Anh chả bao giờ cho mình là thi sĩ

 Anh chả bao giờ cho mình là thi sĩ

Trót yêu em nên tập tễnh làm thơ

Yêu em rồi mới giựt mình suy nghĩ 

Làm sao nếu em õng ẻo ỡm ờ

And she did do a lot of gyrations, as expected. I was young and green and stupid. So I suffered. Needlessly. Actually, I suffered necessarily. I got a bit wiser. So the whole process repeated itself. With each woman, I got a bit wiser. I learned from my mistakes. I learned about myself and about them. You would say I paid for my education with women with blood, sweat, and tears, and cold hard cash, in some cases quite a lot. I was a stupid, shy man.

The biggest lesson I learned was that all women, at least the ones I knew, had a very inflated sense of themselves. The less talented and the more stupid they were, the bigger they thought of themselves. It was a kind of psychologically compensatory mechanism so they could live, could carry their heads high whenever they walked out of the house. Realities be damned. They didn't give a fuck about realities and truths. All they cared about were excuses and excuses of why they were the way they were. One gave me a long list of reasons of why I was not any better than she was (I didn't bother to retort. My contempt was deep.). When I saw the list, I almost fell out of the chair. Gosh, I realized with a sudden, blinding clarity of who she really was. There must be thousands, if not millions of people who are like her, out there in the real world. Then I also knew why I unconsciously stayed away from her: I no longer respected her. Her mask slowly slipped off her face as time passed by. I got glimpses of her true face and I didn't like what I saw. She was too pedestrian, too common, too average, too cheap, too ordinary. There was nothing I could learn from her. I didn't even want to be around her anymore. With disrespect came revulsion. 

One must have a modicum amount of nobility and dignity in one's behavior. The insight came to me, ironically from the rude and cheap behavior of the woman mentioned in the preceding paragraph. So I tried to not to be like her. Instead, I wanted to have nobility and dignity and self-honesty in my behavior. So I dressed better. I spoke better. My diction and articulation improved. I curbed my temper. I learned to bite my tongue. I began to speak what people wanted to hear, not what I wanted to say. I stopped spilling my guts, confiding in people (so what's the fuck I am doing now?). I still have relapses, but hell, I am not perfect. I am just a clumsy, stupid, garrulous old man, okay?

But I wanted to know about realities and truths. So I went back and started hitting the books, especially the philosophy ones. I am on my Wittgenstein kick. The guy was very crazy and unbalanced, but ironically enough had an original, logical, and artistic mind. He had some striking ways of looking at the world, philosophy, and language. I am taking notes as I read. I am learning about myself. I am stumbling, slouching for a reason of my being here on this planet. And I stopped--cold--my long search for love. There was nobody like Harriette out there. 

I am psychologically much stronger now. I now realize life, like everything in it, is a game with strict rules. I must follow the rules to survive and to have peace of mind. 

November 18, 2013