Echo

World…the time has come to…

Push the freakin’ button so we can all get to sleep, a’ight?

Lots of thoughts spinning in my head tonight but so little time and so little energy as I’ve been up since 5:30am and I’ve got the earlier schedule on Fridays. The flood of intellectual synapses is due to my having to make a 2 1/2 hour drive to Irvine in LA traffic during rush hour for my cousin’s son’s birthday, and the 45 minute drive back. I actually love driving at night. The freeway puts me in a semi-hypnotic state and I do my best thinking on the road.

I realized that it’s been a long time since I’ve had rageful thoughts at Eli. Of course, I’ve also been avoiding dating and consequently, sleeping with people, which could account for that, as I usually feel most violent towards him when I want to get close to someone. Maybe I’m letting go of the anger. Or maybe I’ve voluntarily given up on my desire to ever get close to a man and be in a relationship, because I just can’t fathom it. I’ve always been able to “see” a little further ahead down the road, at the very least, see likely outcomes to things. And whenever I think about relationships and partnerships, I always draw a blank. I’m really not saying this in a depressed or frustrated way. I just…don’t see it. I think people’s life paths are all different, and I may just be someone who’s very fulfilled but not meant to walk that particular path, and that doesn’t really feel like a bad thing.

I went to my cousin’s party and the entire family was there. It’s great seeing them because most of my cousins are married and have kids, and I love those kids. I love my nephew Austin (technically my 2nd cousin because he’s my cousin’s kid) because he’s got such a great, open and caring spirit (he’s a Leo) and we have a great connection. And I get to be myself and crazy with them (tumbling!). It’s cool because no one’s judging me and making kids laugh is the the best thing in the world. I told my cousin’s husband that sometimes I look around and I feel weird that I’m just about the only one who’s not married. He told me, 26 isn’t that old. I told him that I’m 26 and can’t see myself in a relationship in the foreseeable, so I’m definitely not getting married and settling down for life anytime soon. But to be honest, I wouldn’t mind meeting a good person. A stable person who’s got an open mind and an open heart. I’m tired of really weak men. Really insecure and emotionally-inept men. But I suppose I would have to want to meet one, and I wonder if the reason I don’t is because I’m afraid of what it might imply (a real relationship that leads to possibly marriage. Yikes). It’s very hard for me to wrap my head around. But maybe it’s not my head that needs to be in play. But it’s very difficult for me. My fear of relationships is quite overwhelming. I’m an intimacy junkie…I like diving into the depths of other people and myself, but to me, that doesn’t imply a continual connection…a promise of consistency and expectations of more.

You know, my favorite stories when I was a kid was of those elves who would come in and fix things in the middle of the night but the people didn’t know. What was that story? About the cobbler who needed shoes but couldn’t make them? But these good elves would sneak into his workshop in the middle of the night and make the shoes for him, and when he woke up, there would be shoes to sell. But he had no idea who was making them. I want to be those elves. I want to affect other people, bring them positivity and compassion and love, without them knowing me or wanting to hang on to me.

And a real relationship, one where you have to promise to stay and really stay…I can’t…fathom it. I get “error” messages in my brain. I just can’t understand it. Isn’t it enough that I really love you? That I really care about you? I love almost everyone I’ve ever had a connection with–friends, lovers, acquaintances. I care about you and think about you often in the quiet spaces of my mind and soul. I’ll never tell you about it, and if you told me that you knew, I would be very, very embarrassed. I wish you well, even if I left things angry or told you I never wanted to see you again. I just can’t deal with goodbyes. Sometimes I get so damn angry that goodbyes even exist. And it makes me behave badly, because I want the goodbye, since it’s inevitable. Just give me the goodbye so it doesn’t feel like we’re sitting around, waiting for it. I don’t care if you all don’t care about me. I still wish people well. Because life, you know? It isn’t easy.

I know that if I don’t figure this out soon, I could end up spending the rest of my life alone. Because people have their own lives and if I don’t build my own as well, then I’m gonna be left behind. But is that really a good reason to cling to another person? Because I’m afraid to be alone? If partnership doesn’t feel natural to me, isn’t it just going to make both my partner and I miserable because I’m off my path and dragging him down with me? Everything has a trade off. And I prefer the intimate, intense connections with random people from around the world. I would rather spread love and compassion to many people than give it all to one person or one small group, because to do the latter feels selfish. But I also have to understand that by not funneling into one specialized place, I give something up. Maybe I just have to decide what I really want. But I guess I don’t have to right now.

Do I date a lot of gay men in the sense we’ve been talking about them today? Yes. Gay in that they don’t feel comfortable with something about their innate nature so they have severe intimacy issues. Usually they’re not necessarily gay. A lot of men who have been molested (by men or women) often wonder if they’re gay or emasculated, and therefore, have severe intimacy issues and issues with women. It’s not really about a sexual preference. It’s about how they feel about themselves as men. For some reason, I’m drawn to men who have been abused in some way because I can always see it in their eyes. I can always feel it radiating off of them, in that place between their chest and their stomach. You feel it psychically as a hard tension, muscles like a clenched fist clinging for dear life to a dark object, probably the same way a massage therapist can feel a knot in a person’s physical body. And you have to approach them the way you would a terrified animal, using your most gentle energy to soothe them as you work that place inside of them, trying to get them to let go of that dark object. Because what they do is they’ve compacted the thing they are most afraid of, all that hurt and rage that goes along with it, into a tight little ball in the deepest part of them. But they’re so afraid that if they let go, this thing will expand and overtake them, that they spend almost all of their emotional energy containing that compacted little ball. Do you remember how scared you were of letting go of that bar on the roller coaster, as if holding onto that bar was the only thing that would keep you from flying out? But at some point you realized that even if you let go, you wouldn’t die? The illogic of letting go and the relief when you realized you weren’t going to die is an incredibly cathartic and life-affirming experience and it’s one of the reasons why I think people love roller coasters and other “near-death” simulations. Once these people can let go of that ball, they will finally be free–to live, to grow and to love, however they choose. They spend so much energy trying to protect themselves and control this thing, that they have nothing left to experience life and give emotionally to other people. You need to soothe them until they can imagine that if they unwrap their fingers from this ball, it will overtake them, but then it’ll be gone…dissipated into the atmosphere. Why do I know this? I have no idea. How do people know how to approach frightened animals and soothe them? You just do. But you get bit and scratched
a lot before the animal trusts you.

So why is this particular pain so important to me? I have no idea. For some reason I’m tuned into it. And it matters to me, that people let go of this particular pain. Sometimes I don’t really care for the person; they’re actually not nice people and not my first choice for a romantic partner. But I just want them to not have that pain. Because the person inside who’s holding that explosive ball is a child. And that’s who I see when I look into their eyes.

Can I be honest with you guys?

It’s haunting. I look into their eyes and feel that heavy, diseased ball in their centers and all I can feel is what the world is capable of doing to innocence–destroying it and leaving wounded children to pick up the pieces. And if I come across someone and see this, it can bring me really down. And in a way, as long as I see this out there, see people walking around this wounded, I’ll never have faith in the world. I went to therapy and then to hypnosis because I wanted to know…why sexual abuse? Why molestation? Why specifically when men are the victims? Maybe because they are most likely to hurt women when they’ve experienced this type of pain? Why does it enrage me and haunt me? I have no memory of anything ever happening to me. I wanted my memory regressed and still, nothing. I was never afraid of anyone touching me, though I was just generally afraid of people, men and women. I like being touched affectionately. It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s there. I try not to look for it, I try to avoid it, but when I see it in someone’s eyes, I just can’t look away.

I care about these guys as human beings but usually, I don’t really want to date these guys. I don’t want to sleep with them or be in a romantic relationship with them. But I do become obsessed with that pain, and it draws me. I think the level of intimacy that is required to get to that place confuses a lot of guys and they assume this is love, which it is–but I’m motivated by my desire to alleviate the suffering of another human being rather than a romantic connection. And the dating thing is just the conduit which allows me to gain access to their deepest wounds. Sometimes I feel like sleeping with someone is the price I pay to gain their trust and have them allow me to get near that place where things are locked up. Sometimes it’s a relief to be with someone where there isn’t this exchange. I would rather date someone where this dynamic isn’t present and be able to help others in another capacity, but I’ve found that 1. I can’t help everyone (like by becoming a therapist) because I won’t have a connection with all of them where I can see their insides as clearly as I do with certain people, and some of these people who have this pain are hellbent on self-destruction and thus, are dangerous to me as they are willing to take anyone down with them so that they don’t have to do it alone; and 2. Men don’t tend to allow a women in unless there is something romantic/sexual to be gained.

So that’s how it happens. How these types of people get into my life. I’ve been trying to be better about walking away, about pretending I didn’t notice something wrong with their eyes. But whenever I do, I get so angry at the world, with how it so often sacrifices innocent and trusting children to harm.

Afternoon Recovery

Well, the day was spent with the guys at work making fun of me for my little encounter at the Bean, as they would sporadically come up to me and spout theories. Examples:

“He’s just really shy and got freaked out. He’s probably kicking himself right now because he knows he looked stupid.”

“I bet he’s stalking you and got freaked out because you got too close.”

“I bet he’s gay and mistook you from a distance for a really pretty man.”

(thanks guys)

As bizarre as the encounter was, I realized how strongly he reminded me of a friend I used to hang out with. Or date. I’m not sure. I have no idea since our relationship was really bizarre.

This friend is really hot but really shy. Like too hot for anyone to really believe he’s shy. We would randomly see each other at group gatherings, and I called him out of the blue one day asking if he wanted to work on a film project with me. I was moving into my new apartment the next day and we made plans to hang out that night. So he picks me up and we grab drinks. Even though we’ve hung out at mutual gatherings, I didn’t know that much about him; he’d always been really quiet, but he had an amazing smile and was always laughing at people’s jokes. That night, he was kind of shy and awkward, but very nice and very quirky. When he dropped me off, I asked him if he wanted to see my place.

Now, if any of you have met me (and most of you haven’t), you’ll know that I’m not so bright when it comes to social cues. When I say, “Do you want to see my place?” after a night of hanging out one-on-one with a lot of flirting that seems an awful lot like a date (but which I dub “hanging out” unless I’m told otherwise), I literally mean, “Would you like to take a tour of my place of inhabitance before leaving?” So he comes up and as the now infamous legend goes, I had him sit on a coach facing a great city view while I turned off the lights, lit a candle and stood behind him in the doorway without making any sort of move, because I was literally only planning to show him the view. And obviously, I crossed a few signals.

After that, he would call a lot; he was really sweet and always said and did nice things, like giving me a ride to the airport at 8am on HIS birthday. There was quite a lot of evidence saying that he liked me, some strong hints, but nothing outright. And I’m the type of girl you have to carve it out in perfect spelling on a club and then bash in the head with to get me to realize you like me.

But then he would do things that were inconsistent and confusing as hell.

For example, when he would call me, he wouldn’t really talk. It would make me kind of nervous because if I didn’t say anything, we’d have very long, heavy silences, until he’d finally laugh nervously and say, “Say something!” Soon my friends and I were trying to figure out–why would a guy call a girl just to not talk? (Like, why would a guy invite a girl to sit at his table and then not converse?) Could a man really be that shy? Or was he insane? We had never encountered this type of male creature.

And then there were other things that were just flat out bizarre.

Once, he invited me to a party at his house, but when I showed up, other than saying hi when I first got there, he ignored me for the whole night. I ended up talking to some random people just to pass some time before it was appropriate to leave, but then he got really friendly when I was trying to leave. I don’t get mad easily, but I was irritated to the point of damn-near pissed off.

Sometimes we’d be on the phone late into the night and he would tell me that he’s really, really shy, that he felt comfortable with me and had opened up a lot with me, and that I’m a really hard person to read. I figured it was obvious that I was interested in him as I had called him out of the blue with a flimsy excuse about working on a project, and wanted him to make an outright move or declaration if he wanted something, because I found him so hard to read and didn’t have the guts to be the one to lay out her cards first.

This ball of whatthefuck went on and on until I couldn’t take the tension anymore and started dating someone else, just to not have to wonder about this anymore.

I don’t know; the whole thing was weird. And in hindsight, you don’t want to date that kind of dynamic. I feel like if you have to work so hard, it’s not right anyway. But I also acknowledge that I’m not an easy girl to try to start something up with either so that doesn’t help things. Maybe there are really shy, eccentric guys out there that can be normal. This particular friend’s been in a relationship for years now, and things are great. Or maybe most of those guys are weird because they have severe intimacy issues. Or maybe they’re just Aquarians. Aquarius boys give me a perpetual ? above my head because they’re so damn eccentric and I never have any idea where they’re coming from. I actually hate them. They totally freak me out.

Regardless, it’s an intriguing distraction. Maddening, but intriguing. But in the end, I don’t want anything to do with it.

A Desperate Cry for Help

So I’m still seeing that psychohypnotist and it’s doing wonders in helping me stay on track with writing (I have a problem with getting easily discouraged). I’ve had 3 sessions and so far, the changes have been quite noticeable in how I feel and in my creativity. But there’s still one area of my life where I act like a goddam idiot.

So I went in yesterday and she asked me what I would like help with today. I told her about Coffee Bean Guy. How I want to have a conversation with him but I’m completely freaked out and won’t even look at him, even though he always looks at me. That it’s not so much about him anymore, but about why I get so freaked out when I’m actually interested in someone. I have no problems approaching guys, asking guys out, etc., but if I like you, chances are, I probably won’t even talk to you or look at you. In fact, I may even run away. What am I…4 years old? Fuck.

So of course, I shot myself in the foot because her homework assignment for me this week was to talk to him. I told her hell no. She said, he obviously is interested in you but is too shy. I gave her my evidence to the contrary:

1. He talks to everyone. He seems to know everyone who goes there.
2. He’s willing to say hi, how are you, but he doesn’t start a conversation. Maybe all he wants to say is hi how are you, and doesn’t have an interest in talking.
3. He may be married or in a relationship, which is why he can’t technically initiate a conversation with me.

She looked me in the eye and said, your homework assignment is to talk to him. You’re going to challenge yourself.

So today I got up at 6am, went to the gym and hit the Coffee Bean at 8am, giving me half an hour before work. Also, he seems to always be talking to someone if I get there at 8:15, so I figure I’ll catch him when he’s alone. I park and see that his car is in the lot. Game on!

Here’s the play by play:

I walk in and see that indeed, he’s sitting by himself, reading the newspaper. I’ve bought a newspaper outside as my prop. He looks up, sees me, looks down quickly. Looks up again. We make eye contact. We both smile.

I get in line. I notice he gets up and goes to the bathroom. [I anticipate that his game plan is: He goes to the bathroom. I buy my coffee. By the time he comes out, I’ll be standing by the coffee accessories area waiting for my drink which is between the bathroom and his table so he’ll walk by right in front of me]. I have to suppress nervous giggles. I order my drink, stand at the accessories area. Indeed, he comes out of the bathroom, walks by and says, “Hi, how are you.” (good offense anticipation, Julia!) But he says it kind of gruff and doesn’t really stop as he says it (as usual). Suddenly my confidence plummets. What if that’s all he really wants to say? What if he’s just being polite? What if he doesn’t really want to talk to me? What if he knows I have a thing for him because maybe I’m the one who’s always looking and he’s just fanning his ego? DAMN. Now I’m terrified.

He goes back to his table but instead of sitting down, he gets his cup and goes to the counter for a refill. Hmmm. I figure this may be the 2nd-down play. Because once he gets his coffee, he’ll have to go to the accessories area, which is where I am, giving him another chance to talk to me. Sounds possible right? So I regroup my muster and indeed, he follows the anticipated play. I see him coming and we make eye contact, but WHAT? I quickly look down and BURY my head in the newspaper. Now he’s putting stuff in his coffee less than 2 feet away from me. And come hell or high water, I am NOT. LOOKING. UP. So he sits back down just as my drink is ready.

My confidence is shot now. I don’t know what to do. I’m thoroughly confused. But I know I have one more chance. There are two empty tables next to him. One is jammed between his and another woman’s and has newspapers on the chair and empty cups on the table. Not a good choice, as I would also have to squeeze into that space, and I can be very clumsy when I’m nervous. The other one is a tiny round table with the chair angled at him. The table is touching his, so I would be sitting damn near on top of him. There’s another table next to that one somewhat further away, about 6 feet away from his but it seems more of a natural choice, if I weren’t stalking him. But it has a lot of crap on the table. So…what would the logical choice be? I honest couldn’t tell. I was so scared of looking like I was purposely sitting next to him and therefore, stalking him, that I decided to take the table that was NOT next to him. So he watched me walking back and forth, getting napkins to clean up the table.

I noticed he was reading the basketball page of the sports section when I walked by after cleaning the table. Now, who knows about basketball more than me??????? Good God, I can talk for hours about the NBA! I can tell you every player’s stats, strengths & weaknesses and astrological sign!! In fact, he was reading about Rudy T. resigning and I had the perfect conversation starter–“So who do you think is gonna take over the Lakers?” It was so EASY!

But I was too scared at this point. He saw me staring at his paper as I walked by. Why was I staring at his paper? Because I knew he had looked up and was watching me, and I was afraid to make eye contact. So I sat down and buried myself in my own sports section.

We glanced at each other a few times. Then some girl sat down at the table in between us (the one touching his) and started talking to him. He left abruptly at 8:25, which is about what time I needed to leave to get to work. Yes, he announced his departure loudly. But I figure I’m assuming too much if he did it to let me know he was leaving. So I had to leave too since I need to be at work at 8:30. But by the time I made my way out of the parking lot, he was already pulling out.

Status: MISSION FAILED (due to dumbfuckery)

Somebody, help me. Do I show up at 8 again tomorrow and try again? Or is he going to think I’m stalking him?

100,000!

He Looks Like is about to get it’s 100,000th visitor!

I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in a while at the gym last night and mentioned He Looks Like. With a mysterious glint in his eye, he said he was going to get me more hits and that I’d break the site’s traffic records today. I don’t know what he did, but it’s been off the hook. In the time it took my 100 wpm fingers to type the last few lines, I got 116 hits.

743 to go until 100,000.

Thanks E! You’re the freakin’ man.

Today’s Pick Up Don’t:

Don’t say to a girl you’re interested in, “You totally look like this gorgeous girl I used to date! But she died.”

Brian and I went to the Scissor Sisters concert tonight and here are the pictures:

And a 3-legged giraffe ravages a mermaid. They really didn’t look this provocative on the table, but this angle makes it look pretty disturbing.

What Happens When You Fall Asleep Watching Super Troopers

Last night I had a dream where I ran into one of my mom’s friends. This friend is a single mom and has a very needy personality, even though she’s a very nice person. She’ll just go overboard doing nice things for you, like if you invite her over to your house, she’ll bring 3 different cakes even though she didn’t need to bring anything. In my dream, I ran into her and she was being pushy about wanting to do something nice for me. I noticed she was wearing a card around her neck that said she was authorized to supply medical marijuana. So I asked her if she could get me some. So she takes me to this hospital supply store and starts putting these things in the basket. They looked like bags of crystals (supposedly pure THC). Like MSG. So she insisted on buying me a bag of every kind and I went home with all of this stuff. I didn’t want to touch any of it because to be honest, I worried that it was crystal meth. Then I found this thing that looked like a small wreath made of what look like intertwined cigar leaves, with six sections. I unwrapped one and there was a slug in it. I knew that if you ate the slug, the effect was the same as shrooms. But the thing was, that the slug was oozy and disgusting, and there were these small little crab-like spider insects crawling in and out of this thing. I’m arachnaphobic so I was flipping out that this thing was in my home, laying on my carpet with these bugs that were now going to be in my house.

I also felt bad because I knew this thing cost $150, on top of all the other stuff she got me that I didn’t want to put into my body, and I also knew that she doesn’t have a lot of money and barely scrapes by. I just sat there, debating on if I should just take the stuff so I’m not so wasteful.

When I woke up, I was super relieved that not only was that slug thing not in my house, but that I didn’t have this score of drugs that I felt I needed to take out of guilt.

Dude. No more drug movies late at night.

ps–here are Aubrey and Candice. They’re wonderful people.

CBG Update

I was driving to work and saw Coffee Bean Guy pulling out of the CB parking lot. He ended up sitting in traffic behind me, and he knew I was in the car in front of him because he had seen me drive by as he was pulling out and we’d made eye contact (okay, to be honest, I was looking into the lot to see if his car was there when he pulled out). As I covertly watched him in my rearview mirror (he’s a nailbiter when he’s nervous), I was noting that for an older guy, he’s really cute. Even though he drives a 2-door Mercedes, which is kind of a turn off for me (I don’t like guys with sports cars. They’re usually Peter-Panny and not practical. Boys in four-door sedans? Hot).

It’s been over 15 months now that this has been going on. I wonder when we’ll actually have a conversation. Let’s start a pool. I say February 6th…2007.

In a way, I bet the conversation will be disappointing. This awkward flirtation is probably more fun.

Minutes from Sunday, 4am

I had a really interesting conversation with Aubrey and a guy named Nate in the wee hours of Sunday morning after everyone else had fallen asleep. We were talking about evolution, and Nate said he read an article talking about how, by 2030, robots will be able to process everything that the human mind can, and it’ll take another 4 years for them to realize that. I believe the article spoke of an evolution something like this.

And as I was talking about synchronicity earlier, Aubrey and I had just had a conversation earlier in the afternoon about how life on earth is water-dependent, and the first creatures on land, the insects, were able to make it out of the ocean because their evolution figured out that by using exoskeletons to keep the water in, they would be able to survive in what are basically organic space suits. But since the exoskeleton was too heavy on land, the invertebrate system was the way to go. [this is a weak paraphrasing of Aubrey, who is a scientific genius].

We were talking about how groups that come together have a synergistic intelligence that far exceeds individual units, such as cells creating complex organ systems. The same thing happens when people are grouped together, from small villages to mass societies. Intellectual/Intuitive resources are pooled along with the material, and group entities take on their own psyche and will.

Evolution is an agreement among the parts, an agreement whose goal is the survival of the group entity. Previous human focuses have been on scientific studies to improve the human body in order to more sufficiently and efficiently contain each individual piece of the collective for as long as possible. Socially, we have been striving to learn how to communicate and connect with the different pieces that represent parts of this group entity in order to have more resources pooled and expand more greatly. If you break down everything we have done scientifically and socially in the decades since our collective became “conscious” (due to heightened intellectual consciousness and awareness of individual people), our core motivations have been focused on two things: 1. Survival of the species; 2. Dominance of our environment and all elements within the environment.

Since I could write a whole thesis on the motivations of science and society, I’m not going to get into it right now. Just assume that humans have proven to be strongly driven in part by a need to ensure that our physical bodies (what we need to remain “in the game”) survive in order to allow our group consciousness to survive.

Considering that we are currently burning through our resources and our continued dependence on oxygen is threatening our survival, our collective focus has suddenly turned to artificial intelligence.

If it is true that computers will one day have the capacity and programming to value judgments using the processing of parameters and data the same way a human mind does (regardless of consciousness), then they could conceivably one day become autonomous intellectual beings. If the next step of artificial intelligence involves evolving to the point where consciousness and “soul” is developed, the human species could very well be on its way to evolving into a different form, one that is not based on a need for oxygen. If this is true, perhaps our obsession with computers and their processes is our collective way of coming up with a better model of “carrier” for the individual pieces of our group entity, thus doing away with the flawed and inefficient system that is the human body in its current form.

Maybe someday, hundreds of years from now, my consciousness and my own collective memory will be in a body that is completely unlike the one I possess now. It’s very possible that my consciousness has lived lives as bacteria, but I have no way of remembering the experience because it is completely unlike the current state of my evolution.

Regardless, it can’t be denied that we are moving somewhere and there’s a purpose. It’s so easy to dismiss the trends in human advances as having implications that are too science fiction, or to be too caught up in hyperbolic imagination. I think the truth is that we all move forward, and just as organisms were able to leave the confines of the ocean and humans were able to leave the confines of their continents, we will soon be able to leave the confines of whichever limits we are currently held under. Furthermore, advances made in artificial intelligence also have a huge impact on time/space, as time is the way in which our current intellectual processing is able to keep track of external logic, and is a completely subjective interpretation of the systems outside of us.

There’s a lot more about this that we talked about, that I want to talk about, like how our mastery of transportation allowed us to break away from other animals because it broke the time/space rule (an ant can only travel so far in its lifetime, if it tried to walk from one point to another in a straight line from its birth on, versus a human, which has greatly increased its distance versus time with its transportational inventions, thus, actually collapsing space in the time/space continuum). But I can go on forever and the implications of everything are so big that I can only deal with it piece by piece without going on and on and on and getting distracted by the pertinent tangents. Sometimes I wish my brain were bigger or had more processing power.

We also talked about Silver Spoons, that 80s show starring Ricky Schroder and were trying to remember its theme song.

Nate went home and Aubrey and I were ready to collapse as well, but somehow, having a glass of scotch together turned into a scotch tasting. My favorite is still Johnny Walker’s Gold Label, even over Blue Label.

Went to bed just after 7am. Woke up cranky. Wished Aubrey and Candice lived closer.

Synchronicity

Every once in a while, I’ll suddenly notice how the universe syncs things up.

I’ve been meeting a lot of people from my past whom I haven’t seen in a long time. The funny thing that happens to people you meet along your way but don’t see for a long time is, at some point, your mind stops thinking they exist. They become theoretical beings, as real as characters in a book you’ve read or in a movie you’ve seen. You accept the presumption that they had a life that continued after you last saw them, but it now becomes abstract, being pieced together in the realm of the imaginary.

Lately, a lot of people from my past have reconnected with me. And it’s been really nice, seeing people, talking to them, finding how life is treating them and how they are experiencing reality. But mostly, it’s nice to know that while they’re on their own path and I can’t see them, they still exist.

I think sometimes I feel really alone. That even when I’m surrounded by people, I still feel alone. So in the last few months, I’ve withdrawn to spend most of my time by myself, to listen to that silence. To see if that feeling still persists. And then I realized something, as I listened. It’s not that I feel alone within a crowd because I have so many barriers that I never feel close to people. It’s that I’m afraid that when people leave my life, when I no longer see them on a semi-regular basis, I get scared that maybe they really don’t exist anymore. That once people disappear from your life, they never come back.

There’s a stage in a child’s development, where once an object is taken away from the baby’s line of sight, they assume it no longer exists and won’t be surprised if they look back to that spot and it’s no longer there. At some point, I believe our imagination (abstract thinking) becomes more developed and we are able to assume existence of objects even if we are not currently experiencing them as fixtures in our immediate reality.

I wonder if for some reason, I’m still connected to this stage because a trauma occurred there. Somewhere for me, it was reinforced that—once an object disappears from immediate reality, it really may no longer exist. Maybe my parents at some point left me alone for so long that it kicked in a survival instinct that truly thought I was going to die because my nurturers ceased to exist.

So I’ve been confronting this lately, my fear of saying goodbyes, my fear of getting close to people because I figure that sooner or later, they’re going to disappear so it’s better not to get too attached, and it gets me kind of down that I would even have to be dealing with this issue. But then I realized that lately, a lot of people from my past are coming back into my life (including Coffee Bean Guy!), reminding me that they’re alive and well and most importantly, still exist and want to connect with me, and it makes it so much easier to fathom letting down my guard, and not being so scared that there won’t be anyone around in the moment when I really need someone.

It’s nice that sometimes the world gently sends you the things you need exactly when you need them.

Random Weekend Notes

(keep in mind that I’m writing this thing at 3:30 in the morning so I’m going to be random and incoherent…for better or for worse).

Early Friday am, had a long conversation with my mother about better communication that would provide more productive results. Calling someone up and condescendingly telling them things such as how to rework the language content of their websites or that they would be hot if they just got liposuction, is not a great way to induce receptivity. Even worse is calling this person up every day with the same conversation. I told her that I appreciate her intentions, but recommended that she ask me what I would like from her instead of assuming I want her to tell me what I need to do in every aspect of my life.

Work was uneventful. Very very uneventful.

Went to Long Beach to see Ed, my friend from college. Got lost because mapquest was WRONG. It always freaks me out when mapquest is wrong. It’s like when you’re a kid, and you catch a parent in a lie. It freaks you out and you get scared that maybe the world isn’t everything it seems… Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic but I did finally get there and was kind of late and felt bad because it took so long to get there and I figured he was hungry. We went to In & Out Burger which is usually a must stop in California for people not from California. The burgers are above average for fast food burgers, but it’s more that it’s such an institution, like the Hard Rock Cafe. We headed over to the Yardhouse, which has the most impressive beer menu I’ve ever seen. I’ve been to the Yardhouse in Newport Beach, I think, with my cousin. And I was psyched beyond words that they had Saxer’s Lemon Lager on tap; I’ve only been able to find is twice out here, even though it was easy to find in Michigan, despite the fact that it’s brewed in Oregon.

They didn’t have Saxer’s so I tried the Youngberry Chocolate blend which is Lindeman’s Framboise & Young’s Chocolate Stout. Dude. Awesome. That stuff could make an alcoholic out of me, despite the fact that usually half a beer will get me very drunk and very sleepy.

Ed’s an engineer and he’s really smart. That’s so cool. Talking to him made me really miss college and being able to hang out with a lot of smart, inquisitive people, and just philosophize and theorize about the world at large. I miss people who think about a lot of things, and want to talk about it. I think that’s why the blog world is so cool. You can see their thoughts–everything that they keep on the inside but don’t want to talk about, all the questions they pose to themselves, which are the same questions you’ve posed to yourself, alone in your head. People don’t talk enough. Blog’s are just another way we’re trying to talk to each other, because we don’t know how, when we’re all face to face, in the same room.

Aubrey and Candice came in late and I was supposed to pick them up and take them back to my place, but I couldn’t get them on their cells. Later they called and said they were going to hang out late but I was too tired so I just went to bed.

…saturday

Woke up this morning (and I use the loosest definition of morning possible) at 12:40pm. I must have been really tired, and it didn’t help that I was emotionally exhausted from having Sarah Clarke who plays Nina on the show 24 in my dream, wrestling with another chick. Okay, that sounds really gay, but it wasn’t like that; it was like some tense scene in 24, except in my head it was real and I needed the other girl to win, though I was really hoping she could win without hurting Sarah. And I think Peja Stojakovic was there, because I seem to remember him sitting on my right on the bleachers and we were sitting together quietly, watching these two girls fighting to the death.

Anyway, so I’m a bum. Went to the mall, went and had sushi, went to Lauren’s house to hang out with everyone (it’s Koo’s birthday today!) , went to the Clippers/Warriors game with AD, went to Britannia for Koo’s get-together, went back to my place with everyone to chill, and very soon… went to bed.

Today’s mood: something big and black

SHIT!

My coworker just called me and was like, “What email were you replying to when you called me an asshole?”

I’m like, “Excuse me?”

He says, “What email were you replying to when you called me an asshole?”

I’m like, “Dude, I didn’t call you an asshole. I mean, you are an asshole, but I didn’t send you an email calling you an asshole.”

He says, “You sent me an email. The subject is E.T. and it just says, ‘You asshole.'”

And then it dawned on me.

He had sent me a video clip almost a year ago that showed a guy made up to look amazingly like E.T. getting a blowjob from a chick, from quite an advantageous (or disadvantageous…depends how you look at it) angle, as he lets out these weirdly alien E.T. moans.

And I was highly offended.

Well, my Outlook on my computer had suddenly stopped working right around that time, so I would write these emails and then try to send them, but when they wouldn’t go out, I would just leave them in the Outbox. I started accessing my email from a web browser and forgot about the emails stuck in my Outbox.

Last night I was tweaking from too much coffee so I was getting a lot of stuff done, including finally fixing my Outlook. I downloaded a year’s worth of old emails onto my computer and totally forgot that a year’s worth of random emails that I had drafted and left in Outlook’s Outbox folder would also get sent out.

Now I’m freaked out about what else was sent. I have a tendency to write angry emails and then let them sit as drafts to see if I cool down and feel differently. Or sometimes I write emails and wonder if I sound insane, so I leave them and reread them later to see if they’re okay. But since my Outlook was broken, I could very well have been leaving them in the Outbox knowing they couldn’t get out anyway cuz Outlook couldn’t connect to the server.

Well, as Urethra just said, I should just be zen about it. Whatever was sent was sent already. All I hope is that there weren’t any personal, embarrassing photo attachments or drunken declarations of love.

The Only Thing More Pathetic Than Dating Down

Boys date up, Girls date down. There are studies. It’s been proven. Boys tend to overestimate their looks and worth, therefore going after girls who should be out of their league, while girls tend to underestimate their appeal and settle for boys who shouldn’t even be given the time of day. This works out swimmingly for the boys either way (cute boys get hot girls, ugly boys get the decent-looking-but-with-a-heart-of-gold girls). But what about the ugly girls? As Jewel says, “Who will save [their souls]?” Because right now, they’re all sitting at home alone, watching Buffy reruns and…listening to Jewel. Lord help them! Make them at least one step cooler by sitting at home alone, making fun of people on the internet.

Anyway, I digress.

Girls date down. It’s a fact. We’ve all done it. Some of us obsessive-compulsively. And if there’s a 12 step support group out there that deals with it, please tell me ASAP. A friend of mine would like to know.

But what’s worse than dating down you say? What’s worse than a girl who’s attractive and nice, dating some guy who makes the liquid in her friends’ eye sockets curdle? Well, my friend, the next stop on your self-esteem’s journey to blowing its brains out is the phenomenon known as: Crushing Down.

Okay, you dated him. “That Guy.” He looks like a troll. He’s 5 feet tall. He high fives you after sex and refers to himself in the 3rd person. He dumped you because you wouldn’t let him spank you. But he’s got…nice…skin. And nice skin is quite a hard trait to find these days.

But while that’s bad enough, what about when you don’t even have enough self-esteem to lust after a top tier icon, when the very rule of Fantasy is that you can have whoever and whatever you want?

*****************Does This Sound Like You? *****************

While other’s think about George Clooney, you think about Boy George.
While other’s think about Matt Damon, you think about Pat Sajak.
While other’s think about Brad Pitt, you think about Jared from Subway.
While other’s think about Jude Law, you think about a ham sandwich.
While other’s think about Ben Affleck, you think about……………………..

Trick example! No one should be thinking about Ben Affleck!

But you get my point. Ladies! It’s bad enough that we date down. But when we don’t feel worthy enough to even fantasize about having hot monkey love with an A-lister…you really need to be slapped around. When you find yourself lusting after that guy from King of Queens because he has pretty eyelashes, you are in the RED ZONE, lady, and eligible for a damn wicked intervention! When you admire James Gandolfini because he can be surprisingly tender, you need to be CUT OFF and force fed gay porn mags until you can recognize and appreciate a perfectly liposuctioned six pack.

I’m just saying, if we can’t get any decent guys in real life because they’re off chasing some pipe dream that some supermodel is going to give them the time of day, at least let’s crush on someone who meets unrealistic standards, okay?

On a completely unrelated note, check out my favorite site.

PS– Bill Pullman is only second in deliciousness after this man…

Great site, Kattan!

This He Looks Like Thing

I’ve been quietly working on the book proposal to publishers for about a month now but I can’t use the photos I’ve got on the site right now because legally, I don’t have permission. So…to anyone who wants to see a book of these things, would you be willing to send me some crazy, weird, goofy, funny, dorky photos of you and your friends/family? I don’t care if you stage them. Just don’t tell me that (and don’t be too obvious). I would need the rights to both the photo as well as the image of the person(s), so whoever’s in the picture needs to give me the rights to use their image.

Anyway, if you have anything and know the people in it will give me permission, email me and if there’s something I can use, I will declare my undying love to you. I know I can get your names in as photo contributors if this project gets picked up. Thanks!

The Return of Coffee Bean Guy

So I finally dragged my butt out of bed early enough to grab Coffee Bean before I went to work this morning. My radio alarm went off to NPR as usual, except today, it came on with Dubya in mid-sentence saying, “–Iraqis. Pull out…and withdraw.” I started cracking up. First of all…aren’t pull out and withdraw kind of the same concept? And second of all, well…you can probably figure out the second of all.

As I parked my car, I noticed Coffee Bean Guy’s car in the lot and got kind of excited. I mean, I haven’t seen this guy in months ever since I finally got my own parking spot in our office building and didn’t have to park in CB’s lot across the street. I did get stopped at a light in front of the place last month and he saw me, smiled and waved.

So I walk in and he’s talking to someone but he does a double take when he sees me. As is our relationship, I got too shy to make eye contact so I hurried to the counter and ordered my cappuccino. I went straight to the coffee accessories area and intently grabbed napkins, Splenda, etc. so he walks up and throws away a napkin, trying to get my attention. I’m too shy to look up so he says really loudly, “BYE JOHNNY” to this guy across the room. I can feel him trying to get my attention so finally I glance over and smile but quickly look away. I look back and see him leaving. He pauses at the door and looks at me and we both quickly look away.

What is it about this interaction that makes me so damn giddy? Okay, I know he works at the drug rehab house across the street. Possibly is a former resident there? I don’t know. Smokes and drinks coffee like a fiend so that’s usually the sign that he’s replacing some sort of addiction. He’s probably 10-12 years older than me, and acts a bit bizarre in that he’s always trying to get my attention and say hi, but he’s crazy awkward about it and he never actually comes up and has a conversation with me. I do have to admit though, that he’s a damn good dresser, and it’s kind of sexy. He was wearing a blue button-down today that’s probably my favorite shirt of his, because it brings out his eyes. Anyway, so I was disappointed that yet again, he tried to get my attention but didn’t cowboy up and just talk to me.

My order finally came up and I walked out, in time to meet him on the sidewalk as he was heading back into the building. I smile and say, “Hi!” He smiles and says, “Hi” but then mumbles “How are you” into the ground in front of him. But I’ve already walked past him at this point and am not stopping.

Maybe this sounds egotistical but personally, I don’t think he really needed to go back to the Coffee Bean. Because he had said goodbye to people already, yet was headed back in. But after running into me outside, he turned around and walked back to his car instead of going inside. And we’ve played this game before.

What is it about the mysterious, slightly dangerous men that even smart women fall for?

Six Feet Under Thoughts

I finished Season 2 of Six Feet Under this weekend. It’s a really great show as far as the acting. The actors really make the characters incredibly rich and dimensional. I kind of find the woman who plays Brenda to be incredibly unattractive, but her character is interesting. The way she formulates her responses to things, linguistically, is really self-centered and narcissistic. You can see how she says things to illicit pity or sympathy to control the conversation, rather than being vulnerable to hear what may be said that might hurt her. I don’t know if she’s just perfectly cast for the role (she plays a quintessential unresolved gemini and when I went to check the actress’s birthday, lo and behold, she’s a gemini. So maybe she’s playing what she instinctively knows), or she’s an incredible actress who has the psychological consistency of the character down pat. I actually lean towards the former. [sidebar: Peter Krause is a very natural, incredible actor, by the way. I was really blown away by some of his work on this show. I don’t know how much character range he has, but he’s an emotionally riveting performer. These two do have really good chemistry, probably bring out the best in each other]

This was my favorite scene of the entire series that I’ve seen thus far. Brenda and Nate have broken up because Nate found out that Brenda was sleeping around all over the place while they were engaged. Nate had also admitted that he slept with an ex-girlfriend and got her pregnant during their relationship. Nate’s having brain surgery the next day, so he’s going around, putting affairs in order with the people in his life.

Scene Four: Brenda’s Apartment, nighttime
NATE sits on BRENDA’s couch. She sits across from him on a chair.

Nate: Okay, so I just wanted to tell you that I think a lot of what you had to say—
Brenda: I’m so sorry.
Nate: Just let me finish. A lot of what you said was true.
Brenda: I didn’t have the right to say anything to you. I’m the one that’s fucked up. I am so fucked up.
Nate: (smiles) Okay. Maybe. Um..But…you were right when you said that being with you made it easier for me to feel so together. That I was ready for something real and you weren’t, and that is just not really true.
Brenda: Nate, I have a serious problem. I think I’m—oh, God, I so don’t want to say this. (pauses, hands him a book) Here.

He looks at it. The cover reads, “Hunger for Love: Facing Sexual Addiction” by Peter Veverka, Ph.D.

Brenda: I’ve been going to these meetings.
Nate: (smiles) I went to one of these meetings once up in Seattle. It freaked me out.
Brenda: Why?
Nate: Just the people. It seemed like a cult.
Brenda: No. W-what made you go?
Nate: (exhales) I thought it might apply.
Brenda: Well, it says in the book that, once you realize what it is, and you work really hard, you can—people have this whole new experience of love. (timidly) Some people, I mean.
Nate: So…what?

Long pause.

Brenda: I really love you. And I don’t think I would have done what I did if I didn’t really love you.
Nate: That’s a very…strange thing to say.
Brenda: But I think it’s true. It was the fear of…feeling something real.
Nate: Okay. (nods, takes this in) I love you, too.

Tears fill her eyes. He smiles.

Nate: I guess I just wanted you to know that even though you really pissed me off.

She gives a small smile and looks down.

Nate: I mean, I still get so angry if I let myself think about it—
Brenda: Of course you do. Of course—
Nate: But I felt like this was something. Being with you made me feel more…just feel more, I guess. More than I used to feel. More than I felt with anyone. I mean, everything I was running away from, I don’t even know what it is. Fear, I guess. I felt all of that with you.
Brenda: I’m good at making people feel fear.
Nate: But I can’t—
Brenda: Nate, I’m not saying now—
Nate: I can’t even think about the future.
Brenda: I’m just saying maybe.
Nate: I’m having surgery tomorrow.

She looks stunned.

Nate: (lies) It’s uh—uh— an embolization. Totally routine.
Brenda: Can I be with you?
Nate: No.

She pauses, hurt.

Nate: My mom’s coming with me, and it’s really nothing. I mean, I’m gonna be fine.
Brenda: (almost collapsing into tears) Oh, Nate.

She reaches over to hug him, but he backs away.

Nate: Look, I’m sorry. I gotta go.
Brenda: Nate! Nate, please!

He quickly leaves, perhaps before he breaks into tears himself. She is left alone on the chair, feeling horrible.

*****
It was this part of the conversation:

Nate: I mean, I still get so angry if I let myself think about it—
Brenda: Of course you do. Of course—
Nate: But I felt like this was something. Being with you made me feel more…just feel more, I guess. More than I used to feel. More than I felt with anyone. I mean, everything I was running away from, I don’t even know what it is. Fear, I guess. I felt all of that with you.
Brenda: I’m good at making people feel fear.

GAH!

…they were so close it drove me crazy. From a director’s standpoint, picking apart the scene and what was happening for each character–Here’s Nate pretty much saying that he’s not so put together and realizing that he was scared. Because in a way, this relationship broke through his defenses and made him face himself and his fear of intimacy and living and he’s suddenly realizing the magnitude of that on top of the fact that he could very well die tomorrow. He’s saying he still gets angry (his defense) but being with her got him in touch with something real inside of him, something he wants. What Nate wants in this scene is that lifeline, to confront his inner fear, to understand that the things he fears don’t END him, don’t destroy him. Brenda has the chance to come to the table, and by having the courage to face her own fear, break through that barrier that has held them both back, and help them realize that being absolutely vulnerable and having zero control will not destroy them. If she weren’t so defensive, she’d be able to hear what he’s saying, that something about their connection is BIG, and that he’s scared, that they’re actually both in the same boat, because they’re both human beings and we have absolutely no control over life. All she has to do is take the risk, give up control and say she was terrified. It’s not even what she says per se, but more so that giving up of control and being absolutely vulnerable which the other person within this type of connection will automatically sense, and they would have found themselves in the same place, of absolute and pure emotional connection.

She was doing so well, courageously plugging forward, telling him that she wouldn’t have cheated if she didn’t really love him, accepting his less than understanding response and continuing with admitting her fear of feeling something real. And then he meets her by taking a step forward as well by admitting his own fear. AND THEN SHE FUMBLES THE BALL!

For some reason, within what he just said, she only hears what she had anticipated–rejection–and says, “I’m good at making people feel fear,” which is a statement that not only shows that she’s not being vulnerable, but that she’s trying to get him to come over to her side and show that he loves her/cares about her by giving her sympathy/pity, taking care of her emotional needs because she’s this wretched being that makes people feel fear. She suddenly reverts back to her comfort zone, the game playing where she wants him to negate her statement by saying something positive to prove himself. It’s manipulative, whether she’s conscious of it or not. It shows that she’s not in a place to be vulnerable,
to give up control. Therefore, Nate, does not feel safe enough to be vulnerable and admit exactly what is consuming him, this incredible fear. Instead, rather than having his needs addressed and having Brenda take care of him during his most needy hour, he’s taking care of her, by protecting her from the knowledge of what exactly he’s up against.

I think Nate realized he wasn’t going to get what he needed from Brenda. She’s not in that place in her evolution. Because if he had told her the truth about his surgery, he knew he would have had to take care of her feelings about losing him, etc. because Brenda makes everything about her. That’s where her evolution is. And he just doesn’t have the mental energy and strength to deal with her right now. Furthermore, after she says that line about being good at making people feel fear, Peter Krause stops and then the scene suddenly takes a completely different turn. The implication of the transcriber was that Nate left to cry, but I think his being extremely upset was not so much about not wanting to open up his heart and hurt both of them with expectations when he may very well die tomorrow, but from his painful disappointment in Brenda’s inability to help him with his needs. If she reached out for him, it was because she needed him, not the other way around.

This scene was actually really, really sad. Brilliantly written and masterfully played…impeccable scene. If I were teaching an acting class, I’d use this scene for analysis. What each character thinks he or she wants, what each character actually wants. And how those all interact. Within the richness of conflict and contradiction, lies complex and nameless truth.