So I go to Starbucks across the street. Yeah, Starbucks = closed. I walk around the business plaza by myself, wondering what to do for the night. Cell phone is dead, can�t call anyone, no one can even call me. Something about a 100-dollar payment they wanted Saturday, apparently, they wanted it Friday instead. Maybe the same person who told me that also gave me my schedule last Wednesday, they live in the same world.
The walk isn�t as fulfilling as it normally is. Normally Joyce is by my side, dancing around and over the various tribes of cockroaches. The northeast stretch has evolved past the hunter-gatherers into a tidy little fiefdom. I remember this because I killed their king and experienced the day of mourning and the subsequent crowning of a new, smaller, king. The king is dead; long live the king, and all that.
Joyce wasn�t next to me tonight. In fact, I haven�t seen her for, I guess, a few weeks. Other then writing short little stabbing emails at each other, there has been little to no contact. I miss her. Walking my few laps around the business park, I idly wonder about he cyclical rifts that form in our friendship. I wonder if she even cares now that she has a new person to focus on, or if I�m just another drop of water sliding off her back. And then I realize I wonder too much and keep walking.
What to do now? I chide myself; it�s 2am on a Friday night, with no means to contact my network of friends who are, undoubtedly, out and about. I stop on a stone bench at some nondescript office building and read a couple of pages from �A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius� and realize that I don�t like this book. Not one bit. The odd 10 or so pages I�ve read stabs at dams of emotion I�ve built and much like the little Dutch boy, I just don�t need the hassle right now.
So I decide, fiercely, that I�m in the mood to write. My system is confused, being told to sleep, forced to sleep for a few hours, and then forced to be awake and alert. It�s the perfect foundation for a good writing session. The rare wave of nausea punctuated by a sick sublime contentment. So off to home I go.
I�m walking up the walkway to the house and the motion sensor floodlight kicks on just in time to save me from stepping in some awful yellow putrid mess on the sidewalk.
Thank you, Mr. Floodlight, thank you.
Upon closer inspection, I can see a birds beak, a bunch of hair, and what looks like, rotten ground up cat-food. I�ll never understand why we have pets, really.
So I avoid the mess and walk up the shelf under the kitchen window and place my belongings upon it so that I may wash the vile mess off the sidewalk: One piss yellow work shirt, one book, my wrist brace, and a book of matches. The wrist brace teeters and falls into the planter below the shelf, despite my clumsy attempts to save it. I grunt awkwardly as I been down to retrieve the brace and, at the last second, notice a huge black widow perched on the hem of the brace, glaring up at me. It�s probably pissed I just ruined a few hours of it�s work by dropping this brace on her newly built house/buffet line.
Right. Nice try, not falling for it, you can keep the fucking brace.
So I inspect the area around the spigot closely for any more surprises and turn on the hose.
Another one of life�s little lessons, make sure there are no strange attachments on the end of the hose before turning it on.
So, after my third shower of the day, I finally wrestle the hose into submission, very much like that guy who wrestles crocodiles on TV, except I think crocodiles are easier, and spray the god-awful mess into the ivy. I eye my fallen bracer and it�s new sentry one last time and shrug, resigned, and continue into the house.
My room smells like stale cheese puffs, which is curious as I haven�t had a cheese puff in this room in, well.. 15 years? The rain does odd things to old houses, bringing out all sorts of strange smells. I comment about the smell to grandma who makes me explain why I�m not at work, and she scoffs, saying I always smell things that don�t exist.
Hrm, well.. yes, but if I were to make up smells, it wouldn�t be stale cheese puffs.
Funny thing about grandma, lately, she�s been acutely appreciative. Hey, that�s what I respect most about people, right? Their appreciation? But it�s over the top, by a large margin. She says it with a tear in her eye. Telling me so many times a day how good I am to her, how much she loves me, and appreciates the things I do for her.
This is new, which isn�t to say she�s ever been unappreciative, but it�s never been like this. I don�t know how to handle it, to be honest. I got her a frappacino, this is not cause for tears. This is not cause for long heartfelt hugs and shaky praise. It�s unnerving. It�s frightening, actually.
And yes, I know what some of you may think this is a sign of and I�ll tell you now; keep it to yourself unless you want to be punched in the face. And maybe even ran over. It�s nothing personal, you see.
It�s all very illustrative of my emotional barrier lately, as well. It�s like memory foam from NASA, guaranteed to give you a better night�s rest, so say the late night TV gods. It takes the perfect shape of your body, that is, until you leave it. Apply pressure and I feel it acutely, move away but for a moment and it�s forgotten. Her long strings of love and praise are felt acutely until she walks into the other room, and all I�m left with then is the intellectual conundrum of it all.
R.O.I.
Perhaps that�s the reason for my new found �strength�. It�s an awkward strength; I don�t know how yet to best use it. I fumble around and do more harm then good, it seems. The armor feels gangly when I move. I�ll get used to it. This is what it means to be a man these days. It�s taken me 28 years to figure it out. Perhaps if I were to have had an emotionally unavailable father around at an earlier age, I could have learned the lesson sooner, and forgone the heartache. Yes.. Return On Investment.
Aside from that, I sincerely like being me. This is one of those days where I�m just stupid happy to be me. Seriously, it�s fucking GREAT to be me! Just last night, I was wondering what it would be like to be someone else, man, would that suck. If I were someone else, I wouldn�t be doing what I was doing, or knowing what I�d be doing. I�d just sit around and wonder �What�s Garald doing right now?� Being me, I don�t have to wonder! I knew that I was going to lay down, read some, and hopefully fall asleep.
I�m more alive then I�ve been in a long time. There are few actual pleasures, if you want to get picky, but there are many sensations that make it wonderful to be alive.
And yes, there is and will always likely be some physical antipathy for myself, I still wouldn�t change who I am or who I�ve become. I would sooner change the world to fit my expectations then change my expectations. I want people to be good.
So until that actually happens, I just do my best to try and avoid hypocrisy, which isn�t as easy as it may sound, especially in this town. Just takes fortitude. A lot of fortitude.
Hi ho.
Isn�t that a wonderful segue?
Unfortunately, I don�t really have anything to segue into. My room is now filled with the scent of a lime green candle from Target, that of mint cucumber. Normally, that may be disgusting, but this candle company pulled it off. Not too sweet, not too minty, and doesn�t make me hungry. What more could I ask for in a candle? Those cranapple ones suck shit. All it does is make me slightly queasy and hungry at the same time. �I can�t eat the candle. I can�t eat the candle. I can�t eat the candle.� My mantra when I was over at a previous girlfriends house. It was filled with food smelling candles. Probably explains her hate/hate relationship with food and her weight.
Norah Jones is serenading me.
�Wish that I could fly away...�
Man how, I wish my cell phone worked. I guess that�s the risks of having only one phone.
Well, it�s 4am now anyway, I�m sure the only friends that are still out are in clubs and wouldn�t be answering the phone anyway. I�d like to go to sleep, I think, but I don�t want to throw another curve ball to my body just yet. I�m ignoring the nagging desire to browse old emails. No need to resurrect old ghosts.
I know, I�ll go lay in bed and do these little mental exercises that are normally reserved for when I�m laying next to a sound sleeping loved one, wide awake. I create a 3d block with many holes in it and shift pegs from hole to hole, adding more pegs as I plant the previous ones in there final resting place, keeping track of the location of all of them. I think my record was 36, which isn�t that great. I can keep going if I keep the pattern uniformed and let the abstract portion of our brain kick in. You know, like how we can conceptualize 1000 trees but not actually acutely understand each individual tree? We can do individual trees up to a certain number, some more then others, but I don�t remember if 36 was good or not.
For instance, visualize 10 trees in your head. You can see each tree, you understand that there are 5 on the left, 5 on the right, they are accounted for and whole. Now increase the number by 2, keeping the entire scope of trees present, don�t let your mind abstractly conceptualize the trees, once you do, you lose. How many can you make it up to? Be honest.
The cube exercise is easier to get higher numbers since you have a axis frame of reference to associate placed pegs with.
Yes, it�s stupid shit like this that allows me to survive sleepless nights. Conversely, it makes me pretty good at visual based puzzles. Made me a fair mechanical engineer, as well, being able to visual conceptualize finished projects when in the early design phase.
Yes, I�m rambling... As Ms. Jones would say, �I�m feeling the same way all over again...�
Erica emailed me today.
this is one of the only times I will get to use the computer. Alaska is cool. Salmon are ugly. I wish we could've had lunch. Sorry I couldn't get to the bar.Miss you,
Erica
Humm.
-G