October 2010 Archives

It sure would be easier if I weren't the sort of person who is haunted by things.

It occurred to me last night that the last time I had to get over somebody, I didn't have to be in the same state, much less the same small section of town. We never ran into each other accidentally, we didn't have to put on a show of niceness, and, oh, come to think of it, he didn't deliberately say something cruel to me in public.

There are various problems with the current situation, some to do with the laws of physics, many to do with the equally perilous laws of Murphy, not a few to do with the fact that this guy spent so much time in my apartment.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's no place in this apartment we didn't have sex. Except maybe the ceiling - though I'm sure we would have managed that eventually.

It's not so easy to put someone out of your mind when the ghost of their sexy naked presence is haunting your house.

And it becomes a whole lot less easy when you can't even think of them fondly anymore. I'm not used to that. With a few notable exceptions, I like my ex-lovers, and after the adjustment period I tend to be glad I knew them (in the biblical sense).

In this case, the whole thing's been poisoned, and I'm not sure how to deal with that, internally or externally. Well, I guess externally I'm hoping to simply avoid ever seeing him again (good luck with that; we live all of 3 miles apart). Internally it's a disaster. It's like a failed piece of origami - every way I turn it, it just looks wrong. I can't see a way through it, and - perhaps because I am no longer 14 - I am not used to this sort of petty behavior. I just don't know how to cope with it.

I'm dumbfounded, in much the same way that I get dumbfounded by the behavior of drivers in this city. "What? You really want to kill me? Just because I'm on a bicycle, on the same road as you? I don't get it."

Yeah, I haven't been writing. I haven't been cleaning house. I haven't been playing with the kitten. I haven't been sending people things they're waiting for. I haven't followed up on six important things. I haven't followed up on six unimportant things.

I haven't been answering my phone.

I haven't been saying yes to anyone.

What I have been doing is riding my bike to lonely destinations and standing there, ill at ease, watching the sky change.

I've put hats on my head when it got cold, I've taken layers off when it got too warm. I've been to the grocery store (which was quite pleasant - the people who work there are often magically nice to me).

I bought ingredients for this soup I keep seeing (or smelling) in my head. It's the intersection of sweet and fiery. (Yes, I tweeted that already, but it bears repeating, because I think it's the ultimate personal ad for me. If I really had guts, in fact, I'd delete every word of my stupid Internet dating profile and replace it with that one phrase.)

Anyway. I will post a picture of the soup (maybe), and if it's good maybe I'll even tell you how to make it. Though if it's really good, it'll almost certainly be because I've made it half-consciously and it'll therefore be unrepeatable.

Anyway. Again.

I'm hurt and I'm angry and I want to build myself a marshmallow igloo to live in.

Instead, I gotta live here. I got invited to three parties yesterday, and I went to the one I'd been invited to first, and it was not as much fun as I'd hoped. I couldn't help but wonder if the other two were better. One of them, at least, might've held the possibility of getting fresh with a young boy (that was who invited me).

On the other hand, marshmallow, ya know?

I'm probably not ready to make myself vulnerable in any way, not even enough to have some well-deserved and really quite needed boy-type-fun.

"Jean-Luc, blow up the damned ship!" - this I hear from the other room. (Not actually a whole other room, but it's essential to small-apartment living to think of your various subspaces as rooms.)

Yeah, Jean-Luc, blow up the ship.

I went to the beach this weekend and discovered something. I like my own company. Sometimes I like it a lot better than the company of other people.

There was a good-looking guy on the beach who really wanted to talk to me, and I put up with it for a few minutes then devoutly wished he would leave. I asked him to leave. He didn't get it at first. Eventually he did, but by then it was getting too dark to stay.

Not that I mind dark beaches, but this one is isolated, and there's a certain line that I walk with regard to personal safety. To stay longer would have been over the line.

Anyway.

I rode home solitary and quite gleeful in the pitchdark. Boywich bought me a really fabulous light not long ago, and I hadn't tried it out yet, and it is wonderful. I felt safe and self-contained and happy.

Then I met up with some friends a few hours later and...again wished I were alone.

They were being irritating, making a big fuss over something that was no fuss at all. There was a brief errand that needed doing, and not one of them was willing to get off his ass and do it, so I did it. Maybe it's just that I like being in motion, but I don't quite understand that sort of lethargy. I have trouble getting out of bed (because it's warm), and I have trouble settling down to work (I'm avoiding it now), but I don't have any trouble riding a bicycle. If I could, I would gladly wake up, eat, and ride the rest of the day, every day of the week. I wish someone would offer me money to do just this.

On a day that includes a lot of miles, my legs may get sore, but I invariably feel better at the end of it than at the beginning, and I'm nearly always raring for more the next day. I've said it before and I'll say it again - born bicycle tourer.

I don't know what it means that I didn't enjoy anyone's company except mine yesterday. Maybe it means nothing. I had a perfectly good day, except for the parts where I was with other people. I wasn't cranky. I felt good and complete. I made all the lights I never make, and when I got to the beach my favorite birds were out in force - tiny scurrying sandpipers. I just wanted to watch them and play with them and talk to them.

Somebody I barely know told me I looked unhealthy yesterday, which, well let's just say it's not something that's often said of me. I can only suppose my ennui was showing. My ennui and my five hours of sleep and my thirty miles on a track bike and a peanut butter sandwich.

I ate and went home and ate some more, and it hailed like the end of the world was nigh.

I pulled the basil out of the window and shut the latter and watched as the streets filled first with debris and then with a river of soapy-looking water. The cat hid under the bed. I was fascinated.

This is the second time in recent weeks that we've had a freakish and dangerous weather incident that came on suddenly, and both times I had been about to set out someplace on foot and took a look at the sky and thought the better of it.

My kung fu is strong, though saying that will probably bring on a hurricane, which I will be out on the bike for.

I put myself to bed early last night, because I was sad and done with being awake. When I woke up, I was dreaming about punching somebody in the face. I often wake to fighting dreams, which tells you how I feel about morning - or the human race, I can never decide which.

There is a deep mess in me these days, and I am fighting with it, and maybe there are outward signs of that. It used to be that nothing ever showed on the outside; I was just built smooth somehow. That isn't true anymore. That comment about how I looked came when I was sitting, resting, in an unguarded moment. What I really think is that I looked unhappy. Because I am.

I spend a lot of time hiding it in daily life, but I won't hide it here. It's not the same as being depressed, apparently, because I am still enjoying the little details of being alive - when I walked into the kitchen this morning, I'd forgotten I bought apples at the farmers' market yesterday, and I was so pleased to see them.

They're what I think of as real apples. All heirloom: Russets and Keepsake and Cox's Pippin. The russets are the ugliest, and my favorite. They have this scratchy-gold sort of bloom on them, and then inside they are intense and tart and taste like nothing else on earth. Oh lordy, they are me. No wonder I love them so.

PS. Here are some pictures from Sunday, when it wasn't hailing at all.

More about fall.

This is, for me, the most evocative time of year. It sends me so easily into other times and places, some of them the ones where I felt I fit best, even if only for a moment or two.

I get on my bike and I ride without much idea of where I'm going - and it hardly matters, since where I'm really going is into my imagination, and the pedaling is just the means of getting there.

I think of leaves, and apples, and the smell of hay, and fires lit outdoors, and people singing. It sounds like something out of a movie, but it really was my life at times. I don't know why I've never been able to bring it back, but I haven't. And so I think about taking a long - a very long - bicycle tour, and living in a tent for a while, and seeing different land and skies every day.

It would be best to do that with a companion - preferably one who's a better bicycle mechanic than I am. But I also think I should take some classes, so that I don't have to wait forever to take this trip.

It occurred to me the other day that I do a lot of things by myself simply because I don't want to spend my whole life on the threshold. I think sometimes that's the reason people get married - because they feel they need permission. They feel they need a partner to buy a piece of land, and to put holes in the walls of a house. They need a partner to feel they can exist, that they have a right to make roots in the soil.

I don't know if I'm capable of roots. I've never quite felt I belonged anywhere, or to anyone. I was barely able to accept the responsibility of adopting a cat, and I sometimes worry about her. What do I do when I want to leave, on the bicycle, loaded down with food and shelter and nothing very much else?

I know that Boywich would look after her for me if I asked him to. He lives far away. It would be a big logistical nightmare.

I sometimes wish she were a dog. A dog could happily come with me. Wow, twice I tried to write "dog" and it came out "god." Twice. A god could happily come with me.

Interesting.

I rode a lot today, and it felt great. The weather is cold, and it finally cleared up enough that I don't have to wear raingear, or even bring it. My feet were cold, and I had to wear wool around my neck. I realize I love this time of year, and not just because it's nearly that brief fleeting time in fall when everything seems crystalline and ideal. We haven't even had that kind of weather yet, really. It's been cold and cloudy instead.

But I love winter riding, I really do. Sure, the layers make it a little fussy when I have to pee, and it takes longer to get out of the house.

But I like the slower pace of riding in cold weather. It's never about sprinting, when it's cold or snowy out.

It's just about getting there, and enjoying the ride. I feel calmer, and less hurried. I feel glad to be outdoors, and I check every face that goes by to see if it's anyone I know. It often is. There aren't that many people who ride year-round, even though the winters here aren't all that severe, usually.

I like the kind of miles that are just about moving along, getting where I'm going, and looking at what's going by. I think I'm a born bicycle tourer, though I've yet to try it. I like spending time with my bike, in the same way that I like the company of my teddy bear, and my cat - quiet companions who suit me.

And then, just when I was getting really lonely doing my solitary ride, I ran into some friends, and we rode together for a bit. And I felt...complete. Like there was nowhere else I'd rather be. It didn't last long; it got cold, and we all parted ways, and I went home and cooked second dinner and ate it. And now I'm thinking about whether to bake oatmeal cookies. I don't know. I have knitting to do. I'll make some tea and see where that leads.

I was telling a friend last night that I could make a list of a thousand things I like about fall. Maybe I'll just give you a few each day.

1) & 2) The smell of leaves as they've fallen to the ground, and the way they twirl on the way down.
3) The crunch of acorns under the tires.
4) Squirrels chomping on nuts with their little hands.

I was talking to a friend tonight, and he was in the middle of writing a blog post about why he continues to blog. And he was finding it tough going. Which, I pointed out, was ironic.

I know that here I ebb and flow, as do most bloggers who've been at it for a while.

Side note: If you're new here, you may not know that I started this here thing in about 2003, and that there was a technical glitch that resulted in several years' worth of posts being - not quite lost, but only recoverable by hand (and if you don't think that's ironic, for an online medium, well, I can't teach you anything about irony).

Anyway. Ebb, flow, etc. Yes.

The thing about a blog that's about nothing but whatever is on my mind at the moment, is that there's a certain amount of room for ebb and flow. I haven't promised you a rose garden, so when I start growing cherry trees or bugger off to Firenze for six weeks without telling anyone except the gelato salesmen (warning! stock up on stracciatella!), well, it's basically okay.

Nobody's terribly disappointed; they just figure I'm off having a nap or something. And eventually I come back and write a little list of things that hangs together pretty much like a homemade Halloween costume. It resembles an idea, but not the original one I had.

My friend's blog, on the other hand, has a specific purpose, and as such, he ain't always in the mood to write about that purpose, so sometimes it's hard to keep going. If it were a person, it'd be that little sweaty kid on the couch who's suffering from ennui and pretending it's a fever so he can get out of school.

My blog is more of a delinquent who knows damn well he's too smart for school and thus feels no compunction about cutting class anytime he damn well pleases.

Anyway. Stracciatella notwithstanding, here we are. I never promised you a rose garden, and you ain't getting one.

What I can give you is: yes, of course, a list. Well, no maybe not. Maybe just some random impressions in a freeform fashion.

It is cold out - 54F/12C.
The cars passing by sound like rushing water.
I'm riding over a lot of acorns these days.
I painted my toenails a couple of days ago when I was bored and not especially sober. I hadn't picked out the color (it was bought for me by a friend) and didn't think I'd like it (dark-blood red), but I'm starting to think it looks kind of good on me. My feet are very pale, and it looks if a messy vampire had been licking my toes.
I don't have a date, and I don't have a date, and I don't have a date. I had two last week, and I suddenly get this feeling there's going to be a lull. As much as I dislike that, on one level, on another I wonder if I might want it that way. I am feeling like one of those creatures who curls up when touched, an isopod.
I'm not sure I want anybody touching my soft underbelly again for a while.
Have you noticed that this is in fact a list of sorts? Maybe I should go back and number them.
Nah.
It gets so late so quickly, do you ever notice that?
I'm knitting. But what I really want to be doing is climbing trees.