True Suffering

Originally Posted Friday, January 25, 2013

I wrote a drunken piece last night that insulted almost everyone.  I thought I was being clever, but by the early morning's dark, I couldn't find the cleverness anywhere.  And so, with regret at having to begin again, I deleted it.  That is what happens when you take things too personally.  C'est la vie. 

There is a line in "The Great Gatsby" in which Gatsby comments about Daisy's choice of men. "It was only personal," he says.  He wasn't interested in such minute things as he wanted to live larger than that, wanted to live in the greater myth of Love and The Golden Girl.  Truly, little that is personal really matters.  Try telling someone your problems.  Oh. . . they will be fascinated. 

It can be done, of course, but it must be couched in some framework larger than the merely personal. 

"Look at me!  I'm suffering." 

Or worse, "I'm wonderful."  Remember Jim the Gentleman Caller in "The Glass Menagerie"?

"Look how big my shadow is." 

Last night's writing was somewhere between the two, for when you are drunk, a great man suffering but fighting bravely on seems just the thing to write about.  Especially if you are the great and brave sufferer. 

The girl in this picture--do you think she is real?  I've seen her, and I still doubt it.  She says she wants to come back to shoot again, and I wonder how that can happen.  I would credit my own photography for creating her, but I've seen many other photos of her and she doesn't seem quite real in those, either.  She has made up her name.  All names are made up, of course, but she rejected the old one and has made up another.  It is literary and quite enchanting, too.  But this girl is a myth.  She can't be this thing you see at all.  I've seen the flesh and blood, and this is not that at all.  What an amazement.  What a trick.  But if she were real. . . my god. . . there would be true suffering.