Echo

A good resolution is both inevitable and surprising.

Mercury Retrograde Report

1/3/10 was quite a day of malfunctions. Either that or my magnetic force is really something right now.

1. First thing in the morning, I noticed my phone wasn’t charging. I was holding it in my hands when the screen suddenly went white. It’s never done that before. Then it went dead.

2. A few minutes later, I got on my computer and was looking up directions to the restaurant where I was meeting some relatives, and suddenly, the computer just shuts down like we had a power outage. My dad was in the same room and he looked into the kitchen to see if the power was out, but it was just the computer. I tried turning it on and it would power up, then just short out again. I did it twice, then told my dad the computer couldn’t seem to turn on. “You must have some serious electro-magnetic force today,” was all he had to say. I went out to lunch and when I came home, I saw the computer was fine. My dad told me my mom turned it on and it worked fine. So I got on it and seconds later, it suddenly died again like we’d had a power outage. It wouldn’t start up, yet my mom tried and it started up fine for her. I figured I might have something magnetically strange going on with me today, so I left the computer alone. Later I would find out that whatever happened to the computer killed my speakers. Only one of them works, and the sound is so low and far away, it sounds like a tiny radio inside an ant hill.

3. I was sitting in my dad’s car, and he was putting something away in the trunk. There’s a button you can press for the door to come down and close automatically, but there should be a sensor that lets it know if something’s in the way. He was leaned into the trunk putting something away when the door just starts closing. He reaches out his hand and hold the door, trying to keep it from squashing him, but it wouldn’t stop trying to close. He had to forcefully push it back open. That was kind of scary.

4. We went to visit my grandfather’s grave (we tried to go yesterday but didn’t make it out). We went back to my parents office to get my car, because I’d met them there and left my car in the parking lot. I told them I was on my way to get gas and would see them at home. The computer said I had 14 miles left. I got on the freeway, and the “Check Engine Soon” light came on. We just got the car back. Baby got a brand new heart (new engine). I couldn’t believe it. Then the car started losing power. My speed was dropping, first 50, then 45, and I saw the next exit coming up so I hoped I could at least make it to the exit. My car got me 50 feet into the exit, dying on the shoulder. I figured the computer had malfunctioned and it was out of gas. The sun was going down, and of all days for this to happen, the day my cellphone died. So I had to run a mile to the gas station, and buy a $15 one-time-use gas container and half a gallon of gas (I figured the full gallon might be heavy to run with). I asked the guy working there how to use the container, but he wasn’t particularly smart, so we spent half an hour fiddling with the parts. The seal was broken for some reason, so I had to run with the container in my left arm, held really still to keep the gas from splashing on me. I got the car running again just as it got dark, getting home an hour and a half after I’d left to get gas. When I got home, I asked my family if anyone had been wondering what happened to me. My mom said she had been worried and had asked my dad why I’d taken so long, but he’d responded that I’m a big girl and can take care of myself. Indeed I can. Lots of cars had passed by me as I ran to and from the freeway exit, and not a single person stopped to offer assistance. Whatever. I was lucky it’d happened where it’d happened.

4. Computer keeps reverting back to today’s date as somewhere in Feb of 2002. No matter how many times I reset it to the correct date, it keeps going back to 2002. I have no idea why…can’t even remember what I was up to in 02.

5. Played basketball at the gym. First, a tangent. Wore these black soccer socks that cover my calves, because they’ve been cramping whenenever I take a jumpshot. I hoped keeping them warm would prevent cramping. They were really effective, as my legs would *almost* cramp after 4 hours of full-court running, but they soldiered on. Gym guys are already mildly obsessed with my legs because they’re so strong, but the socks kind of made them look ridiculous–to anyone who’s ever had a fetish for female soccer players, I looked like the Darth Vader of female athletes. I was wearing all black–black Adidas Floater OG’s, black basketball shorts and a black tank top with those socks. I looked pretty badass. My mom asked me why I didn’t just change my name to Angelina and strap on a gun. I’m pretty sure I got passed the ball a lot more because of the way I was dressed. I didn’t play exceptionally well (terrible ball-handling today), but I did score a lot, including this one drive into the lane with a one handed banking floater over a jumping defender that was really not normal for my skill level. Just one of those lucky things that will make people think I’m a better player than I actually am. This really muscular Asian kid with a knife tattoo on his shoulder who’s built like he was sculpted out of rock was following me around all night talking to me. When he was leaving, he wanted to know when I’m going back to Seattle, and when I would be at the gym again. It was flattering. The universe has been throwing me a lot of really cute but younger guys this week. I almost invited this guy who works at the gym out last night, because he’s a really nice guy, he’s insanely cute, he always comes in and rebounds for me when he sees me, and he always blushes whenever I smile at him. But the truth is, I always want to go out with guys. But I’m often too nervous being out with guys to really enjoy it. Thus, my conundrum. And my hope that with the right guy, things will be so natural, I’ll just feel comfortable.

So, the malfunction. I was at the gym playing basketball wearing my heart rate monitor, but it kept reading that my heart rate was like 218, and then it would go to 0 and get no pulse. It was really erratic.

*****

All this makes me wonder if Mercury Retrograde is just a time period where magnetic forces are a little wonky. Or a time where it does something to people’s inner magnetic forces that causes a lot of confusion and mishaps. Mercury is an element that is mysterious and volatile. And we just had a full moon. If I wake up tomorrow morning to find like paper clips and assorted metal objects sticking to me, I can’t say that I won’t be completely surprised.

the flipside of the healer is the warrior. like two sides of a coin. to work with light, you must have walked with darkness. to work with life, you must have walked with death.

The night before last I dreamed that I was working somewhere, like a bed and breakfast so where I worked was also my home. I knew Shane, the guy I play basketball with, and he had gone over to the front counter with a red suitcase and asked them if they could mail it for him. When he left, I told the guy at the front desk that I would run it down to the post office for him since I was on my way anyway, but instead, I took it back to my cabin and opened it. I wanted clues to who he is. I found some old photos taken in Hawaii–I was looking for a girl, to see if he had a girl, but they were mostly of family. Then I noticed some older, random photos. The strange thing about all of them was that he wasn’t in any of them. He’s probably the one taking the pictures, I thought. But still, it was strange. I didn’t really find anything else that shed any light on him or his life, and I had an overwhelming fear that I would get caught, that I would somehow leave some clue, drop some object inside the suitcase that would let him know that I’d been through his stuff. I’ve always been terrible at anything sneaky–I always get caught. So I put everything back and closed it up. He’d told the front desk he would be back in the afternoon so I didn’t have time to get it to the post office; I had to hide the suitcase. I figured I could either hide it in the garage (in a separate building), or in my cabin, places he wouldn’t go into. I absolutely did not want him finding out I went through the suitcase, both because then he would know I like him and also because it’s a stalker thing to do. Both of these reasons mortified me.

So I decided to hide it in my cabin because that would be the last place he would go into, then went outside.

He was there with a Filipino woman with short hair, a little chubby. Middle-aged. I looked at them together and I realized what his deal is–he’s divorced and carries emotional baggage from it. She had a small black kitten with her. She asked if she could put the kitten in my cabin, and I suddenly remembered he had made that request, that I watch a kitten for the week. I realized that if I let them into my cabin, they would see the suitcase. So I told her that I couldn’t keep the kitten in my cabin, but we could keep it in the garage, and he got really mad at me for why I was being so unkind and unreasonable with such a small request. I knew I looked like an asshole but I just could not let them inside my cabin.

When I woke up, I felt really guilty. I could still remember how mad he was at me for not letting them inside the cabin, and I took it as a symbol of his potential anger if I step over one of his boundaries. I felt like I had somehow psychically tried to pry into this guy’s life, trying to get information he hadn’t been willing to openly share with me, and I’d gotten a big warning in my dream world to back off.

I think the big message and meaning of the dream is exactly that…back off.

I would like March 3rd, 2010 to be a special day.

He was an olive-skinned kid with curly hair, edges still soft with baby fat. He looked about 17 but was probably somewhere in his mid 20’s. Despite being in way over his head and more than a little drunk, he was blocking the door of my car, trying to get me to stay. This had been going on for a good half hour and now I was tired and ready to go to bed. Alone.

“Do you know what the biggest difference is between you and I?” I asked him.

“What?”

“The only way you can get inside me is by fucking me. While I don’t even have to touch you to get inside you.”

He stares at me, his eyes and mouth poised for a laugh, just waiting for a cue. My gaze doesn’t waver. I’m completely serious.

“I’m sorry, that’s really hot,” he says.

I sigh. Little boys try my patience.

“You’re a little brother aren’t you?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

Why else would we be here, having this conversation, I think.

“You’re a little brother with an older sibling, probably a big sister, and either she was a complete cunt, or she was completely unaccessible, and the only way you could get her attention, to have any kind of relationship with her was by provoking an anger reaction. So you swing between provoking girls and trying to get them to feel sorry for you when the truth is, these girls can never give you what you want, because what you want is something only your sister or maybe your mother can give you. And you know it. But the truth is, you don’t really want to get close to girls because you have really ambivalent feelings towards intimacy. Maybe the root is some form of basic insecurity, or maybe the truth is…you’re not really sure you’re all that into girls.”

A straight man would have been compelled to address that last bit, but he just kept smiling that weird little frozen smile he’d maintained while I was talking.

“You can’t know me. No one knows me. I don’t tell anyone anything about me.”

“What, you think you have to tell people things for them to know you? You think if you stick your head in a hole in the ground, people can’t see you? You’re not invisible. People see you. The difference is I’m willing to call it out.”

“Who are you? How the fuck do you know so much about me?”

“Move.”

He steps aside, and I open my car door.

“By the way,” I say as I get into my car. “I don’t care if Smiles has been your nickname your entire life. Whatever you’re into, men or women, you need to start introducing yourself by your God-given name or make up a real one if you ever plan to get laid in this lifetime.”