2000-10-08 :: 02:19:18

tense beauty guilt dreams

Soundtrack: UNKLE, "Psyence Fiction"; whatever the drunk sophomores outside are playing that I'm trying to drown out

Tonight I had a 20 minute backrub and a 15 minute foot massage from Alison, who is trying to start a professional massage business here. She is very good and very cheap ($20 for an hour). Turning into a well-massaged pile of goo and lying next to the dying fire, watching the embers crackle away to their black end for a good long time. At peace, I was floating, full of ice cream, hot cocoa, and toasted marshmallows.

Whenever I get a massage I am acutely aware of how much I internalize -- my muscles are always extremely tense. Alison told me that my feet were the most tense she'd ever done; she could not rotate my ankle without moving my leg all the way up to my hip. She couldn't get the usual 90 degrees of mobility. She couldn't go longer than my planned time if I'd wanted it (and I kind of did) because by then I'd worn her strong hands out. My leg had to be actively immobilized for her to begin loosening the tendons, and even then, I was stiff, hardened clay in her hands.

As someone who believes in letting things go and not caring about what does not matter, these sorts of things are giant screaming reminders of the fact that I've a ways to go when it comes to embodying that philosophy to the fullest. Most of my family is the kind to come home and gripe about their day, their bosses, idiot coworkers, bitchy schoolmates, all the work that had to be taken home. I never really saw that as being productive, which is -- I think -- a lot of why I am the way I am... but maybe their feet aren't in the sad shape mine are.

On September 11, I bought a poster of the "Afghan Girl" photograph by Steve McCurry, published in Portraits, where it is the front cover. Most people have seen this girl in one publication or another; I bought the book for Ken's birthday a few days after I got the poster. (The back cover of that book is also a lovely picture of her, but not as well known.) The poster cost $12.95, and when I bought it I immediately felt exceedingly guilty. Here I am, purchasing a 600 x 800mm replica of this girl's face, and what does she have to show for it. Nothing, because as I understand it, they never could find her and her haunting eyes again. (Which begs the question, would it really have been better for her to be whisked off to a modeling career and all of that?)

All we have of her exists in McCurry's film archives and in the dorm rooms of college students who buy her poster with a charge card to hang near their computer. The irony weighed down on me. On the one hand, I wanted the beauty of her face and starburst irises to adorn my boring off-white walls. On the other I felt the unbearable first world guilt of living. Beauty [obviously] won, but as I finally got around to unrolling the poster and straightening it today (now that's rather sad, isn't it), I felt these feelings come back when I stared into her eyes, her pupils contracted pinholes in a wash of green and blue and orange, a strand of hair falling from her forehead just so, her red hood tattered and contrasting.

I am tired and relaxed. I want to go to bed with my book and try to ignore the people outside. I want dreams to take over.