Posted 10:20 PM by Blah blah

Zooming in on the Rough Edges

From Rabbit Blog (by Heather on 9/27), one of the best-written blogs I mentioned below. She writes for magazines like Salon.com:

Dear Rabbit,

Subject: I have friends like you...

and I sometimes question if they understand their problems. I read research reports about people like you.

...I don't know how serious you are. You seem incapable of expressing anything sincerely or seriously, except when writing about your family or the break-up with your boyfriend. So, I have a hard time determining if this is an elaborate and pathetic disguise, or if you are really lonely and screwed-up.

I suppose, to conclude, that I continue to read once a week because I keep waiting for that moment when you write about something wonderful and satisfying, something that you've wanted to accomplish, to fall in love, bowl a perfect game, apply toenail polish in a small, unventilated bathroom, or whatever it is you want, has happened.

Maybe next week.

Best,
Sam

Dear Sam,

I don't have friends like you, nor do I read research reports about people like you. I rarely read research reports at all, and my friends tend to be people who are less concerned with academic attempts at dissecting human behavior and more concerned with expressing themselves, honestly and entertainingly. Many of them are in conflict with themselves, and can artfully outline this conflict....Many of them whine daily, on a public website or elsewhere. The reason their websites are "public" websites is because people read them. The reason people read them is because they're entertaining. The reason they're entertaining is because conflict is at the heart of any good narrative.

You are an incredibly serious person, and as such you mistake my shifts from giddy to sullen to critical to lethargic to elated to self-loathing, and you paper over all of it and call it insincere and not serious. It can't be serious or sincere because it's foreign to you, because you can't imagine changing your mind 12 times a minute, or writing it down as it happens. You imagine that anyone who would do so must be insane, or must be consciously engaging in behavior that they know is against what they want - what they want being what you want, of course: to know the Truth with a capital T, to maintain your dignity, to remain positive and optimistic, to keep your private thoughts behind closed doors, where they belong.

To me, and to the people I know well and spend my time with, positive experiences and negative experiences are one and the same. We can take sunshine and flowers and make them oppressive and repugnant. We can take smog and crusty eye goo and make them glorious and uplifting. We do this all day long, and it drives us crazy, and it drives us. It makes us interesting to each other and annoying to each other. We are simultaneously impossibly light and heavy, sincere and insincere, cynical and pretentious, jocular and melodramatic. We contradict ourselves every second of the day, and we're not about to apologize for it, but then, we are actually willing to apologize for it, and we do so almost constantly. We have a lot of courage of conviction, except when we're chickenshits.

But I should speak for myself: I'm both incredibly happy and healthy and lonely and screwed up, and these things are in conflict. If I were only lonely and screwed up, don't you think you could tell that? Don't you think things would seem sort of gray and lifeless around here? If I were entirely full of shit and completely lacking in seriousness, would anything here be worth reading? If you could tell exactly what I was, would you keep reading? Do you read short stories featuring clearly defined characters who fall in love, bowl a perfect game, and emerge unambiguously happy? Or do you read about conflicted characters who have mixed experiences and aren't sure how they feel, in the end - and neither are you?

There are plenty of blogs filled to the brim with the wonderful, satisfying experiences of their authors. They don't entertain me, personally, but I would never label such people as insincere because they choose not to include all the ambivalent experiences and rough edges that I do. Plenty of things make me happy in my life - there are countless opportunities to look on the bright side, to say something upbeat or kind, to wax poetic about the joys of this or that. America is the land of enforced cheer, we swim through cheery messages all day long, holding our ambivalence and conflict in like holding our breaths. There are few opportunities, in day to day life, when you're interacting with living, breathing people who have agreed to sing the same happy song in unison, to be sullen and weary and nihilistic or even to be conflicted or indifferent. We are individuals! We look on the bright side! We know what we want from life, and we're gonna go out there and get it! When I'm writing, I have the freedom to zoom in on the rough edges. When I'm writing, zooming in on the rough edges is what makes me happy.

Do I seem morose? Did I contradict myself just then? If I were worried about those things, I wouldn't be able to write at all. Sincerity isn't optional. If it were, you wouldn't keep coming back to this blog.

Either that, or you're consciously engaged in behavior that you know is against what you want.

Wonderfully dissatisfied,
Rabbit