Nobody is owed happiness

So I was on the Daily Mail’s website the other day (I know, I know), reading some bitchy comments to an equally bitchy article – and it struck me, how the promise of happiness is used a battering ram in our culture.

People look at happiness as a sustainable commodity, which in turn allows them to turn around and say things like, “Well! She’s a 43-year-old woman! Who’s divorced! And has a career! She’s bitter! And will wind up bitterer!”

Oh my dear sweet and loving God, most of us wind up bitter. Even most rich guys who ditched their wives for women half their age are bitter as hell. Trust me, it comes through in interviews.

I think that life, public life at the very least, would be so much easier if we could all come to grips with the fact that happiness is temporary and therefore can’t be prescribed like some pill. It wouldn’t be happiness otherwise.

Monday music, the “I really wish I wasn’t sick again” edition

What’s WRONG with me, and WHAT SUPERNATURAL ENTITY have I pissed off?

Ahem.

Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For a Sunbeam – Nirvana
Heysatan – Sigur Ros
Get Back – Ludacris
Heaven Tonight – Hole
The Last Thing On Your Mind – Lights
Red Turned White – Architecture In Helsinki
Baby’s In Black – the Beatles
Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis – Neko Case
Animal – Miike Snow
Vesna – Melnitsa

Since we’re continuing with the theme of my childhood around here:

“The Craft” was so bad that it was good. It was also creepy as hell, when you think about it.

This is why I’m glad I’m currently in Moscow, as opposed to New York

On a completely unrelated note to Jill’s post about parents, kids & public spaces in New York City, these lines about New Yorkers stuck out at me:

You don’t chat with people in line at the grocery store; you don’t talk to strangers on the subway; you don’t interrupt or disturb other diners in restaurants. We spend so much time in public, surrounded by so many people, that even in public people feel a strong necessity to maintain hard boundaries when it comes to personal space.

See, I’ve long noticed that about NY, having been there on a few fairly long visits, and it’s something I would have a hard time getting used to. Even though Moscow’s huge, and cramped, people chat to each other in grocery stores all the time – or at least the grocery stores I frequent. People talk to one another on the metro. Public life bleeds fairly effortlessly into the private, or vice versa. Sometimes, it can be annoying, even infuriating. But after over a decade in the South, not talking to strangers as much sometimes makes me feel as though I’m trapped behind glass.

LOST: “Jears. Jears on the side of my face.”

I want to say that I haven’t been writing about “Lost” because I haven’t had the time, but if I’m honest with myself and with you, I’ll have to say that I haven’t been writing about “Lost” because it’s like a love affair coming to an end, like something out of Graham Greene, the sort of relationship people overhear about in restaurants and pause with their food halfway to their mouths and stare, and, well…

I’ve never felt the “OMG a show I love is coming to an end” thing with such epic force before. “Six Feet Under” was monumental, but life forced me to wander away from it, and I only ended up catching up when I was already living in Dubai. “Inspector Morse” & “Star Trek: TNG” were introduced into my life sporadically. I’ll never forget the night we all watched the end of “Sex & the City” in Anna & Mary’s dorm room, but I wasn’t nearly as sentimental toward that show. I didn’t get it when an entire country freaked about “Seinfeld.” And as for “The X-Files,” if I get started on how that show wound up, I just might end up on the other side of town, possibly in Khimki, sobbing outside a beer kiosk with some contract roofers at 4 a.m. The phrase “mercy killing” even rings hollow at this point.

So this? This is pretty much new to me. My soul feels like its been clubbed in the knee-caps.