Lessons in Organizing Pandemonium
Listening: "Happiness is a Warm Gun" (Cover) by The Breeders
Reading: A quoi rêvent les loups ? by Yasmina Khadra
Watching: Haunted Hotel on Netflix
Wanting: Acetaminophen
I watched Gremlins (1984) for the first time this weekend. I feel like movies from 40+ years ago shouldn’t warrant a spoiler alert, but here you go: !alert!
There is one scene where Kate (female love interest) is—quite comedically—maintaining a fierce devotion to her part-time bartending job amid the chaos of the Great Gremlin Takeover of their picturesque-Hallmark-small-town (despite it also being Christmas Eve? But it’s okay because she doesn’t like Christmas because her dad died pretending to be Santa in their chimney? God how had I not watched this movie until now it was an absolutely wild ride). Despite the bar being absolutely trashed and barren of any other human life in favour of dozens of boozed, evil-turned Mogwai, rowdily playing poker, smashing glasses, and swinging ineptly from ceiling fans, Kate persists, frantically filling drinks and even lighting cigarettes, desperately clinging to any semblance of order.
Lately, any task that I start (which are few and far between) feels as futile as Kate's attempts to run a bar for a horde of gremlins. Completing one reading feels ridiculous when I know there are twenty others and I'll barely be making a dent. Cooking a meal feels silly when I can just eat its deconstructed components and skip the prep time and dishes. It's possible that I'm just burnt out—this feeling extends to nearly every aspect of my life lately. Conversation is 80% listening on my part, responses have to fight through a thickly hanging fog in order to make their way out of my mouth. Making plans feels like a threat of danger, even with my closest friends. There has been a lot of "forcing myself" to do things lately, and very little motivation. It feels a lot like I am stringing myself along, scrapping together bits of energy where I can find them (supplemented by too much caffeine) and working on a dysfunctional motor. Chugging along, submitting assignments on time, sure, but not truly functional. This is the problem with considering someone "functional"...a "functional" alcoholic, a person with "functional" depression...this is not function, this is not right. All it proves is that you're able to perform tasks without too much disturbance to the system. You're not "malfunctioning" enough as a capitalist contributor to warrant any real concern. I think this is why some people yearn to hurt visibly. It's harder to ignore.
I think about the word "pandemonium" when I feel like this; I remember being taught the etymology of the word in a Classics course in first year. The Greek "pan-": all, and the Latin "daemonium": evil spirit. All of the demons. Utter chaos. The Worst Imaginable. The way this word has been watered down is fantastically funny to me, even the Merriam-Webster example sentence: "Christmas morning at our house is always marked by pandemonium." Unless you live in the Gremlin cinematic universe, I can't imagine this being the case. I'm realizing now that I probably sound like an Imagine Dragons song talking about all of these demons in my head—this is not what I'm trying to communicate. It's more the implications of the word—pandemonium evokes a different image for every interpreter...it captures the indescribability of one's inner world. I can explain the way it feels in my head to navigate the day-to-day, but the description will always feel limited. Chaos does feel fair—everything I do feels like standing in the middle of a crowd and trying to relocate people without a microphone...it could work, eventually, but I'll have to tap each person on the shoulder and give them the instructions individually, and there's a looming fear that by the time the last few arrive at the new location, the first will have already left in frustrated impatience.
I've been trying to convince myself that doing things halfway is better than not doing them at all. I would rather go to class and pay half-attention than skip the lecture. I would rather write a shorter, less polished blog post than ignore this space entirely. I would rather read the first page of an article than fail to open it once before tutorial and have zero idea what the discussion is about. We've all got to be a little easier on ourselves, I think.
I felt sad for Kate while watching the bar scene, but I also admired her unflinching determination. In the same way, I am proud that despite the mental blocks, I feel the need to create. Even if it means a blog post every couple of weeks until I can regain momentum, or some creative brainstorming via Pinterest until I feel the energy to craft again, I can't shake the intrinsic desire to be creative, to reflect thoughtfully through writing, to learn more about myself and the way that my brain works. For that, I am grateful.
Until next time,
Abby