Yearning and Longing

Originally Posted Thursday, January 31, 2013

There are nights when you just can't help it (I guess if you are of an age), nights when something happens and you listen to The Beach Boys.  It is magical.  It is transcendent.  Even now when you know they didn't surf, when you know that they were not happy, that "dad" was a tyrant and the genius was crazy, when you know that there was no innocence other than the one they sang about and probably longed for. . . you can't help it.  You listen.  It might start with "Surfer Girl," as it did for me, or with some other song, but the night becomes one of yearning and longing.  What can you do but listen. 

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That was last night.  I'm better this morning.  I don't think I was drunk as much as exhausted.  I only had the doctor prescribed amount of liquor plus a glass of wine.  It was not enough to make me maudlin.  No, it is definitely something other than liquor.  I am dying inside, perhaps, with isolation and the lack of both internal and external stimulation.  When the papers (even the New York Times) writes about "a flu epidemic," I have, perhaps, a different vision than the medical field.  "Epidemic" invokes movies scenes in dark, dismal light in browns and sepias of people dropping on the streets and in homes, of untold sufferings on a massive scale.  Apocalyptic.  Maybe that is a word I confuse with "epidemic."  Yes. . . I am certain of it.  

Even as I have killed off a "popular" blog and have closed my studio to models, I seem to have turned off my email accounts as well.  And the less I have to do with people, the more they vex me.  

The Beach Boys for god's sake.  I stayed up too late watching old videos on YouTube.  I'd have been better off reading these.