« minimalist blog of the day | Main | time, upside down »
walk with me...
November 10, 2004
...and prepare to ramble along... the latest gap in writing has ended, thanks to the reintroduction of my favorite creative catalyst (that would be a nice cold lager and lime, for the new reader). but it's been awhile, and the thoughts have piled up in my head, so i'm not even going to attempt any structure here...
i'm still here.it's been a fairly busy few days, and i think the longest gap in my blogging so far. it is not evidence of a decline, but simply of circumstance and maybe a bit of uncertainty.
i'll catch you up. friday night, i hung out with brian and shannon and josh, at brian and shannon's crib. they have this completely amazing home they call "the hobbit hole." the house is essentially built into a mound of earth - the front door opens to a long concrete hallway into the home proper, which is entirely underground, which makes it incredibly energy-efficient. the entire house is kept cool by a single window-mounted air conditioning unit. despite being underground, the rear of the house is almost entirely windows, set slightly below ground level, so that every room gets an ample amount of light. pretty killer.
anyway, shannon is my karaoke sun-sei, teaching me the ancient art of karaoke. i drank many harp, and sang many songs, from "kung-fu fighting" to some silly song from "dirty dancing", to "sexual healing," which i discovered i can perform much better than i anticipated. soon, very soon, people will hear exactly what i can do.
saturday was low-key, but at night, i went to play pool with morgan. as trivial an event as it was, it was a sign of the rebound i'm experiencing. i'm normally extremely competitive, overly competitive, even at things i'm no good at. put me in a beach volleyball game against the US olympic team, and i'll hate myself for losing.
where does that come from? childhood, expecially in junior high and high school. even back then, i believed, even more than the average child, i think, that i was destined for greatness. but i wasn't well accepted, especially when my parents illegally shipped me to the eanes school district in an attempt to avoid the onset of busing in my 6th grade year.
my parents took me to and from school. sometimes, i'd have to wait for hours after school for them to pick me up, since, obviously, the bus was not an option. across from hill country middle school sat a large plot of undeveloped land, owned by the goethe family. it was an anomaly, crowning a hill bordered by subdivisions, duplexes, a school, and a strip mall.
it didn't take long, sitting for those hours alone in front of the school, to notice the beautfiul girl on the horse. every day, she rode the property on a chestnut arabian.
already, the daily teasing, frequent public humiliation and semi-frequent beatings had done a number on my personality, on the natural openness and social boldness i had shown as a child. but in the early fall evenings, with the cold creeping in and the other kids long gone, i could still be myself, and it didn't take me long to cross the street to meet and talk to elizabeth.
she was a couple of years younger than me, but she had a presence over and beyond her blossoming good looks. we talked every day, her in a t-shirt and jeans and shoulder-length light brown hair, on her horse, me leaning on the chain link fence. we talked easily, comfortably, daily, for months. it was a connection that in those difficult days that made everything ok, that made some sort of sense at the literal and figurative end of the day.
february came. in sixth grade, you've moved past the tiny generic valentine's day cards that you gave to male and female classmates alike. mom, still at that point thinking first of my heart above all else, thought a box of candy would be nice, and she bought me one to give to elizabeth. valentine's day at the fence...
sorry, that's a tangent. why am i so damned competitive? certainly some of it is inherited from my mother, a portion due to a certain very asian sense of pride, and the rest arising from my mother's hard-knock experience of moving to this country and struggling to succeeed, conveyed to me by some sort of lamarckian evolutionary process.
but so much of it came from my own struggle to be worth something in a place where everything told me i was worth nothing. junior high is bad enough that way. not trying to reserve any particular hardship for myself, but out in westlake, i'm confident, junior high "goes to 11". it's one more than totally crappy, you see.
i had to push myself in everything i did. i couldn't keep up with what it would take to impress these people. i wanted their acceptance at a minimum, their respect beyond that, a revolutionary despite everything, and a leader to them in spite of them all. i learned that by being harder on myself than anyone else could be, i could protect myself in a way. by being my own worst critic, i took control. but if it was never enough for them, it certainly was, and has never been, enough for me.
rewind. so, morgan and i went to play pool. lately, i've been disillusioned by the failure of the universe to yield what i wanted, maybe some of the things i've felt i needed. i've felt that i've tried, but i've felt that the universe has thrown some things back in my face. last week, i bottomed out, emotionally and physically.
i should not sound or feel so put-upon by the universe, and that's exactly what i realized late last week, with a bit of resignation. things are what they are. jennifer gave me a friendly whack upsidedahead. that helped. and yeah, giving up helped. being disappointed again last week helped, got me again to that point of a simple decision - die, live feeling this way, or live trying.
playing pool saturday night, i let go. i didn't drink, amazingly. it was a struggle letting go of the need to be amazing, better, or even just OK. and i ended up playing pretty well.
last night, i went running, and i didn't have to be at the front, didn't have to beat my best time. i met a nice young college professor and new mother named janay, who helped me through a difficult run. i ran with her, at just a steady pace that would get me to the finish, not at an ever-changing, ever accelerating one.
tonight, i went bowling with shannon and brian, and for the first time ever, did not get angry at myself for my performance in an activity i participate in no more than twice a year.
are ya still there? it's been a long, meandering path. thanks for getting here with me. there's more to tell about the past few days, but maybe i'll separate them into hopefully more coherent posts. the bottom line is that i'm ok, i'm better. to an extent, i'm accepting my place in the universe right now, such as it is. but there's a freedom to that acceptance, and maybe a bit of hope.
i'm trying to get myself back to some better, healthier, stronger, and yeah, more attractive shape. i'm placing my hope in myself, and in the unspecified potential of the future, and not in the face of every attractive woman i see. i'm done going to the fence, hope in my heart, and a heart-shaped box of russell stovers chocolates in my hand. no more chasing the beautiful girl on the horse. no more damning myself, hating myself, for failing to gain everyone's acceptance and love. no more being the child waiting in the falling darkness for something to come. let something come find me.
Posted by Rob at November 10, 2004 11:26 PM