Summertime Sadness

Kiss me hard before you go
Summertime sadness
I just wanted you to know
That baby, you're the best

I got my red dress on tonight
Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight
Got my hair up real big beauty queen style
High heels off, I'm feeling alive

Oh, my God, I feel it in the air
Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare
Honey I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere
Nothing scares me anymore...(2, 3, 4)...

Kiss me hard before you go
Summertime sadness
I just wanted you to know
That baby, you're the best

I've got that summertime, summertime sadness
S-s-summertime, summertime sadness
Got that summertime, summertime sadness
Oh, oh oh

I'm feelin' electric tonight
Cruising down the coast goin' 'bout 99
Got my bad baby by my heavenly side
I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight

"Summertime Sadness" Lana Del Rey

— `phfina commentary

We choose our fates, and we choose how we feel about our choices.

That's it.

So simple.

And I've got that Summertime Sadness, I find myself crying so hard these days, so hard my eyes are red when I wake up, looking like warmed-over death. I mean: look at Lana Del Rey! She sings songs, that, if I may be so bold, are like my stories, so disturbingly visceral, and so true. Sex, alcohol, drugs, despair.

... Life. ... or death. Doesn't matter. Nothing does anymore. What's the point? There is none, so why bother?

My choice, right?

I just attended a death anniversary Mass of a priest, a Monsignor at my church, that everybody loved. He was a hard, hard man, he smoked hard, he drank hard, he never, ever backed down from his principles. If had ever meet him, he would have probably beat the sin out of me and preformed an exorcism, just in case.

And he would have done in with Love in his heart.

And the thing is, he chose it, and he was the happiest man in the world for it, because it was never about him, he gave his life to God, and he had open-heart surgery, an appendectomy, the KKK on his church yard burning crosses calling for his death (he was THAT old) which he stood up to without fear, and when he was about to die, he didn't tell a soul, he just went around, having supper with the people he loved and cared for, and then he died, leaving thousands of people touched with a life that was never about him.

He didn't care, either, see? But still he chose: he chose God, and he chose to be happy about that choice, no matter what life threw his way.

Me, I care. I care too damn much, but about the wrong thing, about that girl in the mirror, that, really, doesn't matter at all, not at all, but I choose to try to not look bad and walk around with this chip on my shoulder seventeen times bigger than little me (all of 17 pounds?) (The merchant of Venice wouldn't get his pound of flesh from me), all wind and arrogance.

You know, I almost never, ever would've listened to Lana Del Rey. You know why? It was given to me by somebody about whom I'd already made my mind up. "Fuck, all stupid fucking romantic mushy love ballads; I can't poison my mind with more of this shit!"

That's me. I choose, but then I really don't all: I snip, snide, snicker, and look down my nose at all of you, better than all of you, because, hey, I'm self-aware, and I'm me, and I know what I like and what I don't like and if you dare to offer anything to me, well, obviously, you're wrong, and how dare you, anyway in the first place?

Monsignor Browne was like that. The Mother Superior said, "you know, Father, you really should stop smoking."

He snapped right back to her: "You know, you really should mind your own business," and finished his smoke.

He loved his smokes, he loved his drink, and he didn't give a fuck what anybody else thought, because he knew people in their hearts because he knew himself, and he knew all their darkness of their 'harmless advice' of trying to change him to be more like ... well, like them, and not like Christ.

I learned today, a protestant Church lost their minister, and they asked him to preach at their church ...

Do you know what he did?

If I put myself in a priest's shoes ... which I will never do, btw, as God wills that I don't ... I would've been like, excuse me? Convert to Catholicism, or go to hell you heretics!

That's `phfina for you, so tolerant and understanding! @_@

You know what Fr. Browne did?

He went, every Sunday, for a year, to their church, and spoke on God and Love, right from their Bible (there are differences in the rendering of the texts in the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles). And he would've done it for years more if the Diocese hadn't transferred him to a new parish across the Commonwealth (when they found out?). And, looking at the people today... today! ... with love shining in their eyes for their Father Browne, those people probably fell in love with him, too, for what? for him giving himself up to serve others with nothing other than love in his heart for the people he loved.

And look at Lana Del Rey, my foolish pride and arrogance prevented from listening to one word she sang to me every word she sings about her throwing her life away, so carefully destroying herself, over and over and over again, because why? Because she's alive and she's, yeah, because she's a woman, in the pointless, hopeless, throwaway world.

And her only hope is ... cocaine? PBR? A good hard fuck her bf, or, well, any boy within arms reach, ... and why?

And why? So she can be alive ... be alive for just one second of her worthless, pointless life where everything, all her senses are dumbed-down and dulled in this grey nothingness we all push through, posing, 'working', faking our way through, but never, ever acknowledging what really doing: which is anything possible to avoid staring Truth in the eye and calling a spade a spade.

That is: looking right in the mirror and acknowledging that what we've done with our lives, the only thing we've done with our lives, is to waste it away.

What's the point?

The point is: Fr. ... Msgnr. Browne, Lana Del Rey, they chose opposite.

But they had the guts to choose.

Msgnr. Browne chose to give his life to Christ ... to be a 'Christ'ian, to follow Christ to the end, and he was happy with that.

Lana Del Rey chose to look in the mirror, and actually sing her heart out, to give herself, completely and entirely to any and everything, to burn out, a supernova, and to fade away, but to proclaim to her very last breath her despair and agony.

Me?

A faker. A poser. Too good for anybody and everybody.

That's why, when I think of her, I'm so happy for Saga. She chose to move on with her life, and she made the right choice, to relegate me firmly to the past.

Because that's the only way I can help anybody who loves me ... to help them get over me as quickly as possible and to forget me, because I'm not a choice, I'm a failure. I fail over and over and over again to choose, but I surely have my snide commentary on everybody else and what losers they are.

And I have the gall to be self-righteous about my hypocrisy.

And then, when I have to face the nothingness of my pointless day, I stare at a bright and sparkly screen, so unlike my dull and grey life, playing video games. They have prescriptions for my 'condition,' so hey, I can always get strung out on drugs, because that's so much better, being a docile little fucktoy cumdump cog in this superinfoindustrial machine with metro rail to take us to and from the machines that we are walking ghosts in.