red leaves

Posted on October 11, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

i have put off writing, put it off beyond the nether reaches of the day. a day i will most remember for making a moment to speak to you, dear imaginary reader, and to express my gratitude in the hopes you will not judge me too harshly for my lack of substance. I remember a day where I was neither solid nor liquid nor gas. please do not judge me harshly.

And i will remember the souls along the highway, peering out through the windows of office parks… dreaming their dreams of 1001 nights at the Renaissance Hotel and its untold splendors. splendors i dare not traipse nor plunder, which is what I sometimes tend to do.

And I will remember my heart lifting me out of the abyss when I read your email. all of it. the whole thing. beauty is a rare thing, was my first thought. But that really was a thought implanted by another, and not one I can call my own.

that seems to be the limit of where my remembrances will take me today. Oh, yes, all of the red leaves blowing around me. thank you for them.

and my gratitude for banishing my real desires for carbs and potato chips.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Combatants

Posted on October 10, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

It’s too noisy in here. in this room. in this head. constant din and clatter.

seriously agitated all day, ever since last night when a friend gave me some advice that is the complete opposite of my instincts, that is the complete opposite of what some of my other friends would tell me… but deep down, deep, deep down,  i think my friend might be right. it’s not so easy to listen to what one doesn’t really want to hear, unless one really wants to hear it.

Vacillation is not anything I would wish unto any of my enemies, if I had any enemies to wish unto. Is it strange to have no personal enemies? Or enemy combatants?

it’s all so agitating. i have not been the funnest person to be around lately, as those who have been around me can attest. nor the best blogger.

I saw a sign in the window of a hair salon that read “keep the hair you no longer have.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Returned (Allen, pt. 1)

Posted on October 8, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

The other night at a bar, a friend asked me if I have spoken with Allen lately, it kind of took me off-guard. How could she know I was holding regular conversations with him, silent conversations while awake, verbal ones while asleep… whether he could hear them or not. But I never realized we might be overheard.

Actually, he happens to be here at this moment, looking over my shoulder… and I sometimes can’t stand when people look over my shoulder while I work. But for some reason, with Allen, I was the opposite of self-conscious.

But I haven’t seen him lately. I don’t want to get into a whole story… but his life was taken away from us when innocence and ceaseless, urgent curiosity led him into a cult, from which he never returned.

This was in the mid-1990s. He had wandered off, just as he always had.  I always knew he would return form Colorado, or Wyoming, or Oklahoma, or Mississippi or one of the Dakotas… I just knew for a fact he would return and still am convinced, and I have been convinced probably for 17 years now.

Ever since he sent me that postcard from Wyoming letting me know he had retired from life, and that he highly recommended it.

But I just assumed this was some sort of code I could not encrypt. Whether he wandered off to live among Pygmies in Africa or helping his dad out in Naperville, driving cross country, in this country or that, driving off in his cab, he would just up and go, and it might take months before anyone heard from him because he always always returned as mysteriously as when he left. It was the unspoken pact he made with those of us in his circle, whether we knew we were in his circle or not (it took me quite a while to realize I was in his circle).

In the corner of the postcard, he scrawled down his phone number. I read it as an invitation to contact him, and I tried to contact me him, but wasn’t that surprised to find it was not in service. That was the norm,  because who paid phone bills in those days?

I wish you could meet him… I have the feeling you’d hit it off quite well. Call it an instinct. I think you would enjoy each other. I think you might even enjoy his rooftop parties on the rooftop overlooking Maxwell Street where we danced on chairs, drank beer and barbequed things.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

brown noise karaoke night

Posted on October 6, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

what’s the word for that feeling you sometimes get…. as if you are a guest in someone else’s home who has overstayed her/his welcome? you know you’re not supposed to be there. you’re supposed to be elsewhere, but you need someone to help you read a map because you can’t figure it out how to get there on your own. but you can’t gather the wherewithal to ask anyone for help even though everyone around you must see you are crying out for it, mustn’t they?

all  that you know is that you know you must go where you are wanted, which is not necessarily where you are sent.

you came here for a reason…  but a reason you can’t seem to recall. it feels vaguely familiar.

as i write these words, i am serenaded by deep and lush brown noise and it transports me to a world where there are no men on the other side of the wall who are watching sports in a very vocal way. instead, i breathe the fragrance of brown noise all around me. with barely audible ripples of turbulence next door.

i let it wash over me. it’s my security blanket.

without the brown noise, i would be utterly terrified, petrified with terror.

with the brown noise, i am fearless. there’s nothing i cannot do.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

the decider

Posted on October 5, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

Lately I am focusing a lot of energy on making decisions without actually having to make decisions. It’s not as if I want others to make decisions for me.

But if I can somehow sway them to make the decisions I would like them to make on my behalf without the tiniest amount of effort on my part, I think that might be rather nice and refreshing.

And maybe then I would not reproach myself with an internal voice that accuses me of being indecisive. I would defend myself to that voice, and perhaps say that I am highly decisive, but that most of my decisions are carried in the vessels of other people–and all I am doing is waiting for their delivery. And maybe clarify that by emphasizing that everyone’s decisions about anything are interconnected… and who am I to not acknowledge those interconnections?

But then that voice would criticize me for waiting, instead of acting. To which I would counter that it would be impolite for me to disrupt the passage of the vessel before its intended time of delivery.

And then both me and my voice would be at a loss for words. Which in itself is a kind of decision.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Eiffel Tower

Posted on October 3, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

I’m not sure how to engage in conversation with one of my co-workers. I must first say that not once in my 3 years of working there has anyone asked me anything about myself or anything about my non-work life (not a complaint, just an observation)…. so it’s always interesting or amusing or refreshing when someone opens up to me, as he did when he told me that he was going to the ZZ Top concert tonight, and he likes Rush and, I think, Journey, too. And he is speaking in the present tense because apparently they still exist and he is an avid follower, going to concerts whenever possible.

As he tells me these things, I just kind of smile and nod… sort of waiting for him to ask about my music tastes, to engage with me, but that doesn’t seem to happen. I want to tell him about all 10 of the Dylan concerts I’ve attended… or the Mekons in Seattle or the acidic Halloween night of the Grateful Dead at a hockey rink in Massachusetts, or the time I saw Patti Smith at the House of Blues in New Orleans and discovered that I was in spitting distance of the stage because I did not realize she is constantly spitting, or the  moment Cecil Taylor abruptly left the stage when a photographer took a flash photo in the midst of a harrowing solo at the Jazz Showcase. But I’m not sure what he would think of me. And then I wonder why nobody seems to know very much about me. Why must I always wait to be asked?   Anyway, this co-worker went to Paris last month and returned with gifts for us part-timers… a little trinket of the Eiffel Tower that I think is supposed to connect to a key chain. So I know he means well. I’m just not quite sure what to do with it, not being a trinket person.

I don’t really like the direction this blog is going. I’m finding that I am trying to find little significant incidents in my daily life and report on them… since most of the time, I live in the mundane. But it still comes across to me like someone trying to write in a clever way. I’m trying to speak from the heart, but maybe I can only speak with a voice or a leaky pen. It makes me sad that I cannot write this way. Or  that I can’t find the language or the courage to express the real things that are going on. There are so many things I could tell you but something is holding me back. I’ve got to figure this out.

This will not stop me from writing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

my winter heart

Posted on October 2, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

i can almost feel it. my winter heart slowly awakening. October is my Spring. i’ve never been able to figure out why i am this way.

the only person I know that seems to really “get it” is my chiropractor/acupuncturist, the most perky upbeat person i can imagine. she even has these really annoying plaques on her walls, with positive message slogans (Imagine prosperity. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.) And she beckons me to visualize these slogans while lying there on the acupuncture table.

But the last time i saw her, i was lying on my stomach while she  inserted dozens of needles down my spine, around my shoulders,  into my back. And while I was lying there, I was so   seized with this tightness around my left shoulder blade. It just kept getting tighter and tighter, like a cramp that was bearing down upon my chest that was about to cave in. I was getting short of breath until it reached a moment of crisis… when she returned to the room to remove the needles 20 minutes later, I instantly puked on the carpet

thus nullifying all of those slogans. my body could not handle them.

But somehow, we are soul-mates as pilgrims of winter

.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Captain Kangaroo

Posted on October 1, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

it’s that time of day where i search and search for something to say. and if i could say anything, would it be worth writing about?

i could write about the barista at the Starbucks on the way to work. He said, “How are you doing today?” I said, “not bad” (which was true), and then I asked him “How are YOU?” He sort of stood there, frozen, surprised, and then he said, “I can’t believe that. No one ever asks me that,” which I found difficult to believe (but I think it must have been true). And then he said “the coffee is on us.”

But, as it turns out, it didn’t work out entirely in my favor. There are certain days, such as today, when I am particularly overly sensitive to caffeine… and I struggled with this edgy unfocused energy most of the day… which only diminished once I surrendered to being unfocussed. I think the barista must have foreseen that this would happen. There is usually a reason when a barista willingly does not charge you coffee. You just have to look for the signs, which apparently I did not.

At work, there is often a man who comes to the library specifically to read the day’s newspapers which are held at the reference desk, and he likes to sit in the chair closest to the desk. He will grab the Tribune and take that to his chair. And then a few minutes later, the NY Times, and a few minutes later the Wall Street Journal. And each time he returns to the desk, he murmurs “thank you” with his eyes downcast. And each time I am always overwhelmed by his very strong cologne. He tends to dress like … I’m not sure how to describe it as a style. A navy blue blazer, white shirt with tie, white pants. On summer Sundays, white shorts and yellow golf shirt… a Panama hat. Like a 40-something year-old frat boy. And always that cologne.

On a day like today, when I am edgy, I have this uneasy feeling that there is something that he wants from me.  But he doesn’t really quite know how to ask. But if I engage with him, that may encourage him to ask what I may not want to hear. It’s peculiar. This sense of self-protection that makes me feel like a not very good person. I know he means no harm, especially on a day like today when he was actually dressed like Captain Kangaroo.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

avoid, resist, embrace

Posted on September 29, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

it turns out that avoiding and resisting may sometimes be advantageous in the sense of giving me more time to gather information about what i may be avoiding… after all, i’m an information gatherer…

whether my avoidance is really attuned with sharply-honed and astute instincts… or mere trappings of fear and delusion, I do not know.  how can I tell if I am avoiding or simply stalling for options that I would gladly embrace?

but i think when i avoid, it has a chain reaction, and I gradually find that any move I can make, this way or that, has some element of something to avoid. there’s always something to avoid, but it feels much harder than finding something to embrace. although tonight I seem to be embracing a bag of raw almonds a little too closely.

yet I am grateful to have more time for nothing happening at all, which makes me feel as if I am avoiding less, but not necessarily embracing more… except embracing hope that situations will arise around me where i can avoid avoidance and embrace embracing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Turbulent on the inside. …

Posted on September 28, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

Turbulent on the inside. Frosty on the outside.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

avoid, resist

Posted on September 28, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

so many things to avoid doing today. i didn’t have time to count or attend to them all. so many phone calls i didn’t return. so many decisions to avoid, resist.  i’m not sure what to do with them all. especially the little matter of leaving most of the people i know and love, to go off to a new city i do not love and where I know no one, for a job i am not interested in.  but they are expecting me to return their call. and i avoided it today. but i’m less certain about avoiding it tomorrow. clearly some action must be taken, and i’m afraid that it will be left to me to take that action. i wish i could will it away. at the same time as trying to think positive. just think positive. is that so hard? whatever happens, just be positive, OK?

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

disjunction

Posted on September 27, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

even a Lost Pedestrian has some sense of direction everyone once in a while. but sensing it and actually getting there… sometimes there’s a bewildering disjunction. It’s amazing how far I can lean forward in one direction, only it turns out to be in reverse and by the time I realize it, I am… bewildered.

i should probably offer more specifics, but i’m still trying to negotiate this intersection between public blog and private reflection. the voice is not yet authentic to me. and i have too much respect for you to pretend i am using that voice. i have too much respect for you to try to sound clever. i just don’t have it in me.

So i can only go as far as saying that i weary from all of this uncertainty in any direction I look. Which is an observation, not a complaint. If you looked into my eyes, you might see weariness. But then again, if you looked into my eyes, i might feel self-conscious and I’d have to figure out a new way to stop blinking. And how authentic would That be?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yom Kippur eve

Posted on September 26, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

So far, i have atoned very minimally, if at all. i woke up with a yearning to atone, but really, what constitutes atonement? forgiveness for my moments of selfishness that were really not about acquiring things, but more selfish, perhaps, in the sense of these pervasive struggles with self-doubt and self-reproach, those moments of congestion where I am not even aware of just how closed off I can be to the world and people and situations that are right there in front of me? And where I may be needed the most.

I miss out on a lot. And maybe if I made more regular appearances in the present, I would miss out on less, and then just imagine the possibilities if self-doubt could transform into greater compassion and courage. just imagine the possibilities. i really do think I can make this happen if I work on them more than once in a while. I think I can do that . just try harder.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

i saw a half-moon rising tonight …

Posted on September 25, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

and felt immediately responsible for the other half. its safety and whereabouts

and i will take this with me when i enter sleep in a few minutes

after a day on which i could never get a proper handle, on unsteady footing

such a day as that.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

i can’t stop eating fruit

Posted on September 24, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

but what I really want is a bag of potato chips. i’ve spent most of the day eating other things precisely to avoid eating potato chips. as I type these words, I am eating my 4th apple of the day.

i’ve had a couple of instances this weekend with people smiling at me as I walk by, and each time, it rather startled me… like some sort of otherworldly sensation. so immersed i am in my own ruminations, so deep within my cocoon, by the time the smiles register, those people have long since past. If I could devise some seamless way for me to catch up with them, apologize and explain:

I’m sorry I did not respond to your smile. When you walked by, I was busy calculating whether or not I could live in NYC on $19,000/year. Maybe if I shared a studio apartment with 16 people in the Bronx, and maybe if I could live on oatmeal and bananas and apples and an occasional bag of potato chips, I could make that work. But by the time I had finished that thought, you were already gone and now I want to make amends for not smiling back in time for you to notice. Would you be open to trying this again? Is there something I could do to make this worth your while?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment