The Lost Pedestrian

besieged by headaches (probably titanium-induced) most of the day, except during my haircut. It’s been a real struggle to get through them. but here i am. anyway. it doesn’t feel like i’ve done very much. but i think i might be on the verge of finishing the video, finally accepting that my voice-over will never be what i want it to be, but it is the best i can do. i guess you could say that i am learning to embrace my imperfections. but there are just so many, i can’t embrace them all.

whenever i ride the train this week, i fall heavily into this book that, for whatever reason totally engrosses me. or engulfs me. i become oblivious to everything and everyone else around me. i forget about what came before and what came after or what comes next.

how strange it is to become so completely engrossed immediately upon leaving the soul-sapping workplace. something vaguely similar to my 3 years as a pothead in college. i hated school so much, and felt so humiliated because my earliest art projects were ridiculed by teachers and students. i guess i was as much of an outsider in college as i am  in my current work situation. they are very similar in a lot of ways. frat boys who want to make it in Hollywood. i just wanted to be like Antonioni.

i never really enjoyed marijuana as a party stimulant. it was never an escape, never an exit. it was always an entrance. suddenly, out of nowhere,  abruptly, i could find a voice. and courage to use it. and i draw upon that still, although i rarely feel courage.

but pot smoking takes a lot of practice. otherwise it totally obliterates you. which i guess is the big draw for some people.

how did i even get onto this subject? oh, because i am trying to find new ways to find an immediate uplift and it has to be immediate because i am rarely in one place at one time for very long and i never seem to have time for anything. certainly not enough time to develop into a competent pothead again. but i do have some time to read memoirs of French existentialists on the subway.

this really is not turning out to be a very good post at all. but I will save it anyway. sorry!

in a future life, i hope to not be living in a past life. unless it’s a good one that i somehow missed because i was not paying nearly enough attention.

my feet have this habit of falling asleep on aeroplanes. they are the only parts of me that do not suffer from chronic insomnia. they are not sleep-deprived in any sense of the word. they take pride in their somnolence. they drift off, apart from me. even when i am sleepwalking, they will not follow me.

when my feet fall asleep, i wonder what they are dreaming about. maybe they are dreaming about angels because they have heard it said that angels have no feet. but angels have wings, like aeroplanes.

nothing happened. nothing happened at all. i’m trying to recall the last moment when something happened, but i think i have to rewind to 24 hours ago when i sat next to you at a theater for the first time in over a year.

but last night was a different performance from the 1 last year. and since then, we’ve barely exchanged more than a word or 2. although i think we both enter each other’s minds. i guess that is what brought us together again. i guess.

and then i think of everything that has happened since the last time we sat next to each other, and to be honest, i cannot think of a single thing. the more i reflect upon it, the more i am convinced that nothing has happened. which makes it easy for us to pick up right where we left off.

it’s funny though. your children said that they remembered meeting me. and neither of us could recall how that could have happened. it’s not even possible. although i know that i met your children in  a dream. or maybe it was on Facebook. who can tell anymore?

I’ve been searching for you. But you are not easily found. I thought I heard you here, I imagined your voice pinging out to me. The words were too distant but I could tell from the texture, the timbre, this was not a call of distress. It felt like the complete opposite. Euphoria, might be one word to describe your call.

Somewhere you were out there. I may have been looking in the wrong places. This often happens. And then I’m the one who gets distressed.

And then I have to stop and take a break, take a breath, and then I start my search all over again. But I know you’re there. I can feel you all around me. I think you are amused, but not mocking or judging. I can feel that.

It’s true. Even though I may not show it. I miss you. A lot. I can’t think of other words to say it. Those are the best ones I have right now. I hope they will suffice.

A breeze passed through me. And within it, a feint droning sound with slow pitch bends, rising and falling, under a voice that said, “What’s there to miss? I’m right here with you. Just chill. OK? Do you think you can do that? Can you just do that for me? If I have one thing to ask of you, that would be it.”

*The title for this post was my iPhone’s translation of my voice speaking the words: why are relationships all about power?

why is power all about relationships?

i asked you first.

but i asked you second.

but i don’t really think relationships are all about power. i just think they’re kind of bi-polar.

i do not think they are bi-polar. i just think they’re kind of elusive.

you mean, like one minute they’re here. the next minute they’re not.

whoosh. they’re gone.

where did they go?

I have no idea.

but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

not unless you think it is.

why do we feel compelled to act like stereotypes of ourselves?

do you mean why do we feel compelled to act like caricatures of ourselves?

That can’t be right.

No, it’s not right at all.

I’m sorry. I  didn’t mean it the way it sounded.

You didn’t mean what?

The question.

I’m not sure I understand. Which question?

Of course, I understand if you can’t answer that right now.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

i am finding that the best way to get through stressful situations is to just say thank you to everybody you encounter. even if there is no real context.

take today, for example, the only 2 words I have uttered so far are thank, you and sometimes just thanks. But I’ve said it to like 50 or so people, so I don’t feel as if I am short of words.

thank you makes me feel more present in the world. Whereas the other words I sometimes utter automatically, I’m sorry, are a kind of a veil.

this is just a secret between you and me. so please don’t tell anyone.

i’ve been offered a job in another part of the country and i’ve been either wrestling with the decision, or trying to distract myself from the decision as much as possible this weekend. i seem to like distraction a lot better.

i think the positives about the job are very abstract. there’s not very much i like about it, except that it would be some kind of change. and change is what i have yearned for. if you happen to have followed my blog, this may be old news by now. it’s old news for me.

but i somehow can’t make the move, and i can’t tell if it’s because of not knowing anybody in the area and having to start anew in finding a support base of people, and who knows how long could take… and then the red flags about the job:

I would be supervising 3 people. One of those 3 has held that very same position in an interim capacity and had applied for it when it became permanent. So that would be 1 person. The other 2 people have had issues with my potential supervisor, although he would not go into specifics about what those issues were. Since I had nothing to lose, I asked him how they might feel about someone else who was not already their colleague being hired, and I was told there was no way of predicting. there might be some resistance. they might feel loyalty to their colleague.

this is the first i’ve written about it, and as I type these words, it occurs to me, “so why would anybody in their right mind want to enter that situation?”

but that is countered with another voice that is telling me that although I yearn for change, I cower in the face of change. that i am just using these perceived red flags as excuses.  And that if I pass up on this opportunity and decide to stay put for now, that this would signify failure and defeat and resignation … and i’ll never be able to change anything ever.

that is the crux of it. my instincts are to say “no,” but maybe those are just fears and not really instincts. in which case, i have no clue as to what my instincts are telling me.

hopefully, now that i’ve attempted to at least say something about this situation, that will be all i need to get over the hump and start writing again about things that really matter.