Wednesday, August 03, 2005
(12:04 AM) | Brad:
Self-Destruction; or, I Should Really Be in Bed
Upon the repeated recommendation of a friend, as well as Weblog participant, I've been reading Paul Auster's book Moon Palace during my breaks at work & just before I go to bed. I'm halfway through it now, and already know it to be fabulous book. The best part so far has been the depiction of the protagonist's self-destructive tendencies following the death of his uncle. In utter despair, he decides to see if he can successfully give himself fully over to the flux of life .. to basically do nothing about life happening simply happening to him. Ultimately, it leaves him without electricity and phone, eating only two eggs a day, losing over fifty pounds in a single summer, and nearly dying of the flu after being evicted from his apartment and taking refuge in the trashcans & bushes of Central Park.Ah, self-destruction. It brings back a lot of memories. Memories of friends who declared their willingness on a Wednesday to get dangerously drunk that weekend, only to find themselves arrested on a Friday while driving intoxicated. Of family members showing up at my apartment door, high on all manner of pills and weed at 11 in the morning, and then flashing a gun for the stated purpose of blowing out his and/or my brains. Of me drinking early & often at my best friend's wedding, and embarassing not only myself when the time came to toast the bride & groom. Of once seriously entertaining the notion of filling a humidifier with bourbon, closing my bedroom door, just to see what would happen.
I turned thirty this year. And while I don't necessarily feel old, what with the fact that I'm still technically a student & have somehow managed to never work a real job, I kind of miss the self-destructiveness of my twenties. That which was witnessed up close & personal, and that done by me for all to witness. Not everybody can be a Hunter S. Thompson, I guess. Most of us settle down at some point, and that's normally around the point when monogamous sex becomes the rule rather than a threat that's avoided. Is growing up, then, less a matter of getting older, and more a matter of wanting to hang onto oneself? one's lover? one's stuff? I dunno.
Orson Welles once said, "It's only in your twenties and in your seventies and eighties that you do the greatest work. The enemy of society is the middle class, and the enemy of life is middle age. Youth and old age are great times -- and we must treasure old age and give genius the capacity to function in old age -- and not send them away." I can't help but think, at least right now when I should be sleeping, that this is the case only because these are the ages when throwing it all away seems like the most natural thing one could do.
