Why on earth is desire only permitted to find expression in these restrictive and unimaginative forms? I can't get my head around it, it's baffling. There's some fundamental principle I'm just not getting. What am I, a child? I've lived, I've had my share of experiences, and I've read books, I try to understand. But I feel like it comes down to either getting it or not getting it, and I sure don't get it. Furthermore I don't trust people who say they do get it, that seems like a failure of imagination more than anything. Imagination or nerve. This is not the only way to live.

At any time in history there are limits and boundaries and codes of acceptable behavior, restrictions, permissible thoughts. But isn't it a little perverse to be aware of them consciously in your own life, to reach out and touch those walls and shrink away, not from fear or even respect but simply with a shrug and resignation? These are lines for sociologists and future historians to draw, they aren't rules for individuals to follow from inside life. It's too self-conscious, everyone is too aware of them, it's like customs or norms turned into laws. Every so-called rebel is media-savvy and shrewd, the only choices are quiet acquiescence and the emptiest sort of calculated provocation. Have you seen the discourse on so-called alternative lifestyles? The level of dialogue is frequently idiotic, it just reinforces existing strictures when it should be ignoring them. This is one reason nearly all gay movies are insipid, we replace one set of codes for another even more restrictive one, or simply reuse tired schemes and replace "straight" with "gay." Big deal. Gay marriage is fine but can we move beyond this now, please? I'd like to aim a little higher.

I need to study this more and figure it out. On some mornings I see wide open spaces and no limits on possibilities, a landscape in which desire's multifarious tracks can be followed in any direction, and I know that's an illusion. Sometimes when I feel especially gloomy I see this perception of freedom as part of some diabolical programming, some tranquilizing false vision worked into the masterplan.