Harm and Foul

I hate sleeping through alarms. I've lost my moral high ground. Maybe that's just as well. Maybe it'll be better without the antagonism. Or maybe it won't. Who knows. I've thought about it, I've wondered and considered and chosen a course of action. I'm feeling a little Frost-y at the moment. I spent part of the evening with a friend. A good friend, better than I generally have any right to expect. An inversion of friends I've had before. Not to say that I don't expect and hope constantly, because that's just my nature, and I'm bound to do it. But I have those expectations, those hopes, and when they don't manifest, or manifest a little differently, it's okay. An inversion, it doesn't have to be a fight, a test of wills, it's honest. It feels good. Safe in a backwards way. We're not making it any harder than it needs to be. I usually make things more difficult than they should be.

The damaged attract the damaged, and it's a little like the blind leading the blind. I want to make it better, I always want to fix people. I'm not sure why. Has to do with want and need, and probably daddy issues too. I always worry. I worry and I overthink and I can never use the excuse of not having thought it through because I always do. I do the things that people make excuses for. They say they were drunk, or punch-drunk, seeing red or looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses. They say they didn't know what they were doing, what would happen, that they can't think, that they don't think. I don't have those excuses. I think it all through, calmly, rationally, and still do it. Knowing the consequences, knowing what can or might or will happen, I do it anyways. After careful consideration, I make the conscious decisions that people tend to blame on their unconscious minds, on the id, on their reptilian brains. I don't get to cover my ass, I've just made choices and then have to live with them. Some have been the least of evils, certainly, but by no means all of them. I sometimes wonder if I am really some sort of monster, or if I'm damaged beyond repair. If either is the case, how can I justify wanting to fix people? Maybe I first need to fix me. Only thing is I'm not sure how.

Dance With Me?
Sing once again with me, our strange duet. I play with fire. I like it. I may be an adrenaline junkie, but I'm picky about my triggers. I'm drawn to the darkness, convinced, perhaps, that the light lies at the end of the tunnel, or that once my eyes adjust the best things are the ones once obscured by darkness. Crazy, but that's how it goes. The closer you get to the light, the bigger a shadow you cast. I want to see what the shadows hide. I want to know. I want to understand. And if you want these kind of dreams, it's Californication. I need to connect to something, connect to someone. I let myself get drawn in and it's never enough. Feeling as good as love, you could, you can. I like duality. I like the underdog. I'm drawn to the damage, like a rubbernecker on the highway. I don't have guilty pleasures, or at least I try not to. I make my choices and I deal with the fallout. No harm, no foul. Either way I don't want to wake up from this, sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare. I have an overactive imagination, I spend too much time living in "if" land. If only, If I, what If? Sometimes I play with fire and it warms me right to the core. Sometimes all I get is burned fingers, and sometimes the odd welt on my thumb. I've always liked games of chance. I'm steady but I'm starting to shake, and I don't know how much more I can take. I've never really been one for games of skill, mostly because skills can come and go so easily. My bets are usually with the green lady. One or the other. You're the right kind of sinner. I'm not. Sin is a tricky concept. If it's bad, why do we want it? If it's good, why would we be punished for it? More ifs. Ifs ands and buts. There are always exceptions. What you feel is what you are. I wish I could sing like Pat Benatar. I forget how much I love to sing, how much I need to sing. That's the way, though, isn't it. Sometimes you forget what you need until you have it. I think I thought I saw you try. Nothing's going to stop me from trying. Nothing ever does stop me from trying, at least nothing external. I'm stubborn as anything. I got it from my mother. Well, she jokes that I didn't because she still has all hers. But you get the idea. I want these words to make things right, but it's the wrongs that make the words come to life. I want what I want, and half the time you'll never know what it is. Because I'm afraid. I was surrounded by enough cruel, vindictive, competitive people in the past that I learned not to share my goals, because once someone knew about them, they became an obstacle to them. Guess I'm really on my own. As though if I say it out loud it's true, and I have to really deal with it when I fail, rather than just saying I didn't care anyways. I care too much, but I have to. I have to care about something, about someone, it's a compulsion. I am falling, and if I let myself go, I'm the only one to blame. I have to care, I want to care, and that's what usually hurts me. I like the duality of it, to be honest, the contradictions, the paradoxes. I like paradoxes. Paradoxes and balance. Both hydrogen and oxygen burn, but together they'll put a fire out. I don't want to put the fire out. I like it, it's warm and it makes everything else go. Isn't it messed up how I'm just dying to be him? I've never been one for Pascal's Wager, but strangely that doesn't stop me from believing in something. We always wind up talking philosophy. Not that that's a complain by any means. I wish I could make that pattern expand. People need more hugs. Take a backseat, hitchhike, take a long ride on a motorbike. My scars are mostly on the inside, lining my lungs, my stomach, filling the spaces between the muscles and the fat, stretching between the tendons. Let's compare scars, I'll tell you whose is worse. The ones on the outside are nothing special. Chicken pox, a couple of childhood scrapes. I've never broken a bone, even twisted or sprained a joint. This world if you let it will drive you into the ground. I won't let it. I can beat this. I have to be able to. I have to believe that I haven't been set up to fail. If I don't, if I can't, there's nothing else I can do. Well, there's always one thing I can do, but that would require a trip to the chemist. You're no problem at all.

Mistakes can only happen with the benefit of hindsight. Unless we're speaking empirically, of course. But empirical really isn't my style. Mistakes are just risks you wish you hadn't taken. Sometimes you can only see things from the outside. Sometimes beauty is in the mind of the beheld. There should be more love. The stigma shouldn't be in having done it. The celebration should be in having recovered. Everyone needs more hugs.

I've been more introspective than usual, which is saying something. I must be making up for the extraversion of the last little while. That's right, I'm an extrovert. Shy as I am. Another paradox. No wonder I've got such an affinity for them. I'm full of them.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Poison

Destructive behaviour is a funny thing. Funny peculiar, usually, although I have been laughing an awful lot lately. A means to an end. I wonder where the end will be. I know what will likely happen if I continue. I've seen the pictures. It isn't that I like it, it isn't that I need it. But oddly, it makes it all feel better. The willing intake of so many toxins, it makes me feel better, strangely. Like bringing the turmoil from the inside into something concrete, something of which I am the commander. Something that's between me and that little burning tube. Someone made the hypothesis that in order to do this kind of thing, one must hate oneself. I freely admit that I hate myself from time to time, but it is not at those times that I crave the toxins, not usually. Something to focus on, something to bring myself out of myself, something to make the rest of the world real again. Art on the edge, going not quite to the point where you lose control, but close.

And it makes it easier. Easier to forget. I already have that foul taste in my mouth, it lets me ignore it. Easier to act, not to think, not to wonder, not to compare. Easier to keep the secret. I once felt relief, a strange, twisted kind of relief that all I needed to trigger a sensory memory of that strangely comforting time was to smoke a couple of cigarettes and drink a case of cheap beer. It was that easy, and the taste in my mouth when I woke up the next morning was exactly the same. And here I am drawing parallels with that time again. Much as I say it's the same, it isn't. Fundamentally, it has this major, gigantic difference which I can only see being totally honest with myself. I won't call this a game, even if there is some play involved. I toy with the idea of opening up, of telling tales. If I did, the inherent betrayals aside, would it change the act, force me to change the qualities or quantities of it in the telling, in the reactions? Adjust the past in my memory based on the reactions of someone who wasn't there? Colour the experience with the eyes of the present? Force me to qualify and quantify my own reactions? I don't know. You have to be honest about what you want, and I don't know why that has always been so hard for me. But now I am honest about what I want. Both in the short term and the long term. At least to myself. At least as far as I can figure out what I want. That's all I can ask of myself.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried. I'm reasonably sure it's not a motorcycle accident, since it's supposed to be packed up for the winter by now, but I'm still a bit sketched out. It's unusual for it to be like this. Some people, you don't worry if they don't pick up the phone, some people, you do. With him, I do. I'm worried, I'm afraid. Not just about now. About later. About whens and wheres and what ifs. I'm pretty good at being realistic, but what happens when the thing you've tried to be most practical about becomes the thing which not only can, but must, defy rationality, the thing that makes everything else take a back seat, the thing everyone's looking for whether they think they are or not. The thing I thought I couldn't have, and so petulantly declared I didn't want. Maybe I still can't have it. That would be poetic, wouldn't it?

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Being Vewwy Vewwy Quiet, Huntin' Wabbits

Secrets can be fun. When I say I'm not surprised it happened, it means I thought it probably would, although I would not have been surprised if it hadn't happened either. In spite of my sometimes overwhelming urge to confide, I'm keeping my trap shut this time. Secrets have a way of wiggling out even through pursed lips. There's nothing to confide. It's not like it's anything I can't handle. Secrets still give me that lovely glowy feeling though, that feeling of knowing something. It makes each joke a little funnier, keeps a slightly sardonic smile on my face throughout the day. Maybe I'm really keeping it quiet because I still haven't shaken that need for the approval of all the other sheep. Especially here and now. Which implies that I'm not sure the other sheep would approve, and it's true. As much as I like to bandy about my I-don't-give-a-shit-about-the-masses attitude, when push comes to shove, I'm as much of a coward as the next person. When the masses are made up of people you've come to know and care about, it's a little harder to flout what they think. As long as I don't get any direct questions, I'm alright. I don't lie well. And sometimes "It's none of your business" just won't fly. I would so hate to take away their punching bag. Largely because I would likely replace it. I've spent a fair amount of time the last few days cringing over the jokes I've laughed at, the jokes I've made. In a new context, they're still funny, but I really don't like having to eat my words. These ones might not go down so easy.

I may have started out as a fox, but I was always hunting something. Even when I tried to pretend I wasn't.

Inevitability. That's what's sometimes lacking, this peculiar feeling of not being able to stop it even if you wanted to. It feels good, fun, not stressful or worrying. As much as I hesitate to tempt the fates of contact between shit and fans, things are pretty good right now. Into the home stretch and on my way. Adventures are good.

Dream On
Daydream Believer

Dirty Little Secret

I got home just a few moments ago. Just after half past two in the morning, totally sober. I'm on a little hiatus for the moment, hoping that my favourite form of toxin will regain its power.

So it wasn't the quiet, relaxed, even intimate evening in I had been planning on. It was probably just as well. That's the great thing about shows on DVD, you can watch them another time. Haven't picked up my fiver yet, and though it's gone to double or nothing now, I'm not sure it's a fair contest anymore. Is it bad if I kind of want to lose this bet?

It's all about the little moments. Most of the time, I just want to go back to those moments of excitement and intrigue, and in the pursuit of them, I find more moments, until I wind up sitting confused and alone trying to rationalize actions, both my own and those of others. This is the problem with not knowing anyone very well.

If it wasn't crazy, I'd be bored. I prefer the craziness, as much as I might bitch and complain. I think I have a balance for a moment or two.

And I'm only 16000 words away from December.

Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer

Without Ever Knowing The Way

The scariest part was how quickly I started to go into defense mode. It's all better now, but my shopping list for today worries even me. It started out innocently enough. I've never had sherry before, and I needed some more pens. The shopping list wouldn't be worrying at all if not for context. Everything's about context.
Friendships are funny things, and they can come in such a vast array of shapes and sizes. This kind of friend is the kind of friend I always wanted. I think I wanted it before because it was a little strange, a bit unusual, and because I was missing something. It's been a long time since I vocalized needing that kind of friend, never totally sure what the logistics of actually having one would be. Then, all of a sudden, once I wasn't looking for it... But isn't that always the way it goes? I wonder if it's always like that with him. Whether it's something about him, or something about me, or something about the two of us together. Whether I could have that in another context. Whether I'd want or need it in another context.
I've never before felt like that. The parts were familiar, certainly, but all of them hitting me at once bowled me right over. I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty, I just need to analyze the things that happen to me. And this is one of them. Over the hump, really not so long to go. That's the bit that gave me all those ironic chuckles last night. I was starting to see the Christmas lights at the end of this tunnel, and were they ever gorgeous. I was starting to have everything sorted out. From here on in I'll have to be a little more careful. I never meant to hurt anyone. Usually the only one who I hurt is myself, and that's okay with me. When you play with fire, after all. I can take a couple of burns. Nobody else asked for this though. When you don't understand the backstory, it's hard to understand the action.
Nobody was supposed to know who I am. I'm getting braver, letting people see a little more of what's behind the mask. Connecting the mind and the body, so to speak. Telling real truths, in unadulterated and undiluted form. It feels good in a crazy terrifying roller coaster kind of way. Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie after all.
The decade shift is getting a little bit closer. As always, I'm finding that I don't have it nearly as figured out as I thought I would by now. Sometimes I catch myself out at it, reading an article about someone a few years younger than me and thinking that they're my age. Or worse, sometimes I catch myself thinking something like, what an immature brat.
The age thing came up today during the talk. I normally don't think about it so much. It's less noticeable when I don't see his sister, who's got a decade on me, when I don't remember that he was my age when I was my littlest sister's age. The more time goes on, the less it matters, the less it will matter, but at the moment it has become a bit of an issue. When we don't want the same things. But we do. We want the same things when it counts, and I think it'll be okay that way. It won't be long.
Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Risk and Reward

Awareness and risk, we didn't crash into one another. I don't know why he annoys me so much. Just the general frustration of fascination, I'm sure. At least he's talking to me again. Only in theatre.

As always, the toughest bit is getting out of bed in the morning. Every tough time is like that. Once I'm out of bed and moving, and occasionally this translates to properly dressed and no longer rocking my PJ's around the living room, I have some momentum. As much as I hate to imply that physics may actually have some bearing on my life, I feel I'm a victim of inertia. In the same vein, getting to sleep is tough too. I don't want to rely on the pills on the bedside table to stop the charge of circular thoughts around the inside of my skull, to dull the heartache and let me drift off. Morpheus is only sometimes my friend. He didn't want to let go of me this morning, and I suspect that tomorrow will be no different. The lines are crisscrossing each other, and I don't know where they turn into boundaries. I'm still intrigued, though I'm sure it's a bad idea. Just the same as before, right down to cigarette smoke. It's human nature to want what you can't or shouldn't have. Though if I get what I want, will I fall into the same trap again? The one I unwillingly lure someone into as we speak. Maybe it is to do with the exoticism. That which is rare is always prized.

I like to shelter, I like to protect, I like to nurture, but I also like to deal with independent self-sufficient people. That sounds like I'm a lot angrier than I am. I'm not angry really, it's just that nobody else is quite enough, and I'm frustrated in more ways than one. The fact that it doesn't feel quite right doesn't quell the cravings, just keeps me from satisfying them. The fact that I don't know who to trust, who I can trust, especially given my recent bouts of tongue wagging, doesn't help at all. And I should be writing for NaNoWriMo rather than doing this. But for some reason I'm not.
I might be taking up Japanese again, but not until December.
Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Don't Stop

I really hope he was the one texting me back at 2 am. It seems just like before, right down to the cigarette smoke taste in my mouth and the funny feelings about dancing. Still, I think everything's going to be alright. I think everything's back to normal. Maybe. I wish he hadn't bailed out on me so early. Would it have made a difference if I said so? It's okay not to be normal right now. It's okay not to be okay, that's what friends are for. Am I going to regret not forgetting tomorrow?
And trying and trying again.
I laugh because I know exactly what's going on, and have a new insight into the world of a fascinating person. Fascination. I am easily fascinated. The tattoos and the deviance. I would love to be stronger and smarter than I am.
Bedtime.
Daydream Believer

Sweet

Oh my stars, the number of song lines I cycled through trying to come up with an opening for this post. Nothing seems to fit.
I'm in a good mood today, despite coming altogether too close to coughing up my lungs for my liking. I'm managing. I really feel like things are under control, which I have to admit, is a feeling I really enjoy. Two months is nothing. I'm not quite over the hump, but close. I can make it to Christmas, and once I've made it that far, the rest will fall into place. I've fallen into place here. I feel like I fit. It's good. I feel like I'm on top of my responsibilities, not getting crushed under them, and having a little fun too. Just tethered enough. Maybe this time I'll be able to manage the avoidance of strings.
It's not about peace, it's like martial arts, to be still without being still. I feel like that right now, and right now everything seems okay. But that could be the sniffles talking.
Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Have You Any Dreams You'd Like to Sell?

So counting down, again. If I had a penny for everything I've counted down to. Right now, with only a bit over a week until NaNoWriMo begins again, I think it's totally fine for me to be looking forward to it, stocking the fridge with food I eat when stressed and exhausted, and yes, panicking about lack of plot. Unfortunately, I've been watching far too many Joss Whedon TV shows to feel confident in the originality of my ideas. Erp. Oh well, as usual, jump in and see. There may well be vampires involved. Because I loved them before Stephanie Meyer brought them into the spotlight.

Oh dear, I just looked at the calendar, guess what's exactly two months away today. Oh dear. And the crisis begins... now? More like continues. It's not like I haven't been wondering what I'm doing with my life for the past, oh, let's just say several years. And really, I've never felt more secure in the knowledge that it'll all work out. And it's not like I'm the first of my friends to cross this threshold, in fact, close to the last. So why does this feeling of dread fall on me like so many bricks?

On the other hand, that means I only have about 2 months until my sunny warm Christmas. There's something strangely appealing about wearing shorts (shut up, Loud, I mean comfortably and not for the purpose of jumping into snowbanks) around Christmastime.

I got off the ground today!!!! Even if I was partially lifted. Progress!

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

London Calling

So I've been counting wrong all this time. I should've started at 16, not 15, which puts me at 12 tomorrow, rather than 11. But one may be cut off the end from my previous figuring. Which would put me in exactly the right place. Happy thoughts.

I started working out again today, even though I'm still sore from that yoga thing on Thursday. Ow. I'm bored. Although somehow this doesn't stop me from wanting to shirk my responsibilities. Even when I hardly have anything to do, doing the things I have to do sucks.

It's worst when I'm at home alone. I'm bored and want to go home. It always passes, but while it grips me, it's got me. I don't want to do anything but go to sleep and hope it's over when I wake up. I'm trying to keep myself busy, but I can't shake this feeling of stagnating, the holding pattern, waiting for the real thing. I really need to stop doing that to myself. Waiting. I'm not going to wait anymore, I'm going to do something. Maybe take a ferry ride to start. In three weeks, I'll be writing a book. I better have some material.

Dream On
Daydream Believer

Touchdown 0094

Well, I have space. At least at home. And I do feel at home here, even if everything's different, even if everything's wrong. Even if my room's too big, my bed's too big, the streets are too small, the clothes in the shops are too small, and I had to work way too hard to find a bottle of salad dressing. I'm happy. I'm adjusting. There's a lot to adjust to, the greatest of which is that he's not here. 3 down, 12 to go. I'm gonna be okay. We're gonna be okay. I just don't know what I'll do if this trial proves to be too much.
I don't know why those guys put me in such a foul mood. Maybe it's because I know that if I lose him, that's all I'll have left. It's a depressing thought. That and I suppose my fight or flight instincts are changing gears a bit. Here, I'm a fighter. I have to be. I have to fight for everything. I have to fight my way into an already established group. I have to fight for myself, my work, my sanity. Yes to cream teas. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what's important. Sometimes it's crystal clear. It's easier to fight for what you believe in when you know what you believe in. I've been to defensive, too tired, too hungry. I'm homesick. With varying degrees of literalism. Maybe I will become one of those beauties, but I'd probably have to give up chips to do it.
I love the post-bar food, and the fact that I can go for a night out for about half what I used to pay. I love the view from the end of my street. I love that my accent is sexy here. That which is rare is prized. I love that picture.
I wish I'd brought more posters, my walls feel oppressively beige. There have been lots of things I've wanted to say, and I can't remember most of them.

I'm here, I better get used to it.

Dreaming of home (a little).
Daydream Believer

101 Dalmations

Well, colour me a little sheepish. I meant to do something big, important, special (relatively speaking of course, I have it on decent account that there are only about two people who still read this) for my 100th post. It seemed like an important milestone, one deserving commemoration. Then I checked the handy dashboard button that lets me see how many posts I've actually published, rather than just all the ones I started and let auto-save, many of them blank pages, and discovered that I'm actually past that delightful milestone. Tarnation! Here I was hoping to take the chance to reflect upon how much has changed in one hundred posts, spanning three of the more interesting and tumultuous years of my life. Oh well, knowing myself, I probably would never have gotten anything on the page, I'd be too concerned about being profound and reflective, and generating something for posterity. I love to look at those beautiful notebooks they sell in the classy bookstores with the five-dollar-a-pop coffee shops in them. You know, the ones with artistic designs on magnetically or elastic closing covers and pages that are some interesting shade of off-white, maybe boasting of their composition, recycled organic acid-free paper, or just plain pretty to look at. I never buy them because I know I won't write in them. I always feel like nothing I can write can do the book justice, like it's so beautiful it has to have profound things written in it. The right message for the medium. No, it doesn't help to know that somebody else is going to buy that notebook and use it for shopping lists. But now I feel almost in the right state of mind. I worked 8 hours and meant to go to sleep when I got home, but it's been a couple of hours since then. Long enough that the tea I made is cold. Well, tried to make. Silly me, I followed the directions on the package and am left with a veritable boat (because of course when you screw something up it's never the time you're making a reasonable portion) of lukewarm milk which, while providing all the aroma of a cup of Chai, has nearly none of the expected taste. So while I'm waiting for that to disappear, and the overnight (read: will hopefully put me to sleep) sinus medicine to kick in, I suppose I'll keep tapping away on this keyboard and see where I end up.

I made a long-distance, pond-hopping phone call today. At first, it was rather panicked. The voice on the other end, however, reassured me that my plans hadn't just come to a grinding halt as a result of a minor postal delay. The first thing I felt was relief, and then, for a moment before getting once again swept up into the whirlwind of that which must be accomplished before Monday, I considered that for the duration of this next chapter, nearly every voice I hear is going to sound like that. That accent is going to permeate my consciousness. The language will be almost the same. And I've been told that that can be the worst part.

Ace isn't sleeping again, we stay up talking and it's good to touch base again, to have another contact point with the outside world, so to speak. He helps remind me that there are an awful lot of things going on out there, and sometimes I think he does it by reflecting back to me some of those qualities I wish I could purge myself of. He can be abrasive and hard to deal with, but I grit my teeth and manage because he also reflects back to me some of my favourite qualities, and I keep hoping that exposure will make them stronger.

I wonder if the refresh button gets sore when I press it this many times. I'd stop if it would just show me what I want to see. Time marches on, and soon I'll have to call it a night, but I keep hoping.

The tune is the same, change the faces and names.

I can't help the way I feel, which right now is totally reckless, ass-over-teakettle hoping with every fibre of my being that this will work. It wasn't like this before, I know what I said, what I had to say, to protect the both of us. Now it's different. People change, nobody knows that better than me. Once again my practicality takes over, only this time I don't want it to. Love isn't all you need. Love can't pay the bills. Even though this is as grown up as it's ever been, is it really grown up enough? I don't know how to make this real. I just feel it. I can't explain why it's different, why the words I said before are really true now, why you should trust that it won't end up the same. I don't know. I don't even know if you should. But I do know that if it doesn't work out that way, that you won't miss me. You'll find someone who really is what I try sometimes to be.
Because. Maybe this is that feeling they were talking about, that magical, elusive "you just know".

I think the medicine's starting to kick in. My sinuses don't feel any better, but my limbs feel a little leaden.
Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer

As The Leaves Began To Change

I woke up a few days ago, and it was still dark. The last time I had to wake up that early, it was daylight by the time I'd ditched my pj's. No longer so. It's not summer anymore, kids. I love fall, always have. Even when it meant the end of summer freedom and the beginning of seemingly endless schoolwork. I just love it, the smell of it, the weather (I hardly ever get tired of telling people, during the dog days of summer, that I'm only sweating like a pig because my genetic makeup isn't built to withstand temperatures of more that about 20 degrees) but most of all, the feeling of opportunity and excitement. Naturally, spring symbolizes rebirth, the beginning of life. That's not the case for me. For me, all that stuff goes with fall.

Another thing that goes with fall is hibernation. Making a nest in which to hide out over the winter. Nesting, that's something I've been wanting to do a whole lot lately. I want to paint, pick out furniture and paintings, decorate. A big part of it is that I've never really had my own space. Sure, when I was thirteen my parents let me pick the colour for the walls in the room I was sleeping in, but it's not quite the same. Even when I moved out, it was temporary, again, not really my space, and then back into the castle, into the extra room that for the rest of the year is a glorified closet. I want my own place, yet another trapping of adulthood I've always wanted but right now am feeling a mammoth push towards.

My baby sister starts high school tomorrow. I wish I could talk to her, tell her that her whole life won't suck as bad as high school will, that it does eventually get better, that it's not as serious as it seems. But even if she'd listen to me, I have a hunch these are lessons she'll have to learn on her own the same way I did.

Looking at it objectively, it's not as bad as some have led me to believe, and not as good as others have. I've always hated the sound of my voice recorded, but like so much else, I'm going to have to learn to live with it, learn to be proud of it. It's a start. I wish the Siren would help me.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Ave Mary A

Drinkin' wine and thinkin' bliss
is on the other side of this,
I just need a compass,
And a willing accomplice...

A willing accomplice is the big thing. Hashing all this out with Bear, it kinda makes sense again. I'm not going crazy, not yet anyways. And I can want the picket fence one day, but not right now, and the fact that I don't want it now doesn't mean I don't want it. Nor does the fact that I won't give up the rest just to have it.

I've been looking for something,
Something I've never seen
We're all looking for something to be.

I felt bad for flip-flopping. Changing my mind again. But the more I think about it, and lord knows I talk about it enough, to enough people, the more I think that the two aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not flip-flopping then, but tweaking, shifting, working out the balances. Figuring it all out. I don't feel that heavy dread, the despair, the loneliness, at least not right now. I wonder where the natural end would be.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

Dream on

Good Friends and BlueSkies That Never End

"If you two want to bruise your hearts on one another, who am I to tell you that you can't?"

That's simultaneously one of the most elegant and true ways I've heard young love described. That's what I'm doing, I'm bruising my heart. But I don't care. It's the kind of bruise that feels good happening, and is only a problem later. It's only after the fact that it starts to hurt. I'll worry about it then.
I can't explain to her that this is the way I wanted it, that it's not about not wanting to commit. It's not about how much I'll hurt later. It was supposed to be about freedom, about not hurting him. He's good to me. I'm happy right now. Regardless, nobody ever has hurt me the way she does frequently, so what business does she have worrying about me? I'm happy right now, when I can forget how much it hurts to be home.

Music and dancing and bright stars I couldn't see and firelight and hiding out in a tent when it rains. I think I'm finally starting to build up some of those iconic memories that most people have of their high school years. I wish I had more, but I can't do anything about it. Now I'm making up for lost time.

Smile, sunshine,
Life is good.

Dream On
Daydream Believer

Grow Your Own Dope- Plant a Man!

Funny that I never really believed him until now. You're beautiful. It's just one of those things guys say to girls whose beds they're trying to get into. Now that he isn't anymore, or maybe he is, who could say, I do. I believe it because I've seen it with my own two eyes. I didn't believe her when she said it either, just something friends say to other friends to make them smile. I never thought about how every time I'd ever said it, it had been absolutely true. That's only just occured to me now. Regardless, it's not something you can believe through proof you can see, you just have to feel it, and right now, I do. "I hope he tells you you're beautiful, babe, because you never seem to believe it when I do." Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but the mind of the beheld. Thank you.

The makeup and jewelry are more like a shield than an adornment today. The shield I keep telling myself I don't need. It's really a confidence thing. A friend once put it very simply for me, "Eyeliner equals confidence." I can't be afraid anymore. I've been seeing a lot of the clear light of morning lately, from both sides. I think maybe that's when I do my best thinking. I wonder if I'll still think getting up before seven was a good idea at midnight.

Oh, I managed to cross one off the list.

Forewarned is forearmed. I'm definitely armed. Hopefully I won't need to be. I seek no enemies. Occasionally they fall into my lap. Hopefully I'll run into the good one today, and this will be a moot point. Or it'll be worse. I'll let you know how it shakes out.

Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer

Lucid

In order to grasp true lucidity, one must rely on their own perceptions, unfettered by the constraints of common thought. It is only once we go a little bit mad that we experience the clarity of sanity.

Maybe we all sound as crazy to him as he sounds to us.

One of the most beautiful, confident, self-assured women I have ever met felt threatened by my presence (read: hopeless girlish crush on her boyfriend) when I felt myself to be a socially and physically awkward 15 year old. Maybe there's something to this. I'm not sure whether her perception or mine was closer to the truth. Either I came off a lot better than I felt, or she was a lot less confident on the inside than on that cucumber-cool exterior.

Oh promised land, what a wicked ground.
Build a dream, watch it all come down.

People squirm when I smile at them on the bus. At first I was doing it to be friendly, now, I'll admit, I'm kinda doing it to see them squirm. And to see if I can find someone who doesn't.

Oh god, he looks exactly the same. He still won't talk to me, but now I can't hope to walk past him without knowing he's there. Hell in a handbasket.

If you want games, I'll play. Games are fun, but don't do me any favours. I don't want your pity.

Bloody hell if you'd just eat a few more vegetables! I know that it's more complicated than that, but part of me just wants my good old friend back. I want to be the more damaged one again, but it's only partially so you won't have to be. How silly a hat do I have to wear before you'll notice me again?

But the half-finished bottles of inspiration lie like ghosts in my room.

I don't know how it's so easy for them. These things don't come easily to me.

Today's what, the 14th? I miscounted, it's coming up on nine weeks now. Hell.

Hyenas laugh when they're agitated.

Maybe a little rampage is what I need...

Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody,
I got some money 'cause I just got paid.
How I wish I had someone to talk to, I'm in an awful way.

Why do I already know everything I read in Cosmo this month? Well, except for that trick with the... never mind. But how come I'm so much more sure of what I already know because now I've read it in Cosmo?

Poor brokenhearted baby. I'm having a hard time mustering sympathy and stifling I-told-you-so's. I'm lonely too, I've been lonely longer, and you weren't going to do a damn thing about it, so why should I?

Good night and good luck.
Don't worry, you can have mine. I'm sure not using it.
Daydream Believer

That Damn Kid

I've been lots of damn kids. Recently too. That damn kid who made the burger wrong. That damn kid who ate ice cream for dinner one night. That damn kid who came home drunk and disorderly, and spent the next day complaining about various hangover-related symptoms. That damn kid who mixed up the orders at the restaurant and put caramel syrup on the apple pie, even though the man who ordered the pie was watching his sugar and didn't want the syrup. So that damned kid ate it after the man sent it back. I've been all these damn kids, and that fact doesn't make me a bad person, doesn't make me a criminal. I'm half inclined to ask what kind of damn kid this lady once was, although she'd have to dig a lot deeper in her memory to find out. Maybe those damn kids are different, but I doubt it. Those damn kids that sit across the street on the porch drinking beer on weekend nights probably aren't any more dangerous than the damn kid who's writing this. I'm not sure whether to be more offended on their behalf or my own. In her defence, they probably call her the batty old lady across the road. Maybe that gives her the right to call them those damn kids.
I wish it didn't have to be this way.

Daydream Believer

Smile

I did it. I had an adventure. By myself, with no one else's prodding. As adventures go, it was fairly tame, but it was a step, hopefully the first of many. And for now, the events of my evening are my very own little secret. I haven't had a good one in awhile. I don't have to tell anyone about it, and that feels amazing, like I've got an ace in the hole. Better, even, because I don't have to reveal it to use its power. I went out and did something just for me, just because I wanted to. I broke down one more wall. I have the strangest smile all over my face, every time I think about it. I laugh out loud. I'm not all the way free yet, but I've taken a big step in that direction.
I have another secret too, but that's only kept from the one person. It's got some power to it too. I mirror her insecurities. I didn't realize how many of her there were. I should have known. We're doing this less for ourselves than each other. This idea that women are always so mean to one another is complete bullshit. The best defense seems to be a good offense. And a shared secret, after so many kept from us.
Sweet Dreams

Summer Sunshine

And the scary thing is, I think I'm okay. My usual gnawing worries have been drastically reduced, and most of the temporary concerns are alleviated. It could just be the drugs, but I'm feeling pretty good right now. My most concerning worries are behind me, and now I can focus on what's ahead of me.

Still working on that whole "no more beige" thing, but making progress. Still working on going after what I want, which is so much easier knowing I can have it. Maybe. On that note, I have to work on suppressing that ugly green thing that likes to rear its head at any and all mention of her name. It doesn't have to be him, it might be, but could easily be someone else.

I finally have so much that I want. Freedom, opportunity. And I'm happy this way. I finally feel like I can.

I'm pretty sure it was a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, and I don't remember the exact lyrics, but they were something like I could take you away and then everything would be great. Everything seems profound and memorable at 4 am.

Heavily drugged and very mellow,
Daydream Believer

Walking On Broken Glass

Home is an interesting concept. Some hold that home is defined as where you went to high school, where you lived while growing up, wherever you hang your hat. I'm not sure it counts as home after I've been bumped for a sewing machine. So here I am, in a place that once was home, but is no longer, having left behind what may well be the best thing that ever happened to me, possibly forever, only to try to unpack my life into a space and a world that doesn't fit anymore. Doesn't fit here. All those things that drove me so crazy, with distance suddenly seem endearing. It really is human nature to want what you can't have. The greener grass and all that. Well, as is usually the case, this grass that seemed so green is exactly the same early-spring, half-dead brown as everywhere else. I don't know what's lying in wait for me over the next couple of months, what kind of traps there'll be to trigger the waterworks. I might even be through the worst. It could well be that the first 24 hours were the hardest. Maybe, maybe not.

So here I am where I hoped to be. Now I just need to make happen what I hoped would happen.

Daydream Believer

Beige

I have spent a lot of time being beige. Nondescript, goes with everything, nothing really flashy to it, you can't have too much or you'll die of ennui. I'm not a lot less beige now than I was then, I can name three different people in the last two years who have had to be introduced to me anywhere from four to nine times before it stuck. Not randoms, people I interacted with anywhere from once to five or six times a week for three months at a time, and it wasn't like they were drunk the first few times either.

The thing is, I'm not all that beige on the inside. Unfortunately on the outside, at first glance, I am. Even more unfortunately, our kindergarten teachers were lying to us, because it does matter what we look like, what we sound like, our appearances, the impressions we give. I suppose I should say me, since it is conceivable that nobody else got this crock from their kindergarten teachers, or that they simply didn't believe them. My disillusionment aside, I'm really not all that beige. There's all kinds of interesting stuff going on, but it's not on the surface, you have to be looking for it.

This is what I get for walking the lines. The line between extraversion and introspection. I take my energy from people, but I love to hide out somewhere inside myself and just think. The line between selling out and buying in. The line between being what and who I want to be and what and who I have to be. Instead of keeping to the razor-sharp edges of liminality, the boundaries all went blurry.

The problem with education is that it's about answers, even though learning is about questions.

I'm not as beige as I once was. Maybe I'm turning a little dusty rose, a touch of periwinkle. Maybe a lovely cafe latte shade.

I hope to get less beige in the future. Rather, I hope to appear less beige. To act less beige, to speak less beige.

Still Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Visitation

I refuse to get my hopes up. I'll believe he's coming when he shows up on my doorstep. Probably just as well, my hopes are so bloody high about everything else lately, and here I am pretending they're not. Well, not really pretending, just highlighting the part that's not so hopeful. Aggravating and emphasizing the parts of me that are sad, stressed, scared, and hurt. Maybe that's the reason for all the tears, the longing looks at those little pill bottles in the drug stores. Suppression isn't really so healthy. Which is why I'm not so sure that not getting my hopes up about this is a good thing. I don't even know what to expect, really. If he shows up (he'll show up, when it's important, he's a good guy). I don't know what will happen (and will I want it to? Am I really as important to him as he says I am?). Maybe (hopefully?) he'll be as out of place here as he wasn't there. Two different worlds I live in, shouting across the divide. This is my world, and this one isn't his. Maybe he'll have no control here, it'll be my turn with some power. A shit disturber, what'll he pull this time? And what will it mean in a month's time? And was this maybe the worst idea yet?


I don't want him to arrive, but once he's here, I don't want him to leave. Be careful what you wish for much? He's upset, I'm upset, and I feel like I'm in a holding pattern, like I'm waiting to land, to actually get on with my journey. Sometimes I wish it didn't hurt so much to hurt him. I could've made this like ripping a band-aid off, but I didn't. I thought I did it for him, but maybe I really did it for me. Is this easier? I don't even know. I probably couldn't have done it anyways, I'm a terrible liar. Yesterday was so fantastic, but maybe that kind of thing is just making the whole thing worse. He wishes, I wish. We all scream for ice cream.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Ad Astra Per Aspera

I was talking to Ace the other day and without really meaning to, I kinda crystallized what I'm trying to do here. Here as in this particular blog, and here as in during my life and work. Kinda trippy stuff. All because I was defending myself from an in all likelihood imagined verbal assault on my value and worth. Because I blog... yeah... I'm still sorting it out myself. Anyhow, Ace said that he wouldn't want to have his thoughts on the internet, because someone might read them. I kinda see this kind of thing as a microcosm* of The Golden Record. In August and September 1977 respectively, NASA launched Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 (Yes, Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1). Each one has a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk with a greeting intended for any life form either Voyager might encounter. This (1977) state-of-the-art technology contains a number of sounds and images meant to portray earth and give anyone or anything that might find it an idea of where the machine containing it came from. Similarly purposed plaques were placed inside Pioneer 10 and 11, which were the first two human artifacts to escape the solar system. Each of these spacecraft had a scientific purpose, which throws off the allegory slightly. The idea behind the plaques and later The Golden Record, was to throw something of ourselves out as far as we can just in case maybe, someday, someone will find it and find something they can understand in it. Is it a little bit out there? Absolutely. But there isn't much that makes more sense to me than the drive to connect, to communicate, to reach out. Even if in forty thousand years by some strange turn of fate or physics, one of the Voyagers comes hurtling back to Earth in a twisted mass of flaming metal, there's still a time capsule in there that maybe someone will understand.

This is a present from a small, distant world,
a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music,
our thoughts and our feelings.
We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.

U.S. President Jimmy Carter

*for some reason, my favourite word lately

Sondheim, Uta, and Kurosawa
Sondheim- Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist. Born March 22, 1930. Known for the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, and composing the music for A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Also Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, and A Little Night Music.
Uta- Uta Hagen, German-born American actor and acting teacher. June 12, 1919-January 14, 2004. Author of Respect for Acting and A Challenge for the Actor. Notable for training, among others: Matthew Broderick, Al Pacino, Whoopi Goldberg, Sigourney Weaver and Liza Minelli.
Kurosawa- Akira Kurosawa, Japanese filmmaker. March 23, 1910- September 6, 1998. Best-known works: Seven Samurai (七人の侍, Shichinin no samurai), Yojimbo (用心棒) aka The Bodyguard.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Baby Write This Down

This post is completely unabridged and uncensored. Kanpai is Japanese for cheers.

So here I am, writing it down. Because somebody said I should. A parable? Maybe.

I once knew this woman, a university professor, who had all sorts of things to say, about all kinds of things. Art, theatre, liminality, juxtaposition, the importance of the live event. Every word out of her mouth was profound, a revelation, brilliance. She knew so much about these topics, and had so much to say about them, that she began to sound like a broken record. The repetition of themes, words, and phrases grew so distinct that someone made a bingo card out of them. All of a sudden, rather than quotable, she was mockable. Did she get less brilliant? Did we get more jaded? Does why it happened matter? Maybe if she hadn't had to get us through a set of exams and projects, she could have branched out a little more, brought in more new ideas, given us more profundity. Or maybe that's all there was, she was so specialized that she'd said her profound piece, and that's all there was to it.

It was profound to you, but I got it out of an Amanda Marshall song. I said everybody wants to believe that they're special, God's chosen people. She said "every soldier in the war's got God on his side, and that's why we can't stop the slaughter".

It's entirely possible that in every relationship, romantic, friendly, platonic, adversarial, you run out of things to talk about. Eventually you know what they think about religion, politics, themself, you, the future, the way the world works and whatever else is important to the both of you. And unless something drastic changes with one of you, there's no more to say. Maybe that's simply a symptom of growing apart, or maybe it just happens to everyone.

Somewhere there's a line between wanting to see them every day and seeing them every day out of habit. Usually just this side of that line there's another one, the line between seeing someone because you have something to do with them and seeing someone because you have nothing to do with anyone else. The line where the default option changes from "alone" to "with them". The line where you become their appendage, or they become yours. Where the world is small and insular, and every decision has them as a factor. You enjoy that for awhile, and then you hit another line, the one where you begin to resent all of the above.

A flutter somewhere around the solar plexus, a flock of thousand-pound butterflies, a flush, a slight sheen of sweat, a stammer, and standing there saying to yourself "Did I seriously just say that?" That place where a "Hi" can have you on a high all day, where anything is possible and it's absolutely brilliant and you swear they'll hear your heart thudding in your chest if you don't faint from the blood rushing to your head first.

Maybe I'm crazy to miss that. I know a lot of people who have said "Yeah, all that stuff is great, but I'd never in a million years trade it for what I've got." Maybe when I'm sitting here thinking that maybe I would, that's the beginning of the end. At the very least, it's probably the way I know that the decision I've already made is the right one. Not the only way, I guess, but at least one. Someone once told me that there's no such thing as a wrong choice, it's just the ones we make, and the ones we don't. That has made all the difference, according to Frost.

Sometimes I think I'm asking for too much. Maybe it is too much to ask for a job that doesn't make me cry before or after nearly every shift I work. Maybe it's too much to ask for freedom. Maybe the truth is too much to ask for in Kindergarten, when they tell you it doesn't matter what you look like, only what you do. Maybe a dual-axis spectrum is too much to ask for. Maybe a spectrum at all is too much to ask for, a middle ground. Maybe there can be no compromise. Maybe a secret is too much to ask for. Maybe being alone is too much to ask for.

Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.

A List Update:
Know/understand all the references in the musical Rent, particularly those in the song La Vie Boheme.
Sontag, Sondheim, Maya Angelou, Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham, Cage, Lenny Bruce, Langston Hughes, Uta, Buddha, Pablo Neruda, Pee Wee Herman, Gertrude Stein, Antonioni, Burtolucci, Kurosawa, Carmina Burana, Vaclav Havel, The Sex Pistols, 8BC, Musetta's Waltz, Heidegger.

Stay tuned for my discoveries.

Dream On.
Daydream Believer

On Bread Alone

Considering my utter lack of aspirations in that direction, I'm a fucking domestic goddess. I probably got it from my mom, kitchen maven and PTA parent extraordinaire. I clean when I'm freaked out, I find washing dishes oddly soothing, I love to cook, even if I'm usually not motivated to do it for myself, and today I baked bread. That's right, bread, not brownies, cookies, cake, pie, or any other sugary confection. Bread, sustaining, simple, wholesome bread. At least it has cheese on it.

Some people say that a person can't live on bread alone. I'm kind of banking on it, in fact, considering my prospective career choices. But sometimes you need bread too. And it's even better when you bake it yourself.

Daydream Believer

'Festo

There are a lot of little things that make it up. It's nowhere near complete, but then again, neither am I. There'll be some additions along the way, and probably some subtractions as well.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to prove John Cougar Mellencamp wrong. The first time I remember hearing that song and noticing the lyrics, I think I was twelve or thirteen. I was singing along with the abandon of childhood, then I realized what words my mouth was unthinkingly forming, and I couldn't help but think:

If it's true that "life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone", then what's the point?

Since then, that's been the cornerstone of my many varied answers to the inevitable, often aggravating question of "So what are you planning to do with your life?" I figure it's less important to try to set the answers in stone than the reasons for them. This is one reason I doubt will change anytime soon. I never want to sit there looking back at my life and say, "Well, those were the best days, and there's nothing that good coming my way ever again." I never want the feeling of just waiting for the clock to run out, for the last grain to drop through the hourglass. I don't want to run out of adventures, things to look forward to, experiences I want to have. Which is why I keep the lovely list on your right, to help me remember the whims, the crazy ideas, help me have something to shoot for.

It's funny, I always had a hard time coming up with goals on those annoying sheets they gave me after every report card in high school. I always insisted that I didn't have goals. What I really meant was that I didn't have goals that had to do with high school, beyond "get the hell out". Once I was, I was suddenly full to bursting with goals, missions, aspirations, dreams.

Especially dreams.
Keep Dreaming.
Daydream Believer

Friends With Complications

Her: "So, uh, are you two, uh...?"
Me: Nervous laughter
Him: Nervous laughter
Me: "No, we're, uh, friends..."
Her: Raised eyebrows "With benefits?"
Him: "Um..."
Me: "More like complications."

An old conversation. Out of date by several months. but leave it to me to remember the random things, some good memories, some bad, a few regrets wrapped up in the scent of Old Spice and Irish Spring, flowers, swamp goo, and the not-quite-clean of a boy/man's apartment. We had our share of complications, mostly my fault, but I asked the questions and he answered honestly. It wasn't really his fault, although I blame him for it sometimes. A lot of the time. I wished for him to do things, say things, and now I wish I could remember them, so I could do them or say them, to make this better. But I can't. "Why do you have to be so attractive?" If I only had a nickel for every time I said that to someone. Right along with "What does she have that I don't?" and the inevitable answer of "tits". But in all seriousness, powerlessness just sucks, in all its forms, no matter which side of the equation you're on. Which kinda makes me wonder where the power in these situations is. I was so sure he had it, but now in a different position, maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe I was wrong about a lot. I guess it's complicated.

I'm surprised I'm not grinning like an idiot. I love hearing that people think well of me. No surprise, who doesn't? But it's best when it's completely brutally honest, and still favourable. I like to hear the brutally honest, no-holds-barred, I-swear-I-didn't-know-you-were-listening opinions people have of me. It's probably narcissistic, and it's probably not very good for me, especially because it's not always a glowing review. But I can't help it, something in me wants to know how I appear to the outside world, because everything looks different depending on the eyes you're using. And every now and then, what people think of you has an effect. Sometimes you can teach yourself to see what they see.
I love the sound of the words she wrote as they roll around in my skull, staving off, at least for a couple of hours, that irritating voice full of derision and foul mood. Lit from within, all red lipstick and dark eyes, young and powerful, something dark, delicious, and alive.

I can't shake the guilt though. I'm not mad, not at her, though I don't think she believes it. It's the guilt that was bound to come back ever since I said "I wish I was a little more like him". Well, now I am a little bit, and I wish I wasn't. He revels in this, having the means to manipulate, to hurt. I just want to make all the hurt go away, and I don't know how.

The older I get, the shakier the foundations of my friendships seem, the old as well as the new. My closest oldest friend I didn't meet all that long ago. Next on the list is the one who I can barely quantify any more, all magnetism, memories, and Irish Spring. Most of the rest don't even seem like my friends, more like friends once removed, I wonder how many of them would still be around if I wasn't around him. I've never had good luck with making friends, I'm a little on the beige side, people don't tend to remember me. At least as far as I know. Every now and then the tables turn, the tide shifts, and I get to deal with the fallout. Sometimes it's more fun than others. Sometimes complications are my only real friends.

Maybe I can widen that circle a little bit.
Dream On
Daydream Believer

Live and Alive

Odd that I can only do this while I'm alone. I guess because in some sense it's still my dirty little secret. I publish my own thoughts on the internet. Even now it's a little taboo. Really though, anyone could find these words and thoughts, which is terrifying and exciting at the same time. Maybe someone I've never met will find a connection, maybe that's why people write books. Unfortunately I don't have the attention span for writing a book. Maybe one day I will. But anyone finding them doesn't know who I am, couldn't know who I am. General things, yes, and some very personal things, but they wouldn't be able to pick me out of a lineup, recognize me walking past on the street, and that's a kind of protection.

Which brings me to why I haven't done this in awhile. Despite the very public nature of the finished product, the process of writing is very personal for me, and very private, and I haven't had much in the way of alone time in the last little while. Not that I haven't been alone at times, but never for a very long stretch and usually alone in the sense of being surrounded by strangers. At the risk of sounding like the temperamental artist I try so hard not to be, I can't work like that. I also prefer to write when I'm fairly certain I won't be disturbed before I can finish at least the thread I'm working on at the time.

I've always been intrigued by intrigue. Oddly enough. But the drama of people interacting with one another and the system fascinates me. In another life, with another personality, I'm convinced I would have loved to be a spy or anarchist, knee deep in all the shit surrounding people, power, love, and money. Why not this life? Well, to start with, I'm a terrible liar. I tend to giggle in the most unseemly and unsubtle way when I try to misdirect people. That's not to say that I can't keep a secret, I can, and like to think I do a pretty damn good job of it. But my favourite tactic for doing so, changing the subject, really wouldn't hold up against someone who knew I was keeping something from them. For another thing, I don't like to hurt people. Even collaterally... usually, in fact, the collateral damage of any situation in which I'm involved is me. I'm resilient, the joke I've made is that I'm actually a superball in human form. Y'know, those ridiculously bouncy things that you can throw against a concrete wall, but then you better duck because it's coming back, and hard. Most of the time I figure that I'm better equipped to deal with any pain I've caused than anyone else. But I let things get to me, usually more than I should, occasionally more than is healthy. But in the real world, I'm not good at the games people play with each other. I don't know if it's possible to be when you don't like to hurt people. I'm getting quite good at getting kicked around though. I've been wondering why I'm not bitter... y'know, that bite the hand that feeds thing... the part they don't tell you is that before that hand fed, it slapped. I've been wondering why I'm not more cynical, more broken, more prone to anger, less trusting. I mean I am all those things, I'm probably more bitter and cynical that I've got any right to be, but not all the time. I have my moments where it all just piles up on me, usually late at night when I'm by myself, but I'll cry, go to sleep, and in the morning it's not so bad.

I don't have too many illusions left. I know that the odds of my making a decent living doing something I truly love are slim, and it's far more likely that I'm going to end up doing something soul-crushing and only being paid minimum wage in exchange for it. I know that the way I'd like to live my life isn't realistic, despite my conviction that it's a good way to live. But I know that none of that is going to stop me from trying. I once read a quote that said "Courage is loving without expecting anything in return" and maybe that's true. Maybe I'm not more bitter because that's not my role. Maybe it's my job to be the one who refuses to stay down. Not necessarily an optimist, but a boomerang at the very least. Perhaps I have an overactive second chance gland or my blood is too high in forgiveness humour. Maybe have too many bad ideas or I'm just too damn trusting, but I really don't care.

Still Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Resolve

Is the title the first or last thing you think up when you write something? A poem, an essay, a blog post, a story, a novel, an encyclopedia, whatever you write. I'm torn. Usually, it's the last thing I think up, because I tend to try to relate it somehow to everything I've written, and I don't plan writing the same way that Loud evidently does. (Where's that post now, huh?) So I don't know what a good title will be, normally, until whatever I've written is done. Every now and then I go the opposite way though, I take a word or a phrase that means something, even if only to me, and make sure whatever I write has some sort of connection. Occasionally the connection is totally organic, like today. It's New Years, a time when people make resolutions, the noun form of the verb to resolve. Resolve has a couple of meanings as a verb, lots actually. But this isn't really a vocabulary lesson, I promise. There are lots of ways the word resolve is used, but it mostly boils down to two overarching definitions, either decide or fix. As a noun it can mean strength or determination. All in all not bad thoughts to start the New Year on, if I may say so.

My own resolve is going to be tested. This coming year as well as in the years ahead. Everybody has a "they", something outside themself that has a hold on them, an effect on their decisions. Everybody occasionally at least does something for "them" instead of for themself. For some, it's God (Goddess, Gods, Goddesses, etc. God as a concept not an entity), for some, it's family, friends, strangers, society, various belief systems with varying degrees of arbitrariness and practicality. Assuming things don't change drastically in the ol' noggin in the near future, I'm going to have to tread lightly around "them" for a variety of reasons involving how I intend to defy convention. I grew up in a different world than my mother did, or her mother. Then again, maybe the apple doesn't fall so far from the tree after all. In my grandmother's generation, it was simply expected that she would get married and raise a gaggle of children. True to form, she didn't finish high school, got married at 16, and hauled the gaggle of kids all over the world following her Air Force husband. I usually forget that my grandmother recieved less formal education than I had by the time I was halfway through high school. I sometimes wonder what she might have done if things had worked out differently. Nobody's ever told me what the circumstances of her marriage were, but since her first child was born within the year, I can only assume that due to social convention she had to get married. It's entirely possible that that life was really and truly what she wanted for herself. I know someone who looks no further. Which makes me wonder if that particular dream is the "natural" one. Some would argue that it is "natural" or "normal" for people to want to fill their convential social roles. Wife, mother, grandmother, homemaker, caretaker. Of course, those are usually the people who also believe that homosexuality is "unnatural" but that's an issue for another day. I cannot fathom never wanting something else. Something more. I can't fathom being content in that life.
Part of it is power, and dependence. A huge part of that dream is the idea not necessarily of being rescued, but of being provided for. Maybe it's pragmatism that drives me away from that dream, the sheer impracticality of depending on someone else to take care of me for the rest of my, or their life. Even assuming there would be someone willing, what would happen to me if something happened to them? Besides, if someone has the power to give you something, they have the power to withold it. I sense there's more to it than practicality though. I want to do more. Social roles are changing. It is now more or less expected that a woman has a career in addition to her family. Or, like my mother, as a predecessor. Maybe it is natural to want a family, carreer or no.

I suppose I'm a touch unnatural then. My theory is that I'm wired a little differently. I expect to be mostly alone because of it. Which doesn't distress me much as soon as I let go of a particular heap of social conditioning surrounding family and relationships. That said, it isn't that I expect to be truly, stranded-on-a-desert-island alone, nor do I expect to be celibate or unfulfilled in any way. I just don't expect to have "that someone" that people tend to talk about. The reason for this (going back to those crossed wires) is that I seem to be a little different. As much as I can't fathom being a housewife and being happy with it, I can't really even see myself married in the future with any clarity. Ironically, the rationale behind that one is very much grounded in social conditioning and convention. I don't ever want to get divorced, and can't see myself ever being truly content with one individual and never wanting anyone else. Therefore I can't get married. Bear was aghast at this revelation. I'm pretty sure Loud was intrigued, particularly with the conversation that ensued. And in answer to the comment he made, navigating the future alone is both my intention and prediction. Assuming nothing major changes, I expect to navigate the future alone based on the reasoning above. Although the assumption is less that I'll be alone and more that there will always be people, just not a "special someone". But I think that I will enjoy doing so. You play the hand you're dealt, and I don't see any reason not to enjoy the game.

It seems odd to me that so many of the songs I've been listening to lately have themes of moving on. Because I can't seem to. Perhaps because it feels like unfinished business, curiosity, or just becuase I'm reluctant, as always, to say goodbye. I'm the same way with knicknacks. I'm a horrible packrat, both physically and emotionally. It takes a lot of strength to say goodbye, to walk away, but I figure it also takes strength to fight the battle you know you're going to lose. It takes guts to keep trusting someone, keep believing them, even when they give you no reason to. It takes guts to love knowing you won't be loved back, or won't be loved back the way you want. Years ago I was strong enough to walk away and never look back, and I'm proud of myself for that. This time it's different. Different situation, different people, even different me. I've recieved advice to walk two different ways, a prediction of the future, and lots of heartaches. As I've said so many times, I'm fine now, and I know I'll be fine, I'm just not sure what's going to happen between now and then. Hopefully all that will be fine too.

Maybe the decision will be made for me, but soon I'll have to decide stay or go. Who am I kidding? It's not the decision I'm dreading, it's breaking the news of it. The decision's as good as made. There, I said it, what he's been saying all along. Will seeing it coming make it hurt less? Doubtful.

Once again, I rung in the New Year with Loud, Gold, and Sphinx. It's becoming something of a tradition, I suppose. Not one I mind in the least.

Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance
Why can't we give love that one more chance
Why can't we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves

Under pressure

Can we play that game your way?
Can I really lose control?

Shouldn't let you torture me so sweetly.
Now I can't let go of this dream.
I can't breathe but I feel...
Good enough,
I feel good enough for you.
Drink up sweet decadence.
I can't say no to you,
And I've completely lost myself, and I don't mind.
I can't say no to you.
Shouldn't let you conquer me completely.
Now I can't let go of this dream.
Can't believe that I feel...
Good enough,
I feel good enough.
It's been such a long time coming, but I feel good.
And I'm still waiting for the rain to fall.
Pour real life down on me.
'Cause I can't hold on to anything this good enough.
Am I good enough for you to love me too?
So take care what you ask of me,
'cause I can't say no.


My resolve has not yet been tested. I have never faced a real question. I haven't had to make that decision, and I don't know what I'll do if/when I do. Everyone has boundaries, right now it's not mine that are protecting me. I don't know where mine are. But I'll find out.

Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer