Bottled up/Love
I understand that expression now, ābottled upā. It has to be a bottle because when bottles are shaken pressure mounts inside. Youāre corked. I have full ability to get my words out, and to put them on paper, or in music, or maybe relay them to a therapist, but I donāt. I subconsciously refuse. Itās so awful, but itās too pathetic to be valid. What I like about poetry is that sometimes youāll stumble across a poem that perfectly encapsulates a specific feeling or thought youāre experiencing. And Iām not talking about āI love youā ā which the most unobservant person will realise is the message of every song, poem, book, movie, speech, everything ā but āI am sitting in an unknown cafĆ© while itās snowing outside, and everything feels perfect and good in this moment even though I am only sitting in a cafĆ© aloneā like in Bukowskiās āNirvanaā. Or āEverything is too much or too little and, for a while, I donāt want to concern myself with anything, especially anything man-madeā like in Dionne Brandās āI am giving up on land to light onā. We studied that poem in my English class and the only thing anyone could talk about were the anti-colonial themes, but it can be so much more than that.
Do you know how isolating it is to hear āI love youā in every piece of media and art and song when youāre not in love and have never been in love? I donāt pity people who have had their heart broken because there are a million heartbreak songs and a thousand movies about breakups. There are no songs about never having felt love. There are no songs that capture those specific feelings. Itās either āI love youā or āI loved youā.
Even this essay-poem-disaster has become about love. God.
I feel like Iām speaking a different language that only I speak. I can only translate it through songs and poems ā sometimes book characters ā but thatās at best a half-translation. Maybe a line here or there will cover a side feeling, but never the heart of it. I imagine that if youāre in love, any old Shakespeare sonnet will do pretty well. Do you know āI Am A Rockā by Simon and Garfunkle? Thatās the closest Iāll come.
For example, angsty love issues aside, I really want to leave my home city. My home city is beautiful, I love my family, and Iāve loved growing up here. (āLoveā in this context is okay, for your information.) But I yearn to leave, and see other things, and get away from all the people I love. Maybe in Barcelona Iāll find whatever Iām looking for.
