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personal

This version of me

Sometimes think that I’ve become the very, very worst version of myself.

I’ve resolved my business issues but it’s a sad disappointment to discover you’re not quite as noble as you imagined you’d be.

So I met up with Hazel, Paul and Bryson and drank what was left of my self-respect.

Because of my insomnia, I grew up watching black & white films at 2AM. Jimmy Stewart was my favorite. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.

Do you ever wake up and wonder what happened to all your youth and idealism?

Sometimes think that I’ve become the very, very worst version of myself.

Location: 11PM yest, asking for one more on the UWS
Mood: sotted
Music: Here’s coming a better version of me
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personal

This time around

 

Camera Obscura in concert at the South Street Seaport

 

Camera Obscura – the drummer was smoking like a chimney.

Baltimore was nice. Coming home was nicer. This time around, there was silverware. Sorta.

Was in the Baltimore Penn Station and I remembered being there a year ago asking my brother what I should do when I got home. He reminded me of something:

You’re 33. How can someone that you’ve been with for four years define you? What’d you do before her?

Told him the same thing once before.

I’m troubled again, but this time, for totally different reasons.

Was going to make a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich but instead had a rendezvous with a single-barrel, seven-year rum. No oranges.

This week is going to be very unpleasant but I just told someone here that life has it’s highs and lows. Life’s like that.

I’m ready for some more highs.

Camera Obscura in concert at the South Street Seaport

Location: 9PM yest, Freehold NJ, hearing a sad story
Mood: troubled
Music: I’m a stupid little thing

Categories
personal

Great Expectations

Everyone I ever liked was some form of Estella

Dickens actually wrote two endings for the book – in the published version, you don’t know what happens to the two of them.

In the original, Dickens had Pip realize that he loved the girl that was cruel. And that girl was gone. The good girl left behind, wasn’t the one he loved.

I can relate. Think all the women I’ve ever had a thing for was some version of Estella. Interesting, eh?

I would love to meet a girl with that name. There was this Korean girl Stella whom I had a crush on. When we got our yearbooks, she wrote, You should have asked me out, I woulda said yes.

Argh! It’s why I don’t tell people things like that.

Other names I like:

  • Alexis – damn, that’s sexy
  • Amanda – just dated one
  • Marie – just met one from France, seeing her soon
  • Melissa/Melody/Molly – no explanation
  • Yve/Yvonne – massive elementary school crush
  • Many French/German/Russian names – Tajania, Katja
  • Many Japanese names – Naomi, Marimo

Once dated a girl who was Frau Zuzanne D’Longe – that was just hot.

Just walked in from a date.

Keep wondering if it’s better to have expectations or to have none.

Location: -30 mins telling her, I’m going in again
Mood: sotted
Music: I’d just like to know do you love him or just making time

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personal

Sold I to the merchant ships

I consider our origins

Well I’ve gotten some…colorful emails based on my last post.

While both men and women read a lot more into it than intended, both seemed to disappointed in me for completely different reasons.

Primo Levi wrote in Survival in Auschwitz, that he carried a 100 pound soup pot because it gave him a few moments in the sun.

A guard gave him the gig for Italian lessons. So Levi taught him Dantes Inferno 26, which has the line, Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.

Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Look, we’re human. We’re flawed. But we try. It’s our redemption song.

Dante and Levi both believed that we have some nobility somewhere – even after seeing their respective hells, yeah?

Location: 2PM yest, watching a rooster in Harlem
Mood: amused
Music: someday we’ll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun

Categories
personal

Still thinking of the other side

If we fail, let’s fail greatly

Saw my friend Skinny tonight. He’s on his way to Japan to a new life.

I’m secretly a little jealous, but happy for him too.

Teddy Roosevelt once said that of the person who tries something bold and new:

at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

I’m always impressed by who just pick up and go. Thought so many times about moving here or here. But I never did.

Don’t know why I don’t just get to the other side.

Someday.

Until then, Skinny, if you meet a nice (non-pescatarian) Japanese girl, send her my way?

I’ll be here. I’m ever here.

Location: 10PM, yest., with friends
Mood: sotted
Music: What does this city have to offer me
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Still Shaky

My insomnia is getting to me

Looked for Selene in the blue sky today. I didn’t see her.

I know I’ve picked up a bunch of new readers and I’m sorry that I’m not more entertaining at the moment.

My insomnia and hand shaking has returned with a vengeance, recent events – both open and secret – have kinda brought me down.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful I’m alright. Very.

The hand of God is in all things.

But I sometimes I feel like I take a step forward and two steps back all the time, you know?

Do you know where the word, tantalize comes from? There’s this myth where this dude Tantalus, cursed to be thirsty, bends to a stream to drink, only to have it recede just beyond reach. Cursed to be hungry, reaches for an apple, and the branches pull back.

Never go more than a week without a sleepless night. Last week, I slept. Last night, it started again. It’s ever the same. Two weeks now. I know it.

I hate it.

And it’s killing me bit by bit. Absolutely…breaking me.

Not at once. Just a little at a time.

OK, I’ll stop. Emo – just learned the term recently. Sorry. Working through a few things.

Above, the ever popular and lovely KT Tunstall again for your entertainment.

You cannot buy love. You cannot buy sleep. But red, red rum…that you can have for $10 a glass. And YouTube is free.

Friday the 13th. Of course.

I’ll be back on Monday after I’ve bent some time.

See you then.

Location: my red couch
Mood: still freaked out
Music: And now I’ve got a hole for the world to see

Categories
personal

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is – Bhagavad Gita

Caligirl: …then there are the serial daters. The guys that are always out and about.
Me: If I were honest, I’d tell you that that’s what I’m afraid of. See, I’ve only ever been in long-term relationships. I never really dated. I think I secretly worried that I might be good at it.
Her: (turning) And?
Me: (laughing) You tell me.

——

Him: You don’t think it’s strange, to have a site with your name on it all about you? And all the stuff you write – who reads it? I mean, you’re just you. You’re just a regular dude. You’re not like a celebrity or anything.
Me: “Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Him: What?
Me: (shrugging) It just means that in my head, I think I’m someone.

Location: still in front of this cracked screen
Mood: weird
Music: Must I always be waiting waiting on you?

Categories
personal

Always Dreaming

I dream a lot, but I’m not a very good sleeper

 

But I don’t want to go among mad people, Alice remarked.
Oh, you can’t help that, said the Cat, we’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad.
How do you know I’m mad? said Alice.
You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.

Sometimes I have nice dreams.

Unfortunately, it’s rare because of my insomnia – and when I’m awake, I feel like I’m sleepwalking. But I daydream a lot.

And sometimes, my daydreams are just as real and just as nice when I’m up as when I sleep. I spend a lot of time in my head, you see.

An ex once told me that when she and I lived in the same neighborhood, she used to walk to my building, sit on my stoop, and whisper, Come out, come out…let’s have some fun.

The times I did randomly come out, she thought she had magic.

In my head, she doesn’t hate me, and I don’t hate myself, for how I treated her.

And, in my head, my other ex is wrong and my insides do match my outsides.

But you can never change what another person does or thinks. Only yourself. I know that.

Still, being ambulatory for 18 hours a day means that I spend a lot of time there. In my head, I mean.

I know, I know – what if I get stuck there? I suppose large polite men in clean white coats will take me away. Funny, sometimes I think I’m just one more sleepless night away from that. I’ve been up for…I don’t know how long now…

Hey, you’d visit me, yeah?

Shake your head with that, “Oh, so sad, he had so much promise,” look on your face before you shuffle off?

But sometimes I wonder, which way is worse.

Because, you see, in my head, I’m quite happy.

Michel Gondry said, I dream a lot, but I’m not a very good sleeper.

I love that. The knowing that it’s not just me.

Come out, come out…let’s have some fun…

Location: physically, an ugly hotel bed in 14202, mentally…
Mood: awake
Music: one more, you’re nuts

Categories
personal

My biggest fan

What is your definition of love?

 

Meant to post this a while ago but I thought it was too long. It’s my definition:

When I was 15, my best friend, Kevin, told me that my girl Diana cheated on me. We never spoke, I just shut her out. Stupid kid stuff.

Maybe a decade later, I drove by her home and, for some reason, I rang her doorbell. I expected her to slap me when she answered the door; instead, she let me in, gave me a smile and an apron. She had this huge bar of chocolate that she told me to chop for cookies.

So I went in and started chopping.

After a bit, I asked her, half-jokingly, what happened between us.

She stopped and answered:

You listened to Kevin but we both know that he was the first guy to ask me out after we broke up. So that makes you an idiot. I never cheated on you, you know that. I was your biggest fan. That makes me an idiot. You never stood up for me and I didn’t understand why, because I was kind to you. I was on your side but you weren’t on mine.


Why weren’t you?

I had no answer. Almost twenty years after the fact, I still have no answer. I don’t remember anything else but I remember what she said.

That conversation started me off in being who I am now. In fact, I learned the phrases biggest fan and on your side that day.

It’s why I’m always loyal.

You see, she doesn’t know, but I still wonder if No. 7 ever found that job under the California sun; I wanna call her office someday and hear that message that says she’s left the company she hates.

And I still wonder if Diana bought that ranch in Colorado that she dreamt of and has kids to help her make cookies. I wouldn’t know, though.

I never saw her again.

But I hope she got it all.

As for me, I’m waiting for someone to be on my side again.

Location: home
Mood: pensive
Music: But until then I’ll do just fine on my own

Categories
business personal

Still Running

Humans survived because we ran

With nods to 0utre who cheered me up yesterday while I was hanging out in Stressville.

Been working out like mad but gaining weight!

The late night eating and drinking. I was out and about again tonight only briefly because I’m sick.

Just as well, I gotta cut all that out.

My roomie (ah, betcha didn’t know I had one) said Harvard has this new theory why humans are on top of the food chain:

Humans survived, not because they are smarter than other animals, but because we can run longer than any animal. No animal, not even horses or dogs, can run the distances a man can run when put to task.

Marathon Marathons.

We hunted until the animals just gave up.

We survived because we ran. It is in our nature.

Until I’m breathless and weak, I’m running. Towards what?

No idea.

But, dammit, I’m running.

Location: -30, stumbling home
Mood: stressed
Music: She is raging and the storm blows up in her eyes
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