May 2006 Archives

no more earplugs for a while :D :D

last weekend somebody asked me, "so, get much use outta that knife you always carry?" to which i replied, "of course, every time i need to open a letter."

well, this morning i used it for a more bladeworthy purpose. down in the car park there was once again water on my hood. i'd fixed the primary offender and back in january, when i first parked my new car in the old, drippity spot, i'd asked the apt mgt to fix the leaky. they denied there was a leaky but put some foam insulation on a pipe over my spot.

well, being careless, they missed a spot of pipe, and it appeared this morning that that unprotected spot was the source of the drip. fortunately, being careless, they also overshot on one end, extending the foam beyond where it needed to be to protect my car.

so, out came the knife, stretch went the calves, slicety dicety went the foam, and before you could say "back your car out so that you can get to the drippy spot, stand on your toes and make the length of foam insulation fit the best that it can, on account of the fact that there's a zip-tie that makes fitting it difficult," that's exactly what i'd done.

i'm currently undergoing a bout of prolonged temporary insanity brought on by a woman, compounded by distance.

that's a fancy way of saying i'm half of a pair of madly-in-lovers.

will it last? will it last?
is not the question i should ask
but rather do i want it to?
and if so, what must i do?

she pronounced "pris" as "pree".

tee hee. silly frenchies.

although we differ strikingly in what are perhaps only superficial ways, i find that by and large, i'm a chip off the old block.

this pleases me, because, again, by and large, i could have done a lot worse, considering just what blocks there are in the world for me to have alternately been a chip off of. i lucked out and ended up with a set of inheritable qualities that have served me well.

cheers.

i am in a hurry
i was never in a hurry
but i saw vultures on the beach

need to go back soon.

i always leave the kitchen cabinets open.

hope that's not a deal-breaker.

shouldn't be, since i'm the only one whose noggin's at risk.

i like to re-occupy my memories.

not relive them, reoccupy them. i realized this morning that this is something that i do.

i go back to the same places and re-experience them through different eyes, mine or someone else's. natrually, i only go back to places that i like; i don't expect different company to help me enjoy, for example, vegas.

i re-engineer situations to echo past situations in my life, then re-occupy the experience with my new self and avoid the mistakes of my past.

i made a mistake a couple of months ago. i suggested that i and the mistakee should re-create the situation and this time i'd not make the mistake.

and then, this morning, i realized that not only is that kind of a weird thing to suggest, it's also something i tend to do again and again. the desire to recreate my past sans mistakes is part of my personality, evidently. in 3 days i'll be going back to my fortress of solitude, re-occupying a familar place from my past with my current mind and soul, and with company. to relive the experience of being in my fortress without making the mistake of solitude.

i have a couple more things planned that follow this same pattern.

part of it is simply that i have places that are special to me, and now i want to show those places to the person that's special to me. nothing particularly strange about that. i guess the difference is that i put some effort into re-creating not just the place but also particular experiences -- specifically, mistakes -- of my past, in order to have different outcomes based on my more recent desires and knowledge.

i dunno what to make of this.

every night i have to recharge my phone. it's always in the red when i get done talking with her.

except for that time when the battery died during our conversation. had to plug it in and call her back.

cingular's gonna love me this month.

when did that happen?

fate has seen fit to bestow upon me either a sinus infection or a severe, multi-day allergy attack. my money's on the former, judging from my energy levels.

now, normally i'd shake my fist in the air and curse the fates for mean-spiritedly infecting me a mere four days before love comes around, but to be fair to the fates, they've been pretty good to me lately, so i'll let this one slide.

but if i catch you kids on my lawn again, oooooo!!! trouble!

Rick B: your mind is both your friend and enemy
maury_cohen: ooh, that's deep
maury_cohen: what's it mean?
Rick B: on the one hand, you can always rely on it to think things through and arrive at the most logical choice
Rick B: and at others, you allow it to create fantasies for you
maury_cohen: logic's great for running a starship, but bones is the one that had all the fun
Rick B: hahhaha
Rick B: i though that was kirk
Rick B: he got laid
maury_cohen: that sounsd like a joke but there's much truth in there
Rick B: all the time
maury_cohen: kirk actually only got laid once in the whole series
Rick B: whatever, you think those furballs reproduced on their own
maury_cohen: haahahahah
maury_cohen: ew!!!
maury_cohen: my point is
maury_cohen: that the further i get from my mister spock, the more enjoyable my life has been
maury_cohen: relying on logic is a great way to pick the right battery for your watch
maury_cohen: not necessarily the best way to run your life

5 hours.

blah blah blah marriage blah blah blah.

on the phone last night something amazing happened.

i asked her to read to me one of the poems that i had written to her. she did, and then over the course of the call, she read to me many of the blog entries i've made over the past week, plus some older ones.

that was new, nobody's ever read my writing aloud to me, at least not so much of it at once that i can remember it.

there's nothing in the world like hearing my words come out of her mouth, even if i'm standing at a salsa bar waiting for my mexican takeout to be ready.

she likes my writing, she says, and i haven't found her to be a fibber. she gets my writing, i know, from the way she enunciates it. she gets the rhythm, the parentheticals, the style, the humor, the me that goes into it, and when she reads it aloud, all that stuff comes right back at me. and the lamest off-the-cuff blog posting becomes a piece of music.

she says i should keep writing. i agree. i had reason enough before to write, but now... now my words are not destined to die, unloved, unnoticed, forgotten and buried in some obscure database. every tiny smidgen of effort that i put into what, for me, is art, is appreciated, brought to life to live as it was meant to, and shared with me.

she breathes life into the melodramatic personal emergency of my writing. she doesn't have to, she doesn't really have time to, but she does.

my goodness.

all roads lead to rome, and any time i think about things such as the above, my thoughts always end up in the same place. i've really got something here.

i dont think incense is good for my lungs.

cough.

two sets of broken headphones in two days.

my work headphones now have sound from only one ear. this is due to repeated dropping resulting from entanglement in my chair when i get up and the chair twirls and rips the mp3 player + phones from the counter and dumps them on the floor. that sucks. i liked those phones.

my running phones had a structural integrity malfunction. the left earpiece became unattached from the headpiece. a little electrical tape fixed that.

still, i think i'm getting divine signals that i need to become a headphone audiophile freakazoid. i shall resist.

however, so far my headphone audiophile freakazoid coworker buddy is 3 for 3 on his good advice.

laphroig 15, jose cuervo reserva de la familia, and LOST. he must be right about $500 minimum headphones, yeh?

right.

assumptions morph into knowledge
guesses transition into fact
understanding brings amazement
it's better than i'd hoped
it's better than i'd guessed
however did all things align?
not to "end up like this"
but to begin

i eagerly await the wonders of the next page.

i have a "nature", right?

i'm cautious by nature.

i'm humorous by nature.

i'm good-natured by nature.

i'm wordy by nature.

i'm slow to anger by nature.

or am i?

is my nature all the crap that i think it is, or is there just a gooey-chocolatey-tootsie-pop core of my nature, and the rest is sugary coating added on over the years?

because i'm really having trouble with my cautious nature, lately, and i'm wondering if that's because i really haven't got one, and i've been fooling myself all along.

wisdom is knowing when to listen to little voice #1 that says do it do it do it do it and when to listen to little voice #2 that says wait a minute, take things a little more slowly.

wisdom is being able to ensure that the future me will look back on my choices and have no regrets, and often that means that even if voice #1 will become right in the future, i have to listen to voice #2 so that i can feel as if i've made a "wise choice".

or at least not a hasty one, which is absolutely the opposite of wise.

so maybe i do have a cautious nature after all.

ah fuck it, dude, let's go bowling.

maury_cohen: anyhow
maury_cohen: enough about my girlfriend's nose

will it last? will it last?
is not the question we should ask
but rather do we want it to?
and if so, what must we do?

more comment spams.

3 in one day. it's an epidemic. looks like i need to actually address this one. ugh, what a pain.

hm.

i wonder how all this looks from the outside in. to people who know me. to people who don't. i wonder if one can really get a handle on me by reading it.

i wonder if i'd want to meet the sort of person that could.

every night you are in my last thoughts and every morning you are in my first thoughts

random flotsam of my memories
why would you want to know that?
how can i not tell you?

everything.

i said it in comments but it deserves a post:

this place, cruddy as it may be, is secondary offsite storage for my memory.

some of it is in the form of crypticisms which can be decoded with a little context, cleverness, or a blunt spoiler.

some of it is purely fancy.

some of it is long winded crap (no link necessary to find an example of that!).

some of it is polished crap.

like my primary storage for memories, it is highly context-dependant, hyperlinked, and self-referential.

unlike my primary storage, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. sometimes, so have the words and the facts.

but never the emotions.

memory has no room for insincerity.

the blog is also here to tide me over until i manage to get to work on my novel. i re-read two of my short stories today, GRJ and resurrection. I was somewhat unhappy with some of the writing in GRJ, but still quite pleased with the story. resurrection is still probably impenetrable to anyone but me, but the writing is noticeably improved from GRJ (though some of the scenes should have been heavily edited). the story is actually more interesting than GRJ's, and certainly more personal, and now that I've recently re-viewed solaris i recognize whence i stole the plot.

i need to get back to my polished writing. the "schlock".

i've squirted out a couple of poems lately, they even had some merit. but i need to do something big and bad like resurrection. only thing is, i'd rather play outside. i'm busy this weekend. next weekend is definitely no time for writing :)

giddy-up.

i can see why some folks would feel like they shouldn't have to read 
my writings to get at all of me, that they should get all there is to 
get just through talking.

well, those folks ought to consider themselves lucky that my writing 

exists, out in the open. most folks are just as clammed-up in person 

as i am, keeping details and thoughts private and hidden. that's 

human.

but i put those hidden things down on "paper" for all to see. 

with most people, there is "more than meets the eye".

with me, you've just got to check my blog to find it.

source

once upon a time, someone suggested that maybe i didn't understand the concept of growth.

so i stumbled upon some of my old philosophy and it seems that perhaps i have experienced growth, after all.

the whole thing is fascinating, but the important part is right at the bottom:

i know what i need and i know why i can't get it. 
i know what i have to do and i know why i won't do it. 
i know me. and wherever i go, there i am.

i grew out of my "can't"s and "won't"s. and here i still am. and i still know me.

got that one wrong, too.

short quiz.

be careful how you live.

you never know until you need to.

if nobody reads it, it doesn't count.

occasionally forget which parts of my mental-makeup are ironic-self-amusing-affectations and which parts are real. that's an interesting one, actually. most of the problems are gone for exactly the opposite of my then reasoning: I did actually figure out many of the "dunnos" and thus elimiated the problems. go me.

to consider myself anything but ordinary is not only hubris but worse: statistical error.

and yet, even having found these gems, i failed to find the one post i was actually looking for. so it goes.

wow.

got that one wrong.

i can see it in my work TODO lists.

fancy that :)

no, seriously. another pair.

brooks adrenaline, size 11, 2e.

i was using brooks addiction, size 10.5, 2e. the addiction is motion control and felt weird and after a while pinched the wrong part of the foot.

the adrenalines feel much much lighter (good), less sproingy (bad), and put the pain into a different part of my shin. hopefully that's temporary and squat-related. we'll see.

bah.

gave it one more try tonight, just for kicks, and she said that since that makes four, to number five she will answer, "yes", and she'll mean it.

so now i guess i'll have to mean it next time i ask.

no more jokes about that, i reckon.

okay.

it's done.

i've changed all my post-breakup posts from "draft" to "publish".

it wasn't easy to do, there's no one-click way to do it.

scroll back down to anything between now and may 10 to see what you've missed.

right now, at this very moment, i have tremendous, unwanted power.

i don't know how to wield it.

i suspect that were i to use it, i would destroy it.

i suspect that were i to use it, i would prove to be a tyrant.

and so it will rest.

i've long held (though never mentioned) that the most successful person in the world is the one who believes his own bullshit.

likewise, the most dangerous person in the world is the one who believes his own bullshit.

and thus, believing my own bullshit, i teeter between being successful and being dangerous.

i was told, recently, by someone who is most certainly objective, that i am handsome, funny, and smart. a good catch. and through conversations i've had with acquaintances, it's slowly been dawning on me that i do have some pretty unusual (and pretty good) things to offer to a mate.

if i'd believed all that a year ago, i might now be dating the best looking police officer in san mateo county. fortunately it took me a little bit longer to accept those things (in fact, i accepted them only when it no longer gave me any advantage to accept them), and i'm happier than happy at how things managed to turn out, though it does look like that i still ended up a police officer's wife.

this post isn't long enough, so i guess i'll combine it with another one that i've been planning. tragically, that will make this post too long, but what am i sposed to do?

a long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, i was visited by four troubles.

two were physical illnesses unlike any i'd ever experienced. the worst so far in my life.

one was a mental difficulty unlike any i'd ever experienced. the worst so far in my life.

the fourth was loneliness, though at the time i would never have admitted it.

i had two influences in my life at the time. i love this story as i love my life mainly because the second of the influences was at once both goofy and devastatingly effective. the first influence was a coworker. in my mind, he was an archetype. a mythical figure representing everything i wanted to be. he was the gentle giant (think ron perlman in "city of lost children"), the family man, the jack of all trades, the shaman, the spiritual man, the strong man, the ingenious man; and restless.

he taught me how to squat and changed my life forever.

i intend to thank him personally quite soon.

the other influence, the one that sounds so silly but worked so well, was a video game. a role playing video game based on dungeons and dragons (which my father forbade me to play while i lived with him, for fear it would turn me into a baby-eating satan worshipper. no joke). it was called "planescape: torment" and it had the second best plot of any video game i've ever played, and that's saying a lot, because the first best plot (star control II) had set the bar quite high.

the plot was what drew me in and kept me entertained as i weathered the onslaughts of my own four torments.

but the plot was not what changed my life, for that would not be goofy enough. it was not the plot of the game, but the idea inherent in dungeons and dragons, that by gaining experience (in D&D, that's done by killing goblins: not exactly transferable to the "real world") one enhance one's personal attributes (strength, intelligence, charisma, wisdom) and one's skills (lockpicking, swordplay, the lyre ;).

i decided then, in precisely these terms, to enhance my attributes. i decided to start with my "strength" stat, which was dangerously low. my "intelligence" stat was already good enough, and i erroneously decided that my "wisdom" stat was doing well. "charisma" needed lots of work.

so i set out to work on strength and charisma.

since then, 5 or so years ago, i've kept off the 40-50 pounds that i lost, made decent progress in the weightlifting, branched off into running, hiking, skating, biking, and kettlebell lifting. in short, i've increased my "strength" stat.

since then, 5 or so years ago, i've learned to roast coffee, brew beer, appreciate fine spirits, write a short story, dress well, dress poorly, purchase a luxury car, treat other people, socialize, read some hebrew, sail a sailboat, play a little guitar, program in new languages, and tailor my humor to make anybody laugh. in short, i've increased my "charisma" stat.

my D&D inspired self-improvement campaign paid off long before i realized it. long before i began to believe my own bullshit.

but someone who is most definitely not objective said just the other day (paraphrasing) that she was impressed with my breadth. that's when it hit me: i've leveled up.

the old old me is deader than a doornail and people who didn't know me then will probably never understand what he was about, how he gave form to the much happier new (new (new (new))) me. those who were not aware of my four torments may not understand how powerful is my fear of their return, and how powerful is the drive that that fear gives me. when i stop to think honestly about my motivations, i often find that i am acting to protect myself from my ailments of half a decade past, and to protect myself far into the future.

i've done a pretty solid job thus far.

"drive" is something that i'm all about, though it may be something obscured from those who bother to see me. in the past, and in the present, my travels have been in inner space, and rarely boring. such travels are not for everyone, and not so rewarding for all, and are not an "excuse", though these facts seem hard for some to grasp. and while i've always (or at least recently) believed in living as if tomorrow were my last day, at the same time, the idea of life stages appeals to me.

In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

that formula is a little backwards in my case, but the pattern of stages that i follow is my own, not dictated by movie or religion. my path is my own, and i'm making it up as i go.

and that brings me back to the original topic: at last i'm starting to believe my own bullshit.

i told her she was a conquest and she laughed. she didn't laugh so much when i provided some evidence: the displays of physical and mental prowess, the charm, the tease, the displays of physical and mental prowess. i didn't realize any of that until post-hoc, and truly it is a misrepresentation, but it happened thus and thus was a classic conquest.

and now that i have conquered, i plan to occupy for quite a long time.

i said above that "conquest" is a misrepresentation, because although the facts support the word, the intentions (the conscious ones, at least) did not. unconsciously, i have no doubt that i knew what i wanted, and i knew how to get it.

when i took the final, conscious, risky step, i found that what i had thought would be a torturous, complex thing could not actually have been simpler. i had conquered myself and though i had not realized it, that done, i could truly inherit the world, if only i deigned to ask.

and so what i set out to do (not) so long ago has come not only to fruition, but to ultimate fruition. emboldened by my easy (!) success with what i thought to be unattainable and what i know to be irreplaceable, surrounded by verbal mirrors, i am at last beginning to believe my own bullshit, that which i laid out in my D+D plan from (not) so long ago. i'm beginning to believe i have charisma.

we shall see whether that makes me successful, or just dangerous.

there's only so much saving that i can do.

money is potential happiness in the same way that love handles are stored energy. if the potential is not converted into the actual, it just sits around taking up space and causing stress, becoming harder and harder to metabolize.

it's one thing to save for a rainy day, but death may come tomorrow, so there must be a balance between prudent self-denial and prudent self-indulgence.

indulgence of another can also be self-indulgence, yes?

self-indulgence is not limited to toys: it extends to education, travel, acquisition of knowledge, self-improvement.

food, of course.

naturally, prudence suggests that this attitude is only viable in the presence of respectable savings.

end of philosophical-financial exposition for today ;)

i mentioned to the 'rents that i'd already proposed thrice:

a close friend didn't recognize me today, looking right at me from 15 feet away.

haircut?

silly beard?

demeanor?

i've changed, it seems.

i got some incense today. i haven't burned incense since college. the smoke is giving me flashbacks.

i feel like i'm back at mustang village in that crappy little studio cell. burning incense and drinking sam adams porter and talking on irc and downloading warez and porn and listening to the crystal method and willie nelson and eating ramen+cheese and mail-ordering folding knives and otherwise just living the phat life of a loser college student.

oh man, were those ever the days. there was a time, not long ago, when i wanted to go back to those days. no longer. i'm past that. way past.

the parents asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how serious i was.

i said minimum of 8, probably 9. pa heard 8 and not 9. pa's a character, he is.

i had to disable two smoke alarms tonight, not on account of the incense, but because my stew got a little carried away. i burned the onions and over-browned the beef. i must be out of practice, or distracted, or something.

fortunately, i suspect the char will be overpowered by the prunes.

i claim that my irresistable beef stew can turn vegetarians into meat eaters. it can raise the dead. it can give regularity to the irregular.

it's fackin good.

especially when i don't forget the habanero.

and even when i burn the onions.

holy the crap.

it gets better with every episode.

this show has unbelievably amazing writing.

when locke wiggled his toes in "walkabout" i immediately made the connection to the unoccupied chair. and the episode got better and better.

best series ever. only seen 2 episodes + pilot and already i'm blowed away.

just watched the pilot.

it rocked my fookin socks.

what's with all the waking up early and stuff?

it's getting worse each day. argh.

signed me a lease.

undergoing a bit of upheaval at the moment, but i expect to get my life together pretty soon and have a plan for the next year or so.

and then everything will change all over again.

or maybe it will change in december.

or january.

(if i'm lucky)

or may. or june.

(if i'm unlucky)

but the shit's gonna hit the fan sometime soon. well, "soon" on a cosmic scale. in any case, i need to have a plan of action for the meantime. one that includes personal growth of some sort.

i canna stagnate, that's booooooooooooring.

what if...

i'm the type of guy that falls in love with every woman he meets that smiles at him?

what if...

i stumbled upon something real this time?

i worry.

oh god do i worry.

and nothing worries me more than my love interests, because i intend to find someone to be with for the rest of my life. and if i fuck that up from day 1, i fuck it up for my entire life.

so it's important to me that i get it right.

so neither is my stupid blog.

3.5 hours on the phone.

un-fuckin-believable.

and there was so much left unsaid, for next time.

i've had a phone-based relationship before, and a relationship with a phone component. in neither case were the conversations balanced, consistently interesting, and fully enjoyable.

now they most certainly are all of that.

this thing i've got is pretty amazing, all right.

got a new badger brush.

man, is that thing gamey. washed it a lot last night but it still makes my face smell like badger.

fortunately, the smell will wear off in time. this i know.

composed in the shower.

please believe me when i tell you that you do not want to read it.

don't click here, you'll regret it.

i do not run; i fly
on wings of song and rubber i float above the concrete
above the clouds
where dreams cannot lift me

i must not forget:
endorphins for two, please

whenever i hear dj shadow's "you can't go home again" i get the feeling that maybe life will turn out alright after all.

and the song itself turns up in the strangest places...

well, mostly on my own mix cds ;)

i'm a strong believer in fair warning.

early disclosure.

open eyes.

no secrets.

i'm an open book in ways that most people are not. it's all here to see. my hopes, my fears, my deeply and shallowly held beliefs. it's probably impossible to sort through or make sense of, but it's all here.

it's better to find things out sooner rather than later, and this goes for self-discovery as well.

i like forcing the issue.

i'm a thinky kinda guy.

but i'm also a "man of action", in some ways.

i use the action to squelch the thinky. sometimes that works out well for me. sometimes it does not.

i know what it is that i want in a mate. i knew it since day one but i squelched the thinky for a while. now i have to do a slightly different thing to the thinky: i have to combat it with patience and faith. that's a new one.

i was looking, away back when, for energy, joy, extroversion, and a nice ass, all of which would be used to draw the same out of me, thus providing the both of us with the opportunity to live happily ever after, preferably together. that was my master plan. my secret and not-so-secret plan.

things have worked out, and they haven't. see, those qualities which i was relying lazily upon my mate to draw out of me rather require said mate to be... ya know... nearby. that's just not going to happen for a bit, a good bit, not so big a bit when compared to the span of my life until now, potentially a big bit when compared to the rest of my life, since who knows how long that will be? the fear of untimely death is always upon me.

better now than never, and never may very well be tomorrow, so really really better now.

i've found that when i'm alone i get thinky. really thinky. sometimes that works out for me, sometimes not.

the thought has not occurred to me, even in the thinkiest of thinky moments, that this thing is not worth my time.

that doesn't make it much easier, though. i guess that's where the faith comes in. but i've never had much faith in faith.

waiting changes all things, because time changes all things, and waiting is nothing more than allowing time to change things.

i fear that after the wait, perhaps the energy, joy, extroversion, and nice ass may fade.

but is it not equally likely that the same amount of time will bring about plenty-o-change in me, and perhaps by that time, these things will not matter as much to me (except the ass, that's not gonna change)? in time, my wish for someone to help bring these things out in me may seem silly. even now, it seems a little silly, having seen what i can pull out of myself without aid.

this has all been an exceptionally long winded way of saying the very simple: i miss her, quite a lot. i miss being a man of action, just as when i was a man of action i missed the words.

well, now i've got my words and i'd much rather have her.

and that's the point of AP. lots of words, and nothing to show for them but sore fingers.

the separation, of course, is the best possible thing that could have happened to us.

i hate admitting it, but there's no denying it.

separation is a crucible. a distillery. unimportant crap burns off and evaporates and you're left with either a clearly visible pile of molten love or nothing at all. either way, after a good bit of separation, you know whether or not you're actually in love and thus willing to make the sacrafices required to "make things work".

my problem, classically, was finding out whether i was in love, or in love with being in love. i pondered this question from day 1 (the real day 1, years ago) and can think of no better way than a physical separation to answer the question. every soldier who comes home from iraq to find himself presented with divorce papers has had this question answered for him. and while it's rough and it's awful and i wouldn't wish it on anyone, my cold, logical side admits that that is the sort of thing that's better to find out sooner rather than later: that your partner is in love with being in love, and not in love with you, and couldn't bear the loneliness that comes with overseas deployment, and found you easy enough to swap out for a closer lover.

perhaps the soldiering analogy is a poor one, on account of the fact that neither of us is faced with the worry of death or dismemberment before our next visit. still, i imagine that there is no shortage of divorce among non-combat deployed military personnel. folks who found out that it was more important for them to be with someone than with someone in particular.

i'm all about the reality checks. i like 'em. i said yesterday that sometimes i can't tell when i'm pulling the wool over my own eyes. that may not be strictly true. perhaps it's more accurate to say that i can tell, but since i can't know the future, i can't tell whether keeping the wool there is best for me.

when i say (or think) "i've been waiting to meet you all my life" how can i go on to say (or think) "but you can't expect me to wait for another 6 months to be with you"? one or the other of these must be total crap.

patience is a virtue that i have never had in abundance. small quantities, yes. abundance, certainly not.

the stress of separation will reveal many things, and I will soon enough know whether it is the abstract of a "live-near" or "live-in" mate that i'm after, or the more concrete and actual person of my recent conquest. the crucible of distance will burn away all my illusions and self-delusions about this thing i've started, and i will find whether the willing bonds of this love run all the way to my core, or whether i'm simply full of shit.

my money's on both.

some of the changes she's elicited in me, in such short time, at a distance, are, frankly, fargen amazing.

i'm impressed.

she doesn't just make me want to be a better man, she's twisted my arm and given me no choice. i am a better man now, and it's kinda cool.

the end.

i'm getting to use it more these days.

huzzar.

i used both "allayed" and "fucking" in the same blog post.

that's a mastery of the queen's tongue that few will ever manage to attain.

is to figure out what it is that one wants from life

and then get it.

life is too short to go stumbling through it without nailing down what it is that one wants and thus failing to get it.

this may actually turn out to be rather enjoyable, in an old-school, overseas, 1941 kind of way.

we'll see.

i was wondering the other night, how well does she really know me?

i mean, aside from our amazing vacation in early may, it's not like we dated. we've never really sat around and said: "so, how about you?"

then i realized that she knows me better than most. perhaps better than anybody.

she's had access to my unfiltered mind, many times. that's something that few can (or would want to) boast.

out there on the trail she was subjected to unfiltered, uncensored, unrefined, pre-blog blather. like the bloviation you find daily here, except with more "ums", "ers", spontaneous courtesy checks for ticks, and fewer revisions, grammar-checks, and rewrites. the good stuff. the sudden flashes of if not brilliance then at least insight that pop up and then vanish before they can be blogged or remembered. if this blog represents any sort of "real me", then the trail banter represents the "real real me". more spontaneous. more interesting. more adventurous. more... real.

not only was she not repelled by the real real me, evidently she was drawn to him.

whatever floats your boat, i guess, eh?

i've always had a proclivity for slyly pronouncing what i really think about things, in the most outrageous of terms, to elicit responses from my audience that reveal to me how they really feel about me (or any given topic). (a good example is the sweaty computer chair on the main page.) and not only to find out how they really feel, but to see how deeply whatever it is that draws them to me runs. it's about finding limits.

i haven't found her limit, yet, which is fascinating. i know the limits of pretty much everyone else i know, but not her, even after all this time.

the trail banter didn't flow all in one direction. i know a lot about her from the same source. and i'm learning even more every evening, and inferring more from that each day. even projecting back into the past.

i pointed out last night (somewhat to my own shame and discomfort) that whenever it was that she "knew", i also "knew" at least as early as that. i find that many of our fears about this thing are shared, and the fact that i view her fears as unwarranted suggests that perhaps my (identical or at least parallel) fears are just as unwarranted.

that's comforting.

and the cool thing is that it works in the other direction, too. those feelings on the other end of the spectrum that i find coming at me from her direction, those feelings that i view in myself both suspiciously and hopefully, you know, love -- i find my fears about the genuineness of my own feelings allayed by the fact that she's feeling them, too.

sometimes i feel things.

sometimes i can't identify what it is that i feel.

sometimes i know what i feel but don't want to acknowledge it.

sometimes i feel what i want to (or ought to) feel but not necessarily what i naturally (genuinely) feel.

and sometimes i honestly can't fucking tell which it is.

so sometimes i have to (or choose to) rely on external cues to know what i'm feeling. and since i expect (or ASSume) that she's not one to throw that word around carelessly, i feel a little more comfortable every time i hear it from her -- a little more secure in my own mind that when i said it to her i wasn't using it any more carelessly than she.

i feel like i meant it and wasn't just fooling myself. and it gets more real each time i say it.

it's nice, every once in a while, to have your reality checks not bounce.

easy: increase my gravitational pull until she's trapped in my orbit.

or will she do that to me, creating a binary system that wanders endlessly through the universe?

or maybe i've thought about this so long that i've misread the situation. that's been known to happen ;)

no, actually, sadly, it hasn't. my cutting intuition seems rarely to be wrong, as long as i'm honest.

i am a silly, old-school, romantic, quixotic, pedestalizing sentimentalist.

that's one of the things i like about me.

as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

and it never does, because i can laugh at and viciously deconstruct every silly, old-school, romantic, quixotic, pedestalizing sentimentalism that comes out of my silly, old-school, romantic, quixotic, pedestalizing sentimentalizing mind.

har de har de har.

orbits? trains? stars??

i've got to be joking.

i am and i am not.

that's my irresistable charm. oh, how i love me. mmmph-mmmmm-smoochy-smooch-mmmmm.

a world view is that set of filters, self-deceptions, justifications, and illusions which allows one to remain somewhat sane in an entirely insane world.

a world view is what enables us to continue without overwhelming guilt driving our fancy cars and drinking our fancy coffee and using our fancy A/C while not so far away people are dying of hunger and disease and have no shoes to wear.

some people's world view consists of imagining that there is no world outside their view.

some people pretend there is no suffering in the world.

some imagine that their own suffering is as great as can be found elsewhere.

i have a unique world view. i don't think i've ever laid it out except for one person. people who hang around me long enough can pick up bits and pieces of it.

i can't even say whether i've gotten a grasp on its totality, but clearly, i don't need to. as long as it's still working i can continue on as a happy, semi-functional person.

my world view, in its verbal formulation, is subject to change.

it is a funky combination of empowerment, hope, futility, responsibility, and total, nihilistic surrender, smothered in special sauce.

it is an amalgam of many different philosophies and ways of living.

and even though i'm not going to spell it out here, it's one of the things that makes me unique (even though i said only a short while ago that it's impossible to be statically "unique"). and the illusion of individuality is one of the very things that keeps me sane.

or what passes in my estimation for sane.

huzzah.

i have some gray hairs on my head.

i seemed to recall making a vow to myself that if i ever saw grey on my head, i'd get a buzz.

well i got a modified buzz last weekend and now they really show up.

then i remembered that that was *not* my vow, i had vowed that if my weight dropped beneath 200 i'd get a buzz (which, technically, it did last weekend, so the buzz was justified. but somehow i managed not to buzz it in 2004 when i weighed 185. oops).

no, what i promised myself was that if i got gray hairs i'd quit my jorb and find one that's less stressful. we'll see if that happens.

more and more of the old guard has left from my company. i'm quickly becoming one of the oldest of the old-timers. it's scary.

my legs feel as if i did lots of squats yesterday for the first time after a short layoff.

hey, that's exactly how they should feel.

ow ow ow.

chaco came around today. i haven't seen him in weeks. he was lounging around on the roof across the way when i came out on my patio to brush my teeth.

he saw me and i gestured for him to come over. he did.

chaco likes peanuts but unlike buddy, he won't really eat anything else.

maybe that's why buddy is a quite a bit chunkier than chaco.

if i find out it was the cat that bit off half of chaco's ear, it's gonna be trouble for that cat. T. R. U. B. B. L. E. trouble!!!

but this time i have months on end to enjoy my paralysis, regardless of whether there's accompanying analysis.

ye gads it sucks.

but it's too important to bullox, no?

bah.

born yesterday

no, i haven't done that
no, i haven't got any
no, i've never been there

i was born yesterday
there will be no celebration next month
it's too late to take my meds

i am in a hurry
i was never in a hurry 
but i saw vultures on the beach

i am in a hurry 
and if i move fast enough
i won't catch up with me

it works

so much lost time
so much conflict
i am not an octopus, but i need to be
i am not an encyclopedia, but i need to be
i am not a human, but i need to be

in my dreams i run uphill
awake, i chase myself uphill
what will i find at the top?
clear vision
and rest

i have everything i want
and nothing i want

everything and nothing, they and i are never apart

i am ruled from edom
my kingdom is unbalanced force
for how long can i be still?

there will be no celebration next month
but as always
there will be a mirror

i am not visible to the naked eye
but i can be glimpsed in my mirror

back in the old days i invented a way to send myself coded messages.

i thought (and still think) it's pretty clever, because that's what i always think: that i'm a pretty clever (and highly humble) kind of guy.

i shall now interpret for you, dear reader, one of the messages that i was sending. please be advised that this contains spoilers, both of The Movies in addition to My Life.

launcelot, in the forest, his sword in his side.

referring, of course, to the scene in excalibur where launcelot, in a dream, fights against himself, and, in order to remain on the path which he feels is just, wounds himself.

at the time i posted that, i felt that i was in a similar situation: fighting against myself in order to supress what i wished to do
and stick with what i felt was right. ultimately (i.e. very recently), i conceded that what i felt was "right" was actually very far from it.

max, in the bathroom, his drill in his hand. max, in the park, a smile on his face.

This one's from Pi, which, to this day, remains un-viewed by some of my favorite peoples.

(SPOILER WARNING)

At the end of the film, Max, the main character, solves his problems via cranial self-mutilation. He removes all his worries, all his doubts, all his fears and anxieties and paranoia and all his proclivities to think too much with a simple, direct, and highly effective drill to the brain. In the end it is shown that without his higher mental functions, he's a much happier guy.

I wanted to shut off the little voices that told me that while I was happy, what I was doing was wrong. I wanted (without the drilling) to be happy and content and not have the little voices of doubt constantly nagging away at me.

i didn't trust those voices back then, but it turns out they were right. i trust them quite a lot more now.

and that brings me to my point: i'm still hearing them. but they're saying very different things these days.

back then they were concentrating on my ongoing inner problems: doubt, possible (and conscious, intentional) self-deception, goals, worries about shared interests, shared values, shared outlook.

now they've shut up about all that. they're perfectly satisfied with all the inner stuff and they're focusing on the outer stuff. you know, reality. that which does not go away when you stop believing in it.

distance.

that's what they're whining about now.

and who has to give something up.

and how the giver-upper is going to feel about that in the long run.

you know, real solid, practical, hard problems. the kind that have nothing to do with doubting whether you're really in love. the kind that elicit potential solutions that suggest that perhaps you are.

but potential solutions are only potential. and problems generate fears and fears do not dissipate in the presence of separation.

neither does hope.

this has turned melancholy when it was meant to be hopeful. i'll put my good face back on and wrap things up. So, for today's Darmok's DVD (which, tragically, returns us to melancholy since it's the fisrt DVD scene that solidified in my mind) :

Pris, on the floor. Pris, thrashing.

enjoy.

i want to write a love poem. i've written one for her and orally composed another. she deserves a real one.

but my heart's not in it.

she doesn't make me want to write wistful, cheezy love poetry.

she makes me want to run around laughing and shouting, racing up hills and splashing around in the sea, celebrating how good it is to be alive. thanking fate and the universe that i met her, thanking any powers that this poor athiest boy can imagine that i gathered the courage to do what i did and create this incredible joy for me.

this incredible joy and this incredible anguish.

at one point while she was with me, during a very serious, very solemn conversation, i continued on in the tone I had found myself using and stated, quite seriously and solemnly, that i was enunciating as if i were morpheus from the matrix and wasn't that weird?

we had a good laugh in the middle of our serious, solemn conversation.

then we saw a bear-pig.

i cannot write poetry without her. i can only live it, with her.

:(

i thought about how i've been feeling since last thursday.

it hit me just this evening, while i was on the phone.

the last time i felt similar to this was my first week or three of college. my first time really away from my family. my first time when i was really alone and faced with the realization that i was now On My Own. it hit me hard and i think i may have cried myself to sleep the first night, although i may just be projecting my present girlishness back onto my manly-mansly college self.

but this is worse.

i could have been alone. i was ready to be alone. i can deal with alone better than most.

instead, i am separated. not even the easy separated where we hate each other. no, the much worse kind, the kind where i find out why there's a "mad" in "madly in love". the kind where all i want is for the days until our next encounter to speed on by but everything i do seems only to slow down time.

in college i knew the homesickness would wear off and things would get better.

i hope it never gets any easier for me to be apart from her.

no ma'am.

anguish, that's what i've got. in spades.

so many arghs, so little time.

back in the old days, the oldest of the Old Me days, the days of pointlessness and sorrow, life would drag on and on and on, indistinguished, undifferentiated, punctuated only by the occasional long-planned visit to my ancestral home and my ancestral ancestors on all the usual days: thanksgiving, xmas, maybe sometime in may.

i freed myself from that -- the mournful dependence on external punctuation -- and supplied my own queries, full stops, and exclamations. and yet, now, it seems i freed myself too well, for i find myself in the exact same situation for entirely different reasons.

my life is now one great waiting game of irony, anguish, and harrowed sanity, punctuated (in planning) every couple of weeks by the purest of bliss, the most exalted of expectations, the fruits of more hopes and dreams than i've ever hoped to dream.

i've found again my muse and her name is Hope, Loneliness, and Separation. i wish she'd go away. my first love was always writing and she'll always be my fallback but i've found someone better and i'd rather divorce my keyboard.

this punctuation is the string in stringing-me-along. this waiting game puts the ache in how-will-i-make-it. it's been less than a week and already i can't imagine how i'm going to last. i suppose i will -- i outwaited Life itself to make this connection. still, i can't take it forever.

people keep telling me "long distance relationships don't work." yeah, you think i don't know that? i don't want a phone buddy, i want someone to share my soul and my homes and my life. these are things that i must share through touch, not through radio waves.

there's nothing more lame than the melodramating whingeings of young love, and mine's about as melo and young as it gets.

ho hum.

i was reading an article about some hungry bears (jay: he loves the macaque) when i was distracted by an horrific image:

The first thing that sprang to mind was "thank god i'm not a republican, because that'd be my dating pool". out of curiosity i visited the site, which, as far as i could tell, does not contain pics of other hideous republicans, beyond the few at the bottom of the page (including the guy who will KICK YOUR ASS unless you buy one of the lame shirts).

a couple of the shirts are entertaining, but some are a bit scary, like the one that says "tree. rope. journalist. some assembly required."

yeah, nothing flushes out my kind of women than a good ole-fashioned lynching.

jfc.

it's clear to anyone who's been in love that the rational thinking process goes straight to hell during the initial onset of love.

especially in the shadow of impending, inescapable separation, rationality seems to take the back seat and hand the wheel to illusion, wishful thinking, and rash decision.

such things as moving to new states, quitting jobs, spending large amounts of money, abandoning long-plotted plans all seem like splendid ideas, as long as out-of-reach love has befuddled the long-term planning.

and yet, who is to say that this is not the best time to make decisions?

i am reminded of one of CS Lewis' Narnia books, The Silver Chair, in which the Narnian prince is held mentally captive by the evil witch. For an hour each day he is bound to the silver chair, with standing orders that anything he says is to be forcefully ignored, for this is the hour of his insanity. (SPOILER ALERT) It turns out, of course, that this is his only hour of sanity during the day, the rest of his hours being under the influence of his bewichment.

and so it may be in real life, that what seems to be sanity is insanity, and what seems to be love-blinded irrationality is my first experience with sound thinking in many years.

read some draper. got pumped. switched routines. got pumped.

gonna get big arms for the summer.

yeah, right.

several people have told me this now.

i wonder if sometimes i live my life in such a way as to make it more dramatic when blogged.

maybe.

it's Frobuary 2, YOMHC 0x10! I just turned 0x10!

Ended up at a place I'd never been before and I think it's a keeper. Down by bevmo, it's been there 20 years but I never noticed. To say that the stylist is personable would be an understatement.

I'd decided to get a "buzz" but she thankfully intuited that I had no idea what a buzz wuzz and we worked together to end up with more like what I had in mind. looks nice. i'll be going back. huzzah.

love is about saying "i'll be happy doing anything at all just as long as it's with you," and being able to trust that your lover will always come up with an "anything" that doesn't make you into a liar.

so i reinstalled the OS on my webserver and while i was doing that i figured i'd see if i could also upgrade the blogging software before i got drunk off my arse on jose cuervo reserva de familia.

the answer : no

the new MT is really nice looking but after a couple hours of struggling i said "i've got better things to do, like finishing this shot and going to bed" and so i just restored the whole #! from backups.

but i think i still might to a layout redesign because, honestly, my blog is ugly.

crikey!

as my silly little beard grows longer, i notice that it makes my face appear longer and thus thinner.

this causes me to erroniously assume that i am more fit than i actually am and can afford to lay off the exercise.

last time i shaved off the silly little beard i realized that i'd lost my chin. let's see if i can rectify my pudge without resorting to a motivational facial hair sacrafice.

from a blog that i follow:

In a minor miracle, I already sold my place (and only paid 4% in 
commission.) It was only on the market about a week and the first 
offer was what I was looking for. We move in two weeks. I intend to 
live a completely different life in denver than I do here - more on 
that later. It'll be quite an experiment. Do you ever think about how 
much of the way you live your life today is merely the result of 
inertia from the way you lived it yesterday? I hope a locational 
change will make it easier to bring conscious consideration to some 
of those aspects of life that I could address explicitly, but 
haven't - at least not for a while.

couldn't have said it better myself.

yes, i do think about how much my life today is a result of inertia. i just don't know where that inertial trajectory is leading.

here's something i wondered back in '04:

 inertia disturbed
 motion in a new direction
      away from nothing
      toward nothing
 a new beginning
      to a new end
 what lies ahead?
                  lonesome voyage?
        or a new orbit?

i lost my todo list.

whatever am i todo?

encountered two wednesdays ago in sunol. things might have gone quite differently this week had i not noticed him before he noticed us. looked to be about 2-2.5 feet long.

joy

well son, the funny thing about regret is: it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done.

all of life is transition.

all that will be done, has been done. there is nothing new under the sun. no new people, no new ideas, no new understanding.

if we are to imagine ourselves unique, we must look to our transitions to find novelty.

there is nothing new or interesting about pre-haircut me and there is nothing new or interesting about post-haircut me. it is the transition between the two people that is interesting. it is the path that i took to get from pre- to post-haircut me that is novel.

i may have said all this before.

there are many frigthening things in this life, and near the top of the list of frightening things is the notion that you (and me) are not unique. not special. not interesting in any way at all when viewed amongst the mass of humatity, living and dead. any language used to describe aspects of one person may be used to describe any number of other people. i have short hair, a silly beard, i roast coffee, ignore my guitar, program for a living, and lift weights. sounds like a unique combination. it isn't. i don't personally know anyone else who fits this description, but i have no doubt we could find several were we to try enough.

and yet, i doubt that we could find another person who, finding themselves in an identical life-state to me, arrived at their present condition via the same route that i arrived at mine. in other words, someone who experienced the same transitions. there are many people who have walked a mile in my shoes, but we've all walked that mile in different deserts.

and so, when our own obscure, repetative insignificance threatens to overwhelm us, we need only recall that while our state may not be new under the sun, our path has only our own prints upon it.