March 10, 2005:
The sweetness of Connie and Carla runs deeper than its surface vision of tolerance. The people have good hearts. The circle of principal characters are generous: glad for each others' successes and even the successes of complete strangers. They offer joyfulness to others and they offer it freely.
I think it's that example of joyous generosity which resonates so deeply for me. A double-edged emotion: drawn to its sweetness, while at the same time regretful that the experiences of my own recent life have been so different.
I wonder how often it happens that people with potential are held back by the lack of generosity they encounter in others. I'm thinking of Valadon, Rousseau, Bukowski: working class artists who struggled in isolation without peers or emotional support. They were all fierce. How many others were crushed by the meanness around them?
I wonder now whether I have that fierceness. I don't know that I want it. Yet to my own surprise I find myself determined to brush aside people I once cared deeply about whose behaviors are destructive to me. Especially those whose pettiness causes them to struggle to revoke or denigrate my accomplishments. Anklebiters. Fuck 'em.
I've felt for some time that my long period of recovery from darkness was ending. Perhaps what I'm experiencing now is a resurgence of the undeniable fierceness I felt before it began. If so, it would be good to balance that determinedness with some kind of reasonable compassion for the poor sorry anklebiters of the world, who after all are merely being propelled by their own demons. I'm not there yet. Right now I hate them with a passion that takes me aback. Fiercely.