Horse of Another Color

Eleanor Cavet loves Bob Dylan more then you love your mother. She likes to listen to Bob when she's feeling morose, after a long night of fighting with the boyfriend in which when the argument has ended and the calm seems on the horizon, until she gets the nagging feeling of emptiness and the realization that there was no real resolution. She likes to listen to Bob Dylan when she is feeling sexy, when she thinks about the granduer of doing drugs in some far away elegant flat, and how thrilling it would be to be that miserable person, instead of her boring self (in comparison). She also likes to listen to Bob Dylan when she gets nostalgic, thinking of her grandparents and their 30 plus marriage, where they traveled from bar to bar playing music together, an image of romance that is burned into Eleanor's brain, even though every musician she's dated she cannot stand. Her guitar sits in the corner of her bedroom, collecting dust and groaning out of tune. She's afraid of that guitar, the unlit musical torch to carry on for her family.


Eleanor Cavet assumes that most people do not like her, but this isn't the part where I say she doesn't care because she's going places, or she's completely in touch with herself, or hell, blowing dick to get ahead and liking it. She's just in the middle of mundane, where her nervous chatter to coworkers, despite a lot of laughs, must be totally and completely fake. On a good day she rolls out the jokes and the chit chat and even eases tension, and on bad days, she's a bumbling fool who vomits her life and thoughts out onto other people without bothering to think if they wanted to know, except that she does think about it, obsessingly after. If you haven't noticed by now Eleanor Cavet's emotions are not just a roller coaster, but resemble more the toy in doctors offices children slam the pieces around up and down and side to side from one end to the other, containing several different bars with different colors. There's a name for this toy, google it.

Men love to make her laugh, and try valiantly to keep her laughing for fear she'll start crying. I am painting a bi-polar picture here but let me assure you it's more anxiety and self-esteem, and a little less Russell Brand, or better yet Carrie Fisher (who hasn't seen the star wars christmas special?). It could be her awkward frame of 5'11, 158lbs (she never wanted to be a model, or a basketball player, but thank you for being the millionth person to say that to her) and the thing she hates the most, the little small pudgy stomach she's always had, made even worse by her nonexistent boobs. Luckily she does believe her ass is phenominal (it's true) or she'd be a real basket case. She also has the tendancy to turn men gay, and the constant reminder of how hot her super model older sister does wear her down from time to time. The braces however count for a plus one on the good side of esteem, along with her belief that the ugly duckling has to develop a personality to survive. This might be the reason why most of the time Eleanor is a completely functional human being, and sometimes she's even happy!

Eleanor Cavet could be a sweet and charming girl, if it weren't for all that worrying rolling around in her head. She read in Time magazine that some cortex or other develops thicker in young children who are anxious or distressed or fussy. She's taken this as an acceptance that she cannot help herself, and even though she feels she is making progress in her twice a month visits to the shrink, she doesn't feel like the underlying issue is ever going to surface. She fears most, that there is no underlying issue that can be fixed, and by default (thanks to Time magazine) she is broken.


But Eleanor isn't crazy, this is crazy.