Prometheus, What Is The Statute of Limitations on Guilt?

Just Because (And Nothing About Guilt Yet)

Do you love Nina Simone the way I love Nina Simone?  I was watching old episodes of Sherlock on Netflix and in the last episode of the second season, they used "Sinnerman" over a montage of Jim Moriarity walking from his jail cell to the courtroom and I remembered how much I love that song.



So of course it's been on repeat ever since, here, in our own little online juke joint.

The Wiki says it's a traditional gospel song that Nina Simone learned to sing during revival meetings. (Did you know that her mother was a Methodist minister? Me neither.) The song was meant to encourage sinners to confess their sins.

You got something you want to say?

And a Haiku by Mizuta Masahide

Barn's burnt down --
now
I can see the moon. 

And Now About That Guilt Thing Slash Confusion

One of the websites I read semi-regularly, xoJane, posted a piece called "I'm An Emotional Hoarder" by a writer named Bassey. The article's tag line caught my attention:

On Oprah’s Life Class last week (stop laughing!), she talked about being addicted to your story. I realized that my “addictive story” was about who I used to be and who I should have been.

Ah. I've got that same addictive story, the "who I should be and who I should have been." And I've got the emotional hoard to go along with it.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not even close to appearing on one of those awful shows where they find people living in houses with thirty years of newspapers and garage sale junk and tin foil wrapped feces, etc.  But I do haul around a fair bit of emotional garbage, both in the physical and in the mental sense.

Part of my 40th birthday gift to myself was the permission to throw away any- and everything I wanted to. I meant it to act as a catalyst--but instead I ended up doing nothing, throwing out almost nothing, and definitely nothing difficult.

But recently--ugh! Recently I've been feeling like all that stuff--as little as it is (and believe me, it's not that much--a couple of trunks full of old journals and essays and such, and a couple of crates of old college notes)--is smothering me.

I need to burn the barn down so I can see the moon.

I'm tired of being saddled with who I used to be and who I should have been. It's exhausting--and paralyzing--and every day piles more on, feels like.

That's still nothing about guilt, is it?

Ah.  Where is the guilt? Inside, yes. Around my torso, like a girdle. Why guilt? I suspect a lot of it has to do with wasted opportunities, wasted time. (Do you like The Arcade Fire? They have a song that begins

If I could have it back
All the time that we wasted
I'd only waste it again
If I could have it back
You know I'd love to waste it again
Waste it again and again and again

.) That is dedication to the craft, my friends. But I can't say I would do any differently.

Smashed

For the past couple of days I've been feeling smashed. Flattened. Part of it has been PMS. Part of it has been the advent of late fall/ early winter and the darkness that settles in too early. Part of it has been the anniversary of my grandmother's death, which I never remember consciously, only unconsciously. Part of it has been this general dissatisfaction with myself.

Let's laugh: How bad has it been? My Sephora online shopping cart has a $61.00 jar of face cream in it.  Ha! Ha! Ha!  At $61.00 for 1.7 ounces, that makes the stuff $574.12 per pound.  Ha! Ha! Ha! For that kind of money, I'm assuming there's some kind of teleportation involved, no? Wouldn't you?