I blink and my room comes into dark focus. When you first turn off the lights at night, you can’t see a thing. But the longer you stay in the dark, the more you see. Usually after I lie in bed for an hour, I can see my entire room in shadowy detail.
~Ha Thu-Huong, Hail Caesar, 31
This is one cool 17-year old kid. http://www.thisispush.com/voices/ha.htm
28 October 2009
Dark Focus
Dark focus. I like this phrase. Objects and emotions and thoughts emerging from the darkness over time, swallowed back into blackness with sudden exposure to light. Accidental visions you can only see clearly without trying.
Perhaps you have a defined trajectory, a Life Plan in explicit detail. Allow me to say that this M.O. has always astonished me. “Figure I put in three more years in my current position and then leverage that into management for another 5-10…by then we’ll have paid off most of the mortgage through accelerated payments and our (as yet unborn) daughter will be in school, so we can look at getting a vacation property, etc.” Holy shit. Really? Wow.
I’m going to make the case for a different way of living. Namely, living intuitively. This is an unsettled way to travel, to be sure. Sometimes it results in long layovers in undesirable places, running like hell to make connections. Other times, the best course of action seems to be blowing it all off and sitting at the airport bar making idle chatter with strangers, watching the planes take off and land. It is a state of transit rather than an act of arrival.
For an optimist like myself, good always trumps bad en route. Shit happens, but I get to meet all sorts of people, and sometimes my connections click perfectly, I’m upgraded to first class and my luggage is first off the carousel. Or not. Unsettled. Surprise after surprise. Not the all-inclusive.
It would make life easier—or more accurately, it would make it reassuring—to have a life plan and live accordingly. And it would require me to be a totally different person.
I understand the compulsion to plan, but can’t help seeing it as a trap. The quicksand of complacency, the snare of rigidity. Who can plan for global economic implosions or car accidents or infertility or illness or falling in love with someone other than your husband? Or your father deciding he’s had enough of this life and goodbye? These events happen, and require the ability to react, to adapt, not analyze.
Either through temperament or habit, I yield to intuition. Experience is teaching me to temper this with patience, and not confuse it with instinct. We’re primitive animals whose physical evolution has not kept pace with our brain development. Anger, lust, protection—reflexive impulses that can drive us for both good and bad. I’m all for a modicum of prudence.
Indulge me in a short rant. Intuition is undervalued in our culture. It’s been denigrated in status to a treacly gush of Feeling, not rooted in anything sensible. Even for its proponents, there is a mawkish, mystical element to intuition that is celebrated as something divinely feminine (whatever that means). I respectfully disagree. And I call bullshit.
Intuition is the natural wisdom of the subconscious, informed by constant tides of sensory clues we don’t think about but our bodies acknowledge. It is smart versus clever.
The rational culture dismisses this. Our rational culture, which promises utopia if we only adhere to a logical procession, is wilfully myopic. It gives us environmental degradation as an economic externality, civilian deaths in conflict as collateral damage, political corruption as the cost of doing business. It is madness, in short. It is stopping to tie our shoelace in the path of a speeding bus.
So sweeping cultural criticism aside, you may ask yourself: what’s this got to do with me? That is a good question, always the question for each of us at the end of every day. Right on. If you’re dead or in a coma or otherwise insensate, you lack perspective; therefore the world does not exist outside yourself. It’s not narcissistic to be the sun around which all revolves—who the fuck else is supposed to be at the centre of your universe? (and you new mums, please don’t start with me) You are accountable for you. The correct question is always, ultimately: what’s in it for me?
Well, blink. Look at your life in dark focus. Resist the urge to shine a light on things. This is cheating, when it comes to the important stuff. Plus you’ll only blind yourself and have to start all over again.
I struggle with an appetite for analysis and definition, but…blink, I order myself to blink. Things are slowly emerging from the darkness, yes scary things wrapped in shadows and panicked things that cannot see in the dark and fly into walls but others too, patient things which stand very still and look back at me and say, wait, I am here with you and soon you shall see and we will move further into the darkness together. Blink.
Perhaps you have a defined trajectory, a Life Plan in explicit detail. Allow me to say that this M.O. has always astonished me. “Figure I put in three more years in my current position and then leverage that into management for another 5-10…by then we’ll have paid off most of the mortgage through accelerated payments and our (as yet unborn) daughter will be in school, so we can look at getting a vacation property, etc.” Holy shit. Really? Wow.
I’m going to make the case for a different way of living. Namely, living intuitively. This is an unsettled way to travel, to be sure. Sometimes it results in long layovers in undesirable places, running like hell to make connections. Other times, the best course of action seems to be blowing it all off and sitting at the airport bar making idle chatter with strangers, watching the planes take off and land. It is a state of transit rather than an act of arrival.
For an optimist like myself, good always trumps bad en route. Shit happens, but I get to meet all sorts of people, and sometimes my connections click perfectly, I’m upgraded to first class and my luggage is first off the carousel. Or not. Unsettled. Surprise after surprise. Not the all-inclusive.
It would make life easier—or more accurately, it would make it reassuring—to have a life plan and live accordingly. And it would require me to be a totally different person.
I understand the compulsion to plan, but can’t help seeing it as a trap. The quicksand of complacency, the snare of rigidity. Who can plan for global economic implosions or car accidents or infertility or illness or falling in love with someone other than your husband? Or your father deciding he’s had enough of this life and goodbye? These events happen, and require the ability to react, to adapt, not analyze.
Either through temperament or habit, I yield to intuition. Experience is teaching me to temper this with patience, and not confuse it with instinct. We’re primitive animals whose physical evolution has not kept pace with our brain development. Anger, lust, protection—reflexive impulses that can drive us for both good and bad. I’m all for a modicum of prudence.
Indulge me in a short rant. Intuition is undervalued in our culture. It’s been denigrated in status to a treacly gush of Feeling, not rooted in anything sensible. Even for its proponents, there is a mawkish, mystical element to intuition that is celebrated as something divinely feminine (whatever that means). I respectfully disagree. And I call bullshit.
Intuition is the natural wisdom of the subconscious, informed by constant tides of sensory clues we don’t think about but our bodies acknowledge. It is smart versus clever.
The rational culture dismisses this. Our rational culture, which promises utopia if we only adhere to a logical procession, is wilfully myopic. It gives us environmental degradation as an economic externality, civilian deaths in conflict as collateral damage, political corruption as the cost of doing business. It is madness, in short. It is stopping to tie our shoelace in the path of a speeding bus.
So sweeping cultural criticism aside, you may ask yourself: what’s this got to do with me? That is a good question, always the question for each of us at the end of every day. Right on. If you’re dead or in a coma or otherwise insensate, you lack perspective; therefore the world does not exist outside yourself. It’s not narcissistic to be the sun around which all revolves—who the fuck else is supposed to be at the centre of your universe? (and you new mums, please don’t start with me) You are accountable for you. The correct question is always, ultimately: what’s in it for me?
Well, blink. Look at your life in dark focus. Resist the urge to shine a light on things. This is cheating, when it comes to the important stuff. Plus you’ll only blind yourself and have to start all over again.
I struggle with an appetite for analysis and definition, but…blink, I order myself to blink. Things are slowly emerging from the darkness, yes scary things wrapped in shadows and panicked things that cannot see in the dark and fly into walls but others too, patient things which stand very still and look back at me and say, wait, I am here with you and soon you shall see and we will move further into the darkness together. Blink.
21 October 2009
20 October 2009
The grass is always greener in someone else's bag...
Gretchie doesn't normally drink more than a glass of wine, but is feeling celebratory as is in the City for a conference. So brace thyself...
I love conferences! Learning and delegates and networking, oh my!
Having recently excused myself from recent full employment, a natural extension of my Fuck-you-I-won't-do-what-you-told-me attitude was to find a five-star hotel on http://www.hotwire.com/ for the length of the conference and book it, baby. I don't know if staying in shwank digs is attracting Positive Energy or just making me feel more fraudulent than ever. Either way, I'm revelling in an abundance of sparkling white towels and the perversity of deluxe living in my newly unearning state.
A selective myopic optimism has gotten me this far. The conference is splendid, full of earnest speakers and delegates brimming with good cheer. And yes, I homed in very quickly on the attractive youngyoung Greek economist/revolutionary type at lunch and made a new buddy, to whom I idly suggested that he take me for dinner tomorrow. He agreed. I emit a pheromone these days which is proving irresistable to men who cannot stay more than a few days in my company. Fine by me; it is also what I am attracted to at this time.
Now, before my darlings think my life is all one glamour-filled spread featuring hot and horny Calvin Klein underwear models and champagne brunches, let me disabuse you of a few notions.
1. Singles have more sex.
Maybe some do, but myself, I took a vow of celibacy upon break-up in early 2009. Having been involved nine years with a good man, in many regards, I wasn't eager to rush into anything approaching intimacy with another. I hadn't been single more than six months since I was 19 (and that's 17 straight years ago, little ones). I had some discomfort as to my reason--or lack thereof--for being a serial monogamist, and decided I just needed to stop acting from the heart or the cunt or whatever combination was leading me thus. Just stop.
So I did. And I mean cold turkey, I didn't as much as tousle my own hair affectionately for six months. I took all that energy and pile-drived it into work and friendships and exercise and you know something? I didn't explode in a frustrated spray of female ejaculate, I actually felt pretty good and calm and in control.
Ok, so it didn't last or else this blog would be about Shakti, a Hindu devotee who drinks her own piss and subsists on lentils and that wouldn't be any fun past the ewww stage. But it was good while it lasted, and abstinence--despite its dour reputation--was a bracing tonic when I needed it most.
2. My life as a Single is glamorous.
Actually, no. I'm a dork. I like Scrabble. I love conferences! I read non-fiction and have an almost morbid interest in nutrition, and usually keep a cache of prunes in my car in case I need a high-energy, high-fibre snack on the go. I do my best thinking while I'm running through the woods with my dogs, or having a leisurely crap. And "my best thinking" invariably runs along the lines of strategic communications or creating beneficial partnerships or storylines for screenplays or crafting proposals for an interdisciplinary MBA in 2010. Hardly hot stuff, but things I'm genuinely interested in.
Being alone does allow me more time for reflection, but I cannot dress it up as anything that is particularly flashy or sexy.
3. Singles have more romance in their life.
I have a vibrating synthetic penisthing. It is underwhelming. Allow me to make a plea to the Okiya Corporation to bring back the Big Indian model. They apparently yielded to the Moderate Penis lobby a few years back, and now only make sensibly-sized units aka the Indian (in a variety of pretty colours, granted. But I don't want a My Little Pony. Crassly: I want a My Little Pony Dick).
The 20-something, probably penis-hating sales clerk tried to reason with me, saying she'd read that the average vagina could only accommodate 5 inches. That's fine, but my dear, I'm not looking to accommodate 5 inches. I'm not setting up vag hotel for Extended Stays & Holidays. A big dick, whether real or made of phthalate-free silicone, is intuitively more interesting to me than average. Technically, my vagina can pass a baby the size of a decent Thanksgiving turkey, so please, no appeals to theoretical space limitations.
Ladies, ask yourself: when was the last time a man pulled out a giant cock and you shook your head sorrowfully and said "I'm sorry, but that's too big. I've read I can only accommodate 5 inches, so please put that away." Yes, exactly.
So romance. On a day to day basis, sisters, you probably experience far more than yours truly. When it occurs in my life, as it has recently, it does so with the frequency and likelihood of a meteor shower. Startling in its unexpectedness, and yes, resulting beauty. But odds are you are living with constellations of your own, that you see on so reliable a basis as to have grown inured.
I cannot say I'd trade what is mine for the familiar star shine of dear old Orion or Ursa Major. I can say that a grateful face, upturned to the heavens, and an open heart is a good place to start.
Cheers, salud and good night
Gretchie
I love conferences! Learning and delegates and networking, oh my!
Having recently excused myself from recent full employment, a natural extension of my Fuck-you-I-won't-do-what-you-told-me attitude was to find a five-star hotel on http://www.hotwire.com/ for the length of the conference and book it, baby. I don't know if staying in shwank digs is attracting Positive Energy or just making me feel more fraudulent than ever. Either way, I'm revelling in an abundance of sparkling white towels and the perversity of deluxe living in my newly unearning state.
A selective myopic optimism has gotten me this far. The conference is splendid, full of earnest speakers and delegates brimming with good cheer. And yes, I homed in very quickly on the attractive youngyoung Greek economist/revolutionary type at lunch and made a new buddy, to whom I idly suggested that he take me for dinner tomorrow. He agreed. I emit a pheromone these days which is proving irresistable to men who cannot stay more than a few days in my company. Fine by me; it is also what I am attracted to at this time.
Now, before my darlings think my life is all one glamour-filled spread featuring hot and horny Calvin Klein underwear models and champagne brunches, let me disabuse you of a few notions.
1. Singles have more sex.
Maybe some do, but myself, I took a vow of celibacy upon break-up in early 2009. Having been involved nine years with a good man, in many regards, I wasn't eager to rush into anything approaching intimacy with another. I hadn't been single more than six months since I was 19 (and that's 17 straight years ago, little ones). I had some discomfort as to my reason--or lack thereof--for being a serial monogamist, and decided I just needed to stop acting from the heart or the cunt or whatever combination was leading me thus. Just stop.
So I did. And I mean cold turkey, I didn't as much as tousle my own hair affectionately for six months. I took all that energy and pile-drived it into work and friendships and exercise and you know something? I didn't explode in a frustrated spray of female ejaculate, I actually felt pretty good and calm and in control.
Ok, so it didn't last or else this blog would be about Shakti, a Hindu devotee who drinks her own piss and subsists on lentils and that wouldn't be any fun past the ewww stage. But it was good while it lasted, and abstinence--despite its dour reputation--was a bracing tonic when I needed it most.
2. My life as a Single is glamorous.
Actually, no. I'm a dork. I like Scrabble. I love conferences! I read non-fiction and have an almost morbid interest in nutrition, and usually keep a cache of prunes in my car in case I need a high-energy, high-fibre snack on the go. I do my best thinking while I'm running through the woods with my dogs, or having a leisurely crap. And "my best thinking" invariably runs along the lines of strategic communications or creating beneficial partnerships or storylines for screenplays or crafting proposals for an interdisciplinary MBA in 2010. Hardly hot stuff, but things I'm genuinely interested in.
Being alone does allow me more time for reflection, but I cannot dress it up as anything that is particularly flashy or sexy.
3. Singles have more romance in their life.
I have a vibrating synthetic penisthing. It is underwhelming. Allow me to make a plea to the Okiya Corporation to bring back the Big Indian model. They apparently yielded to the Moderate Penis lobby a few years back, and now only make sensibly-sized units aka the Indian (in a variety of pretty colours, granted. But I don't want a My Little Pony. Crassly: I want a My Little Pony Dick).
The 20-something, probably penis-hating sales clerk tried to reason with me, saying she'd read that the average vagina could only accommodate 5 inches. That's fine, but my dear, I'm not looking to accommodate 5 inches. I'm not setting up vag hotel for Extended Stays & Holidays. A big dick, whether real or made of phthalate-free silicone, is intuitively more interesting to me than average. Technically, my vagina can pass a baby the size of a decent Thanksgiving turkey, so please, no appeals to theoretical space limitations.
Ladies, ask yourself: when was the last time a man pulled out a giant cock and you shook your head sorrowfully and said "I'm sorry, but that's too big. I've read I can only accommodate 5 inches, so please put that away." Yes, exactly.
So romance. On a day to day basis, sisters, you probably experience far more than yours truly. When it occurs in my life, as it has recently, it does so with the frequency and likelihood of a meteor shower. Startling in its unexpectedness, and yes, resulting beauty. But odds are you are living with constellations of your own, that you see on so reliable a basis as to have grown inured.
I cannot say I'd trade what is mine for the familiar star shine of dear old Orion or Ursa Major. I can say that a grateful face, upturned to the heavens, and an open heart is a good place to start.
Cheers, salud and good night
Gretchie
13 October 2009
Blood comes out from an opening between a woman’s legs, every 4 weeks or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHZEOweeoaE
This film falls into a funnycreepy category that can’t be faked. The kid is purely, simply awesome.
This film falls into a funnycreepy category that can’t be faked. The kid is purely, simply awesome.
Risk
A woman, eight and a half months into a complicated pregnancy, is driving to the hospital for an ultrasound. The sun is in her eyes, and perhaps she is distracted, perhaps only temporarily blinded. She fails to see the elderly woman in the crosswalk.
At once: a thud/ hard braking/ a sudden eclipse of the windshield followed by a slow, sick roll as an inert form falls to the ground. Shock, repulsion and brisk emergency logistics. A few days later, as the driver enters the final weeks of her pregnancy, the elderly woman has a stroke in hospital and dies.
On the other side of town, another woman is packing her life in boxes. She was born in this place and lived here with varying degrees of happiness for over four decades. With her son now gone to university in another city, she decides it is time for her too to leave. Within a month, she secures a new, lucrative job in a distant place and is leaving her hometown tomorrow for the unknown.
Two stories, seemingly unconnected. Or are they?
Let me pitch the convenient first: chance occurs randomly, whereas decisions are what we reach. One is beyond control, the Fates weaving the cloth and dropping stitches like tipsy old church-ladies. The other, or so we think, is about taking control and directing the pattern of our lives (me, I like a nice bold houndstooth this season).
But that’s just the pitch. We all buy into that distinction on the surface to make life easier, tolerable, even, especially when faced with horrible situations and bad things happening to good people, etc. But here, Dear Reader, let us entertain the notion that the two are not really that different. Let us venture that they are, in fact, two branches of risk management: the passive and the active.
Risk lurks in every moment. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, an undercurrent of risk lies beneath every chance encounter or sober decision. It doesn’t matter if the water appears calm on the surface. Risk can reach up with casual malice and pull you down. At least a surface flaunting its eddies and rips prepares the swimmer for what could, might happen.
So what to do? One strategy is to compartmentalize risk as a control measure, a neat Bento box of premeditated choices. For example, some pursue adventure in extreme sport or gaming while settling consciously into romantic complacency or routine work. Others may mistake following the norm as the safe choice. Upon reflection, what can be riskier than marriage or having children or yielding one’s long-term economic fate to an employer?
I don’t know if compartmentalizing risk really works. It can lead to an almost schizophrenic division of self, for which I haven’t got the intellectual stamina or emotional detachment.
I’d rather commit to a course of action across sectors, and judge the investment based on the long-term returns. A diversified portfolio, so to speak. (Allow me a derisive snort at myself for choosing this metaphor, as I know nothing about finance and am abysmal at managing even my own money. A ha! for Gretchen, please.)
Take friendship, for example. Making a friend is an easy gamble, a roll of the dice. But holding onto that friend over time increases the risk exponentially, as knowing one another’s flaws—we try so hard to keep them covered, isn't it heart-breaking how cute we all are—is both a gift and a responsibility.
Intimacy is risk. People break, cleave off in directions we can’t fathom or follow. But imagine how impoverished life would be without strangers who learn to love one another, with no suitable anthropological explanations of blood ties or financial gain. Friendship is a pleasant puzzle.
As for Love, I’m hardly the one to speak intelligibly of its risk, but of course I’ll try.
Part of my hesitation to wax poetic on the subject stems from being quite sure I’ve never been in love. Part of my persistence in addressing the subject is being quite sure that the opportunity to fall in love may finally be upon me, if I let it (and don’t fuck it up royally, meows the inner frightened kitten. See: risk. I haven’t forgotten tonight’s topic).
I have peculiar orthodoxy around the term “in love”. I don’t buy the Romeo and Juliet version; though it’s lovely, it also seems giddy and immature. Chances are if they had calmed down they would have eventually glided into boredom and broken up.
My checklist for Is This Love? includes feelings and sentiments that are returned; that leave a lasting impression even after the relationship dissolved; and which has me acting in such a way I can respect in the present and in retrospect.
Instead, in my past I see a series of relationships based on unsatiated lust, on longing for things still unknown to me, on base insecurity and convenience and yes, even genuine human affection. But nothing that could endure, and nothing that was based on equality. And nothing, though I’m sure I was in feverish rictus of emotion at the time, that leaves a strong enough memory for me to really give a shit about the people in my past.
More often than not, I was the one to call the end, but there were a couple of notable exceptions where I was the one to act more badly. A frantic little dog throwing itself against the fence: am I trying to drive you away or attract your attention?
Now, I am open to falling in love as long as it doesn’t impede my own progress, my own sense of worth. This new and dare I say good qualifier sets strict and pleasant limits. These limits hold a welcome appeal to me, similar to shopping in a communist country: my choices are either this one or nothing. This one, luckily, is amazing upon early inspection—but I’m finally at enough peace with myself that walking away with nothing is pretty damn good too. All I can do is aspire to become a person I’d want to fall in love with.
So to end on the theme of risk: do we have a choice in what happens to us? I do not know. The greatest risk appears to me to let fear and cowardice and an excess of prudence govern us. All I am sure of at this moment is that that life is a gift of great mystery and exquisite proportions, and above all is here to be relished. So go get it.
At once: a thud/ hard braking/ a sudden eclipse of the windshield followed by a slow, sick roll as an inert form falls to the ground. Shock, repulsion and brisk emergency logistics. A few days later, as the driver enters the final weeks of her pregnancy, the elderly woman has a stroke in hospital and dies.
On the other side of town, another woman is packing her life in boxes. She was born in this place and lived here with varying degrees of happiness for over four decades. With her son now gone to university in another city, she decides it is time for her too to leave. Within a month, she secures a new, lucrative job in a distant place and is leaving her hometown tomorrow for the unknown.
Two stories, seemingly unconnected. Or are they?
Let me pitch the convenient first: chance occurs randomly, whereas decisions are what we reach. One is beyond control, the Fates weaving the cloth and dropping stitches like tipsy old church-ladies. The other, or so we think, is about taking control and directing the pattern of our lives (me, I like a nice bold houndstooth this season).
But that’s just the pitch. We all buy into that distinction on the surface to make life easier, tolerable, even, especially when faced with horrible situations and bad things happening to good people, etc. But here, Dear Reader, let us entertain the notion that the two are not really that different. Let us venture that they are, in fact, two branches of risk management: the passive and the active.
Risk lurks in every moment. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, an undercurrent of risk lies beneath every chance encounter or sober decision. It doesn’t matter if the water appears calm on the surface. Risk can reach up with casual malice and pull you down. At least a surface flaunting its eddies and rips prepares the swimmer for what could, might happen.
So what to do? One strategy is to compartmentalize risk as a control measure, a neat Bento box of premeditated choices. For example, some pursue adventure in extreme sport or gaming while settling consciously into romantic complacency or routine work. Others may mistake following the norm as the safe choice. Upon reflection, what can be riskier than marriage or having children or yielding one’s long-term economic fate to an employer?
I don’t know if compartmentalizing risk really works. It can lead to an almost schizophrenic division of self, for which I haven’t got the intellectual stamina or emotional detachment.
I’d rather commit to a course of action across sectors, and judge the investment based on the long-term returns. A diversified portfolio, so to speak. (Allow me a derisive snort at myself for choosing this metaphor, as I know nothing about finance and am abysmal at managing even my own money. A ha! for Gretchen, please.)
Take friendship, for example. Making a friend is an easy gamble, a roll of the dice. But holding onto that friend over time increases the risk exponentially, as knowing one another’s flaws—we try so hard to keep them covered, isn't it heart-breaking how cute we all are—is both a gift and a responsibility.
Intimacy is risk. People break, cleave off in directions we can’t fathom or follow. But imagine how impoverished life would be without strangers who learn to love one another, with no suitable anthropological explanations of blood ties or financial gain. Friendship is a pleasant puzzle.
As for Love, I’m hardly the one to speak intelligibly of its risk, but of course I’ll try.
Part of my hesitation to wax poetic on the subject stems from being quite sure I’ve never been in love. Part of my persistence in addressing the subject is being quite sure that the opportunity to fall in love may finally be upon me, if I let it (and don’t fuck it up royally, meows the inner frightened kitten. See: risk. I haven’t forgotten tonight’s topic).
I have peculiar orthodoxy around the term “in love”. I don’t buy the Romeo and Juliet version; though it’s lovely, it also seems giddy and immature. Chances are if they had calmed down they would have eventually glided into boredom and broken up.
My checklist for Is This Love? includes feelings and sentiments that are returned; that leave a lasting impression even after the relationship dissolved; and which has me acting in such a way I can respect in the present and in retrospect.
Instead, in my past I see a series of relationships based on unsatiated lust, on longing for things still unknown to me, on base insecurity and convenience and yes, even genuine human affection. But nothing that could endure, and nothing that was based on equality. And nothing, though I’m sure I was in feverish rictus of emotion at the time, that leaves a strong enough memory for me to really give a shit about the people in my past.
More often than not, I was the one to call the end, but there were a couple of notable exceptions where I was the one to act more badly. A frantic little dog throwing itself against the fence: am I trying to drive you away or attract your attention?
Now, I am open to falling in love as long as it doesn’t impede my own progress, my own sense of worth. This new and dare I say good qualifier sets strict and pleasant limits. These limits hold a welcome appeal to me, similar to shopping in a communist country: my choices are either this one or nothing. This one, luckily, is amazing upon early inspection—but I’m finally at enough peace with myself that walking away with nothing is pretty damn good too. All I can do is aspire to become a person I’d want to fall in love with.
So to end on the theme of risk: do we have a choice in what happens to us? I do not know. The greatest risk appears to me to let fear and cowardice and an excess of prudence govern us. All I am sure of at this moment is that that life is a gift of great mystery and exquisite proportions, and above all is here to be relished. So go get it.
06 October 2009
Spindrift
"Call it irrational if you will, but I would say that there is no path to follow. I want to be like a boat in the sea. Behind it there is a trail, but in front there is no path."
-Santiago Calatrava, architect and engineer extraordinaire. Really. www.calatrava.com
-Santiago Calatrava, architect and engineer extraordinaire. Really. www.calatrava.com
Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated...
That's Mark Twain, not me, by the way. Alive and kicking, kids.
I abandon my munchkins for a week and get a couple of hungry enquiries. So gratifying to the Gretchy, thank you. I've learned to fatten myself on the crumbs of small interest, it keeps me going, so thank you again.
The reason for my absence, as you may have gleaned from my last post, was a much needed vacation. Vay-kay, as they say. Yes, a vacation from it all, the grind of work, the reliable routine of exercise, and the bonds of chastity (necessary where I live, as a more appalling mound of sub-human men you've never seen. We women are sad-eyed indeed but resilient, and the more savvy among us outsource the sex).
Item A: I did get my period right on regular schedule, so only had a couple of days on away time before the Hounds of Celibacy could be fully released (Go fetch! To Taiwan!) and the Kittykats of Lust could settle in and sharpen their claws. Dear Reader, I'd forgot how great fucking could be. Meow. You can't blame me for wanting it to be nice and clean and unbloody--but sure, I broke down pretty quickly and now carry a Tide pen in my purse. Take that, guilty hotel sheets!
Item B: Signs of a great holiday
B.1. Aforementioned Tide pen to deal with sudden stains
B.2. A constellation of fingerprint-sized bruises over one's body
B.3. Happy, alert sleeplessness
B.4. Unused concert tickets (who has the time?)
B.5. A suitcase full of soiled lingerie
B.6. The only clean items brought back in said suitcase are work-out gear (packed in pessimism, but fortunately in the end: who has the time?)
B.7. Chapped lips and a sex-induced yeast infection (considerately risen once back home)
B.8. A zen approach to the shitstorm which awaits you back in Normaland
B.9. General contentment
B.10. Full bowels
I will concentrate on this last item, as it really is the ha-ha-strange funniest.
Okay, look: I've booked the fancy-romancy hotels and hard-earned the money to pay for them.
I've sweated my way over many months, relentlessly, to a trim, tight bod I don't mind prancing around buck, even in the harshest light.
I've invested in decent underwear, even lacy matching bras and panty sets. That fit!
I've planned the dog-sitter and vacation messages and had the bits waxed and bought travel sizes of everything and packed with military precision.
Yet despite my logic and confidence, I knew in the back of my head I'd soon be waging a grim battle for control with my guts. I'm helpless, but am I alone in this absurd delicacy? I suspect not.
Farting, crapping. The last bastions of the liberated single woman. Now I know there are some of you who will scoff at me, who will declare themselves rectally-empowered, capable of defecating on crowded planes and in Superstore bathrooms and at friend's houses, even at work. Ladies, I do salute you.
Chances are, you are married and have at least one child. I understand. After you have been splattered by the Mach 2 projections of a 3-month old, one grows a little blase about one's own comparatively sedate movements. Also, once you sleep in the same bed with a partner for X amount of time, you get automatically entered in the contest of "the Grossest/Longest/Stinkiest Fart Ever? You Tell Me!". Passing gas may be just something you do for kicks.
However, for a single gal trying hard to impress (despite herself), admitting to sibilant and/or violent gas and twice-daily shits seems so, dare I say, unlovely. It's not like the travel gods don't conspire on this. Somehow the pressurized cabin combined with time zone changes and anticipation slows one down to a lazy burble, right upon landing.
Then you get to the romantic hotel and think, well, shoot, if you really wanted to be a couple's destination you'd put the toilet waaaaaaay down the hall--better yet, in the stairwell in a separate, soundproofed ladies' room. I can't really let it all hang out only a few feet away from a man in bed indulging in a post-coital glow.
Add to that a steady diet of restaurant food, and the fight-or-flight non-digestion of excellent and frequent sexercise, and you get one bunged-up Gretchie. You know it's alarming when even your companion is dropping gentle hints about the human need to excrete. Tee hee, whatever do you mean? Have a Tums, they're good calcium. Really.
Needless to say, my step is lighter for all sorts of reasons now that I'm home once again. Till the next time, where the true test of intimacy may just be a heartfelt crap.
G
I abandon my munchkins for a week and get a couple of hungry enquiries. So gratifying to the Gretchy, thank you. I've learned to fatten myself on the crumbs of small interest, it keeps me going, so thank you again.
The reason for my absence, as you may have gleaned from my last post, was a much needed vacation. Vay-kay, as they say. Yes, a vacation from it all, the grind of work, the reliable routine of exercise, and the bonds of chastity (necessary where I live, as a more appalling mound of sub-human men you've never seen. We women are sad-eyed indeed but resilient, and the more savvy among us outsource the sex).
Item A: I did get my period right on regular schedule, so only had a couple of days on away time before the Hounds of Celibacy could be fully released (Go fetch! To Taiwan!) and the Kittykats of Lust could settle in and sharpen their claws. Dear Reader, I'd forgot how great fucking could be. Meow. You can't blame me for wanting it to be nice and clean and unbloody--but sure, I broke down pretty quickly and now carry a Tide pen in my purse. Take that, guilty hotel sheets!
Item B: Signs of a great holiday
B.1. Aforementioned Tide pen to deal with sudden stains
B.2. A constellation of fingerprint-sized bruises over one's body
B.3. Happy, alert sleeplessness
B.4. Unused concert tickets (who has the time?)
B.5. A suitcase full of soiled lingerie
B.6. The only clean items brought back in said suitcase are work-out gear (packed in pessimism, but fortunately in the end: who has the time?)
B.7. Chapped lips and a sex-induced yeast infection (considerately risen once back home)
B.8. A zen approach to the shitstorm which awaits you back in Normaland
B.9. General contentment
B.10. Full bowels
I will concentrate on this last item, as it really is the ha-ha-strange funniest.
Okay, look: I've booked the fancy-romancy hotels and hard-earned the money to pay for them.
I've sweated my way over many months, relentlessly, to a trim, tight bod I don't mind prancing around buck, even in the harshest light.
I've invested in decent underwear, even lacy matching bras and panty sets. That fit!
I've planned the dog-sitter and vacation messages and had the bits waxed and bought travel sizes of everything and packed with military precision.
Yet despite my logic and confidence, I knew in the back of my head I'd soon be waging a grim battle for control with my guts. I'm helpless, but am I alone in this absurd delicacy? I suspect not.
Farting, crapping. The last bastions of the liberated single woman. Now I know there are some of you who will scoff at me, who will declare themselves rectally-empowered, capable of defecating on crowded planes and in Superstore bathrooms and at friend's houses, even at work. Ladies, I do salute you.
Chances are, you are married and have at least one child. I understand. After you have been splattered by the Mach 2 projections of a 3-month old, one grows a little blase about one's own comparatively sedate movements. Also, once you sleep in the same bed with a partner for X amount of time, you get automatically entered in the contest of "the Grossest/Longest/Stinkiest Fart Ever? You Tell Me!". Passing gas may be just something you do for kicks.
However, for a single gal trying hard to impress (despite herself), admitting to sibilant and/or violent gas and twice-daily shits seems so, dare I say, unlovely. It's not like the travel gods don't conspire on this. Somehow the pressurized cabin combined with time zone changes and anticipation slows one down to a lazy burble, right upon landing.
Then you get to the romantic hotel and think, well, shoot, if you really wanted to be a couple's destination you'd put the toilet waaaaaaay down the hall--better yet, in the stairwell in a separate, soundproofed ladies' room. I can't really let it all hang out only a few feet away from a man in bed indulging in a post-coital glow.
Add to that a steady diet of restaurant food, and the fight-or-flight non-digestion of excellent and frequent sexercise, and you get one bunged-up Gretchie. You know it's alarming when even your companion is dropping gentle hints about the human need to excrete. Tee hee, whatever do you mean? Have a Tums, they're good calcium. Really.
Needless to say, my step is lighter for all sorts of reasons now that I'm home once again. Till the next time, where the true test of intimacy may just be a heartfelt crap.
G
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