Simultaneously Enchanted and Repelled by The Great Gatsby Or, I Wanna Change My Hair, My Clothes, My Face

I am the first girl to hold out her fork and say, “Dude! This is so good! You have to try this!”

If I love you and you need something, I’m going to damn well make sure you get it.
Or a very close approximation of it.
Or a sandwich because dude, even if I did have Ryan Gosling’s phone number – I wouldn’t give it to you first. I mean, we’re friends but I’m not running for Jesus here.

As demonstrated above, I’m very selfish in a very peculiar way.

If I have a particular affinity to something, I’m reluctant to share it with the unworthy. It doesn’t take much but you have to earn your way to my favorite menu item and my most beloved b-side.

And that’s why I’m really worried about the fallout of Baz Luhrmann’s take on The Great Gatsby.

The movie comes out on Friday – all bombast and bling. Slick and shimmery as Beyonce’s thighs and calm like a bomb. And with this comes the inevitable gaggle of idiots who get taken in by the, ‘Oooh pretty shiny!’, idealize Jay and Daisy’s romance and basically, take something I love and like it wrong.

Can you ‘like’ something wrong?
Yes.
Yes, you can.

I’m fully aware of the fact that I sound like a crazy person right now. I mean, The Great Gatsby is a classic and it belongs less to be me and more to the collective conscience but I still think of it as mine.

I’ve written about it extensively, I own two copies (one of which lives in my purse) and when I miraculously have more body mass, I’m going to get that last paragraph inked on my flesh.

I love this story even though it’s been criticized as being nothing more than a glorified anecdote. A shivery wisp of a story we’ve all heard a million times – boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy reconnects with girl, boy loses girl again – but there’s a whole other world that ebbs and flows within the confines of that cliche.

As much as I love the lushness of the language, my favorite thing about the novel is its duality. The notion that the very hope that sustains a man is the same that will eventually slay him knocks me out.

Only love will break your heart, right? Love will tear us apart. Love is a battlefield. Love is blindness. Love hurts, right? It wounds, it scars and it breaks your fucking heart…BUT hope? Hope will reduce a man to ashes.

Love pretends that it’s dangerous, but hope will drag you through hell before it kills you and whisper sweet nothings in your ear the entire time.

A couple of nights ago, I had a conversation about the novel and it got me thinking about reinvention, reinterpretation of self, how it’s never too late to start over and how The Great Gatsby really is the great American novel.

The blue-jean clad, hip-swiveling hero from Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark is James Gatz:

I check my look in the mirror
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
Man I ain’t getting nowhere
I’m just living in a dump like this
There’s something happening somewhere
Baby, I just know that there is

Both men springing from platonic conceptions of themselves. Both sons of God, but while Springsteen’s jukebox hero spent his time twistin’ the night away with a pre-Friends Courteney Cox, James Gatz ached for Daisy and casually dispensed starlight to moths in the tenuous hope that she would grace his doorway.

God, is there anything more redolent of the American spirit than this? After all, what are Americans but conceptions of themselves? Children of God who don’t mold themselves in His image but rather their own.

Unlike Gatsby, I don’t regard the silver salt and pepper of the stars looking to repeat the past. If anything, I want to extricate myself from its gnarled roots and I hope this marked difference will spare me the elegiac tragedy that befell Fitzgerald’s high bouncing, gold-hatted lover.

However, I am fascinated by the idea of reinvention and living out your personalized runaway American dream.

My life is kinda up in the air right now and I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I’m buoyed by the same sense of extraordinary hope as Gatsby.

I don’t really have a plan and I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I do know that if you don’t like something – you can change it and start over.

That I can be the person I want to be and live the life I want to live.

All I have to do is run faster, stretch my arms out farther and one fine morning…

Eager For Bread And Love Or, Hey Baby, I’m Just About Starving Tonight…

I’ve started reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

I’m one chapter in and this phrase jumps out at me.

Actually, this phrase pretty much leaps off the page, grabs my face and makes out with me like a Catholic high school boy, all hopped up on pent-up lust, Mountain Dew and Axe body spray.

“Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn’t care one way or the other, “so long’s I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy,” and “so long’s we can eat, son, y’ear me? I’m hungry, I’m starving, let’s eat right now!” and off we’d rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, “It is your portion under the sun.”

Was there ever a more apt description of the fire and freshness stored up in my ghostly heart?

Like Dean, I am starving for both bread and love and I want to eat now. Like right now. Like all the time.

My evangelical fervor for bread is well-documented and I’m pretty sure no-one wants to read another ode to the baguette (but seriously – a dab of creamy goat cheese, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil a sprinkle of sea salt, a diaphanous ribbon of basil and one perfect blushing slice of tomato eaten while sitting in the sunshine? It’s kinda perfect, right?).

As for being a girl in love with the world? It’s this dichotomy of being utterly effortless and being incredibly difficult all at once.

It’s tough because it’s so easy to get mired in the muck – work, money, the unfettered bullshit of the RNC, the unfettered bullshit of media, relationships and adult problems in general.

However, there’s a facility about it because this world is magnanimous with love. You fall in love with people you meet and the people you won’t ever meet. You fall in love with moments – the way the light dapples through the tree outside of your bedroom window and the way your dog sighs and rests his head on your lap. You fall in love with sound and images – the ice cream sweet calliope of Wouldn’t It Be Nice? by The Beach Boys and that great picture of Neil Armstrong and you fall in love with simple pleasures like taking off your pants when you get home or sleeping during a rainstorm.

You’ve got to hold onto that stuff. With both hands and a fierce, intractable grip. You’ve gotta remember it any way you can — I scribble in notebooks and all over my left hand, I take pictures, I reblog, I make mix CDs, I never shut the hell up and even though it helps me to remember, it’s not enough. It never will be. The world is entirely too vast and intricate for me to consume it all.

But it matters. Because here’s the thing – this world is beautiful and one day, we’re all going to die.

So while we’re here – this blink of time, this barely-exhaled breath of a moment – we should actively work to be in love with the world. It’s not easy but isn’t that what makes it worthwhile?

So, if you’re starving like I am – it’s time to eat.

Pass the bread.

Imagine There’s No Heaven/It’s Easy If You Try Or, We Are All Made of Stars

I don’t believe in heaven or hell.

Well, I find myself hoping for the existence of hell in regards to people like Jerry Sandusky, Chris Brown and people who block the intersection when the light turns green but I don’t really believe in it.

Where do bad folks go when they die? They don’t go to heaven where the angels fly but they don’t go to a lake of fire and fry either.

Heaven’s a nice idea – a place where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts – and part of me really wishes I believed in it.

I can see why people do and I understand the need to believe in something like this but honestly, I think the notion of heaven is a fairy tale for adults. A dulcet lullaby whispered under your breath to keep away the monsters under your bed.

I believe that death is final and when someone’s gone, that’s it.

There are no ghosts, there are no angels, there is no-one watching over you.

There is ash and there are memories. There are fading photographs and that is it.

I’m also getting to the point where I get irrationally angry when I hear things like, “They’re in a better place now.”

No, dude. They’re not.

And you know how I know that? It’s because they’re not at the table with me, laughing and eating a good meal. Do you honestly expect me to believe there’s a better place than that? Really?

Bukowski had a bluebird in his heart but my bluebird lives on my sleeve, merrily chirping and twittering away – “Don’t be sad.”

Bluebird from California is a place. on Vimeo.

So, my heart is a birdcage for a crow — black-billed and beady-eyed. He’s quiet for the most part and keeps to himself, but when he gets ornery? He’s a real pernicious little fucker.

However bleak this perspective may seem, I’m not utterly devoid of hope when it comes to the notion of the afterlife. I’m just…realistic.

Which is why I love the following piece by Aaron Freeman.

I do not believe in supernatural family reunions, pearly gates or a better place beyond. But I do believe in the first law of thermodynamics and that gets me through.

The notion that as was will ever be and that the people I love aren’t gone. They’re just less orderly…and considering how damn disorderly they were when they were around – this makes perfect sense.

You Want A Physicist To Speak At Your Funeral by Aaron Freeman

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.

Amen.

Love = Love Or, I Don’t Care Who You Love, Just Don’t Love Crappy Television Shows

Even though Augs is white and I’m Indian*, I don’t think of us as a mixed-race couple. The closest I ever get to it is in the summer when I tan to a warm, coppery brown and Augs burns to a rosy pink.

But every now and then – the reality of our life together hits me. Like it did the other day when I started thinking about Loving v. Virginia – the landmark civil rights case which overturned all race-based restrictions on marriage.

Fifty years ago, Augs and I could have been jailed in certain parts of the country just for being together.

We couldn’t have rented a hotel room, eaten at the same lunch counter or sat next to one another on a bus.

Fifty years.

That’s nothing.

My parents and every single one of my aunts and uncles were alive fifty years ago. Hell, music that I listen to on a regular basis (Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis, Green Onions by Booker T and McGs, Please Please Me by The Beatles) was created 50 years ago .

When I was born, we were a mere 20 years removed from institutionalized racism.

To bring it closer to the present – THREE years ago, a chowderhead justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to marry an interracial couple out of “concern” for their future progeny. Yeah, ‘cause it’s not like a biracial child has ever achieved anything great, right?

It stuns me. I mean, really? People still think like this? After all this time and how far we’ve come?

Then, I start thinking about all of the people I love in same-sex relationships.

It is utterly devoid of logic and human decency to say your love isn’t worth as much as my love because of the color of your skin, where you were born or who you love.

Hell, even Dick Cheney agrees with that.

DICK. CHENEY. Underline. Bold. All-Caps former vice president of the United States who Jack Donaghy may or may not have sodomized while under the influence of a weapons-grade narcotic.

I guess what it comes down to is the following three things:

1. I don’t get it. I do not understand how I live in a world where people actually espouse a belief system so bigoted and wholly stupid.

2. Some truths are so universal that a dyed-in-the-wool democrat and a Sith Lord former Republican vice president can see eye-to-eye on them.

3. If you don’t believe that everyone deserves the same rights, you are not a good person. Let me repeat that. If you do not believe in equality – you are not a good person and shouldn’t fool yourself for a minute thinking that you are.

I’m usually not one for posting YouTube videos here because well, I kinda hate them. BUT, this one is important. Just make sure you have Kleenex at hand.

* Seriously, I am the worst cultural ambassador for India….unless you want to know about good great Indian food. A nickel’s worth of free advice – always order extra tamarind chutney. Food…hell, life is better with more amli in it. Oh and in the interest of not being yelled at by Mom for giving out bad advice — don’t eat too much because, well..I don’t know why. I just remember being yelled at by every Indian woman in a six-mile radius when I started loading it up on my plate. Imagine being attacked by a swarm of shrieking pigeons clanking with gold jewelry. Yeah, it was like that…but worse.

There Ain’t No Devil, Just God When He’s Drunk Or, Remember When I Said No Proselytizing? I Meant That.

I say ‘Oh My God’ a lot, but let’s face it — he’s not my God now, is he?

The past couple of years have been veined with doubt and the odd sleepless night where instead of wondering why the short-form music video all but died, I ponder the epistemology of religion.

I know, right? A girl can’t lull herself back to the Land of Nod by fondly reminiscing on the wonder that is Guns ‘N Roses’ November Rain video?

Since my early twenties, I’ve tossed around the notion that religion doesn’t give you the answers; it merely stops you from asking the questions and the older I get, the harder it is for me to believe in a God. Especially a God outlined by most organized religions.

It just seems really implausible that there’s this omnipresent, omniscient thing out there and even more implausible that he’s listening to us and arbitrarily intervening in our lives.

It seems monumentally cruel, actually. God answers prayers to win Daytime Emmys and football games, but doesn’t intervene for starving children and women getting the shit kicked out of them by their husbands?

What the hell’s that all about?

I don’t want to throw my lot in with that.

You can give me the platitude about mysterious ways all you want, but it seems less a mystery and more the most vicious malfeasance I can fathom. I’m omnipotent, I’m omniscient and I ain’t doing jackshit to help you out. Ooh, watch the steel toes.

So then, when I’m good and deep into my sleepless night, I start thinking about other ephemeral concepts like fate and destiny and the everlasting human soul.

I want to believe in destiny. I really do. I want to believe that there’s a reason for it all and that it’s not just arbitrary chaos.
I want to believe in the soul. Mostly so when I listen to Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine or Bruce and the E Street Band’s Rosalita, I can attribute the feeling I get to something bigger than mere auditory joy.

But, I don’t know if they’re real and that’s the most honest thing I or anyone else can say.

Because no-one really does know.

Yet for some reason, that answer is unacceptable. Agnosticism is looked down on and pitied. Why?

Honesty is something to be lauded, isn’t it?

The quest for knowledge is admirable, wholly human and to be respected, but it seems the search for truth ceases and turns into blind acceptance when it comes to organized religion.

This is The Truth™
Well, why?
Because it says so in this book.
Oh well, in that case….

No dice. ‘Cause see, I have books that say wizards are real and that if you build a baseball field on your farm, you’ll be reunited with your dead father and that the answer to everything is 42 and none of that is true. It’s all fiction….well, maybe not that last one. Jury’s still out on that.

So, I don’t know and honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever know.

Let’s face it – better men than me have tried to answer these questions and are they really any closer to the truth (the real truth. Not the bullshit kind, but the kind with unimpeachable proof)? Not really.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop asking the questions. I’ll read and think and talk and maybe, I’ll figure out. I very much doubt it but I’m with Descartes on this one: If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

I’m Starting With The Girl In The Mirror, Or One Girl Revolution

A couple of months ago, I subscribed to the imgfave feed on Google Reader.

This is a mixed blessing because for every one Mean Girls/Harry Potter mash-up meme (so. much. win.), there are six images of generic nonsense (sun-dappled rooms, glitter, clouds) misattributed quotes (dudes, I can promise you Bukowski never spouted lines from The Princess Bride. Ever) and that glurgey crap from MLIA that teenage girls slap up on their Tumblrs.

Then, I came across this image. And it got me thinking.

I don’t hate my body.

That much.

I’m don’t walk around thinking I’m Slagathor the She-Beast, but every now and then — I look in the mirror and really dislike what I see. And I’m not the only one.

Case in point — Cougar Town.

The cold open of the pilot consists of Courteney Cox’s character, Jules, in her bathroom giving herself the naked once-over. She pinches, jiggles, grimaces and stares in shock. And she caps it off by huffing, “Crap!”

Dudes, Courteney Cox is 45 and she looks like this:

If I looked like this right now, much less at the age of 45, I’d wear as little as legally possible. In fact, Cox would probably be considered burkha-clad by comparison (sorry Mom).

But, this is what women do. Pretty much every girl I know has looked in the mirror at her hips/calves/shoulders/hairline/pores/nail beds and thought, “Oh, what the hell is this fuckery?”

Why? I’ve been milling this over in my head and I really can’t figure it out.

Why do I do this?

Is it so I’ll be aesthetically appealing to the opposite sex? Well, I’m only really interested in being appealing to one man (This time, I’m talking about Augs and not Ron Livingston. I know, it shocked me too) and he already thinks I’m pretty cute.

A few weeks ago. I’m wearing my sick girl uniform of sweatpants, my high school yearbook t-shirt, zero make-up and my hair up in a messy bun. Dan looks at me and says completely sincerely, “You look really pretty today.” My response? “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!”

Which brings me to point number two — maybe it’s a sense of body dysmorphia where what I see in the mirror is at odds with reality?

I look in the mirror and don’t see toes but pigs-in-a-blanket (the hors d’oeuvres, not swaddled barnyard animals). My pores aren’t pores but rather hubcabs that would make a BP exec tent his shorts in excitement and my hips? Not so much hips, but a startling, wibbly mess resembling badly-mixed butterscotch pudding that’s been funneled into beige pantyhose.

To quote my girl Madge, do you know what it feels like for a girl? Well, when you grow up in a society constantly bombarding you with the notion that skinny and sleek and polished and pretty = successful, it feels an awful like crippling insecurity and self-loathing.

(Sidebar: Size 000, American Eagle? Are you stone-cold shitting me?).

And you know what? I’m sick of it. I’m sick of looking in the mirror and feeling as if I’m too much and not enough. I’m sick of wishing I was a little more this or a little more that. I’m sick of looking in the mirror and feeling I don’t measure up both, both literally and figuratively.

I’m starting a revolution. I’m going to stop hating my body and I shall go on to the end.

I shall fight in France, Los Angeles, Morocco, Auckland, on the seas and oceans and wherever else the wind may carry me; I will fight with growing confidence and growing strength. I shall defend my self-worth whatever the cost may be; I will fight on beaches, in fields, in streets and on the hills. I will never surrender and I will love myself and the girl in the mirror.

Vive la révolution.

Oh and triple zero? Bitch please, I’d rather eat goat cheese.

God-Shaped Hole or Seriously, If You’re Thinking About Prosetylzing, Just Back It Up Right Now, Jefe…

I don’t know if God exists.

This entry is not meant to offend (although, it undoubtedly will) nor is it a clarion call asking for spiritual guidance (see: post title)

It’s merely a fact. I’m a pretty devout agnostic and I’m OK with that.

I used to believe in God when I was a kid. Santa, Tooth Fairy, Almighty? Sure. Why not?

I grew up in a typical Hindu household so praying, fasting and eating blessed food were all a pretty common part of my childhood. While I didn’t attend religious education services held at the local temple, I did learn the myths affiliated with Hinduism — how Ganesh got his elephant head, the stories of Ramayana and the Mahabharata and tales of the mischief Krishna caused as a child. Thanks to a pretty stellar English education, I also learned about other religions — Moses and the burning bush, the loaves and fish of Christ, the importance of Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca and why Sikhs don’t typically cut their hair.

But then, I got older. I started learning more, reading more and I saw the ugliness wrought by religion — the pettiness, the greed, the deceit, the cruelty, the fact that religion doesn’t serve so much as a balm but rather as a reiteration of moral superiority — my God is better than your God.

I know that there’s a lot of good being done in the name of the almighty, but for every church drive that helps feed the needy, there’s some asshole televangelist conning Grandma out of her social security check, some sociopathic zealot strapping a bomb to his chest or some hate-filled bigot screaming about homosexuality, abortion, poly-cotton blends or whatever the fuck gets their tighty-whiteys in a wad.

This lead me to believe that maybe God didn’t create man and that it was actually the other way around.

It makes sense, right? Create this ultimate authority figure, deign yourself his mouthpiece and people will essentially do what you say because no-one wants to risk getting a spanking from Daddy. And best of all, you don’t have to adhere to these rules because they’re all bullshit anyway.

I once read that religion doesn’t give you the answers; it just stops you from asking the questions.

I’m inclined to agree with that because most of my questions remain unanswered.

How does matted hair turn into a river? What kind of God asks a man to sacrifice his own child? What kind of God denies a child passage into the kingdom of Heaven because they didn’t participate in a farcical aquatic ceremony that results in nothing more than a wet, angry baby? Hell, who was responsible for shoveling all that manure aboard the ark? Because if there really were two of every animal — man, that’s a lot of shit.

I’m being facetious. I know, but here’s the thing — shouldn’t fecundity be encouraged? Instead of receiving dirty looks, admonitions and platitudes about mysterious ways — shouldn’t we be pushed to question the whys and hows? Won’t inquiry lead to a deeper truth?

Even if that deeper truth is that we’re all alone and that there isn’t anyone up there listening to us — shouldn’t we know that?

Oh, my tongue’s the only muscle on my body that works harder than my heart

Oh, my tongue’s the only muscle on my body that works harder than my heart

OK, I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t.
Brand New.

Was John Hughes right? Does your heart die when you get older?

It makes perfect sense. With age comes experience and the loss of innocence. You get your heart bruised or worse yet, broken. You realize that Santa Claus is just a fat guy in a suit counting down the minutes until he can rip off his beard and hit the bar. You don’t save the world/get the girl and no-one really lives happily ever after.

It has to have some sort of effect on your heart.

These nicks and cuts grow as you do – becoming deeper and deeper wounds until the day you wake up to realize that your heart’s been dead for a while but you’ve been too busy too notice.

The thought of that terrifies me.

I want a stronger heart.

Bigger one, too.

So big it could, as a wise man once sang, crush this town.

But how does one forge a stronger heart? How does one teeter the tightrope between a strong heart and one made of granite — hermetic and cool to the touch?

Like any muscle, you work it out.

I’m not talking in the cardiovascular sense that has me hitting the treadmill (which, sidebar, I seriously need to do. If for no other reason than to listen to Sports Guy’s BS Reports) and refusing to eat things like falafel (can we please take a moment to fully appreciate the wonder that is the deep-fried chickpea?), but more in the metaphysical sense.

Ever notice how the world’s a better place when you’re in the beginning stages of a relationship? That honeymoon period where you find yourself smiling more and noticing just how damn beautiful the world is?

Like anything else, the feeling fades, but I’m trying really hard not to let it and to hold on as long as I can.

Basically, I’m making a conscious effort fall riotously in love with the world.

Every. Single. Day.

I’m not going to lie. Some days, it takes some serious effort. The days when you spill coffee on your pants, spend entirely too long on the phone with someone who makes you want to eat your own eyeballs (headdesk, headdesk, headdesk) and can’t get that infernal Kesha song out of your head (I refuse to spell it with a dollar sign because you know what? A dollar sign is not part of the goddamn English alphabet. Also, autotune sucks unless you’re ordering a pizza). BUT, the important thing is looking past that crap. Because it’s way too easy to get bogged down in it.

Ergo, the creation of the Holy Shit, I Love You list and participating (intermittently) in Grace in Small Things.

I’m trying in the hope that one day, I won’t have to try and it’ll just happen naturally.

And that being said, here’s some stuff that I currently love (holy shit!):

New Found Glory — my heart will always belong to South Florida Easycore, the ‘magic hour’ when sunlight looks like honey dripping over the world, the opening to acoustic versions of Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones, spending quality time with my nieces and nephew, the Chet Baker station on Pandora radio, any conversation that references The Simpsons more than five times, cooking while listening to Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, Italian markets with cheese samples, making travel plans, Portland, Oregon by Loretta Lynn featuring Jack White, driving with the windows down and the music loud, Dolly Parton’s cover of Collective Soul’s Shine, any BS Report featuring Adam Carolla, iced coffee on hot mornings and Chapstick (can’t live without the stuff).