August 2009 Archives

Goodbye, summer. You sucked, by and large.

You presented very little in the way of good weather or vacations (haven't seen one of those since 2005). There was no grand summer romance. I was not filled with joy and mischief. I didn't lose weight. Quite the opposite in fact.

You rained and stormed and made me ill for the entire first month of you.

You sent me what I asked for, a playmate who'd want nothing more, and I wasn't at all sure, once I had it, that it was enough. I'm still not sure. I think it is what I want, but I want him to want me more often than he does.

You gave me some work when I desperately needed it, and I do appreciate that part.

But you didn't really feel like summer at all. I kept waiting and waiting for you to start, in earnest, and all you offered was a burst of hot weather and humidity, like a pressure cooker. And then rain. And now it's September, and I have knitted the rim of a little wool hat. I've an inch of ribbing already. And that means you're done. Gone.

Sure, I may have one last day to ride to the beach with one or the other boy (preferably the older one; he's more handsome, and I've never seen him in beach clothes). I may wear my tie-dyes a few more weeks.

I might want to smell like Delirium a ways into fall, and I might cut off a few more pairs of jeans - but they'll really be for the cold weather to come. It's going to rain again, and this time it'll be cold, and it'll be harder to leave the house. It'll snow, and I'll have to figure out how to seal these windows up. I'll think about having a friend over to bake bread, but it won't happen. He'll make jokes about it; bread will be an innuendo for the rising of other passions. And that won't happen either.

The leaves will fall and I'll wish I had an apple tree.

What is it about the end of summer that just fills me with longing? I feel the same way about Sunday nights, which makes a tail-of-summer Sunday night a double whammy.

It was a slightly odd weekend. Not bad, but full of unacted-upon impulses and chance meetings. It left me feeling a little gnawing emptiness, like hunger - nothing to get excited about, but discomfiting.

I wonder, sometimes, whether the end of life will feel like that - like a meal that wasn't quite right. One enjoyed the things one ate, but there was surely something missing - a magical lemon sorbet that never appeared.

I had a friend whose mother died very young, and I remember her talking about the tragedy of it, not just of her dying, but of all the things left unfinished in that early departure. Of her never having been sufficiently loved.

That's a fear that drives a lot of us, I think. That we won't find the "loves of our lives" before we die, and then, it is supposed, our years here will have been in vain. I am not sure I believe it's got that kind of importance.

Oh, it's not that I don't believe in the existence of love; I've experienced it several times, in several different ways, each of them interesting and imperfect and not destined to last.

I guess that's okay.

You can say this is terrible, cynical, depressing, or whathaveyou, but I don't necessarily think it's all that important to be in love in a way that lasts forever and takes you through to the edge of the grave.

I think love in the wider sense teaches us things and helps our lives feel substantial and worthy. But romantic love? I dunno. There are so many different kinds, after all.

There is the kind that seems to grow right out of one's body, as if it were a tree with roots in our groin. There is the kind that suggests an electrical spark jumping the gap between two minds, so that you needn't always voice the thought to have it heard. There is the kind that makes one aware of the texture of one's heart, as a soft, yielding, springy presence in one's chest. Like those very expensive mattresses that take on an imprint of the flesh pressing into them and retain it for a time.

They're all compelling. But as the center of one's life? One's whole purpose for being here? I don't buy it.

My own purpose(s) for being here (and I begin to think they are plural) are shifting, shadowy. They change and mutate and morph. They are magical creatures whom I never quite catch. I find that it's best not to look for them directly, and best not to chase. I can sense their presence, and I can make them welcome in my home, and that's about all. Like all wild creatures, they're to be respected, not tamed.

So here's what you do when it's so hot out that your brain turns to a rancid sort of pudding:

a) Two showers, every day. The second one with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Castile Soap.
b) Water, Gatorade, lemonade, iced tea, aloe vera drink. If you can find it, green coconut water, so I'm told.
c) Carry an extra T-shirt, pair of underwear, socks.
d) Mooch air conditioning from cafes, shops, restaurants, etc.
e) Greet friends with kisses on the cheek, not hugs.
f) Ice cream. Lots of ice cream.
g) Salty and/or spicy food. But be careful, because much of the time food is going to make you feel a bit ill afterwards.
h) Douse head and face with cold water in every bathroom you come to.
g) Buy new bike helmet, one of those higher-end ones with big air vents.
h) Dispense with bike shorts - too heavy for a second layer.
i) Exception to h) = wear short dresses whenever possible, in which case one must wear bike shorts underneath because one is not a tart.
j) Dispense with raingear. If it rains, one will be too busy praising the gods to worry about getting wet. And anyway, how much wetter would one get from being rained on than from sweating through every garment one has on?
k) Cold coffee.
l) The cat would like a second water dish. Because sometimes the kitchen is too far.
m) Shave your legs. That applies to boys, too. Bare skin radiates heat better.
n) Can I please have another haircut? Pleeeeeassse?
o) Open freezer. Insert face.
p) Nakedness is next to godliness.
q) Always carry a bandana. For the dabbing. And the covering of head in sun.
r) Surround self with the prettiest boys you can find. (Okay, that's just my general rule.)
s) Dream a little dream of October.

A woman I'd just met started to tell me my fortune the other day, or rather, to describe my inclinations.

Indulgent, she said. Check.

Dreamy. Oh yes.

She was a striking woman. Long dark hair, some kind of Middle Eastern heritage, but she was from Sweden.

I was drinking wine, which I seldom do anymore (and for which I paid dearly the following day). We were sitting on large cushions on the floor at a party.

It was a strange party.

All the women there were exquisitely beautiful. There were only four men, and two of them were a couple. Around them flitted tall, long-legged international supermodels.

Okay, they weren't actual supermodels; they just looked that way. They were restaurateurs, writers, photojournalists. My friends are very interesting, and often quite decorative (or decorated), but they don't look like this crowd.

I teased the host about having a hobby of collecting beautiful people, and he gallantly gestured to me, as if to say, yes darling, that's why you're here. It took two tries before I realized what he meant.

Over the weekend I bartered my playmate into sitting for me and the Nikon, but it took some doing. He dislikes having his picture taken. I often think taking photos requires the same skills as taming wild animals. You have to distract the subject with something - a little soothing conversation, a little soft noise, so they're looking elsewhere, so they forget you're there with a big black lens.

The photos came out beautiful, even for me. I sent him some, and he wouldn't even look.

Sometimes it takes someone else to show us to ourselves.

I think we all have an image of ourselves, or maybe several of them, and having to see the external face and body captured on film or video is unsettling.

It makes us realize that our self-image is of the internal us. And that while we may occasionally meet others who can recognize our Selves shining out of our eyes, or being transmitted in the way we move, laugh, or dance, that's not what is visible most of the time to most of the people we come into contact with.

That's disturbing, and so we hide from it.

I liked that woman at the party. She wasn't the person with whom I had the easiest, most smoothly moving conversation, but she was my favorite of the people I met that night. It was something about her eyes, and her warm energy.

And I'll tell you this - I have fallen in love at first sight a few times. In each case, it wasn't romantic love. It was just - I met a person and instantly felt who they were, could see it radiating toward me.

Sometimes I wonder whether people get that from me, too.

The vampire says to the werewolf: "Maybe we need a bit of risky."

The werewolf says to the vamp: "We need to set some ground rules about guests. Like don't kill them."

Snicker.

So. In no particular order:

I cooked some chickpeas. I wore my Oscar T-shirt and, walking down the street, a guy stops me and in friendly manner requests a high-five because I am "Rockin' the Grouch."

I rode into town and back at approximately a million miles an hour. I helped a friend hang some blinds and picked up some T-shirts I'd tie-dyed with her a few days ago. I got back on the bike and raced over to the restaurant where I was meeting this cute boy. Sigh. Cute boy.

Cute boy and I ate food and then cupcakes in rapid succession and then hopped on our bikes. He said I could come stay if I wanted, though he'd just moved that day and his apt was a mess. I declined. Not because I didn't want him, but because I was all sweaty, and I feel that a person's first night in a new apt should be spent solo. For the human-apartment bonding. I didn't explain my reasoning, I just called "good night" as I turned left, away from him.

Then of course I regretted it, because, you know - cute boy.

PS. Those lines of dialogue come from Being Human, which is effing brilliant, like so much of what's on BBC America.

My nominees for best and worst commercials currently airing:

Worst: All ads for "male enhancement" products. Also: eHarmony.

Best: The new ad for Pedigree dog food, which shows a Chihuahua telling viewers that his food makes him not only a good pooper, but an optimum pooper.

Just thought I'd throw those out there.

Well, my weekend sucked.

Including but not limited to watching a friend get doored by a taxi and then treated abominably by the cops he called to take the accident report, having to call the cops myself - thrice - because of truly outrageous noise levels (hint: stadium-sized speaker stacks belong in a stadium), losing all possible sleep in the universe, and having my favorite cell phone of all time destroyed in a cat-related water accident.

I know. You wish you were me, don't you?

I have been known on occasion to howl at the moon. - Crash Davis.

We are mysteries to ourselves, much of the time. This is what I think. Lately, I think it, in one form or another, with varying degrees of awareness, almost daily.

Sometimes we don't find out what is going on until, watching someone else's story, a thrumming goes off somewhere in us - a reverberation of the chest bones.

It's hot in here. I'm restless as a lizard who's stayed too long on the rock.

I notice that the cat sleeps with all four feet together, as if to be always ready to run. I wonder if I should learn to do that.

A lot of characters in movies seem to cut themselves off from risk, and then to be taught that that's wrong. Watching, I usually think I'd make a more interesting character if I were the kind who held it all back and had to be opened up like that.

And then I find how little I allow myself to play at life. How foreign it is to simply do what I want to do, in the moment.

I'm watching a horrendously expurgated - nay, butchered - version of Bull Durham on TV, and it's only just occurred to me that Annie has some things in common with me. In a way I'd never expected she would. Not because the movie has altered over time, but because I have.

Reading a book on story forms and classic archetypes from myth, I came upon a paragraph that stopped me in the proverbial tracks.

In the realm of love, the Mentor's function may be to initiate us into the mysteries of love or sex. In India they speak of the shakti - a sexual initiator, a partner who helps you experience the power of sex as a vehicle of higher consciousness. (from The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers)

Sigh. Damn, I guess that's me. At least in this particular story.
I kind of love the idea; I just hadn't thought of it that way. Yet.

*with apologies to the incomparable Walt.

Hey, I warned you. In the absence of pocketcam, you get what I got, which is a whole lotta Cat.

Well, more properly it is a lot of views of one smallish cat.

Maybe if she weren't so photogenic. Maybe if anyone else would let me take photographs of their faces.

Not that I'd post pics of Boys here. That would be ill-advised.

For one, I'd have to disclose to them the existence of this blog, and then there would go my pressure valve for when they are driving me apeshit batty.

For another, well, I don't like to share my toys, ya know?

Anyway. All of this is by-the-by. Kitwich is pretty, and even though she generally leaps for cover when I point the Nikon at her, occasionally I do capture some hilarious expressions on her face, and she can't verbalize to me her dislike of being Famous, so here she is, looking sarcastic, as she often does when she's sleepy.

I was telling a friend of mine about how Boy Number Two (who really needs a new designation, since he's now my primary playmate) had accidentally left things at my place a couple of times, and she was telling me it was the modern male's equivalent of marking territory, and then I told her that I'd done the same thing at his place.

And then I thought about it.

When I was in college (way back in the dark ages; I used to ride my pet brontosaur to school), the popular wisdom among us inexperienced college folk held that if a boy or girl left behind an item of clothing or a toothbrush or something at your house, it meant they were into you.

When I realized that the boy and I had begun to do that, I immediately thought of that interpretation and then shrugged it off as silly. I mean, really, who wants to read too much into a toothbrush?

But the curious thing is, the idea of there being some kind of interesting psychological underpinning seems to hold water. Neither of us did that for the first couple of months that we were playing with each other. (Yes, by playing I mean having sex.) The day I left something at his house, I'd been very careful to locate (or so I thought) all my random items. And I got home, all proud that my incriminating undies were safely ensconced in my bike bag, and thought, Oh good. I got everything.

And then he texted me. Oops. The last three times we've spent the night together, the visiting party has left something behind.

So here's what I think.

I don't think it means anything Big. I think it's part and parcel of our weird, non-definable connection to each other. We clearly want to be around each other. For various, private, probably differing reasons, we don't want to be boyfriend/girlfriend. But there is something there that is hard to explain. It's primarily physical, but not in the way that I was with the famous Blonde.

{Note: Longtime readers may remember the Blonde, but more recent recruits can get enough of an image from his nom de plume: The Junk. He acquired that name while I was trying to give him up, and one of my friends kept teasing me about what a hard time I was having with it. "Are you off the Junk yet?" "Yes. I'm off the Junk. Well, nearly." "You are so totally still on the Junk. I bet you're in his apartment right now." "Yeah. I am."}

Anyway.

The Blonde used to drive me but absolutely up a wall, in a good way (mostly). This doesn't quite have the same 50-caliber lust factor, but there is certainly something going on that I don't want to give up. And I think (at least for the moment) that's okay. It's messy. Oh boy is it messy. But there is something there that makes us both want to leave little marks of ourselves behind. Footprints in the sand.

I eat and I eat and I eat, and then in half an hour I am hungry again, and the cat comes over to say hello and perch at my shoulder.

Thankfully she is not perching on my shoulder, as it is hot(ish) and she is furry.

I got this hungry by dint of sprinting 15 miles this morning, then another 8 or so, then the last 7 or so home. So. Tired.

So tired that I had to stop at every light to drape my upper body over the handlebars. So tired that even my friend (boy) said I looked tired, and usually he says something a little nicer, like that I look about 12 in my Oscar T-shirt.

He looked adorable, by the way. In case anybody is asking.

I had a funny day. I did so much riding, and then a bit of hanging out with friends who were equally tired (nobody slept last night, it seems), so that we were a roving yawnfest with very interesting bicycles. It was fun.

I realized today that the odd, confusing situation I am in (with regard to boys) happens to be exactly what I need. It reflects my emotional weather forecast, which is rather unsettled and not quite this thing or the other. It's not necessarily comfortable, but it's certainly interesting. And it's fun. Sometimes it's a lot of fun.

It's strange that I needed to give myself permission to not know what I want. And once I did that, I felt better. Why we think we always have to have so much taped down and clear, I don't know.

Sometimes life is just a muddle, and sometimes that's fine. It's like having your good angel and your devilish angel having a party above both shoulders. Occasionally you get kicked in the head (by accident), but the music they make is really entertaining.

PS. I found the pocketcam I want, but it's twice what I was expecting to spend, so I am going to sit on that for a while and ponder.

PS2. Oh my lord. How can it be possible? I am starving again.