Echo

So having moved the blog, it suddenly showed old comments from before I disabled them. I found a comment from this guy I used to be friends with, but stopped talking to him after I felt like he was using me for some mind game that had less to do with me and a real friendship, and more to do with projections from his conflicted world. Here’s the back story.

So I read the comment, and it sounded like familiar bullshit that he was spitting to me at the time. He was always trying to hang his issues on me, and project them as mine. The comment sounded like he was just using me to get himself to drink his own koolaid. I usually try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes, people say things about you that you don’t want to hear, and your automatic response is to dismiss it. But there could be some truth that might help you become a better version of yourself, if you can just objectively separate things that may be useful to you, from things that you genuinely feel don’t apply. I always try to hear what people are saying at the very least, before deciding. You can’t go blindly either way, but ideally, you have to trust yourself to know yourself best, discern what is helpful input and what is not, and to decide the direction of your own life. It’s also helpful to get someone you trust’s feedback for an outside perspective. Using triangles are easiest ways to derive perspective. So I sent it to Rie. I’m really posting this because Rie’s response is awesome.

From B:

Moments can be perfect. Like a poem or song. Everything is there, just as it should be. But life is everything in between. Life is never pure. Life is confusion. Life is the unpredictable. Life makes you vulnerable.  You revel in your angst. You like the moment… because you feel alive without really living. You play a familiar role… even the “real” you you choose to share is a familiar song with a small jazz improv bit that is quickly dropped when it stops feeling familiar.
But you are not being fair to yourself. You’re more than you think you are. You are more than someone who channels. Everything you use to describe your “magic” deals with stealing and borrowing from others…unknowingly proclaiming that you are nothing more than a radio capturing a signal. But you are so much more than that.  It’ll take someone with a stable sense of love and trust to allow you to discover this. Unaware, I hated myself and denied anything more than charming others with the ‘Me’ I liked. But in doing so, I hated those around me for not knowing the real me. But I met someone with that love and trust. It was tough. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was crazy. But slowly she showed me that what I thought was empty was filled. She showed me what it was filled with without condescend. I still doubt that what is there is there. I still battle with self hatred. But I can trust and love.

From Rie:

He’s trying to say you aren’t being real to him. He’s just whining, really. So his comment, to me, isn’t an analysis, it’s more like he’s complaining to you about not showing HIM the real you.

It’s interesting though; the act of analyzing someone is flattering to the one who’s being analyzed (you, in this situation), and he knows that and plays with it. It’s a double-edged sword because it’s in one’s nature to want to hear more about themselves through another person’s eyes (that’s why certain other readers are on your blog all the time). Yet, some idiots like Bobby take that opportunity to slide in some jabs, based on their own insecurities and doubts.

My take on it is, first of all, there is no “real” you. Or “real” me, for that matter. We all play a role in society, in our relationships, etc. We have our beliefs, principles, etc, and that makes up our idea of who the “real me” is, but that’s something that’s felt by others, not analyzed and confirmed. Bobby apparently didn’t feel like he knew the real you. He felt that pretending to analyze you while flattering you at the same time would make him trust you, that that would be his way “in” to you. Maybe you never showed him the real you. Or maybe you did, but he didn’t trust it.

Whatever it is, it’s irrelevant. You are whatever you want to be to other people. You’re a REAL person to me, for example, because you want to be, and I feel instinctively that you are. There’s no analyzing.

the conscious gemini is perpetually looking for the one she was separated from by birth. the universe is such a big place. and even if she remembers the Before, will he?

So wrong…

what do you do when what you want and what you need are at cross-purposes?

field notes – triple door 3/13/10 (arrival 10:54pm/departure 12:14am)

If they’re watching you, even from across the room, they’ll mirror you. That’s how you can tell someone is watching you, even if their eyes aren’t on you. Or, when you make eye contact, they’ll perform a gesture to see if you mirror them. It’s to see if you are subconsciously in agreement with them. This is how they test for connection.

If you’re agreeable by nature, you’ll tend to mirror people without being necessarily conscious of it. If you tend to find yourself stuck in unwanted situations and you don’t know why or how, either your subconscious is working against you, or it’s leading you without you being fully aware. It takes consciousness + discipline to suppress the urge to mirror. You have to let yourself relax, stand your ground, solidify your core.

They say that when you write, you have to think of the person you’re writing to. One famous writer wrote from the point of view as though he were talking to his dead sister. You never fully understood who you were writing to and you’re always trying to get other people to tell you. Maybe you’re writing full circle to yourself. Like a game of telephone with yourself that travels through people’s consciousness and back to you. You always said if you lost something and it went around the world through time and space and it found you again, you would believe in god and universe. Maybe that’s your God. A full circle. That everything begins and ends, but there’s really no difference between the two. That everything is everything. Maybe you hope to find that sign of life, where one day, someone calls out your name, in a voice more familiar than time.

sometimes, it’s the moment that grips me in the throat, and i forget to breathe

When you’re in tune with a room, it’s like having a radar. And you can feel who notices you, who wants to be let in. It’s like because they notice you in a crowded room, you exist for them, and vice versa, they now exist for you. You walk into a room, and ignore everyone. And soon, there’s a tingling. A feeling of being watched. And you can feel their proximity. Sometimes, it’s just a knowing. Sometimes, it’s a heat, an echo, or a flat, dull void. And you turn your head in that direction and through the dark, are two piercing eyes. You only let in the ones with smiles you recognize.

I love leaving a place for a month and coming back. See how it’s moved. See what else I notice about it, having reset my perspective. The biggest change this time back is I can sit in a room and not care who the fuck notices me. I can be in my own world, or I can be in the collective one, but either way, if I don’t make eye contact with you, you don’t approach me. For the most part, the room stayed at bay.

Most people won’t make contact unless you’ve had eye contact with them. Learn to look at people, take in information, without making a connection.

I wondered, can I pull signals not in the room. I focused my mind on California and concentrated on, “Find me now.” Looked down at my phone. Red light blinking for a msg received. Two fish on one line coming in at 11:05pm from Northern CA, one from Curtis, one from Rie. I raised an eyebrow. Noted it in my notebook. If today is this magnetic, tomorrow should be even more interesting, given it’s an 11 day. The knowledge is dropping like snowflakes tonight.

I’ve always taught myself. I let myself lead myself. So who is it that’s handing the knowledge to me? Is it something so grand as a greater force? Or is it just me in the Future, passing it back? Have I traveled so fast that I am only a shadow, an echo, of myself? I don’t think that person has that much power or knows particularly more. That person just has wisdom from perspective, as one might if they were a bit further ahead in the story. And I have to make the right decisions, so that the things I know to be true in the future can exist as I walk towards them in the present.

Every relationship has an optimal place and condition that it inherently defines. We try so hard to force relationships into roles, particularly because society demands that of us for order, but in order for them to really activate and fulfill their highest potential, you have to look really honestly and create a space where you can accept relationships for what they are. Even if that means compromises or being unconventional.

Yesterday I got hit with hot oil on my ring finger and it left a welt. I noticed it this morning, and it’s a red diagonal slash exactly where I would wear a ring. I wonder if it’ll leave a scar. It looks like a brand. Like some mythical god branded me his. I would be very disturbed if I found myself mysteriously pregnant with a half god/half human prodigy.

But then again, the world needs a new hero.

If you put too much energy into what other people think, you’ll never even get to know what you think.

Writers are willing to see Truth. Life from the only point of view they could ever really know…theirs.

We are our own personal truths.

No one is simple. There are just degrees of blindness.

The arks are where the knowledge will be stored. Like grabbing what will be needed for a new mankind. For whatever reason, I’m in charge of information, knowledge. Understanding of humanity. A belief in innocence.

If you detach and live in your own world, but your world is powerful enough to pull people into it, does it matter if it wasn’t the original world?

Fuck, I got caught. Unwanted eye contact. Now a conversation is inevitable. At least this is like paintball. Get caught and you’re just dead in the game. Out there, get caught and you’re dead.

I just pretended I was deaf and/or foreign. First time I had the guts to commit to that. The thing about that play is, if you can’t pull it off, you’re SUCH an asshole.

Sometimes I wonder if this blog is about the things I care about, or the things I let go. Probably a little bit of both.

“Are you writing a book or something?” He was Filipino with a blue baseball cap. I smiled.

“Just a letter to a friend,” I said.

They say, “You can’t use people for sex.” And she thought, “But why else would you get close to them?”

This fucking guy ambushed a group of tall, pretty girls dressed like they just left the symphony. “I’m not like a one night stand kind of guy. I’m just a 4, you know, but this girl was an 11. So what can I say? It was like hitting the lotto! I couldn’t say no. But I didn’t want to be that guy who’s an asshole and uses girls, so I tried to call her the next day, but she’d given me that you’ve-been-dumped hotline, so I guess she wasn’t interested.”

try: cucumber mint lemonade / lavender mint water

Curtis writes: Some people just don’t know when to laugh.

I write: I think it’s a dance. Meanings and intentions with how they work between people. Sometimes people are synched at a low level but it stays consistent. Some people go through cycles of high synch and complete incommunicability. And some people just completely come from different planets.

Curtis writes: Sometimes people from the bigger planet like to bump into little planets just for fun.

This is my biggest laugh tonight. The idea that these people aren’t just bumping the people from little planets, but the planets themselves.

You have to take ownership of what you want. How else do you stand a chance of getting it?

When you refuse eye contact with people, sometimes they angle their bodies towards you, even framing the parts of their body they want you to notice.

Some people just talk in circles that go nowhere. They talk just to distract you from the fact they have nothing to talk about.

The problem is you want a Snake Eyes, Alfred and a champion. You can have it all, just not at the same time.

Do you want to be with an 11 or a 3? Do you want to reach for more or fall back? Chase? Or be supported?

cuz i could lead the nation with a microphone.

and i wonder if i ever cross your mind
for me it happens all the time
it’s a quarter after 1 and i’m all alone and i need you now…

except it’s actually 2. happy daylight savings.

with an assist from dayquil, i toughed it out today and showed up for work.