Who are you and how did you find me!?
Interrobang
Huh?
I have spies everywhere:
Spies drink martinis, and the occasional g&t:
We’re watching you.
Category: personal
Categories
We rain devils play
Yesterday was the first day of rain we’ve had in some time. If you’re familiar with the Pacific Northwest, then you know how odd that is. Sure, we have nice summers, but it seems like it’s been dry as a bone around here for a solid month, and that just isn’t how we rain devils play out here.
The best thing about rain is the morning after, and how many things can you really say that about? Right. All the humidity is drizzled/poured/bucketed from the air onto terra firma (terra sogga?), and afterwards, especially in the morning, the atmosphere seems so clear that you should be able to pick out individual veins on individual leaves of individual trees at a thousand feet. Breathing seems like something you may have never experienced before; entirely enjoyable as though each draught swept the vapor of ambrosia through your lungs.
Colors are enhanced, leaves hang from limbs like emeralds and turquoise, embedded with the rubies and garnets of the approaching fall. The post-partum sheen of the rain sparkles in the wan light of the clear sky. In the distance, perhaps, a cloud or two, and the promise of more rain to come.
Life like a dirty martini
dance the fork out and swing it
wore holes through my socks on a sticky floor
trying to find the right way to
woo
She’s mentioned that breakfast numerous times
I’m always flattered
French poetry in the underground
smiles and coffee and oh what times
and thank you for the years
Now a reciprocity, previously unsuggested
French and dancing?
at the same time no less
like Dionysus waiting in the wings
with wine and fervor and he’s winking
but I’m not going to chase because
I’ve tried that and …
The right way to woo is like dancing
like jazz in the underground club
with smoke against the ceiling
and wine for 10f
and every night we’d stumble home
across the Rhine
just find the syncopation
and Apollo be damned
And ‘lo there was a great smoting, and those quiet moments between words were banished, and the cup of conversation runneth’d over, and there was a great rejoicing.
Sometimes you just can’t do events justice with words. Letters glued together like matchsticks trying to build the strongest bridge, but that annoying kid who eats lunch with you sat on it, and it was never meant to withstand that sort of “earthquake”. Poor, poor matchstick bridge …
My analogies keep running way the hell away from me. We’ll simply call them expeditious and leave it at that.
The short of it is that I met a girl. Those of you who are vigilant would have noticed two posts, that lasted just a day or so, and were then deleted, expressing my enthusiasm about said girl. They were deleted because, when the pot comes to boil, some things are still private, and even if I don’t care that strangers know my most intimate moments and/or embarrassing analogies, it’s not my place to share everything that involves other people. Besides, sometimes you just have to play your cards close to home. This blog is, after all, ridiculously easy to find.
So it was one of those conundrums. And I panicked. These things happen.
So I met a girl, and I was completely flabbergasted. As a friend has told me since (and I would tend to agree, now), my being completely flummoxed about this girl said a lot more about where I was then it really did about her. But you can’t tell these sorts of things to a madman. We went on a date, I bought her dinner, I was smitten instantly. We talked about France, and film, and school and friends and London and travel and language … oh the things we said! The conversation was good, to put it simply. The next day I sent her flowers, and then I didn’t hear from her for a couple days, and got dreadfully anxious. When I happened to run into her at a restaurant downtown, it all seemed so serendipitous that it HAD TO BE FATE! Seriously, my brain was all gunked up with romance. Stupid thing.
A few nights ago, as I was walking around my neighborhood, admiring the stars, she called me and we had a nice conversation. It was nice until the “I can only offer you my friendship” part, and then it was kind of not-nice. But it did help get my head screwed back on straight, and it really didn’t hit me as hard as I was setting myself up for. Thank goodness for skeptical friends who are completely willing to balk at your inexplicable enthusiasm and give you sketchy glances when you’re being foolish. I pay heed to these things, anymore.
So the “f” word was dropped, not so much like an atom bomb as like a … I dunno, water balloon. I was disappointed, sure, but I don’t have anything if not perspective, and I’m a resilient son-of-a-gun, anyhow.
Besides, y’all wouldn’t love me if I weren’t unpredictable and spazzy. The longer people know me the less surprised they get when I do completely off-the-wall things, without explanation or warning. And usually so mild-mannered and level-headed … but that’s what makes life snazzy!
So last night I met the girl of my dreams …
it’s a pity I was only dreaming.
It was incredibly vivid, and I woke up really disappointed that it hadn’t really happened. For what it’s worth, if you see her around, she was: tall, about 5’8″, I’d guess, with a medium/fit build, and shoulder-length medium-brown hair worn back in two braids. She had a kind face and a mischievous smile.
I’m such a sap sometimes.
——
In completely unrelated, and more disturbing news, I’m concerned about the number of people who have been finding this blog with various searches for Second Life “furry avatars”. Seriously though … ick.
Alternately, I wonder how long it will take someone to start making movies using either “Second Life” or “There.com”. With the amount of freedom these programs offer in both character creation and movement, it’s only a matter of time …
Beware the ides of eucalyptus eyes, and the crunch of hearts dropped beneath the eaves of your indifference.
Kisses dropped on my lips by idle loves, women who would have me but would not cherish me, perhaps. I know nothing of it. Lately lying late in the arms of conversation, mild parties of wine and whimsy, poetry and flimsy excuses to brush against each and every other.
Sleep is brief, waking early to breakfast or to go to the airport, or because the light sifting through the leaves strikes my closed lids and pries them apart, coaxing my pupils to wax like black moons as I rub lingering dreams from my lashes.
Today, two LARGE drip coffees, before 8 am. Only three hours of sleep, and two hours of driving as I bid my friend adieu on his journey to China. My skin, like butter over too much bread, stretched taut over jittery muscles and bones infused now with the tar of too many cigarettes.
Last night, conversation for hours with a strange girl who gazed at me while she spoke. Drinks over an open mike, and a late ride home as she and her friend sifted through books I needed rid of, as if they were the only copies ever printed. As she left the car she leaned toward me, looked at me, waited …
… the car filled with a pregnant hesitation …
… and then she wished me a safe drive to the airport in the morning. And then she was gone. As I drove home, I marvelled that we’re all so disparate, so unknown to each other and fascinating, though each normal in their own way, each perfect and unique and mad like Alice and her chesire cat.
Three hours of sleep on a night following a night of three hours of sleep, and momentarily alert I notice the quiet of 3 am, that even the gulls are still. As we merge onto the freeway at 3:45, I turn to my friend, who had not slept at all, and say, “So, last night was pretty crazy, huh?”
He looks at me, confused. “Wait, you mean tonight?” These hours of the day are ambiguous, secretive creatures, subject to miscalculations and shifts in perspective.
As I get home, the sun has begun to diffuse its light into the fog, and the gulls are screaming.
Last night, having decided that sometimes the courageous thing to do is to NOT call someone to go out, I stayed in, by myself, and watched a couple movies.
I think the theme for the night would be touching, as in, both movies were very much so, even though I’d seem them both before.
Sideways follows two men as they travel in the California wine country for a week before one of them gets married that weekend. The thing I like about the film is that neither character starts out to be particularly likable. Miles almost immediately steals money from his mom, and flashes toothy smiles between depressed sighs so often that you’re made to feel like the whole world may be bipolar and you’re just missing out. Jack, on the other hand, is more laid-back, but also more fake towards people.
In any case, the movie moves me because by the end, I like both characters. No matter what shitty thing they’ve done, or who they’ve hurt, I’ve spent hours getting to know them, and somehow they already feel like old friends.
Chocolat is a modern fairy tale that could be set in any age, and it’s that quality that moves me. Once again, the characters progress slowly from cold and implacable to joyful and vivant, or more simply from unlikable to likable, though this time through the exertions of the main character, who is herself something of an angel sent to show the town the way.
In either movie, it’s the triumphs that captivate. The love for life that polks its head through, and the idea that everything rarely is perfect, but sometimes things can turn out that way.
The last two weekends I’ve spent at the beach. A week ago, I went down to the Oregon Coast to hang out with family in a house we rented in Lincoln City. I got to see my brother, sister, sister-in-law, mom, two nieces and a nephew. It was an awesome time. This picture is from that trip.
Yesterday, I went out to Westport, and read the new Harry Potter book while laying on a towel in the sun. I applied lotion, and thought I was doing okay, but my legs definately got a lot more burnt than I would have liked.
Still, there’s something about having been in the sun that makes me feel more full of energy, as though I might be solar-powered. This only heightens my suspicions that I may in fact be plantlife, masquerading as a human, and somewhere along the way the trauma of the human existence made me forget what I really am. I wonder if I should be plotting your downfall, or just studying you closely …
Aperitif: a light follow-up on the palindrome post.
Entree: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Like, when you’re short on materials and you need to make a scarf, you use your “desperate measuring tape” to make you feel like it will be long enough, when actually it’s neither thick, long, nor wide enough (remember, we’re talking about a scarf here). So I posted a personal ad on craigslist – which you can read here for another couples weeks if you like – which I’d like to think is less desperate than it is modern. I am a man of the times. Here is my internet personal ad, hear me roar. It’s a good ad. I put a lot of thought into it. I’m a decent writer. It contains a lot of who I am, and if you get my sense of humor, it’s even pretty funny. I sat back and waited for the replies to roll in. Soon, I knew, I’d be fighting girls off with a stick, and Keira would be calling me to have coffee with her while she was in town for some red-carpet event or another.
Well, so far it hasn’t gone quite as planned. I have gotten multiple responses. By multiple, I mean two. I understand that the tone of my ad is fairly intellectual, so I immediately scared away all the vacuous rain-bunnies that the soggy northwest has to offer. Still, are there only two girls out there who read Craigslist, have an odd sense of humor, and are looking for a nice guy? The funny thing is, both responses I received were in response to my speaking French. I’d pretty much ruled out my French skills as a way to meet girls since, oh, High School when I met Helena Teddergreen in French class my freshman year but was entirely too flustered (and too much of a dork) to talk to her. Besides which, she was like two grades ahead of me and in High School that’s a super-big deal. That and the fact that during my stay in France there were no French girls who fell immediately for my moody and sophisticated American demeanor pretty much ruled out French as a valid method of seduction. Maybe I shouldn’t have crossed it off my list so soon.
One of the respondent lives in Tacoma, and did nothing more than invite me to the TacomaCityFrenchUp! picnic on July 20th. Not with her, just in general. I emailed her back, but she hasn’t yet responded. The other respondent lives in Seattle, and so far has been mostly restrained and reticent in our correspondence. It’s hard to get excited about meeting someone when getting them to tell you about themselves is like pulling teeth. Granted, we are strangers, but there’s a certain social contract involved with placing personal ads, and with answering them, that implies a level of voluntary information sharing. Perhaps La Francaise from Tacoma will email me again, and I’ll go to that picnic. Perhaps I’ll drive to Seattle and meet Ms. Taciturn. In either case, my expectation for true love via internet personal ad is greatly diminished.
Though I’m still waiting for Keira to call.
Digestif: In the meantime, I went to the swing dance last night after playing swing hookie for a couple weeks. My friend Lee was in town DJing, and I had a blast dancing and chatting with people. I did meet someone new, who seems very nice. We even exchanged phone numbers. It just goes to show that the best way to meet people is, and probably always will be, to go out and do things you enjoy. The rest will follow.
My ring broke.
In the same fashion as all the previous ones have, with a perfectly horizontal crack, like a fault-line in a once infinite loop.
I don’t wear a lot of jewelery. At one point in 1999 I had two rings and a bracelet, all silver. I gave the smaller ring away, which I had worn on my left pinky, to a girl I had just met. I didn’t have any romantic intentions at the time, it just felt like she should have it. Just before I went to France I gave the bracelet to my girlfriend at the time, that she would have something to remind her of me. That she broke up with me while I was in France (and she in India), means either it didn’t work, or it worked all too well.
Since then, I’ve constantly had one ring on the ring finger of my right hand. Stupid people ask me constantly if I’m married. Wrong hand. Okay, some of them weren’t stupid, they were Japanese. I have no idea what, if any, customs they have surrounding rings and marriage, and don’t expect them to know ours. But other people have asked, and they were, in fact, dumb.
Now that we’ve cleared that up.
Rings have always had a lot of symbolism for me. They’re both small and go on forever. By themselves, they’re empty. Worn, they’re a part of you. I’ve always thought that silver, too, was a very neat metal. So yes, they’re very symbolic, and when they break, it usually portents change. Usually, I suspect it implies a breaking free of residual attachments that are holding me back. This, in turn, implies a heightened ability and chance to move on to something new and good. Sometimes, it means I’d better shape up and change some of my bad habits, because even things which seemed to go on forever can all of a sudden have an abrupt end. Once that crack is there, you can still hold the ring together for awhile, but you can never really get rid of it. I used to wear cracked rings until they completely broke in two. Now I’m much more ready to let go of them when they say it’s time. Holding on until the bitter end has never really done anyone much good.
Who knows, maybe I attach way too much meaning to a piece of metal. But I think they’re cool, and it never hurts to have a little impetus to create some revolution. Besides, my necklace broke pretty recently as well, so it’s obviously like, a sign from the heavens or something. Yes, that’s right. God broke my ring.
*FREEDOMCOSTSABUCK-O-FIVE*
On being freshly single, meditations:
The first week, nearly every member of the opposite sex appears physically unattractive. Those that are physicially good-looking are obviously either very shallow, completely vacuous, or outrageously mean-spirited. The newly single despairs over ever again meeting someone who contains that perfect mix of inner and outer beauty that their recent ex somehow maintained.
The second week, nearly every member of the opposite sex seems to be a sex god(dess). Those not physically attractive obviously radiate an inner beauty, have perfect smiles, nice laughs, and save puppies from burning buildings. The universe seems to be mocking the newly single, who believes themselves unworthy of any of these avatars of sex and goodness. The newly single despairs that they will never again be desired as they have been desired, for the past was but a fluke which will surely never reoccur.
The third week, I suspect, involves drinking, swearing, and a general attitude of waving the middle finger at the dating scene and the opposite sex. This loud display will fool no-one, particularly not the newly single, who needs another shot of tequila.
—-
And that’s about as far as I’ve thought that through, so far. If you’d like to buy me a drink in week 3, I’ll take a rum and coke. Stroh 80 if you’ve got it, light on the coke.
I apologize for the abrupt disappearance. I’m still not completely sure what I’m doing with this blog, but I do get the itch to post here every once in awhile, and I figure I can do that even while I try to figure it all out.
For those of you that didn’t hear, I didn’t get accepted to McGill, and that’s put a serious crimp in my style. I feel a bit adrift. I’ll figure something out yet, I’m sure.
Anyway, the following are pictures I took while visiting my mom in Port Townsend over Mother’s Day weekend. I hope you enjoy them.
I promise I won’t pull any more stunts, at least for awhile.
Thank you all for your support. 🙂
Categories
Long walk vs short hike?
I took a healthy jaunt one day around McLane Creek, one of the many pretty places to walk in Northwest Washington. It’s very rainforesty, and there’s a beaver dam, and sometimes river otters. There are lots of salamanders, ducks, geese, crawdads, and cool plants, among other things.
We did see a beaver, which is only the second time I’ve seen one at McLane. It was pretty damned cool. I’d love to see river otters again though, those things are awesome.
Anyway, enjoy the pictures!
Northwest Rainforest. I love living in Washington. 
Categories
Meditations
Excellence. That we be thus, to ourselves, to each other.
Echos of dry leaves underfoot, shuffling through the Autumn.
Love’s not just a game we play. It’s a gift we give, and as a gift something we should never demand. Love must be freely given.
Adjust expectations. Apply patience. Be happy in yourself.
Love because you want to, because you feel the person deserves it and you want to support them. For your part, be happy with what you are giving, and with yourself in general.
A healthy amount of realism, to avoid being trod upon.
Whispers that never left the pillow, in the morning gone like the moonlight.
I believe in everything.
I thought this was a neat idea, via Lohans:
Pick A Band, Any Band
Pick a band name or artist, and using only titles of their songs, answer the following questions:
Band: Iron & Wine
Are you male or female: Jesus the Mexican Boy
How do you feel today?: Faded from the Winter
What are you?: An angry blade
Describe yourself: Free until they cut me down
How do some people feel about you?: Weary memory
How do you feel about yourself?: Promising Light
Describe your love interest: Woman King
Where would you rather be?: Upward over the mountain
Describe what you want to be: Naked as we came
Describe how you live: Bird stealing bread
Describe how you love: On your wings
Share a few words of wisdom: Promise what you will
I used to play Everquest a lot. Some of you may remember. Today while chatting with Emily she mentioned Neru and my first thought was “Who is Neru?”. It wasn’t a long thought, a split second at most, but still a bit shocking.
Neru was my dark elf enchantress, who liked to run around with Euclidus, Emily’s wood elf ranger, and start shit with bastard orcs, especially if they lived deep down in some cold ice caves in the middle of a frozen waste. Those were, without a doubt, good times. But I’m glad they’re over, and that we’ve both become more productive with our lives. I’m having much more fun now just being alive, and not sitting on my ass quite as much.
However, in memory of Neru, I would like to take a moment to pay homage to all things dork.
Categories
Greetings from Outer Space
The planet looks quite lovely from up here ….
My birthday passed well, if quickly. I don’t think of my age much, but when I do, it’s still hard to think of myself as twenty-five. This isn’t because I feel old, mind, or that it’s some critical landmark in my life. Rather, because a lot happened while I was twenty-four, and it stretched out, and I got used to it. I’m happy to be twenty-five now, and so far the year has started out great.
A brief list of thanks:
Thanks to the wonderful girl in my life. You’re awesome!
Thanks to my friends and family. You all mean a lot to me.
Thanks to my readers. There aren’t many of you,
but I think you all kick ass.
Thanks to the bloggers I read, for making the world seem smaller and more accessible, and for reaffirming my faith that there are indeed good and interesting people out there.
I’m also thankful that I have work I enjoy,
that I have plans for the future that seem both fun and possible,
and that the world remains such an interesting place.
Categories
The Brothers Ross
I was all set to play poker last night. My mind was a veritable fortress of bluffs, counter-bluffs, counter-counter-bluffs, and ummm … false exits. All their chip were going to belong to me. Then out of the blue, I get a phone call from my friend Benj, who I haven’t seen in like five years!!! And he was all like, hey we’re going to be in town tonight, and we should get together.
For a brief, frantic moment I was stumped. Did I dare to break the poker night tradition for a couple friends I’ve only known since the first grade? I was brave, I said yes, and we went out and enjoyed us some fine Guinness on St. Patty’s Day. It was damn nice to catch up, and to see them in a good space. They’re kicking ass with music (marimbas, lately) and having a ball up in Friday Harbor. I may get to hang with them a bit more tonight, before they head back north tomorrow morning.
I took them back to where they were crashing, and around 2:30 in the morning, declined my house for a better alternative, and slept in the arms of a beautiful woman. Sometimes, everything feels like it is right with the universe.