Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "satisfaction"
Satisfaction / It Was A Dream
Dear Blog,
Sometimes, like the Rolling Stones, I feel as if satisfaction is impossible.
I saw the Rolling Stones in concert seventeen years ago, and they were already old, or they seemed it, anyway, because seventeen years ago I was very young. I was in Prague with my friends and the concert was outside the city in a huge field. We had arrived on an overnight train and not slept yet, because going to concerts after being up all night on a train is the kind of thing that seems entirely reasonable to do when you are nineteen years old. We thought it was pretty awesome that we were going to see the Rolling Stones in Prague but in fact as the concert wore on I got so tired that I went to the edge of the field and lay down and went to sleep. I bought a t-shirt there and never wore it.
I wonder, when I am feeling unsatisfied, what it would take to bring real contentment. If I could arrange everything, my whole life, the way I wish, would that be enough? Probably not – it’s an attitude, right? I should know that by now, but I am a slow learner and I forget things after learning them because I am always too busy thinking about other things instead of the lessons I’m supposed to be learning.
A boy I liked once tried to turn me on to Krishnamurti. He talked about acceptance and peace, and because I was twenty I said I don’t want peace, I don’t want to accept things. We were both pretty into it, that he wanted inner peace and I didn’t. One night when we were drunk he held my hand in the video store and asked me if I was a feminist and I couldn’t stop laughing because he asked it like it was a really romantic question. We couldn’t decide what movie to get and I don’t think we watched anything, we just wanted to talk about him wanting peace and me not wanting peace, but in the end it wasn’t enough and we never did get together.
(There is a difference, of course, between being dissatisfied and being unsatisfied. Like the difference between eating something and not liking it, versus eating something but it just wasn’t enough, or it wasn’t what you wanted, even if it tasted fine. I am not dis, I am un. I’m not pissed off, but I am hungering.)
I suppose it’s possible that I’m having a mid-life crisis, or if I’m still too young for that (god, what are all these years FOR?), maybe I am having an identity crisis. Or probably it isn’t a crisis at all, because it’s not very dramatic and I am happy, more or less, and I am grateful, most of the time. It’s just me going through the days thinking vaguely, like Ani DiFranco, that this is not who I meant to be, this is not how I meant to feel.
Which reminds me that once I was at an Ani DiFranco concert when I was a teenager and she recited a poem by Lucille Clifton. I remembered the name because the poem was beautiful. The next day I went to a bookstore and I bought a collection of her poems. It seems like another life, when I went to concerts and bookstores like it was nothing, like I had all the time in the world, but I wasn’t satisfied then either. Lucille Clifton was the first poet I really loved. And all of this reminds me of this poem of hers:
it was a dream
in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could i have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.
Yours, looking for that extra finger,
Catherine
Sometimes, like the Rolling Stones, I feel as if satisfaction is impossible.
I saw the Rolling Stones in concert seventeen years ago, and they were already old, or they seemed it, anyway, because seventeen years ago I was very young. I was in Prague with my friends and the concert was outside the city in a huge field. We had arrived on an overnight train and not slept yet, because going to concerts after being up all night on a train is the kind of thing that seems entirely reasonable to do when you are nineteen years old. We thought it was pretty awesome that we were going to see the Rolling Stones in Prague but in fact as the concert wore on I got so tired that I went to the edge of the field and lay down and went to sleep. I bought a t-shirt there and never wore it.
I wonder, when I am feeling unsatisfied, what it would take to bring real contentment. If I could arrange everything, my whole life, the way I wish, would that be enough? Probably not – it’s an attitude, right? I should know that by now, but I am a slow learner and I forget things after learning them because I am always too busy thinking about other things instead of the lessons I’m supposed to be learning.
A boy I liked once tried to turn me on to Krishnamurti. He talked about acceptance and peace, and because I was twenty I said I don’t want peace, I don’t want to accept things. We were both pretty into it, that he wanted inner peace and I didn’t. One night when we were drunk he held my hand in the video store and asked me if I was a feminist and I couldn’t stop laughing because he asked it like it was a really romantic question. We couldn’t decide what movie to get and I don’t think we watched anything, we just wanted to talk about him wanting peace and me not wanting peace, but in the end it wasn’t enough and we never did get together.
(There is a difference, of course, between being dissatisfied and being unsatisfied. Like the difference between eating something and not liking it, versus eating something but it just wasn’t enough, or it wasn’t what you wanted, even if it tasted fine. I am not dis, I am un. I’m not pissed off, but I am hungering.)
I suppose it’s possible that I’m having a mid-life crisis, or if I’m still too young for that (god, what are all these years FOR?), maybe I am having an identity crisis. Or probably it isn’t a crisis at all, because it’s not very dramatic and I am happy, more or less, and I am grateful, most of the time. It’s just me going through the days thinking vaguely, like Ani DiFranco, that this is not who I meant to be, this is not how I meant to feel.
Which reminds me that once I was at an Ani DiFranco concert when I was a teenager and she recited a poem by Lucille Clifton. I remembered the name because the poem was beautiful. The next day I went to a bookstore and I bought a collection of her poems. It seems like another life, when I went to concerts and bookstores like it was nothing, like I had all the time in the world, but I wasn’t satisfied then either. Lucille Clifton was the first poet I really loved. And all of this reminds me of this poem of hers:
it was a dream
in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could i have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.
Yours, looking for that extra finger,
Catherine
