Tess's Five Fears

Drought, head trauma, losing what I love, unwanted pregnancy, old age.

[Edit: I'm also afraid of pressure - in the abstract and concrete sense - and I have a phobia of closed shower curtains.]

Tess Everlasting

Now what's the deal with this business of eternal love? Humans are so fucking pompous to think that we can even grasp the idea of eternity in the first place. It's not enough to have something as wonderful as love; we want to make it last forever, too. Goddamn.

I'm pretty sure that the odds are overwhelmingly against eternal love, anyway. For evolutionary purposes, chemical love only needs to last long enough for procreation to happen, and when it comes to rearing families I'd bet that other instincts are mostly responsible. Look, imagine you get a tattoo that you love when you're 18 and you live to be 80. Do you suppose you're going to love that tattoo every single day of those 62 years? There are bound to be times when you at least feel ambivalent about it, and every once in a while you'd look at it and honestly hate it. One day, someone looks for the entrancing depths in their lover's eyes, and they see nothing. Call me a cynic, but shit happens.

And teenagers - teenagers are the last people who should be preaching about eternal love, and yet we hear a lot on the subject out of the mouths of babes. Teenagers are fucking maniacs, totally blitzed on a triple dose of love hormones, busting out Shakespeare porn after the first date. Teenagers want to propose to the hamburger they ate for lunch. That's fine, if mostly disgusting, until the notion of eternity starts getting thrown around. Yeah, you think your lab partner is The One when you're 17, and you think Eggos are the Best Food in the World when you're stoned. After you pop your last pimple and come down off of the hormone high, your lab partner is probably going to look a lot less special, and you're probably going to regret having bought 8 boxes of Eggos.

I'm no pot calling the kettle black; I, friends, am a kettle. I've often fallen deeply into that myopic brand of infatuation, and even now as a relatively self-aware idiot I still entertain my swollen dreams of happily ever after. And you know, with magical grace, sometimes those dreams eventually fit the bounds of reality. Reality, however, doesn't spontaneously become dreams. By no means should those dreams be censored - they should be as lush and sweet as satisfies the unconscious, but only if we can wake up afterward. People of Earth: make the most of love while you have it, but don't write it into your postapocalyptic calendar, advises this humble observer.

Tess In Space

Ahh, newblog. It already feels so homey. Why am I here (at this internet location instead of the old one - let's not get more complicated than that right now)? Because I am Tess, and this is my blog; I realized that that's all there is to it. Took long enough. Lately I've been trying to untwist my knickers and not be so serious about stuff, because most of our earthly stuff is trivial. I'm overcoming the habit of taking myself very seriously - if you were to call me up a few years ago, I probably would have been too busy chiseling my crappy poetry into marble to come to the phone. But here's how it really is: I yam who I yam, I do what I do, I think how I think and it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong or stupid or glorious, it just is, and is nothing more or less. Hence Tessblog. Love me, love my blog.

Now I'll try to explain why I indulge in the generally ludicrous habit of blogging, and I'll have to talk about my brain to do it. (If you have no interest in the way I think, never visit this site again.) One unbecoming trait of my brain is that it is a shite storage facility. I call myself a writer because I actually need to write stuff down in order to think properly, lest my thoughts end up with all the socks that the dryer eats. I'm also the type to develop an inner monologue, and if I kept it up, it would probably make me crazy. I used to lose sleep by narrating my own thoughts. Writing in a diary didn't get my thoughts far enough from my brain for me to really believe them - because in order to validate them, I'd try to ask myself if they made sense, but my own answer was meaningless since my personal reality is so plastic. So my thoughts ended up here in the industrial labyrinth of the intertubes. No one has to put up with them or give a shit (bonus if someone does), because the security of planting my thoughts in a shared reality is enough for me. I figure if my thoughts are here where everyone can read them, they must be real. The blogging thing is definitely about self-importance, but in my case that's a measurement of how much I should care about my thoughts, not everyone else. Blogging is, with rare exception, an egotistical pastime: that's why my name is everywhere, 'cause this shit is about me me me me me me me. Maybe sometimes it looks like it might be about something else. Nope. Me.

So here's my shit. If you don't like it, you can suck it. If you like it, you can suck it too, if you so desire. In conclusion, me.

Tess For Peace

I've got these bikini bottoms with peace signs all over and they make me feel like a big salty douche. Goddamn, they are so ridiculous. Okay, well, in my defense, they were the only bikini bottoms in Macy's that didn't make my love handles explode over the waistband like Pillsbury dough, and I dig the pattern, all meaning aside. But it is pretty freaking ridiculous to advertise peace on your clothes, let alone all over freaking bikini bottoms. I mean, chances are if you're purchasing clothes that advertise peace, you're in a place where you're not going to change any minds. For example, here I am in the Bay Area, spitting distance from San Francisco. I'm not going to get anything done by advertising peace on my swimsuit here. It's not like I'm parading my ass around the leaders of the world until they all agree that peace is the answer, then get stoned and listen to Dark Side of the Moon.

Chances are also that if you're purchasing clothes that advertise peace, you probably haven't put a whole lot of thought into the matter. Chances are that you dig the Lucky Brand neo-hippie look, are generally into love and peace, and have smoked weed at least three times. And if you have actually sat down and thought about peace for a long time and carefully reached the educated conclusion that peace is the answer, what in the sam hell are you doing spending your time and money at the mall? Wouldn't you rather be contributing to the cause in a more direct manner? If you want to legitimately campaign for peace, you'll be lonely amongst hordes of twats in peace-sign bikini bottoms, and wearing peace signs on your clothes isn't going to do much. Even if you fly out to Baghdad wearing a peace-sign pin, you'd probably just get shot a little more promptly than others. Now the peace sign is just like the Abercrombie moose.

It's not doing much for me, either. Maybe people will like my butt more if they see that it's a peaceful butt. I'm conflict-phobic; does that count? What am I going to do if someone calls my bluff at the beach?

"I see you're into peace."
"Uh, yeah."
"That's radical, man."
"Uh, yeah, thanks."

Oh man. I am a toolie tool.