in time of daff0dils...

pramgmatism, humility

2012-01-30T08:10:00.000-08:00

I struggle to main the balance on a certain line that swerves like a question mark and runs, at times, razor thin...

why?
why does the expression of entitlement drive to screams but the notion of giving up make me want to shake the very idealism back into their whitewashed head that is pardoning, right now, every exception short of happiness.

in the same breath that I can barely contain as I hear someone give up, just a little more, on beauty, I a ready to break, be little, condoned the very hubris that makes a young (and sometimes not so young) sap believe they are guaranteed their dream with the exact right wrapping and paper and bow just because they are awesome

this is the thing, if you are lucky enough to know what you want, you should always remember it, and if you are pretty sure you are unhappy, you should heed that warning too

but you should never forget the masses that struggle every day in jobs and lives and situations so unlucky you can barely fathom the compromises they still manage to make and sometimes, yes, even be gloriously happy

as you curse your like for the broken knob, the accidental snub, the moment of idiocy, the long wait in line, consider the compromises and exceptions you might need to make, question why you think you deserve to come first, and what is really "hard" and what is really, just par the course and very simply defies your initial expectations

lattitude of lassitude

2012-01-15T12:32:00.000-08:00

the intersection of annoying and boring seems to exist in every town, most junctions and more than a few popular burrows

I don't really know what to do about it, but it seems that whenever I weave my way through town, desperately trying to avoid annoying, with it's loud horns and obnoxious drivers and spaced out pedestrians, I end up at boring, unsure how to leave, a dull din drowning out the chords of reason in my brain

likewise I parallel boring, hoping to find an avenue to excitement, or find peace on a map, and end up always circling back to that damn avenue. one way streets are unmarked and its either a dead end or back to ennui boulevard. it's wide, it's slow, it is hard to get off of it, and most of the side streets are deserted and a little scary. all the cars look the same: white, silver, black new model sedans and mid sized suvs blasting last months top 40 so quietly I can barely make out the song, but am haunted by the cacophony of listless basslines that all sound the same but don't even begin to harmonize. baselines that are low and without beauty.

I don't know. I suppose the answer is to go by bike. by foot. by cross country ski. use a compass or dead reckoning and move...slowly, patiently, choosing the streets that suit the best and seem only a little bit threatening. to cut through parks, stop at a park bench, eat your lunch and read a book. to speak to strangers and ask the way. only ...take directions with a grain of salt, understand that others intentions may not match your own, that their routes may vary by basis of their own needs. they can't tell you your best route, just orient you on your path.

2012-01-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a strange despondency settles and there is no root cause, no apparent reason. Waking up in such a state seems equivalent to waking up on a raft, no memory of setting sail, no recollection of the sea you are on, with a deep and abiding sense that land is far off, the waters are cold and the sun, not altogether warm at onset, is soon apt to set. It is one thing to set sail, to embark on a journey likely to have dangers, fear, sadness. It is another to find oneself there by happenstance, never making the launch, never choosing the path in the first place. Where are you going? Why did you leave? What did you leave behind? Were you cast off or did you flee? What are your running from... or to?

I am apt to blame dreams. Perhaps I set sail last night in my darkest depths, I embarked on great journey, experienced great sadness and joy in the depths of slumber, I solved the worlds problems, fell in love, saw the northern lights aboard a glorious sailboat and never made my way to shore before waking.

2011-12-27T14:25:00.001-08:00

This year my New Year's Resolution is to eat slower.
That’s it. That is all.

And I know it's early, and I know it's silly.

And so I guess that is not it. All. Which is to say there is more to it:

But see:I eat fast.
I've often noticed this, looking around me, but nowhere was it more notable than on our recent trip to Mexico. We would sit, meal done, watching other families and couples, who had entered before us, still casually working on their food while we were already proud members of the clean plate club.

Yep: we eat with a certain excitable determination, bound and driven to get the tasty into our mouths lest turn out to be a mirage.

And I really mean no judgment, on a general level, as I consider the speed of our dietary consumption. I think it's cultural, and perhaps a bit of a reflection of our extreme enthusiasm for...nutrition. We aren't birds. We like food. Hell, I love food.
I would never strive to be one of those people who barely pushes their food about and dissects it and proclaims it "fine".

But as I sat there, every crumb eaten or scattered, a veritable battle zone of eat or be eaten, while others still casually speared a banana and placed it delicately in their mouth, or sipped slowly on their margarita, eating one chip at a time, I began to wonder whether there is something more to it.

Most things I really like I consume with a speed and intensity perhaps worth examining. Coffee. Good food. Good wine or whiskey. I don't necessarily have too much, but what I have I have quickly. When I want it, I want it right then, and then I want it in me. And even though I know I want to savor it, there is an certain anxiousness about that first drop, and then about making sure I get what I aim for and get it all.

So there it is: anxiety.

And so I wonder if maybe I shouldn't try eating slower. OR even, really just try to slow down, in general. Slow down the consumption, slow down the acquisition. Just. Slow. Down.
Find a way to remove an expediency that has worked its way into my life where I crave the next thing so desperately that I am not even present during my consumption. Slow down the absorption of something so it lasts longer. And finally acknowledge that I don't need the thing I am enjoying, but I can enjoy the thing I am having.

This is hard for me. I talk fast. I think fast. I multitask and I move on to the next project when I am not even half done with the first. I am, unsurprisingly, just a bit neurotic.
And I don't get more done because of it and I don't enjoy more of life's pleasures because of it, and I am certainly not in danger or missing my next meal, or cup of coffee or drink if I don't get it and get it down.

So basically, my resolution is to examine some of my more basic habits and attitudes that add anxiety to my life where there need be none. To attempt to subtly change my processes so I experience things as a more peaceful and organic process.

2011-10-19T12:37:00.001-07:00

know we don't like to think of them this way, but relationships are contracts. They may not be written (generally) and they may be more implicit than explicit, but relationships: friendships, romances, are agreements to behave a certain way with our actions and generosities implying the terms.

Sometimes it is easy. With a good friend the implicit contract tends to be that you will care for eachother, you will say nice honest encouraging things to eachother, you will DO nice things for eachother only expecting a certain kind of reciprocation. Notice I did not say "you will give your love for free" or "you will work without expectation of reciprocation". Because this is, quite actually, never the case. Right? If you are there for your friend and care for them when they are sick and tell them to buck up when they are down, there is an expectation that they will not completely blow you off when you are in the same situation. There is a presumption that because you went to their wedding, they will come to yours. There is a hope that if you care for their animal or children they will not leave you high and dry if they are able to reciprocate the favor.
But still, the terms are relatively simple and they tend to hinge on a reasonably level of equity.

Sure, sometimes one friend working overtime for gobs of money and the other was just laid off and one might assume the equity of money spent or time available will skew, but usually, in a healthy relationship, innate ways are found to equalize. And while there may be some politics, there are seldom clandestine dealing or double dealings, or attempts to find a loop hole in the contract.

Where it can get ugly, confusing and sometimes a little skeezy, is in situations where the terms are not clear, the contract is misunderstood, and expectations beyond the contract lay in the distance shining. This generally exists more in romantic relationships, where it gets "complicated" and emotions are likely to be more volatile, are apt to grow or change.

And so while it is ugly to evaluate "why" someone is doing something to you, or giving you something, or why you are giving more than you would normally, sometimes it is a good questions to ask.
Why did I just cook a 10 course meal for a man I barely know? Why did I agree to watch his kids all week or reschedule all my plans so I can hang out with him every night? Why do I always pay? Why do they always answer the phone, even in awkward situations and why are they the first person I call.
The answer is generally obvious: we are brokering love. We are brokering a romantic love steeped in obligations and ties difficult to break and all sorts of laws are now question marks.
Best be honest about your intentions.
You do not help a person you barely know move 12 times unless you sort of want to get in their pants.
And they do not accept that offer if they have no intention of laying with you.

Sure. yes. this is in no way a hard and fast rule.
Yes, maybe you really just like to help people move and never found that person attractive. Maybe you have nothing better to do. 12 times.
But still, generally you expect something. A beer afterwards, a sense of gratitude. Maybe, even you just expect them to like you more.
But there is still an expectation, and there is still a contract.

This is why you don't take favors from people you do not want to owe something to. This is why you don't let people do things for you when you just don't like them.
Because they may not want your first born, but they may very reasonably have the right to expect their tit is gonna get a little tat.

Likewise, it is only fair to consider, when the beautiful instinct of generosity hits: what are your expectations? What are the liens you are laying, what are the obligations you are brewing?
And if they aren't explicit, might they atleast be fairly clear in the implicit intent? Can they at least be intuited.

I once heard this story from a friend who had been reunited with an old friend. They had a long talk about the olden days and then decided they should have dinner together. They did. Rinse, lather, repeat. They talked about people they were interested in, they joked and laughed. And he offered to pay each time but they generally went dutch, but sometimes it was like "no no, I have all this money, just let me get it". Then, one day they went on a particular romantic "hang out" and he revealed that each and every time they had hung out he was "investing" time in her with the intent to have sex. Dollars/fuck is, I believe the term of economy he used and he felt, even dutch, he had Floored, she stormed out and I would have too.
But I ask you to consider this: who reneged on the contract? What was the contract. On one hand I sort of figure if the tone is you just want friendly company and wish to walk down friendly company. If efforts are made to make it feel that way the contract you are informally signing is that you will both show up for dinner, have fun, and not make eacother feel uncomfortable or in danger or insulted. And, ya know, I'd say he broke that contract and she had a right to be pissed. But maybe he complimented her, always put her jacket on, talked about women in a way that let her know he was available and paid more than she implied. Maybe he was a guy she really didn't know that well taking her out alot out of the blue and offering to pay even though she had a job and the ability to pay for herself. Maybe he was investing alot of time in a single pretty girl. And you can guess what the implied contract was.
Understand: you never have a right to expect sex from someone who does not want to have sex with you. Even if you bought them the hope diamond and a pony. But maybe if an individual steps out and wants to buy you a pony for no good reason you should ponder: why would a stranger want to buy me this pony. Why did this man give me this diamond? Does he expect something?
Sometimes the devil is in the details and I am absolutely not intending to pain the facets of blame and responsibility unfairly in the story above.

I am more posing this question: when inequity sets in within the confines of a close, but potentially ill confined relationship, it is a good idea to ponder what the terms are of the contract you are building. From both ends: if you are giving more than you get, what are you hoping to receive and do you have a reasonable right to expect that pay off? Does the other party KNOW what your actual expected pay off is? Likewise if you are on the receiving end of an inequitable trade, ponder the expectations said generous sole may have, and where you should keep receiving when you have no intention of fulfilling your end of the contract.

Ponder this when your indignation kicks in and you rage on the results of your boundless generosity and love you gave for free, time you gave for nothing.

Nothing is free, and sometimes time, love and companionship is what we are making.
What was your production quotient? And did you even consider the terms of reneging?

2011-10-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

I thought many things. like that he might get fat. or drunk. or more than one girl very pregnant.

but I never thought he'd get ugly.

and I have to admit that I never thought I would be so sad to a see swaggering, womanizing, bright and shining cocksucker like himself fall...but in the end I was just as sad as I never expected to be

and I don't know why. maybe it cheats the memory. maybe it marks time passing a little too clearly. maybe, in the end, I liked him more than I wanted to and I just like to think of him out there, beautiful and knowing it

but instead there he is, pictures on facebook slapping me across the face with their bloat and their sweaty sheen. their bulging waist line and their dear lord put your shirt on because you really can not be that guy, not anymore

but he's still got a girl on each arm and the smile that says he's never sleeping cold

and I don't know if that makes it better or worse, so I'll try not to judge that one small thing.

2011-10-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

I'm all for irony but this has got to stop

when, really, did we all get so damn ugly. neon and pants up to our rib cages that still, somehow, give us muffin top and people who should never, ever, wear leggings. ever. not ever.

I know, I know, the point of tastes it varies per person. and the point of retro is that I am too old to appreciate it.

but I can not fucking believe that anyone truly believes they look good when they squeeze their sausage legs into bright green high waisted jeans and throw down with that shit. I can't. And I don't think it's about style. And I don't think it's about irony.

I think it is about a ridiculous cackle only half the people hear and I think it would be punk rock if only it had a point other than possibly we have all given up.

and if we were laughing at fashion lord almighty I would cheer

but sometimes I think we are just laughing at beauty.

and help me but suddenly my old old eyes just hurt.

Is that all there is?

2011-10-14T16:05:00.001-07:00

I don't have a thing I own that defines me and I don't do a thing in this world unique or significant enough to distinguish me.

What a thing to say. What a thing to know.

And yet. Yet I know it true. And yet. Yet I exist. Autonomously and distinctly.

Yet you can tell me apart from that other girl who does not posess fascinating objects or have distinguishable talents.

The world is filled with us. There are more of us than there are of you. People who knit and sew and bike and wear pretty things and buy trinkets and are on their way from coffee to a drink. Score of people who almost regularly do many things averagely.
We are not experts, we are barely hobbyists. We are not stupid. We look nice, to be hideous is to be extraordinary. We seem reasonable. To not is it's own quality.
Very few of us have an amazing collection of robots or can draw a pretty picture or even inspire one.

And yet I suspect everyone, somewhere, deep inside them has the smallest aspiration to inspire. Maybe just inspire their children, maybe their lover, maybe their parents or that sad man walking down the street who could really use some inspiration.
And we all like to feel special, we all suspect we might be unique.

It makes you really wonder about the nature of such things. How each of us finds a way to matter and what mattering truly is in the end.

breaking up is hard to do.

2011-09-28T08:59:00.001-07:00

It's a drug
You know it is a drug and you understand it is a drug and yet when you take it you think it feels real. It feels like release and control and the vault of heaven. It tells you all your instincts were right and all your fears were ill founded. It makes you feel sad, but it makes you feel you. Or a little less you. No matter. You reach out, your touch it, and you are transformed.

You are removed from the dirty and endless reality of bills and laundry and delivery notifications and waking up alone. You are suddenly not thinking about another night brushing your teeth, washing your face, and making sure you've let the dog out. You are not thinking, really at all. You are alive, and it's gorgeous.

Here is the thing.

There is nothing wrong with the drug. There is perhaps, even, possibly, nothing wrong with using the drug regularly.

But are you addicted to the drug? Is it recreational or a stop gap? It is pleasure or does it just postpone the pain? Is it for you or in spite of you.

Because the simple reality is that no drug maintains it's potency. You need more and more and sooner or later it is about whatever led you to the drug and that escape and all the bits and pieces you will give up to feel the ghost of that escape. It is not about you.

You can't have one cigarette, and you won't have just one drink when a cigarette or a glass of wine is all you think about.
You won't have coffee with him and talk about life in a nice, civilized fashion and wake up the next morning satisfied.

Each text hits a vein, every smile burns a shadow hole in your retina.

And I bet that shape fits like the last tetris piece as you try to rebuild your heart

An abstract post on loss

2011-09-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people walking around in the world. So many people. It's amazing we can even take note of a few. Even in the hospital I work in I am sure I wouldn't recognize 80% if I saw them out of context.
Which is why it is always fascinating to me when a total stranger becomes notable, when a human is suddenly more visible than all the other humans swarming in the sea of humans.

And then there are the ones that I never really get to know. You know what I mean: you exchange pleasantries, stories, learn little things about them. You compliment their shoes, ask them about their dog. You, for some reason, see them around, but might never even learn their last name.

In San Francisco I had this guy, Ivan, that I saw almost every single day. I have absolutely no idea what Ivan did for a living, or where he lived. If he was married, single, a father, a religious man. No idea. But I saw him every day and sometimes we'd say hi and once I saw him several times a day and he assured me he was not following me. And then one day I just stopped seeing him. For a while that concerned me. I don't know why. I don't have any idea who that guy was, but he had become a familiar face, and then suddenly our orbits changed. Or he moved. Or he hurt himself. I'll never know. I'd have no reason to know.

And I wonder sometimes: were there other people I saw just as often, but for some reason didn't take note of? I mean, Ivan and I must have had similar commutes or liked the same places or something that made us cross paths so much. But others must have shared similar proclivities. Was it truly frequency or are there some people that just color the landscape a little more brightly for you? Is there something that makes your imagination wander just a bit more?

Again. I have no idea.

A month or two ago I was walking to meet some friends and someone I worked with hailed me from his doorstep, asked if I worked where I worked. He worked in a completely different department. I passed him frequently but we never interacted. I walked up and we started a conversation. There were...interesting things about him, or the kind of things that tend to capture my imagination. Music. Pets. Whatever. Just the stuff I like. Stuff that made me think he would be someone I, or my friends, might like. And so he became one of my "familiar faces" I see constantly. We talked. I knew a bit about him. Not much. Just enough to make him stand out just that much more. Certainly not enough to take it even a little personally when the email came out today to announce to our workforce at large that he had died on Monday. On some level I wasn't even sure I had a right to feel more than abstractly sad.

But it did make me sad. One less interesting face in a sea of forgettable madness. One person I am bound to question if I truly missed the boat or the bullet in having known them better.
A very specific person I am sure much more specific people are truly feeling a gaping hole of loss around right now.

The world is a big place. But I've always suspected that each and every person we can relate can make it seem that much smaller, that much warmer and that much more intimate.

Selfishly that is all I have to add to his passing, other than it is sad when people lose people. In any given way.

2011-09-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

I know I've posted this before, but this is worth watching. About 1 millions times.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

I was raised with the backassed notion that strength, independence, and the quest perfection would make me the sort of person worthy of love.
I don't know where I got this idea, but I am sure somewhere between lessons on the frontier and education on capitalism it's easy to imagine where the notion of the self made man comes into a headlong collision with instinctual notions around intimacy.
And it makes sense that the media (we can always blame the media, right) and a zillion beauty pageants and sports competitions, and society and politics and a general sense of man against nature reinforced the notion that if I let someone know I was tired, or weak, or sad, or if let them know something was hard, or that I was dressing to hide those extra 5 lbs they would love me just a little less, that their disappointment would diminish their affections.

At any rate, I am here to tell you it is a lie. Or rather, that strength, independence and growth might exist in direct conflict with the quest for perfection. You will never be done, you will never be perfect, you will never polish this vessel to that kind of shine. And people looking for that kind of mirror finish are often seeking their own reflection, so let it go. You don't need such narcissism in those you hold close.

And I am here to quote the best fortune cookie I ever got "you think it is a secret but it never has been. Which is to say, people already know you are not perfect. They know you have faults and down moments and a brain farts and cellulite. They were born knowing it. And they don't care.

And as much as I'd like to say that love, intimacy and friendship blooms over shared strengths, talents and beauties, I suspect true bonds are created when we witness the depths of those we love, the chinks in the armor, the truth of their existence found in the all pox and inconsistencies and secrets and formers lies.

Which isn't to say you need to be miserable to be loved. I do not believe that in the slightest. I am not the kind of angstful creature that would claim that in some deep dark room there are a bunch of emo wonders experiencing the greatest love of all.

And it isn't to say that others don't appreciate your achievements, I am sure they do. I am sure they are amazed. But I mean to suggest something far more simple: that an epic lists of faults, that a history of success and failure, that beautiful eyes and a soft underbelly might have more to do with actual happiness than a laundry list of achievements. That the constant quest to explore, change and grow with the acceptance of our sadness and faults can exist in tandem with joy. And possibly joy can not exist without it.

But I also think there is more to it than simply embracing one's faults and addressing them in the quest for inner peace. That is not simply about inner honesty. It is about sharing. It is about allowing others to love you, to be there for you, to know when you are having the most ridiculous insecurity, the most unnerving emotions.
Which is to say: open your damn mouth. Let a tear shed. And as reasonably often as a listening ear will allow. Because as much as friends, family and lovers love it when you are happy, and want to share the good times, they also want to be there for you. They want to let you know they love you, not in spite of your issues, but because of your issues. They want to let you know they care for YOU Not just the portion you deem fit for public consumption.
But they are not mind readers, and so you need to forgive this minor imperfection and make it easy for them to know when you truly need a helping hand.
Which brings me to the other upside, of being vulnerable around your friends, of being confident enough to know people won't run when you show them that fault: they will know they can do the same with you. They will grow to trust you. They will understand that they too have the kind of loving support that allows them to try, and fail, that allows them to break down, and move on.

If you were happy all the time you'd be a gameshow host. If you were perfect all the time you'd be a super hero. Both stand alone and people are always happy to see them come and...leave. So they can get back to their lives with the people they love and trust.

2011-09-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

and so we have a theme: you are what you do.
I apologize if I am becoming a one trick pony, but welcome to part 3,576 of "your actions reflect your priorities".

It's a true story folks.
This time taking a different angle, which is to say, all the things I consider a chore, work, a pain in the ass.
Which is to say nothing belies a lack of enthusiasm like considering a 15 minute drive a pain in the ass, like picking up the phone, like checking a website for updates, like forgetting to check in.
No shit.
Sure, sometimes overwhelmed emotions or a crippling phobia can be blamed for such issues (I mean, if the phone is your nemesis, I will not cast dispersions, but you best get friendly with a texting machine of some sort, or buy yourself a billboard, a smoky fire, a pigeon).

That being said, allowing for the fact that humans HAVE SHIT TO DO (and the less resources you have the longer it is apt to take you do them) I will still default to:

You do, on the whole, what you want, and you bitch and whine a lot less about the effort it takes when you enjoy the end result, when you consider the process part of the reward.

I think of it this way: I asked a coworker what her plans were for the weekend and she told me she was excited to do a laundry list of chores that would have sent me screaming for the hills. Seriously, the cleaning and the straightening and the organizing. Holy shit, hand me a margarita, but with no irony she stated her profound enthusiasm for these tasks planned. Another person very clearly stated she had no other plans then to sit for hour on end in the park and read. She hoped. Not a trace of boredom or annoyance of restlessness. She was going to toil to find a good book, the right blanket, and a bevvy of sunscreen. Then she was going to place her ass down and not move. End of story.

Some of you are bored. Some of you are stressed. Some of you know that you hate it when you get in the car to drive 10 minutes to see a friend while others are bouncing in their seats to be so damn close and have their buddies only moments away.

Nothing is a better tip off than a groan or a sigh of frustration that maybe what you are about to do is not really your moon and stars, if you get my drift.

Sure, sometimes we all gotta spend some time doing shit we don't want to do to move it along. But when your first thought is the work it entails, well then maybe the reward isn't so heavenly.

2011-08-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

I know they are only words, but they exist for a reason.
Like paper money, like wooden coins, like pot brownies at burningman, they are currency.
They exist to make communication easier, and in the same way most people won't trade a nickle for 4 pennies, words are less interchangeable than some people might think.
Especially important words. Especially heartfelt words.

When I say I like someone or, love someone, it is a deliberately expressed sentiment. I mean just that. I don't mean they are okay, or that I do not dislike them, or that I could stand to be in a room with them alone for an hour. I don't mean I would last a drink with them. I don't mean they are acceptable partner for my friend or that they do not steal or offend. I mean I enjoy their company, I mean they occupy a space in my mind that makes life just a little brighter, that much more fun.

There are so very many people we get know in our lives. Coworkers and friend's spouses and that guy that has worked at the mini mart for years. We say we like them and we spend time with them, sometimes by choice, sometimes by extension, but is it fair to say, to anyone, that we really like or love these people? Regardless of the attachments formed over time and repetition, are we doing anyone any favors claiming our affections lie with people we have simply learned to tolerate for the sake of peace and community?

I don't know. But I do know that love is a gift and affection is precious. And I can't help but to feel we should claim to like and love a whole lot less people, and maybe tell them people we truly like and love how we feel a whole lot more often. Which is to say, spend those words like the gold they are. Generously, but never capriciously. Because love may beget more love, but not if you throw it in a well and wait for it return your wishes.

2011-08-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

To a considerable amount of people on this earth I am one of the most boring people they will ever have the dubious displeasure of spending time with.

And so are you.

Remember that when you dismiss someone out of turn.

you are not the girl you think you are

2011-08-18T16:15:00.001-07:00

the bathroom mirror makes you look tall
but it's all your head. in your head

even with all the ways I see myself that contrast with the other ways I see myself and with reality in general I am still stunned to find how often I am not who I saw myself being, not who I see myself being

2011-08-18T16:08:00.001-07:00

everyone needs a birthday resolution and mine is to walk the walk just a little more than I talk the talk

seriously

as I get older one thought crystalizes in my head more than any other: you are what you do.
yes, there is a deep and beautiful world that lives within each mind, but in the end, your priorities are reflected in your actions.

in my head I am a sinewy stunning exotic beauty. but in my head in my head I am also the lady who so enjoys cheese and wine and lounging about in the sun. you can see which one takes precedence. in my head I can also kick your ass. but in my head I also do not spend hours in a gym. so in reality I can't run nearly fast enough from a fight so I am lilely to hide like a big sissy under the table.
you get the picture.
we all have fantasies and beliefs and a long to do list on the road to self fulfilment but what gets done first might only have the smallest bit to do with convenience and luck

so I should do what I want, and model the way if I am to become self actualized.

and some of the things I want to be actualizing. well, you might not like them.

Saying no

2011-08-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to suspect one of the greatest keys to happiness is learning how to say no.

This is not just about setting boundaries, which is, indeed, very important. This is not about making time to say yes to the things you really want or should to say yes to.

It is about the kind of maturity found in rejecting ideas, notions and, yes, sometimes people, with grace and kindness.

Enumerated, in no particular order, are a list of rules I wish more people would consider:

1. You do not owe a detailed explanation.
Really. You don't. You do NOT need to give a long list of reasons you can't make something, or enumerate all the obligations you have that would come before another's needs. You don't even need a litany of apologies. In fact, the more information you give to people, the more information they have to evaluate you, your priorities and your rejection with, and the more likely they are to find insult and fault. Do I really want to know that you are putting laundry before my birthday? Do I really want to know that weekly date night supersedes your friends wedding? I really just don't. All you are doing with a litany of excuses is revealing a list of priorities that take precedence over that invitation. So,be kind, but be succinct.

2. Even though you don't owe the person an explanation, it's nice to give them something.
And I mean something simple. Like: "I am sorry, I wish I could, but I already have plans". A curt "no" only communicates that not only are you saying no but that you really don't think it is worth your time to explain why. And yes, sometimes a simple "can not " suffices. I mean, if we are talking about group invitations on facebook from your third cousin, yeah, sure, a simple "no thanks" really does the trick. But if a friend asks you to do something you should probably give the a bit of an excuse. And the more important the event is to that person, the kinder, clearer and more succinct your answer should be. "I am sorry, but I can not make your baby's baptism because I already have obligations I absolutely can not break" will do. Again (and I know this just brings us back to Number 1, but it is really worth repeating), there is no need for "I'd love to be there but I have a ticket to Les Mis and my boyfriend is sick so all this laundry is piling up and I am just so tired" It just makes the person wonder why your laundry can't wait a day until after the baptism, or why your grown up boyfriend can not take care of themselves while you show up for precious Jenny's big moment. And it makes them wonder why they issued a big important invitation to you when you are treating it like a terrible obligation to be added to the pile of laundry and sick people. Seriously, it's Jenny's big moment, so say sorry kindly, and let them know that there is a reason you are not able to make this important event. Give them a hug even, or send a smiley face. Use a fucking emoticon, and move along.

3. If this is an invitation you really wish you could say yes to, but sadly can not, make an alternate suggestion so they know you appreciated the request.
You know, sometimes you really really WANT to say yes. Sometimes you are asked to help someone move and they helped you move the week before,or you are asked out for dinner with someone you want to spend time with but are filled up all week with obligations. So, take a moment, and consider when you might be free or how you might be able to make it up to them. Phrases like: "I really can't that day, but I'd love to help you unpack, if you need help with that" or "Wow, I am really busy next week but would love to have dinner. Do you have any time the Sunday after?" will communicate that their invitation was welcome, and was appreciated, and that you, ya know, actually value them in your life.

4. If this is an invitation you really are pretty pleased to be able to say no to, DON'T make a big production of your sadness.
I mean really, this is just confusing and stupid. SometimesyYou are invited to a colleague's group happy hour and you just don't want to go. That is when: "I am sorry, I really can't" will suffice. You don't need to go on about how much you'd love to hang out and how you should do it another time. In fact, it seems to me most invitations that fall into this category are made our of politeness in the first place, anyway. SO just be polite, but direct, back. And if they are actually heartfelt invitations that you really want to not receive then you are not sending a clear enough message by being effusively sorry or taking a raincheck.

5. Pay attention to the quality of the invitation.
I mean, come on people. If your friend invites you to the opera with excitement, and you hate or can't afford the opera, don't follow your no, with "but you can come by and slug some PBRs if that doesn't work out". I mean, it isn't just insulting, it implies a certain pathetic need on the part of the person issuing the invitation that is probably uncertain. They are inviting you to special event, not sending out a desperate plea for company of any kind. Consider your response.
On the other hand if your friend invites you out for a casual drink and you feel like a hike, it is probably okay to express, WITH ENTHUSIASM that you would love to hang out, don't feel like a drink, but would love to go on a hike that night, or another night if they are attached to a drink that night. The key here is still sensitivity and enthusiasm. If this is someone you actually like, and you want to spend time with them, best to treat their enthusiasms with respect and kindness, even if you do not share that enthusiasm.

6. If you say no enough, people will begin to think they should stop asking for things.
I know, this isn't exactly incentive to say no unless that is the effect you are going for. So you might have to go out of your way to invite people to things or offer help or what have you from time to time if you make a habit of saying no. Even if you do it with unbelievable panache and grace.

7. Don't panic when you have to say no.
I mean, really. There are a zillion things you are going to have to say no to in your life, and people tend to feel something is wrong when they ask you to have a drink and you respond with abject fear. It may be that you are overwhelmed and one more request is just sending you to a tizzy. It may be that this is the 5th request you've gotten for your time in the last hour. But people don't need to know that and they don't need to know that their simple request is causing you grief. Because quite honestly, their request ISN'T causing you grief...your busy life, or lack of time managment skills, or simple bad timing is the culiprit. Not their suggested nightcap. And the less kind, calm and sincere your regrets sound, the more alarmed and annoyed you come off, the more likely they are to take your rejection personally. Which is ironic since that might be what you are panicking about in the first place.
So stop, drop and roll. Consider the request and the level of acuity and respond appropriately. Succinctly, kindly, and with enthusiasm. To be clear, this means "I am overwhelmed, annoyed and overburdened in general and the idea of spending a night with you and your child sounds like a hellish waste of time even on a good week, so I wish you'd go out and get a friend who likes that shit, and save the adult invitations for me" should sound like: "I'm sorry, but I really can't. I promise to show up at your next happy hour,though"
Also, understand this: while most people will, most likely, be briefly disappointed by your (kindly, succintly phrased) "no" they also, most likely, will not be crushed beyond repair. Disappointing people is a fact of life, but assuming people's entire happiness hinges on your agreement and cooperation is just a silly ego boost you'll need to let you of. Most people are pretty resilient and hurting them just takes more work. So, if that is your fear, get over it.

8. Consider that other people are busy, important and overwhelmed as well, and they also often have to say no to things . AKA, don't be a self important ass.
Which is to say, if you receive a request or invitation don't just assume it is cast out of a sea of free time and stress free recreation. Yes, it might seem like you are crazy busy and your friend always has free time that they are trying to fill with your precious moments. It might look like your sister spends hours on the internet and can't possibly understand the demands you have on your resources when she asks you to dinner. But she might be managing her business and looking to spend her few scant hours with you. She might be asking for help moving because of this, and you are her only hope. Or maybe she just really had her heart on a little time with you, and is super busy herself. Or not. It doesn't matter. The point is that an invitation or query for help is not an open opportunity to impart value judgement on how people spend the time that is NOT offered to you. The busiest person in the world might have asked a zillion people before you to come over a knock back some brews every night this week at the end of social swarm. The freest person on earth may just be calling you because they really want to see YOU and do that specific thing with you. SO, just consider that that they value your time, company and assistance and that is why they asked. And respond appropriately. No one likes to have their time treated as if it has no value, even if it is free time.

2011-08-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

So I know this is going to sound like the girliest thing on earth, but it's not what you say, it is how you say it.

Which is to say, in these very crass and casual times, I think far too few people truly pay attention to the nuances of language, be it spoken, email, text.
Intentionality is difficult in most parts of life, but even more so when we are monitoring what comes shooting out of our mouths. And true, there is a balance between being so careful that you become guarded, and simply being ...conscientous, but I suspect this is the backbone of social grace.

2011-08-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

Here is what I want from you. I want you to be grateful. I want you to get down on your knees every day and thank your lucky stars, or the lord above, or whatever hand leads for all you have in your life. I want you to thank the heavens if you have employment, I want you to thank them twice if it is a job you can even half enjoy. Have a lover? Thump your chest in gratitude? LOVE that lover, beat yourself prostrate just a little bit to reveal how exactly fortunate you are to have that lover who does the things that make life just a little bit brighter, the days shinier. A home, children, pets? I want to see callouses on those knees. I want to see the exhaustion of your gratitude, the blood of your debt.
And while I want our lives to be steeped in honesty, for your grievances to be heard and our hearts honest, I also want you to shut up. Just a bit. Just a little. Because every time you whine about your to do list, how HARD everything is, how much work the day takes, how much time your lover steals, you show me that you have not yet internalized a truth that will do you well to understand: we were not born to be happy, we were simply born to be. We exist to breed and we breed to exist. And then. More babies. A fortune, a biology. A divine plan? Perhaps, but the tools are given, and providence is up to you. You don't deserve happiness just because you are so rad. You earn happiness by being awesome.

So when you wake up and you see her lying beside you and she smiles and rolls over and brushes up against you I want you to smile. When the dogs asks to be fed I also want you to pet him. When your boss texts you I want you to jump just that high with a spring in your step. I am not asking you reduce your expectations, I am asking you to wake up to the ongoing fortune of having the luxury to ask for more.

2011-08-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

I will never find it and I will always be lonely.

This I have begun to understand.

Married, with dog and friends and new extended family there will always be a hole I dug myself and that can be stuffed full with bodies but they will never fit together like the soil that belongs there. A failed game of tetris, a square and a triangle that do not create a diamond, though hammered with the biggest mallot you can find.

I speak words and they flow out and I see them parting in wisps around awaiting ears. A little of bit of smokey understanding seeps into my companion, and I can see it in their eyes, but the rest is lost. even less makes it's way back.

We do this to ourselves. It is a reality of our own defining. We bore a little well in our most valuable real estate and wait for the water to seep up and in some cases we hit our mark, sometimes we hit oil, or find gold. It doesn't belong there, but it can buy us a soda when we are parched. The rest of us learn to tend our well. We build a wall around it, step carefully along the borders. Sometimes we take a trip to it's depths and test the dry earth and take deep breaths in the musky darkness. We emerge pail, hungry, heightened senses careening. And every thing is too much, and all we can do is to paint a prettier picture and place it on top of the well so we don't fall in. It is a picture of a tree, a rock, the ground that was once there. Our lover is now sitting atop on the well, a figure of rocks and sticks and likely personage. There are our ancestors, peering down.

A well decorating and seldom celebrated tunnel that goes deep down and is only getting deeper each time we dig a bit more, hoping to quench our thirst.

I am well fed but exquisitely thirsty, and I keep cooking to replenish the feast.

2011-08-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

We are on a busy and funfilled excursion from birthday to party to wedding to honeymoon to birthday again. a fortune of celebration, a bevvy of love.

one should feel fortunate when life allows them to bathe in such festivity.

should is seldom an indicator of will. or can. or would.
a slight misfortune perhaps

one should that I wish were a could has much to do with the ability to shine in one's joys instead of wallowing in the guilt associated with the trappings of the fiesta.

You very much know the drill. I have eaten too rich, drunken too much, slept too little and there is laundry to put away. Things are piled and not stacked, I am not living up to my potential.

Naturally that which needs to be done has been accomplished, mortgages are paid, jobs are attended, the lawn is eventually mowed and clothing is laundered when it really needs it. Our home is clean enough to be welcoming to most, my personage presents without alarm.

But still the guilt and self doubt, the to do list buzzing like a fly you want to swat, the finger wagging until you almost bite it off...

And I am forced to question the very nature of potential and the ultimate utility of this protestant work ethic fashioned guilt that tells me I am slowly, sadly failing after a night of revelry, after a day of leisure. The instinct that tells me I have not earned my fun...

It makes me feel sad and empty and always always rushed. And then I sit down, and I form a list, and do not see a burning point that must be prioritized above "ate, drank and was merry"

This is my failing. And everywhere I look people seem busier than I. Harried and rushed and overwhelmed and stressed. Except for the few. Well rested and able to make the time. They whisper: Life is a to do list. If you are lucky.

A rose by any other name.

2011-07-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

So. I changed my name. No, not daffodil. You may not call me tulip. Rose. Rhododendron.
I changed my real name. My real last name. To my husband's name. Because I now have a husband.
This has garnered a surprising array of reactions. Joy (because let me tell you how many people will be relieved to never have to pronounce my maiden name again). Confusion, annoyance, and almost betrayal.
I don't know if it is feminist reaction. Or simply adversity to change. I don't know if it is the act of moving from having such a defining and ethnically obvious name to something a bit more common.
But it got me to thinking.
I never had cold feet. I never really "freaked out" about getting married. I mean, I had some well earned neurosis around throwing a giant event in which 99% of the significance in my life were bound to attend.
But I never had second thoughts. To be honest, I never really considered it a decision. Maybe that is a good thing. A sign that is was so natural it was a given. Maybe it was a bad thing, an alarming signal that I am prone to avoiding analysis when it comes to major decision.
That is another blog.
But truth be told, I only had one moment in which I laid awake, making a real decision, and contemplating the magnitude of my new path.
And that was the night before we went to get our license and had to decide on the name change.
Understand, I have spent 37 years of my life with a very long, hard to pronounce, even harder to spell, notably semitic last name. It is a name people respond to with amusement, confusion, joy and recognition. It is a name that says something about who I am and where I came from. It is a name tied, in my head to a multitude of wonderful things: family, religious heritage, old friends and old communities, as well as some hardship and challenges that have made me who I am today. Things like being one of the few jews in a very secular southern california community. Things like being the girl who did not sing xmas songs during winter pageant. Things like having to explain dietary limitations to very confused teacher, friends, parents. Things like always feeling just a bit different, just a bit special.
I think alot of people will argue that in our judeo christian society being jewish is not a minority, based on the very root of that word. That probably can be true. Depending on what kind of jew you are. I assume if you are John Schwartz, who grew up with a notably jewish, but easily pronounced name, in a mixed community of other jews, all mostly secular, maybe with a channukah bush and the kind of bar mitzvah that only really meant a bevvy of presents and the chance to make your other friends jealous that might be true. I imagine if the temple you went to was mixed, and you lived in the kind of family that never celebrated a sabbath, and sort of embraced all holidays in the name of diversity you could very much say you did not grow up a minority, or at the very least, you did not experience a culturally different experience than the episcopalen next door.
But if you grew up like I did, even slightly observant, home every Friday night when other people had slumber parties and, later, kegger to go to. If you didn't participate in Saturday sports because of shabbos and you felt just a little weird around winter holiday time and were out for a bunch of days the very first days of school because the secular school year starts smack dab in the middle of the high holidays and many teachers, including even some Jewish ones, didn't get why you had to be out because John Schwartz was coming to school that day. Well, then, you begin to understand how a bunch of things are actually christian, not just American. You begin to understand that your "American" experience was very different than my husbands, one of 100s of Kelleys in a small town practicing all the same cultural and religious rituals as his multitude of cousins, friends and teachers.
What does this have to with my last name?
Well, I am now a Kelley. And I am. Because my husband is now my family. And his family is now my family. And I love that. My family has grown and I have changed because of that. And to deny that, is, to me, to deny the very point of marriage, the very virtue of that union.
But on some level I will never be a Kelley. And I know this. It's as obvious, as the saying goes, as the nose on my face.
And so I kept my last name as my middle name. And yes, less people will see it. It will be relegated to an initial. And my boss can now breath a sigh of relief at meetings and people will now only misspell my last name... half the time. But my old name is still there. In the middle. Fully a part of who I am.
Because I don't believe you can give up who you are to be someone else. I don't believe you can just pick a new name and be a new person. I think you are where you came from and you color your path with it's textures. Even if you pick a surprising direction at the fork in the road.
I think you don't go from being a jew to an irish american because you change your name. And you don't go from being weird to average, or cherry to vanilla, because you drop a syllable.
What's in a name? A whole story. But a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.

2011-07-23T22:51:00.001-07:00

not every discovery will bring about cataclysmic change or world peace

if my latest discovery is simply that it pleases
to see a white station wagon, parked next a colorful fire hydrant and a bunch of weeds
or that I like a gerber daisy, just sitting there wrapped in newspaper

then we have accomplished something. we have accomplished something.

this morning the sky reminds me of florida

2011-07-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

hazy and slow and promising of warmth
a certain languid and lonely memory hints in the distance and I'm transported quickly
to places that were once safe but became sad and empty
to an atmosphere at once romantic and bittersweet

there are parts of florida, in my mind, that remain perfect and warm and sweet
there is a pool and crickets and watching boxing late at night on the tv from my fold out bed. there are headphones filled with new and wonderful music all the time, and there are dreams so pungent and promising and these dreams are always bathed in humidity and reflected white tile. there is family, everywhere, old, but sweet, and loving and apt to praise youth in that way the fleeting generation sooths.

but there are also strip malls and endless parades of fire ants and cheap imitations everywhere you look. everything is new, and everything is replaceable. and I am getting older, and fatter, and I tired of the mirrors on every surface, showing every misplaced hair and the sweat trickling. and the food, once decadent and so reassuringly normal is now processed and overly sweet and I can taste it hours after I've eaten, and I am always hungry but crave nothing in particular.

I think of the things I lost and try to hold onto the parts built on a certain innocence, I try not to hate the naivete that led to the fall

I sort the feelings, hoping to cull, hoping there is something to keep.

mostly I think of the spaces I still hope to find that stay magical and sultry in the hot sun, that do not exhaust in full sunlight, where colors are true and a slight breeze hints at the thunderstorm on the horizon, always quick to pass and bring more flowers

jut a tip

2011-06-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

you no longer have to pretend that your friends like me
I may be...less than universally lovable, but I can (slowly) take a hint

I see the missed invitations, I note the awkward conversation

you no longer need do me the favor of grandfathered relationships that always serve to remind me of my own tenuous status as a person of interest

let it go. it works better when we are honest
and I'd rather be lonely than lonely and embarrassed.

Just a tip: Make it a priority to see and spend time with people you love. It matters more than fine china, more than that report you need to finish,

2011-06-03T11:01:00.001-07:00

and more than getting the house clean.

Sorry, this one is not so easy and should not be taken lightly.

A good friend of mine found out the other day that a good friend of hers had died.
Awful awful news.
And this post is in now way meant to make her feel worse, or increase her regrets.

But, ya know, it makes a gal think.

Even in the best of circumstances there is bound to be regret around such news. You didn't visit them enough, you didn't tell them you loved them as much as you could have, you never made the time you meant to make. You thought there would be time to solve that issue, make that call, write that letter.
Ad infinitum.

I had a rash of deaths last year that I found out about on facebook. On facebook. This might seem like a divergence from the topic at hand, but the very fact that I found out about them on facebook seemed emblematic. I was no longer close enough to find out through a phone call or a personal email, I found out a social networking site.
This was, in every way, shape and form my fault.

But wait, there is more: these people had one very specific thing in common. Though they had been good friends at a point in my life, and still had bright burning significance in various parts of my brain, I had not made it to their weddings.
Blame money. Blame unforseeable events. Blame, honestly, my own discomfort of travelling so far to sit through a long event with people I barely knew.
All of these things, true true true.
But still I remembered the conversation around both events as I watched the condolensces roll, as I looked at their face suspended in life on my computer. Iwas embarassed to ad my words to the drop in the bucket that included people they met once, people who would miss them every day. I felt like a hypocrite. I felt like a fake. I felt cheated. I felt regret.

I am sure, if there are thoughts in death, or after death, they did not curse my absence. I am sure, in life, they had better axes to grind, and I am also sure that their wives, their parents, their closest friends would be the ones they most wanted to see on that day.

It isn't about them, and second guessing their responses, it is about you. It is about you and what you get to feel or not feel, see, or nto see. Because you are the one missing them now.

So what I couldn't help but to think as I circled around the events I missed was the opportunities I passed up to share joy with them

A wedding is just one day, but there were also birthdays and trips I didn't take and efforts I didn't make and phone calls I didn't return because I had SHIT TO DO.

Yes, I had shit to do, like the laundry, and work, and house rennovation and ....I don't know. You name it. Some of it important, some of it crucial, all of it, in the end, indicative of my priorties.

SO here is what I think: life presents a variety of financial, emotional and ideological barriers in the quest to spend enough time with those you love. And we are bound to be overwhelmed by all the reasons we can not take time or make time. But in the end, time is all you make, and it's only what you make it.

So give yourself the gift of time with those you love. Because I suspect that looking back on a lifetime of memories with someone you love will be worth far more than looking back on a lifetime of perfectly kept books, a mowed lawn and a lifetime of regrets and excuses.

Just a tip (take 3)

2011-05-19T12:08:00.001-07:00

Just a tip: If you can't argue without name calling or insulting someone's intelligence, please don't argue with your friends"

This really falls cleanly into the "if you can't play nice, please don't play"
I know this is a harder line to tread, and sometimes, in the heated environment of an debate, people can forget themselves and let things slip.
But please, people, please do try. I have noted, over the years, and especially on sites like facebook that this is a particularly hard tip to follow for people.
Understand, I am not suggesting you keep your valuable opinion or dissenting information to yourself. I am not even suggesting you sugarcoat your words.
But there is a not even sort of fine line between stating your opinion in a direct, respectful and well informed manner, and immediately defaulting to insults or demaning insinuations.
But then sometimes I wonder: DO people know they are insulting you when they imply your opinion is stupid without telling you why? Do they know that implying you only think something because you are this color, or from this part of town, or wear converse, is actually really condescending? Do they know that implying any one group is, across the board, stupid and ill informed is just plain stupid and counterproductive, in and of itself? Do they know that jumping down someone's throat without asking polite, clear and real questions just implies they walked in assuming the opinion proffered must be based on a deep deficiency.

I don't know, but they should.

Look, if you respect someone enough to engage in meaningful debate over anything from a pair of shoes to war in the middle east, you should also enter into the conversation with the expectation that they MIGHT know what they are talking about, and that they are capable of understanding what you are talking about. You should assume they are educated to a level in which they can understand the debate you are presenting. If you find they are NOT getting it, letting them know they are stupid or evil or deficient in some manner does not make your point, unless your point is that you are an ass. Educating them, nicely, does a much better job of informing them, and possibly even swaying their opinion. And finally, if you find they are so lacking that they can't even begin to understand your point, back out nicely, because otherwise they probably just come to dismiss you and your opinion even more completely.
Anything else just shows you are looking for a fight. And friends don't go looking for a fight with their friends if they want to stay friends for very long.

Just a tip (take 2)

2011-05-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

"Just a tip: playing cool, hard to get, or mostly ambivelent about getting to spend time with your friends, lovers, or people you just generally like doesn't make you look cool, it just insults them, devalues their time, and make you look like an ass."

This seems so obvious, and yet...and yet modern times have really taken a toll on our manners and truly served to complicated even the most basic desire: to spend time with someone you like. I mean, it once was common practice to send a paper invitation letting someone know you'd be HONORED if they would be amenable to your stopping by or coming for tea. You'd send a little note, and joyfully anticipate a positive reply. You'd set a nice place service, you'd embrace your friend from across town warmly like they had travelled the alps to share bread with you. Now you get a text at 9pm that says "I'd maybe be into hanging out if you are free". You show up and they ask you to pick up a six pack on the way only to find out, when you show up, that 3 other people got that text too, and your friend has to step out for a moment. Really? Really people? I mean, I have seen people ask people out that they WANT TO DATE with a "maybe you want to go to this show? I might be there with some friends" This is how you reveal your enthusiasm to get to know another? Look, the way I see it is: if you want to spend time with someone you ask them to DO something (or specifically nothing) with you in a way that lets them know you really want to see them, and then you give them your attention. If you want to hang out with a group casually atleast let people know you are happy to do a group hangout if they are up for it, don't make out like you are doing them some great big favor by hanging around your house should they trip and fall into your home. If you like someone let them know you like to be around them. If you don't like someone enough to respect their time and their efforts, don't bother asking at all, man

Just a tip

2011-05-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

There used to be a website called "Just a tip".
You could log on and send an anonymous tip ranging from "Just a Tip! Everyone loves a man who bathes!" to something complimentary or specific or detailed "Just a tip, every time you call me fat, you make me want to toss you into the wall!"

I miss this site.
It strikes me, as I get older, I get easier to annoy and offend. Part of me knows that this my problem, and that only therapy and lots of meditation are the real answer.
But another part of me suspects this is atleast a little bit a healthy change indicative of slowly rising standards. That I am annoyed because, by now, I have the expectation that certain social and personal ...ettiquete should be obvious, should be self evident.

As such I have begun my own personal weekly "Just a Tip!" on facebook. Sure it may be lame or bossy or passive agressive, but mostly I consider these tips to be undeniable and obvious truths that will hopefully serve as reminders to others. And I profer these not just for those I love, but as a reminder for myself as well. However, because I love a good rant, my weekly tips will include a little more meat on this blog.

Annoying and verbose extrapolation to follow:

Just a tip: you can never go wrong with making a friend feel like an amazing person. If you are feeling insecure, turn that on it's head and remind everyone you know that they are so gorgeous, so smart, so unbelievably interesting that you are lucky they spend time with you. Trust me, they'll spend even more time with you."

Again, it seems so obvious, but I know people do the stupidest, most counterproductive things out of inscurity and just plain spaciness. I mean, it seems clear that we should just be nice to our friends, huh? I mean, criticism, if productive, honest and kindly communicated is part of the deal, but just sniping your friend down because you are feeling shitty is always bound to end badly. I have this one friend I drink with from time to time, and we'll be having a great time, and then he'll just drop some random brief insult into my lap. And I can tell it has more to do with him than me. Sometimes I even suspect this is his way of trying to make me feel grateful for his company: ya know, I've aged a bit, I'm getting a little chunky, I can't expect a great job like that, but atleast HE'LL THROW ONE BACK WITH ME. But at that point who wants to, because, you know what...after the insult I find: suddenly.I.am.not.having.fun.anymore. On the other hand, if he dropped awesome compliments, I'd probably overlook that he is snarky and insecure and weird and just be that much more happy to be in his presence. I might not even NOTICE these things if I wasn't suddenly on my second martini with my back WAY up. SO it is worth repeating, but SHOULD go without saying: make your friends feel good about themselves, and they will return the favor. If you feel something catty or mean or even inconsiderate about to slip out. STOP. DROP. and ROLL. Then remind them how hot they are. It will be much more fun. I promise.

2011-05-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

This picture makes me smile every time.

I found it posted by someone I barely know on facebook and couldn't stop looking at it. Infact, I was so tickled I downloaded it so I could look at it from time to time. I am using it without permission, infact. Sorry Clarice. I just can't help myself.

Sometimes I ponder that a picture of my partner or my own dog doesn't have this same effect. Or pictures of sunsets or rainbows or little children playing. But I think, very simply, it's contextless adorableness and absolute ridiculousness could never be replicated by an image that had history, or backstory or import.

Once, I was at Breitenbush and a little girl was sitting on her mom's lap and her mom was, like everyone else in the clothing optional hot spring pool, naked. The little girl was just old enough to be talking a bit, and every once in a while, when her mom would uncross her arms revealing her breasts she'd say, with utter joy and innocence "there they are!"

Thinking of this, for some reason, gives me a similar sense of amusement.

Not everything that brings a smile can be defined, and often, defining it or understanding it, truly, would kill the trigger. Sure, I could ponder a backstory, figure out why it was that I liked this one pic of a dog in costume and not another, what I thought started that little girls innocent exclamations. But I prefer not to. I get a feeling, and it is enough.

I try to remember this.

if the goal of living is to grow...

2011-04-27T19:51:00.001-07:00

So one of the more interesting side points of one my favorite Ted Talks is that the goal of living is to grow, not to be happy. Specifically, as humans, we have alot of quirky, weird, and sometimes apeshit crazy impulses and urges, many that can serve to stand in the way of happiness. This is because we are not built to be happy, we, like every other creature, are built to survive, to go on. More specifically we are built to breed.
But I'll talk about that another time. Another blog. What I want to talk about is what it might mean if we accept that our makeup, our design, is not engineered for the main purpose of happiness.
What does it mean if the goal of living is simply to grow, but yet we yearn, with so much of our being, to be happy.

Well, first off, I'll admit, I found a certain amount of relief with the notion that I was not uniquely designed to be happy, not specifically aimed, genetically, at satisfaction. Because, frankly, it takes some pressure off.
Here, I'll try to make it make sense. If I am made to be happy, and I am not happy, well then I am some kinda fuck up, huh? I mean, if I was built to find joy and peace, and I somehow managed to make a series of decisions that landed me in the miserable heap I have occasionally found myself in, I must be a unique kind of mistake right?
I know that kind of thought has run through my head, more than once. All those angstful teenagers, hiding in their rooms, horrified not just by whatever is standing in their way of happiness, but at the unhappiness themselves. That seed is there: there is something wrong with me for not being happy with what I have. There is something wrong with me because I am sad. There is something shameful or deficient in my lack of ability to seek satisfaction and find it.

But...what if that isn't it. What if it's not true. What if they are quite actually doing what they were designed to do. What if we all are just doing what we should be doing. Namely: going, moving, growing, taking part is this ridiculous ballet that allows us to continue to exist, in one way or another. Then happiness, the pursuit of it, becomes a side note, a choice, a side note that allows us to continue, and our failure to find it at times can just be considered a failed task from time to time, an achievement, but not the point, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

That being said, I think there is something very noble in the pursuit to find happiness. Because happiness, as often as not, is what keeps us moving, keeps us going and keeps us growing. It is a mechanism, but it is a glorious mechanism that most effectively can help us meet our goal: to grow.

So yes, we've gone full circle, and yet I still have a point. No, I swear.
If we are not built for happiness, but we are capable of finding it, and we WANT to find it, then we have to make it our discreet goal to get it. And it means we may, very well, have to make a special effort to find out what makes us happy, and make it an even more special priority to fight for it, because it might not fall in our lap or come to you naturally.

And if you know what you need to make you happy then you already have something very special. You have a road map to your motivation, a dotted line to your bliss. And it may be broad, or it may specific. Maybe you just need love, maybe you need non stop lovin.' Maybe you need to be the most famous person in the world, and maybe you just need piles and piles of puppies. But if you know, you know, in your heart of hearts, that a pile of schnauzers will keep you in smiles for the rest of your life, and make you a more productive and effective person, than damnit you should go get a dog. And more importantly, you shouldn't let anyone make you feel bad for knowing that is your bliss.

It is the very definition of sanity to pursue what want if you know it will make you happy. And those who love you, hopefully, will always respect your craziest little urges and your most understandable desires alike, because they respect you, and they want to see you happy. And you should be very wary of anyone who tries to tell you that your goals, your little points of bliss, are greedy or stupid or completely unreasonable. Because even if you will never get your pound of puppies, or your true love, the art of wanting is art of wanting to thrive.

I me mine

2011-04-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Flowing more freely than wine,
All thru' Your life, I me mine."

When you were a child when you would see a toy you liked you would scream "mine" and hold onto it with all your fury. When someone wanted to borrow it you would scream "but that is MY plunkie! No she can't play with MY plunkie"

Yes, I know, I do know, some words are inconsequential, sometimes we adopt phrases like a taste for candy, and every once in a while a phrase or term just... slips out. Sometimes your dog has eaten someone's lunch and they are yelling "whose damn dog IS this?" and there really is no better way to phrase it "Sorry, that's mine." You go to the cleaners and what are supposed to say: "I am here to pick up a suit"? No, No...You are there to pick up YOUR suit.
I mean, really, all words have their place.

But as I get older I can't help but to notice the way people phrase things, the words they pick to express themselves. Especially in the most common and simple of circumstances.

Understand, everywhere you go, there you are. You carry your presence with you and within that an ownership. If you an express a thought we assume it is what YOU believe, if you are carrying a traveler mug we assume that mug was bought by you. Presence is undeniable, as is differentiation and presumed ownership. If you hold hands with someone they are your mate in most people's eyes.

But think about how often you use the possessive. Is it your cat, or the cat, or a cat? Or is it George, the cat. Is it our house or my house or 2200 Robinhood Lane"? What is your default?

If I walk up and compliment something that is yours do you make sure I know who it belongs to? Are you annoyed when waht is yours is mistaken for another's?

I mean no judgement as I explore this question. In fact, as an extension I think about this: it is as a matter of self discovery that we come to know who we are. The most self aware people explore where they start and where they end with regularity. So awareness of who are you are, what you want, and even what you are willing to own, is key in the path to self discovery. One might even say accepting ownership of you, yourself, your possessions and your actions is part of maturity.

On the other hand, to take possession, to own too much, it attempt to control and conquer things no man can every truly hold onto, can be truly unhealthy, can be a sign of insecurity or weakness. That child screaming about their plunkie? They know that plunkie is about to be given away to their friend if they don't raise a fit.

And to complicate things, the question, quite naturally, is cultural as well as personal . There is a passage in the Bhagavad Gita that can be translated as "They are forever free who renounce all selfish desires and break away from the ego-cage of "I", "me" and "mine" to be united with the Lord. This is the supreme state. Attain to this, and pass from death to immortality." Some cultures believe in more communal, less autonomous means of belonging, believe differentiation is backward, a sin.
Simply put: some cultures believe no one can own a piece of land. Others throw a flag down the moment they see an open beach.
And I can see the freedom in a world without possession, in a world in which you exist without need for differentiation. But I live in a America, and in a world in which my social security number can tell the government every dollar I "own", every debt I have paid. So I don't know that such abandonment of material possession is viable. Ownership, be it intellectual or physical property is pretty ingrained around these parts.

So maybe a better question is: how often do you unconsciously insert your presence and ownership without truly considering the context or implication?

Say you are at a meeting, and an idea is brought up. And you are perfectly aware the idea originated with you. Now lets say. for the sake of a point, there is no merit to be gained from credit for this idea. You will not score a point with your boss or get a raise. It's an average idea, so average that it floated from one head to another and the person who voiced it barely recognized it was not their own original notion. Possibly, even, you said it first, but sooner or later another most likely would have voiced it . Do you want people to know that is your idea? Is it important that at least one person know? Possibly the whole group?

And lets say we are at a potluck. And everyone brought a dish. Does everyone know which dish you brought? Are you sure they know you brought THAT bottle of wine?

And let's say we're all friends... is it important that everyone know who your best friend or partner is? Must everyone know who you came with?

It's an interesting question, and to be honest I do not have an answer. I am not implying a nice black line where affection ends and pride and ego begin. I don't know that discovering that line would help anyone. I don't know that it wouldn't.

I do have a challenge though. I was once given an assignment in a Language and Human relationship class. I was not allowed to ask a question for one week. Naturally, asking questions is a good thing. Questions solve problems and gain clarity. But the point of this exercise was to examine that amount of questions we ask that are actually requests, that are not seeking an answer at all. You aren't asking if you can have the lamb and potatoes, you are telling the waiter you'll have the lamb and potatoes. You aren't asking if you can use someone's rest room, you are telling them you need to use their rest room. On the other hand, you may need to ask them where it is. Get it? Sometimes examining our speech reveals how divisive it truly can be.

SO here is the challenge: go one week without using the possessive. It might seem impossible at first but there are ways around it. You aren't there for your suit. You brought a suit in and you are here to pick it up. That isn't your boyfriend, that is John. And that idea, it isn't yours, it's a thought. Temporal and passing and up for sharing and growth. Sure you will find yourself talking in circles, sure sometimes ownership will still be communicated and obvious. But try it. No mine, no my, maybe an "ours" from time to time, but only to express that sharing nature.

expectations

2011-04-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

what do you do when something that is supposed to bring you joy, something that is supposed to share love and increase community warmth only serves to make you feel lonely and frustrated?

do you give it up? do you find a new way? do you accept that your investment in this thing, though perfectly normal, is no longer healthy?

sometimes releasing expectations, even perfectly normal and healthy ones, is the only way to move forward.

the jewish thanksgiving

2011-04-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

sarah silverman calls passover the jewish thanksgiving and, as they say, it's funny because it is true

I mean, ofcourse, it is much more than that: a celebration of freedom, a demonstrative lesson in gratitude, a chance to drink 4 glasses of wine with support from a higher power....

But on many levels thanksgiving and passover DO have something in common, namely: it a time when many jews get into a room with a bunch of family and friends that they barely ever see otherwise to eat and drink a WHOLE LOT

AND with any holiday that brings people together who just don't see eachother that often, but have a historical bond, I find it really is a chance to give thanks.

As such, with the intent of being a glass half full (and waiting for elijah) kinda gal: I have to say I am really thankful for the friends I have. I never ceased to be amazed by the variety of people, ranging from jews who are interested in finding a home for an evening, to those who are simply curious about a tradition, who come to our seders. And I am quite clear that many, falling into the latter group, are partially there to support me on a holiday, as I attempt to keep ties to traditions I grew up with. The bonus is that it is also a chance for me to share a little bit more about my background and about what makes being jewish more than a label, more than an ethnicity. And the fact that people are interested in that makes me feel especially loved and grateful.

But, also being a glass is getting empty kinda gal (some evaporation is bound to take place waiting for the herald of the messiah, after all) I have to admit there is a bittersweet quality to seders. Naturally, over the course of decades, the attendants change. Some move, some are no longer with us, and some we simply drift apart from. And it causes me to take stock in the ways we have all grown, and in some cases, grown apart.

One of the hardest things about getting older, for me, is coming to terms with the amount of people in my roledex that are more like old family than friends now: aged vintage and close to my heart, but no longer people who yearn to share time. People who I suspect may still love me on some level, but probably like me just a bit less than they used to. And it causes me to think of the awkward pauses where there once were comfortable silences, the gaps in continuity, the scheduling and rescheduling of yearly meetups that make it all to clear, to all of us, that we have moved significantly down eachother's priority list. And yes, yes, I realize this is part of life and people have lives and responsibilities. They get busy and they get overwhelmed and they get tired. But in the end a small part of the rollcall of excuses can't help but to sound just a little like the friendship chapter of "he's just not that into you"...which is to say, our priorities reflect our affections, when all is said and done.

SO I become thankful, and a little bit sad. I miss all those I was once close to. And so I try to repeat one thought that is also very present in the pesach seder: we are all temporary, there is something bigger. We are preludes on playthings for the wind. And as such we should be grateful for those who love us now. And we should also endeavor to remember fondly the point in time when we shared close intimacies with those no longer close to us, as these are the temporal gifts we are given.

2011-04-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

I rally against shame because I am keenly aware of the affect it has on our ability to move forward.
It appears to be a commonly held belief that if you can make someone feel uncomfortable or embarassed by their behavior, that they will make moves to change that behavior.
In certain circumstances I think this may be true. If you embarass a child for being mean to another child they may stop expecting kudos for being a jerk, and thus cease the behavior. If you remind someone that every time they don't recycle, a tree dies, they may endeavor to reuse their cup.

But these levels of discomfort, and the behaviors attached, often correlate to an easy to change behavior, or a level of embarassment that has not yet burrowed it's way down to soul shattering shame.

Shame is different. Burrowed in a deep dark place it tells us we don't just make mistakes, but are somehow specifically flawed.

And it has been my experience that shame does create a change in behavior, but not the change you'd hope. Most shame creates secrecy. It creates myth and confusion. Miscommunication. It propels a person to treat an issue like a black hole that they take increasingly longer routes to circumvent, eventually scared to even look at the whorl, for fear of being sucked straight inside.

Because at the base of shame, it seems to me, is an idea: manifesting unlikable or problematic behaviors is not indicitave of work to be done, but work that will never be done. It communicates: you didn't just fuck up, you ARE a fuck up.

Because of shame abused housewives are scared to leave their home and wear a short sleeved shirt. Because of shame people over eat in private and hide the wrappers. Because of shame we circle quietly around the hell of our shortcomings unable to truly ever move away from them, but unable to truly address them nonetheless.

Shame makes a mistake the monster in the dark. Shame turns confusion into terror and self hatred. Shame makes us all lonely, convinced that is where we deserve to be.

The greatest thing you can ever do for someone you love is remind them that you love them for all of it, even their worse moments. To assure them that for every burden they share with you, your belief in their perserverance doubles. To show them, in your actions, and your words, that mistakes are just that, misteps on a generally honorable path, learning experience that just serve to gorgeously differentiate and inspire growth.

And to remind them that it is never, ever, shameful to be the beautiful and flawed person that they are.

On shame, sex, reproductive rights, and the "S" word

2011-04-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend the other day. One of my best friends. One of my best educated and most liberated friends. We were talking about her sex life, and being single, and her dating life in general, which is, as things go, is not particular crazy or dramatic, and she noted "I just don't want to be a slut".
Now, we weren't talking about some crazy need for affirmation manifesting itself in wanton promiscuity. We weren't talking about a sordid trail or used and thrown out men. We were, quite actually, talking about her pretty much sleeping with one man she wasn't sure she ultimately wanted to marry. That slut.

I've been circling around this lately. Women, their reproductive rights, their ability to do what they wish with their bodies when they wish to do it, and the desire and ability to do it without shame. And how much this shame and empowerment connects to so many of our confusing and controversial issues.

Now hold with me because I am going to get political and personal.

Whether or not you are religious, whether or not you believe in monogamy, or polyamory, or sex out of wedlock, or abstinence or monogamy or polygamy or a free love pile, it is undeniable that birth control changed the face of society.
Countless books, essays and expository articles around the sexual revolution, around the pill, around open and unloaded access to family planning have made it clear that, for better or worse, a woman's liberation is undeniably tied to her ability to choose when and where she has a baby, without also having to choose abstinence.

But there is more: there are also a lot of arguments that will posit that our economy, crime rates, and violence rates are directly correlating to a women's access to family planning. And that is the term folks. Not birth control. Not baby killing. The ability to start a family when they want to, not when they lose their hymen.

So, basically, it more than likely that access to family planning services makes women more independent, and society safer and less economically depressed.

But yet, this is still hard for a lot of folks and it makes sense that it would be. To be clear, sex and reproduction are undeniably tied together. Also, to be clear, I absolutely respect those who choose abstinence, who have religious or moral beliefs that say birth control is wrong or abortion is wrong or sex out of wedlock. If you believe that, that is your right.

But I don't believe that is really what is going on here. Because ongoing and countless surveys show that the majority of religious married couples use birth control. All over the internet you can find statistics around the amount of people who have sex not solely for the end goal of procreating.

We seem, on the most part, pretty aware of that and even mostly okay with that. Middle America is more than happy to watch a happy loving affair that clearly entails sex on the big screen and call it romance. Every time you turn on the tv you will see it. Even more traditional shows, which stress waiting until you are in love or married don't necessarily say "and will have sex solely for the act of procreation."

And yet the open and unfettered access to family planning for independent single women still seems to rankle. So what is it? There is something there. Still. Is the controversy not around killing babies, as so many would have you believe, so much as the having of the sex in the first place? Is it all about who does it, when, where and why they do it? Because we all know that if Planned Parenthood loses funding happily married well insured and well off couples will probably still be able to walk into their doctor's office and say "doc, we just aren't ready, can we get a prescription"? We all know that, odds are, that woman who just gave birth will be able to choose the post birth IUD option without lot of "controversy".

Who will not have easy, non-judgemental access to birth control will be the single woman, often the economically disenfranchised single woman, and most certainly the uninsured single woman.
Those poor sluts will not be able to walk into a clinic and choose sex without "consequences".

And so I can't help but to think that is it. Below it all. A certain belief that women really shouldn't have as much control over their bodies as they do. A resentment that women CAN choose to have sex with someone they would NEVER want to have a baby with and then go to work the next day and not hope and pray that the rabbit doesn't die.

I think what is really going on here is that society still hasn't made clean terms with the power that birth control gives SINGLE women. And I don't know if it is our love affair with the middle class nuclear family, or a fear of empowered women in general, or just an underlying puritanical believe that women shouldn't want and get sex without fear, denial and shame, but I think it is there. And I think, that while the argument is about abortion for a few, it gains strength and momentum in the larger society based on much larger and farther reaching grounds.

thowing a coaster under the evervescent source of your good time

2011-04-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

I always feel like she is wrinkling her nose. There is an ongoing element that I can only describe as something that lies between vague dissapointment and frustration…a valley she resides on where let downs bloom like daisies and the air always smells of compromise and sub par performance.
Have you ever met that girl? She is often incredibly nice. Kind. Generous even. Smart. What more than one person would describe as a “good person". And as often as not this same girl thinks she is fun. She’ll think she is a laugh RIOT. She is the first up for a drink, the first with a big plan, the first to enlist you in a week long excursion to the middle of nowhere to explore the local wineries or hike the caves. But somehow it is never as fun as you expect.
No, that is unfair, sometimes is awesome.
But occasionally it is much less fun than you expect. Which is no fun at all. Sometimes you say something, or do something, somewhere, and are plagued, for most to whole of the time by a nagging sensation that you have somehow wronged her terribly, and she is now suffering silently by your unknown transgression. And this knowledge begins to sit at the back of your head like a warning bell, causing you to question every sensitivity, warning you to have fun carefully, to party with extreme caution.

The worst part about this girl is that I often suspect I am her. And I know, on some level, when my soul sister of perpetual dissapointment calls for a partner in less than tolerant socialization, that I that much more sensitive to the criticism she radiates as I recognize these same character traits in myself.

I wonder: am I the girl desperately trying to whip everyone into a frenxy of excitement over something they have slowly learned to dread? Am I the one yelling “parteee!” and then throwing a coaster under their cocktail glass and exclaiming through a strained face “no, it’s fine! I am sure soda water gets that out! I’m cool” when I am so, obviously, not cool and letting everyone in the room know I am now not free for the week while I scrub out that stain? Am I the person slowly alienating all my friends as I created narrower confines around planet fun and the commute I am willing to take to get there? Am I that lady who has such a hard time relaxing when things don’t go JUST my way that no one can relax around me?

And typing this, I know, by virtue of asking the question, the answer is very clearly yes. And I am forced to acknowledge my neurosis undeniably clashes with what others might term “the art of letting loose”.
And also, typing this, I am hoping the answer is just a bit of “no” because I can ask myself, before I make a plan, exactly how important it is that things go the way I planned, and remind myself, the answer does not have to be “very” and if it IS, I should probably cuddle up for the night with a good book and a fifth of bourbon.

And also, typing this, I have to wonder what her, I mean, MY problem is, exactly. Why are so many things bound to dissapoint? Why, as I get older, does so many behaviors fall outside the confines of fun? Why, very specifically, am I so judgemental and senstive? Why, as I yearn for others to love and enjoy my little nuances and foibles, do I find it so easy to find offense in their behavior?

I don’t know. I just know this post got a lot longer and deeper than I intended it to. And that someone is going to read this post and wrinkle their nose and not call me for a week. Even though it is not about them.

So it goes.

no, really (a short list of seemingly obvious things I have nonetheless been inspired to address and enumerate in our brave new world)

2011-04-03T14:24:00.001-07:00

1. Facebook is not the real world. Sure there are virtual places you can farm and trails you can die on. Sure, you can play scrabble. Sure, all your friends and enemies are there, and people TALK about the real world, but there is also a level of removal that allows people to utter phrases so mean and insensitive, or conversely so uncharacteristically supportive, that if uttered out loud your head might explode. So next time you post something potentially explosive, try saying it out loud first. Do you blush? Do you feel guilty? Do you hate yourself or soemone else just a little bit more? Erase that post.

2. Facebook IS the real world. If you post that you are in a relationship, or getting divorced, or secretly really love Stryper, you are telling every person who checks facebook this information. If you put down all atheists, or tear down everyone who enjoys the grateful dead, or bitch about all drivers or motorists or the latest environmental legislation, you are not quietly expressing an opinion, you are laying it on the line, for loads of people you can't be bothered to call, but still very much do exist to read. And they may very well respond. Perhaps not how you wish they would respond. But if you accepted their friendship, even virtually, it is kind of petty to hate them for having an opinion now.

3. Conversely, you can't expect every person to check facebook. If you see someone seldom online, you might actually have to tell them you are pregnant or moving to beirut. You might have to write the people you care about most a personal message. Suck it up. Facebook is only a part of the real world, a part some people couldn't give a damn about, so it is best to approach people like they MIGHT have read your post, but very well could have missed it.

4. Telling someone to relax will almost always yield the opposite reaction. They are freaking out for a reason, even if that reason seems silly to you, and best practice includes addressing that issue, and not dismissing it as irrelevant. This goes for verbal and written text.

5. Telling someone that something that is bothering them is not a big deal just lets them know it is not a big deal to you. If they are in any way, shape or form making it clear it is a big deal to them, it is best to simply address the issue like their priorities matter as well. And if it is truly that irrelevant to you why say ANYTHING? Belittling someone's concern just lets them know you are dick, it doesn't make it clear that they are silly for worrying. Again, this lesson can be used on and off line.

5.It is still incredibly rude to text, tweet, check your facebook or have long conversations in front of another person that you were just spending time with in the "real world". I don't care if you and your boyfriend are in a fight, or if that picture of your puppy is just so cute. If something so big a deal is happening that you can't pay attention to the person you are with, excuse yourself and they should understand. And while it IS hard to ignore a ringing phone, or that insistent "beep!"There are ways to address the virtual equivalent or someone jumping up and down and saying "hey! hey" and that is to acknowledge them quietly and then tell them to wait their turn. If this is still confusing for you,consider this: even the most sensitive individuals respond well to a "do you mind if I check this" and a "I am just going to tell them I am out and will call them later" (followed by you actually doing it).

6. Technology has changed the world and it has changed us. If you are evidently online or reachable 24/7 and then ignore a question on email or text for days on end people WILL assume you are ignoring them. If you post every 20 minutes and don't respond to a personal request they may get insulted. Conversely, not hearing from someone for 3 hours is not the equivalent of being dumped. And if you almost never see someone online, best to assume you shouldn't send them emergency information by email. Which is to say, in your real life, you use your abilities of observation: if you never see Jane at the bar, you don't expect to bump into her there, and if you see her there all the time, you don't bring her arch enemy there for a drink. Use this same discretion in the virtual world.

7.Finally: As things like facebook allow us to "know" more and more people that we would never have bothered to keep contact with if we had to call them or go see them, or even email them individually, it is important to consider how well you know these masses. Sure, they may tweet their innermost thoughts, or they post every time they go and get a latte, but they are still, on many levels, people you do not bother to have personal conversations with on a regular basis. They are not strangers, per se, but they are also not intimate friends. Their life may be going well or be in shambles. They may have gotten a raise or they may have lost their job. They may have families dying or a screaming baby or they may have found a higher power. They may very well believe in something you do not and they may, or may not, have a good reason to do so. But in the end, since you haven't had a deep dark discussion about the meaning of life lately, best to assume they might have thoughts, beliefs or needs that do not jive with your own. And if you liked them enough to accept their request, you should probably treat them with a modicum of sensitivity or respect. With that in mind, consider what you say, or post, or tweet, or insta message to a large group. And get ready to cull some friends if you really don't care how they feel when you scream something borderline offensive or judgmental from the rooftops of farmville.

warning: metaphor follows

2011-03-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

so you buy a great pair of shoes. they aren't your style and they are sort of uncomfortable but your legs look incredibly hot in them.

half the lure is that you never wear shoes like that, but for some reason, in your minds eye, these work for you and you have to have them.

so you buy them and bring them home and put them in your closet, and outfit after outfit does not work with these shoes. they look weird, or they make you look fat, or they are just as trashy as you always think that style is but for some reason you missed it when you fell in love with these shoes. and maybe once or twice you sort of match them up and wear them out and the whole time you are only aware of how these shoes are so so not you and they make you look weird or suburban or cheap. or maybe you think they are awesome, and then you catch a glimpse of them in a window and notice that you don't look like yourself.

of course, you are the only one who notices. you wear the shoes out and they are just shoes and everyone else compliments your shirt. or only the girl who is always wearing your least favorite outfit compliments you on them, and then you can only see them on her.

sooner or later they end up in the back of your closet. or on a truck to goodwill. or maybe, sometimes, you take them out and admire how they make your legs look in private, then nod, in disappointment, and put them away again

and then you grab the shoes you wear every day, throw them on, and try to shake the feeling that you've somehow let yourself down.

Something has got to give.

2011-03-21T09:51:00.001-07:00

It is a well known conceit that those who are tops in their public lives are often very much the bottom behind closed doors. And below the wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor embedded in picturing the chairman of the board ball-gagged lies the question of why this dynamic exists. Why do those who stand the tallest in the sun need to bend over when the lights go out?

Put very simply: something has got to give.
In a world in which so many opportunites are given to exercise our power and dominance, or to give in with the tides, there is a delicate balance that we all face when trying to take advantage of all the joys life has to offer, and also find inner piece.
And so it is no surprise that the woman who gives in to every whim with her partner might be looking for a little more control with her colleagues. It is not shocking that after a day of fighting for her voice to be heard in the boardroom, she might not want to decide where everyone goes to dinner, or the color of the drapes.

Most of these trade offs, these balances, can be done with a certain level of finesse, picking and choosing the best times to express strength by conceding, to clarify need by controlling.

But sometimes the scales get knocked. Sometimes we don't get to make a choice we really want to make. Sometimes we give in when we should have stood our ground. And I often think, when I see someone pushing and pushing for respect, yelling for attention, and insisting that they can not put up with another slight or injustice, that they have, somewhere else, conceded control that was very important to them. Likewise, as I watch someone give it up, I sometimes wonder: will someone, somewhere else, pay?

Life is a series of compromises. And it is far too simplistic to assume that your compromises in one arena won't effect the delicate balance of decisions you make in another. So sometimes it is imporant to question the times when your back is up and whether this is really the fight you want to fight. Conversely, when you decided to concede: is this something I actually need, is this an essential decision that I want to have control over? And how will it come to matter in other parts of my life that may be far more consequential, if I give this up?

Because something, somewhere, will give, and it's best to also consider how elastic the rest of your life is as you stretch and pull at the fabric of your world.

2011-03-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

as I get older I find it harder and harder to slow it down.

the elusive action, the discipline necessary to re-mechanize a pace always sits across the bay, beyond the horizon, hidden in gestures and glimpsed at in pretty pictures. Unclear, uncertain, but just possible enough to taunt, and tempt.

2011-03-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

You can cease contact but you can't stop the conversation.

Like a mythical beast, one head appears after another, and endless conversations are had...in a vaccuum.

That is, I have found, one of the hardest things about silence. About endings without closure. About deaths and breakups and the missing of someone.

The conversation never ends, it just meanders and lingers and finds new parts of your brain to include. It is a nonstop rollplaying game with many characters, and only one player.

Sure, sooner or later the conversations become less frequent, less interesting, more predictable and circular. But they never are truly resolved. They are questions without answers. They are that jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece, right in the middle,and the mona lisa never gets her smile.

2011-03-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

The last post might come as some surprise to anyone who has spent, well, ten minutes around me.

I am hardly a wilting rose, and I am sure words like "obnoxious" and "demanding" present with much more insistence than "timid" or "avoidant".

I recognize that. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

But to say that I accidentally swung the pendulum renders me as happenstance as my alluding blame for the aforementioned culture of the silent scream.

There really aren't alot of things I can claim I stumbled into. Is what I am trying to say. Saying poorly.

So yes, I've become a little aggressive at times. Hardly the meandering stream I depicted in my prior scribe.

Because, see, there are other issues, other results that present themselves from embracing a life of intensive tolerance and extreme agreeability. Worse problems that simply losing your voice and, perhaps, a bit of yourself.

The worse part about being so easy is that you begin to get to know some really hard people to know. Perhaps they can smell you out, they know they are difficult, they know they are demanding, and they are looking for just that kind of friend who might like to step out of the way and agree with their extremely unagreeable nature. Perhaps it's just written on your face "will break for anyone, anything, any time, and am hoping you'll ask me to do it".
But I suspect it is more simple than that. More succinctly, these are people who are used to people letting them know that they are in a pain in the ass. repetitively. they are demanding and problematic and difficult and most people cut and run when they realize how many unreasonable demands are down the turnpike.

but not you, because you are used to it. hell, it's almost like a swan song. or a challenge. the course of true love did never run smooth and you'll take any rocky road because that has "depth and meaning" written all over. it has "indispensible" scrawled on it's rocky slippery mossy cliff right next to the blood and skidmarks others left when they realized this was the last trap they wanted to walk into.

so yes, one might say it is a self fulfilling prophecy. you don't want to be any trouble. you don't want to push. you don't want to disagree with even things you probably should disagree with, and you certainly don't want to be demanding. and so you find the person with the most unreasonable demands. and give and give and give. and you give it up. what? you want me to walk ten blocks in the pouring rain to meet you on the corner in front of your house so you won't have to make a left turn? yeah sure, that makes sense. you want me to wait at home for you to stop by and buy myself a new vehicle to occasionally swing by your trailer park because you don't want to pay for a phone or a phone booth? makes sense. you want me to sit here, waiting for you, while you chat up every girl in the room and then go home with you? that sounds just fine. you want me to tell you I love you but it's not big deal if you don't love me? I can do that. I'll just be here. waiting. more than valuable, because you'll never find anyone who gets your unreasonable needs like I do, you'll never find anyone who bends to meet them

hell, I'll make it a source of pride. how much shit I can put up with. see? I am not like other girls who squak and cry and pick on you for all that little shit. I can take it. I am more than happy to make your insanity seem normal if that make me special. it'll be our unique bond.

yeah. no. fuck that shit.
the moment I figured out that the very people who love a push over are the people who like to push, I started making a little more noise.

and now I can't seem to shut my fucking my mouth.

but, you know, I've had worse problems. as you probably gathered.

better the devil you know.

little children should be seen and not heard

2011-03-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

In the interest of being fair, it is more than possible I developed facets of this trait as a result of my own devious nature. Most intelligent children who are not looking for attention realize it is better, often, to avoid it. The amount of things that will fly under the radar if you are generally accomodating, mostly co-operative, and steer just clear of punishment, might be surprising to you. And even, at an early age, I realized sometimes it was best to say as little as possible when asked, and to ask for as little as possible, when all was said and done.

And to be honest, I will not diminish a certain amount of this awareness as a positive character trait. Nothing grates more on my attention than a child who needs constant attention, or constant tending. Nothing frustrates me more than the person who digs their own grave because they will JUST.NOT.LET.IT GO. Dude. shut up and you won't get detention. Lord, does your mom have to approve every step you take and every bowel movement you have? Man, does it matter? Let's just get out of here and blow up this shit when they aren't paying attention.

There is a flip side to this though. Because being generall conflict savvy can quickly degrade to being conflict adverse, and all the accompanying thoughts: Just don't ask for too much and they will love you more. Just make it easy and they won't find a reason to get angry.

This is a difficult lesson to teach someone who never learned it. And believe me, for better or worse, some people never learned to NOT MAKE WAVES. I see it when everything is a paramount issue. I see it when they just don't understand why I didn't speak up.

But it's true. Sooner or later the fear of negative attention can outshine the promise of wish fulfilment, and you begin to do away with not just your needs, but your personality.
No, no, I don't need to take ballet, I am fine with not enrolling in a class only offered across time at rush hour. No, it's fine. I'll walk home up this dangerous road. No, really, you don't have to say you love me. I mean, why should I need to hear that if you aren't ready to say it? No, really, you can see other people, I mean, maybe I want you to. Maybe I want everything you want. When you want it, even your absence.

You get it. It is called being conflict adverse or avoidant. But it is more than that. It is being need adverse. And it is tantamount to valuing your own silence above your own voice. It is the point in which you try so hard to be easy, that you forget sometimes the best moments are born from challenges and conflict. And you neglect to realize how very much you are selling everyone, including yourself, short.

If I could describe to you the amount of things I have chosen, in my life, to not experience, because I didn't want to disrupt others, because I didn't want to hear "no", because I was so afraid if they noticed me they might begin to hate me, it would horrify you. If I could surmise the opportunities I may have missed in an effort to make others comfortable, and own my own self less accountable, you might be stunned. If I could enumerate the instances in which I not only chose to not ask for something I really wanted and needed, but decided I didn't really need to want it, in an effort to avoid resentment, to avoid being a burden...well you get my drift.

It is,a s they say, a slippery slope.
And I do not mean to discount the ability to understand when prudence or cooperation are called for. I think it is an admirable trait to aspire to accomodation in all things you feel mostly ambivelent about. But one must have priorities. And the second you think your relative ease is your biggest asset, is the moment you sell all your relationships short, and even begin to silence your innervoice. It gives wings to the voice that says that not just your needs, but that you are a burden.
And the anger, the frustration, the confusion and fear only grow. And that static you hear is every request you never made when it was something you had a right to want.

Like I said, it is a balance. It is lovely to consider others needs and wants, others goals and limitations. But it is just as important to give yourself an equal voice when you deserve it.

awkward

2011-03-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

I try, sometimes, to describe the reality of being an awkward person. of being shy. of being socially uncomfortable or inept.
and I know it is not nearly as bad for me as others. some people approach every new situation with fear, every unknown is daunting, every stranger a new opportunity for anxiety.

and I know it is all in your head. my head. ofcourse it is. most discomfort, mental discomfort, is all a spiral of self obssession and judgement.

but that doesn't make it any less real

what I do know is that life is full or potentially awkward and uncomfortable situations: new jobs, new loves, new cities, new foods. if you plan to grow you will, most likely, get used the feeling uncomfortable on some level. if you plan to love people, you will have to get just a little past the pain to find the pleasure.

and conversely, if you plan to be only comfortable you are going to miss out on a whole lot.
especially if you displace your frustration, fear and annoyance on the others around you, sharing the pain without permission, allowing another's discomforts to soften your own.

that is just a good way to be left alone. or get bitch slapped

because like love, awkwardness begets itself
and also like love, the more you share, the more you have to share

but unlike love, sharing such discomfort doesn't ease a burden, ever, truly, and doesn't empower another in a way that builds strength

so you have to choose. you have to choose.

M.I.T*

2011-03-01T12:26:00.001-08:00

* Muse in Training

This morning I was on facebook (yup) and I noticed the following comment "I am almost back in Muse Shape". I was rather tickled by the notion of one training to be a muse, or working on themselves to get them back to museworthy. And I have been mulling on the value of this since.

It seems to me we all are very open with more common goals. We wish to be worthy of love, desire, admiration, attention, even adequte compensation.
These goals have much to do with our closer personal relationships and livelihood. They are interactive, generally have a certain level of depth, and often a certain level of necessity.

But to be a muse. Oh to be a muse. To consider this calls to an even broader question: what is a muse.
I mean, we all know what a muse is on a mythical level. Something sent down to the heavens to inspire creativity. They are a devise, and the relationship implied is mostly one side: after all we are dealing with the divine, and it doesn't need anything from you, it is here for you.

Actual human muses get a little more complicated. They think and live and breathe and require interaction, feeding, love, nutrition. They are, as noted, human.
And when inspiring another it is often clear what the other gets. Again, inspiration. And the glory of being inspired by a muse is how little is has to do with the muse on so many levels and how much it has to do with the trigger they provide to make a little part of your own brain fire, light up, spurn you on.

But what does the muse get? In the case of the comment above, I find it worth noting that this was a woman to woman, heterosexual relationship based comment. This was not a romance based comment. Atleast, not in sexual terms. And yet she was excited to be her muse again?
How, why, to what end.

I can only contend this is the part of a person who's highest tip of self esteem, and self romance, if not self love, is sparked. To aim to be a muse is to aim to also fire up something in yourself you think others will find inspirational. To aim to be a specific persons muse is even more interesting: because you are attempting to hit a mark so obscure, and yet specific, that the relationship becomes sublime. I want you to look at me and not feel closer to me, I want you to feel closer to g-d.

Think about that.

I think about that because it is complicated. I also suspect most of us (and I know I have) want to be a muse atleast once in our lives. Sometimes to our lover, although I suspec that is needlessly complicated and misguided, sometimes to the masses. We want to, just for a moment, not just be smart or beautiful, but challenging and inspirational. It is, on some level, or our 15 minutes of fame.

And some poeple will end up a muse to many for generations, while others can only hope someone, somewhere, catches a glimpse of them and is changed, altered and driven just a bit more than they ever would have been, for that fleeting sight.

And it seems, in general, like a poor idea to train to be a muse at all times, or atleast to aim to be a muse. Mostly for it's narrow focus, but also for the undeniable likilhood of consequential disspointment. But yet...but yet I can't help but to think if a few more of us were in muse training, we explicitly aiming to inspire as such, when on the path to self improvement, we might excite ourselves a lot more as well. We might, even, become our own kind of muse.

2011-02-22T11:55:00.001-08:00

I've heard it said that one of the glories of maturity, and aging, is that you become comfortable in your own skin, that you really begin to know yourself.

Perhaps this is the halmark of aging gracefully, of truly maturing and not just degrading from wear and tear, because I have found quite the opposite.

Maybe it is an indication of a path wrong taken, maybe it is just a variance of the experience of life, these are questions I am not equipt to answer.

But I have found my thirties have afforded me more questions than answered, and have only served to make this skin suit seem less fitting, more confusing, more confounding.

And sometimes I wonder if those who find peace simply do not ask the questions I ask. Or are more comfortable with unanswered questions.
Like they walk in the house and suddenly the house has changed and they just assume that is how the house is meant to be. And they make themselves a drink. Elephant in the room? Welcome! Do they do that? Have a martini in the room they never noticed before? Take a bubble bath in the tub that suddenly appeared in the basement.
Their backyard has turned to ice...do they just strap on skates and have at it? Shrug and decide it's nicer inside anyway?

I don't know. I just know my instinct is to poke the elephant. To ask everyone about the new room? Was it always there? Did I just never notice the door? I check the thermostate, go online: why is it so cold out. And more importantly, more relevantly, never really rest until I find my answer.

This is what I am like in my own skin. Suddenly I look different than I expected and I can barely recognize myself. Suddenly I have thoughts and feeling and expectations I never had and they can not simply just BE ME. I am, very suddenly, a bigger mystery to myself than I was when I was 18. I hear a song and it doesn't sink in, I see a movie and I am having a dialogue with my many voices, instead of simply absorbing and reacting. I am, quite actually, very out of sorts in my own skin.

And there are choices. Choices I never anticipated and can't seem to make and options present havoc.

And there I am, viewing everything from a certain strange safe distance from myself. Judging, but less and less understanding. Trading empathy for clarity and receiving, in kind, a room with a view to a wall that once had a door. Or vice versa. So hard to tell when you have lost the floor plan and left the map in the glove compartment of a car you haven't driven in ages.

2011-02-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

I think it all starts with NOT considering yourself the most fascinating and intelligent person you know.

This may seem like a gigantic leap backwards, self esteem wise. But ideally your self esteem is not contingent on being top of the pile, head of the pack. That, of course, is a whole other can of worms I am happy to address later in the inevitable "other reasons you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake: a guide to responsible parenting" post.
But I digress.

What I am talking about is the ability to effectively, genuinely listen. What I am talking about is what happens in a conversation, what happens at a bar, what happens in the boardroom.

And maybe I am coming crazy out of left field here, because I may run with a particularly dorky and self important crowd. But I have noticed that a whole lot of people I like seem to possess a quality I particularly dislike: the desire to see themselves as superstars, bright and brilliant orbs in a dull and empty universe. They fancy themselves the experts, the intellects, the creative sprites, frustrated with others short comings, annoyed by others banal progressions.

And an ongoing side effect, of this, seems to be a tendency to fight, to squabble, to love and lose, to annoy and frustrate.

Which is not to say you shouldn't have a little faith in your own expertise, in your own abilities. If you notice someone explaining something wrong, pulling rank, showing the wrong way at the wrong time a key to happiness is quietly HELPING everyone understand your knowledge.

But the key is not helping everyone loudly understand your own expertise.

Am I making any sense here?

I'll try again.

I really wish a lot of people would shut the fuck up and try to figure out what they don't know, instead of assuming they know it. I really wish a lot of people would enter a conversation with the possibility that they are the one who will learn something, they are not the one who will solve their problem. I really wish most people wouldn't consider everything from how to change a lightbulb to how solve world peace fodder only the geniuses have right to. I really wish people would understand that as much as I can perform certain complex functions with surprising ease, I have a hard time following the simplest dance lesson or understanding the technical specs on your average manual, and imagine most people have the same range of understanding. I really wish other people would imagine that though they might be a great and shining star in certain zip codes of their own universe, that the rest of the planets are also littered with both sparkly and dull sheened rocks each possessing their own value.

These are my wishes. And they are broader and less concrete than stop please texting when we are out to dinner or take your damn backpack off on a crowded bus.

But they hail from the same location: the part of me that imagines a world with more consideration and respect.

I like it when men give me that sleazy look.

2011-02-17T16:20:00.001-08:00

It is true.

I might even, sort of, like sleazy men, although I think this is less true. Infact, I have a certain radar that allows me to carefully naviagate away from particularly creepy or sleazy people. This might be something I picked up from outreach work, or just a skill I picked up after one too many creeps flew under my radar. But that aside, I like it when I get those creepy, lascivious, I bet you look good naked looks. And while I seem to have just ascerted I don't like sleazy predators, I often like the kind of man who will give me sleazy looks. Perhaps I just like lusty men.

This must all seem like a terrible contradiction. Or like I have horrendous self esteem.
Perhaps that is the issue, and perhaps it is just that I am a middle aged woman and true looks of lust and longing come fewer and farther between.

But I don't think that is it. Because I have not always been in deep doubt around my appeal, and I have always had a certain soft spot for the mostly harmless man who expresses a borderline innapropriate appreciation for my...considerable assets.

So what is this? What is this very incongruous, and possibly partially pathetic thing I have for such a breach in propriety.

I think it has something to do with openness, and a little bit to do with a sense of humor. We just seem to live in such a closeted and uptight society. Even in portland where there are strip clubs galore, and even in this day and age where pop stars consider pasties and hot pants on perfect stage attire, I still find something shameful and humorless in our society when it comes to expressing the very honest reality that we are all sexual creatures, who find more than just one person in our world sexually attractive.
And so when someone is able to express 'dude, I would totally do you" without simultaneously expressing "I am actually trying to do you" I feel a certain sense of relief, a certain sense that a barrier is down I never really appreciated being up.

And understand, I do not mean to imply we all want to have sex with eachother all the time and anyone not wanting to express that is uptight.
I am simply noting that the measures we go to in order to hide the fact that most of us find a good deal of people physically appealing just serves to make this very organic fact loaded, when it is just biology. Further, having a sense of humor about how ridiculous and unfair this is goes a good measure towards relieving unnecessary guilt.

Or maybe this is all bullshit and I'll take it where I can get it.

Who knows.

2011-02-09T12:46:00.000-08:00

All her pictures are of them. In the woods, in their home. Dressed up, dressed down. Depictions of their life travelling in a minivan down the information superhighway.
His are of his friends. His art. His passions: bridges or science fiction or puppydogs. Whatever.

I think of this, flipping through.

There they are, linked for facebook and everyone to see. A declaration for the world to hear.
But follow one link and you’ll get a very different picture of the same shared life.

I have searched on his page, hers. Hers leaves no room for doubt…flowery language, updates galore on their mutual adventures. His, ofcourse, give hints. Occasionally mention, the offcuff remark. But it takes more effort, it takes background to give it all context.

As I look at this I ponder it’s meaning:
Simply a different method of self presentation? Extrovert vs. introvert, privacy vs. exhibitionism?
Or something more serious. Inequity of feeling? Differing ways of defining themselves and the relationship they are in?

It all knocks on the door of a question called as often as not:
Does equity in a relationship matter? Can a relationship ever be equitable, truly, or just strive towards balance like the scales of justice. Does it teeter like a totter in the quest to balance? Or is that simply the signs of instability.

I don’t know the answer to these questions. I just know they are both “taken” and “committed”. I am just not always sure what they are taken with, committed to.

2011-02-02T11:40:00.001-08:00

The other day, when on Netflix, I was pimped Battlestar Galactica.

"Because you liked Firefly! Buffy the Vampire Slayer!"

This made sense. I did, infact, love both those series. I also loved Battlestar Galactica.
I would, infact, argue that at points in time BSG was the best series I have ever watched. It was beautiful, it was inspiring, it was mesmerizing.
If it were not for the last episode I would put it down as one of the best series of all times, bested only by deadwood, that ended better even when it did not end, than BSG did with ample opportunity and complete control.

The truth is: I felt betrayed by that ending. It was sloppy. It was confusing. It did not answer questions it went to great lengths to ask.
It was like the best sex ever and no climax.
And that just makes you angry.

I contrast this with Firefly. A series that was cancelled after very episodes and then came back to give an ending that addressed the beginning, and that made a point of the questions it asked. SO many question Joss Whedon must have imagined years of development to address: why are these pirates heroes, why are the "powers that be" so dangerous were answered: because the omnipotent desire to improve human life and human conditions belong with no one group or person. Because people work together to evolve, because society should evolve, it should not be test tubed forward. Because we do not have the whole picture, and we do not know what the human condition will reveal, when truly put to the test.

And then I even contrast it with the ending of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean, let's face it, this series mostly peaked in it's first 5 seasons and puttered around alot. And still, it ended...more than decently. It answered a question: the hellmouth can not exist in the world always to be battled. It must be destroyed. It gave another interesting answer never really posed: what will a girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders do? The answer: redistributed the weight, empower her sisters. Change her life by changing others.

And then I even think of dollhouse. NOT a very good series. A couple of stellar episodes, some very enjoyable cast members. But uneven, occasionally sloppy. And yet, I'd argue. It ended beautifully. It even, sort of, ended before it began. It knew it's point when it started to speak, it asked a question it wanted to answer.

My point is not to extol Joss Whedons virtues here. Or even to go off about my geeky love of scifi/fantasy.

My point is, as much as the process matters, the point matters. And the ending matters.

And to make an even more specific point: Fiction in general and Sci Fi and Fantasy in specific are generally written/ created to examine the human condition from a new angle. Imagining a likely but not present scenario, presenting our situation in a new light allows us to reexamine our current world.
It is not just fun and game and dungeons and dragons and the coolest space ship ever.
Not only. Although that is great. It is our current world, spun on a top, shaken in a snow globe, plopped at the bottom of the sea, so we are able to better ask questions from a new view.

And if you create a world to present a point, if design a whole new galaxy then you should probably know what point you were going to make.

History repeats itself? Why has this happened before and will happen again? Why is one girl so special she came back from the dead? Why is there a missing cylon model that keeps being brought up only to be dropped? What keeps people going when there is so little to live for? (It is certainly not family, because they ditch eachother like hot potatoes in the exposition in order to make a forced point). What is sentience? Is there a difference? A breaking point?

Why ask all these questions if you don't have an inkling of the answer or even want to truly inpire discussion? Why bring it up if it doesn't matter?

And, ya know, the point can not be that there is a deity, that there is g-d.

Understand, I don't think there is something wrong with religious fiction, and I think you can write a big beautiful world that addresses our relationship with omnipotent power.
But if the point is, after zillion of questions and a billion answers "who care! G-d!"
Well that is just lazy. It defies the very point of such a creation.

We already have several well known books that go there and beyond. Books that people live by daily, refer to hourly. Acknowledge, obey and cowtow to. You know what I am talking about.

You don't need to do a gigantic bait and switch about the nature of life only to say "doesn't matter, lord's plan".
The point is to address the human condition, in and out of the notion of divine poetry. The point is to address the question, not make the question irrelevant.

I mean, what is that? Existentialist explosions in the sky? I could kill this arab or this cylon, but in the end it's all dumb and silly and people will be brought back if they die in order to make sure we end up where the lord wanted us to, despite our best intentions, despite or decisions.

When you write, when you create, when you imagine and juxtopose and paint and solder and adjust the aperture you are doing so to get a better view of our souls. Of our plight, and our intent and our ultimate purpose. Anyone can ask a question. A child can ask a question. And, infact, the question a child will most ask is "why?"

So it is best to not open a can of worms if you didn't think it might help you catch a fish.

2011-01-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish we lived in a world with a inch more class and a smidgen more gentility.

I wish people still tried to disguise their leftovers cleverly. I wish people knew not to ever bring a half drunken bottle of anything over to a dinner not hosted by a family member without a certain irony or shame.

I wish they didn't have to tell me all about the dirty laundry details of their day when settling on 7pm.

I wish they excused themselves from the table, only took calls and texts of the utmost importance when at a social engagement of any kind, and knew to acknowledge every person in the group. Even if that person was ugly or awkward.

I wish they rsvp'd with the actual number attending. I wish they knew which events called for prompt vs. fashionably late.

I wish they knew to not wear underwear as outerwear.

I wish they knew how to conjugate.

In the same vein, I am glad no one seems to care about the proper way to set a table anymore. Or that my brastrap is showing. I cringe every time a close friend says goodbye to me the way they would to their great aunt, and treasure the infrequency. I am happy we do not have to send thank you notes for every old thing. I am pleased
to have text messaging as an option over actual conversation. I love repurposing.

I just wish we would begin to level off towards a new gentility. One that allows a freedom that disposes with certain old school morays, while still maintains a certain shine, a certain presentation. Because I think some formalities exist to communicate respect, if others, perhaps, are just there to put us in our place.

Mostly I just wish people we more honestly thoughtful, and considered the subtext of their words and behaviors.

2011-01-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

There is something very important you need to understand.
You can not demand respect.

You can only earn it.

I am not talking about the trappings of respectful behavior or the workings of gentility.
I am speaking of honest deferential esteem.

And the harder you try to demonstrate you are due a deep and abiding respect the longer it will take you to earn that rare honor.

It is not a party favor you get just for coming, and it is not something you are due just because you like yourself.
You do not deserve respect because you are smart or pretty, you gather it, like a moss on stone, through how you handle those attributes, and how you demonstrate your character.

There is one thing for sure, though: when it is lacking, there is no mistaking it.

You can choose your friends, not your enemies....

2011-01-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

Suffice it to say I am under no obligation to adore my friends lovers and partners. With tastes ranging as they do, and the undeniable reality that love, or atleast lust, tends to be a bit of a blind whore, sometimes your friends show up with new ...friends for you that you would not have chosen for yourself.

It is all tricky territory. And as we live longer and longer, mature slower, and switch out our relationships with increasing frequency, there are more and more people we get to know as a result of our friends romantic choices.

So yes. I am under no obligation to love a friend I did not choose. But as a friend I AM under the obligation, I think, to atleast respect my friends new romantic partners. To accept them as very much as I can, and back my friend up in this excursion into romance, within the scope of reason. It is called being a good friend. It is called being a decent human being.

And that is why she gets on my nerves. I mean, I know I am a virtual stranger. I am not expecting her to show and gossip with me like I am her oldest and dearest BFF. I am not expecting her to trust me right off the bat. I am not even really expecting her to have long conversations with me, or seek me out in a crowded room. But I AM expecting her to acknowledge me, I AM expecting her to look me in the eye, I am AM expecting her to not step, suddenly, between me and my boyfriend and have a long conversation when she knows very much we arrived together and that she is very much both interrupting and ignoring me. I am expecting her to treat me with atleast the level of respect you reserve for a coworker or a distant family member.

I know she did not choose me as a friend, but need she choose me as an enemy?

But people, these days, man. They have no fucking manners. This girl, this mannerless insecure flirtatious snob of a girl is not the only one. I am shocked at the amount of people who will look right through you rather than acknowledge you. That will pretend you don't exist rather than put the effort into being kind to a new and most likely, insecure in their new roll, human. I am amazed at the men and women who do not invite their friends partners to their parties as well. Who have decided, since they might not have gone out of their way to choose this person for a close relationship themselves, that said person is not really worth a welcoming word or acknowledgement in their world.

Who the fuck raised these people?

Understand, I don't think couples should give up their individual relationships. I still prefer to at least, occasionally, hang out alone with any or all of my friends, as the quality of the intimacy is so very different. I don't really appreciate when I am planning to have a drink, one on one to catch up, to suddenly find myself in a group situation. I am not saying couples give up their autonomous relationships. But I also would not invite a friend to events, over and over again, making it clear that their new loved one is not in on the game. And I may not hug the new girl, but I most certainly say hi.

We call this manners. Finding ways to, as genuinely as possible, treat people with the respect they deserve, even if you can't conjure up bonafide affection. Erring on the side of kindness and consideration when interacting with another.

And I understand this is hard for some people. I am as insecure as they come. I am shy. I worry that I am bothering people. Interrupting. I am not outgoing. But I am also not a bitch.

And so this is my New Years resolution. To be as welcoming and as kind as I can be to anyone and everyone in my midst that does not scare the bejesus out of me.
And to hope that I will model the way for others to do the same.

I will not be a beautiful bride

2011-01-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is a lesson I continuously relearn as I prepare for a wedding and am inundated, am inundating MYSELF, with image after image of beautiful glorwing glorious brides in expensive dresses and expensive locations, laughing and twirling and telling you how it was just so so so their perfect day.

This is a hard lesson to learn, even though I have known it for years. Even though we fancy ourselves modern, realistic, pragmatic women, above the fantasy of the princess and the prince, it still lies there below the surface. It festers.

I mean, you don't have to look far to see the evidence. There are a zillion websites, a kajillion chat boards devoted to bridal make up and bridal hair and shoes and bras and veils and hairpieces and it goes on and on. There is a TV SHOW about brides competing for PLASTIC SURGERY so they can be the perfect bride.

The perfect bride.

And I start to think of that and what it means. It certainly has very little to do with marriage or being the perfect wife. It has little to do with being comfortable or happy or relaxed on your "big day".

Indeed it roots much more deeply in a certain fairy tale nostalgia that we all get one perfect day. One moment tantamount to your 15 minutes of fame. Everything is about us and we have the right to be grossly, intensely and immensely vain.

Oh, no doubt.

And then I still I think there is more to it than even that.
When I think of brides I think of disney. And those fairy tale books I read in which so many lives changes on a dime when the princess was recognized by the prince for the beauty she was and whisked away from her life of work and sadness. Cinderella, Right? Sad and dirty and then suddenly a perfect beautiful princess so ideal that the prince came after her, and gave her a new life, forever. Her shallow fantasies of attending the ball in the best gown actually a downpayment from her beautiful soul on the final investment of a life with the prince. Fuck the chores. I want a night of perfection. Even if it means leaving the prince in the dust as I run off at midnight, sad and confused. Even if it means a lifetime of punishment. Because ofcourse it WONT mean that. Ofcourse beautiful perfect magic that will last a lifetime will be born from my big big moment.
Obviously.

And ofcourse, no one is that naiive. No one really believes that being beautiful and perfect on their wedding day is the secret portal to a life of ease and luxury and earned opulence.

And yet a little bell rings. A small ache nags. No one wants to be fat on their wedding day. Or old. Or Poor.
No one wants a tacky wedding dress. No one wants to make their big entrance only to have everyone go "meh".
They want to amaze. They want to thrill. They want people to be wowed by a beauty they never truly realized existed.

Much like a kiss at midnight, I think a small part of us believes that who we are on our wedding day is a harbinger of things to come. A mystical moment to show everyone how we can shine. A moment to regress to all the childhood fantasies we have since abandoned and dance the night away and do it on a cloud and not get VD.

But the reality is most of us will walk down the isle average. perhaps pretty. made up and probably well dressed and most likely somewhat impressive in some small ways. We will make our loved ones happy because they love us and love to see us thrive.

But if we are old we will still be old, and if we are fat we will still be fat. Our nose will be big, our skin uneven. And if we are poor, well, we know how that goes.

It is a big day. It is a beautiful day. It is a moment you make a decision to love someone immensely for as long as you are allowed. That is beautiful.

But I will not be a beautiful bride. I will be a 37 year old in a lovely dress with a ton of baggage with wrinkles and frizz and fat.
And nothing will change that.

But if i am lucky I will be surrounded by friends, embraced by close ones, and next to the man I love.
And that should be more than enough.

2011-01-12T12:31:00.001-08:00

A few years ago Portland had a pretty bad ice storm. Well...bad for Portland.
And much like the varying and various snowstorms we have had, it shut down the city. People stopped driving. Stores closed. Schools shut down.
And with good reason. Everything was slippery. Sidewalks, driveways, even grass... a virtual skating rink that made taking out the trash precarious.

One thing the ice storm did not have in common with our snowstorms, though, was that it was virtually invisible. No piles of bright and cheerful snow, no snowmen built on corners, no week old dirty sludge or even piles of melting mystery crap. Just a paper thin, almost imperceptible, layer of ice over everything. A transparent, but just as threatening coat that could really only be seen in direct sunlight or in flashes of a headlight, when the ice would suddenly sparkle, revealing a clean and shiny beacon of danger in every nook and cranny.

And that was weird. I remember looking out the window, and everything looked perfectly normal. It appeared to be a perfectly normal day. Even, really, a nice day for Portland....fairly clear, no real rain or wind on the horizon. And yet the streets were deserted. Every once in a while a car would slowly roll by but that just punctuated its lack of companions. Small groups of people would be walking down the middle of the street on occasion, slipping and lurching. I pretended they were zombies for a while.

And then I very quickly began to go stir crazy.

It is interesting, during a snowstorm I often find myself with the opposite of cabin fever. Presented with the unique guilt free license to cuddle up all day and do nothing, I settle in, occasionally look outside at the white fluff, and am perfectly content to enjoy a movie or a book. I enjoy the silence. The break from the norm.

But there was something about this ice storm that produced the opposite effect. Cheerless and creepy, it stalked like an anonymous foe, the appearance of normality outside a mocking reminder that you could try to touch your normal life, but you would probably end up on your ass if you tried.

I found myself counting the steps to bar across the street. Made a dozen phone calls. Everyone was grounded. Frustrated. Lonely.

There is something comforting about a notable and clearly present obstacle. A problem you can see, a foe you can trust to be bad, and in just that way, may be challenging, but there is also a reassuring quality in that known quantity. And conquering that known problem creates a sense of accomplishment, a new level of achievement.

It is the sleepers that are scary. The lurkers that serve to haunt. A foe just below the surface that never presents a face as real as it's evil. These are the things nightmares are made of. And even if you emerge unscathed there is a haunting sense of insecurity: was there a threat? did that threat secretly assert itself like a cancer, only to pop up later at the finish line and show you that you lost? Or was it still out there. Was it bright and sunny with a big icy patch on the hill you did not take today, but would have to take tomorrow.

Anxiety. That question if you just dodged a bullet or is still heading quietly towards you, so stealth you do not even know it is there. That sense that you did not so much escape, as get a temporary pass.

the honorable gentleman

2011-01-08T12:47:00.000-08:00

Reading various articles about the recent shooting of Gabrielle Giffords I was particularly struck by this headline "Congresswoman on Sarah Palin’s “Target List” Murdered at Political Event"

Before we go "there" I want to make it clear, this is not the entryway to a Palin bashing post.
While I have no love for Ms. Palin, I tend to think, like a misbehaving child, she is best ignored until she acts more like a civilized human.

This is also not intended to address anything to do with the political compass, or gun control.

What I am more struck by is the term "hit list" and the violent language we have come to embrace in matters that used to be governed by enforced civility. I was taught, a long time ago, in some American history class, that terms of honor and respect were made standard in the house because conversations would turn too violent, too confrontational. Which is to say, we govern our language to remind ourselves that we are not enemies, that respect words breed collaboration and genteel interaction.

And my how far we have come.

Go open a paper. Or a political website. Terms like "fascist" are thrown around with aplomb. "Evil". People make "hit lists". And these words aren't used on mass murdering dictators. They aren't being reserved for actual fascist rulers or crazy gone toting terrorists. They are being used to refer to someone in a different political party. With a slight deferring view. Sometimes these names are being cried out moments before the politician coldly shakes hands with the branded on a TV spot.

It seems violent language is cheap, and we are no longer required to respect anyone who disagrees.

And why does this matter? Right. They are just words. Phrases. Perhaps it is just the evolution of language? Or conversational speech. You can say bitch on TV now. Why not call the president a Nazi?

Because language has power. And the words leaders, even reporters, use have a special potency. Perhaps the expediency and distance of the internet is giving us an especially rigid skin and we can forget exactly how powerful words are. In a day and age in which you can call a friend a bitch online and not see them cry, it is easy to forget that cruel and explosive words have the ability to sway.

But they do. And when an unhinged 20 year you will never meet trusts you, and is being told that a perfectly respectable member of the house is on a "hit list" for very simply having a different opinion on healthcare. Well. We are walking on some very thin ice.
Not everyone is skilled in the nuances of language, on the combative rhetoric of the political zone. And they very well may take you at your word, they may very well pick a close target and hit that shit.

Or they may just lose perspective on the range of ideas and beliefs that exist in this world to be considered. They may narrow their viewpoint to a laser like beam, excluding and punishing all that do not fall in line.

That is dangerous too.

billy has come unstuck in time

2011-01-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

sometimes, looking around, I find it hard to imagine I was ever in any place I have ever been. our immediate surroundings hold such weight, some overwhelming presence that I can't imagine, yet alone believe, that I was ever on a beach in Honduras, or a mountain top in Yosemite, or at a cafe in France at four in the morning.
I am not there now and it never happened. I am who I have become regardless of the past.

but other times. oh, other times, like time slippage, a small trigger, a little random visceral poke will transport me into the space of presence of someone long gone, long past. a story, a song, the sound of someone's voice. a comment will evoke a feeling and then it's 1991 and I am nursing another unrequitted crush and dying to leave my town. or I will see a picture it is 2001 and I am in love. with him. and it is not so bad. you know. I am me in that moment and all it contains.

I had a friend once say they never fell out of love with anyone they ever loved.
on some level. well this is just bullshit it seems to me. a little bit of stubbornly not letting go because we all know that moment when you are dividing up your stuff and you can't begin to imagine how you ever felt the way you felt the moment before your first kiss.

but on the other hand. maybe there is nothing truer. there are moments when I am every bit as in love, or as scared, or hopelessly under the tide of an emotion long ago inspired. or I am angry. all over again, for all the things that made me angry over years of emotional undertow. or I am at peace. on my porch. napping. for just a moment.

ofcourse. these moments slip away, into a slipstream I think we like to call nostalgia. they are there for the reminiscing, never to be lived again. in those transitional moments I find myself lost. how could I have wanted, yearned and lived for things so potently that are now a simple memory. how will I never see him again or never have a chance to love that person as I did. And what. what if now is just another one of those moments. And it is ten years from now and I can only capture my current life in bursts and memories.

Such a strange thing. This plateu of time.

2011-01-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

we are trapped.

bouncing around in this glorious gilded cage.

i know this to be true and yet i argue against it with ongoing intensity because i very much believe the heart of peace is found in a certain notion of freedom...

i tell him, when he is overwhelmed by the need to choose, to choose something, a path, a flavor of icecream, a car, a vice. i tell him that these are his choices, his modes of freedom. i tell him resenting what he gives up is a tantrum worthy of a two year old.

i believe these truths with every fiber of my being. i say that giving up love produces love. i assert that spending time on one activity, making a conscious choice, grows you, enables you to handle more. i know that closing a chapter can just begin your book.

and yet i know there is a lie in there. an unsaid "but" within every "spread your wings and fly".

the trap. the glorious and sad reality that we are not omnipotent. the loss of innocence implicit in the need to choose.

look. every time you go to work you are not at home. every time you fall in love you lose independence. and then you build trust, and you lose that glorious fall. you commit, you give up freedom. you break up, you give up comfort. life is filled with distinct and explicit traps that, and if we are smart we methodically engineer our prisons as much as we can.
we decorate our cage. we make it home

the greatest thing you will ever do for yourself is make your cage beautiful, and to perch it on high. pick it out, decorate it, and glorify in the view from every angle. looking out, looking around. find a gate you know how to open, but feel just as safe closing.

2011-01-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

I could feel the slippery slope we were heading down. A spiral embedded in a silent hope of mutual acceptance and approval. But within that delicate system of checks and balances I could see the clause, the obvious downfall of such a limited friendship, found in the moment in which we disagreed. Which is to say I could see he was always looking for proof. Always judging.

Would today be the day I said something he found fault with? Would 4:00pm bring about a discussion in which I asserted an opinion he found even minor fault in, thus showing a chink in an armor of a pefection only defined btruly by commonality?

What I am saying is: he was always looking for proof that I was terrible or great. Always redefining my worth based on a phrase in passing or a decision judged without discussion.
If I scowled at something he enjoyed it was just further evidence of my lack of awareness or taste. If I called something great, it was proof of hyperbole. If I failed to react with the right level of venom, it there was my apathy.

Sometimes I pondered if I should feel flattered by this startling display inspection. If there was something personal in the manner in which I was always on a chopping block or pedestal.

At a distance, I generally suspect there was something deeply impersonal about his outbursts. His need to villify or approve. That his judgements only revealed his own extreme internal compass.

A strange, almost methodical method of culling.

I also suspect they were, very simply, a way of making himself g-dlike. In a position to judge he proves his own worth.

But yet, even now, I can’t help but to wonder at my occasional need to find importance in his words. The abrupt crash as he deems me irrelevant or illogical or beyond saving. The almost sexual tension found in joy attached to another job well done, another sentence or structure built to his specifications.
It has a way of making me feel…visable.

But then I get shy again, as I am wont to do. And close the door.
And then I grow a pair. And remember I already have a daddy, if I want to concern myself with tantamount approval. And I don’t need the bullshit stamp of approval of a person immune to beauty of nuances and the complexity of the real world.

a post of vicious stereotypes

2010-12-18T11:16:00.000-08:00

We've all heard it: a woman's home is her domain. Her heart is in her castle. I don't know, there is a well known catch phrase in there somewhere.

I was thinking about this the other day: how in this very modern world where half the women I know earn more than their partners, those who even HAVE partners, there still tends to be some very common defaults when it comes to homemaking. These women, who work full time, and are often the gatekeepers to the kitchen and the gatekeeper to homelife. Everything from cooking to cleaning to managing the families schedule somehow defaults to the lady of the house, with duties such as fixing a faucet, garbage, heavyduty yard maintenance falling to her partner.

This is, ofcourse, not a hard and fast rule. But I have heard more than woman note this year that she arranges the kitchen, or the kitchen is "hers.

And the funny thing is most women I know are not roped into this role. They are not cajoled or bullied or coerced into also doing the housekeeping. They are, infact, rather insistent in it. They assume control and guard it like a right more than a duty.

I don't think this is nature. I don't actually believe this is some genetic pre-disposition born from protective homemaker instincts. Not entirely anyway. I have a feel this is more born from what we saw our mothers do, and their mothers before them. The men went off and lived their lives and the thing they had control over, the thing they managed, was home life. It was their job. It was their duty, but it was also their right. It was, in fact, where they found and kept their power. Because their husband may have had drinks with the boys or his own other personal space in his office, his car, the whole outside world he was required to interact with. But the wife had her kitchen, her garden, her children, her home. If dinner was bad, it was on her, if home life was glorious, a credit to her.

Women have control over a lot more than the home these days. They are RESPONSIBLE for a lot more. Half the women I know are in managerial or director roles. They have tell people what to do at work, they wield a paycheck big enough to tell people what to do period.

And yet they still feel threatened when they feel they are losing the lions share of say in how the home is run. They feel obligated and due the right to run the home. The dominant and domineering housewife is still a well known stereotype.
And these women, well they have a lot of time to refine that skill. A career has given their own home long before they shared that with their mate. They managed their own apartment before HE came into the picture, and they know what is to be done. And so I see my female friends suddenly dominant in the home on a whole new controlling level that often shortchanges the fundamental necessity of compromise. So comfortable are they with the role of managing the home that they no longer think of the necessary respect they must consider when rearranging a room or buying and disposing or possessions.

And so this is my plea to all the independent, strong and incredibly awesome women out there who have not yet figured it out (and believe me there are more than a few): if you are going to share the bills, if you are going to share independence, if you are going to have your own friends along with your shared friends and share the world, you must also share your home. And that is more than inhabiting space. That is more than divvying out chores. It is a concerted effort that involves communication and the presumption that as much as you know how to run your own home, he knows how to run his. It involves developing a shared vision, where both people have veto rights. You no longer lose all power if you lose control of your home.

And you gain time, and peace of mind, in giving up a certain amount of control.

That last statement, by the way, is applicable in many situations. Think about it.

tired

2010-12-09T21:13:00.001-08:00

can we just fast forward to the part where everything is okay again?

to the moment where the dog has stopped shivering and throwing up and my car is working and not an enormous financial sink hole, and to the day in which I wake up and aren't excited that I got 4 good hours in before my neck and arm start hurting again.

my physical therapist explained so much of pain can be a feedback loop. nerves put on watch when there is a very real threat call up all their friends to help them stand watch, and soon, after the injury is gone, there are just sensors, everywhere, feeling everything, hypothesizing it is pain. viewing everything as a hurt.

and I guess the secret is knowing it will end. stopping the feedback loop, visualizing into reality a healed and happy future and chugging along with assurance that things will relax, things will loosen up, and the inflammation will be soothed, soon a distance memory.

but I am so so not there. I can't help it. It's been a hard week and today I hardly had the energy for one more issue. one more concern. one more worry.

And I have it easy. I know I do. People have many and much worse issues and challenges than me.
They have real problems. Their car is totalled and they can't even make it to work and little jimmy needs braces or a colostomy. or he needs to eat.
I am working through challenges to my placid existence, barriers to opulence.

But still, sometimes ....sometimes I just want to move. to another time when these issues are solved and everyone feels happy and whole and carefree again. when I am floating on a cool pool in the warm summer sun, and dog is chewing on her bone, and my possessions are the farthest thing from my mind.

2010-11-16T21:26:00.000-08:00

here is what I think when a man calls a woman a ball breaking bitch
or a controlling wife
or that kind of overbearing woman who always makes a man do what and when she wants

you know, like have babies
and recycle
and remember to note their birthdays and show up at their friends functions

I think that man is finally dealing with a woman willing to forceably be as spoiled as he is. willing to make a point of her needs. I think she has hung out with his friends silently more than enough, she has watched him try to weasel out of this event, or find a reason his home, his life, his mission is more important and said yes. and now she is saying "well, maybe not just yes, maybe yes BUT"

I am tired of hearing all about women who are boner killing zeitgeist conquering wenches when they are, quite actually, often people who want their side heard as well.

there. I said it.

in the end

2010-11-07T23:23:00.000-08:00

I've always been a sucker for the voice
deep, high, strong, soft...like a casanova I have no type, but I can't escape the lure of a true beauty. it has can be sonorous or melodic or gentle...but it must be somehow pleasing.

and I find, in the end it's his voice that always gets me
like a wisp from the past when everything else has changed. still so familiar.

2010-10-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

Suffice it to say she had significant doubts when he did not show up to her reading.
She felt a bit like an ass thinking like that. You know, here was a man who had cooked her dinner and cuddled with her at night and was proud to show her on his arm hither and yon. And yet. And yet. There she was, soul bared, and he wasn't aching to see it.
And all the reasonable questions and arguments ran through her head: that he knew her. HER. Not some character on stage. Not some presentation. He couldn't be expected to like her creations. That was a matter of taste. Or maybe, even, he had something far more important to do than see her present a facet of a life he was actually absorbed in.
She just didn't know. And yet it seemed strange. Strange in the same way she wasn't the first to hear his demo. Strange in the way that he only seemed so concerned if she even liked his music.

It is odd how people get to know eachother. Some people shake your hand and then go home and comb the internet for every evidence of your existence. They read every word you tweet and stare at pictures for signs of what lies beneath the surface.
Others can be handed your diary and not even be curious enough to crack it.

Does this reflect a lack of curiousity, or simply a different modality of knowing? Do they smell your scent and look in your eyes and know all they need to know? Do they not play over your words for inflection? Do they simply absorb what they are given and know something you may never not?

Some people. So curious. Others: content and absorned in the macro they are given.

I've never really understood it myself. I am a comber. A searcher. I listen closely. I consider words and how they are articulated. I wonder at their patterns. I replay chords to grow deeper into a human. I stare at their art, trying to find the intent, the logic. I find people's bodies, these shells they inhabit, difficult to see through, opaque and confusing. Too unclear. I'll take any hint. I know others are not like this. I know others exist in a far different realm. More in texture than detail, more in the sublime than the subtext.

And so I insisted on comforting her with the always honest reality that people are different.

And that it's hard to discern, sometimes, one persons contentment with their context versus an actual lack of curiousity about who you might truly be, what you might honestly think, ponder or feel.

Art

2010-10-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

I am not an artist.
I feel the need to clarify this even though the fact that I can not paint, sculpt, draw, play an instrument or take a picture should have made this alarmingly evident.

This might seem like a silly thing to clarify, since so very many people in the world are not artists. Infact, if I could formulate a guess, I'd guess most people are NOT artists.

Except in my world. I have the fine pleasure of being surrounded by painters, sculptors, musicians and photographers. If I passed out odds are an artist would catch me. While we waited for a doctor I'd be surrounded by visions of beauty, breathtaking sounds in the background.

I intend not a note of sarcasm when I say that I suspect, in this manner, I am blessed. Lucky to have access to so much beauty.

And yet. Sometimes I think people forget I barely possess a creative bone in my body. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can (probably) create a nice flower arrangement, or decorate a room, and have been given props for "creative decision making".

But lets face it, that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the ability to create something solely there to inspire, entertain and titillate.
I can't do that with my clothes on.

I am not an artist.

And sometimes this is hard for me, when inspired by people who spend so much time creating these amazing things. Especially when they realize how little time I spend doing that very thing. Sometimes there is a desperate din: what will we talk about? Sometimes there is pity for my sad and empty soul. Sometimes I know they respect me just a little less for all the meaningless things I must fill my day with that are not art. All the uncreative things I do. And what do I think about anyway? Is my head filled with numbers and pragmatic ways to arrange a kitchen or organize an office? Maybe I just think about Grey's anatomy and new ways to roast a chicken.

And from nine to five, yes, generally, if I am being honorable, I am thinking about pragmatic things. Because that is what they pay me to do. Sometimes even when I leave the office. And yes. sometimes I think about ways to cook something, or even just love and life and sex and food. Just like artists do when they are not thinking about their art. But sometimes, guess what: I am thinking about art.
How it sounds, how looks, how it effects me. Even though I am not able to create it. Even though I am not drawn to add my ten cents to the pool. I can appreciate it.

But then, sometimes, I wonder if maybe I really can't. Maybe in the same way I can never imagine what it is like to have a kid without having one or live through a war in my peaceful existence I don't truly belong in an art gallery, I don't truly understand what I am hearing when I turn on the radio. I mean, sometimes I enter a group of artists I can tell they respect me just a little less, because I am not one of them. I can tell I am a tourist. Or even worse. A patron, who's interest in their creations will hopefully extend to a bursting wallet because lord knows I have nothing else to offer, lord knows I can at least invest, if I can not understand.

I don't know. I always thought art was created to communicate to even the simplest of creatures. That art, if well wrought, would reveal the impulses and intensities too sublime to illustrate mundanely in a pamphlet. That art could move a plumber. Or even a healthcare analyst. Maybe I am wrong.Maybe I just don't understand.

After all, I am not an artist.

questions

2010-10-14T23:18:00.001-07:00

I suppose if I could ask them all the same question I'd want to know if they loved me.
Life has so many unanswered questions, so many holes and uncertainties and one of the hardest things to get used to is that there will always be a cornucopia of queries left unaddressed because you can only really know what goes on in your own brain.

But still I'd want to know. Was I loved.

Well maybe not, love being such a cagey word, so prone to interpretation.
So maybe the real question would be: how am I remembered. With what clarity? and more importantly, with that import? Do they remember meaning it? Did they wish they meant more. Was my presence weighty, or a mere whisp? A distraction or an obessesion.

You know of what I speak.

When you start to get older you have years and years or experience behind you to recall, faces and names and places and about a zillion conversations in the past. and yet some moments stand out, some people persist. some face haunt.

and sometimes you just want to know if you shared that memorable moment. if you both were there. if that particular piece you can not escape has weight in the mind of another as well.

you'll never know the answer. I'll never know the answer. but I guess, if I could ask. I would.

donald draper and good old dave

2010-10-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

I have an old friend I have seldom occasion to see.
But I find myself thinking about him from time to time. The same way I find myself thinking about Donald Draper.

First, let me explain a little something about Dave.
Most women I know, who have known Dave, at some point or another, have had a crush on him. Maybe not at first, maybe not for long, but at some point most women I know who have gotten to know him,have wanted to know him...better.

Then let me explain a little more about Dave. He's short. He's cute but not incredibly striking. He, is, at times, a little stout. He's balding. He walks with a limp.

He is, of course, also insanely smart and incredibly funny. He's awesome. And he IS attractive. IN that way I described.

But think about all the dudes you know who are insanely smart and incredibly funny and spend countless hours online just hoping for one woman to love. Think of all the awesome guys who are attractive in a particular way hopeless devoted to their right hand.

And think of Dave. Always, atleast, knee deep with the ladies.
And not just any ladies. Pretty ladies. Smart ladies. Hot ladies.
His wife is smokin'. I mean, really, you should see her.

And then I think of Don Draper. Who's, ya know, (A FICTIONAL CHARACTER, I KNOW I KNOW) all that and more with the ladies. And, indeed, in this case it is no mystery. He looks like Superman and is the hottest shit on the planet, creatively. He's tall, dark and handsome and mysterious.

That isn't the point.

The other day I was watching Mad Men I found myself noting one thing: the way Don Draper gazes at women. The way he appraises a pretty girl with utter admiration. The way he looks at her pretty lips and her delicate wrists and thinks, without a doubt, "thank heavens for this divine diversion". The way he likes that they are ladies. The way he approves of their power over him, even when it's his own demise.

And it makes me recall a moment, a long long time ago, when I was sitting with Dave, and a bunch of ladies walked by, some pretty, some more than others, and he said, with a certain childlike awe "girls are pretty"

And then I think of Joan Holloway (ALSO A CHARACTER AND NOT A REAL HUMAN). I think of how stunning she is. And the range of reactions she reveals in her overwhelmingly powerful sexual appeal. Some men, they look upon her and they see an angel. They will see her and can not help a sweet word, can not help but to salute.

But other men. That is a little more complicated. Some men, awed though they may be by her beauty, will always hate her just a bit. Resent her for the obvious power her sexuality has. They will experience the complicated and bitter emotional storm of observing a woman who can reject them, and they will take that very possibility as proof that the universe is unfair. As proof that women are manipulative, because their emotions have been influenced, their bodies moved.

And I am not saying women want to be observed and loved without judgement as pretty fluffy creatures. I am not saying we are cotton candy, innocent in our wiles, valuable for our assets.

I am suggesting something very different:
That sex beauty passion and love are exquisite, perhaps, because of their ability to make us lose control, to make us lose power in the face of their madness.
Like a reverent being we stand awed in their midst.

But there are always people, so scared of the control they lose, that they can't see the enlightenment they stand to gain. They are cowards. They are narrow. They are half developed and eye wide shut to the riches of the world around them.

But there are also people: so confident in their presence, so clear in their personal needs, that they can let themselves lose control when the time is right, can let themselves purely appreciate the beauty the world has to offer with definitive gratitude. Even if that beauty is as simple as a perfect cheese burger or a group of pretty girls walking by...

And I think the reward of being those people is that more and more things become beautiful, more and more opportunities present to find glory in the little things, grace in the gestures.

Well, and the disarming and completely winsome effect they have on those they appreciate.
Which is to say. They get alot of tail.

Sisterhood of the One Size Does not fit all

2010-09-28T10:42:00.001-07:00

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The relationships women foster with eachother and the variety of social rules and accepted behaviors that surround “sisterhood.”
Girls nights, grooming sessions, travelling pants. The strange desire some woman have to coo or compliment every time they see a female friend on something …HOW ARE YOU. YOU LOOK GREAT IN THAT. The unspoken rules. Your friend never looks fat. Or Old. Or is pathetic because she can’t stop calling him. She should DTMF, but if she doesn’t you are there for her. And so on, and so forth.

And I’ve been thinking about the other end. The cattiness. The competition. The inevitable sense of keeping up with the joneses that can permeate even a close group of friends when they “progress” at different paces, or even make different life choices.

I am prone to think of Peggy, from Mad Men, in the ladies rest room. And she has done the practically impossible. Become a female copywriter in a world dominated by men. And she makes a decent wage and has her own apartment and all that jazz. And she is proud. And the first person comes into the rest room and compliments her on her own office and isn’t she doing well for herself. And the second person, pregnant, looks at her, and makes a comment akin to “don’t worry, you are still young enough to find a man and have a baby”

And both are being friendly. No one has said “Oh, you pathetic homely girl. Atleast you have your job” And No one has says “bitch, how did you get that job, I bet you slept with the boss”
And no one has also says “you are brilliant” they have said “nice lipstick!” or “ I love that top!”
Like they said to the last 3 girls they saw.

Dolling out compliments to let their friends know they are in the position to do so.
Withholding them with similar incline.

I think about this. And then I think about my boyfriends friends. Who are actually really close friends. And when he shows up it’s like “hey! Good to see you! I saw your show! It was awesome”
Or maybe just a warm hello! Not, ya know. Nice shoes or WTG! About the most irrelevant pieces of their wardrobe.

I think of how little their friendships are reflections of their insecurities, and how commonly women bring their insecurities into the very fiber of the way they bond, for better or for worse.

I don’t know. I don’t know where I am going with this except:

Friendships are important and extended families make us feel loved, warm and secure.
Or they should.
And I suppose you can’t change the fundamentals of how different genders build closeness. I don’t know that I would WANT to. I am fine receiving a compliment from time to time or even well intended critical feedback. But it strikes me, as often as not, than in an effort to deny a particular intrinsic quality of “female bonding”-the reflexive need to curb the competitive streak- we have developed some very inauthentic means of expressing ourselves. Methods that bely our purpose.

SO I guess the main question is: what to do, and how to do it in a culturally appropriate way that still breeds healthier, kinder and more accepting relationships.

sin

2010-09-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

so I tried to think about the sins I'd washed away, the things I had absolved

and I realized that my biggest issue isn't with absolution, it is with the very notion of sin. of evil. that we are made so simple that we need accept acts and concepts as inherently wrong, when evil springs from decisions and their likely results. causation, context, intent, belief.

I think we are sophisticated enough to understand that certain acts are a bad idea, because of their likely result. I think evil can not exist in our mind at inception, I think it grows when is passes the filters of empathy, human kindness, hope and reason and springs an action likely to destroy, hurt, confuse and confound.

I do not know, any more, that I believe in sin. I do not know that I believe there is a lord in heaven who would create creatures who were unable to evolve beyond "yes" and "no" without wondering why.

And for that reason I do not know that we can be washed clean so much as plunder on, by force and habit, working on all the things we believe can help us blossom, while negotiation with the desires that lead us to ugly acts until they are ridiculous and unthinkable in action.

I think we learn to be bad, I think we breed wrong. I do not think evil seeds. I think it breeds from laziness and distraction.

But I am willing to pay ritual attention to my sin, lest I cease to act with intent, lest I become so habitual that I forget to examine my acts for their likely result.

2010-08-16T12:36:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is my birthday and I've been trying to figure out a gift I can give myself.

I know this sounds like a strange thing to say, but in a year in which I have had, on various levels, a hard time emotionally, it strikes me that the chasm of happiness has mostly evolved from events in which I have failed to love myself well enough and wise enough.

Don't get me wrong. When I say it has been a hard year I not giving proper credit to the joy and achievement associated with such "difficulty"
Since I last saw a birthday I have gotten engaged, bought a house, and managed to turn an awe inspiring mountain of unsecured debt into a reasonable mortgage and a tiny credit card bill. I have lost a decent amount of weight. I have gotten back in decent shape.

I am in love, I am well homed and fed and full of potential.

And yet, somewhere in the process I stopped loving myself, and loving life as I should...
I have become driven by the notion that I might just be failing myself, in the very ways that count.
Does that sound right? Does that sound possible? That such reasonable acts of self love and self care would yield this realization?

I can't explain it myself and so the only reasonable explanation I can come up with, at a moments thought, is that I have only started to notice the things I do to inhibit my own happiness and to survive instead of thrive now that I have cleared away some of the crap that was obscuring my view.

I liken it to cleaning my house only to uncover the scratches and water stains and to discover I haven't been doing such a good job of taking care of the things I love.

And so I want to start this new year off, my next year of existence, finding ways to not just amuse myself, but to love myself.
But I don't know where to start.

Other than with a list of what I want, and perhaps, time and circumstance will lead me towards my needs if I acknowledge what they are:

I want more close friends and less meandering acquaintances. I want to connect more and mingle less. I want to form bonds that help me relax, endow me with inspiration, comfort me with joy.

I want to eat more great food and drink good drink. But I want to eat less and drink less. And Enjoy both by the contrast.

I want to move. Well and happily. I want to internalize a force that makes my body's kinetic design a joy and not a frustration.

I want to look in the mirror and think I am beautiful, and not a hair above acceptable. I want less compromise and more acceptance. I want to look in the mirror less.
I want to look at others more.

I want to create one thing that can share just a piece of what is the real me, and not simply my assortments of tics and habits and mechanisms. I want to create.

I want to live more with my spirit and less with my ego, and I hope this will make me a better friend and lover.

This is the what. The difficult part is the how.

its a bird, its a plane

2010-08-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

There is this scene in the first Superman movie:

It is early in the movie amd "Clark Kent" has just appeared at the Daily Planet. And there he is, a ridiculous anachronism of sorts, all "golly gee" and "can do" and Lois Lane, wise, sassy, and completely unable to to deal with Clark's innocent presence and, is asserting herself all over the place. So there she is, walking all over him and out manning him at every turn (no doubt because she is a woman in a man's world, and perhaps just a bit because she's self important and more than a little self absorbed and you can't really blame her but that isn't the point). So when their boss, unable to open a bottle, hands it to Clark, Clark makes a good show of trying to open it, and then hands her the bottle, ostensibly to keep up his cover as the weakling he claims to be, and after shaking it and loosening it, she hands it back to him.

And, well, we all know what happens when you open a shaken soda bottle.

Lois, slighly taken aback as anyone decent would be, apologizes "I'm sorry Clark, I didn't mean to..."
And he cuts her off, and directly states with a slight smirk "Ofcourse you didn't Lois, Why would anyone want to make a total stranger look like an idiot?"

It is, by all accounts, a wonderful moment.

And I think of this moment, time and time again. During the power plays that are inevitable in daily life. The cynicism and delicate jabs and moves we make to clarify our wit at the expense of others implied lack of intelligence. I think of it during teen movies and the memories they bring back of cruel and clueless children, mocking the odd man out because it made them feel better.

I think of it when someone makes me feel fat, or comes on to my boyfriend to prove she is sexy and more worthy than me. I think of it when someone shuns me for no good reason or looks at my shoes like I could have done better.

I think of it when anyone tries to make me feel small.

I think of it because it is the ultimate one liner. That response you were dreaming of in the bathroom as you tried to imagine the appropriate zinger to being verbally wedgied. That thing you wanted to say to stop it all, stop them in their tracks. make them regret what they did.

Why. would. anyone. want. to. make. a. total. stranger. feel. like. an. idiot.?

Right?

I mean, really? Doesn't that say it all. In no uncertain terms: what could your actions possibly say about you if it was your intent to kick the underdog. OF COURSE you didn't mean to do that? What sane and kind person would want to see another suffer, would want to watch another squirm. Infact, I am such a big person I am going to give YOU the benefit of the doubt, because only the smallest shriveled heart would sing to such a petty attempt.

We forget this as we grow. Verying levels of sophistication takes foot and the insecurities over being inadequate make it tantamount we seem right. We forget.

we roll our eyes and we snicker and we get better, and we get subtler at making others feel small. We don't kick and we don't call ugly names. Atleast not in mixed company.

But what we DO do, is we use our brain. To out think and over analyze and find a rationale as to why we must embarrass and degrade, as a initiation by context, to prove our relative worth. We tell ourselves there is a point, a rationale, to highlight the bottom rung, and how very far below you it is.

We shine our correctness like a headlamp. We use our clever mind.

Which really must, in the end, have something better to do than to make someone feel like an ass. Because really, truly, who would want to make a stranger feel like an idiot?

damning with faint praise

2010-07-14T10:23:00.001-07:00

I remember, once, I showed a friend the house we had just bought, and with much enthusiasm gave him the grand tour, showing him our large living room with period built ins, or wonderful backyward, our dining nook surrounded with divided light windows. And he with much enthusiasm began to compliment...our basement.

Now, I imagine his compliment had more to do with his own basement...the only part of his regal and amazing house currently out of commission, than anything else. I imagine it was NOT meant to convey "I can't find anything to like so I'll express admiration for the least notable portion of your home". But it did.

And this reminds me of getting really dressed up once, and putting all this attention into every detail, and then having someone compliment...my fishnets. My 99 cent fishnets. The fishnets, no doubt, atleast 5 other girls were wearing fascimiles of at that same party. And my filling silly. Because I had bothered with the unusual and amazing shoes. And the dress that actually fit me and made my body look amazing. and the hair. And this person walked up and she half heartedly noticed...legwear everyone would be wearing this season. Causing me to wonder if I actually looked sort of fat in my dress. If my shoes really were as amazing as I had believed. If I even looked pretty.

But then one time... I also went to a party, equally dressed to the nines, with a great dress, and great shoes...and I had someone compliment my earings. Which were my grandmothers earings. And which I love. And I was excited. Because I chose those earings to compliment the outfit and I really felt like the outfit was not complete without them.

Which is to say, complimenting somoene on a possibly small detail is tricky business.

So the question becomes: what is the trick? What is the secret to complimenting someone so they feel rewarded for their attention to detail, their pervasive taste into even the smallest touches versus honing in on something so seemingly irrelevant that it conveys the message "all the other things are so lame I can't even bring myself to comment on them."

I don't know. Perhaps it is a matter of taste but that seems unfair. Because expecting someone to notice when something is done well is more a judgement on their perception than on their discretion. I mean, sometimes a tiling job really deserves to be the focus of praise, and sometimes it is the last thing you threw together. Sometimes an outfit is built around the shoes, and sometimes you just gave up and picked something that hopefully matched.

It FEELS like it is a matter of sensitivity but that seems slightly unfair too. After all, much of what people notice and judge has to do with what their current, personal focus is on. I always notice people's shoes. Because I am always looking for a nice pair of shoes. And bras. I love a good piece of lingerie, and am likely to notice the brastrap, if it's nice, even in the most dazzling get up.

So maybe it's best to play it safe. To be clear why you are subjectively picking out a particular detail.

And I am suddenly reminded of the time I was out, and a friend of mine walked up to me, and they said "you look gorgeous! and I know it seems silly, but I really like your ring. I collect vintage jewelry and that is a really unusual piece"

There? See how she did that? And I didn't even think about what she may or may not have missed.

That smart girl.

Sometimes the devil is in the details. Sometimes heaven is found in a grain of sand.

2010-07-01T10:26:00.001-07:00

I was a little more than 16 when I first saw him. Actually first I saw his pile of books, neatly arranged and clearly ordered volumes on Freud. These books added a certain context to my obviously disorganized and toppling stacks on anything and everything to do with Jung. I was doing a report on dream symbolism or archetypes or something like that and I was using a skill closer to dead reckoning than actual research to amass and arrange my bibliography. This is a skill that over subsequent years I have honed: the ability to use intuition to gather an almost haphazard variety of reference materials that somehow always manage to give a sense of "breadth" to my research instead of disorganized desperation. I am not sure why it works but it works and there is always a certain organic feeling about it that makes me feel like I am riding some sort of academic jet stream. Skipping stones through rivers of knowledge. Anything but systematic.

Looking at his stack it was quite certain he was doing his due dilligence. There were notes and outlines and even a sort of improvised personal card catalogue. I didn't know who this guy was, but there were...methods to his methods, and I had chosen to share that table partially in a mocking gesture to exhibit the glory of my madness. I didn't know who this guy was, but he was clearly a geek.

He returned while I was on another pilgrammage through the psychiatry section. When I walked up his head was down and his brow was furrowed as he tried to find a book that I had swiped from his pile to use in my own research. After all, Jung was a deciple of Freud and various passages from that book would make it look like I had gone beyond the call of duty. The book was sitting in plain sight on my side of the table and when he noticed it he got up, shook his head in annoyance and went to grab the book. Then he seemed to think better of it and paused, clearly examing the propriety of the situation, perhaps questioning, when he saw my books, whether it was an accident that I had grabbed his book (a possibility completely unlikely as it had been half way down a pile of books right next to his chair) or whether, maybe he had been mistaken in the assumption that he actually had ever really grabbed that book in the first place. I could see other questions passing in his head. Maybe he was wondering if two wrongs made a right. If it was really okay for him to grab that book back even though I had evidently stolen it.

I describe these impression in hindsight realizing I am completely and utterly misrepresenting my first impression of this man. Of this boy. Pride keeps me from describing my impressions in their actual order. Because my first impression was that he was one of the best looking people I had ever seen. My first thought was that he was hot. Not not hot, beautiful. My first thought was that he was an asshole because he was so goodlooking. And my next thought was that I would need to move, because I would not be able to get any work done and I would spend hours catching glances at a man who would never give me a second look. That any instinct I had been using would fly straight out the window only to be replaced by lust and awe. My first impression was panic.

But in order to move my books I was going to need to go back to that table.

He was involved enough in the moral quandary of it all that he had not noticed me approaching.
He was standing over my pile of books and kind of grinning at their conteent by the time I got to them. He was tall. Not kind of tall. Very very large. I am short so most men are contextually tall compared to me, but he was towering. I would later learn he was a hair above 6ft6. And he was proportioned. A little lanky, but not that awkward composition most men when they are that tall have that makes it clear how huge they are from a distance. You know, most tall men are either kind of hefty or quite skinny. Longish, coltish. Strangely sized hands and feet for their height. This guy was like a perfectly proportioned average sized man. But not.

I was completely slain.

I apologized and told him he could take the book and made up some lame excuse about borrowing it quickly because I had been looking for that book and noticed he had it and he flashed me a large smile which completely threw me off because guys that hot don't usually smile like that. He looked at me very closely and that also thew me off.

Understand, as extraordinary as this man standing before me was, I was ordinary. And I knew this without a hint of doubt. Short, but not exactly petite. Buxom, but at that age still uncomfortable with that fact. Dark, but not exotic. Your basic slightly weird fuzzy haired highschool outcast. Completly clear on the lines highschool had drawn for me. Which included the undeniable fact that guys who looked like that would only give me a second glance in my most far fetched fantasies.

But here this guy was looking at me pretty closely and I couldn't read his reaction and he had blue eyes so dark the iris almost blended with his pupils. And he had a tiny blue streak in his black hair to match them and I was going to die.

I sat down and buried my head in my now useless stack of books and he went and did the same.

2010-06-28T13:44:00.002-07:00

and so, and unsurprisingly, I struggle with the problem of my own relevance, or more to the point my own irrelevance.

we are all ants scurrying on the big sweet spot, in a ray of the sun, chancing for a moment of deep warmth and fulfilment. we are all irrelevant. whether you are michael jackson or michael johnson. irrelevant. playthings of the wind.

telling myself this, sometimes, helps, but in the end scale seldom has the calming influence you would expect

because we are the center of our frame of reference and our own significance, our own insignificance, is paramount to our sanity

and you know something is wrong when you are no longer the star of your own dreams and the point of your own poetry. you know something has gone awry when every piece of symbolism has a face not your own, and when you expect to come second in line to most every person you know

internal, external wallflowering of a profound nature, maggotry of the soul. the act of turning oneself into a tiny pest on the apple of their own life, instead of finding a way to see their little bit of fruit as the center of the universe

2010-06-28T13:44:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I believe it is righteous indignation and sometimes I believe I am just mad at myself for being an ass.

Truth: He used every "loophole" in the book to make betrayal seem more like a misunderstanding.
Truth: this, in and of itself is a betrayal, of trust, if nothing else.

Bigger truth: I knew, just a bit, all along, and let myself believe. I knew, all along, there was an abyss where there should have been a warm, sweet pool.

And I still think about it.
I still dream about it.

Because it is the last loss of innocence.

Here is what I dream about. The feeling. The moment before I stopped believing, completely, and whatever that felt like, even though it made no sense.
The moment when I looked into his eyes and saw a sign of human life, saw a shred of authentic empathy.

And I dream about the awakening, and the reality, and the part in which I can not forgive myself for having a relationship almost entirely with my fantasies and not with a real person, not with the person standing there, not with the "object" of my affections who was less having a relationship than the romantic equivelent of a smoke break.

In my defense, it comes up, it rears its head because it is still right there. In conversations. In the spiderweb of social interaction I encourage.
And I never know exactly what to say because "yes, I had a rather long relationship with somoene who did not have a relationship with me".

I mean, jesus. It makes me sound like a stalker. Like his biggest fan. Like pure ass.
When in reality it is more like the Truman Show, in which one of us played a part, and poorly at that, and one of us was NOT acting.

Except for the part when I acted like I knew what I was doing. Except for the part when I pretended I believed.

And maybe that is the hardest part. Maybe that is me, as they say, "losing my religion". Maybe that is me hating myself for being so very false, in my own way, and wondering wondering wondering why I would do that. How I could do that.
And, more the point, how I was so happy doing it, if even for a brief period in my life.

Or maybe it is just hard to be irrelevant to someone you once found important. Even in hindsight. To admit you WERE their biggest fan, telling everyone about the eye contact he made with you in row 3, and how when you danced it felt like JUST the two of you, and how everyone knows you are crazy even though that dance ended in a night of passion in your head, in a home and children and the unbelievable and unexpected romance of elvis falling love with the girl he was looking at in row 3. when he was, in actuality, just squinting at the light, and thinking about the cold beer he'd have when the show was over.

that old feeling

2010-06-27T10:03:00.001-07:00

instinct and intuition are strange things.
most people believe in instinct. as animals we are bound to have some natural reflexes and urges innate for survival. hungers and desires and even cravings for things when we can't explain why.
it makes sense to even the most logical person: instinct: go into the sun and get your dose of vitamin D. head downstream because some part of you knows you'll hit a lake or river and society gathers around still banks of water. I don't know.

but intuition seems...a little more nuanced. and yet, when it rears it's ugly head many of us fight it. it doesn't make sense. it's just hocus pocus. and still, many people will tell you, ignoring intuition seldom yields the results our logical minds would hope.

I remember, once, I had this "boyfriend". And being sporadic people who both sort of hated the phone we would go a few days without any contact whatsoever. But one weekend, one perfectly normal weekend without contact, I knew knew knew something was wrong. I could feel the psychic tether slack. I could feel him...with someone else. Instinct? No. No immediate cues were present. Intuition. And I called him. And I asked him. And he had slept ...with 3 other, different people.
3 other people.

And I thought about that. You know. Shit, if a festival of cheating doesn't send your feminine intuition into overdrive, doesn't excite that small psychic alarm bell, what will. But then the logical part says: maybe he did it all the time, and you got suspicious, and you get jealous, and so you asked, and he finally told you.

I know this not to be true.

How? well, first of all I know him fairly well this point in my life, again, and after all that shit and a pretty powerful friendship and very little on the line I had my suspicion confirmed. I was the only one he was sleeping with. Until that weekend when the gawds of pussy overflow decided to throw a little downstream and into his pond.
I just. Well, I know this.

The same way I knew to log on to myspace, or facebook or whatever "social networking" site was big at the time when another ex of mine had recently broken up and check some random mutual friends website to confirm they were, infact, a couple now even though they had been friends for years and I hadn't seen them together in longer than our relationship and no specific thing tipped off that intuition.

The same way I have become randomly jealous, or suddenly inexplicably confident in a variety of situations, ranging from romantic to professional, with no real external cues.

And you can call a little of that instinct, but more of that was intuition.

So the real question is:
What do you do when your intuition tells you something that no logical part of you can justify. How do you finagle an intuitive suspicion that finds no roots in reality?

honesty's strange bedfellows

2010-06-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

I was raised to tell the truth.

I think of this now and then, how very clear my parents were that they would not tolerate lying, How very often life lessons, punishments, arguments were rooted in the desire for me to become an honest person.

Very honorable sentiment, very respectable goal.

And it is always not just a pleasure, but a relief, when someone says exactly what they mean.
With their words I mean.

But those are words.
Words words words.
Things we think we mean and so we say them.

But lately it's come to my attention all the other manners of communication that fall by the wayside as we attempt to make our words foolproof.
All those shades of gray presented with varying levels of authenticity that can be found in the subtleties of our interactions, in the prioritizations of our passions, in the things we choose to do and not to do.

I have a friend. We'll say for the sake of conversation that she is a good friend. Not, necessarily a close friend, because there are definitely things we wouldn't talk about, but you know, she is an old dear friend.

And she has never been to my house. Not ever. I don't even know that she knows where I live.

Now this could be attributed to a variety of factors: frantic lifestyles, strange coincidence, you name it.
But there is more to it than this.
First off. I have been to her house. Repeatedly. I run around town to meet her. Rearrange my schedule to spend time. I travel. And I enjoy, for the most part doing it. And she isn't disabled. She doesn't have children or sick pets. She goes to OTHER people's houses. But she doesn't go to mine.
Complicating this is the pressure *I* get to visit. How nice it would be to see me. How much she misses me. Would there be any reason I would be in her hood? And yes. and sure. And I will try. And hey, I tell her, you are always welcome to stop by as well.
This goes without response.
And then we tell the lie that is not a lie in words but is evidently false when backed by our actions: I care about you. I miss you.
And I find myself thinking of how they care about me. They care about me in their space but are not really concerned about my life and space. They are, in fact, not even curious enough to get in a car and make the long trip over to my side of the river. They, quite actually, avoid references to my side of the world, my end of the social spectrum, to reasons and opportunities to come see me. And I begin to feel awkward when I mention working on the kitchen they have never seen. Resting on the couch they have never sat on. Saving money for a mortgage on a home that does not, in their mind's eye, really exist.
It is as i my private life and and the space I inhabit are...not extant.
This is how they miss me, this is how they care about me.

And then I start to tell the same lie: that I am busy, I don't have the time or money or whatever to participate in their life. But I miss them. We should hang out soon.

Yes.

And the irony is that I DO miss them. I DO care about them. I want to have a phone or email conversation about the latest big news or their newest favorite song. I do not wish to create space, I do not wish to severe contact. I believe they feel the same. But over time one thing has become very clear: I am not a priority. I am not even really curiosity. And perhaps what they miss has more to do with what I occasionally symbolize or on occasion provide, then the actual me that exists in my home, with my pets, with my partner. Their absolute lack of wonderment about how I live my life honestly communicates something we could never politely communicate with words. And I am learning to return the sentiment.

It's these...variances, shall we say, in ninth commandment that get to me sometimes.

Because most children are taught that honesty is the best policy, but then, over time, they learn, like the rest of us, to develop less than totally forthcoming communication, and relationships with big holes in what should be candid interaction. They attend family reunions in which you hug an aunt you barely know and tell them you love them. They call grandma and make sure to tell her absolutely nothing really relevant or thought provoking about their lives.
They create palpable distance with their actions, and mutter the same words that mean something very different when said to a close partner or friend "I miss you, I love you"

I don't know. Maybe there should be different words. Better words. Or maybe we should be trained with different expectations around polite interaction, intimate expectations and the almighty search for the truth.

Lest we grow up saying a bunch of words that sound true, and should be true, but are in all actuality, as far from the truth as we can imagine. Lest we grow up to be ghosts of intension, and shadows of actual sincerity.

On judgement, on loneliness

2010-06-07T09:30:00.001-07:00

As often as not I am embarassed by my behavior. Really. When it comes to social situations, even if I have a good time, I find myself second guessing my "performance" as it were, at the end of the evening, or the next day. Especially when even the smallest amount of alchohol is involved.
Infact, I'd venture to say the rarity of my great evenings stems from the rarity of experiences in which I am confident I did not bore, annoy or offend anyone involved.

Understand, I am not exactly a drunken mess. I do not spout (I think) opinionated judgements against those I am recreating with at any regular intervals. I have a modicum of social grace, and (again, I think) remember my actions clearly enough to acknowledge that I am not someone who should be permanently convinced I was judged poorly.

Mildness of manor, aside, I still very rarely come out, internally, unscathed. I am still plagued by a certian nagging notion, more often than not, that I am a bit of a dissapointment. That I am invited out of association, rather than urge or desire, that I am not really all that loved.

I have been trying to pinpoint what the source of this suspicion is for a while now? Is it just straight overwhelming lack of confidence. Am I just way too overcritical. Should I be medicated?

Perhaps. But in the end I realized a very critical aspect to this feeling. And it has to do with safety. Not freedom from death in a ditch type safety. Not personal health and harm safety. But more...the safety felt in a certain reassurance of freedom from judgement.

Understand: I think a certain amount of critical judgement is essential and implicit in every day life and all critical actions. I would be the last to claim that I don't judge constantly and sometimes too harshly. But there is a rare and beautiful thing in a close friendship, in a family, in which you stop really judging what your friends say or do with a glaring light. In which soft focus chimes in and they can tell you strange things, say things that might be taken the wrong way, get too drunk, act too stupid, and you don't only forgive, you barely even notice.

Sometimes I wonder if this is a key part of the whole "only child syndrom". I remember, once discussing the difference with a friend with many siblings, none of who they really liked. And after a long discussion my friend did allow "well, it is nice to know there are 6 people I can fuck up around and they are still obligated to love me and aren't going anywhere".

Yes. It might be nice to know that.

Look, here is what I know. As we get older, and many of us travel and settle far far away from our homes, we find new ways to build family. New people to depend on and love, new social networks to thrive in. To feel safe in. And I often suspect the hardest part of this effort isn't finding people we can respect. There are tons of people out there who are perfectly decent and respectable citizens. Or people we have tons in common with. Hell, some of my favorite people don't like most of the books I like, or hate some of the movies I enjoy, or are possibly offended, deeply, by my sense of style, and nod politiely. I don't even know if it is a matter of finding people who amuse you, though this is definitelypart of the equation. The real trick, I think, is finding people you can feel safe being yourself around, and can trust to love you and appreciate you, even when you act like an ass. Finding poeple who are likely to give you some slack, presume a certain level of awesomeness even in your stupidest hour. Friends who will mostly not judge, or atleast judge with an eye to help, rather an eye to cull. Friends who can exercise the fine line between reasonable discernment and unnecessary conviction. Well, those are the friends who become family.

And while, for some of us, this may be hard to find, In the end it might be a key defining element between a life of loneliness and critical self judgement and a life of comfort, ease, and relative happiness. The difference between company that keeps you occupied, and cushion that allows self actualization.

2010-05-06T15:19:00.001-07:00

I believe in fate. I do. I can’t help it. Life has demonstrated too much whimsy, too much unmistakable coincidence and unbelievable conclusion for me to not regard the universe as delicately woven fabric, likely to express itself with divine serendipity when you least expect it.

I even suspect, on some level, there are some people we are tethered to on this journey, strange characters we will experience again and again, without any real understanding of why that is.

And I like this. This certain lack of control I sense over life lends my world a ethereal beauty, and larger purpose.

But that being said, I do believe there are things we can control. I do believe there is a difference between fate and the interpersonal connections we create and foster.

And mostly I think thatwhile a certain lack of control, a certain perspective on our smallness in the largeness of so much elusive universal order, can be comforting, it should not be a crutch.

It is important to exert the control you can over making your life what you wish. You only have the ability to choose so many things, but more often than not you can choose who you share your life with and who you trust and love. You can walk away, and you can say hello. And if you create a web of characters in your life so difficult to untangle they are practically knotted, you best hope there isn’t also a web of lies obscuring the knots you should probably atleast try to untie.

dear diary

2010-04-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

okay so I had a little melt down. or a big melt down, internally. about various things. various seemingly unrelated things that all equated, in my silly squishy brain to:
Who the hell are all these people who call themselves my friends but are unsupportive, un interested, and in general apparently unwilling to make the smallest attempt to keep our friendship reasonably close and decently accessible.

And then I analyze that first sentence. "call themselves my friends"?
Do they, or do I, simply, insistantly, call them my friends.

Friend, like love, like fair, like justice, is a strange nebulous word these days. I say it, and it means one thing to you and another to me and another to the guy down the street. That guy leering. He wants to be my "friend" ...get it? Who knows what it means any more. You "friend" people on online social networks you don't even plan or necessarily want to see in this decade. You ask people to be a friend when you need a quarter. It's a strange word with even stranger variances, and semantical debates aside, it is very clear that friendship means different things to different people.

And so I suspect the real art, the skill, the finesse of relationships is listening close enough to understand, vaguely, anothers definition, and then to decide if that definition is compatible with yours. Atleast for that person. Can you accept your "good friend" really only appreciating you in a limited capacity and only supporting decisions that are beneficial to them as well as you? Then, cool. Can you accept a best friend who forgets to think of you constantly? Do you downgrade them to buddy? Keep them despite their faults?

I don't know. I just know, as a theme for this year, I've heard alot about the slow dissolution of various friendships, and this is not just including the dissonant noise in my own brain. It's easy to be let down, to be hurt, when your definition doesn't jive with a close friends about mutual boundaries, consideration or respect.

And in the end, it is also very very hard to not internalize these issues? Are WE bad friends? bad judges of character? bad at maintaining interest? affection?

I suspect the answer, to all of these questions, is yes yes yes and no no no.

Because friendships are about relationships and choices.

Which is to say:

It takes two to tango, and two to set the rules and decide the give and take of your relationship. If you can't decide on a definition and establish trust around that decision, you are going to have a problem. But you need to be honest about the rules too. Your friend is a flake? They are a flake, and they will flake on you, and if you need them not to be a flake to be your friend, you might find that friendship over. On the other hand, your friend knows you like to be called. If they can never call you when they can't make it, they aren't really being a friend either.

Which brings us to choices:
If the contract is violated, it needs to be renegotiated or it needs to be discarded. Otherwise the resentment will be paramount. Learn when to walk away. Learn when to reassess. Learn to understand what each of your friendships are about in their own unique way, and whether you can appreciate them on those (always, inevitably) limited levels. And if you can not? Then you must walk away. For yourself. For your friend. And out of respect for eachother.

2010-04-05T11:58:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if I've become numb or if I am just on constant, overfiring overflow from the mechanizations of my life. If it's simply mute reflex to the frustrations of all the things I witness, daily, and feel powerless to change, all the boring maintenance of existence.

When I was a wee young thing I used to lie in bed at night and make up stories. Elaborate fantasies about who I was in an alternate reality and who I might become. What I'd look like and what they'd say and how I'd wow the world and change people's lives and amaze and impress and save the world. How I'd help. How I'd be indispensable. How I'd be happy.

There were many alternate universes alive in those days, and they were as real as the world I witnessed. Perhaps more so. I was more familiar with the OTHER house I lived in or the OTHER school I went to than the color of my tooth brush and the same walk to school. I laid my head down and without even trying my secret places enveloped me, my worlds opened before me.

I don't know when I stopped experiencing this. I imagine it faded, happening some nights and not others, happening at times of greater insomnia, happening in moments I most needed escape. I do know I don't do this anymore. I know I climb into bed and I feel the bed and sometimes that is a wonderful wonderful sensation, and sometimes I think about my body and how it feels and struggle against the various discomforts. Sometimes stress gets to me and I mull over details of the past I cannot change and the likely outcomes of these transgressions.

But I never...go...anywhere...anymore. I never travel.

My imagination, once vivid like a movie on a screen peeks out in strange and unreachable ways. I'll find myself saying something I didn't realize I was thinking. I'll look at a painting and know that image has once been seen, in my minds eye. Sometimes I hear music and I travel and mild sensations like a wafting scent return me to things I am thinking and I don't know how I got there or even sometimes, what I just saw. I can almost feel the wall in the head. The solid gray matter than separates the screen I am looking at this very moment from the beautiful mountain tops beckoning my hopes on the other side.

This seems patently unfair to me. As we age things become...well, routine. Every day I drive over the same bridge and I might be too tired to even conduct a conversation but I can navigate to work without even seeing the scenery. I get out of my car. I catch a shuttle. I get a cup of coffee. I rinse the same mug out. Over and over again.

I once read something by Joan Didion where she described the comfort she felt in daily repeated activities such as I just described because they mimicked the ongoing necessary cycles that nature perpetuates. Because they are about the build up and tear down of daily existence.

I do not have this reaction to the daily ins and outs of things. I cringe when I realize routines I have fallen into. I start to pull into the same parking space, day 4, and almost cry. I can feel myself drying on the dish rack. Again.

And then I want those places. I NEED those places where I have super powers and every day is an adventure and today I am a pop singer and tomorrow a poltician or maybe just at an elite boarding school away from the pressures of home and able to concentrate on what I want when I want. I miss the moments when I am me, but me better, me prime, in a world shinier and prettier and much more unpredictable.

I need any hour in which I am saving the world, and not combing the internet for a better deal on my facewash or looking for the perfect dish rack.

Perhaps it is just the loss of youth, the inevitable cruelty of age. Or maybe it is something more. Maybe it's like a secret password still held in your subconscious, a passkey sitting on the floor infront of that wall, waiting to be picked. Maybe I don't need a passkey at all. Maybe I can just walk through that wall without even trying if I remember I can do that.

Or maybe I am just too scared to walk through and see what these worlds look like, right now, with my adult eyes. Maybe I'm scared I'll walk through that wall, get in the car parked next to dream house, and on autopilot simply drive to the store to pick up another carton of milk.

2010-04-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

sitting there I realize the error of my ways
the guarded way I live with him and the guarded way I live with myself and all that I deprive myself of every day that I sleep walk through life and make very careful measures to maintain control
my shame, my awkwardness, my discomfort a guiding force that traps me in this shell and creates a warped and reflective mirror wherever I go

And the many faultless ways he endures the ghost that I've become and endeavors to love my wispy presence

And I swear to myself I will go home and use this knowledge to break out, just a moment, just enough to at the very least apologize. To hold him in my arms or to fall, dramatically, at his feet as he so deserves.

Knowing that the commute home with its honking and its merging and the glare off my hood and the anticipation of all the details I will have to deal with will make me tense and bitter and holed up and weak and it will make me forget all that matters and that he will walk through the door and I will, instead, ask him some insignificant question about a detail I pay unnecessarily close attention to.

You think it is a secret, but it never has been

2010-03-25T12:35:00.001-07:00

When I was in college I had an affair...or..was sleeping with...or was involved in some not completely cute and wholesome way that I can't quite figure out how to define with one of my housemates. I mean, in my young and innocent mind there were massive elements of romance and deep dark secret unrequited feelings that were embarassingly not so secret and enough OTHER embarrassing things to fill the first chapter of a book entitled "I am confused in matters of love".
But that is another story, and for the purposes of this post I'll just divulge it was the first of many "romances" I would have in my life that didn't exactly follow the "boy meets girl, boy and girl date, boy and girl publicly decide to date, boy and girl THEN sleep together, everyone is happy for boy and girl and their relationship".

Even more to the point I'd say it was an almost run of the mill college story that involves two people in a dorm or co-op or housing facility that have some hormones and some level of feelings deciding to explore those feeling without actually "dating". One of those messy silly situations in which two people are not nearly mature enough to just sleep together and probably don't exactly want to do that anyway.

The interesting thing about this situation, and about many of these situations, was that by not declaring ourselves in any way, shape or form a couple, and by always denying our intention to keep doing it, we seemed to believe it was somehow some kind of secret. We seemed to imagine that though we had made out in public, probably been seen in and outside of each others room, talked to our closest closest friends about it (shhh!) and exchanged about a zillion barbs only sexually involved people would exchange on a public bbs forum, that we were doing something clandestine, private and unknown to the general public.

One day during this very dignified experiment a group of my friends, including this man, went to eat Chinese food. At the end of the meal, as is customary, I popped open and read my fortune cookie:
"You think it is a secret, but it never has been"

I could hardly contain my reaction. Especially when we all read our individual fortunes out loud and added the customary "in bed".

More to the point, the whole table, a good number of people at that, couldn't contain their laughter and knowing nods, as I read mine out loud.
And still I believed. Still I believed it was my little secret.

Until one guy, somehow miraculously outside the know, stated "I don't get it".

Which prompted one person to declare, finally, out loud, something I hadn't accepted everyone at the table so obviously knew: "X and X are seeing eachother".

You think it is a secret and it never has been.

I think of this, still, from time to time.

I thought of this the time I took my "best friend" on a trip with me to visit other friends and one of them asked what my boyfriend wanted to drink and said oh no he's not my boyfriend and he asked how he wasn't my boyfriend and I said well we aren't committed like that so they said even louder "what does your NON MONOGAMOUS BOYFRIEND want to drink.

I thought of this when my friend stopped dating suddenly and started never leaving the house and seemed to never use her own bed and showed up all the time with her married but divorcing roomate but was always just too tired to stay late at parties and too busy for any of our set ups, but almost died when someone unaware this was supposed to be a secret commented how great it was that they had found eachother.

I thought of it when we interviewed "sheila" for a job who was dressed as a woman and made a bunch of out of her way jokes to imply she has always always been a woman but had hands the size of magic johnson and then someone accidentally used a male pronoun.

I thought of it when I gained 20 lbs and was suddenly wearing everything loose so no one would notice and was stunned when a friend of (at a very reasonable time) guessed my pants size as my actual pants size.

And I think of it each and every time my friends tell me many things that are not 100% the truth or nothing but the truth but more fanciful semantic confections baked to distract themselves and everyone else from the details around the stark truth.

So often we engage in this weird little game where decline to publicly state a situation, or we call something a thing other than it is, or do something wholly inneffective to hide something that can not be hidden and imagine the whole world believes our little lie.
And what strikes me as so silly, so ridiculous about these farces, is how much easier it would all be if we let down the facade and faced the truth straight on.
How much easier it might be to prune a rose bush if we knew it wasn't actually a petunia patch.

Yes, we are trying out sleeping with each other because we like each other but for some reason ranging from his wife to possibly him being not that into me we wont date.

Yes, I am a flaming homosexual who collects hello kitty products and never ever "connected" with a girlfriend or a public boyfriend and calls you "honey" so come ON.

Yes, I am in love with my best friend and act like a couple with him and will change my entire life, plans and goals to be around him but am not sure where this is going or if it's even a good idea so don't call me his girlfriend.

Yes, I am in a multiple marriage and am seen with all my wives, constantly, but we'll just call them the babysitters.

Understand: I am not saying there isn't privacy and that privacy doesn't have it's value. And I am not saying there aren't some secrets most people never guess at.

I am just saying that those things you are unsure about and not so ready to say outloud are not necessarily invisible.

And the the many many things you can't quite declare and nobody probably really cares about anyway?

I am just saying.

...that you think it is a secret, but it never has been.

2010-03-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

So let's talk about Angelina Jolie.
No, really.

She's famous, she's beautiful, she's married to one of the world's most notoriously beautiful men, she uses her wealth and fame to help impoverished foreign countries.

These things are not fascinating to me on every level. I mean, sure, I look at a picture of Angelina Jolie and I think "prreettty" but that is about it. That is about the extent of my reaction. She's good looking and reasonably talented enough to not offend my tastes. But she hasn't done a decent movie in years, so she remains mostly uninteresting to me as a celebrity.

And yet, well, she really gets alot of play. Alot of play in that "famous for being famous" way that Paris Hilton gets attention. Famous for being pretty and well connected and living her life with a certain amount of...flair and freedom only the rich and beautiful can exercise.

And this is not interesting to me either. People used to be fascinated by royalty or socialites. Skills are hardly the only calling card to bring on celebrity.

So here is what IS interesting to me: I have come to notice, as of late, even with the limited exposure I get to pop culture, that for a lady who sits around being pretty and is really quite harmless, she certainly inspires alot of anger, annoyance, petty distaste and catty reaction. I mean, really, actually, more than alot of also pretty also moderately talented starlets.
Infact, it wasn't that long ago that I was sitting in the home of a woman my mothers age, and when he image flashed on the screen, she muttered a series of insults that made my head whip around in surprise.
Where, I wondered, did this anger and annoyance come from.

And it's the things people get so angry about: her gall to be adopting so many children, her absolute nerve to not be smiling in every photo etc..etc... It's almost as if her desire to live a life that has more to do with hollywood represents some sort privileged lack of gratitude they just can't stomach.

And then I think about this: the other day I was in the checkout line and I picked up a magazine and there was an interview with someone. Posh Spice? I think. Or. Sorry. Victoria Beckham. I think. Maybe. But she made a comment about how she was never the prettiest or the most talented girl in the room and that she got where she was by sheer will and perseverance.
Now. Now we all know this is not the lord's only truth. There is no doubt a massive amount of luck and some other good connections that could be blamed. But she also had an interesting point: she was not top of the heap. Objectively. She needed to bring something else to the table.
And you look at someone like Madonna who is very pretty and very strong and reasonably, well, in a sense talented with some serious business smarts and you get that same sense. She is funny looking and has a boring voice and sang alot of lame lame songs but is still the biggest music star in the world and she seemed to make that happen by sheer willpower.

And it then I wonder about Angelina Jolie. Because, quite frankly, she IS the prettiest girl in the room. I mean, if you can believe the pictures she very much seems to be someone without a bad angle and with enough beauty to not need a nice dress or good lighting, even, to shine. And she has a famous dad. And she has an acting career that has showcased, sure, a decent amount of talent, enough to not hate her for riding on looks alone. Which is to say. She is lucky. very very lucky. And there was a short period where she was married to Billy Bob Thornton and it made her seem interesting, but it was still this luxury of choice, like she didn't even need a beautiful boyfriend to make a statement. And then she had the most beautiful boyfriend of them all.

So I wonder this: do we just hate truly fortunate people. I don't mean lucky as in they were there, working hard, and got lucky enough to let their modest attributes carry them straight to the top. I mean, is it just very hard to stomach people who really don't HAVE to try. Who are born with an inn to the good life and have such a surplus of beauty and brains as it is that they barely need it.

And if so, why? It seems to me humans used to concoct these deities, these greek gawds of mythic proportions, each one more beautiful than the rest, and we did it for inspiration.
But yet we can't stomach mere mortals with an abundance of natural charms.

I suppose it's because even the drabbest, saddest, least fortunate person can look at someone like Madonna and think "hey, she tried really hard and she got somewhere, if I try, outrageous fortune may hail upon me unseasonably as well. But we look at someone like Angelina Jolie and just know there is not a lesson to learn. We know we aren't going to be reborn again tomorrow with accidentally fantastic lips and standing invitation to the Oscars. And that is hard for us to accept, let alone like.

Or is it something more than petty jealousy and the stark contract of actual true fortune? You tell me.

at night a candles brighter than the sun

2010-03-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

He leaned and said, in the sweetest tone, how he was just beginning to notice my glow.
He compared me to a small warm fire or a candle, something beautiful and bright but not so overpowering that you couldn't get close. someone whose warmth you could enjoy without getting burned.

It was meant to be a compliment, and I took it as such. At the time I didn't think very deeply about it. I understood it as the subtle declaration it was.

Now I think about it in a different light.

There is more to this compliment. There is context. When this statement was proferred it is important to note it was in comparison to his ex girlfriend. A forest fire. A blazing inferno. A big beautiful rager you couldn't ignore, but was at many times more than a little scary. She was a controlled forest fire that at any moment could be lost to an unexpected sundowner.

I understood his point: such intensity is hypnotically attractive, undeniably magnetic, but after a while you are tired of squinting, you are over getting burned.

And I am this small little flame you'd hardly notice but is actually quite lovely.

I am not sure I am okay with that. really.

We have all these terms and analogies and similes and metaphors for things that are not immediately beautiful. Acquired taste. Approachable with a sophisticated palate. Blah blah blah. That girl, when you get to know her, you get to like her...

And there is certainly something to be said for understatement.

But there is also something to be said for critical listening and the ability to turn a compliment over and see it's backside:

At 20 feet I'd barely notice you, and you are only beautiful once someone knows you well enough to overlook the fact that you seem pretty average, otherwise.

Please note: he did, quite actually, eventually fall in love. But not with me. With another blazing fire. Not quite the forest inferno that inspired our first comparison, but another undeniably bright flame that was difficult to ignore. He did not cuddle up to my comfortable hearth and fall asleep. But he stopped by sometimes to warm his hands, sometimes even to gently stoke the flames.

I am very aware of who I am, or more to the point, who I am not, to most people who barely miss me in a minds eye minute. But sometimes you wish those who love you most wouldn't find such sad ways to assure you that this is really okay, that this is really a good thing.

Sometimes a compliment that damns with such faint praise only serves to further drive in the screw you wanted to loosen.

2010-02-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

It was unusually foggy and the mist obscured everything. Trees, river, the city as a whole, giving the bridge I was on such a heavenly effect that I momentarily lost myself.

It was unnerving, and I found myself temporarily displaced. Was this the bridge I crossed every day? Maybe it was lack of scale, lack of context, but everything took on a...massive quality, a gorgeously royal persuasion. And I found myself considering the regal countenance my surroundings might have if I beheld context in a different light.

Sometimes I forget there is still the possibility of progress and ingenuity pursuing an ultimate state of universal prosperity, beauty and design, complexity and simplicity, propreity of scale. Sometimes I forget it more than a grandscale tetris of priorities. Sometimes it's sandcastles and sometimes it's legos. Sometimes I forget there are places where nature and construction exist in harmony.

2010-01-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

So there I was, trapped in a chair at the dentist office listening to “Keep On Lovin’ You” by REO Speedwagon and I got to thinking.
First: about the odd timelessness of adult contemporary/soft rock radio stations, and how I could swear I have been sitting in dentists offices for 20 years, listening to the same “Keep on Lovin’ You” and “Rosanna” since I was a kid, and how it has always seemed like music from the past, but the same past, and how they only seem to have added one or two songs to their rotation in all those years. And I found myself wondering what the protocol is, what the specifica standards are for adding, say “Everything I do, I do it for You” but not another softer classic, or something Ambient like Air or Bjork.

But that isn’t the main thing I was thinking about. As I was sitting there, letting the sweet sweet sound of Kevin Cronins take me away from all the pain and suffering of an overachieving dental hygenist, I started to listen to the lyrics. And I found myself thinking about that notion. “I’m gonna keep on lovin’ you, because it’s the only thing I wanna do.

And, well, first of all, it’s a little sick. I mean, really, you don’t want to sleep, you just wanna keep on lovin her? Goodluck with that.

But more I found myself contemplating the decision to just keep on loving someone, even if things are bad, even if things are confusing, even if things are over. Because there is certainly a tone to that song of joyful resignation to the full fledged experience of being in love with someone, forever, even if the path didn’t keep them together.

And I was reminded of a friend of mine who once said “I am in love with every person I ever loved still” with a certain pride, and at the time I thought this was a little crazy. Or sad. Or perhaps a question of semantics.

It seems to me people fall in and out of love. Often involuntarily. And it also strikes me that this might get to be the only way we truly get to fall in and out of love: involuntarily, by instinct and not thought.

And then I was thinking about all these people I know who are dealing with breakups right now, and how they remind me of my past breakups, and how, during the anger and frustration and pain and missing we try to fall out of love. We expect to fall out of love. We anticipate it, hope for it, and how hard it is and how sad the very experience of losing love is voluntarily or not.

And I found myself wondering if REO speedwagon wasn’t onto something there. If maybe the way to go is to hold onto loving someone until your body wont let you love them anymore. Until you fall out of that pit and straight into another deep abyss of affection. Maybe you can’ climb out, maybe you just need to lay back and wait for the ground to give way.

Because yes, it is hard to love something and not have it near. But I wonder if the wrenching feeling of trying to end love before it’s time is that much more painful, and if maybe there isn’t something to be said for proudly and joyfully enjoying your love for another, even if you can’t be with them, even if it means suffering the absence of their loving you back.

Because so much of us is born and grown in love for another, and we can’t kill that love without slowly killing a small part of ourselves, our hearts, our hopes. So maybe we hold on just a bit longer than is easy, and enjoy that there is love to be had, even in inconvenient forms, and there will be more love to have again.

an interesting kind of lie

2010-01-26T14:50:00.000-08:00

http://jezebel.com/5456561/weigh-less-pay-less-whole-foods-offers-discount-based-on-bmi

Ah. every day another reason not to shop at whole foods.

So. So I normally don't blog about this kind of thing but I couldn't resist.

The amount of ways this is wrong wrong wrong to me is staggering.

To start, and in no particular order:

Every one of these factors are influenced by genetics to varying degrees. Cholesterol is the obvious cuplprit here. Because while some people can control it by diet and exercise, alot of people will never land in the platinum zone without medical attention. Likewise, blood pressure. Even BMI, to a certain extent, will be influenced by muscle density and bone density. I have a friend who wears the same size as me, has a similar life style and consumption and is very muscular: and weighs 10 lbs more than me. She does not experience other health issues becuase of this weight differences.

It rewards results and not work. I find it very very interesting that something couched as reward fo rbeing healthy does nothing specific to encourage healthy lifestyle. There is no discounted gym membership attached to this. No reward to people for riding their bike to work or specific discounts on healthy products (produce has higher % off than, say, tofu cheezums). This is a reward to successfully losing weight and other notable results. It punishes those who fail, and rewards those who succeed, or naturally fall within the ranges they consider healthy.

it strikes me interesting that there is a "thinner the better" quality here. ie, the bottom tier isn't broken out at the beginning of the healthy BMI range, it's the middle to lower half of the healthy BMI range. The bottom or best tier is <24. A healthy BMI is 18-24.9. The reward for being at the top of your BMI is the same as being slightly overweight. I find this interesting, in the same way I find it interesting that there is no bottom range. Aneroxics are stoked!

There are claims of confidentiality but I think most checkout people are smart enough to do the math when their coworker gets a 25% discount instead of a 30% discount.

But mostly I find it disturbing that it's pitched as a "lets work together to get healthy and lower healthcare costs" when it is quite clear it is specifically to lower agency healthcare premiums. It's interesting how specific and quantitative it is to produce proof of a demographic rather than, you know, encourage healthy behaviors. Because it's tougher to pitch to your healthcare agency that now 50% of people ride their bikes or are in smoking cessation programs. But...if you can get on record 50% of my employees are thin and do not have preexisting health conditions such as high blood pressure, than they give you a break. In short it is sort of agency wide adverse selection, pitched a communal well being.

And mostly, on some level, even if it can't be used as a hiring standard or any real method of "discriminization" it implies that your personal business is very much your employers business, and that those who are successful in all arenas of their lives are more worthy of reward. It is not trying to help, it is trying to send a message: here is Whole Foods we don't like fatties, and don't really believe in things like "genetic predisposition". We'd like you to provide you with benefits, but we'd like you to make it easy for us by not really needing them.
But mostly, we'd like our shoppers to see healthy thin people working and shopping here, so they will feel better about themselves as they pay way too much for processed soy snack foods!

It's all about teamwork! Go team!

the minor leagues

2010-01-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

we are all sisters. that is what we tell ourselves right? supportive, never competitive, completely invested in each of our friends, beautiful in their own rights, doing as well as they can, whenever they can, irregardless of our own personal fortune.

but is this really true?

I am not really so sure.

oh you know what they say about girls. they are competitive. petty and ruthless. pretty little backstabbing bitches who only love you as long as they can love themselves more.

I don't believe that to be true either.

But sometimes...sometimes I wonder if there is a fine line. or a large grey progression from the beautiful supportive selfless network we'd like to see ourselves in to the vicious circle we fear.

I mean, I think, honestly, we all want to see our friends thrive. Do wonderfully. Be very very happy in whatever way best suits them. Find love and fame and fortune and get the appreciation they deserve.

But I think where this gets iffy, gets difficult, is when one friends is getting what they deserve, and another...very simply isn't. or, atleast, is not getting what they think they deserve. Or, more to the point, are getting much much less.

Which is to say, in all relationships, inequity is a killer.

And we've seen that scene. A group of girls out. All pretty. But some are prettier than others. And they are all getting attention, some more than others. As long as the variance isn't too great it really doesn't tend to matter. But when it is, well, thats when things get special.

And there is always that one girl, who is happy to spread the love as long as she knows it's hers to spread. Which is to say: she has to be on top.And you may be allowed to have what she does not, but you are not allowed to have what he CAN not.

Which is to say, it's a dog eat dog world. And you'll be alot happier if you build a family, create a team you can depend on. But what happens when everyone doesn't qualify for the same league. How does this work when one person is beautiful and smart and just got that promotion and another is flailing by the roadside, alone and abused and hoping to make ends meet?
How do we then, decide what teamwork is really made of. And who sits bench? And who on that team is really that sad when you seat the star player for a few minutes and give that little guy his place in the sun....

I don't know. None of it makes any sense.
I just know I want everyone to get what they need to be happy. But I also want mine. And do we really all have to share?

2010-01-22T14:58:00.001-08:00

boy A says that no one has ever done a single romantic thing for him and I can't help but to wonder how that is possible
is this a question of semantics? of impossibly high standards? did they not notice? was it the wrong person who did it? or have they really, very honestly, never been the subject or participant in a truly romantic exchange

this seems possible, almost plausible, and I suddenly picture a world in which even my most personal moments are marked by exchange, a kind of currency, lacking sublime pleasure
I imagine a drop without a fall, beauty with a swoon, never being close enough to touch, or even notice, the presence of the divine

and quite suddenly I feel very very fortunate

for noticing, for caring, for being allowed to even just be there.

the wagon

2010-01-22T14:50:00.001-08:00

my how easy we fall off

I am just going to start off by saying 2010 has already not been an ode to self control.
resolutions gone, moderations are only semi effective, but

well, I seem to be getting enough done.

And it dawns on me that some efforts to exert self control are really only for the sake of.

And that maybe such habits are only formed as an excuse to excise pride when we could be looking in other, better places for self confidence, and quite simply happiness

which is to say, you don't always need to effective to be happy. especially when being effective isn't accomplishing, ultimately that goal

this is something I tell people alot, but have somehow, over the course of becoming effective, forgotten myself

once again, I remain, an object lesson
and once again I forget that when doing something FOR myself, I should make sure it is, quite actually, still atleast a little bit about me.

the safety of objects*

2010-01-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

(*title stolen from a book by A. M. Homes)

As soon as it was gone I missed it.
He gave this silly little trinket away, something seemingly inconsequential. Passed it on for someone else, the real person he had thought of when he made it, the person he thought would love it the most, and I felt this indescribable wave of sadness roll over me. Loss.

This is a hard thing for me to explain. I don't take to things very often. Stuff.
I know collectors. People who see furniture or cars or plates or cameras or ...stuff...and have to have it, and once in possession, learn to love it. They fondle and caress and wax and fix and shine. In some cases it is specific to the thing, particular to the kind of stuff: a photographer with their cameras, a cyclist with that particular bike. Some people just like trinkets. Some people just amass items they cherish, physical representations of their investment in the world around them, tactile symbols of little bright burning spots in their brains.

Not me, not so much. I like items for their utility. It's not that I don't appreciate beauty, it's not that I don't understand loving a cello for the cello it is, and not just the music it makes. But something in me...resists getting attached to too many things for their personal resonance.

For example: I have a car. It's a decent car. It's not ugly, but it's boring, by my standards. I see cars all the time I like much much more. Cars I actually think are beautiful. I don't actually have a thing against cars or owning them or loving them. But on a base level I prefer the car I didn't pay for, which is dented and boring and personalityless and dependable. I think about this and compare it to how my boyfriend feels about his truck. Which is adorable and sexy in a strange old mechanical way and which takes constant maintenance and leaks and used to smoke. And how he loves that truck. I bet he loves it more for the work he puts into it. I know this only strengthens the relationship he has with this object.

I like my car because it requires the least amount of emotional investment I can give an object I have so come to depend on. I like it because I know I have to have SOME relationship with a car I drive, but this is as little relationship as I can reasonably have, without verging too terribly on neglect.

I think about other things I own, the other decorative or unnecessary items. And there is a similar theme. Sometimes I want a particular thing. A beautiful piece of furniture, a nice set of glassware. All of it is tantamount to building a home, of wanting an atmosphere of beauty and love I can depend on. Of wanting a place to bring my friends to congregate and relax. That is their utility. But some part of me always resents to the obligation these items represent, my further bond to the physical world, with greater chance for loss through the simple damage of a material item.

No thank you.

Now see, I think it's good to cherish things. Freedom is, indeed, just another word for nothing left to loose. I think she had that right. Which is to say, if you don't have anything you are scared of loosing, you don't have anything you really care about.
For the last few nights I have had horrible dreams about losing my boyfriend. And I wake up relieved for the reality of having him.
That is fine, I can handle that. Wanting him here, always, and recognizing the profound loss his absence would bring..is something I can handle. it is an obligation I could not begin to resent. We all need ties to life worth protecting.

But a thing? Fuck that.

But here it stands. I still missed that toy. Terribly. The loss. I was sad. SAD. And I hated the thing on some level, resented it. But still I wanted it back. And 10 more. 20 of them. A bank of toys as insurance against a future wave of loss.

How could I get so attached to a trinket? I knew he wouldn't have given it away if he knew. But here is also the thing. I mean sure, I tried to tell him. But he passed it on anyway with a certain knowledge that I loved that toy but maybe thought someone else would love it more. More to the point that toy never belonged to me in anyone's head but my own. It was not meant for me. It was meant to make someone else happy and it WOULD make someone else happy. Verry happy. I knew this. And I felt so so selfish for resenting that. For wanting to deprive another of this symbol of love. And I felt ashamed, for having believed it was meant to make me happy instead.

And then I realized something. I know other people feel these connections to things that I often do not. And this realization makes me treasure the things people give me, the gifts people chose to bestow upon me, as a measure of how I treasure them. How I treasure my relationship with the giver. It makes me feel loved and that is an attachment I can stand to foster, I can bear to carry.
And if that thing, that dumbass twisted metal thing, had been accidentally destroyed by a fire or broken by a child I would have been fine. But to have it passed on, well, I felt this little loss of love.

I lost the safety of an object, and I felt a tie break just a little. Symbolic, stupid true. There was something I thought someone had given me as a unique gesture, the way a child walks up to you and gives you half their eaten popsicle as a symbol of love, a popsicle you don't even really want, but it means everything to them. And suddenly it has unqiue value to you as well.
And you know they love you. Until they take that popsicle out of your hand and give it to someone else. They actually wanted you to hold it while they tied their shoe, but here comes their mom, and they actually want her to have that popsicle.

This can be a lonely world, and there are few objects that hold value worth their tether. But the love. That is safety. And the symbols. Those are the safety of objects that serve as reminders of the ties that bind.

2010-01-13T15:41:00.001-08:00

She informed me that I had to understand because she was insecure. This girl was insecure. Very very fragile, and all I could feel was resentment. I was almost awash in this annoyance that rude or dismissive behavior can be dismissed under the easy banner of insecurity and I couldn't entirely understand my ire until I delved deep into the realization that I just didn't buy it. I couldn't feel sympathy because I was too awash in a certain self hating empathy. She is insecure. *I* am insecure. You will find very few people as insecure as me.
I have pondered this. I know this is wrong.
Even though the statement feels right I know it is wrong.
And then I ponder that everyone is insecure on some level, and that statement while it sounds right, feels true to say might also the wrong. Given that we are, reasonably, using a term with relative value, which is to say if someone is insecure, someone else has to be secure to give the spectrum relative meaning, I have to assume there are a great deal of people perfectly confident and a certain amount of people barely able to leave their homes in the morning. Gracious outgoing superstars rounding out one side and someone shaking quietly in a corner on the other.
So perhaps it is unfair, given the multiple levels of horrible horrible insecurities I can imagine to say no one is more insecure than me. I can leave the house, I can speak infront of a crowd with the right chemical cocktail, I can tell certain people I love them without running to the bathroom and freaking out. I can handle myself. For the most part, is fair to say, my insecurity does not rise to the level of intense neurosis or fragility.
But I am, quite actually, very insecure. And as such I walk around with a certain intense hope that I will not encounter too terribly much that will knock my fragile ego down another notch. I navigate with this specific aim. I fear new groups, I never call first, and I very very much do not want to get up infront of people and dance dance revolution that you very much. I very much fear looking into your eyes and reading what you think of me. Get it?
And also, as such, I try not to make insecure people feel bad. Which is to say: even if I can't quite get it up to be outgoing, I try to be reasonably friendly. I attempt to be kind. I don't flirt with other people's boyfriends. I don't start conversations that one particular person has no hope of joining, I don't pretend people aren't standing infront of me. Even though sometimes I want to. Even though sometimes I close my eyes and want to make more than just me invisible in order to take a deep breath and decompress in the middle of a crowd.

And you want to know insecure: I am perfectly convinced that most people find my somewhere between alienating and deeply dull. I am reasonably convinced your average man finds me as attractive as a springer spaniel, I can hardly imagine that invitations naturally include me, I am pretty much sure you aren't talking to ME.

I GET it.

And so someone is insecure. And I am supposed to give them slack because they are insecure. Even though they just took their insecurity out on me. Even though they just effectively communicated my complete lack of value to me. Even though they just made me FEEL MORE INSECURE.

No, fuck that. Alot of people insecure. ALOT of people I know.
And they manage to not do that.

It's called managing your insecurity. And if you can't do that there is also a name for that, and that is called being rude.

It's not that you can't be rude and insecure. It's that they are not the same thing. And you learn to manage one to spare the fall out of the other.

There. I said it. And now I am a terribly unsympathetic person. A terribly unsympathetic insecure person. Yes, now you know.

What becomes of the broken hearted...

2010-01-12T11:52:00.001-08:00

There is a famous equation almost everyone has heard: That is takes roughly half the length of a relationship to get through it's subsequent breakup.
In simple terms, this means you should be pretty much over a relationship that lasted a year about 6 months after it's demise.

Right.

I read another quote recently.
The first part of this quote asserted that this equation was, quite frankly, total bullshit.
I am inclined to agree.
The second part asserted that no equation can be applied to emotional situations, but that you can be pretty sure that the time it takes to get over a break up isn't going to be less than the amount of time it takes to feel good, again, about yourself. Or, more to the point, to stop feeling bad about yourself.

This equation I put more stock in.

Ofcourse, nothing is a hard and fast rule. And I imagine some people walk away from meaningful relationships, ego perfectly intact, feeling pretty swell about themselves, but simply missing the person they were with. I Imagine some people truly are confident enough to not take even the passive rejection implicit in a breakup personally, to really believe what is likely the truth: that they are great, just not the ONE. And perhaps that first equation is meant for them.

I, ofcourse, have never met one of these people, but I am sure they are out there.

It's been my experience, that most breakups are fairly rich with rejection, even if unintentional. Little bits of ego crushing dismissal peppered through the entire dissolution process, even, sometimes, if on the rejecting side. And it's beenmy experience that even in the healthiest of breakups these can haunt for a while, as each person learns to again affirm that they are, indeed smart, attractive and worthy of love, even if that one person hated their laugh or got tired of their body or grew weary of their whims.

And that is healthy breakups. Some breakups, well, let's be frank. Some breakups really really suck. And they can be a real blow to the ego, they can make us question everything: our worthiness, our judgement, our intelligence, our sexiness, our personal control. Lives we've built, carefully over time are suddenly fragile and our ability to control our very atmosphere can be threatened.

I've been there.

I realized once, a while ago, that I still hadn't gotten over a break up that was...well, far past it's expiration date. Far far beyond any reasonable amount of time anyone could expect fro healing. I'll spare you the details.
But the funny thing was that it wasn't my love for this old boyfriend that haunted me. No, long after I had stopped missing him, long after I grew annoyed, and even bored by the memory of what was actually him, I was not over this break up. Long after I began to fall in love with someone else that rejection still hurt. It hurt like hell, and it would get me angry and upset if I thought about it too much. So I didn't.

Looking back now, it only begins to dawn on me how very much this had to do with the complete abolition of my self esteem, with the ways in which this relationship slowly destroyed my sense of self worth. With the ways in which I began to doubt my sex appeal, my worthiness of love, doubt the value of my unique signature as a human being.

I mean we grow up being told that we are each unique and beautiful snowflakes, but when experience tells you that you have filled a hole as interchangeable and cheap as a frozen yogurt cup, then there is some reconstruction that needs to be done to begin to really believe it again.

And this belief is very hard to construct on one one's own. Because we are social creatures. Communal beasts.

And I think what makes it worse, even harder, is that, in our culture of self reliance, it's easy to feel bad about oneself when we look for affirmation in others. Weak. It's easy to feel, frankly, shame when you realize that another has done such a bang up job on your self esteem. They teach you that you can't love others if you don't love yourself. That no one can teach you self respect but you. That love starts within. And it's all true. And it's all words.

What does all that mean? How does it make any sense to a person who has made a healthy habit of letting other's in? What if outside experiences have created an information loop that any reasonable person would learn some very...unfriendly things from. What IF you have been repetitively rejected based on certain criteria, what if you've been denied love when others seem to swim in it, what IF you have told yourself you are amazing, only to have one or a series of partners demonstrate that they very much do not agree with that assessment.

Does a jumping to the obvious conclusion in a time of intense fragility make as a pathetic and sum results of these equations?

I mean, these are people we LOVE, or atleast did love, and as such it's only sane to value their opinion. And when their opinion seems to be that you aren't all that graet any more, that you really aren't worth the effort, well it's easy to see why our egos would take a little bruising.

And so I think about the cycles and spirals of self destruction people go through around breakups. The drama and hookups and also the walls they build. And I don't think they are simply about trying to find worthy distractions from the pain, or about learning to love and trust another lover again. I think alot has to do with trying to learn to love oneSELF again. Trying to prove we are as awesome as are supposed to believe we are. Trying to prove we indeed have control over these thoughts, and our own actions, and our own ability to have happiness in our life.

And this is hard. I have to admit, for years I wanted some affirmation that my ex had found the slightest value in me. I didn't want to hear I was "the one". Hell, I didn't even want to hear that I was one of the best, I certainly didn't feel that way about him. I just....wanted...to hear I was worth it. That I was awesome. That I didn't fuck up my own life by being so unworthy of true adoration and affection that he needed to bolt, needed someone else, needed very much not me. I wanted to hear he made a mistake when he rejected me. That no one would reject ME. I wanted to hear I wasn't a reject.

But I was. To him. The trick was to not be that to me. FOR me. For my new love. For my friends. For the large part of me that wanted to feel beautiful and alive and believe people when they loved me, believe that they could and SHOULD love me.

Again. repeat. HARD.

And so I try to remember this when I see people going through breakups. Especially hard breakups. Especially confusing breakups. Especially breakups they wouldn't have chosen or breakups that robbed them of their voice and their sense of control. Because they aren't just getting over the very real promise of happiness that love promised. They aren't just missing their lost love. They aren't just lonely.
They are grieving for a part of themselves lost, if hopefully only temporarily displaced. They are learning to re-believe in themselves and all the things they have brought into question. And they are new, they are different, each time, because their hopes, their aspirations, their understanding of themselves against the outside world has changed, and they have to learn to love this new person that they have, on some level, always been.

And finally, they are angry. And they should be, because someone they loved told them lies about themselves and that is cruel and unfair and awful and crushing. It is confusing. Even if they were wonderful people who would have never chosen to convey a message like that. They told them a lie implicit in all rejections: that they no longer mattered. Not enough.

Learning to believe you matter on every level is difficult when someone you trusts tells you don't.

What becomes of the broken hearted?
Well they mend their hearts. Over time. Just sometimes it takes longer than you'd think. And usually they are mending more than their hearts.

In a fairy tale the villain is ugly

2010-01-11T16:21:00.000-08:00

Did you ever notice that? The wicked witch is all boils and green and old. The big bad king is fat and sweaty and notably gluttonous.
The devil may be in disguise, but the disguise isn't very good.

This strikes me as a simplistic tool used for alleghorical purposes that really serves to fail it's purpose.
Not only because it contradicts that lovely old addage about beauty being only skip deep, but because it teaches us that the bad guys are easy to see, simple to note, and not really all that dangerous.

In the real world I have not found this to be the case. Infact, I'd argue, from a social evolutionary standpoint, it's almost impossible. Because how would those who are dishonest, creepy, selfish or predatory thrive if they were repugnant from the onset. How would they be so convinvincing if they were so offputting.
The devil might wear red but I bet he'd cover up that whiff of sulfur with a good cologne, because few people are attracted to shitty experiences just for the hell of it.
In the real world the devil would be brad pitt or audrey hepburn or a very cute puppy dog. In the real world he wouldn't have to work very hard to charm you. Because otherwise he'd fail.

I think we like to fall back on the theory, horribly enough, that most other people are stupid. People are dumb. Other people. People we don't know. That is why they fall for these terrible tricks and get to love these horrible people. Because they were dumb enough to take an apple from some chick next to a cauldron after she had asked you to take a load off on that casket.

We stick by the idea that you can tell when a person is bad by the way they look and smell, and likewise we seem to enjoy the notion that if someone is attracted to a person that is bad it's because they are deaf dumb and blind. Just horribly flawed in the judgement department.

But this just can't be right.

It strikes me that the vast majority of people can tell a bad liar and DON'T want to buy a timeshare from a guy wearing a suit made out of one hundred dollar bills. It strikes me that people don't jump head in to trusting people they don't know well if they aren't carrying heaps of charm.
It strikes me that people aren't so much stupid as HUMAN. And they want things. And they are prey to charm. Because it is charming.

And so it strikes me that charm is a dangerous thing. Not in and of itself but because of the danger it presents. And so I am wary of people who yield far too much of it. Who come on too exciting or too beautiful or too harmless or too..immediately and irresistably wonderful.

Not because they might not be actually all those things. But because only time will tell. And in the meanwhile it is this very beauty, this very charisma that makes the waiting game seem so very unsexy. It is the wanting that makes the waiting, frankly, suck.

And this notion, that a bad idea always looks and feels like a bad idea. Well that is just insulting. Poeple make decisions based on the facts they have to work with. And quite oftne they make stupid decisions because they can't undestand the facts or are not quite clear on the context. But just as often, well, I suspect they make bad decisions because the facts are misrepresented. Because they look different than they are.

Because that charming little devil is wearing your favorite boots and showed up with your favorite icecream and is helping you put on your coat, like a gentleman would when you were cold and hungry and just wanted to go for a romp. And because his smile is just so sweet that it tells you there is no reason you shouldn't trust him. Because he looks like the prince. And we all know that means his kiss will wake you from a nightmarish sleep, not lull you into a false sense of comfort, a misguided sense of wellbeing.

2010-01-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

there is alot of joy in the house that centers around good food and better friends and nostalgia not even sort of long forgotten

this is something I recognize from the periphery but which makes me very happy nonetheless

and I think of creating spaces in which anyone feels safe to express their joy and insecurities

I think of that little space in the small of your back that lets go and then tingles when it realizes everything is set. everything is settled. sit back. have a drink. you are safe.

2010-01-07T22:01:00.000-08:00

it's all a push and pull of no and yes

no represents every voice in my head reminding me that through the smallest sacrifices we derive character. it is the part of me that knows an appetite unrestrained is never truly satisfied

but yes. yes represents every fantastical desire I have to truly be alive, to absorb and to reflect the glow of the sun in every drink I drink, every heart I know, every moment I am naked, basking, in whatever source of warmth is most alive

Dirty sexy money

2010-01-06T10:23:00.001-08:00

Let's talk about something dirty. Something private. Something very very uncomfortable to discuss for a good amount of people but extremely important to quite a few.
Something the governemt wants to control, sometimes for the good, sometimes now, something more and more entities think they have the right to know everything about you.

Not sex. Money.

The other day I heard a story I found truly, horribly offensive: A friend was telling me that her boyfriend was rejected from a job because of his credit.

This. had. me. floored.

Since I heard this I have been hashing about in my head the reasons your employer should even KNOW what your credit score is. I know, I know it's a reflection of your ability to be responsible, or, atleast, fiscally responsible.
But aren't your references, your job history, your arrest background and presentation also a representation. And yes, I understand wanting to know if someone was in dire straights if they...say, had access and control to a good deal of funds.
But this person was, for all extensive purposes, a social worker. The most he would probably have had access to was a gas reimbursement fund. Something that most likely would have required receipts.

And I hear about landlords checking your credit thoroughly. And again, I understand: they want to know if can afford that apartment. You know what shows them that? Your pay stub. And I can even understand if they want to know your debt ratio. But the details. Every dirty things that can and will go wrong? No, I don't understand that.

And then I think about this: your credit isn't affected just by your inability to pay debt, it's affected by your abililty to use credit. IE> you can only have so good a credit score without borrowing. You can only have so good a credit score without earing alot of money or juggling ongoing debt.
I think about this: you are a school teacher who never uses a credit card and buys only what they need and has a used car from 1985 and makes their mortgage on time...you credit...not as good as someone who makes a bit more, lives beyond their means, runs up their credit cards, has a car loan and manages to make their payments on time.

But this isn't just about credit. and credit reporting. A subject I could go on for days about. This is about money. And the increasingly pervasive tendency for everyone and everyone to be able to examine how we use and abuse it. For any given reason. To judge, to judge.

And it also strikes me, if you get rejected from a job because of your finances, as an increasing trap. You have too much debt? GUESS YOU WONT BE PAYING THAT OFF WITH YOUR NEW PAYCHECK.

But in the end it all strikes me as creepy, and the closest we yet come to a big brother mentality in this world.
They don't care what you believe politically and religiously. No. They care what you spend and what you don't spend. Because that is where the real power is.

And it's ironic. So ...modern. Because there was a time when it was innapropriate to even speculate what someone else made. There was a time when it was gauche to ask what something costs. There was a time when you showed up with cash and people took and they gave you something you owned, no questions asked. There was a time when you showed up for a job interview in a decent suit with a letter of recommendation and people were...impressed.

And there was a time when you were allowed, within certain legal parameters, to make a mistake.

Today I opened up a news article and it claimed that a good credit score used to be 620 and now it's something like 700, with boosts for every 20 points. The first line of the article noted "new credit rating standards has peopel who once took pride in their spending habits speaking to financial experts on how to boost their ratings."
This, on every level, violates me.

Because the last thing I want to do is get a job, earn a wage, pay my bills and live my life happily, only to find I am somehow failing because I did not juggle my loans incorrectly or take out the right car loan. The last thing I want to do find out is that someone who has taken on their parents debt can not get a job because his debt to income ratio is undesirable.

And why? Because this is how they control you, how they make you spend, how they make you repentant, for things you should never even have to consider. This is how they turn you into a little piece of plastic and not a human being.

Are you the favorite person of anyone you know?

2010-01-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

A few years I saw a short by Miranda July.
A simple question, posed at several passer bys: "Are you the favorite person of anyone you know?"

How sure are you? Are you very sure? Somewhat sure?

How about another question, a question that nags: How important is this?

Lets get even more specific: how many people would say they really really like you?

About a week ago my old friend Eric dies. I heard about it... On facebook.

Ah facebook, you giver of givers, always informally allowing me to trickle in the tragedies of friends past.

And he was, indeed, a friend past. At the time I knew him, I actually think I knew him quite well. We had a certain kinetic energy to our conversations. Good friendship chemistry. The ability to really get into it and at it. The ability to laugh alot at nothing in particular.

Over the years we had lost touch. You know, different cities, different lives, different relationships, changes in values. All the usual stuff. He was still a stand up guy, I'm still a perfectly nice dame, the glue just wasn't there to hold that kind of long distance friendship together. No harm, no foul.

And yet I felt really bad when I heard. I mean, not just the usual "his poor wife, poor guy, that is awful, the world will miss him" kinda bad. But it hit me in a particularly harsh way.

When I woke up in my unexplained panic attack the other night. Checked on everyone, was sure something was wrong and missing, when I came to check my emails looking for concrete reasons behind the disturbance I found myself searching for old emails of his. Some old correspondence. Reminders of how we communicated. And it just hit me what he had to do with this little middle of the night freakout.

I noted a few posts back that I had a vague New Years resolution to spend more time around people I really liked. This is not really the truth. As much as I'd like to spend more time LESS annoyed and frustrated by my company this year, my motivation does not lie quite in that root. It would be much much more accurate to say I aim to spend some time around people I am pretty sure REALLY like ME this year.

And when I was thinking about this, searching emails, indiscrminately freaking out all over my house and the ether, it dawned on me that I am not exactly sure how to accomplish that goal.

I am not even sure who is on that list anymore.

It also dawns on me I spend alot of time being the friend of a friend who someone tolerates. Or an extra at a dinner party where most people are connecting but I provide reasonable filler. It dawns on me that not only do I kill alot of time, I kill alot of other peoples' time. Slowly, with the kind of innocuous and irrelevant input that one is likely to forget the moment they walk away. It dawns on me I very rarely walk away feeling like a mutually beneficial experience was had by all. Like I inspired, thrilled, exctied. Like I was like, really really liked. More often I feel like I am standing there. And we are talking. And it's fine. And soon they'll be talking to someone else. And who knows what I said. And who cares. They weren't there to see me. I can't really say I was there to see them.

And although I hadn't spoken to Eric in years one thing I remember about the time we were friends was that we liked eachother. We had great conversations. He liked me. LIKED me. Or atleast did a very reasonable job appearing to. Hell, even for that I'd give him a high five.

And when I think of that I miss it.
And I also realize I can look back and count, on not too many fingers, the amount of people I have had that experience with. Which is not to say I haven't been fortunate enough to know tons of wonderful people. I most certainly have.

It is only say...

Well, look: connecting is hard. Atleast it is for most of us, I expect. And to find someone you have the kind of chemistry with that inspires true friendship, bonafide giddy affection is a rarity indeed. To have a conversation that inspires you, that makes you feel inspiring. That is golden. That is beautiful.

To be close. Well, to be close to someone, when you think they are amazing. Who thinks you are amazing. And you are sure. Very sure. Completely sure. That, frankly, is holy.

And so I think we often fake it. We fake it to make it. Sometimes it works. At any rate it's the polite thing to do. People have friends and they have friends and more often than not we end up in a room full of them.
And if we are lucky we spend time around people we atleast feel like we should like. Appreciate. Acadmically if you will. And if you are a reasonably decent person it seems like they should like you back. And so we try to share a certain muted mutual admiration, if not necessarily love.

And you know what that amounts to: loneliness.

Plain and simple and no other way to put it.

Go out and fly to other cities and sleep on people's couches and search high and low for people who like you as much as you like them.

Find wonderful people. But not just wonderful people.
Find people who laugh at your jokes because hot damn you are funny and they can hardly believe how much. Find people who believe what you say, and want to learn more. Find people who smile when they think of you and call you on the phone and wonder, just randomly sometimes, how the hell you are doing. How you are really doing.

Find them. And keep them near. Because as awesome as you are it's not as easy as it sounds. But it's a worthy goal to pursue.