A Trivial Comedy for serious people archives

Something in me is very anxious.

Alright, so I just finished watching Aguirre: the wrath of God, and that would be enough to make any normal person skittish. If you haven't seen it, you probably should. How absolutely absurd it seemed, watching Conquistadores dreaming about their power, drawing up their mockery-maps, giving the people they found a Bible. Is it supposed to make sense? What meaning did they find there? What good would a city of gold do them? And all that power - who cares? Why do you do these things, is it a miasma? A cultural complex? Enjoy your empire. Ol�!

I can never unwatch, or unlearn, the head rolling away while it spoke still, the impure thoughts of the father, the hallucinations. I will just have to live with that.

My mother called on Sunday. My father had a root canal and is in better spirits than he had been. It was delightful to talk with them. My best friend is on campus. I am miserably homesick, and disinterested in my schoolwork. I miss home, it's more than the fall, I always miss it when I'm away. I am probably just imagining that I love it so much, but I miss my mama. It's all the same, it's always the same.

I have been deeply fidgety. I have sat down to write journal entries four times this weekend and failed often. Before my best friend came, I set everything in my room pretty carefully. I arrange things, I plan, I take care of my domestic duties. I have always, was I born this way? Probably not, I learned somewhere that my job is to put things in their place, to organize and set up house. I feel like I'm playing house here.

But I make my room up and I say "What a lovely room!" And become paralyzed. I can't move, can't touch anything, can't even lie still on my bed. What now? What is it for? It will all fall apart as soon as I start to do work or play or lie on my bed, even if I'm doing nothing I'm disrupting everything. What am I to do? Why did it end up this way? All the girls in my class loved Oregon trail, but only because we liked to stock our covered wagon. I will be prepared, I will have everything neat and in its place. I am a homemaker, not a home-liver.

She thinks it's a bad thing, I can tell. She wants us to see beyond what is put before us. She wants us to see things for what they are. But I want to be domestic, I know it, I just can't sit still for two seconds.

2002-09-30, Homemaker

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