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June 28, 2005
and again
the blog has been sparse lately, again. i'm not losing interest in the medium at all, and i'm certainly not losing interest in writing. i've still written bits in my notebook that i just haven't transcribed.
to some extent, i think i'm tired of my own writing. i still have this narcissistic affection for my own writing style from time to time, but the content...
i think i want to hit home runs. i want every entry to be a piece that stands alone, and is entertaining to read. i've gotten out of the habit of writing just to write because it all became so focused on what i was feeling, and it was getting redundant. it was giving people a lot of just one side of me, even though that's the side that's been around a lot lately.
and it's the side showing now, too. i fell back in the hole saturday, for no apparent reason. i've been getting more sleep in the past couple of weeks. i haven't been drinking as much in the past week, and i even suspect that coming off of that (i need a better, less loaded word for "habit", here) might be a little to blame.
there are disappointments. i'm a little annoyed at how much i spent this month on things like car repairs (that were mainly for convenience and cosmetics), cat repairs (that were mainly to get oliver to stop peeing out of the litter box due to a urinary tract infection), and stuff like that.
i'm a little miffed at the dating life - that's new, right? er... anyway, i've met a succession of seemingly interesting prospects, and i'm getting a weird chain of unreturned calls from girls that seem somewhat interested, who haven't even spent enough time to know too much about me (scientists have placed this amount of time at around 37 minutes).
something is clearly wrong, and it's gotta be me. maybe i'm blacking out and going all pat o'brien and leaving pornographic voicemails for these people. maybe, unbeknownst (that's a weird word) to me, i sound like mike tyson over the phone. maybe sprint is trying to cockblock a brotha.
they can't see me picking my nose through the phone, right?
anyway, what do you do? i'm changing things up. i plan on not being as open with people when i meet them ("hi, i'm rob and i hate james taylor."), and maybe not actually calling them when i get their number. build some mystery around myself, drive them mad with curiosity, make them search the city for me on foot and what-not.
i lost about five pounds, somehow (no, really, i have no idea what happened), and i'm thinking i need to lose about 15-20 more. it'd be nice to have someone just be superficially attracted to me from across a room, and i'm not talking about a huge, 80-yard-wide room, either. cause i think once they get to know me, people seem to like me, seem to think i'm a fun guy.
until about 10 months down the line, of course.
where the hell did this all start? no idea, and i'm too lazy to scroll up to the top of the entry. i do know that i'm going to just start writing more in here. i'll try for quality, but there'll be a lot of days like this, i suspect. at least if there's a post every day, people are more likely to come back often, on the off chance something interesting happens.
see you soon.
Posted by Rob at 01:06 PM | Comments (3)
June 27, 2005
what i did for my lunch hour very much, thank you.
my energy and motivation still off and drastically insufficient to get me to the gym, i decided to run errands during my lunch hour.
i walked past the lady at work who's exceedingly nice, who, though diabetic, has become only my second significant rival in the baking arena. unfortunately, she also has the annoying habit of ordering me to smile. while the idea is nice, it's also grating and presumptious -
"smile!"
"wha? oh, wow, you're right! holy crap, that hadn't occurred to me! i should act in a way exactly opposite to how i feel! it's brilliant. ok, ok, let's see if i remember how, maybe that's the problem... oh, damn, is this it? oh, no, that's me flipping you the bird, how silly..."
today, she began singing some song as i walked by the front desk.
"don't worry, be happy."
i feigned a pained chuckle. i slowed a bit, and fought the urge to bludgeon her with a stapler. "ah. yes. ah. what's that about?"
"oh, i don't know."
"ah."
"have a good lunch."
"ah. yes."
i walked out, but the song was still cycling through my head. just a few bars. over. and over.
i got on the elevator with a lilliputian guy that looked like he was coming from the board of accountants upstairs. that is to say, he looked like an accountant, not entirely at ease in his brown pinstriped suit.
he smiled.
i smiled and nodded back.
".. worry, be..." i began to worry that she was, in fact, some kind of witch, or a vampire. yes, a vampire. you know they have a little-publicized mastery over the power of hypnotic suggestion. it would explain a lot - her imposing frame is topped by short, spiky, salt-and-pepper hair. she commonly wears a black cloak over shiny silver or shiny dark red shirts.
i got out to my car, which was sitting in the sun roasting like a dead, burgundy-colored, hail-damaged yak.
"don't worr..."
"holy f-" the alarm system chirped.
"...happy"
thank god, in so many ways, for the new coldplay album.
i cranked it up to 11, trying to vibrate any recent memory, of the song, and of a few other things, out of my skull.
thundercloud to pick up a sandwich. large smoked chicken on wheat. yum. grocery store to cash a check and pick up a few things - peanut butter for my usual toast-and-peanut butter breakfast every morning. salad dressing. chili cheese fritos.
heading back towards downtown, i opened the bag and crammed some fritos in my mouth. they made me a bit happier. the crunching added to the bobby mcferrin-disruptive effect of the stereo.
i decided to finally stop by the monolithic whole foods store, where my roommate, jane works. jane has wanted me to come gawk at a girl she thinks i should meet.
i have to say the store is pretty amazing. nice, well, lit parking garages. moving sidewalks. separate dining "venues" for everything from sushi to pizza to seafood. i mean, nothing i would like, take pictures of or take a guided tour of, but pretty impressive, still.
oh. and everywhere, beautiful women. i mean, an unnatural saturation of not only attractive, but interesting-looking women, at 2:00 in the afternoon. it defies reason, really.
i couldn't find jane at her usual spot at the pasta venue. i checked out the others, making a wide berth around the massive, but stinky, section of stinky cheeses. i fought the urge to press my nose up against the cool glass in the pastry area.
i found shannon at the tea counter, chatted with her just briefly, then a mass of people rounded the corner, coming right at us. someone was explaining tea selections. it was a tour group. a guided one.
guided tour groups. in a grocery store. exactly what is there for a guide to say?
"if you'll look to your left, down past the flax waffles, you'll see the largest assortment of seasoned nuts in the western hemisphere. of course, we like to think our tour guides are the largest assortment of seasoned nuts in the world."
the improbably easy to get tour group laughter would follow. later, they'd recount the joke to the relatives that dumped them off at the store so they could go to work. their relatives would laugh politely and wish the old people would just leave and go back to montana.
"and just down here is where joe from meats asked out donna from wines last monday, but she totally turned him down because she heard he stole a couple of tabs of x from veronica, the cashier. joe and donna slept together later, anyway."
the tour group began flowing and closing in around me at the tea counter, like the fish had that time in the caymans when i dangled a bit of crab on a fishing line into the water, as i had seen the local fishermen do. first a couple of small fish, then they got larger, and more numerous, swarming around my legs and bumping me until i dumped the line and bait and ran like hell back to the beach. i looked at shannon with growing terror. she was nonplussed. apparently, this is the norm for her workday.
"um. ok, great. well, bye."
swimming out of the flood, i immediately ran into george, a friend of jane's i'd met. he pointed down sixty or seventy yards down to the other end of the store, past the beer, past the wine, to the seafood venue.
jane described the girl to me, and where she was down front near the express lanes. i ambled through, looking for someone that matched the description. i saw one girl with the hip glasses and other features jane had described. i tried to make out her nametag, but as carefully thought-out as everything else at the store is, the nametags and the names printed on them are too difficult to locate and read for the casual stalker. it gives people the impression you're staring at their boobs.
i figured this girl was the one. she was really cute. definitely way cool, maybe even slightly hippy-y.
i couldn't let her see me in my dockers and starched shirt. i'd have to return in baggy, deconstructed shorts, a t-shirt fadedly promoting an acceptably obscure band, and, well, i guess barefoot, since all my casual shoes are made by nike.
in fact, she would probably disassemble my vast collection of nike basketball shoes and turn them into a melted mosaic protesting the exploitation of cheap foreign labor and the unrelated, but still enraging female circumcision rituals in certain countries. or, she'd soak them in gasoline and hurl them at other things that were also politically not cool.
she's probably so cool that she doesn't eat meat. this could be a problem.
my lunch hour was almost over. i rode the moving sidewalk down to the parking garage, opened the door to my car and was immediately greeted by the warm, old-world spicy aroma of chili-cheese fritos. then, it struck me. chili-cheese fritos. i grabbed the bag, shoved several into my mouth, and looked at the ingredient list.
there is no meat in chili-cheese fritos. unless, of course, disodium guanylate is meat. but, i think it's salt and something derived from guano, which is, of course, bat dung.
there is hope, after all, in the unknown. we could maybe have a life together, with me wearing the same pair of shorts every day, finding some used chuck taylors in a vintage store, working not to reveal my uncoolness, and dining together on chili-cheese fritos.
unless she's a vegan, in which case that's more cool than i care to deal with. i gots to have my cheese and my ice cream.
leaving the store, i saw the musician guy jane brought home the other night.
then, god help me, i'm sure i saw un amb-assador nominee john bolton crossing the street. i revved the engine to run him over but decided that if it wasn't him, i'd feel bad and not enjoy my brownie, and if it were him, there were probably snipers watching me. i cursed myself for not being willing to give my life for the peace and sanity of international diplomacy, but i only sat and glared and swore quietly as he walked past.
Posted by Rob at 02:50 PM | Comments (1)
June 20, 2005
somewhat randomly-generated minimalist blog of the day
no thanks, all truth...
(glad to see i'm not the only person who overuses ellipses...)
yes, less, i will...
and because she is, my heart feels warm and sorta safe...
now fairy godmother, always cinderella.
things don't always have to be the same to be right. the lack of an oak is no reason not to appreciate the acorn.
ghosts are real, and they're here with us, and so, all is not lost... should we answer them when they speak to us?
Posted by Rob at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)
returning to mercy street
"are you gonna write about this in your blog?"
pause.
well, i sort of have to, don't i?
the dreams, unbidden during the day, unavoidable in sleep, have persisted over the years. we see each other again, and while history never repeats itself for anything more than a smile, a momentary return of the dave and mattie-like banter, or the briefest of memory-laden embraces, it's always ok, it's sort of enough, i know it's as right as things could ever be again. we say the things we should have said back when it all fell apart, we apologize for all the things said and done, unsaid and undone.
with the mutual best friends we have somehow still completing some circuit between us, some part of me believed or hoped, or maybe knew, that it was just a matter of time until mary and i had that moment, though i wondered how long it might take. i feared it might be 20 years from now, maybe at a wedding of a friend's kid, or maybe even further, 30, 40, 50 years on, the need spurred that much more as we passed each other at a funeral, or a gravesite.
the romantic in me, the lover of love, imagines the sorrow, the realization of possibilities and lives lost, like the song they play every year around new years about the old lovers who meet again in the grocery store, the "same old lang syne", drink a six pack in her car, talk about the past and present, and they laugh until they cry.
but romance for its own sake is selfish. the better me has wanted her to be happy, even if it dooms the fantasy, even if it means the past truly fades into time, becoming just something that happened long ago, its power and pull just a curious memory.
a week ago, i was at lunch at trudy's, the place near campus where we spent so many hours together, and with our friends back in college. my father was in town, and he and i talked of his relationship with my mother, how that power and pull is still there in some way for him, a wound, a loss still fresh and real these decades later. i talked about mary, and how i let that struggle and loss impact so much of my life, how long the process of letting go took, but how it all helped me understand a little better how this life works, i think.
my cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and i ignored it. it buzzed again, and i looked discreetly at it - it said "Private."
a third time, and i was concerned, so i answered.
only confusion and surprise clouded recognition. a voice i hadn't heard in almost seven years, and then just briefly, but still the same as it ever was, light and warm.
i told her to hold on, mouthed the name to my father, whose eyes grew wide. he told me to go.
for 45 minutes mary and i talked. she had found out about my website from our mutual friend, and she read the blog entry i wrote on my birthday, on her anniversary.
she felt the need to apologize, i told her she didn't need to, but that i did. she finally got me to stop talking so much, so she could say what she wanted to say, too.
we didn't speak of love or even friendship so much, but of what we felt we were responsible for, what we wished we had done to be right for everyone involved. i didn't and don't know what to feel about that, but some part of me thinks, maybe knows, that it didn't need to be spoken, that sometimes, as she had once written years ago, i should know better than she could possibly say.
we caught up a little. she insisted that i had to do something with my writing. she asked what was up with all the beer. i think she was happy with the answer, but i don't know that any questioning of the drinking has ever hit me quite as squarely. i heard her son in the background, we talked a little about her kids. i asked her about katy, her niece that really made me want to have kids, and i was shocked to realize that so much time had passed, and that little katy was about to enter the university, back to where mary and i began.
she asked if i understood, and i told her i did, that no, this was the one time, and that we couldn't communicate again.
and then the time came, though i kept trying to delay it just a little. but for now, there was nothing more we could really say. at least this time, we got to say goodbye.
i sat there in trudy's little rock garden for a few minutes, with the cell phone still radiating heat in my hands. in my heart, like in the song, the snow turned to rain, just a bit, but i was also ok, knowing that she was out there, that maybe even now she sees and knows something of my heart through these words, through my writing, which she deserves so much credit for.
that night, i slept on the couch. the cats roamed the apartment elsewhere, leaving me alone. the neighbor upstairs, a kid the age mary and i were when it all began, stomped around incessantly. i watched the lines of light and darkness on the wall shift softly as the blinds drifted in the air conditioning's breeze. i thought of her, and fell asleep, and when i dreamt, it wasn't of some fervently wished-for future moment of forgiveness and reconciliation, but, finally, of days and love past, and real.
Posted by Rob at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2005
"he was a little mean about 9 days ago"
ok, so i got some really nice comments from some folks following the one about the errant email. then, of course there was the comment that was a little over the top, if well-intentioned, which has since been edited.
so, i need to say to the person in question (let's call her... "glenda", just because it's so unlike her name. maybe "frieda"... that's funny... no, no, "glenda".) and to everyone else - glenda's good people, and was a really good friend, and she doesn't really deserve to be slammed. questioned, definitely. challenged, yes. poked fun at, oh, of course, it's what we do. but slammed, no.
my friends are welcome to judge me, but i'm hoping they'll tell me what those judgments are, so i can get shit fixed, yo? even your unintentional email has something in it that's well-taken. there is some stuff i need to get back to, and we're working on that.
so, anyway, that's it. hope to hear from you, glenda mcsplenda, because you know we'll run into each other.
peas out.
Posted by Rob at 03:20 PM | Comments (1)
the halcyon days...
i've been spreading misinformation.
people in the coffee shop have sometimes asked exactly what "halcyon" means. i had always known it as a shade of blue, no doubt from some remembered paint chip or stupid marketing for a really icky car paint color. and this is what i've been telling people. they've seemed happy about my answer, but i've been wrong.
halcyon has been on my mind a lot lately, and this morning, i was curious to see how the dictionary would define a color.
as it turns out, halcyon not only an adjective, but a noun, referring to a kingfisher, especially one of the genus halcyon. it was also "a fabled bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was supposed to have had the power to calm the wind and the waves while it nested on the sea during the winter solstice."
and, so, halcyon is also used to describe calm and peacefulness and tranguility, as well as to describe prosperity, the golden era or years.
and so it has been for me, to an extent. working at halcyon, at the coffeehouse, in some way, however briefly, calmed the wind and waves within, while bringing a little prosperity, as well.
humanity in so many of its forms flows in and out, in small waves, then tidally, as the night and its promises real and imagined exert their pull. older men congregate to play chess, nursing their whiskey and sodas, pondering, sliding pieces, tapping the timer.
gaggles of giggling and swishing sorority girls, 20 year-olds with gold american express cards, come to the counter, laziness, feigned carelessness and coquettishness portrayed with the shuffle of flip-flops. they order smores and bubble teas, they leave monumental and sticky messes behind and often don't tip at all.
some regular homeless guys come in. we give them coffee, a kind word as time allows, and even a surly kid gives a guy a day old scone or muffin. it sucks to have to turn the body slightly when pouring their coffee, watching for any motion over the tip bucket.
the occasional rumble of a street bike, or well-tuned voice of a ducati's potential energy foretells the regulars in leather jackets, or the guy that always looks a bit out of place in his leather vest on sunday mornings. he sits alone in the back and sips his coffee and stares outside. sometimes he moves to the front, by the windows.
students rearrange tables into library-like rows and spend hours nursing a hot tea and poring over books.
a time-lapse film would show little blossoms of light exploding through the days and nights, notebook computers opening like blooms, giving rather than receiving light, bathing programmers and businesspeople and students and aimless surfers in cool blue.
there's something peaceful and calming to the work, at times, in the ritual of pulling the filter off the machine, slapping it a couple of times to dump the damp, spent grounds into the little receptacle, slapping the lever on the grinder to release fresh espresso, level, tamp, knock the loose grounds from the edges, tamp, twist it into the machine, and hit the button.
frothing and foaming the milk continues to challenge me. i play with the angle and depth of the steaming wand, trying to get the milk swirling just right, getting the wand tip to cavitate enough to create froth, i watch the milk expand, i imagine it sweetening slightly, and i hold my hand to the side of the metal pitcher as long as i can to get it to the right temperature.
i like the moments, when i feel enough space to step up to the counter and banter with the customers. only a couple of times have i revealed the alter ego, the attorney thing. i feel maskless, i feel like i've finally, in some small measure, taken control of who i am.
the diversion of identity is not without a downside. there's the woman that comes in every saturday morning, with her sweet old dog waiting outside patiently for her as she gets her coffee. i chat with her and pet her dog every time. she's got a beautiful and honest smile. last weekend, i asked her out. she said sure, that she'd leave her number with me before she left. she kept half of that deal - she did leave...
there are any number of reasons it might have gone the way it did, but even 19 year-old frank said that i'd probably have had more luck if she met me as a lawyer than as a barrista. maybe, maybe not. probably. if so, then her lack of interest is best for both of us.
finally, of course, i love the people i work with. i push myself to perform for my little team, because it makes things go easier, it minimizes the stress, it impacts the tips at the end of the night that they rely on as their income.
but the cost lately has been a little too high. in a typical week, i work my 40 hours as an attorney, then seven hours saturday, seven hours sunday, six hours monday night after work, and six hours wednesday after work. 66 hours a week. combine it with thursday nights coaching, and early tuesday nights running, and i haven't been writing, i haven't run or gone to the gym as much, and i don't play basketball at all anymore.
the fatigue is wearing on me - i dread my day job already, and i don't want to dread a job that was supposed to be a release for me, but i've started to. after a week with my father in town, taking off of both jobs, but wearing myself a bit thin with activity, tomorrow morning and sunday morning and the sunday afternoon father's day gig loom ahead, making the weekend unwelcoming.
so, i'll be pulling it back. maybe not quitting completely, but cutting back to one or two days a week. it does make me a bit sad - it's silly to have to choose one job over the other, and to have to choose poorly, in a way. but the halcyon, the mythical bird, has flown the nest, and the seas are just getting rougher here. i gotta seek calm elsewhere.
Posted by Rob at 09:03 AM | Comments (1)
June 08, 2005
"he was so fun 10 months ago"
that's ok, i'm really not mad at ya. disappointed, but i was already disappointed that we don't talk or hang out anymore. i suppose now i know why.
but really, as far as this goes, i'm primarily amused. you see, i think maybe you hit "reply to all" instead of just replying to the person that apparently forwarded my email to you. it's a classic sitcom moment. i'm excited to get an email from you after all this time, and i get one that's actually about me, saying,
"He is a wierdo. He was so fun 10 months ago."
i wrestled. it was sorely needed writing inspiration. but which way to go? talk about the self-doubts that it both reflects and inflames? or no, i really wanted to use it, to write one of the funny bits, to make you see, "hey, i'm as fun as ever."
but i don't know that either works - neither feels right, not right now.
aside from the simple comedy of it, there's irony, too. first, i tried to be pretty transparent to you from soon after we met (which was actually a little over eight months ago), so i'd think any weirdness was quickly obvious. it seemed you accepted some of it, called me out on a lot of it, and i always listened, and what you had to say helped me through a bad time.
i was not at my best the night we met, but perked up, only to crash again when you and chet ended up hitting it off and chet unexpectedly dropped off our other party companion and me. i remember at the time being jealous of chet because he was clearly funnier and more fun than me. it made me want to get back to the funner and funnier self that i and hundreds and hundreds of four other people had once thought i was.
we became friends anyway. i opened myself to you. i find, from time to time, that there are things i hide from myself. but a long time ago, i decided that i had to try not to do the things that i would be ashamed to tell people about, and that if i did, then i still had to be honest about it. i did that with you. i do that here.
so, what made me so weird? the only contact we've had, in any way, for the last five or six months, is through this blog. you expressed concern indirectly before at what i'd written, which i appreciated, felt a little guilty about.
so is this it, this blog, what i write? is this where you see the weirdness, the lack of fun? part of me is a little angry at the presumption - have you been there? have you been here, with me, where so many of my friends have been, despite the inconvenience and discomfort of it?
i remember the fun we used to have, too - i was always amazed and enamored and not a little turned on by your bizarre and shocking sense of humor, the devious scenarios that would play out in your mind. i remember, too, the night you burped out loud in the mall, the joy and freedom you seemed to feel at the slightest, most boorish comedic act, but counterbalanced, so tragically, almost, by the immediate guilt and self-reprobation.
you've always been uncomfortable with, almost and perhaps ultimately disliked me for throwing myself so open here. but you did keep reading, didn't you? i don't want to presume, but i feel so certain that it speaks to some part of you, the part that is beautiful and real, but captive, crushed into silence by so many fears of your own, so many rules you feel you have to follow to be alright, to be a good and loved person.
and that, my friend, makes you a weirdo, too.
i'm there with you, a certified weirdo. i've always known this. embraced it in some ways, always worked against it in others. but then again, who of my friends aren't? and for you... i loved you anyway, maybe one of the few things i have done, that i do, right. i believe in you, as i thought you did in me. together, as with my other friends, i thought we might get to the places in our hearts and minds that we needed to be. i wanted that for you, for me. when you faded out of my life, i let it go. i just figured different paths would have to be taken. to be honest, it could so easily have been me writing that email today, dismissing you as a flake, as other things. if i ever have, then i am now so sorry.
your words stick, like a wound in my heart, like a flag in my mind. i will question, i will work. some good may come of it. but i have something for you, too:
no matter how smart, how beautiful, how rich, how right, how powerful a person is, it is only their compassion and their will to honesty that will make them a great woman, or a great man, or a great human being. let anything that isn't deeply in your heart fall away. be who you are and don't feel the need to apologize. it may, in the short term, gain you joy or sorrow, or nothing at all, but in the end, it is all you have in life. this is what i'm trying to do here, trying to make all the sound and fury mean something. it's something you and i both need to do.
much love always,
rob
Posted by Rob at 02:23 PM | Comments (4)
June 03, 2005
"that's how i knew this story would break my heart."
(aimee mann)
i parked in the alley, was with a friend, walked through, stepping carefully between and across the puddles that rippled grey skies, just like the ones i pick my way through in the alley behind the coffeeshop.
my friend and i come to some people by the dumpster behind the record store, like the dumpster behind the record store i visited so often when i was back in college.
she was there, just in front of a group of people that had accumulated to watch some confrontation, under clouds that began to release small cold drops of rain on her as she quietly but firmly berated some surly guy dumping garbage. i was too late to know why, and what i heard i now can't seem to recall.
i watched her, then went through the back door into the record store, wiped the slowly warming drops from my face, my hands on my jeans, moved through the beige and glass room, just like the record store i went to with kristi in alexandria a few years ago.
she came in sometime later, began browsing, the clack of disc cases, small, wispy locks of hair under a knit cap lifting softly with each slow flip of a phonograph record.
I maneuvered down the aisle across from her, willing her to look up, to glimpse, to smile. i saw her, glancing slyly up from the racks, moving my way, too; cat and cat, mouse and mouse.
i was staring.
she looked up through her glasses, smiled, said, "what?"
"i'm sorry?"
"did you have a question? i don't work here, you know," still, all smiling.
"yeah, i know... but. ah."
nice.
recovery. sort of. "coffee. want to grab some?"
she looked at me warily. "you don't drink coffee, do you?"
"no."
"hm. well, that's ok. let's go."
sitting together, inside, but walls open away behind her to the lightening afternoon. we talked of many things, the girl and the walrus, everything so easy, finally.
i asked her name, but only heard her voice, and didn't catch it, and didn't want to just ask it again. it didn't matter, because somehow, once again, now, so many years later again, i was beginning to see, beginning to know.
it couldn't have been more perfect, it couldn't have more perfectly imperfect.
she was like everyone i've known, and like no one i've met. i was amazed at everything i had never thought to want or ask for, even as i had doubted that something far less could ever come.
she paused.
"you do know, right?"
i blinked, my eyes opened slightly, the day seemed to lighten as something in me fell.
"you're not real, are you?"
she smiled, sweetly, sadly, "no, i'm afraid not."
my stomach tightened, but i smiled, as i had before, how long ago, years and minutes.
"that's ok. if i were awake, and you were really here, it could just so easily be something else - married, gay, too young, too old. so this is just, 'not real.' funny, but in the end, it doesn't really make much difference, does it?"
"no, i guess not."
"are you having a good time?"
she smiled again. "yes. yes, i am. and that matters just as much."
i nodded. i wrapped my hand around my mug of tea. somewhere, something, my mind, my heart, god, decided it was warm.
"yeah. then, is it okay if we just hang out a little longer? can we just... do this?"
"i'd like that. but i think simon wants out."
"what? no..."
i could hear simon whimper, and it pulled me away, out of sleep, and she was gone, and i was there in kammi's house, where i was staying with simon and max and the cats while kammi was away, and i was alone, simon at my bed side, wagging his tail, wanting for some reason to go out at 3:24 in the morning.
i reached out and scruffed his ears wearily, stared at the ceiling and tried to put it all back together.
i can't remember her name.
Posted by Rob at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2005
maybe the why is not what we hoped.
maybe it's not about solution, or resolution. maybe it's not about getting closer to better, because maybe that'll happen, maybe it won't. maybe it's just about getting it down, letting the words out. maybe they resonate, maybe they remind, maybe they're a sign warning "dead end."
maybe that's all it is.
Posted by Rob at 10:11 PM | Comments (1)
minimalist irony blog entry of the day
so, back in march, i attended an afternoon of depositions as counsel for a friend. two court reporters showed. i was asked my name, and to spell it.
the other day, i get a courtesy letter from AcuScribe Court Reporters - "When Accuracy Means Everything"... addressed to Mr. Richard Hill.
i can't define it, but i know it when i see it.
Posted by Rob at 08:51 AM | Comments (1)
June 01, 2005
not again.
well. what to say. i've generally been trying pretty hard. with everything. but only results show or matter.
still love the halcyon job. but i'm still slow, and it was pointed out the other night. my work ethic there is great, i think - most shifts, i don't take any break at all, sometimes not even to go to the bathroom. i move, and i stay as cheerful as possible. but that's not all it takes.
have become increasingly disenchanted with the other job, the law job, the job that can only be listed as my "first" job by virtue of being a greater source of income, even though it's crappy. in my ninth year of being an attorney, i make over $10,000 a year less than the median first-year attorney's starting salary in 1996.
i was out sick yesterday, the return of the icky green sinus infection, that keeps me coughing, feverish, and slightly dizzy most of the time. it prompted a serious discussion about my attendance.
i'd love to talk about it in more depth, but the bottom line is, the past couple of weeks had me later than usual while i was housesitting and bouncing back and forth every morning. i still wasn't always the last one in. when i have gotten here on 8:30, it seems to go unnoticed largely because the only person in legal that gets here earlier (a 7:30-4:30 guy) keeps his door closed all day. there's no one else to see it.
the people making the stink are apparently elsewhere in the agency. perhaps i should wear a bell and jump up and down when i come in.
so, i feel a little ashamed, a little pissed, and a little hopeless, because i'm back to that point i've reached with every other law job. granted, it's not why i left or lost other jobs. these jobs are all ultimately pointless for me. it's about paying bills, which is certainly important, but that's about it. it won't mean a fucking thing when i'm dead.
meanwhile, there are other things, hopes and dreams that i'm beginning to realize i have to grow up and let go of, like i'm sure some people will tell me i need to do. i appreciate it, but if the only comment my writing drives you to make is, "suck it up and stop whining," don't bother.
did i mention my growing contempt for people?
anyway, kind of connected with all this, i realized the other day that everything i do is still about trying to win, trying to prove something. when i was struggling for acceptance as a kid, that's what it took. with my parents, that's what it took. and at 36, i'm still not done trying to prove my worth to everyone else. i keep taking things on, piling them high, as if hoping the weight and effort will turn the coal i am to diamond.
it's not working.
i'm going to go take a 15 minute lunch break now, and make sure i'm seen coming and going.
Posted by Rob at 12:48 PM | Comments (2)