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just another
July 13, 2005
low red moon,
how can you just
sleep like a baby?
sleep like a baby?
but you shine so different on another.
- belly, "low red moon"
just... turn.
no?
her back is to me, headphones on, working on her powerbook.
i've seen her so many times in the coffeehouse. almost everyone tells me that they haven't really talked to her, that she smiles, is nice, but that she just won't say much.
i'm sorry, and i don't entirely understand what drives me, what moves me. it could be something psychic, it could be psychosis. it's nothing so simple as colors and measurement and proportion, and i'm glad for that. maybe it says something for me, or maybe i've just lucked into not being more of an asshole.
but she is beautiful. maybe she reminds me of a dream i once had. maybe she reminds me...
fairy godmother, are you out there? i know you are, and somehow, that makes sense, makes me feel like it'll all get figured out. funny, though, how maybe you're least able of anyone to tell me what it was, to tell me why it was you.
but no, it's not déjà vu all over again. brown hair, again, but blue eyes, this time. so much of it, still, is in the smile, though it's not the same smile. in some women, it would be flirtatious. for some, it might come from some slight unease. in yet others, it would say, "you're silly, and you amuse me."
i can't figure this one, and that's maybe part of the attraction. maybe it was with her, with you.
she's twenty feet away, in a small triad of notebook computers, working. she's here almost every day. i'm at the bar.
i finally talked to her when i worked sunday. it was clumsy. "so, um. you're working, huh?"
yesterday, i talked to her when i stopped in. walked up to her table boldly. then, more clumsiness - "so, um, you just, like, work here everyday, huh?"
shortly after i came in tonight and set up my own notebook computer, she walked up beside me to get some water from the cooler. more clumsiness - "so, like, you work here a lot, huh?"
again, though, the smile - was it trying to encourage me, if only for my own sake? finally, i actually introduced myself.
i've been typing and watching. she hasn't turned around at all.
it's always been someone. some focus. some of the enfatuations were realized. i assume "requited" is a word if "unrequited" is. i can't say that those relationships were any more substantial for coming true. i can't say the others were more powerful for not coming true.
but real or not, powerful or not, lasting or not, there's always someone.
it's become a joke between me and my friends, so much that hopefully it's not even more of a joke when i'm not there. girl of the week, known only by greek-like epithets - "gym girl," "girl with ferret," coffeeshop girl #1," "coffeeshop girl #2" coffeeshop girl #5."
what is real anymore? how do i know? what have i felt before, and been wrong about? how much was ever real, how much just a function of time and place and wanting?
as i wrote this, leora came up with today's horoscope. mine reads:
Regarding the perfect relationship - there isn't one. There's a wonderful ideal in your head. But sometimes, you hold out for everything, you walk away with nothing. Today, find something to love about the one who loves you.
pretty damned pointed for a horoscope. it takes dischord in the reader's relationship as a given. maybe the dischord in my own heart.
what is it? what will it be? what if this is what i'm like this time next year, or five, ten, twenty years from now?
chasing ghosts, chasing ideas. less and less able to distinguish what's real, where to draw the line between belief and knowledge, between want and have.
i keep fearing, keep writing about the fear, that this is getting old. i fear it growing weary not just for the reader, but for myself. this has been the tale of much of my life, but it's grown, acquired momentum with the added force of experience and knowledge and thought. it is more and more becoming the reality i see and have to work through. i fear i hurt people in the process. and i, too, hurt in the process.
so, there is this, and this will either be the chronicle of resolution, or of dissolution. i'm trying to be open-minded, trying to write my own ending, but on nights like these, i just don't know.
and still, she won't turn around.
Posted by Rob at July 13, 2005 07:00 PM