your seaside arms*

Here's what I think: I think we start adulthood with some basic materials. What happens with those materials is further shaped by experience and history, by artists and knives, by time. But there's this basic, this fundamental material that is who you are.

Like say you're marble. Hard and cold, and one artist who tried to work with you froze to death at your feet. Chip away what doesn't belong he said, and then he lay beside his tools and never woke up. Or you might be clay, thrown down and raised and fired. But you're still marble; you're still clay. I didn't go with the glass metaphor here, because I think shatter might lose its power if I throw the glass around too often, but don't think I wasn't thinking about it.

My point is that life shapes you, but your basic self remains the same. If you've ever gone to an elementary school reunion, you may start to think your basic self was already pretty clear at age six, but I'll give leeway for an undefined self before adolescence, maybe before adulthood. I don't think adults change. And this is why I don't forgive. I wanted you to be one thing. I believed you were one thing. And even if you stood before me again as seemingly perfectly etched, every line an echo of the words we spoke, the dreams we screamed under trains, there are the promises you broke... even if you looked as perfect as a wedding cake, I can never now forget that you're plaster of paris, and you've never even been to Europe.

I'm not saying nothing's possible. People change, or we are the change we are looking for, or spare some change. I don't mean that change can't happen. But there is a difference between a change in appearance and presentation (which I believe is --which I know is-- possible) and a change in the fundamental nature of a person. I thought you were marble until I felt your true measure and realized how fake something could be. You might say nicer things now that you used to; you might even now say you had loved me then. But I believe you're still an imitation, no matter how clever, and I expect that you can never love anyone half as much as you love yourself, and that's why I don't listen to anything you say.

Or another story, because I don't think there's nothing but betrayal in the world, you know: I thought you were gold. I wouldn't have traded you in the worst crisis; you were too precious to think of trading, though I knew your weight and its worth. You have changed shape, have been beaten and reformed and worn as one woman's decoration, one man's teeth. But I saw you shiny in the river and my history was changed by your glint in the light. And days or years cannot tarnish you. I know this much is true.

_{*"your seaside arms" is a phrase from the song "True" by Spandau Ballet; it was meant to be an allusion to a line from Nabokov's "Lolita" about a girl's "seaside limbs" ("“But that mimosa grove the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since.") The songwriter made the illusion to impress the woman who had given him the book. She reportedly missed the reference. This is the problem with making obscure references. I wouldn't know anything about that, though.}

Comments

[tuckova]

We're all just walking chemistry experiments.

Seriously. I feel like even if it explodes, I'm gonna learn some real interesting stuff.

[ozma]

I think people can change in incredible ways. I've seen it. It's true there might be some basic aspects to a person that remain constant but it's so hard to know what those are. Can we ever tell? Forgiveness can change a person, love can change a person. So can trauma, resentment, hate.

There's an interesting book by Zimbardo--sorry can't remember the name. I don't know why but this--and also reading about war and what happens to people in war--this had made me think we are all capable of good and evil, that few people are really good or evil in a fixed way but that situations affect us so much more than we realize.

[Corbin]

I am made of beer.