Inflection

I read this in a magazine today:

You're allowed to do nothing.

Of course I read it with the emphasis on the word nothing.

You are allowed to do nothing.

They meant it as a release. You're allowed to do nothing, to relax.

I had to read it several times before I understood it correctly.

Brief Glimmer of Understanding

In the course of work, I'll sometimes enlarge a digital image until I can see each pixel, to perfect the gradation between colors. I'll hone in on a spot that is barely bigger than a fingernail and tweak and tweak until I feel that it's just exactly right.

Then I'll zoom out to see the image at its normal perspective and realize...all that painstaking subtlety didn't really change a thing.

That's what I'm doing right now...zooming out to my normal perspective.

Delayed Gratification

There is an inescapable feeling when flying - that shift when you stop ascending and your stomach drops and you can't help but perceive the change from climbing means that you're falling. It reminds me of other things.

I spend my time in airports watching.

The older man in (I swear) a zoot suit and baseball cap, carrying a shaving kit.

The woman holding a book on biblical studies, wandering and looking lost.

A leggy redhead with vicious bruises peeking from under a miniskirt.

The balding man in first class taking out his contacts then smacking himself on the overhead compartment.

The man across the aisle too timid to tell his neighbor that he (the neighbor) is using the female receptor of his (the timid man) seat belt.

The woman next to me reading a relationship self-help book and twisting her engagement ring.

And all along I sit, trying to wrap my head around Schrodinger's explanation of quantum superpositions and finding it allegorical to life.

And cursing the short life of my iPod battery.

Then reading an article about a mathematician who posits that there are parallel existences, all based on the fact that everything is an equation, and I think - where on this axis is the membrane the thinnest that I can touch hands to the mirror-me?

Heart Murmurs

I've been OFF for a few weeks. Been full of doubts. Is there an overdue bill? Do the dogs need a trip to the vet? Have I forgotten a birthday? A watched movie to be sent back to Netflix? Did I miss an appointment?

Everything has checked out. And I've checked. Repeatedly.

Still there has been this little voice in the back of my mind....you forgot you forgot you forgot.

I forgot what? What have I left behind?

Then suddenly, it lifted. I've no idea of the trigger. It just...disappeared.

And I'm back again, to the old contentment. No longer unhappy. Not for any particular reason, just because I let go of what was making me unhappy.

Proving, yet again, it's me who controls my destiny.

Today and Still

A squirrel came as near as he could, balancing on a limb, one eye on me, one eye on everything else.

A cardinal skittered skittered along the edge of the roof. I only saw his bright red tail feathers.

Two mockingbirds dueling on the fence, claiming their territory.

Knockknockknockknockknock of a woodpecker on a light pole.

Turn my head, there is a flicker of flame and smoke from the citronella candle.

I watch a mosquito sink its vicious little proboscis into my arm. Anyway.

Cars drive by. Dogs bark. I sink into another book. A woman on the verge of discovery.

I drift to sleep, gently. Awake again. Not much of a barrier between them.

I turn off my thoughts with the help of chemicals. Sleep is easy and deep. Limbs heavy. All of my energy just to push the air out, pull the air in. The wind moving the tiptops of the trees around.

I don't want to move for a bit. Just stay right here. Tell me it's okay. Tell me it's fine. Take this pinchiness out of me for a little while.

Sunday Morning Coffee

This is causing me to re-learn how to be. I find myself falling into old patterns, and I walk away from them. I counsel patience. I am squelching the want want wantingness of me. It's difficult. I wake some mornings, sweaty and twisted, after dreaming of things that undermine me.

Ironic that letting myself become dependent is the first time I've felt truly adult.

There is no nonchalance here. Just an emotional chastity belt. It's enough for now, on my trip to a leash.

Silences

People tend to fill a void. With action, or words. I'm not that way. I don't mind a comfortable, companionable silence. I don't feel the need to fill that space with endless chatter about trivialities. Most of the time. I do have my chatty cathy moments, generally due to overstimulation via caffiene.

Sometimes, though, I observe myself and my silence and wonder if it seems like disassociation or reclusiveness. I suppose that is true to an extent, I can be quite the hermit. I've always understood that my tendency towards solitude is more about enjoying myself rather than not enjoying others. Is that vanity? Or acceptance? Or enlightenment? I'm not sure, but I have been told that I seem cold and distant. I don't intend it, it is just a natural consequence of my quietude (in all definitions of the word).

I am at peace. With who I am, who I have been, who I am becoming. With my weaknesses and faults, with my strengths.

This is a nice place to be.

Dialogue with Understanding

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

From T.S. Eliot, East Coker.

Self

I'm wearing a body that isn't my own.
I'm thinking thoughts I finished before.
I'm in this place again.

I'm done here, for now.
I'm too open, soft.
I'm pierced with no regard.

I'm losing ground.
I'm deep in sleep.
I'm unable to resist.

I'm endless, intolerable, choking need.
I'm loathsome.

Mulligan

I'm not sure if there is a way to convey how well I know that I am sometimes unable to get past the ME-ness of me. Suffice it to say that I'm nearly paralyzed with the need to reach out and make contact.

It's the way it always goes. I find out too late, or nearly so, and try like mad to turn it around. That sabotage so neatly completed and so difficult to take back. But I didn't mean it, I just needed the absence and distance to put me back in a state of unrest.

I find myself thinking it all through again and again, dismayed at how often I turned the conversation. I wonder if you recognized it, if you found me tiresome, if I'm just another failed experiment for you. I'm self-aware, painfully so, and this knowledge that I've been so thick and obvious is humbling.

It isn't that you didn't appeal, it's that I found you too appealing. I had to poke you around in my head and see how you fit there, and now I know...maybe too late...that it's not just a willingness to submit, it's an eagerness.

And I can't save myself.

Agent Saboteur

I'm a sham. A crock. A lie.

I say here that this is what I want, what I need, yet when something even remotely resembling right approaches me, I sabotage. I disappear. I dissemble. I run away.

I cringe at the thought of giving up my independence...of relying upon, of giving myself over to. Of being weak.

Instead, I embrace what is unsuitable, or unavailable, or unattainable.

Why am I so contrary?

Read this. Save me.

Judge Me

I've never been one for resolutions. Not in the strict sense, anyway. Last year, I decided to become vegetarian, and did...for 10 months or so. I suppose it's more of a Let's Try This Now than a resolution.

Whatever I choose, it's usually in the mind-improvement or socially-conscious category than any superficial "must lose 10 pounds by swimsuit season" type of bucket. Not that I fault those who want to lose 10 pounds, it's just not what I envision for my own personal satisfaction.

Before I babble on about irrelevant resolution-making, I'll get to the point. Today I created one of those Johari windows for myself, where colleagues and friends can select words that describe you. You can see where your perception of yourself and the way they see you overlap, or where they miss the mark altogether.

Knowledgeable. Witty. Those were the two most popular. I was pleased with intelligent and independent, confused by powerful, and almost offended by spontaneous.

But because I'm a very fair and balanced person, I had to give them all the opportunity to criticize me as well. Enter another Johari window, with negative terms. Childish? Unreliable? Foolish? How dare they? Vulgar, yes. Insensitive, at times. Overdramatic, well, yes, I suppose.

Seems I have resolutions to make after all.