Raspberry Cream And Fear

I've spent my whole adult life looking for a partner.

This isn't to say that I've been obsessed with it, or that I've completely neglected myself and what I wanted. I moved when I needed to move and I did and saw what I needed to do and see when I needed to. I've lived my life. It's always been there in the back of my mind though. I may be going to the gym because I like it, but I know part of me wants to look better to increase my changes of attracting someone. Let's face it, one of the main reasons I became interested in trying yoga was that I knew there'd be women there. Sometimes it seems that it permeates nearly everything I do. Even now, while I'm writing this, I'm thinking about what woman might read it and reach out across the ethers to find me, and this, I think is part of the problem.

When I was in high school, I was so obsessed with working hard to get into a good college that I never took the time to think about what's next. When I found myself attending one, it took several semesters to get my bearings and figure out what to work towards next... A job? Meeting people? Running track? Truth be told, over 14 years later and I still haven't figured it out.

I think it's the same with women. At first, I was a serial monogamist. I thought I'd be so happy to get a gilrfriend that I'd dedicate my very being to making sure I didn't lose her. Well I was and I did and I lost her anyway and thank god for that. Seems with all that hoping and wishing I'd forgotten to realize that it's important that your girlfriend be nice to you. Lesson one. Then came the lesson that it was actually possible that *two* women could both be interested in being my girlfriend at the same time, but there was only room for one. Moral consequences and romantic possibilities danced in my head furiously until it near exploded. Took me a few tries to get that one behind me.

Sooner or later, I figured out that women, much like me, much like the rest of us, are looking to be with someone too. They aren't mysterious creatures who may deign to give you their affections if you're lucky and abide by their every whim. They are actually people with their own sets of wants and needs and, if you've guts enough to go out and talk to them, if you don't hide yourself at home at all times, if you can be reasonably well mannered and nice, stumbling upon one who might actually like you isn't impossible, but only very difficult. So I started to make the effort to get out there and see what I could find.

Much like college, however, I haven't given much thought to what to do next. Marriage? Family? Kids? Sure, but how do I get there? How do I go from first date, to third, to five weeks to three months to ten years? Am I failing because I'm training to be always wanting, waiting, looking? Am I not trying hard enough or trying too hard with the wrong people? I hear my friends wonder about themselves in the same way-- male and female alike-- so I know I'm not the only one, but I feel like with me it's different, that I'm somehow more intrinsically to blame for my problems then they are for theirs.

More Specifically

Some nights you really want to sleep. Some nights, you just don't. It's not always so much to do with what your day was like, it's just the way it is. Maybe you're just not tired, but then maybe you are and you just don't want to give in. Could be that you've got too much to do, or that you don't feel like doing anything and sleep is simply one more thing you don't want to do. Maybe there's a reason for this-- premonitions of haunting dreams you'll not remember forcing you to rail against the onslaught of heavy lids-- damned if you know. You don't want to sleep.

And you don't have to.

You've got responsibilities in the morning, that's for sure. The clock creeps forward, or leaps in fits and starts, or races faster and faster as the hour grows later. You're just not done being awake, and it doesn't matter. Fill that time however you must until you're satisfied or too tired to care any longer. That's how it goes-- tomorrow be damned, I'm not done with tonight.

The State of My Union

I've got a rhinovirus. So I've got that going on.

Friday I took off from work. Saturday I did the volunteer thing. I felt better, so I did my workout after and had pizza and that beer I've been craving all weekend.

Sunday I woke up feeling like hammered shit.

I went to brunch anyway, and an impromptu bike ride to the farmer's market on a borrowed $2000 bike that was like riding on air (no, I didn't steal it). The sun obligingly came out just long enough for me to do that, but then gave way to rain for my afternoon with my friend at Seaworld. "Look Ma! A Dolphin show!". It's no New England Aquarium, I'll tell you that much.

The spaces in between were spent home alone, puttering around, with no one to whom I could unveil my stimulus package, thinking up stories of love and madness I could not bring myself to write down.

And Then Tonight

I walked home from dinner, feeling strained and congested from yet another cold, and looked up above my apartment to the near-full moon hovering amidst a set of clouds, surrounded by an aura of pale, yellow light. The sky was deep blue rather than the pale, grey of darker nights and the clouds stood white against it in the moonlight. They stocked the air so evenly and well that they seemed to hang still, and made the moon appear to be the object streaming by.

Or So I Thought

I was going to write that last post last night and then my friend called and I changed my mind. I thought I'd back fill it in for perspective.

She called and told me that her ex, who won't stop calling and messaging her, who wouldn't give her enough when she was with him and now won't leave her alone when she's been brave enough to be not, came to her house, from the city one hundred miles away where he lives, and tried his key in the door.

Luckily she had changed the locks.

The door rattled a few times when she was on the phone, but when she checked the peephole, no one was there. Later, it rattled a few times more.

She called me, understandably upset, and I remembered what that was like. I remembered feeling small and scared and vulnerable and, above all, stupid for feeling that way, not knowing why I needed to hide exactly, but knowing simply that I did.

Sometimes you see, you want that asteroid to hit. Sometimes, young though you may be, you're tired to your bones and you just want everything to stop.

Perspective is only useful for those who have the luxury of standing on the other side.

No Nervous Wrecks

... going down.

At any given time, I have been informed, an asteroid with a diameter of roughly 100 meters could enter the Earth's atmosphere, superheating the air in front of it, instantaneously vaporizing everything within 120 miles of it's crash zone. Upon impact the asteroid itself would vaporize, but the impact force would create a 50 mile wide and 20 mile deep crate-- one to make the Grand Canyon look like a joke-- and blow a wall of earth, rocks and metal hundreds of yards into the air that would then ripple outward like the waves caused by a pebble in a pond, destroying everything in it's path for hundreds of miles in every direction. When this was over, the cloud of gas and ash and hot iron ore that would blanked the hemisphere would blot out the sun for months, if not years, making life for survivors very difficult indeed.

Do you know how much warning we would get if such an asteroid were to come our way? One second. We would see it when it hit our atmosphere and that would be that.

So why argue? Why be stressed out? Why waste time with bad feelings ever? Tomorrow, the net day, the next second you could be gone.

That's what I say.

This Is England

Or, perhaps, Venice.

I'm staying at Anthony's again. He's buying a new place and will soon be moving out of the house in Venice Beach, an idea that I somehow feel fills me with more sadness than it does him. That's probably bullshit, but I've always been the more likely one to wax sentimental.

Some People Want Like A Candle Flame...

...I want like a forest fire.

All told, life has been pretty good. I've got an office at work, which may sound petty, and not what you're used to hearing from someone more wont to write from his pathos than from his ambition, but there it is. Two-and-a-half years of a light-less cubicle and now I've an office with a window. Productivity is up. I'm happy to go into work, and since I spend so much god damned time there, this is good.

Maybe I 'haint got no lady no more, and maybe that's a bit of a downer, but what of it? I had a weekend so full of fun and happiness that I could hardly believe it was over. I woke Monday morning and thought maybe it's still Sunday. Maybe I get to sleep in. That may not sound so great, but it's a sign of a good weekend, I'll tell you what.

So what if I still seem to be looking for someone? So what if I want the answers? Why is that so important to me, those answers? What, if not who am I looking for? Why do I stay in the car and recline the seat after I've arrived home and play the same song over and over, wondering if it's OK to just crawl into the back and sleep there? Why do I walk to my car in the middle of a dinner with friends to listen to that one, slow, sad song just one more time? And is *that* normal? I think not.

'fuck's wrong with me? I'll tell you what: precisely nothing much and, perhaps, that has me just a bit on edge.