Echo

“happy halloween, dude. Get it in.”

Msg from my formerly religious-right friend who became human again after he started smoking weed

He took a cake from me. Said these were his favorite. A year ago, I couldn’t even get him to take food from me in a dream.

At the potluck, he asked to sit next to me. He was on my right and Bill, the one he’s quietly and privately deemed his nemisis on the left. Twin Tauruses, born 6 days apart. Both married and to be married in the same location.

Can’t they see who brought them into orbit.

I was more comfortable talking with Bill. Found my arm draped over Bill’s chair, casually, the universal display of territorial ownership. Dropped my arm as soon I realized. Last thing I need is that caught on tape.

He told me my meatballs were the hit. Later, he told me he ate 7 of them. When he left, he thanked me for the cake and the meatballs.

1. You are just starting to understand how well-fed you would be with me.

2. Elvis has left the building.

3. Don’t worry. We’re still friends.

My coworker comes up to me while I’m sitting in the car. He’s got a plastic bowl of potato salad his mom made, and the sky is a rich, lazy blue around him.

He asks me all kinds of questions–where I live, what I do, if I still write.

“What about personal life. Are you seeing anyone?”

I stumble for an answer. Somewhere bouncing between no, kind of, I don’t know.

Why?, he asks.

People always move too fast with me. My insides don’t match my outsides, and people don’t always understand that or expect that. I move very slowly.

What’s slow for you, he asked.

I need to know you as a friend or have worked with you. Otherwise, it’s hard to get close.

Lesson one:

Use some of that 20/20 hindsight as foresight. Practice predictive foresight.

I quit caring.

Who’s the one who keeps control of time? I asked. And when the silent room echoed back, I realized it was me.

I’m gonna let the tiger out. And that tiger is gonna behave.

I’m not much of an active participator. It wears me out.

There’s this thing Chinese people do, where they scrape a penny over your back and inside of the elbows, and it’s supposed to draw out toxins. And sure enough, tiny purple constellations appear under the skin, drawn to the surface. I remember my mom doing this for me once in Cabo where a single mango margarita laid me out, and it did make me feel better afterwards.

November is like that for my soul.

As soon as Scorpio appears, the darkness floods in and toxins are drawn to the surface. It’s why I love November. For the intensity. The storm. The death. The rebirth. And with the rain, purge and cleansing.

Spirit detox.

I accept the dark and light of Scorpio.

When I leave, I forget things like they were a dream. I wonder if dying is like that. You forget life like it was a dream and in doing so, you find yourself awake in another.

Life is all about where you wake up.

Goddam commit to not caring. I’m fucking serious. Fucking commit to it or caring is going to kill you, Julia. You need to turn it off.

I felt most peaceful in Seattle. I traded silence for the price of loneliness. And I finally felt like I could hear myself. Recognize myself.

Coming back to Fremont is like charging back into the center of the sun. Everything is painful. Everything is a draining challenge. Everything hurts. Whatever buffer I gained in that year in Seattle, it’s been burning off in the atmosphere and I’m getting more and more exposed. I came back a giant but little by little it chips away. My skin is raw in this air. My skin will burn up if exposed.

I’m not of this place. I found a way to sustain myself and my boundaries for a time but I can not breathe this air. And now my supply is running out and I am starting to suffocate. It is getting too close to being about survival. Fight or flight. My inner violence is a hot, hot anger. A tiger pacing, frantic to breathe. I resent this cage. I hate this cage. I resent those who I believe put me here. Hurt others or hurt myself to save others. This can not be the balance in which my life hangs. And yet every day, I make a choice.

At the base of every human, is a shadow that is no more than an animal. This is a world that demands compromise.

I do have to admit not having to care anymore and being able to say, “That’s not my problem anymore” is attractive. Then I think about what kind of mess I would leave behind if any, and if I would be letting people down but then I wonder, is that my responsibility? Is the right decision to stay or to leave? Where would I go? Do souls without anchors drift until they disappear or do they just cease to exist?

Some people want riches so they can have the private jet. The boat.

Me, I want the driver. The bodyguards.

There’s nothing I like better than being alone in the crowd.

And then when I tire of the crowd–the bat cave.

Sometimes we get so caught up wanting things, we lose sight if those things are worth wanting.

We should only want things that are truly prizes. If it ain’t no prize, it’s not worth wanting.

He ain’t no prize.

What’s blacker than black? My mood at the thought of re-entering my life back home. We are at the W in Taipei, $800 a night suite with floor to ceiling windows and a view of 101. It’s amazing and I can appreciate that. But sometimes I find myself looking down at the street below, trying to imagine if regret would go through my mind in that final split second before hitting the sidewalk.

The bride wasn’t just a little pregnant. She was hella pregnant.

It just takes time for me to trust someone. And people who rush me or expect it to happen without putting effort into being trustworthy…they’ll never get in.

I had a dream last night I went to a customer’s site and had a meeting with Intel but I’d set it up and was in charge so I wasn’t worried. It was on Halloween and then there was a band playing afterwards onsite. There was a guy I was interested in who was going to be in the meeting (I think it was yhe lawyer I went on a date with) so I was excited about staying afterwards for the concert and spending time with him. I got there early and found that my shirt wasn’t all the way on (I’d missed the armhole) so I went to the bathroom. First the toilet was so high that I tried getting up there with a step ladder that was in the room but decided against going because it looked like a recipe for an accident. Then I tried to fix my shirt but it turned out I was wearing a lot of layers so I took them off and ended up carrying a pile of clothes into the meeting.

After, I grabbed a booth near the front of the stage and was texting the guy and my assistant that I was saving them a seat. This Vietnamese girl tried to take the seats and I kept telling her these were mine but she could have up to where the seats broke up, but she kept crowding the seat I was saving for my assistant so I got mad and pushed her side of the couch until there was a 2 inch gap and told her her butt better not cross that line. I texted my assistant and told her to hurry, but then I wondered why I was working so hard to save her a seat given what was going on between her and J.

I think there must have been 2 guys there. One was a male coworker who I knew kind of liked me who showed up at the booth but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to him because I was texting with the lawyer to see where he was. The lawyer texted me and casually mentioned “my girlfriend” something, and I was shocked but just went with the flow like it didn’t faze me and this must all have been nothing.

Later, I was really shaken by it. I’d taken it and had gone with the flow instead of asking him WTF and calling him out on being a sneaky turd. I was angry with myself for being non-confrontational and not standing up for myself while meanwhile standing up for someone (my asst) when I was angry about what she was doing right in front of me.

Panic attack at work today. Hyperventilating. Could not breathe. Could not catch breath. It was awful. Body would not obey mind. The more I couldn’t breathe the harder it was to stay calm. We take breathing for granted.

We’ll be brand-new by tomorrow.