confidence, day 2

Posted on September 23, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

day 2 of my feigning confidence experiment. it’s off to a rough start so far. we all were sitting across from each other in this conference room. at the conference table. i guess it was my turn to speak, but i asked the people around me if they could wait another week until i had more confidence in what i was going to say to them. i mean, i knew what i wanted to say, but i just could not at all sense if now was a good time to say it. if they could only give me one more week.

And the people just stared back at me, not blankly at all, i just could not read their expressions. i thought, well they’re not asking me to leave. but that doesn’t necessarily suggest that they want me to stay. and how can a person tell the difference? i knew then that i had entered an unconfident moment.

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this thing between us

Posted on September 23, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

dear imaginary reader,

i’m not quite sure how to express this, but lately I’ve been feeling this growing sense of schism between us. like lately it just feels like everything’s out of sync. i’m not saying that this is either of our faults… well, “fault” is really not the right word. i’m trying to think of what is the right word to describe this. i’m not sure why i even mentioned it.

and i’m not quite sure why we are not communicating as well as we did those first weeks after we met, which were kind of magical to me. maybe i should not be trying to recapture that. maybe it’s unfair for me to compare last week with this week.  maybe i am trying too hard and maybe that is the problem. maybe there really isn’t any problem. and maybe that explains why there really is a problem.

these are just things i notice when i don’t hear from you. but i know it doesn’t mean you are not thinking of me. it would be patronizing for me to conjecture anything you might be thinking about. i hate to think you would think i am patronizing. that would be the worst, would it not?

and now i’ve just lost my place and forgotten what i was thinking about. maybe that explains the problem i’ve noticed. like there’s some kind of wall, but it’s not like a wall as you and i would think of a wall. this wall has no walls. i’m not really sure what it is, but i’ve noticed this more so of late.

it’s not like you are on 1 side of the wall and i am on the other. because this wall has no sides and even if it did, i don’t think we could possibly be opposite it, whatever it is.  it’s not like that could never happen. but something tells me it won’t. but that doesn’t mean it will or won’t. and it still doesn’t mean there is no wall.

and i’m not saying a wall is necessarily a bad thing. a wall can be a good thing, depending upon who is fortifying it.

actually the more i think about this thing between us, the more convinced i become that there is very little between us. it’s almost imperceptible. it would be disingenuous for me to assume what there is and what there isn’t. but i just wish you were here so we could figure this out together.

i feel awkward in ending this post in this way. it feels unnatural. almost preternatural. but i’m feeling like i am taking up way too much of your time and i don’t want to leave feeling that way. but I don’t want to stay and take up more of your time. but it’s so very hard to leave. at least, for me. i don’t know how it is for you.  but it is for me.

gosh, it’s even later than i thought. now i really am keeping you up too late with my chatter. But i’m sooo glad we’ve had this conversation. i think everything is going to be ok.

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Transfigured

Posted on September 22, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

i’ve been thinking a lot about transfiguration today. After reading the Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan and how he was transfigured from another Bob Zimmerman who died in a motorcycle crash a few years before Dylan’s crash and they just happened to share the same name.

Then tonight I saw the amazing incredible Vertigo at the Film Center which had a similar story line as Dylan’s transfiguration account. A living soul possessed/haunted by a deceased soul. And I wondered if Dylan was just being a trickster with the interviewer and simply revamping the plot of Vertigo. But you can still believe in it. I do.

After the movie, I waited in the rain for the 147 bus. People have such huge umbrellas these days. Have you noticed? I wonder why that is. And then for the 2nd time in a row, while standing up to begin my descent off the bus as it was braking to a halt, I lost my balance and almost fell into this poor woman’s lap. This happened the last time time I took the 147 bus home on a Friday night. I think there’s some connection there with Vertigo, transfiguration and the 147 bus I am determined to figure out.

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right on

Posted on September 21, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

friday is my only 9-5 day of the week (the plight of the underemployed)… but still there are certain rituals attached to it. Like when I arrive, I always say to the very nice woman who always sits at the front desk, “hi, how are you doing?” And she always answers, “great! how are you?” And I always respond, “pretty good.” And she then she always responds “Right on!” But in a muted tone.

I wonder if she realizes how much i take that “right on!” to heart. It’s always my mantra to get me through the day. Some day I will have to think of a way to thank her.

Along the bus ride to work, there was a line of people outside the Apple Store, winding around the building. I could not tell how long this line was… it must have stretched for miles. Lots of trucks from TV stations. I guess the new iPhone is out. It amazes me that so many people can afford anything..

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help wanted

Posted on September 21, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

take haste in your writing tonight, Lost Pedestrian, take haste for the moment of curfew is at hand!

said the voice

Today confronted with my perennial issue. the sense of always feeling like an intruder, that hounds  me everyday. constant hounding. I can think of a few people who might be able to help in different ways, but it’s so very very hard to ask for help. I run into walls with it.

And then, when the opportunity for getting someone’s help passes, that very thin window….  I wonder what would have happened if I had communicated with the person. And what if they were able and willing to give me the help I needed?. Maybe if I was not persistently reluctant to ask for help, it would open up the way for things to move in the direction I seek.

I just always assume that people might think I am trying to “use” them in some way. Or that their lives are too packed and it would be inconsiderate of me to barge in on them at any particular time.

And then if I ask for help, I am greatly embarrassed. It’s just this awful habit, isn’t it?

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fight or flight

Posted on September 20, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

a day unremarkable enough to write nothing about, but i don’t want to fall into the bad habit of not writing at all. but really, if you happen to be reading this, i would be grateful to you for setting your eyes elsewhere. imagined reader. there are far more enchanting places to go.

i can say i am grateful for being spared the indignities i had considered as possibilities that might arise today,  and how i would respond to such slights and indignities. if there might be another option besides flight because i cannot fathom a fight. but flight… now that is something I can strive toward.

i guess I am a pacifist, but the above paragraph was not any expression of any pacifist ideal… unless self-preservation is a pacifist ideal. i just cannot find fight in my nature. but i like to think I am capable of it, when necessary, at least to protect beings i care about from harm. but fight, as a way for me to get somewhere, to get some thing (like attention or approval)… well, it hasn’t worked out so far. it’s not in my repertoire.

i guess i have fought for my survival, I’ve been told, although I have yet to realize it. i have looked at this from a reverse angle. I have fought against my demise. and when I think in those terms, it’s a daily battle. but a very mundane one. there’s nothing extraordinary about it and there’s nothing disgraceful about it. i am here and i am glad of it.

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inalienable right

Posted on September 19, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

I wonder if I’ve mentioned to you that my MacBook Pro weighs like 60 pounds. So I don’t really  take much pleasure in carrying it around, but I live such a vagabond life that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me not to carry it around in spite of all of the objections of my arms and shoulders. Tonight, I was working on a cover letter at a cafe table at this extravagantly immense Whole Foods and after guzzling down a bottle of kombucha … well let’s just say I decided to place my faith in the world and very purposefully left the laptop on the table while I excused myself to “the facility.” And when I returned, I was gently admonished by a Whole Foods employee for leaving a laptop unaccompanied, especially because there are no cameras around to document any thefts that might occur. At first I was a bit miffed because, after all, it is entirely my right to leave things out in the open at risk of theft if I want to. An inalienable right. And maybe I really did want to explore how far my faith/trust could take me. And here he was, almost patronizing me.

But then it hit me that he was not speaking as an employee, but as a concerned human in a community. And I expressed my appreciation. And I meant it.

But I’m not quite so sure about the absence of cameras. My friend L once told me about the time she was passing by the nuts section, and she could not help but grab a few stray cashews that had escaped the bin. Almost immediately, some sort of robot appeared to scold and intimidate her. I have never seen any robots at Whole Foods, but L is the last person I would ever doubt. If you knew her, you would agree.

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(not) good at things

Posted on September 18, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

I’ve been searching astrological sites on the Web to see if Mercury is in retrograde because everything has felt a bit off for the past 2 days, technologically, logistically, communicationally, socially, workfully. and then finally, almost at the day’s end, I have come to realize that it’s not the stars or the planets who are at fault. It is I who faces the realization that I just have not been very good at things these past 2 days. things i try to do, i’m just not very good at them. maybe this is a good thing to realize at this late hour because it isn’t quite tomorrow yet and there’s is still time for me to be better tomorrow. There’s still time and hope for me to improve, isn’t there? If anyone out there can offer me any encouragement, my eyes, ears and mind and heart are entirely open. thank you for your time

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everything

Posted on September 17, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

have you ever run into situations where friends, people you have known for years, make assumptions about you that you know are not true, but which bother you anyway, and then you start to believe they are true and so you become those assumptions?? it’s very disconcerting. it takes you to a place of such shame, a place where you have strove to move as far away from as possible. and then these assumptions take you right back there again.

and that’s when you might start to imagine living in a strange city like a complete unknown. a place that is assumption-free. or a place with so many twists and turns, all you have to do is turn yourself around to be in an entirely new city, with an entirely new fresh start. that is part of the allure of new york as a place of endless possibility, a place where I feel great affinity and community that is also a place where I can be completely lost. at the same time.

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tonight’s word is

Posted on September 16, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

subcutaneous.

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tell me how

Posted on September 15, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

tell me how to defy gravity and I’ll do it. I swear. And I’ll do anything after that. I promise.

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an awkward moment

Posted on September 15, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

What is the difference between a body and a ghost? I could not tell which one you were. The streets, the galleries, the bookstores, the pizzerias, the train platforms, the office hallways, the lobbies, the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the elevators, you trod upon. That wasn’t really you, was it? I could have sworn it was you, but it turned out to be someone vaguely similar who answered to your name when I called. We exchanged glances, each of us imagining the other person was someone else, vaguely similar. Until we arrived at a mutual recognition that the similarities were tenuous and coincidental.

What an awkward moment that turned out to be.

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help wanted

Posted on September 14, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

such a dreariness, a weariness, a bitterness, and yes, a bile, consumes me at work. How I wish I had thicker skin to shield me from the insults and indignities and other gestures of utter disrespect becoming increasingly manifest at my job. I never ever could have imagined that my longest stint of employment would be in the most toxic of environments for me.

And this toxicity is is blurring my vision, focus and drive to be cleansed of it.

It feels as if I am being tested in some way. There must be some simple steps I can take to maintain my integrity, to liberate me from further denigration… to find some positive feedback from the world, to thaw out my frozen heart, even gradually.

But again, I question if I am the one who is putting out something into the world that fortifies this sense of stuckness. It’s not Them, it’s me.

The Oracle had warned me about this trap of feeling as if I am constantly put on trial… that I am failing to live up to some test. Yet I experience too much self-reproach to have room for self-pity, thank god.

But tonight I hit a bit of a wall.

I am flummoxed.

When I arise tomorrow, I will strive for the courage I need to truly be authentic and present… but here is one instance when I realize that I might have to ask for help. But from whom and in what form?

This is the part where I turn off the computer and yield to the currents of my dreams. which hopefully make more sense than my awake time… hoping that I will be visited by signs. maybe possibly sign after sign, like that Cyndi Lauper song.

Actually, rather than wait for the signs, I am guessing that I must the one who must create them, and maybe that’s where I need your help.

So please, pledge now!

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the consortium

Posted on September 13, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

an oscillating consortium of bitterness and exuberance,

resentment and humility,

fears of hopes gone asunder,

an anxious plea to the fire gods to extinguish such fears,

a new dent on an old car,

a joy in exertion,

a numbness that fatigues,

a suffocated brain cleansed by an open heart

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The squall has ceased to be the cause of my complaint.

Posted on September 12, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

There’s something about the way the city is slanted tonight that throws me askew, even while seated. I first noticed this while riding the train. Every bump and turn, acceleration and deceleration, vibration and stillness… my body just didn’t react in harmony with any of this. Even in my apartment, tripping over the carpet, stumbling as I dropped the keys. Something feels amiss, out of phase. The Midwest appears to be veering slightly to the right.

Writing the paragraph above seems to be the only thing I’ve done that I actually intended to do all day. A whole night looking for a place to work and write, only to return to the place I had been avoiding most of all. I may as well as spent the day looking for a parking space.  It must have to do with that slant I mentioned.

I’m utterly captivated by the beautiful, beautiful writing of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in his aviation memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars. I’ve come to revere him… .

“Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations. Our sordid interests imprison us within their walls. Only a comrade can grasp us by the hand and haul us free.”

“Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by the great problems, having trouble enough to forget your fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty  bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

The squall has ceased to be the cause of my complaint.

The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen, I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.”

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