My name is Carol, and I admit it: I’m a chronic malcontent. What is a chronic malcontent? Someone who is never satisfied, can never be happy, sees only half empty through mud-colored glasses, and goes through each day with a personal rain cloud the way Pigpen traveled with his own dust cloud. But Pigpen was happy (I think). Chronic malcontents have honed discontentment to an art form.
I’m not sure why I’m writing this. It’s unlikely anyone will ever read it, considering I don’t plan to tell anyone this blog exists. It’s sort of like the online equivalent of a message in a bottle. But I’m not asking, is anyone out there? It’s more like I’m just letting the universe know I’m pissed.
What have I got to be angry about? Thanks for asking. Really, nothing. I’m white, and I live in America. I mean, I should be grateful, counting my blessings, thanking god (if there is a god), right? But on the other hand, I’m female and 55, so I think I’m entitled to gripe. Plus I’m in graduate school. Plus I teach at one of the dreaded career colleges people love to hate. Plus I’m packing too many pounds as I try to recover from a misguided bout of veganism. Plus I’m single and I haven’t had sex in 8 ½ years. Is that enough? What do you think, have I earned the right to complain?
Relax. It’s not like anyone is going to read this. Certainly not you.
So, in classic nihilist style, I’ve claimed there is no point to this narcissistic endeavor. But not everything has to have a point. Does it? Sometimes the best art is the kind that seems completely irrelevant. Like art about nihilism, for example. I used to be pair-bonded to a nihilist, but that is another story. I’ve done all the complaining about that relationship that I’m going to do. Long time ago, blah blah blah, old news, ho hum.
- Dissertation hell.
- Art hell.
- Relationship hell.
- Vegan hell.
- Employment hell.
- Introvert hell.
I'm sure there are other hells that will manifest from time to time, as hells are wont to do. Maybe you will find something hellish to relate to. But since no one is reading this, it doesn’t really matter.
Why the name handbasket? Well, obviously it comes from the amusing cliché of going to hell in a handbasket. I’m not sure I know what a handbasket is, do you? I picture a sort of wicker, rickety affair with a crooked handle. That’s not all that funny, I know: I’ve received (and given) plenty of holiday gifts in baskets just like that. You can get them at Goodwill for $2.00. What’s funny about going to hell in a handbasket is the image I get in my mind of all my friends, family, colleagues, in fact the entire stinky swell of humanity, tossed into a rickety wicker basket, sliding down a dark tunnel toward hell as we elbow each other for room and scream at the top of our lungs. To me, that is funny. Maybe that relationship with the nihilist had some lasting effect on me. Hmmm.
Although, now that I am examining my mental image of the handbasket scene, my perspective is from outside the basket. Do I actually think I am exempt from going to hell in this handbasket of humanity? No, not at all. But I can’t quite imagine myself sitting in that cramped and smelly pile of bodies. It’s more like I’m discorporate, a disembodied intellect floating alongside the squirming mass, maybe taking virtual pictures. Which I would post on Facebook, of course. If I had a Facebook page, which I don’t.
So come along for the ride. Or not. Who cares. In any case, it’s quite likely my attempts to write this egotistical blog will go the way of millions of other self-absorbed, egotistical blogs: passwords forgotten, thoughts frozen in time, pages lost in cyberspace, maybe stumbled on by accident once in a millennium by a stray traveler, who reads a few lines and quickly clicks the back button muttering a one-word judgment that sums up the entire hopeless, useless, pointless endeavor: “Lame.”
