You've Got My Number

I'm a consummate self-analyst. Not only am I fond of reasoning out my every decision and feeling, but also of acknowledging the limitless possibilities inherent in a single action. This results in a lot of paranoia about the future and choices made in the present. It also results in a lot of situations (as often happen in sitcoms or HBO dramas) where I'm the subject of some diatribe or lecture whereby the person thinks they are revealing knowledge of myself, to myself, only for me to be generously irritated at the assumption that I hadn't thought of it. I'm crazy, no doubt, but delusion is not a spice in my recipe. Among other things, I think I suffer from some mild form of obsessive compulsive disorder, or "The O.C. disorder." At any given time, my mind is traveling down the tunnels through scary or wonderful non-terminal butterfly effects.

Wee.

I think that the self-defeating prophecy is my favorite, sort of like saying that blue skies are my favorite, since both are found in abundance. Still, I try not to let my paranoia or insecurities completely determine my personal life. Frankly, despite how beautiful I can swing a sadness, I rather enjoy being happy. It tickles my fancy, and I'd like for it to keep on tickling well into eternity if I can help it.


Relative to the lone wolf, gray attitude which I took to in the past couple years, it comes rather as a surprise how in love I am, and the happiness that that love has generated. Sure, I may not show it openly (in fact, I was recently asked if I was depressed, because I was acting differently), but it nests so close to my inner thoughts that it practically becomes me. I'm operating on a whole other level of internal dialogue, which I think is the most important dialogue -- except, perhaps in this case, those which I carry on with Persephone.

Every love is different, and while that which I share with this woman encompasses with varying degrees all other loves which I have ever felt, it is defined by a truth of comfort, an ease which I am not accustomed to. It permeates every experience I have with her, however minor or insignificant. Persephone is everything I imagine her to be. Yeah, we surprise each other sometimes. Yeah, we have random fun. But most of all, it's that smile I have in my heart, even if it's not on my face, every time I kiss her cheek or she walks into a room. It doesn't shatter down my defenses, it glides through them. It doesn't trip me up, it doesn't send me through the roof. It floats like feathers on the wind, landing and lofting up again, over and over, across the empty plane of thought and feeling.

Just Because

I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted in this thing. Do I really have no commentary to offer? No snark, no existential musings? No self-indulgent, presumptuous statements about the way of things?

You often hear that ignorance is bliss. Maybe the reverse is true as well. I have found that though I am quite happy right now, thanks in large part to that thing called Love, I lack the traditional depth and focus I used to have on life's finer mysteries, the nuances of behavior in those around me, and how to perform rudimentary simple tasks such as walking without running into things. Last night I walked into the edge of the stove. This morning, I sliced my toe on a stray DVD player. Today I find myself unable to perform the function of sorting data in Microsoft Excel, or to remember where I stored a particular drafted letter. I put a sheet on my bed the wrong way and didn't realize I had done it until I was under the covers.

Is Suffering perhaps a close friend to Mental Acuity? And I, now hanging out with Peace & Contentment, have been ostracized from sitting at his lunch table? Seriously. Maybe bliss does beget ignorance. When you lack nothing which you desire, you lack the urge to discover, to analyze. You generate no answers, because you generate no questions.

Oh yeah, I was also in a car accident recently. I don't think that, at least, had anything to do with my not hasing smarts. Rather, that had to do with my not hasing tractions. Michigan winter can be pretty brutal, especially in an economy where plows and saltings are no longer affordable. My car turns from just having an offensive color to being a death trap on wheels. I skid, slide, and drift while going less than 20 miles an hour. Let me put this another way: if there is ice anywhere on a road, my awareness of my own mortality expands infinitely.

No one seems to really understand this either. There is some notion, somehow, that because I've only lived in this state my whole life I could somehow just be bad at driving in winter. I seem to remember driving in winter for 6 years prior to getting this car and not almost dying every time I got on an icy/snowy road.

I have determined that tired and hungry could be mutually exclusive feelings. I'm used to feeling both at once. Whether this is pure coincidence or merely that I'm tired because I'm not eating, I will leave that up to logic to decide.

Right now, I just feel tired. Last night Persephone made me dinner (which was delicious by the way), so I feel full. I ate breakfast AND lunch today (Ho-ho!) as opposed to one or the other. I don't crave any organic sustenance. I am sated.

Now the exhaustion. My coworker is back today, so I imagined I'd feel, I don't know, less like I was running a marathon. No such luck. From the get-go I am the hamster in the wheel, spinning into infinity. This combined with my now resurrected romantic life has left me feeling burnt out even when I wake up in the morning.

I fail at check-writing. I think Margarita is paying the price. Well, I am too, with a stab of 25 bones in an overdraft fee. Twice. Four times if you count the fact that I am recompensating her.

I happen to think that I am very responsible with my money, especially lately. Way early in my career as an Aide I stopped buying things I didn't need. I cut back on everything, consolidated trips home to multiple tasks just so I would not waste the gass money. For the past year especially, I will go a long time without eating because it costs me out the ass just to survive. Everything has a dollar sign.

Something happens when you get older, though, and it's something that I often take for granted: grown up needs are absurdly expensive. Whether they are tickets (guilty), loan payments (guilty), car payments (sort of guilty), or medical costs (guilty) They will drain the shit out of your meager bank account. Sometimes I feel like even when I am way overestimating how much something costs, it ends up costing even more. For example, my dental bill? If I do everything that they want me to do, it costs me literally 1/6 of what I am paid in a year. And they want to do it within three weeks. Not a chance in hell.

On top of that, and this is not a complaint towards my employer as much as it is a complaint towards public opinion dictating how much government employees should make: I don't make nearly enough money for the work that I do. When I tell people I work for a politician, they think two things about me: 1) power, and 2) money, of which I have neither. My power is limited to my resolve in granting myself enough self-respect and backbone to resist the blame for all of my constituency's ills. My money is limited to enough for me to survive on (most of the time) and little else. Let's be clear, my savings account is a joke. There is nothing in there at any given time, because it all goes towards something. I live paycheck to paycheck.

Do I want more? Well, no. I don't think I need more than it takes to maintain something that qualifies as a standard of living. What I would like is enough that I don't have to bounce checks to Margarita or be late on my car payments. My credit score is probably not so much bad as it is struggling to still be a number at all. It doesn't bother me to be poor, because I don't want much in terms of riches. It bothers me to be unable to make good at least with the obligations I have. I could care less about a nice car or a big house (or even a house). I want to just break even.

On top of this, budgeting is extremely hard for me because I am so forgetful. I have even forgotten plans to make a budget. Instead of planning, I just change the way I think about expenses. Urgent needs are all I am typically willing to pay for. Occassionally, I will buy a drink for myself and someone else, or fast food.

Someone said recently that our society has made it a crime to be poor. I think that's oversimplification. I think the nature of money ties virtue to a balance of wealth. If I have enough to pay my debts, I am a good man. If I don't, I am not. If I have so much that I pay off my obligations and have some left over that I am not donating, I am greedy.

In Star Trek, people have jobs which are pursuant to their ambitions, talents, and desires. Money does not exist, and poverty does not exist. Maybe once we reach a technological age where machinery and computers can accomplish rudimentary labor, all goods will be socialized and we will be free to pursue purpose instead of the dollar.

I am not a commie.

In An Instant

I'm an extremely strong advocate for the Butterfly Effect. Which is a silly thing to advocate for, because in reality it is not only present but unavoidable. Causality is the ultimate trip: action begets result, but those results are not always predictable. For someone who spends the greater part of his life searching for patterns in the fabric of reality, you have to imagine that I am surprised to... be surprised.

Persephone came out of the woodwork like a butterfly floating through a field of gray. I sat among the rotting memories and sober conclusions of solitude for what seemed like an eternity (two years). I wouldn't say I was totally without hope. I hoped for the future. I hoped for peace. But I never expected this.

I would tell you the story of how we met and connected in its entirety, but that's less intriguing than the process, at least for the purposes of this blog entry. I'll just elaborate on where it starts. I barely knew her to start, but Persephone was going through some rough shit. I mean, of course, heartache, confusion, etc. Things I'm well acquainted with. So Persephone makes a facebook (is there a TM sign I can insert here?) post with awesome lyrics from a Paramore song I was unfamiliar with at the time. Naturally, I asked her to identify the band/song. She does. Then I ask her how she's doing. She asks me if I'm free for coffee.

Hold the phone. A pretty lady asks me if I'm free for coffee? This guy? Well, naturally I'm attracted to fair Persephone, but I understand she's been through a lot. I'm also tired as hell. I had promised myself that I would take care of myself first. But you know what? One last hoorah for the common good. More than likely, I was just going to be messing with my emotions by trying to help someone I'm attracted to. But it seems like she could use it, and she definitely trusted me enough to meet me early in the morning, by herself. I am a safe harbor. Maybe I can make her feel better somehow. So I decided to go. I didn't know it at the time, but romance was calling.

On this simple choice hinged what true believers refer to as Destiny. The Plan.

While it may be such, I know with certainty that it is at least the Butterfly Effect. I could've said no. I could've changed the date of said meeting. But hell, why not now? My choice beget a whole series of results, further choices, further actions. It was like being in a dungeon maze, opening a door you passed by at one time and never opened before, and finding that it led outside, a version of outside you never believed existed. An outside you felt but never saw.

I set foot in that coffee shop and I haven't looked back since. I'm not just in love, I'm loved back. I'm cared for. I'm understood. I'm trusted. I'm listened to. I have a partner in crime (or justice). I have someone to laugh with and someone that gets me.

Is there something spiritual about the Butterfly Effect? Does it lead us where we are supposed to go? Or is causality simply impartial?

I'm not sure. But here I am reaping the rewards of a universe where minor actions make major life changes.

In Which There Are Code

Air is quite an evocative term bearing a lot of imagery, and I think that is well-deserved. Because we are a self-aware and sentient species, we are jealous of those breeds which can manipulate it. We long, sometimes, for the relative freedom of the birds. This, however, is tangent to my point. The point being, we need air. To breathe.

We breathe. Sometimes we cough, sometimes we sneeze, sometimes we find ourselves being choked by strange men in alleys or large snakes native to the Amazon River basin. But the expression "a breath of fresh air" is tellingly expressed to describe when someone is encountered by a person, place, or thing which pleasantly contrasts with the hum-drum of their daily lives.

For the past couple of years my life has felt fairly stagnant. Occasionally, I've had my encounters with something fleetingly interesting and, also, the periodic hangover. There has lately, however, been a whipping of the winds somewhere in the valleys of my mind and in the events of my life. The stagnancy is bubbling from underneath with fermented product. I am feeling a breath of fresh air. Perhaps more than one such breath -- or one such air -- I think when we are dealing with pluralities the expression starts to self implode. Bottom line: I'm feeling pretty vital.

I have determined that at some point this blog will be connected to Martini's, so I'm going to start giving people codenames, Martini being one of them. I am not an explicitly private person, but codenames can be fun and I sometimes need to handle things... delicately... for the sake of others.

Since Psyche, I have interacted with many different women on a purely platonic level. Gunrack was sweet, even kind, and will do some man rather well, just not me. After all, I do not own a gun, let alone many guns to necessitate their racking.

Now, somehow, there is a strange whisper in my heart. A glimmer at the corner of my eye. Things are happening. The world is turning again. Psyche is a painless memory. Gunrack, a friend kept carefully at a distance, for whom I wish all good things. And everyone who proceeded them I bear no ill will, just a future of success and happiness with someone who will help them achieve it. I will wait for that person now. And I will know her when I see her, not her face, but the depths of her. I will stare at her and through her. And I will commit to nothing as I commit to recognizing the difference between wanting to see her, and seeing her.

It is a strange thing to be human. Quite a bit more bizarre to be the person I am. I reflect on my own psychological geography and wonder at how life is colored by our perceptions. It is strange, too, how a chance encounter or a road not traveled (yet) can reveal so much more than we anticipated.

I cannot actively remember the last time I posted here, although it is dated and an important film is referenced. Let's face it, I live a reactive life. Thanks to Lauren Majewski for reminding me I had this.

I have had a crick in my neck for days. A normal person would say this is because I stretch too little. But my first active thought is that I'm single and a girlfriend could provide some sort of context-appropriate massage. We all know about the other kind of massage, which I have both given and taken, and which only occasionally proves to be platonic.

I digress.

My neck hurts, and when a part of me hurts, I'm reminded of my age. When I'm reminded of my age, I'm reminded of my mortality. I'm also reminded that I've been saying since I was a child that I would die when I was 26. I'm 25 now. This is an increasingly morbid thought given that one of my best friends and kindred spirits passed only two years ago.

I told my friend I would write a poem about her tonight, but at this point I feel either too drunk or too tired. When you can't tell the difference, you know you've had too many late nights. Additionally, you probably drink too much.

Brittany May is one of those people men write poems about, love poems, but that is not my aim. Specifically, I'm writing her a not-love poem -- distinct from a slam/hate poem. I am writing her a poem about how wonderful it is to have a girl who is nearly as close as a lover even though she isn't one. Every time I see her I am reminded of how the feeling of love always dominates your consciousness and supersedes all other priorities, even your sense of compatibility. As I often profess, passion is the penultimate power in the human possession. It rules us, and allows us to rule ourselves in a sense of right.

Seeing Brittany reminds me of these things specifically because it is not so with us. We are partners in crime, in life, but not in bed. It is unique to have a woman in my life who I can treat as a woman and a kindred spirit, and lavish affection upon, without making her an entity of my desire. That is not to say I don't love her, or that I think she is not an entity of men's desires (rather the contrary, as I have predicted and watched men follow her around like they are lost puppies, such is her power over men), but for my part it is the kind of love one feels for the sparrow that sits on one's finger, or that the viking feels for the Valkyrie. She is simply a beautiful creature to revere, even idolize, to take into my confidence, but for whom I feel no sense of desire, of need.

Such things are necessity in romantic matters of the heart.

When you are single, feeling alone goes hand in hand with freedom. At least, that's the popular understanding. Being single is it's own special prison; the possibilities are not endless, because at the end of the day you always go home to yourself. Reinvent yourself as you might do, your faults and your virtues are corners you cannot surpass by your own accord. No. It is connections through which we become more.

And what connection is more powerful than a romantic love which fuels both parties into a state of chaotic nirvana? Therein lies a constant connection which facilitates changes in both, and changes together.

Predatory Older Women Who Are Compared To Large Cats

I am cougarbait. Let's be frank about this.

I'm not gloating -- certainly not -- and I'm not talking about dangerous felines. I'm not actually sure I've ever seen a cougar. But I have been acquainted with a variety of cougars. You get me?

I knew you did. I'm not sure what property of my being lends me to cougary advances. I should note that I have never been successfully cougared. As a male, there is something certainly exotic about the prospect, but not enough to underwrite my better judgment.

Young women are used to guys of all ages buying them liquor. This is not only common, but almost socially expected, because young ladies are treated as flowers, bars as gardens, and men as honey bees or some other creature interested in flowers. I know, that's a bad analogy. I'm only saying there's an established order to it. It's not right, it's actually kind of pathetic, but it's truth. I am not an active participant in this process, although I am not a detractor. I'm getting on in my years, so meeting a girl that interests me, even in a bar, even just as a friend, is considered good fortune.

I digress.

The point being that I have been given free alcohol by a number of women over the past two years alone. Their cumulative age is probably around 300. Feel free to divide that number as many times as you see fit to attain a workable average age. The occurrence perplexes me, and I am taken aback in awe and wonder at myself. Only one or two of these women have made it obvious that they aim to hunt, and I am the prey. One even happened to make mention of it in front of my male friends.

When out with a group of my female friends a few months ago, I was assured by many of them that I am indeed cougarbait. Their excitement in labeling me this way was alarming, as if they had discovered a box of free kittens wearing red bowties. I did not necessarily hide my disappointment or shame -- I would much rather appeal to women my own age, even if I chose not to pursue those women either.

Au Naturale

I don't think I spelled that correctly.

It has been a while since I mused here (rest assured, I've not stopped musing), and I find the urge to do so again. As someone who analyzes himself and his surroundings with certain determination (if not accuracy), I'm fluctuating always between what comes naturally to me and what I think should come naturally to me. Here we are. You can decide which of these two monsters is clattering at the keys.

Before I retire at night, I try and come to conclusions. It's become more of a habit than a conscious effort, like the life lessons which used to follow cartoons or live-action Saturday morning programming. At some point, these messages become either redundant or completely trivial, but they continue regardless. Always, I'm try to discern a truth which will set me on towards success, righteousness, spiritual peace, or emotional freedom. I'm not sure I care which, and maybe that's just part of the problem.

My au naturale approach is just one in a number of countless maxims which I've instituted for as long as they proved effective. A markedly optimistic person would say that I am approaching an absolute truth. A largely pessimistic person would say that I am striving in vain for an answer I will never find. Your average person would probably say I'm thinking too much. At times, I lend myself to each perspective.

I have discovered something blocking my thought processes all the time. Almost a kind of intoxicated gray haze, it prevents real concentration, total development of thought. Admitting to what that could be (age, broken heart, hunger, destroyed brain cells/a traumatized mind, the subconscious wisdom that my musings are purposefully self limiting) seems to do nothing for the process. What does is being able to talk to someone about it. Despite my beloved friendship circle, I find myself at times incapable of trusting others, or ashamed to reveal myself. At times, I speak openly to myself. I wonder openly if this is how psychosis starts. According to some people, I'm crazy already. It's part of my hesistation to open a discourse. It wasn't always that way, though.

My darkest thoughts these days would probably not disturb most people. Well, maybe the Machiavellian ones. Still, there's an undercurrent to all that I do which seems irrevocably tied to virtue. Please note: this does not make me a good person, just one with a hyperactive conscience. I believe that when people do good deeds, it comes from a place of love or a place of guilt, or both. Occasionally, people are motivated by righteous truth. This though, is a fire which does not burn continuously, but fitfully and circumstantially, just enough to tow a bottom line. It's a Bruce Willisian kind of "good".

When you fall in love, you are enveloped by a sense of confidence. Total faith is something that is difficult for a person of my analytic obessiveness to achieve unassisted. What we feel may be false, it may be true. Time will tell, as it always does (or never does, I guess, depending on the duration of the question). If love (and I mean, pure, unadultered commitment and passion) doesn't pan out -- for whatever reason -- the consequences are dire. It is not in our nature to give up. It is not in our nature to let go. We pursue acceptance only as a segway to a peace. When we emerge from such a loss, however that emergence is achieved, we are different people. Not better. Not worse. But different. We envy the chameleon and the butterfly, but in the end we humans have a greater propensity for corruption, redemption, modification, adaptation. And always, always, with some ability to choose -- if not how we feel, than how or if we act on those feelings.

Intelligent Man, Stupid Animal

Some careful life observations last night with my best friend. Of course, these observations were made under the influence of Moons Over My Hammy, so take that for what you will.

Human are interested in progress -- personal progress if not social progress -- and that progress is itself defined by struggle. Whether that struggle is an obstacle overcome or a pain endured is not fully distinguishable by our sense of pride, although I suppose that if you have more of the latter than the former, you'd burn out pretty quickly.

My friend and I are in quite different circumstances. He's a married man with a lovely wife, a steady job, and a pleasant home. And while he loves his life and is secure in his environment, he is like a tree growing indoors. He does not feel trapped, merely confined by the placement of his roots, with a ceiling above his head where the sky used to be. Now his limbs feel stunted, his leaves without air, and the twigs from the branches are searching the walls attempting to find cracks. Because his life is so structured, it does not lend to troubles which would lend themselves to progress.

I'm a single guy with a troubled romantic history, a somewhat tentative job, and an apartment by the freeway. While I am not desperately at odds with any of these things, they do color my world. The result of a break up that happened over a year ago was a nearly complete blindness to movement. The pain of the break up not being nearly as significant as the continued love for this woman and a lack of belief in a future emotion as powerful. It is as if the sun stopped setting, and I was in its presence always, and happy. Suddenly it disappeared before my eyes, and I found I could no longer see the stars that came before it and, worse, could no longer care that they weren't there.

Despite our differing circumstances, our dilemmas are both existentially troubling, and what is lacking in both our lives is cosmically similar. My friend and I are both self-assessing, self-improving, consumers of truth. We both, in our own ways, lack the resources and time and circumstantial justification to pursue that truth. We both feel present in a society that does not easily permit our need for the varied and random life experiences which would lend themselves to struggle and progress. We have minds obsessed with a growth, and that growth does not seem immediately possible and we begin to question if others live their life without it. He is bouncing off the white walls of a room with no doors, lit by fluorescence, wondering if he should even be asking for a window. I am stumbling blindly in the dark groping for a path, fairly certain that whatever path I find will lead me to another nowhere.

For the time being, we wait. We wonder if there is a struggle in waiting, if there is something to be learned there or something to grow on. We repeat the exercises of past inspirations, trying to catch a beat of the same drum that drove us to paint, sing, write, play, and move.

I generate no answers here.

Rambling Edition

I'm going to try to refrain from constantly referencing song lyrics, as I seem habitually (or maybe genetically) inclined to do. That's just a warning because I want anyone reading to know that I realize what an unoriginal consumer I can be.

I had a revelation today. I have many revelations, very often, and they last for about a day and a half, and then they fade into nothingness. I wonder if anyone else is like that. From a psychological standpoint, I feel I use these revelations on beauty, hope, love, grace, etc, to keep me from teetering into existential dilemma.

The revelation: For a straight man, I am mistaken for a homosexual one at abnormal rates. That is not in and of itself a problem, or a point of pride, or even a big surprise, just an observation which lends itself to some analysis as to why. My friend, the lovely Miss Ewa Jarosz, insists that I'm merely "European" and should've been born there as opposed to here. That's a comforting thought, at least, that I might fit in somewhere. I'm sure I'm not unique in this regard, although I may be more open than others.

Developmental psychology has been reminding us on a pretty regular basis that we are the products half of nurture and half of nature. That is to say, I developed from a canvas (nature) into a painting (nurture) -- probably a Picasso.

While I can't change how I was born, who I actually am is refracted through countless lenses: purposeful and incidental things done to me, choices I've made, tsunamis. I can wager that I have always been extremely self conscious, sensual, and emotional. I presume these elements to be nurture, but that is merely because they have been present and persistent within me for the longest time. I cannot claim my sexuality to be an inherent or learned trait, but I certainly suspect it is the former.

Social psychology has another commentary: American Heterosexual Man (we'll call him AHM) has come to be defined by certain traits -- my sexuality at least being congruent with the most private aspects of that persona. On the surface, however, AHM is (for no statistically good reason) defined by traits like aggression, competitiveness, showboating, sports, and limited emotions. I am none of these things, but that does not make me a homosexual.

Were I to wager for the sake of an explanation, I'd say that these traits are leftover primitive (or perhaps frontier) ideologies which served man in his early stages in the process of gaining mates and surviving long enough to do so. Heterosexual males (those capable of a reproductive coupling) served their prospective mates a lot better by being savage d-bags. It was a different kind of sexual battleground than exists today, aside from the fact that the desire for these traits have been passed down in the genes of women for thousands of years. That may be changing, too.

Am I part of a biosocial evolution? That'd be pretty presumptuous of me to say. What I do know is that despite my preoccupation with appearance, my obsession with certain male celebrities, my apathy towards sports, and my demonstratitive nature, I really have enjoyed only sleeping with women and have no desire to switch teams.

It is hard to shift cultural norms about sex and sexuality. I can only conclude that I have a responsibility to our society to decrease investment in this stereotype by sleeping with as many different females as humanly possible.

I'm just kidding. I'm more monogamous than the dikdik.

Introduction

We start by saying that there is a humor and a beauty to life, that human beings are no less farciful than fanciful, and that all attempts to perfect or improve upon the world or ourselves are narcissistic but natural. The sum total of all such efforts is cyclical behavior cleverly disguised as progress.

That is to say, you were born crazy and stupid enough to try and deny both.

With that being said, I declare a purpose for this blog: to speak on anything and everything of significant and trivial interest in life. I will be partly obsessive and partly blasé, fully critical and naturally forgiving, vaguely guarded or hopelessly exhibitionist. I may also be a bit dualistic.

There will be observational commentary.
There will be lazy categorization.
There will be brilliant analysis.
There will be some other things.
There might be shame.

This is a human blog -- by humans, for humans (and against them, too).