Further down Elm Street the wind picks up, and I'm cold. Really cold. I nearly slip a few times on ice. My car is of course several blocks in the opposite direction, but what makes me less eager to turn back now is the thought that this night is in many ways not just a real downer, but a bust all in all. I have come away with nothing, and feel more perplexed than when I started my walk.
Faintly then, I hear her.
"The moon's awake now/With eyes wide open..."
A beacon in any storm, Shakira's tantalizingly absurd vocals pulsate from inside Rudy's, a favorite bar of mine.
Normally I don't drink alone. No real moral objections, I just always saw drinking as a social thing and feel a bit self-conscious and generally uncomfortable with no one there to join me.
"Sitting across a bar/staring right at her prey..."
I pace for a few seconds with my phone out pretending to send text messages. My fingers start to lose their dexterity in the cold.
"It's going well so far/She's gonna get her way..."
A couple of burly door guys with lots of facial hair and piercings are chatting it up, and they vaguely notice me.
(Hey fellas!-A douche-bag? No, no I just might be meeting someone here. But they may not show. That's why I'm CONTACTING them. Ya know, with THIS phone? FRIENDS. YOU know how it is. What a hassle. Need the light over here because the screen on my cell phone is the kind that. doesn't. light up.)
...
"Nocturnal creatures/are not so prudent…"
Damn you Shakira. Damn you and the float you belly-danced in on.
I grab an Advocate from one of the free vendors and practically dive through the front door.
Once in, I can smell the frites sizzling in the back, behind the bar.
Rudy's is a Belgian owned establishment, an off the beaten' kind of joint where neighborhood regulars and Yale students go to chill out, mingle, catch live bands, sing karaoke on the right (or wrong) night, and write/carve something poignantly random or perverse in the bathroom or on the walls in the back.
Despite it's hip, alterno-simplistic vibe, the bar serves, among a few domestics, expensive dark reddish, or "blonde" beers with complex Flemish names, brought to you each in their own intricate glass. Adorned with calligraphy and images of things like leaping fish and medieval angels on the sides, these are far more than just glasses. They possess all the regalia of a mini chalice or goblet.
Eat a basket of thrice dipped fries covered in MAYONNAISE to wash down your grail-beer!
It's a Belgian thing. If you don't know anything about the Belgians, well, that’s just how those 'Wa-loonies' roll, and I certainly wouldn't change it
I grab a small table, order an $8 beer the name of which sounds like "Grimreaper", and take to my newspaper, my back to the door.
Occasionally I bring my head up for sip of beer, and I scan the room. It's generally quiet, like the glow of a fireplace at midday. Pockets of people are seated throughout at the old, oaken booths while few patrons lean at the bar.
In the middle of an article about a man's successful bionic sphincter implant (THE FIRST REAL medical breakthrough of the new decade, mind you) Cold grips my back and neck and I shudder. A group of about six or so walks in. All friends. All cheerful. All holding the door open for one another in an irritatingly slow, chilly cadence.
I pop the collar of my jacket, and when I turn back around, on a wall otherwise littered with rusty staples and thumbtacks a single flier with two words on it glares at me.
"Fuck Resolutions."
Yes, strange paper, I agree. Resolutions are destined to fall by the wayside. It's a Lifestyle that truly endures. Points for Rudy's.
Again, and for about the fifth time by now, the cold lashes my back and I shiver. I turn again, and this time rather scornfully. These people clearly don't realize they have no right to leave, nor do others to enter: Not while I am seated in the wake of the front door.
I notice the place has really picked up since my last sip. The dull peat-fire from before has become a kind of bonfire now, with a steady roar of lively conversation.
On the final swig o' the 'Reaper', the feeling from outside on the street returns.
Everything seems to mesh together and, alone at my small table I am becoming increasingly self-conscious and all the more annoyed at myself for it.
I'm hit with a feeling difficult to describe except for incorporeal-I have somehow popped my head through "behind the scenes", the curtains unguarded because no one on the outside had been watching.
It all sort of weirdly comes into focus then.
I wasn't actually a person in the room, but felt more like a presence haunting it--an undercurrent barely acknowledged, like a draft creeping in from somewhere, considered with a mild disdain, or apprehensive indecision.
A GHOST…
On the street I had been the live one, chilling out with the specters condemned to the boundaries of Temple and Wall; Chapel and Crown. In here it is the opposite dynamic: that, though within an arm's reach they all feel impossibly far; younger, older, male, female, each separated from me by some other existential plane.
This upsets me. It's one of my worst fears.
It was time I disappeared from there. I know I'll return. But not tonight, not for a while. I put the fancy glass back on the counter and make my way out. The man in front of me obviously doesn't hear my footsteps in back of him and lets the door nearly slam in my face.
....
.......
New Years is a bizarre time...
Friday, January 8, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
If You Ever Go To New Haven Town... (New Years, Part One)
New Years Day is bizarre: Advertised universally on the menu as a Friday, only containing all the taste of Sunday, with Wednesday preparation and brought to your table with a garnish of Monday.
Perhaps it's because it marks the transition away from Christmas and into that cold, grayish gulag that precedes Spring here in the Northeast. No longer the brightly lit, multi-colored gulag that inspires giving and peace on Earth, it is rather characterized by another set of grim sense experiences: blistering cold, a deadened landscape (at least in southern CT), eight hours of maximum sunlight, the abrasive screech of a rusted timing belt quiet enough to ignore in the warmer weather, and subsequent daydreams of the west coast.
It's the period our intrepid leaders in government tried to render a bit warmer by forming the uneasy pact with greeting card companies that resulted in the flop we know as Valentines Day. With little else to do, they took the only remaining logical measure, and turned seasonal authority over to more capable hands; thus scapegoating a little earth-dwelling rodent.
This past Friday night I spent my January 1st, like I often spend many nights, walking around downtown New Haven, Connecticut.
It's nothing new, as I said, I do this often: ditching the car on any one of the city's many streets, following eyes, nose and ears returning again having found whatever it was I was looking for that day.
I weave through block after block, down one-way streets and around corners, tracing the squares in the city's grid like a wayward pencil across graph paper.
There's Chapel Street, the Yale Rep to my left, York Street to the right. Edging past the Yale dormitories I'm occasionally warmed by the steamy, sweet-smelling run-off from the laundry rooms.
Out onto Broadway where students, and other pedestrians, homeless and non-homeless alike congregate in front of the lit thoroughfare where I spend my workday. Here one can, among other things, shop American, urban, organic or eat a smart hamburger. Farther down York I listen in on the drum-beats, baselines and solos echoing from Toad's Place, and beyond...
Friday, New Years, was of course dead; a blanket of black silence speckled with the iodized glow of street lights was all that greeted me on my circuit. Cafes and restaurants were naturally closed, the storefronts dark, and the Yale students and faculty that typically litter the streets were now gone, many having left in a dusty trail of completed exams, coffee cups, and old textbooks; the wake of an old semester.
I turn down High Street and make my way towards Chapel. A lone Starbucks on the corner provides the only light in a row of darkened buildings. It's moderately full inside and as I peer in, I catch a few vacant stares.
Ah. Forgive me. Monkey had to use the john, and the Organ grinder's in the shop, ya see...
I shuffle past a quiet Payne-Whitney Gym, deserted and dark save for a single orange light by the big, old wooden doors.
(Not the actual way in, which is like a long cave entrance off to the side, currently sheathed in blue construction tarp and scaffolding-an industrial alternative to Lewis Carroll)
Vertically plastered along the building's old bricks are pictures of various Yale athletes, male and female frozen forever in mid lay-up; slapshot; forehand; volley. Each has its own torch-like spotlight underneath it, and for a minute, as corny as it sounds I'm reminded of Greek ruins. A pantheon empty, save for the echoes of rubber sole's screech on parquet, the violent crash of torsos on hardened mats and the thud of racket balls, overpowered then by a ravenous Yale crowd, blood-drunk for Harvard red.
The windows of Audubon Street, the arts district of New Haven and daily a defiant fist-pump in the direction of anything under the Yale fine arts umbrella, are a dark void.
Standing at the end of Grove Street I listen to the steady thrush of traffic, peering out onto State at the broken line of bright headlights. I guess in some weird way it reminds me a river. A river slowly but surely murdering the ozone, but still, a river.
Wall Street is especially lonely. A kind of Sleepy Hollow that cuts under a stone archway and into part of the Yale campus at one end that is accessible only on foot, and with a student ID. The President of Yale parks his vehicle in a private garage down here. It's awfully small to accommodate anything I imagine him driving though, like a hover car powered by Dark-Matter, or at the very least an M1 Tank with a rabid bull-dog stamped on the side.
It's here that a strange feeling overtakes me. It's as though wind, the sand it blows down the cracked concrete, the dull honk of cars in the distance, and the dim electrical buzzing of the streetlights mingles with the steady beat of my own footsteps to produce some weird night time score.
I stop.
Old words written by Patrick Kavanaugh ebb and flow through my mind:
"On Pembroke Road,
Look out for my ghost-
Disheveled, with shoes untied..
Playing
Through the railings
With little children-
Whose children have long since
Died..."
Everything becomes so acute and internal then, the way it gets, I think, while under water. Time becomes fluid and for whatever space of that moment, I actually wonder if I'm still capable of speaking.
I take to walking more briskly now on Elm Street, around the perimeter of the New Haven Green, the blue fiber optics of the city's Christmas tree softly glowing toward its center.
I come eventually to the Quad-section out in front of Broadway that's divided by a commuter lot and am given the option to continue my current course, or take one of three new ones:
DIXWELL? WHALLEY? GOFFE?
The first three were Puritan judges. Elm, last I checked, was of course, a type of tree...
Choose your destiny...
Perhaps it's because it marks the transition away from Christmas and into that cold, grayish gulag that precedes Spring here in the Northeast. No longer the brightly lit, multi-colored gulag that inspires giving and peace on Earth, it is rather characterized by another set of grim sense experiences: blistering cold, a deadened landscape (at least in southern CT), eight hours of maximum sunlight, the abrasive screech of a rusted timing belt quiet enough to ignore in the warmer weather, and subsequent daydreams of the west coast.
It's the period our intrepid leaders in government tried to render a bit warmer by forming the uneasy pact with greeting card companies that resulted in the flop we know as Valentines Day. With little else to do, they took the only remaining logical measure, and turned seasonal authority over to more capable hands; thus scapegoating a little earth-dwelling rodent.
This past Friday night I spent my January 1st, like I often spend many nights, walking around downtown New Haven, Connecticut.
It's nothing new, as I said, I do this often: ditching the car on any one of the city's many streets, following eyes, nose and ears returning again having found whatever it was I was looking for that day.
I weave through block after block, down one-way streets and around corners, tracing the squares in the city's grid like a wayward pencil across graph paper.
There's Chapel Street, the Yale Rep to my left, York Street to the right. Edging past the Yale dormitories I'm occasionally warmed by the steamy, sweet-smelling run-off from the laundry rooms.
Out onto Broadway where students, and other pedestrians, homeless and non-homeless alike congregate in front of the lit thoroughfare where I spend my workday. Here one can, among other things, shop American, urban, organic or eat a smart hamburger. Farther down York I listen in on the drum-beats, baselines and solos echoing from Toad's Place, and beyond...
Friday, New Years, was of course dead; a blanket of black silence speckled with the iodized glow of street lights was all that greeted me on my circuit. Cafes and restaurants were naturally closed, the storefronts dark, and the Yale students and faculty that typically litter the streets were now gone, many having left in a dusty trail of completed exams, coffee cups, and old textbooks; the wake of an old semester.
I turn down High Street and make my way towards Chapel. A lone Starbucks on the corner provides the only light in a row of darkened buildings. It's moderately full inside and as I peer in, I catch a few vacant stares.
Ah. Forgive me. Monkey had to use the john, and the Organ grinder's in the shop, ya see...
I shuffle past a quiet Payne-Whitney Gym, deserted and dark save for a single orange light by the big, old wooden doors.
(Not the actual way in, which is like a long cave entrance off to the side, currently sheathed in blue construction tarp and scaffolding-an industrial alternative to Lewis Carroll)
Vertically plastered along the building's old bricks are pictures of various Yale athletes, male and female frozen forever in mid lay-up; slapshot; forehand; volley. Each has its own torch-like spotlight underneath it, and for a minute, as corny as it sounds I'm reminded of Greek ruins. A pantheon empty, save for the echoes of rubber sole's screech on parquet, the violent crash of torsos on hardened mats and the thud of racket balls, overpowered then by a ravenous Yale crowd, blood-drunk for Harvard red.
The windows of Audubon Street, the arts district of New Haven and daily a defiant fist-pump in the direction of anything under the Yale fine arts umbrella, are a dark void.
Standing at the end of Grove Street I listen to the steady thrush of traffic, peering out onto State at the broken line of bright headlights. I guess in some weird way it reminds me a river. A river slowly but surely murdering the ozone, but still, a river.
Wall Street is especially lonely. A kind of Sleepy Hollow that cuts under a stone archway and into part of the Yale campus at one end that is accessible only on foot, and with a student ID. The President of Yale parks his vehicle in a private garage down here. It's awfully small to accommodate anything I imagine him driving though, like a hover car powered by Dark-Matter, or at the very least an M1 Tank with a rabid bull-dog stamped on the side.
It's here that a strange feeling overtakes me. It's as though wind, the sand it blows down the cracked concrete, the dull honk of cars in the distance, and the dim electrical buzzing of the streetlights mingles with the steady beat of my own footsteps to produce some weird night time score.
I stop.
Old words written by Patrick Kavanaugh ebb and flow through my mind:
"On Pembroke Road,
Look out for my ghost-
Disheveled, with shoes untied..
Playing
Through the railings
With little children-
Whose children have long since
Died..."
Everything becomes so acute and internal then, the way it gets, I think, while under water. Time becomes fluid and for whatever space of that moment, I actually wonder if I'm still capable of speaking.
I take to walking more briskly now on Elm Street, around the perimeter of the New Haven Green, the blue fiber optics of the city's Christmas tree softly glowing toward its center.
I come eventually to the Quad-section out in front of Broadway that's divided by a commuter lot and am given the option to continue my current course, or take one of three new ones:
DIXWELL? WHALLEY? GOFFE?
The first three were Puritan judges. Elm, last I checked, was of course, a type of tree...
Choose your destiny...
Friday, January 1, 2010
Tabula Rasa
This is a strange time for me. Historically I never did much on New Year’s Eve, and the night just could not pass quick enough. I like to tell myself that maybe, perhaps it’s because holidays present a kind of paradox for certain people.
I suppose it’s difficult for those who possess more abstract modes of thinking we’ll call them, to immerse themselves in the strange, insular artifice of the holidays.
“No, no, not to worry things are GREAT!!! Happy New year, WHOO!!!”
…
But they aren’t.
Peddling this contrived mantra pushes the expectancy to be HAPPY on the rest of us, and for me it’s always been one I could never meet. It’s another way I'm reminded of being impossibly behind the curve.
I'm not a miser, really, far from it. It’s not as though I can’t have fun. It’s not as though I can’t enjoy simpler things, like a good old fashioned night of debauchery…
…Or of just forgetting myself for a while. Turning the volume in my head to low and the volume outside on high, and having a good time, connecting for a night with those around me, because apart from the corporate and economic-driven components that’s the most functional thing the holidays present us with, and God knows we live much of the year’s remainder, in my opinion, estranged from one another
Maybe it’s ME putting the pressure on myself.
There are things…There are always things, tangible or otherwise. Each December 31st we stand on the precipice of a new stage, an idyllic tabula-rasa, (that means “clear slate”, in the scholar’s tongue dontcha know…) whereby all of our shortcomings, failures, misgivings or mistakes the previous year are forgiven and forgotten in place of a new blueprint of productiveness. But last year’s incongruous tablate is still ever present cognition, and I puzzle over it: speckled with foggy sketches and caricatures; with good intentions, strong attempts and attempted "do-overs"; otherwise, quite incomplete.
I’ve never had much of a problem keeping promises to others, though in recent times I’ve squelched on showing myself the same courtesy.
2009 had its interpersonal ups and downs, and one thing I’ve noticed about each trend for me: when it rains, it pours.
I surprised myself on several occasions. I surprised myself with my ability to shine the way I’ve wanted to, and in front of certain people. Then as soon as it seems like it can’t get any better, the bottom falls out, and I find myself wading through the same quicksand I thought I left behind. There were propositions I made to myself, and ultimatums I therefore presented afterward: Research grad schools. Get a job. Take GRE’s. Write. Read. Write some more. Get something published. Get into a grad school. Meet someone…
…Ok. Cut your losses, Make money, write as much as you can, and at all costs, get the hell out of here…
Christmas and New Years respectively, also comprise the time when abstract thinkers are known to have…flare-ups. But with the level of alcohol, other depressants and stimulants alike flowing as they typically are, this is one of the most chemically imbalanced nights of the year anyway.
So, pulled between the options of going toe to toe with a slightly older and no less boozy crowd tipping champagne back until either the ball drops or they do, getting behind the wheel tonight and wandering the roads in search of life (and thus effectively taking mine into my own hands), or hunkering down somewhere with the network of friends and colleagues I’ve sadly never had in this glass-shop I acknowledge as where I grew up, I’m left to wait it out at home like some twenty-four hour bug with a book for company.
(hmm…what is a 95-word proclamation of pathetic?)
...
I imagine Dave Sedaris must have several stories to tell of New Years Eves spent alone: one near penniless, commonly drunk young man floating solo through life-limbo, between big cities and less than lucrative jobs during that pre-success, pre-Hugh Hamrick stint.
I’ll try and look for one…
At any rate, I hope everyone has a happy new year. My scope isn’t limited to the next few hours, rather I speak of the next 365 days and my hope for you all, like the hopes I have for myself, is that you accomplish at least a few of those things you need to; to do something NEW, and artistic or expressive in some way this upcoming year. To try at least one thing new you wouldn’t normally have. Expand your stages, and therefore your parts in the world. Add a few new dimensions to your life. Apply to a school. Or to a job, both of which you may have previous lauded as higher than yourself and hopelessly out of your reach. None of it is. I hope you find love. If you already haven't. I hope your year is full of it; for others and yourself.
(My blog was saturated with this philosophy in 09...)
Start tomorrow. No one will hold it against you for sleeping in.
I suppose it’s difficult for those who possess more abstract modes of thinking we’ll call them, to immerse themselves in the strange, insular artifice of the holidays.
“No, no, not to worry things are GREAT!!! Happy New year, WHOO!!!”
…
But they aren’t.
Peddling this contrived mantra pushes the expectancy to be HAPPY on the rest of us, and for me it’s always been one I could never meet. It’s another way I'm reminded of being impossibly behind the curve.
I'm not a miser, really, far from it. It’s not as though I can’t have fun. It’s not as though I can’t enjoy simpler things, like a good old fashioned night of debauchery…
…Or of just forgetting myself for a while. Turning the volume in my head to low and the volume outside on high, and having a good time, connecting for a night with those around me, because apart from the corporate and economic-driven components that’s the most functional thing the holidays present us with, and God knows we live much of the year’s remainder, in my opinion, estranged from one another
Maybe it’s ME putting the pressure on myself.
There are things…There are always things, tangible or otherwise. Each December 31st we stand on the precipice of a new stage, an idyllic tabula-rasa, (that means “clear slate”, in the scholar’s tongue dontcha know…) whereby all of our shortcomings, failures, misgivings or mistakes the previous year are forgiven and forgotten in place of a new blueprint of productiveness. But last year’s incongruous tablate is still ever present cognition, and I puzzle over it: speckled with foggy sketches and caricatures; with good intentions, strong attempts and attempted "do-overs"; otherwise, quite incomplete.
I’ve never had much of a problem keeping promises to others, though in recent times I’ve squelched on showing myself the same courtesy.
2009 had its interpersonal ups and downs, and one thing I’ve noticed about each trend for me: when it rains, it pours.
I surprised myself on several occasions. I surprised myself with my ability to shine the way I’ve wanted to, and in front of certain people. Then as soon as it seems like it can’t get any better, the bottom falls out, and I find myself wading through the same quicksand I thought I left behind. There were propositions I made to myself, and ultimatums I therefore presented afterward: Research grad schools. Get a job. Take GRE’s. Write. Read. Write some more. Get something published. Get into a grad school. Meet someone…
…Ok. Cut your losses, Make money, write as much as you can, and at all costs, get the hell out of here…
Christmas and New Years respectively, also comprise the time when abstract thinkers are known to have…flare-ups. But with the level of alcohol, other depressants and stimulants alike flowing as they typically are, this is one of the most chemically imbalanced nights of the year anyway.
So, pulled between the options of going toe to toe with a slightly older and no less boozy crowd tipping champagne back until either the ball drops or they do, getting behind the wheel tonight and wandering the roads in search of life (and thus effectively taking mine into my own hands), or hunkering down somewhere with the network of friends and colleagues I’ve sadly never had in this glass-shop I acknowledge as where I grew up, I’m left to wait it out at home like some twenty-four hour bug with a book for company.
(hmm…what is a 95-word proclamation of pathetic?)
...
I imagine Dave Sedaris must have several stories to tell of New Years Eves spent alone: one near penniless, commonly drunk young man floating solo through life-limbo, between big cities and less than lucrative jobs during that pre-success, pre-Hugh Hamrick stint.
I’ll try and look for one…
At any rate, I hope everyone has a happy new year. My scope isn’t limited to the next few hours, rather I speak of the next 365 days and my hope for you all, like the hopes I have for myself, is that you accomplish at least a few of those things you need to; to do something NEW, and artistic or expressive in some way this upcoming year. To try at least one thing new you wouldn’t normally have. Expand your stages, and therefore your parts in the world. Add a few new dimensions to your life. Apply to a school. Or to a job, both of which you may have previous lauded as higher than yourself and hopelessly out of your reach. None of it is. I hope you find love. If you already haven't. I hope your year is full of it; for others and yourself.
(My blog was saturated with this philosophy in 09...)
Start tomorrow. No one will hold it against you for sleeping in.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Adventures in the Book-Trade, Part I
I. A man, smelling as though he’d spent the past several days in the cargo hold of a Dutch East India Company trade ship inquires as to a book on “immediate response psychiatry.” I tell him the publication date of the book he wants is the tenth of February, as the computer screen indicates, and should you want to reserve a copy now we will hold it for you on the day it comes out. He doesn’t see why if he reserves it now, he doesn’t get it earlier than that—than the date it is released on the market PERIOD. As though the screen were some kind of Free Mason’s riddle, he leans in to have a better look. Really close. The pungent smell of nutmeg and curry…
II. A man and a woman, late thirties, early forties perhaps, literally prance into the children’s section dressed faintly like members of some kind of trendy, traveling bard-cabaret. Brother and sister I guess, though difficult to distinguish at times. Brother has on tight black jeans, woolly boots and a violet skull-cap and reminds me of an effeminate Cat-in-the-Hat. They are looking for a series of kids’ books called the Traveling Benedicts something-or other and as if on cue have a smug comment for everything co-worker Liz and I tell them. She wonders out loud to me if we are part of some candid camera experiment going on. They are entirely too giddy, and any form of happiness typically only stirs up resentment and paranoia in us book folk at that time of night. Sister reminds me of a witch. Not a bad one, necessarily, but not Glenda-like either; more like the flighty, bleach-blond, boozy pill-popper witch of the south (who wears too much make-up). It occurs to me that Dorothy in fact becomes the Witch of the South in Frank Baum’s world, and would pass the mantle to her daughter, and so on. Considering the lineage it all starts to make perfect sense…
III. A group of choral geriatrics decides to grace the bookstore with their broken renditions of a very, VERY Berle Ives Christmas, with an assortment of show tunes mixed in. My co-worker Sean and I have to set up the chairs at the forefront of the store’s upper level. Despite our insistence that we will take care of it, the “maestro”, an outspoken woman in her seventies or worse shows us how to set them up properly, dragging two interlocked chairs behind her, knocking over an additional two. The set has the feel and sound of a difficult childbirth, persisting for well over an hour. Customers in the store leave, while those at the door refuse to commit and turn around. Maestro is very lively and animated, dancing around and swinging her little composer’s wand, which I suspect she lifted from a Harry Potter activity book. Resentment overtakes me each time I see her head pop up over the shelves I’m stacking, not because of her ridiculous movements, but more for her ill prepared chorus of singers, a clear sign of her poor leadership, (or perhaps the huge collective lie she is responsible for concerning the old farts’ ability to sing. One of those.)
IV. A woman, incensed that, NO we do not offer gift wrapping services informs me that our other locations, as well as our competitors do at little table stations and would it really be going out of YOUR way to do the same? I tell her I can quadruple bag her purchase, spinning it in a special labyrinth of recycled holiday plastic if she is so inclined. She is not.
V. An older man asks me what I know about the NOOK, our new e-book reader. “Why it’s one of the two most vital components of a Thomas’s English Muffin, of course,” I tell him. His stare is like that of a shop front mannequin—artificially inviting, though mostly neutral and aloof. He goes on to speculate for a while about how the manufacturers will work out what he thinks are the glitches for a proposed NOOK-2 model. “Perhaps they will call that one the CRANNY,” I enthusiastically say.
VI. A couple inquire as to a book for their grandson; five years old and of course very “smart”. I point wife to Shell Silverstein’s classic “The Giving Tree”, metaphorically rich, touching, and simple from which there is a clear message. The memory of it warms her. Husband is not impressed and ignoring me tries to sell her on a book about a talking tractor and his friendship with a young deer. Rather than a children’s literary classic from a master he suggests a story about anthropomorphic FARM EQUIPMENT. “He’s a BOY-boy,” he tells me, “and into ‘BOY things’.” Don’t be disappointed sir, I quell the urge to tell him, but the deer, or half of him at least probably doesn’t end up over a fireplace at story’s end.
VII. A kid, about eleven or so excitedly enters the children’s section. His parents are very eager to leave, but he insists: “I know exactly what I want now, can’t I just run and go get it?” He walks through the archway entrance slowly and in awe as though it were the Stargate, points to book one of The Last Olympians on display, and asks me where the rest of Rick Riordan may be. I scan through TEEN, and then JUVENILE FICTION. No dice. “If your parents get on ya about taking too long, just blame it on me ok?” He nods. More rummaging. He points to Eoin Colfer’s extensive Artemis Fowl series: “Those were good too. I’ve read all of those.” He then spots what we are looking for overhead in JUVENILE FICTION SERIES (I mean, what the hell was I thinking?) Parents arrive. He pleads with his father for a set of all three sequels. “Remember how fast I read the first one?” What a surprise, the wishes of a child at Christmas time win out again. They leave.
A kid defies his parents’ demands that he hurry up. NOT in a Toys R Us. NOT in a Gamestop, or a Best Buy, but a bookstore. Through his best efforts he coaxes them into buying not a video game, remote control whatever, or DVD, but another book, the author of which he knows by both name and reputation. The smile lasts through the remainder of my shift.
II. A man and a woman, late thirties, early forties perhaps, literally prance into the children’s section dressed faintly like members of some kind of trendy, traveling bard-cabaret. Brother and sister I guess, though difficult to distinguish at times. Brother has on tight black jeans, woolly boots and a violet skull-cap and reminds me of an effeminate Cat-in-the-Hat. They are looking for a series of kids’ books called the Traveling Benedicts something-or other and as if on cue have a smug comment for everything co-worker Liz and I tell them. She wonders out loud to me if we are part of some candid camera experiment going on. They are entirely too giddy, and any form of happiness typically only stirs up resentment and paranoia in us book folk at that time of night. Sister reminds me of a witch. Not a bad one, necessarily, but not Glenda-like either; more like the flighty, bleach-blond, boozy pill-popper witch of the south (who wears too much make-up). It occurs to me that Dorothy in fact becomes the Witch of the South in Frank Baum’s world, and would pass the mantle to her daughter, and so on. Considering the lineage it all starts to make perfect sense…
III. A group of choral geriatrics decides to grace the bookstore with their broken renditions of a very, VERY Berle Ives Christmas, with an assortment of show tunes mixed in. My co-worker Sean and I have to set up the chairs at the forefront of the store’s upper level. Despite our insistence that we will take care of it, the “maestro”, an outspoken woman in her seventies or worse shows us how to set them up properly, dragging two interlocked chairs behind her, knocking over an additional two. The set has the feel and sound of a difficult childbirth, persisting for well over an hour. Customers in the store leave, while those at the door refuse to commit and turn around. Maestro is very lively and animated, dancing around and swinging her little composer’s wand, which I suspect she lifted from a Harry Potter activity book. Resentment overtakes me each time I see her head pop up over the shelves I’m stacking, not because of her ridiculous movements, but more for her ill prepared chorus of singers, a clear sign of her poor leadership, (or perhaps the huge collective lie she is responsible for concerning the old farts’ ability to sing. One of those.)
IV. A woman, incensed that, NO we do not offer gift wrapping services informs me that our other locations, as well as our competitors do at little table stations and would it really be going out of YOUR way to do the same? I tell her I can quadruple bag her purchase, spinning it in a special labyrinth of recycled holiday plastic if she is so inclined. She is not.
V. An older man asks me what I know about the NOOK, our new e-book reader. “Why it’s one of the two most vital components of a Thomas’s English Muffin, of course,” I tell him. His stare is like that of a shop front mannequin—artificially inviting, though mostly neutral and aloof. He goes on to speculate for a while about how the manufacturers will work out what he thinks are the glitches for a proposed NOOK-2 model. “Perhaps they will call that one the CRANNY,” I enthusiastically say.
VI. A couple inquire as to a book for their grandson; five years old and of course very “smart”. I point wife to Shell Silverstein’s classic “The Giving Tree”, metaphorically rich, touching, and simple from which there is a clear message. The memory of it warms her. Husband is not impressed and ignoring me tries to sell her on a book about a talking tractor and his friendship with a young deer. Rather than a children’s literary classic from a master he suggests a story about anthropomorphic FARM EQUIPMENT. “He’s a BOY-boy,” he tells me, “and into ‘BOY things’.” Don’t be disappointed sir, I quell the urge to tell him, but the deer, or half of him at least probably doesn’t end up over a fireplace at story’s end.
VII. A kid, about eleven or so excitedly enters the children’s section. His parents are very eager to leave, but he insists: “I know exactly what I want now, can’t I just run and go get it?” He walks through the archway entrance slowly and in awe as though it were the Stargate, points to book one of The Last Olympians on display, and asks me where the rest of Rick Riordan may be. I scan through TEEN, and then JUVENILE FICTION. No dice. “If your parents get on ya about taking too long, just blame it on me ok?” He nods. More rummaging. He points to Eoin Colfer’s extensive Artemis Fowl series: “Those were good too. I’ve read all of those.” He then spots what we are looking for overhead in JUVENILE FICTION SERIES (I mean, what the hell was I thinking?) Parents arrive. He pleads with his father for a set of all three sequels. “Remember how fast I read the first one?” What a surprise, the wishes of a child at Christmas time win out again. They leave.
A kid defies his parents’ demands that he hurry up. NOT in a Toys R Us. NOT in a Gamestop, or a Best Buy, but a bookstore. Through his best efforts he coaxes them into buying not a video game, remote control whatever, or DVD, but another book, the author of which he knows by both name and reputation. The smile lasts through the remainder of my shift.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Productive
In a conversation recently about what was most important to us and how we want our lives to play out, a friend mentioned how eventually she wanted to live someplace outside the country. This was nothing new for me to hear; we had both studied abroad in the same Irish city and not surprisingly we both wished we’d never left. So we’d discussed decisions like this before and what led us to them, but it was how she said it this time that got the gears moving:
"I would rather live in a foreign country. Where everything isn’t about money and productivity, but about living, and beautiful things...."
I equate productivity, being productive, with things like self growth, doing what things you have to do, following up on all the things you wanted to.
Waking up reasonably early. Cleaning up, maybe tending to the yard. Some exercise, probably. Maybe further a relationship you may have only just kindled with someone, or spark an entirely new one. Make a call to a family member or friend you haven’t talked to in months, maybe even over a year. Finish a book, or start one, the one you’ve been meaning to read. Gain some ground on a personal/professional endeavor; a sketch of a building if you’re an architect, a series of snap-shots if you’re a photographer. If you’re an aspiring writer like me, maybe peck away at a short story, poem, or the "manuscript."
(That’s an intimidating word, manuscript...)
Give something away you don’t need. Hack away the things that no longer serve you in any way, and continuously add something that does. Leave a footprint in the sand, a positive impression on the world, or in someone’s life. (Earning a living probably fits into this model somewhere.)
The brand of productivity my friend seeks, as many of us do, to liberate herself from is of the "assembly line" variety, concerned with figures, statistics, money and status.
Lately a lot of us have been in survival mode just trying to keep our heads above the water, seeking independence without drowning in debt and the cost of living.
In this country, you are what you own. For many, self-worth is Codependent on net-worth.
*Sigh* If you’re gonna be broke, ya better be cute… (I look at my receding hairline and shudder lately...)
...
I think what it comes down to is filling the hours and minutes with as much learning, growing, and of course, sharing as possible.
Time is NOT money. I want to personally desecrate the grave-site of whoever coined that insipid phrase, because those who truly subscribe to that ethos do NOT actually utilize their own time—they monopolize the time of others.
I began working in a Barnes & Noble recently, and sadly my time, like the time of my coworkers, supervisors and managers is just a currency generating tool for a bunch of corporate fat-cats who sit in a board room somewhere in New York City and who definitely don’t give a shit about literature or spreading the "word" around.
It’s not just us either, but every consumer who walks through the big glass doors and consigns the minutes or hours of their day to that store. The customers always suspect they are being screwed somehow (though it doesn’t actually stop them from pissing their money away.) They are probably right, but they should channel their angsty frustration and collectively broadcast it to that Manhattan office building instead of slinging individual dirty looks, snide comments and other venom-tipped arrows in our general direction.
...
I’m not suggesting we boycott bookstores or anything in general. I in fact...love bookstores. If Glade made a "new book," or "wafting café aroma" scented plug-in, I’d have one in every outlet of my house.
Consider the suit-clad people in that conference room: even if their suede pockets are lined deeper than ours, in the end, their time isn’t theirs, and all time on this earth is small time isn’t it? With so much energy focused on financial and material gain, holes start to form.
Creative; spiritual; interpersonal; romantic.
Throwing money at a gaping void in life never was the best way to fill it. Besides, it runs out. Well, for most of us, anyway. Still there are a lucky few with inexhaustible trust funds, bankers whose alternate clientele include exiled royalty and arms dealers, and credit cards with platinum status that put Michael Jackson’s Thriller to shame.
Before you get envious, remember that they will continue to shovel that money through that black hole of little to no return like coal into an insatiable fire.
No, time is not money. What is done with it in the end, frugal or frivolous is inconsequential. Time is LIFE. How do you SPEND yours?
"I would rather live in a foreign country. Where everything isn’t about money and productivity, but about living, and beautiful things...."
I equate productivity, being productive, with things like self growth, doing what things you have to do, following up on all the things you wanted to.
Waking up reasonably early. Cleaning up, maybe tending to the yard. Some exercise, probably. Maybe further a relationship you may have only just kindled with someone, or spark an entirely new one. Make a call to a family member or friend you haven’t talked to in months, maybe even over a year. Finish a book, or start one, the one you’ve been meaning to read. Gain some ground on a personal/professional endeavor; a sketch of a building if you’re an architect, a series of snap-shots if you’re a photographer. If you’re an aspiring writer like me, maybe peck away at a short story, poem, or the "manuscript."
(That’s an intimidating word, manuscript...)
Give something away you don’t need. Hack away the things that no longer serve you in any way, and continuously add something that does. Leave a footprint in the sand, a positive impression on the world, or in someone’s life. (Earning a living probably fits into this model somewhere.)
The brand of productivity my friend seeks, as many of us do, to liberate herself from is of the "assembly line" variety, concerned with figures, statistics, money and status.
Lately a lot of us have been in survival mode just trying to keep our heads above the water, seeking independence without drowning in debt and the cost of living.
In this country, you are what you own. For many, self-worth is Codependent on net-worth.
*Sigh* If you’re gonna be broke, ya better be cute… (I look at my receding hairline and shudder lately...)
...
I think what it comes down to is filling the hours and minutes with as much learning, growing, and of course, sharing as possible.
Time is NOT money. I want to personally desecrate the grave-site of whoever coined that insipid phrase, because those who truly subscribe to that ethos do NOT actually utilize their own time—they monopolize the time of others.
I began working in a Barnes & Noble recently, and sadly my time, like the time of my coworkers, supervisors and managers is just a currency generating tool for a bunch of corporate fat-cats who sit in a board room somewhere in New York City and who definitely don’t give a shit about literature or spreading the "word" around.
It’s not just us either, but every consumer who walks through the big glass doors and consigns the minutes or hours of their day to that store. The customers always suspect they are being screwed somehow (though it doesn’t actually stop them from pissing their money away.) They are probably right, but they should channel their angsty frustration and collectively broadcast it to that Manhattan office building instead of slinging individual dirty looks, snide comments and other venom-tipped arrows in our general direction.
...
I’m not suggesting we boycott bookstores or anything in general. I in fact...love bookstores. If Glade made a "new book," or "wafting café aroma" scented plug-in, I’d have one in every outlet of my house.
Consider the suit-clad people in that conference room: even if their suede pockets are lined deeper than ours, in the end, their time isn’t theirs, and all time on this earth is small time isn’t it? With so much energy focused on financial and material gain, holes start to form.
Creative; spiritual; interpersonal; romantic.
Throwing money at a gaping void in life never was the best way to fill it. Besides, it runs out. Well, for most of us, anyway. Still there are a lucky few with inexhaustible trust funds, bankers whose alternate clientele include exiled royalty and arms dealers, and credit cards with platinum status that put Michael Jackson’s Thriller to shame.
Before you get envious, remember that they will continue to shovel that money through that black hole of little to no return like coal into an insatiable fire.
No, time is not money. What is done with it in the end, frugal or frivolous is inconsequential. Time is LIFE. How do you SPEND yours?
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
She is Love, (More Musings on Love, Part Two)
...and I do believe her when she speaks..
What is a soul mate? It’s a term that gets tossed around a lot, relegated now mostly to Nicholas Sparks novels and their subsequent film adaptations.
However, its origins aren’t found in some lake house in North Carolina, but somewhere near HERE:
Everyone possesses a soul. Our souls are like pieces to something greater: an origin point. Across time and history, when we die, our souls divide. Each half, or shard, or whatever you choose to call it enters into a new human vessel for rebirth. The process repeats. So, one then becomes two, which later on becomes four and in turn eight and so on. It’s easy to imagine this in terms of cell division, the blueprint by which the universe expands and grows.
It accounts for why the world’s population was by leaps and bounds smaller a hundred, five hundred, a thousand years ago.
Anyhow, moving forward: There are others, separated from us sometimes by oceans and time zones that carry in them a corresponding piece. There is a part of them inside which was once a part of us, a long, long time ago. We begin our search for this person from the very moment we are born.
"You complete me." That term never gets old. That’s because it’s as timeless as this migration of souls, this process of reincarnation.
That’s the story, take it or leave it. But whether conscious of it or not, we are always looking for something, for someone. It is a mechanism, awareness from deep inside that I believe is separate from, and supersedes conscious judgment and thought. It is that unexplained apprehension we feel; a void or emptiness we can’t fill; a primal call on some strange frequency beckoning us to migrate, like something out of a Jack London story. It is what responds to that special light behind the eyes of another.
These beliefs precede many of the world’s existing religions, and are prevalent metaphors in several of them. (Think Adam’s rib, and that certain lady whom possesses it after it’s removed from him...That corresponding part both he and Eve share that was a piece of the original human design.)
"True love" is just that: our soul’s recognition of it’s counterpart inside of another. It is also the energy, the beacon, the waves we send out and the means by which we locate it.
For many, or honestly, for most, it never happens. Some dilute the importance of such a thing; a mere selling point for greeting card companies and romantic comedies. They con themselves into thinking it doesn’t exist, or they don’t need it. Still many others hold fast to this utilitarian viewpoint for all things. They weigh the value of their relationships with one another as though they were commodities, a process akin to buying a car:
"Well, we’ve been together this long, and we already live together; Well, she’s hot—I mean, she’s pretty hot, don’t you think?; Well, he can put up with me; She lets me do whatever I want; He has a great job and takes care of me; Well, at this point in my life...I probably can’t do any better...I’m almost 30, for heaven sakes! It makes sense, doesn’t it?"
NO. No it does NOT make sense.
"I just need a companion; a presence that fills the room..."— Then get a DOG, for Christ sakes. Or a parrot—those possess (albeit in a limited capacity) the power of speech.
Still some do believe. They believe so deeply and want it so much that they rush the process. Eventually, in their desperate quest to find it they project things onto people that never existed. Others know full well they aren’t there at all, but the idea is that it’s better than being alone. Right?
When actively looking for something it seems hopelessly out of sight. It’s a search for a gold cache in the black hills while the wind bites especially hard.
The Zen masters advise us not to seek, for all shall come to us; to enter every situation without expectations; to substitute thinking for doing, and reacting; to get back to us, to simply BE. This is sound advice, and it starts somewhere near here.
Part the first, I think...
By living without the censorship of self-conscious thought, we project a clear, complete version of ourselves. We are confident, motivated, inspired. We learn, live and grow. We are beautiful in this way.
Part the second is to infuse love into everything we do. If everything we do is done out of love, from cleaning to cooking, to writing to painting, to sculpting our bodies to clearing our driveways of old, wet leaves (that mostly aren’t ours in the first place, but anyway--) we send this power out as a signal, a beacon whereby our match can correspond, wherever they are.
I guess for those languishing alone, it’s about nurturing not just the hope but the faith that if our eyes and ears and hearts are always open, if we trust in the goodness of the world and dance to its music, we will find that person. If we lose them, we’ll find them again...
I Hope...
For those who have settled into loveless, empty, plateaued relationships, remember you are entitled to something much better. We really DO have everything we need to be happy on our own, I think, though some days, maybe even a good stretch of days, the solitude can become torturous.
There is a small upside to it all: there is more than one perfect match. In fact by this logic, we may have a few soul mates. In one lifetime, though rare, we may discover more than one other incarnation of our souls. If we let our own receptors operate, they'll sense it when it comes near. It’s important we don’t dull them with the banter of our minds, our anxieties, our bitterness, our crises, etc..
Never lose patience. Don’t be afraid to be alone for a while. Listen for the thunder. Remember, they are looking for us as well.
What is a soul mate? It’s a term that gets tossed around a lot, relegated now mostly to Nicholas Sparks novels and their subsequent film adaptations.
However, its origins aren’t found in some lake house in North Carolina, but somewhere near HERE:
Everyone possesses a soul. Our souls are like pieces to something greater: an origin point. Across time and history, when we die, our souls divide. Each half, or shard, or whatever you choose to call it enters into a new human vessel for rebirth. The process repeats. So, one then becomes two, which later on becomes four and in turn eight and so on. It’s easy to imagine this in terms of cell division, the blueprint by which the universe expands and grows.
It accounts for why the world’s population was by leaps and bounds smaller a hundred, five hundred, a thousand years ago.
Anyhow, moving forward: There are others, separated from us sometimes by oceans and time zones that carry in them a corresponding piece. There is a part of them inside which was once a part of us, a long, long time ago. We begin our search for this person from the very moment we are born.
"You complete me." That term never gets old. That’s because it’s as timeless as this migration of souls, this process of reincarnation.
That’s the story, take it or leave it. But whether conscious of it or not, we are always looking for something, for someone. It is a mechanism, awareness from deep inside that I believe is separate from, and supersedes conscious judgment and thought. It is that unexplained apprehension we feel; a void or emptiness we can’t fill; a primal call on some strange frequency beckoning us to migrate, like something out of a Jack London story. It is what responds to that special light behind the eyes of another.
These beliefs precede many of the world’s existing religions, and are prevalent metaphors in several of them. (Think Adam’s rib, and that certain lady whom possesses it after it’s removed from him...That corresponding part both he and Eve share that was a piece of the original human design.)
"True love" is just that: our soul’s recognition of it’s counterpart inside of another. It is also the energy, the beacon, the waves we send out and the means by which we locate it.
For many, or honestly, for most, it never happens. Some dilute the importance of such a thing; a mere selling point for greeting card companies and romantic comedies. They con themselves into thinking it doesn’t exist, or they don’t need it. Still many others hold fast to this utilitarian viewpoint for all things. They weigh the value of their relationships with one another as though they were commodities, a process akin to buying a car:
"Well, we’ve been together this long, and we already live together; Well, she’s hot—I mean, she’s pretty hot, don’t you think?; Well, he can put up with me; She lets me do whatever I want; He has a great job and takes care of me; Well, at this point in my life...I probably can’t do any better...I’m almost 30, for heaven sakes! It makes sense, doesn’t it?"
NO. No it does NOT make sense.
"I just need a companion; a presence that fills the room..."— Then get a DOG, for Christ sakes. Or a parrot—those possess (albeit in a limited capacity) the power of speech.
Still some do believe. They believe so deeply and want it so much that they rush the process. Eventually, in their desperate quest to find it they project things onto people that never existed. Others know full well they aren’t there at all, but the idea is that it’s better than being alone. Right?
When actively looking for something it seems hopelessly out of sight. It’s a search for a gold cache in the black hills while the wind bites especially hard.
The Zen masters advise us not to seek, for all shall come to us; to enter every situation without expectations; to substitute thinking for doing, and reacting; to get back to us, to simply BE. This is sound advice, and it starts somewhere near here.
Part the first, I think...
By living without the censorship of self-conscious thought, we project a clear, complete version of ourselves. We are confident, motivated, inspired. We learn, live and grow. We are beautiful in this way.
Part the second is to infuse love into everything we do. If everything we do is done out of love, from cleaning to cooking, to writing to painting, to sculpting our bodies to clearing our driveways of old, wet leaves (that mostly aren’t ours in the first place, but anyway--) we send this power out as a signal, a beacon whereby our match can correspond, wherever they are.
I guess for those languishing alone, it’s about nurturing not just the hope but the faith that if our eyes and ears and hearts are always open, if we trust in the goodness of the world and dance to its music, we will find that person. If we lose them, we’ll find them again...
I Hope...
For those who have settled into loveless, empty, plateaued relationships, remember you are entitled to something much better. We really DO have everything we need to be happy on our own, I think, though some days, maybe even a good stretch of days, the solitude can become torturous.
There is a small upside to it all: there is more than one perfect match. In fact by this logic, we may have a few soul mates. In one lifetime, though rare, we may discover more than one other incarnation of our souls. If we let our own receptors operate, they'll sense it when it comes near. It’s important we don’t dull them with the banter of our minds, our anxieties, our bitterness, our crises, etc..
Never lose patience. Don’t be afraid to be alone for a while. Listen for the thunder. Remember, they are looking for us as well.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
All The Love Gone Bad, (More Musings on Love, Part One)
"..Turned my world to black..."
(It’s been almost a month since my last post. I have no excuse; other than my center of abstract thought took a vacation and the more languid part of my brain covered his hours. My muse is fickle, and I’ve just generally been in a bit of a rut. For those that read, I’m grateful, and I will try and keep up in the future.)
In my life I’ve been treated to a Whitman’s Sampler of how the bonds of love and relationships are cheapened and perverted.
In my own family I’ve seen people settle time and again for second, third, or even places where medals aren’t usually handed out.
It’s been one divorce after another. Bickering, slandering; no evidence that anything higher, or stronger than enmity and hostility ever existed. Everyone literally hates everyone else. What they think they have is transparent and empty, and they jump from one person to the other, using them up and moving on. It’s as though their relationship with each other is no different than their relationship with a pair of shoes, or a rental car.
All around me, peers, friends, neighbors and still more family have been continuously unfaithful and abusive towards one another. Both ends lack any real sense of appreciation for, or understanding of the other. They are impatient with one another and selfish. They stare at every other passerby muttering "I wish..." They become estranged.
So, I know what love isn’t. But I know what it is too; the three magic words and the weight they carry. Sometimes you recognize a person by their scent, their taste, their voice; the tactile memory of their skin. In darkness, in complete and utter blackness you can find your way back to them. No measure of depth or breadth space or time could keep you from seeking that person's light.
When bathed in that light, each one of our faculties is set ablaze. With them we are constantly learning, and discovering new places geographic or otherwise. Everything we are, everything we offer shines and washes over one another.
Around them we are inspired, motivated. Their presence pushes us to try harder. Behind their eyes are this life and energy, as well as warmth and support and kindness.
With them we share the similarities, of course, but just as many differences. Maybe "differences" is the wrong word. I hate the term "opposites attract." There are no "opposite" forces, only complimentary ones. Two people compliment one another.
It’s a waltz: each one takes a lead, while the other feels out the steps and follows unselfconsciously, discovering and exploring and learning anew. Each one offers the other a new perspective, a new way of looking at the world, at something they may have missed, or a glimpse into something totally different. Over time, it evolves and matures, becoming as Bruce Lee observed "like coals, deep burning and unquenchable."
Then there’s the physical component.
Yeah. Sex.
Often called lovemaking by representatives of the R&B and Soul communities. I know. I was never too fond of the term either. Isn’t it just another PC, Billboard Top 40 term for sex, the overly Christianized canonization of fucking?
No. At least lately I don’t think so. Its sex in the context of love: Unselfish, often spontaneous, and untiring. It is to be so close, intertwined so complexly and deeply that neither person can tell where they begin and the other ends. Their breaths are synchronized; they know each others' rhythms, compliment their movements. They’ve memorized every curve. One pushes and the other pulls. One pulls, and the other pulls harder.
Think it can’t ever be this good? That I’m over-hyping it? Think sex is overrated? Then you aren’t doing it right.
If it all sounds rare, bordering on impossible to some, that’s because, well, it is. To find another who evokes all this inside is to catch a bolt of lightening in a glass bottle. Timing it just right; listening for it, reading it and being in the right spot because it never reveals itself there more than once. Then there’s having to courage not to flinch. It’s a lot isn’t it? It doesn’t always happen. But it can. And once in a while, it does...
(It’s been almost a month since my last post. I have no excuse; other than my center of abstract thought took a vacation and the more languid part of my brain covered his hours. My muse is fickle, and I’ve just generally been in a bit of a rut. For those that read, I’m grateful, and I will try and keep up in the future.)
In my life I’ve been treated to a Whitman’s Sampler of how the bonds of love and relationships are cheapened and perverted.
In my own family I’ve seen people settle time and again for second, third, or even places where medals aren’t usually handed out.
It’s been one divorce after another. Bickering, slandering; no evidence that anything higher, or stronger than enmity and hostility ever existed. Everyone literally hates everyone else. What they think they have is transparent and empty, and they jump from one person to the other, using them up and moving on. It’s as though their relationship with each other is no different than their relationship with a pair of shoes, or a rental car.
All around me, peers, friends, neighbors and still more family have been continuously unfaithful and abusive towards one another. Both ends lack any real sense of appreciation for, or understanding of the other. They are impatient with one another and selfish. They stare at every other passerby muttering "I wish..." They become estranged.
So, I know what love isn’t. But I know what it is too; the three magic words and the weight they carry. Sometimes you recognize a person by their scent, their taste, their voice; the tactile memory of their skin. In darkness, in complete and utter blackness you can find your way back to them. No measure of depth or breadth space or time could keep you from seeking that person's light.
When bathed in that light, each one of our faculties is set ablaze. With them we are constantly learning, and discovering new places geographic or otherwise. Everything we are, everything we offer shines and washes over one another.
Around them we are inspired, motivated. Their presence pushes us to try harder. Behind their eyes are this life and energy, as well as warmth and support and kindness.
With them we share the similarities, of course, but just as many differences. Maybe "differences" is the wrong word. I hate the term "opposites attract." There are no "opposite" forces, only complimentary ones. Two people compliment one another.
It’s a waltz: each one takes a lead, while the other feels out the steps and follows unselfconsciously, discovering and exploring and learning anew. Each one offers the other a new perspective, a new way of looking at the world, at something they may have missed, or a glimpse into something totally different. Over time, it evolves and matures, becoming as Bruce Lee observed "like coals, deep burning and unquenchable."
Then there’s the physical component.
Yeah. Sex.
Often called lovemaking by representatives of the R&B and Soul communities. I know. I was never too fond of the term either. Isn’t it just another PC, Billboard Top 40 term for sex, the overly Christianized canonization of fucking?
No. At least lately I don’t think so. Its sex in the context of love: Unselfish, often spontaneous, and untiring. It is to be so close, intertwined so complexly and deeply that neither person can tell where they begin and the other ends. Their breaths are synchronized; they know each others' rhythms, compliment their movements. They’ve memorized every curve. One pushes and the other pulls. One pulls, and the other pulls harder.
Think it can’t ever be this good? That I’m over-hyping it? Think sex is overrated? Then you aren’t doing it right.
If it all sounds rare, bordering on impossible to some, that’s because, well, it is. To find another who evokes all this inside is to catch a bolt of lightening in a glass bottle. Timing it just right; listening for it, reading it and being in the right spot because it never reveals itself there more than once. Then there’s having to courage not to flinch. It’s a lot isn’t it? It doesn’t always happen. But it can. And once in a while, it does...
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