dragon sits at computer with very poor posture

Posted on March 23, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i decided to stay in tonight in the hope that a rare night at home would inspire a creative spark or too. that was 3.5 hours ago, 3.4 of which were spent lurking on Facebook browsing other people’s FB presences. All my stamina would allow me to do was lurk. i’m still in shock to have learned of my friend Wendy’s death via Facebook earlier this week. i feel like i should post something to honor her in the ways that her many friends have done. I am truly moved to read their expressions of love, loss, gratitude, their stories, their images, their memories.  but i can’t come up with the right words. all i can do is “like” and lurk, and do what i can in organizing her memorial. otherwise, i can’t seem to merge grieving with social networking.

i also had planned to find a Quigong class in Chicago, or least begin looking for one. a close advisor suggested i practice a pose called “dragon stands between heaven and earth,” which I’ve now done for 4 nights in a row, each night increasing the time a bit longer. But it’s interesting and strange that the longer I hold the pose, the shorter the time feels. which is not a very good excuse for not even making an effort to find a class.

how can i be worthy of being a dragon if i sit around at my computer waiting all night for a dragon to find me?

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untitled

Posted on March 21, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i can’t tell if it’s healthy or not that all of the clocks in my one-bedroom apartment are set to a different time zone. i know this makes it harder to be in the present. But the non-linearity of it all is good for my training. it keeps me sharp. it keeps me from worrying that i am not sharp.

and with time moving neither forward nor backward, it creates this aura of stillness. a stillness I could hang my hat upon, if only i wore a hat.

i have a lot invested in this stillness. actually, without the stillness, who knows where i’d be? maybe at long last, i could set myself free. free from this habit i’ve fallen into of being older than everyone around me, everywhere i go.

in between completing that last sentence and now, i just discovered  that a dear dear friend has suddenly passed away. i’m utterly deflated and i can’t deal with the process of these shockwaves setting in. but maybe this is why clinging to stillness is part of my fabric. it’s what i count on to survive.

for Wendy H.

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Support staff

Posted on March 20, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

she scares me. i’m utterly petrified by this woman at work who i am supposed to be supervising. which means i am her supervisor and i am completely terrified of her.  it’s not funny at all.

i may have written about her in another post, so i hope you’ll forgive any repetition.

or maybe i started to write a draft of a post about her that i never bothered to finish because i was terrified that she might find it somewhere, discover who wrote it,  and who knows what would happen after that? at least i have had the good sense to not reveal her name, other than to mention  that she shares it with a month that falls on April Fool’s Day.

it would be bad enough if we shared an office, but since neither of us has an office, we share a desk with less than one yard’s distance between our ergonomic chairs. she likes to look over my shoulder, at my computer, and make suggestions. she likes to instruct me on things that i already know and i must pretend to be receptive–and of course thank her profusely for guiding me to the correct information i would never have figured out in her absence. And in between, I freeze up, I clam up, dreading my next correction.

she likes to tell me how freezing it is in the room where the air always feels so stifling and suffocating to me. she turns the thermostat all the way up. i wait for her to leave the room so I can turn the thermostat back down… but then i’ll hear her returning footsteps and i run back to the thermostat to turn it back all of the way up.  Then I’ll say, “You’re right, it is really really cold in here. God, I wish they would do something about it,” in the hope that if I agree with her about the room temperature, she will be nicer to me, less ominous and foreboding.

i expend most of my workday energy trying to come up with new ways to corner her into being nicer to me, to leave her no choice. it’s pretty clear that being accommodating just isn’t good enough. Being worshipful is the next logical option, but it might be a bit too much. it might show my hand, so to speak.

Show my hand? Where did I get that from? The only card game I’ve ever played is Old Maid.

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my prediction

Posted on March 19, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i’m frozen. now that i’ve taken the perilous risk in telling 10 or 12 friends about my blog, i’ve run out of things to write about. i think i’ve covered just about everything i can think of, within my very narrow range of thought and expression. maybe this means it’s time to abandon this blog and give birth to another blog, only this time really truly keeping it anonymous. not pretend anonymous.

a former therapist might call this reverse narcissism. i don’t know if i agree about the reverse part. maybe the whole purpose of an online presence can be embodied in 4 one-syllable words.

  1. please
  2. look
  3. at
  4. me

i don’t know if anyone really wants to hear about the nightmare that startled me into awakeness this morning. it was dark. my dog and i were walking in a park. out of nowhere, out of the shadowy thicket, a wolf/dog monster jumped out at us. Before i had the chance to react, the monster had bitten my dog, lethally. i looked into my dog’s sad sad sad eyes, at his lifeless body, and my entire world collapsed. it was the worst possible feeling. it’s hard to even write about it.

and then to wake up, feeling destroyed… what else can one do but roam to the kitchen, eat a bowl of oatmeal with protein powder and a banana, and then drive to the gym to ride on an elliptical cross trainer for 45 minutes?

but there’s really nothing to be upset about. i know my dog will return before the end of the week, just like he always does.

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Titanium and MSG

Posted on March 18, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

another migraine-ish night, the 2nd one this week. i think these are more like titanium headaches than classic migraines. this may not make sense to those people out there whose cervical vertebrae are not fused together by titanium. i hope this will never make sense to them. Metallic headaches have a different kind of resonance.

this may also have been brought on by a rare argument with my mother while eating Chinese take-out leftovers. She was very very very upset that her 21 and 22 year old grand-daughters are not married, do not have children, and have not yet figured what they will be doing the rest of their lives. i was really surprised to hear this because the one member of my family who vaguely followed this course eventually attempted suicide. And that led to a seismic shift in my parents perspectives on and expectations for their children from that point on and ever since. They became more gentle and open and accepting.

I tried my best to defend my nieces as best as I could. I said, Mom, they are seedlings. It’s ok for them to still be exploring the world and not have everything figured out just yet.  My mother said that by the time she had reached 21, she was working and supporting my father get through medical school. It’s true, she did.

But it was so odd to hear my mother express her disappointment in my nieces. it may have been the sciatica talking. And the MSG  in the mongolian beef probably did not help matters any.

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shrimp role

Posted on March 17, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i spent most of today trying to figure out where to put things, only to realize i had no idea where anything went. a mountain of paperwork. i tried to arrange it into little categorical piles, but soon there were so many categories and then so many distractions from categorizing… all of this with the goal of finding a lost $50 check that i may not have even received. finally, after 16 hours of categorizing and re-categorizing, i gathered all of the papers into the very same mountain from which i began.

and i thought, this is no way to live. then i went out to eat shrimp rolls and tilapia in ginger sauce at a thai restaurant.

and i returned to the paperwork, this time finding the file folder i created maybe 15 years ago for astrological charts. i was really thrilled to discover that i had the foresight to create such a file, but somehow it disappeared again, deep within the pile, along with the latest astro-cartography maps from December.

my astro-cartographer told me that great things would happen in about 4 months if i stayed in the same city and did not relocate to the west coast. i think i only have 1 month left to wait. but i am not sure what i am waiting for.

 

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on (un)boldness

Posted on March 17, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

it’s clearly time to make a bold move, but there are so many of them to make–and how does one choose one from the other? not choosing is the unboldest move one can make. there’s nothing more unbold than that (from what they tell me).

does a sigh count as a bold move? does gazing away from the screen towards the window constitute any form of boldness? when i consider not sighing, I then ask myself, hey, what’s the big risk? just do it. come on! what’s holding you back?

does climbing out of bed count as a bold move?

but what if you’re afraid of the dark, and you still go to bed each night, alone, might you consider that move as bold? that cold slab of a mattress can be quite intimidating.

there are so many people doing such immeasurably bold moves without a moment’s hesitation. they’re everywhere. i think one of them just drove by my window. and there’s another getting off the bus.

so it’s not as if there’s any shortage of potentially good teachers of boldness. they’re out there if you look for them.

but somewhere along the line, you’ll have to make a choice of one of them to be your teacher. And that’s the choice I have so far lacked boldness to make. And the clock is ticking…

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This magic moment

Posted on March 16, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

I pretended to be a nice person today and almost convinced myself. Now if I could only find a way to make that real, who knows what that might lead to? Maybe somewhere beyond this Starbucks where I sit clumsily typing on my iPhone waiting for a ride. “This Magic Moment” playing on their sound system.

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thank you

Posted on March 13, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank the woman and her child who smiled at me at the airport, when there were so many who, for whatever reasons, could not. I’d like to honor their contributions to my spirit and for my waking me out of my worker/commuter stupor.

it is for them that i write this post. it is their memory that has inspired me to write these words, when there were far too many other words i did not have the wherewithal or even the ethos to write.  out of the few words that i do happen to know, i have selected some of the highlights and arranged them for you.

but please, do not feel obliged to thank me. the only thanks I ask is to one day offer the same to you as you offered to me. I don’t know when that day will be, but hopefully some time before Columbus Day. I’ve already added it to my calendar. I hope you can wait that long.

I know there is one other person I be remiss in not thanking. And that would the one follower of my blog who is an actual blogger, and not a robot or an online retail store in need of traffic. For you, dear blogger/reader, you have made my stay here more meaningful in ways I could not imagine.

 

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a peculiar habit

Posted on March 11, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i am prone to flights of delirium that quickly collapse into waves of panic. it’s a nasty habit i must learn how to break. for well over a week, my job has utterly oppressed and depleted me. in a moment of panic, i was convinced it was stealing my soul. so i turned to a place i had rejected over 3 months ago. And I begged. and I pleaded. Take me back, take me back.

I spent over 3 hours crafting an email, pleading my case to be taken back. I really mean it this time, I wrote. And I proofread it, read it over and over again. And finally sent it out. And that felt good for about 90 minutes.

And then another wave hit me shortly after my plea. what if they agreed to take me back, would i really want to go there? what was i thinking? what had possessed me? my god, what have i done? I asked.

but it was too late to intercept the email.

i guess i don’t know how to live without chaos. i should have learned by now.

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Posted on March 10, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

jokeno's avatarI'd Rather Be Painting.

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apologia

Posted on March 9, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

forgive me for not saying very much today. i’ve been very migraine-y, brought by another day of ignominy in the workplace. if i write about it, it becomes more tangible. and tangibility is the last thing i want to happen.

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an abrupt stop

Posted on March 6, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i notice this particular pattern amongst people who tend to ride on subways. they all seem mildly irritated with me when the train comes to abrupt stops, and I lose my balance, and I topple over, upon them. some of them even seem angry, no matter how many “i’m sorry’s” i enunciate.

today, one person told me… you, kind sir, can never be sorry enough. and I replied…  you know, i always hate it when people call me “sir.” it makes me feel less child-like.

it was very fortunate that I had reached my subway stop because i had this sinking feeling that i was about to topple over again.

 

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my name

Posted on March 5, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

a peculiar moment. at work. somebody asked me my name. it was so shocking to be asked that I found myself at a complete loss for words, and I did not know quite how to answer. i said, do you mind if I sleep on that tonight?

the other person said,
Of course. Why would I mind?

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a transitional moment

Posted on March 4, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

it’s hard to tell what any of this means. talking into some wires molded into a plastic case to a virtual stranger in another continent. night after night we talk. it’s especially hard to figure out any meaning since I find talking on the phone rather stifling. yet we talk and talk and talk. we each take turns, sometimes each turn lasting over an hour. actually my turn is more like 15 minutes, but it feels like an hour.

tonight we were talking and i could almost sense these massive waves of emotion pouring out from you, and i thought, this should be a key transitional moment in our relationship, but there’s this blockage and i don’t know what it is. what is wrong with me? i should be feeling things more. why am i not feeling things more? why am i not feeling more things?

has my emotional landscape become such a frozen tundra? am i dried up inside?  i wanted to feel things at that transitional moment, but they were so difficult to conjure. even that word, conjure, reveals how unnatural it was to try to feel feelings i could not feel (nor conjure).

and then it occurred to me, maybe Marshall McLuhan encapsulated the predicament… that the medium is the message. it’s all about the medium.

so there really isn’t anything at all wrong with me. i just have a really shitty phone.

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