A resounding gong or a clanging cymbal

1. I described myself as complicated in conversation over the weekend. The PG asked me why I was complicated. I was not quite sure how to reply to this. I told him that I want many things all at once and they are generally all mutually exclusive to each other. He replied that this did not make me complicated, this made me conflicted. To which I shrugged and said, "Tomato, Tomah-to."

And now I wonder if this is true. Conflicted, not complicated. I prefer to think that in fact everyone alive is very extremely complicated too.

Isn't there an inherent complexity to the world and our relationship to it? Yes? No? On occasion, I am accused of over-complicating things, both in my outlook / analysis and my solutions. I am accused of engaging in byzantine thinking as a self-indulgence, as a way to amuse myself. But that might just be evidence that I am a goober.

My new mantra (it's two days old) is: "What's stopping me? I am."

2. I was accused over the weekend of being "Real." I think it was intended as a compliment but if I think about it - I am Real and conflicted when I'd much prefer to be complicated and Mythical. How do I get in on THAT action?

3. Lately I have been hearing many people use the expression, "It is what it is." Firstly, tautology, redundancy. What's wrong with saying, "It is this." I suppose that it's supposed to sound Zen but it sounds resigned and defeatist to me. As CK would say, "I don't like it."

4. Because G has been reading DFW's essays and the South has as well, I bought "Consider the Lobster" and have been reading it on the train. I am tempted to devote all of my posts on this blog to DFW quotes, from now until the day I die.

"It's not that Turnbull is stupid: he can quote Pascal and Kierkegaard ... It's that he persists in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair." - David Foster Wallace

"No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." - David Foster Wallace