Echo

this guy kind of ran away yesterday. the majority of me doesn’t care, but i know there’s a part that’s been feeling bad. i was at a music show i read about in the weekly that sounded interesting. i watched this guy with dark brown hair and a warm smile talking to a shorter, feisty guy, and i wondered if they were gay guys on a date or just friends. i was hoping to talk to him, and i smiled at him when our eyes met. his smile back made me dizzy with giddiness. he asked if he could join me and we talked, but i was feeling really shy because i’d been wanting him to come over, but now that he was here, i hadn’t thought anything else through. the music started so i stopped talking or looking at him and just focused on the stage. we sat there in silence for a few songs and then he suddenly gives me this little wave and walks right out of the building, giving me a sidelong glance before he disappears out the door. he seemed kind of offended.

it’s a shame. it was a good opportunity for two people with certain similarities to get to know each other. people so rarely give me the benefit of the doubt that i might be someone who needs a little coaxing to get out of her shell.

i thought i’d clicked to play today’s song and it somehow led me to this link. i have no idea what i clicked.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday’s street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for–that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don’t you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

-rainer maria rilke, duino elegies

this is what i imagine god looks like. except his light is blue, not red.

read this when i’m smarter.

i understand that my weakness is often that i can’t see what’s right in front of me, or what is most obvious. i have blindspots. sometimes i need trustworthy people to help me out by telling me what i’m not seeing.

There’s an urban legend that when the Indians first saw Columbus’s ships, they weren’t able to perceive the ships because they were nothing they’d ever encountered in their world. The validity of the story is often debated, but i think what the story really opens a discussion for is the idea of perception. a guy posting as silas sparkhammer on the snopes boards had some good comments:

Again, go into a forest (if you have never been in one) and you will have a great deal of difficulty finding your way around. This confusion won’t last for mere seconds, but for hours and hours. It takes time for the brain to figure out entirely new patterns.

Take someone who doesn’t know how to play chess. Take another person who is a master of the game. They both see exactly the same light patterns reflecting off of the pieces on the board…but they perceive *very* different things.

There’s also this experiment in visual cognition. Check it out. Did you see it? I saw it.

And that’s the thing. Perceiving people on multiple levels. Keeping an eye out for the WTF.

Last night, when I was out people watching, I was thinking about those Indians not recognizing the boats. Maybe there are certain people who are around in your world, but you can’t see them because you haven’t enough perspective to recognize them. So you recognize they’re people, but you don’t really “see” them. But when you get into a different place, different eyes, different frames of reference, you can suddenly recognize them. Through your connection with them, they suddenly bring your life to a different level.

maybe the most unselfish thing the sun can do is keep his distance, knowing that drawing things towards him, even if he’s choking with loneliness, would be catastrophic.

well, well. it seems you and i have created a portal.

That’s Not the Point

To: Rie
From: Julia
11/14/2009 12:15:51 AM

I’m just sitting at the bar and this lesbian one seat over reaches under her friend’s elbows and hits me on the arm a couple of times. I look over like what the fuck just happened, and she’s just sitting there, staring straight ahead pretending she didn’t. Is this some kind of lesbian tribal dance?

From: Rie
To: Julia
11/14/2009 12:23:56 AM

Is she cute?

From: Julia
To: Rie
11/14/2009 12:24:58 AM

She looks like a catty gay man wearing a short blond wig. tattoos.

From: Rie
To: Julia
11/14/2009 12:52:59 AM

Ewwwwww

if you drive a yellow corvette with the license plate, DANGRZN, you’re probably bad in bed.

only fools provoke a sleeping dragon…

get ready. maybe we don’t recognize other life forms because we don’t have the right definition for what is life. i’m still convinced that not everyone on this earth is the same kind of human.

a daschund is not a german shepherd. a dog is not a wolf.

last night’s dream featured an appearance from the man who’s more familiar to me than time. except this time, he appeared as my friend, max, an actor with an electrifying smile i haven’t seen in almost a decade. max had the most amazing smile–it was like a disco ball lighting up a dark room. but he was a really quiet guy, kind of strange. and he used to call me and not talk, so we would have these long, uncomfortable silences. he once gave me a ride to the airport at 6 in the morning. on his birthday. and my friends swore to me that a guy wouldn’t do that unless he likes you. but he told me he was really shy, and in terms of initiating anything, i’m very shy, so at the end of the day, neither of us was willing (able?) to initiate anything. or maybe we both intuitively knew we weren’t romantically compatible. i think over the years, life’s been hard for max. i once wrote him an email to say happy birthday, and he wrote back a strange email about how he doesn’t know much about this world, but he knows that i am a really good person, and there aren’t a lot of truly good people in this world. it made me think there was something going on in his life that he wasn’t willing to talk about. even recently, we connected over facebook and he mentioned that the last year has been really tough but didn’t go into details. he was always like that. a beautiful smile hiding a dark enigma.

so in my dream, i ran into max and he looked the way he did, 10 years ago, with that same smile. but i knew it wasn’t really him, it was the guy from my dreams, and when we hugged, it felt like home. my heart cried in relief. he said he’d spent this time apart getting things ready, and had finally bought a home for us. that he hadn’t moved in yet, because he needed to find me first, so that we could start our new lives in this new home together.

he took me to it and it was a duplex by the beach, but the construction wasn’t completely finished. you had to use the communal bathrooms outside. it was dusk, the sky a rich blue, those few moments before night where it’s not dark, but there’s a complete absence of light. i didn’t want to go into the bathroom because it was crowded, i was wearing socks, and it didn’t look clean. so i turned around to go back to the house, but it was empty. he was gone again.

dear god,
please. no more old guys.
it’s distracting.

Cool.

you say potato, i say, whatever

all these words…like dry ocean sandstorm
quicksand
undertow
gravity hung upside down by his ankles
and the voice harnessing echoes
in the space between shadow and light

these words i could spin into towers for you
walls of sand so high
you’ll think you’ve found the bottom of the well
when you lift up your arms and scream into the night sky,
and the echo of your own name pulls you back to life
into a present autumn dawn
aching
with a distant memory
of something once held in your hand.

man…i have no desire to be in the public eye. i like having a following, i like a detached kind of notoriety, but i do not want the public to own me. i hate the way people feel entitled to take apart other people, like the way we treat our celebrities, politicians, athletes, etc. once people have their collective eye on you, you lose your freedom to be you without the distortion of judgment.

these are a few of this week’s anomalies:

-went to return a basketball at the front desk of the gym. the new sales guy, the one i finally closed my “negotiations” with (i only wanted them to concede one thing and i would join), was behind the desk with the two usual staff member. he’s a tall guy, about 26, said he used to play pro ball in europe. he knows i joined for the basketball court. i returned the ball and as i was leaving, he asked, “hey,…so, uh…when are you going to bring your husband in?”

i turned around and searched his face. he seemed sincere enough. “when i find one.”

he did look truly embarrassed, saying he thought i said i had a husband.

“no husband,” i said. “but maybe i have some kids running around that i don’t know about.”

the whole desk laughed and i left. later, he found me reading on the elliptical machine and said he was really sorry about that conversation. i told him it was cool and that i actually thought it was kind of funny. i asked him how sales were going, and he got embarrassed saying he’s not really into being a sales guy. i told him that sales is good for people like us who are competitive, because it allows you to compete with yourself.

-this big bear of a guy in his 40’s keeps pulling my ponytail while we played 2-on-2. okay, i probably caused this situation, because the last time we played, i had to guard him but he’s gotta weigh 240. there was no way i could out-muscle him. one play, i got low to box him out…just threw all of my weight into my legs and back and pushed. i moved him out of the box, but i had to use his body to keep me upright while i got my legs back under me. to do this every play would be too f-ing hard. so he said, “look at you, pushing against me.”

i gave him a sly smile.

“don’t you know? i’m flirting with you.”

so then my team won that game. because guys can’t focus when you’re flirting with them on the court. they put up bad shots trying to impress you, and they don’t play you as aggressively because they want the contact but they also want the distance to be able to watch you. i don’t purposely flirt to take advantage of defenders, but hey, i can’t help that i’m a naturally charming basketball player.

but now the consequences are that he likes to pull my ponytail flirtatiously, and he likes to touch me…a lot. the price of winning. so we all know what this means…i switch up my schedule.

-lesbians. lesbians. good for you.

-i was at this cafe yesterday and look up to find this white guy in his 40’s standing over me. “do you come here a lot?” he asked. i remembered him as a guy who had me on his radar here the day before, but i pretended not to notice him and he didn’t engage. i did catch him looking at me as he walked out the door and i smiled…80% out of friendliness, 20% smirking that he’d been too chicken to say something. i’m sorry. sometimes i can’t help myself. i taunt but it’s an innocent kind of taunting. so now i’m in the same cafe, and he’s standing there, talking to me. then i notice he has his coat on, and no coffee in hand. i’ve been fairly aware of the room, and i know he hasn’t been here the whole time. and after he left, i watched him and he went straight out the door. i think he must have been walking by and saw me through the window, or he had walked by around the same time i was here the day before to see if i was here. either way, he was determined to talk to me and invited himself to sit down. by his body language, he was very anxious, too. i was very nice, and friendly, but c’mon…no offense to older men, but i want to grow old with you, not trailing 15 years behind. he was eager to tell me that he owned two investment properties as well as his own company. i wondered if he was hoping that would impress me into being enamored with him, like a caveman conking a woman on the head with a club. i’m always suspicious with guys who try dangling shiny “facts” right up front. the way i feel, unless you own an island and take me to said island in a private helicopter to prove that you do indeed own an island, i will not be impressed by claims of wealth. i am happy enough with a guy who has a job, can support me and kids, is a cool dude, balances me, and never makes me get up at the crack of dawn.

-hehe. i’m in a playful mood tonight. rie always tells me to stop glamouring poor, defenseless guys. i say that i can’t help it if they wander themselves over on their own two adult legs. today this guy did the drunken bee approach. do you know what that is? it’s when a guy is walking by and he sees you, and he’s got such a sudden, compulsive impulse to approach you that he starts walking in your direction, but his brain’s like, “wait…what the fuck is going on?” and so half of him is coming at you like a magnet, and the other half is trying to stop the approach. it makes them kind of weave with a very conflicted look on their face. so this guy rambles his way over and pretends to be looking through the windows behind me, then when he realizes i’m looking at him like, “what’s up?” he asks me what my name is. then he says he thought i was leslie, this tv newsreporter’s wife. and then he just stands there and stares.

good actors tend to have really dilated pupils in scenes. it’s a sign of intense focus. when a person listens with so much focus that their pupils are dilated, sometimes the affect on the other person is hypnotic. maybe it’s because feelings of fascination and attraction also dilate the pupils, so these potential signals heighten the experience for the person being listened to. i’m not sure. i think the reason why people find my eyes intense or fascinating is because my pupils tend to be dilated.

The Dress

So apparently, everyone and their mother knew about my bridesmaid dress fiasco for Daisy’s wedding. Literally. When I showed up in Laguna Beach, everyone was asking me how my dress was, and I had the same response– “How do you know about it?” News travels fast. I assured everyone that I had it under control and all would go well. And if I flashed a boob, it would be to the enjoyment of all.

So come wedding day and it’s judgment hour. I need the help of two girls to get me in the dress–it was still a size too small and didn’t zip up all the way, but the tailor had created a flap to cover the part that was open. I could breathe, but I couldn’t breathe too deeply, and I had to be very careful of laughing too hard. Which was very difficult because I was designated the comic relief for the day. Outside of it making my shoulders look massive, it worked out:

here we are as deceptively well-behaved young ladies.

It was very hard to simultaneously sit and breathe in the dress, so whenever we had a break during the day, instead of sitting and resting, I would pace. When the reception came around, my cousin, Sharon, asked me how I was going to sit and eat. I told her I would eat in a lunge*.

The pumpkin soup was delicious!

Mmmmm….Steak.

(*Don’t worry, I ate sitting down like a lady. A shallow-breath taking lady.)

It cracked her up so she insisted on taking a picture doing a lunge with me:

This one’s for the troops.

And for the fun of it, here’s a picture of my cousin and I “looking at the bunny” that was being shaken to get the baby to smile for the camera:

LOOK AT THE BUNNY!…LOOK AT THE BUNNY!