August 29, 2005

The Wisdom of Jen Aniston

This is a blatant rip off of and not nearly as brilliant as “A Villanelle Composed Upon Jennifer Aniston’s Answers To Her May 2001 Vanity Fair Interview, With Catalina Island Glimmering In the Distance”, but something must be done about Aniston’s September 2005 Vanity Fair Interview. She has a tremendous ability to spew and suck drivel simultaneously, and she speaks like poems I wrote when I was twelve. So now, poetic excerpts of the 2005 interview for those of you who puked too soon and didn’t finish reading it. Believe me, it means nothing more in context.

****

i)

Seven very intense years together;
we taught each other a lot-

about healing, and about fun.
It was a beautiful, complicated relationship.

What we said was true-
as far as I knew.

We exited this relationship
as beautifully as we entered it.

ii)

The world was shocked
and I was shocked.

The sad thing, for me, is the way
it’s been reduced to a Hollywood cliche.

iii)

It was that thing about being a nurturer;
somewhere along the way

you sort of lose yourself.
You just don’t know when it happens.

It’s such an insidious thing,
you don’t really see where it started-

and where you ended.

There’s no one to blame
but yourself.

iv)

It’s sad
something coming to an end.

It cracks you open, in a way
it cracks you open to feeling.

When you try to avoid the pain
it creates greater pain.

I’m a human being
having a human experience.

I have to think there’s some reason
I have called this into my life.

I have to believe that-
otherwise it’s just cruel.

v)

I’m not a fortune teller;
I have no idea how it will play out. People say

“What are you going to do?”
I just don’t know.

I kind of love that
not knowing.

****

Read Lynn Crosbie’s take on the Interview, who believes Aniston “reveals what lies at the heart of women’s public demonstrations of personal grief. While public men tend to exhibit a panoply of vivid emotions when cuckolded, ranging from bleak despair to homicidal fury, with the exception of the prostrate Elizabeth Smart, women, hobbled by vanity and pride, are more given to follow the song-counsel of Melissa Manchester: “Don’t cry out loud/Just keep it inside, learn how to hide your feelings. . . .'”