Ernst Keiser, Komiktragödie-Porträt Karl Hindelang, 1921.
I have a hard time describing exactly what this painting does to me. I don’t know how to write about art —I’m not smart that way or any way. All I know is it compels me to sit and stare.
The painting at his feet, the cigarette, her grin.
Operating on instinct is the only way I know how.
I can hear my neighbor crying through the wall.
It’s not a good world, getting worse every day.
Witnessing everyone’s coping mechanisms is making me sick
especially my own.
Cigarettes, banana pudding, Lorde’s 2017 album Melodrama. My ability to be flattered by what is essentially madness.
How quickly it all turns to disgust.
The other day Naila and I were talking about men and she said: I can overlook profound character deficiencies.
S-a-m-e. You have to, or you are Refusing Romance.
I know all about refusing too — poking holes in passion. I know now, or at least at this moment, that I would have been happier if I had played dumb.
Pretty much every time.
The reason people with money tend to downplay or deny their wealth is certainly shame, but I believe there’s a second factor: it truly doesn’t feel like anything to them. It cannot fulfill, it worsens the alienation, a curse that makes the emptiness more pronounced, so it is minimized into nothing or no big deal.
At least that’s the only way it makes sense to me, how I rationalize the rationalizations.
Always trying to make sense of them, of you.
Read five seconds after I sent it. Raised on the water.
Shame into audacity and then always cruelty.
Spit on my ability to forgive, big guy.
Nothing if not consistent.
I used to have better reasons to stay on my toes.
Maybe this is hell, or maybe hell is nowhere near this bad.
fucking who knows!!!!
until next time.
ps: part four of my series on zionism in Hollywood *finally* out next week, promise.
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Do you think that “overlook[ing] profound character deficiencies” in men/partners is in any way related to accepting our own deficiencies? Or wanting to be accepted in our imagined deficiencies?
"I know now, or at least at this moment, that I would have been happier if I had played dumb.
Pretty much every time."
I'm curious on why you think so.
Also, (judging from other posts as well) why focus so much on already largely corrupted people among all this madness, while even relatively healthier interactions are getting harder? Are you "only" surrounded by rich people, careerists and social climbers?
As for me, If I'm not being increasingly honest I feel like I'm playing with people's feelings. The reverse holds true as well. That said, only once I've found somewhat lengthy romance including real mutual effort. But still I think that if some things matter, trustworthiness is one. I've written some on this here, including from a more political perspective: https://cassandrafartsback.substack.com/p/dating-and-the-new-normal