Echo

It’s that solidness from within. Expands the chest. Gravity.

I’m also all too easily enabled. Be stronger about blindspots.

It’s not just men who hate it when they’re told, we have to talk.

I hate it, too. Good news or bad news, it scares me.

Do not make it real by acknowledging it. Live your life. Focus on your path.

I’m furious because he has no idea I’m furious. Is it fair? No. Is it the truth? Yes.

I love you 12:12.

Thank God for siblings. Some you’re born with. Some you pick up along the way.

My slump continues. It’s like there’s a lid on the basket. I know it means there’s something else I’m supposed to be working through. The most inefficient thing I can do is focus on the frustration and wallow. The best is to figure out what is the lesson at this level. The truth is I am being frustrated in various aspects of my life. I am losing my cool. It means I am losing control, letting the outside control me. Can I ride it out? Can I recognize what and who is good for me, and what and who is not? Can I stay above the fray and breathe? Breathe, baby. Just breathe. There are people who believe in you. Let things come to you. You are being asked to create more space with vision.

Fucking irritated at what’s going on at work. Don’t even fucking talk to me.

It is amazing how I can compartmentalize. No wonder I lose track of my feelings sometimes. On one hand I can be completely professional, smile and work and cooperate. On another level, I’m seething. No one can tell. I barely notice it myself. Until I’m alone and my mind goes to it and up comes disgust. But who am I really disgust with? Not them. I’m disgusted with myself for even noticing.

From a professional standpoint, this is going nowhere good.

I slept really poorly last night. Was dreaming that I wanted to buy a new place because my place in San Jose has extremely hard water that is making my hair fall out (true…that’s why I have only been showering at my parents’ house…it’s a known problem that we’re trying to get the developer to address). I was looking at this place that’s $5 million that had 5 bedrooms but was only 700 sq ft, but it was adjacent to the Russian River for rafting and had a private pool. I was looking at the listing and thought it didn’t make sense. San Francisco real estate was out of whack. I kept waking up thinking, you don’t want to live in SF because that place is a bottleneck, but I would go back to sleep frantic to move out of my place in San Jose.

Those fitful dreams were cut in with thoughts about basketball and wanting to stop playing. I thought I tore my ACL again yesterday. It was dangerously close. I recognize that I am lucky it didn’t tear. I went to practice just trying to take it easy. We have a player that I really try hard not to play against. She’s great if she’s on your team, dangerous if you’re playing against her. Reckless. She tends to ram her butt right into me right above the knee and she actually injured me a few weeks ago when she hit me on the side of the knee;  that was a really scary moment as well and I’m still recovering from it. last night I was under the basket and she popped her butt straight into my kneecap, causing it to slam backwards and buckled. I shifted my weight immediately to my other leg but it was very, very close. Scarily close. For a split second, I thought my ACL was done.

I did get kind of mad because she’s always saying I don’t take care of my body, but she’s my biggest risk of injury on the court, so part me of wonders if she’s unconsciously trying to hurt me to prove a point, but I try not to think like that because I’m sure she’s not consciously trying to hurt me. But I have to be realistic about assessing the risk and she’s a big risk. After yesterday, I think it’s not worth the risk.  I think I was really worried about the game today, about if I would try to get up in the morning to find that my ACL is torn. I woke up this morning feeling crappy, feeling scared, feeling unhappy. But at least when I stood up, the knee felt okay.

It’s not worth the risk. I’m not trying to prove anything, and I play like shit when I worry about getting injured anyway. It’s just not worth it.

In my dream last night, I encountered a bar called Hunt’s. I could see it was crowded through the window, so I was trying to find the door but couldn’t get inside. When I finally got in, there weren’t as many people as there had seemed from the outside. I heard my inner narrator say, it’s so sad. You are always looking for a crowd but you always end up alone.

Don’t want to think about it
Don’t want to talk about it
I’m so sick about it

I’m done. It’s a good thing.

Bad dreams to end ambiguous feelings.

Really fucked up dream last night. I was some kind of evil psychopath and I had a girl coming to visit me and for whatever reason I decided I was going to torture her. She got here and I acted like we were friends but I drugged her drink so she passed out. Then I bound and gagged her and threw her in the back of a van while I went out prowling bars.

It was weird because it was me–my brain, but I was evil. I walked around the streets of Santa Monica, smug that little did people know I had this poor girl tied up in my car. I think I must have had her in there for a couple of days because I remember thinking she’s probably terrified and wet/shit herself by now, and it gave me a very complex feeling of both sadistic pleasure and guilt. And rage at her for ever trusting me.

I remember I was walking on the Promenade when I saw Nick from the gym except he was bald. I know he’s not into me, and I could have sworn he saw me then got up to leave because he didn’t want to talk to me.

I think around then it dawned on me what I’d done, that I would either have to kill her or go to prison. What was I gonna say? Just kidding? I think I knew it was a dream because I said to myself, you better end this world but I wanted to get her first so I went back to the car. I remember the smell of vomit and she was scared and more happy to see me than realizing I was the one that did this to her. I felt like a monster. Then I woke up.

I know that they say in some interpretations, every character in a dream represents an aspect of you. In this one, I was a sadistic monster and a naively trusting victim. Maybe I’m angry at the part of me that has held on to something I shouldn’t have for too long. Or maybe my unrequited feelings for someone unobtainable is the monster, the way I’ve kept my insides trapped from actually interacting with the world.

I don’t know. It was hard for me to get up today. I felt dirty from the world I’d walked in, the skin I’d lived in. I went through the day with no feelings. A heart of cement.

Today, I felt nothing.

Parks and Recreation is back on. I heart Ben so much, it’s a shame he’s not a real person. Those episodes when his feelings were revealed last season–pure umami. I’m pretty sure my brain was tricked into thinking I was in love. There were nights I had trouble sleeping. Good scene work does that. I like things that are visceral.

That drummer gets a lot of pussy.

You’re just sharp enough and you’re just cute enough but you’re missing that something that ties your heart to your balls. -my evaluation of someone I met at the conference.

Almost one year ago. Office Christmas party. It was supposed to be a celebration but what I remember most is the rain. He in a trenchcoat. We under a canopy in the rain. A hug. And my heart and soul and mouth were silent. Will my memories always be defined by silence? Will the rain this year haunt me? I always try to do the right thing. That is my greatest strength and my greatest flaw. Maybe I am a soldier. Maybe underneath it all, I’m programmed to do one thing, not necessarily by choice but because that’s all I know.

I know how to replace Steve Jobs’ void. I don’t know if it’s a dream or a vision but it’s worth trying.

I’m an athlete on the verge of retirement. Just have to accept.

hey pretty…

Kyrie suggested we go for drive in her new 2-door BMW coupe. In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats; Kyrie took over from there. At nearly 90 miles per hour she zipped us up to that windy edge known to some as Mulholland, a sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains, where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns. Sometimes dropping down to 50 miles per hour, only to immediately gun it back up to 90 again. Fast. Slow. Fast. Fast. Slow. Sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. She preferred the tighter ones, the sharp, controlled jerks swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again. Until after enough speed and enough wind, and more distance than I’d been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of the city I rarely think of, and never visit, I heard her say,

Hey pretty, don’t you wanna take a ride with me
Through my world?
Hey pretty, don’t you wanna kick a slide
Through my world?
(Do you get the gist of the song now?)

I can’t remember the innane things I started babbling about then. I know it didn’t really matter, she wasn’t listening. She just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped her seat back, and told me to lie on top of her. On top of those leather pants of hers, her hands immediately guiding mine over those soft, slightly-oily folds, positioning my fingers on a shiny, metal tab, small and round, like a tear. Then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though I could feel her lips tremble against my ear, she seemed far, far away. “Pinch it,” she said, which I did lightly until she also said, “Pull it,” which I also did, gently parting the teeth, one at a time, down under and beneath, the longest unzipping of my life.

We never even kissed or looked into each other’s eyes, our lips just trespassed on those inner labryinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off-color of my only tongue. Too bad dark languages rarely survive.

What’s this? There was a witness tonight. Claiming in the span of 2 minutes, I disappeared. Interesting…