unattached

Posted on March 2, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

A perfect Chicago night, weather-wise. The frozen wind crashing into my face, free of judgment, free of violence and harm.  it made me feel alive and happy and free and un-alone for the first time since i saw you last, 3 years ago on the S train.

i wanted to embrace the wind as closely as one can embrace without suffocating it. i wanted to let it know it was welcome here in my heart. i wanted this night to stay there forever.

but the frozen wind has no conception of attachment, the way some people do. by “some people,” i am, of course, referring to me. it is I who is the attaching one here… the one who longs for frozen time, who insists upon it, undeterred.

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in the thick of it

Posted on March 1, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

just when i think it couldn’t go any higher, i am reaching new highs of alienation at work. there’s so much aggressive male energy, so much of it, it’s this foreign land i do not know how to navigate. it’s the kind of environment that i’ve spent my entire life — each and every waking hour — doing my best to avoid. and now here i am. in the thick of it.

if there were 1 friendly face, 1 encouraging voice, 1 hint of acknowledgement, maybe everything would not feel so oppressive. maybe i could find a place to breathe a sigh of relief.

but all of these men, these un-artful men … like a fraternity of undergraduate business students. they’re so loud, too. so unfunny and so loud. a lethal combination. and they talk down to me, too. i am glad i never worked as their house-keeper or janitor.

and my co-worker is just as masculine as the students. she cuts you off before you have chance to complete your sentences. she corrects you a lot. you ask her now she is doing and she tells you that you forgot one detail in a monotonous procedure. and when you ask her about her weekend, she tells you that there are 2 hockey games to watch on tv.

each day, i crawl deeper and deeper into myself. and when the workday is done, i have no idea who this person is that i’ve been carrying in my body. Who are you?

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The Journal of Falling Ice

Posted on February 28, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

as I sat on the train, commuting home from work, through a fake blizzard, i was overcome by motion sickness while reading an article from the peer-reviewed publication, The Journal of Falling Ice. I thought it might help if I stopped reading and fixed my gaze out the window. But it didn’t. The woman seated next to me seemed to be doing just fine, reading very intently without distraction.

i rather liked her.

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my 3 attributes

Posted on February 27, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

rehearsed with our loosely assembled band tonight. we tried out one of my songs-in-progress… which meant that I had to act as “director,” a role i only accept with great… with great… um… what’s the word? trepidation? humility? ambivalence? (i think i’ve just identified my 3 greatest attributes…. 3 is better than zero, they tell me).

still, i wish i didn’t have to go through these elaborate contortions in order work past my 3 greatest attributes, and somehow direct people. that’s the problem. if you come up with ideas for other people to execute… such as performers…. it falls upon the idea generator to generate a vision for the other performers to latch upon. directing is such an isolating endeavor. i don’t know why anyone would want to do it who is not a control freak.

maybe i’m just innately anti-authoritarian. maybe just antiquarian,  maybe i’m innately afraid to take charge. maybe i just want to be on equal footing with everyone else. i want them to like me. i want them to see me as more than a director, but as someone they could always count upon forever, no matter what.

but if I go with that approach, nothing ever gets generated or accomplished. so in a way, i am providing a focal point, even though my focal point is off somewhere when i need it most. fighting with a ghost. And that’s why no one can see it… the focal point, in absentia. But I assume they think i know it is there. I can’t stress enough how wrong they are.

if you, or an acquaintance should ever ask me what it is i like about directing, I might answer, i like the part where i step down and someone else takes over. or i like the part where i am directing but no one has arrived for rehearsal just yet. i like the part where I am late while searching for parking, holding up rehearsal. I like the part where once I arrive,  I apologize to everybody for taking so long to find parking.  And I like the part where they say: that’s really ok. We barely made it here ourselves.

But then i feel bad for putting them out of their way for me… and that’s when the trouble really begins.

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scary

Posted on February 25, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

an odd day of feeling nothing absolutely nothing at all. i wish that would scare me but today i am not capable of even feeling scared. Which makes this all the more scarier.

what if i am this way tomorrow? will i feel less than i’ve felt today? and the day after that… ?

then one day i might ask what it was like to feel, at one time? and then i would try to imagine what that felt like, back then.

but tonight, it’s a foreign concept. i don’t know why it is that way.

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unimpeded

Posted on February 24, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

why is there always this tiny part of you that is intent on sabotaging everything, now that you finally have things going for you,  such as a job? why does every corpuscle in your infrastructure cry out for you to just stop showing up and see if anyone notices. return to your stoner days and sit around all day with your bongo drum and a large bong  and the grateful dead blasting for days on end until one day somebody knocks on your door to inform you that you no longer have health insurance benefits. But even that does not impede you. Why is it that when you think about it, you have managed to hate just about every job where you are expected to do more than  sit around all day with your bongo drum and a large bong  and the grateful dead blasting for days on end until one day somebody knocks on your door to inform you that you no longer have health insurance benefits?

Yet you still insist upon standing your ground, unimpeded. And this might be the only time you have stuck up for yourself  or anybody in your entire life.

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gliding

Posted on February 23, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

gliding, simply gliding along the surface of things these days. i notice, especially at work, this gliding works best–but i still can’t get how other gliding people actually engage with each other. how do they do it?

it’s this non-verbalized consensual agreement between people to communicate on a certain level that seems so effortless for them but often unattainable to me. there are moments when my frenetic frantic attempts at gliding actually land where they are supposed to land, but those are accidents.

accidents that do not seem to be happening at monthly employee birthday parties or shared elevator rides or fleeting feint hellos in the hallways and lobbies. but accidents do happen as long as i am oblivious to making them happen. which i guess is how would describe my process of art-making. but there’s no gliding in art. art-making is an avoidance of gliding. i should do that more often.

i can write more on this another day. its rather late after this ridiculous post-movie dinner in which i ate steak and eggs for the first, and perhaps final time of my life.

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unliked

Posted on February 21, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

something is happening to my left shoulder.

i don’t mean to complain about it. but on an objective level, i can see it does not like to stretch back so I can push my left arm into the sleeve of my down parka.

it doesn’t like to steer my car, either hard right or hard left.

it doesn’t like when i try to raise it up.

it doesn’t like to push or hold doors open for me. it doesn’t like when i tell it, “it’s OK. don’t worry about me. i can handle this on my own.” it seems to resent that.

it especially does not like when i use it to lift my laptop bag, grocery bags, garbage bags (i am sure there are more bags i could add to this list).

it likes it best when i put things down.

it doesn’t like any of the stretches i am trying to loosen its grip.

it doesn’t like when i challenge it.

it doesn’t like when i succumb to it.

it doesn’t like when i question it.

it doesn’t like it when i worry about it.

in fact, it would prefer if i did not even acknowledge it.

i get the sense that my left shoulder does not like me very much at all.

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a predicament

Posted on February 21, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

is shyness a disorder, a characteristic, a trait, a color, or something other? is it good or bad to have it? and if one does have it, should one pretend it isn’t there? And what is the best way to pretend? is there a strategy? does it demand practice? and what if pretending comes across as pretending? then what does one do? pretend that one never pretended? does one acknowledge that s/he has pretended? would that not lead some one to retreat into shyness? would that not be a predicament?

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the plate

Posted on February 18, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

my fall from grace occurred gradually and by and large, without incident. i can’t point to one specific event.

Actually, now that I think about it, there may have been one incident. i think the year was 2000. i seem to remember breaking a kitchen plate with the remains of a candle stuck to it, slamming it against a tree and tossing the shards into the Mississippi River from a levee in New Orleans.

It was late at night, pitch black. there were ghostly chants of some kind in the distant woods… and drumming, too. i was overcome by panic and ran out of there as fast as my feet would carry me (not very fast).

When I returned to the kitchen, I tried to brush it off. It felt comforting, as if order was restored. A mere hour later, I was perplexed when i noticed that one plate was missing from the dish rack. I thought someone must have broken into my home.

And i never gave it another thought until now. I guess that’s why I don’t live there anymore.

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Russian tea room

Posted on February 17, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

maybe it’s not the wisest thing to do, drinking a decaff cappucino at an argo tea. i think that sends a bad message.

there were these 2 men there, russian mafia types, speaking russian, in russian accents. they made me kind of nervous. i left argo earlier than i had planned, even though it was never part of my plan because i had no plan. but they made me nervous, being all russian and all. actually, how would i even know where they were from? they may have been from the Ukraine. I will have to read up on this, but i hear that the Ukraine is not Russia. it makes me nervous just thinking about reading up on that. it’s been a nervous night.

anyway, what i meant to tell you was that just as I was exiting argo, one of the possible Russians called out to me, “hey, mister! your telephone!” he was waving my iphone at me. i have zero idea how it got into his hands.

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Friday

Posted on February 15, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

I feel old and unfathomable and somewhat bifurcated

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comparison shopping

Posted on February 14, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

somehow i gravitate between fears of the known and fears of the unknown. it’s hard to decide between them. especially when no one is around to give me clear guidance, maybe except for you. i try to imagine which way you would go and how you would get there. and then i’d wonder, why can’t it be as easy for me as it is for you? And then you might say, “stop comparing yourself to everybody. i hate when you do that.”

And then I’d say, “but I can’t help it. I wish i could, but I can’t.”

And then we’d each exhale.

Minutes would go by, until I finally ask “is it ok if we change the subject?”

And you might reply, “I can’t even remember what we were talking about.”

Neither could I.

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are they gone yet?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

Somebody yelled at me at work today.

well, not really yelled at me as much as condescended to me. and that feels a lot like yelling. And my usual response is to curl up into a fetal position until that person leaves.

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no parking intended

Posted on February 11, 2013 by The Lost Pedestrian

i can’t seem to find anywhere to park and i have been wandering for 3 days and 3 nights, with nary a parking space to be found. all of my hopes and dreams pent up in this elusive parking space just beyond my grasp. wandering in a vegetable non-sectarian stupor, completely unmotivated to do much more than obsess over my parking misfortunes, and continue to wander. to what end?

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