Lana del Rey has released a new song. I am delighted! It is vintage Lana, with her soft crooning, infused with the sultry richness of her voice that just seems to ooze honey and sex but also with strong tones of crushing sorrow and loneliness. She is my favorite alter ego.
She also reminds me strongly of what I am not.
Living in Ithaca, every waking day can be rich literary fodder. From the merciless nights in February, when the world seems deceptively warm as streetlights bounce of the drifts of white snow, despite being as cold as death, to the summer, stifling humidity followed by rain, grey skies, winds whistling through the leaves, chilling to the bone. It is quiet. Silence is often broken only by the rustling of leaves or the gushing of waterfalls that cut through the gorges. Like my trip to Istanbul, I was sure that the words would well up in my mind, in my eyes, and fall off my tongue. Silvertongue, they would call me. Just like Istanbul, I was sorely disappointed. Where I was sure that this was going to be a period of literary fecundity, I was left staring, a year later, at a torrent of clear, cool water that poured from the skies, shivering in the middle of July, waiting for the words to come, waiting for my moments of genius; for that life-affirming spark that would rage into a passionate fire, that would make me capable of painting pictures with words for the rest of my life.
Sometimes, I wonder if the desire to become a writer stemmed from a deeper insecurity within me, fueled by low self esteem. In my younger days, I would write verses, short and long, on very similar themes- loss, loneliness, death, decay, the utter pointlessness of existence! It was indeed quite enjoyable to entertain the notion that these verses would someday amount to something, even a Pulitzer Prize. I wonder if that was a salve for the pain that arose from the anger of not being a genius or an innovator. Perhaps, it was something to aspire for, when I had no clear direction of where I was going or what I wanted from life. It is easier to get through the mundanity of each day, when one believes that there is an ultimate goal, an ultimate destination to a very repetitive journey. But what if life is, like science predicts and the nihilists assert, inherently pointless? A cosmic accident, an insignificant existence in a sea of galaxies, suns, dying stars, in an ever-expanding random universe!
Sometimes I feel that my literary shortcomings stem from how normal my life is. Surely, in order to write something powerful, the author must have a series of experiences that range from tense excitement to inconsolable grief. All award winning novels are products of profound life experiences- wars, death, interment, personal tragedies. I wonder if my disability to produce good literature stems from the normalcy and relative comfort of my life. Simply put, I have nothing to write about.
The insidiousness of normalcy recently manifested in my life, as a recent crib fest where I proclaimed that I wish I had acknowledged and come to terms with my eventual reality, four years earlier: that instead of wanting to be a rebel, an angel of excess and decadence, I wish I had accepted that graduate studies in the States, a job with computers, a husband from my own community, a house with a white picket fence, nerdy kids and dogs would be my ultimately reality! I would have prepared myself for this. I should have spent more time learning to code than dream of the day I would become an iconic, female Hank Moody. My upper middle class past would become my upper middle class present and future!
Alas, now it is too late, as things mostly are for people who dwell on their pasts. As the years inch by and I see ten grey hair in place of one, I wonder where all this is headed. I wonder if I should strive to make my new dream come true- to wake up at 7:00AM sharp tomorrow with a smile on my face, apply to three jobs, start my online machine learning course, read about Java and Python, go the gym, eat healthy, watch an episode of Seinfeld and go to sleep. Or should I continue being who I am: a self-hating yet narcissistic, insecure girl in a state of flux, with an aspiration to be an extraordinary writer and a vehicle for change on one hand, and trying to face reality on the other. Will I eventually accept that being normal, and hence unremarkable, is my reality? And even if I do, is it really so bad after all?
