days ago was Aunt Caroline's wake, which was apparently a lot of fun and at Oline's. I continue to get reports that Max is devastated and Scarlett is a badass, but I haven't managed to talk to either of them (phone troubles, time zone troubles, long work days). Val and Trick attended as my representatives and give me most of my intel.
My emotions on the subject are complicated. I feel guilty about not being there for Scarlett, who was my best friend until high school, and my roommate for years after that. It's dumb, because there isn't anything I could say or do that other people aren't already saying and doing better than I am. I couldn't really afford to fly home for this, and I've been in the middle two shoots plus preproduction on two other films, in all of which I play key roles. Nobody asked me to come; it was assumed I couldn't. But I feel embarassed that I'm not the sort of person who drops everything to be with my family and rage against the dying of the light. I get angry lately when people call me controlled and careful, even though it is always said with admiration and relief. Even though when it comes to my extended family, and Aunt Caroline especially, my main job has always been to remain respectable, accomplished, and capable, just so there will be one person who is not entangled in obvious drama. Any time I put myself in context of my family, I feel ashamed, and I don't always know why. Maybe that's how it is for most people; I don't know.
I also feel pretty strange about the fact that Val and Trick were there, even though from what I can tell, they've been doing a great job, and their presence makes perfect sense - they've been involved with my family for many years, and in essence are my family. But they also aren't. It's fractured. Or they are family, but because they are family attached to me rather than attached to my family without me as a link, they will always be seen as emblems of me, regardless of the fact that they've only seen me for one week in the past year and three months, and that I sometimes have trouble identifying with the older in-cold-storage version of me. I don't like to think about it, because it draws my attention to my increasingly disassociate sense of identity.
And then there's an emotion I don't know how to name, which centers around the fact that Trick and Val were there and Ciro wasn't, because I didn't know it was happening and they couldn't reach him and it would have been strange anyway - we've been together for a year and a half, but only 8 months of that have been in the same city instead of inter-continent, and only 2 months of the 8 have been in Dallas. We were friends for four years before that, all of them in Dallas - but friends who were always out doing stuff instead of sitting down to dinner with the family. Except to Chad and James, and maybe Ashley, we-as-we don't exist to anyone I know in more than an abstract sense, and not even that for most of them, even though I try hard. I don't know how to express the absence of something. I feel like I live my whole life in mime.
--
"This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow"
-Emily Dickinson, "After Great Pain"
