Beautiful Basil

Here we go again. It's 1am, I'm drunk out of my ass on good wine and 2 shots of expensive tequila (which is totally worth the money by the way, because it's got a very limited hangover), home, lamenting and stewing in a moshpit of memories and regrets.

Forsooth, there should be a comma between the eponymous 'Beautiful' and the eponymous 'Basil', because it's not a commentary on how attractive I am (as true as the case may be), but a sarcasm-laced verdict of how I've handled...oh, I don't know, the last ten years of my life? I'd say that's a fair estimate of how long I've fucked up and been in a state of fucked-up-edness.

Drinking and blogging. Why is it so attractive to me? I can't bear to read these entries in the morning and yet I can't get myself to delete them, as embarrassed as I maybe because I cling on to this belief that everything I write when I'm like this might be useful to me, years from now when I'm beyond cringing at my hapless attempts at acquiring some kind of life.

My biggest regret...well, right now, it's the cancellation of Carnivale, because I just saw the second season on DVD and it's quite brilliantly original. I suggest you all rent/ buy/ forage/ steal the boxset and spend a weekend watching it. Don't watch it with someone you love (because it's not happy) and don't wach it with someone you think is an idiot (because chances are you're right and they won't have the patience for it).

My biggest regret, in things that matter, is that I allowed myself to get this bitter.

Sure, there are reasons for it, good ones I guess. Vulnerability mixed with rage mixed with disappointment...the usual bullshit that life's so adept at throwing at you. But it's a faustian arrangement, allowing yourself to follow the anger, stirring it rather than putting it out and moving on. You think you're justified in your anger and you probably are but that's not the point. The point is the anger doesn't help you, it hurts you. Sure, maybe in the short term, it fools you into thinking you're stronger than whatever it is that's battering at your brain, but long-term? It's been invited into your soul and now you don't know how to live without it.

Even with the insomnia and the mania and the depression. Can't let go. Or won't.

Speaking of depression, I'm developing a fixation on the depression: the dustbowl era of the United States, Grapes of Wrath, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and, of course, Carnivale. I love that combination of hopelessness and mysticism and desperation. It's a real inspiration not to get too...well, depressed.

Beautiful, Basil. Just beautiful.