weary

Posted on September 11, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

too weary to blog tonight. I’m fighting heartbreak from seeing a good friend whom I had not seen in nearly a year in such a fragile state… I can’t imagine anyone more vibrant and charismatic… but seeing him tonight, so fragile (a possible neurological disorder, hopefully treatable). it was heartbreaking. and B, his poor partner, who is giving her all … people can have such difficult lives. what can we do but stay connected and present for each other? but i wish that i could offer more.

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unalone wolf

Posted on September 10, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

I ended my nearly 48 hours of not speaking to anyone but cashiers and front desk clerks around 9pm this evening when my mother called. It was very very tempting to extend the duration, but how can you not answer the phone when your 83 year old mother calls and you have not seen her in 3 or 4 weeks? not even I could do that.

this was a day where I really did have so much to offer but pretty much kept it all inside. i will try not to judge myself too harshly. i will try not think of words like “selfish” or “wasteful.” As the Oracle told me, I may think that I am a lone wolf.. but she said I am very much a tribal being.

somewhere some time after art school, I decided to craft playing the lone wolf as a romanticized excuse for shyness and lack of confidence. I never imagined I would craft it so well that it entrapped me much of the time since. I never even considered that people might mistake your shyness for aloofness. Your silence for snobbery.*

but now I am determined to break through it, in spite of the weekend’s regression.

*Bob Dylan, The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar

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The air smells like barbecue dust

Posted on September 8, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian
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It doesn’t take much lack of imagination for me to be sitting outside at Starbucks somewhere in Lincoln Park. At this Starbucks, they’re serving wine and people are drinking. They’re playing “Rock and Roll High School” on the sound system, but is anyone listening? At least I am in the wireless outdoors.

Trying to find words to express my thoughts. Or maybe thoughts to express in words. But all I am really doing is gazing at the other consumers and pedestrians. And pigeons, too. We all sit under umbrellas. I guess ultimately, we’re all under the same umbrella (I guess I really did just say that).

It is 5:41 pm and I just realized that I have not spoken to anyone since 8:30 last night, (except for cashiers and receptionists… and the woman I just asked to watch my computer while I momentarily stepped away). And it doesn’t appear as if I will do any speaking at all tonight. I haven’t planned that far in advance.

I think of the options for tonight and how I might elude The Familiar… and I’m coming up empty and directionless. I know I have six minutes left before I must move my car. But who knows what’s supposed to happen after that?

Again, I’m in this state of waiting, instead of activating. But one thing I can say about myself right now, I’m not bad at typing.

Posted on September 8, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian | Leave a comment

cauliflowers for O

Posted on September 8, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

today was not a day but a blur. almost like a smudge mark on the windshield, but i could see around it here and there.

people walked passed and through it. i waved back. And there were flickers of recognition. Before they evaporated.

but dinner with O was far more voluminous. Even the Spanish wine, the cauliflower and chicken in some kind of yogurt sauce. O had stumbled into $9000 he had lost but regained and we celebrated as if he had won the lottery.

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exit poll

Posted on September 7, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

Redemption is real, but seems so far away. What can I do to get there? For decade upon decade upon decade, I have been figuring out ways to not blunder… completely delusional and profoundly limiting.

Shaking things up, subverting automatic impulses, catching myself from falling into obscene habit (meaning, it is habit itself that is obscene). The best habits are the ones that remind me of what not to fall into. Such as disillusionment.

I really can’t say what any of this means. Nor why this is first thing I end up writing about after Obama’s convention speech, which moved and excited me. I can’t say if there is any real connection. Perhaps it’s all about staying adamantly open to possibility. And the hope that one can find can a fractal of human sensitivity and empathy in those who so obsessively seek power. Could this person actually be my friend? Would this person want my friendship? All power aside, could this happen?

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confidence

Posted on September 5, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

today, i tried to exude a fake sense of confidence and almost got away with it. i don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. not having actual confidence, or getting away with faking, or not quite getting away with it. perhaps some day you can show me how to cultivate the real thing.

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the inert

Posted on September 4, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

today, an epic struggle against the forces of inertia. there are days when I awaken with this indeterminate weight of uncertainty. I eat my oatmeal with protein powder and my banana and swallow my supplements… and then … and then …  there’s all of this directionlessness to ward off, which I seem to manage to do, in spite of me being me.

i celebrated Labor Day by finally sorting through 2 mountains of paperwork stranded on my desk. bills, receipts, cryptic post-it notes, more bills, more receipts, pads of paper with notes written to various friends and waitstaff when I could not speak, stretching exercises, knee strengthening exercises, vocal exercises. copies of exercises, membership expiration notices, mysterious credit cards, reminder notes. vast vast clutter and the thought of how to sort through it… well, i spent nearly a year suppressing that thought. But today, I conquered.

I wanted to celebrate but no one was around to help me celebrate it… which I know must sound self-pathetic, but I say that as an objective fact, with no psyche repercussions whatsoever. It was just curious to me how so many people could not be around to celebrate my accomplishment. But I know they will be there eventually.

Early this a.m., another half-awake half-asleep dream about Bob Dylan. He shows up as a regular visitor to wherever I am living in my dream life. We get along quite well. I feel accepted by him. It’s uncanny.

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when in doubt …

Posted on September 3, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

… which I am at least 53% of the time, there’s always Mozart.

… and my friend Enilc. Have you ever had the experience of a new person, sort of a spiritual twin, entering your life precisely at the right moment… right when you need it most, even though you did not even realize how much you needed this person in your life? I would say that describes my experience with Enilc. There’s something about Enilc, or the times I spend with Enilc, that just transforms everything in the immediate and less immediate landscape. There’s this energy field, call it a vibrantly spectral affinity at work that I’m not quite sure I understand, or can make sense of, or describe. It sort of came from nowhere and now is everywhere. We’re from such vastly different worlds, time zones, generations, eras, cultures. Enilc may only be my delusion. But we are somehow aligned.

It’s kind of like Mozart, in a non-Mozartian way. It’s exciting to be on under the same sky as someone like Enilc. It makes me rather happy.

But I can’t quite sustain it. Today, for example, I expended far too much energy to uplift myself, or convince myself into a better mood. But everything sort of lagged. Things that did not faze/phase me yesterday hit hard and heavy today. Especially in the presence of family, which somehow always seems to leave things a bit tainted.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow a return to a more expansive view of the sky. Maybe tomorrow everything will fall into place. And I will have a clearer vision for whether I am moving forward, backward or sideways.

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I was in the best mood …

Posted on September 2, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

but then WordPress destroyed it. I had written one of the best blogs I’ve written to date, and somehow, while trying to publish it, WordPress sent it into oblivion, and I’ll never get it back. And now I’m upset and frustrated and disappointed.

Many years ago, I was at a Keith Jarrett concert and either somebody coughed or a cellphone rang, just as he was reaching one of his peaks. And he just stopped and froze onstage, right then and there. Then he walked away from the piano to the front of the stage to scold the audience (which I agreed with). He said something like “You know that G major chord I just played? That’s gone and I’ll never get there again.”

Perhaps it’s a sign that I am not meant to blog tonight… although I cannot stand when people use those same words to me… it was just not meant to be.

I hope I am not sounding vitriolic. Just a bit stumped.

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Against rejection

Posted on August 31, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

My question today is

what is the average rebound time needed to recover from rejection? 5 minutes? 5 days? 5 years? Why do all rejections feel somewhat like rejection? Why do they always carry the same weight? What constitutes them? Are they liquid? Solid? Gaseous? Why do they always have no color? And how much rejection can a corporeal body withstand before it crumbles into dust? Is that something that can be measured?

Do rejectors have any real sense of whom or what they are rejecting?

Is it possible for a rejector to give the one whom they have rejected just one more chance? Just one? I wonder what would happen to them if they just opened themselves up to that possibility, just a hair. I wonder if they have any sense of how much that would mean to someone who is rejected. It would mean everything.

But I guess these rejectors exist on a higher plane than those rejectors who flatly reject, not giving the rejected any chance at all, from the get-go. I think of these rejectors as less dimensional than the others, less nuanced.

Do rejectors feel that they truly know the essence of whom they are rejecting? And where does this knowledge come from? How have they reached this conclusion? Is it knowledge accumulated over the years? Are they channeling a higher power that I may never have the capacity to comprehend? I mean, if I were like ever… ever in a position of rejecting, it would take YEARS for me to reach the point where I felt that I had discovered a person’s essence… and it would be a miracle if I had made that discovery at all. And even then, I would have my doubts. How does a rejector reach this state of rejecting?

The thought occurs to me that one way to avoid being rejected is to stop trying to be accepted. But then I fear that if I made no efforts to be accepted, I would be rendered invisible, obsolete… and I guess this would probably not feel that much different than rejection.

Maybe it is this trying that negates the possibilities for acceptance. But then it’s hard to concede that trying is futile. And maybe not trying is a protective mechanism. Maybe it is healthy once in a while not to try. Once in a while.

Maybe one day I will have the wherewithal to ask one of my rejectors for his/her thoughts on this. Although, since he/she has already rejected me, he/she probably could not hear me through the door  they have already closed. And my voice can only go so loud.

Instead, I will imagine what it would be like to live in a world without rejection. Something to consider.

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my 1000 miles of driving hit me like…  um… I was going to say “sledgehammer,” but it was more like a tsunami of fatigue and I had the good fortune of having a mattress nearby to collapse into late in the afternoon. one of the only benefits of under-employment, beyond having more time to go to the gym where, after my workout, I sat there transfixed, watching people hoist themselves up and down the climbing wall. Including one woman who was talking on her cellphone as she climbed. And it made me think, I wish I could do that. and then I thought, no, she was just a metaphor of some kind.

later, dinner out with my friend M whom I never seem to be in sync with. we met at a Greek restaurant. I arrived first and as soon as she sat down, she immediately started telling (not asking) me which appetizers we should order, which included beets, even though I am rather grossed out at times by beets. she was just so forthright about ordering, and it sort of unnerved me. Like when she said, I think we should order the Taramosalata, I was taken aback and I now regretting saying “Yes, sir!!!” And after that, we both struggled to find some connective tissue wavelength, which did not quite happen. She was there for the milonga that the restaurant hosted every Wednesday night… she would ask me a question such as “how was your mother’s birthday?” but disappeared into the tango haze as I attempted an answer.

I said I wish I could be as bold as you. She said, you can be. Just try. But I’d like to be bold in a different way. Bold without aggression. Now that is something I can strive toward.

Posted on August 30, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian | Leave a comment

the night so dark and blurry…

Posted on August 29, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

… I left town in a hurry.

and I was far from home. for hours and hours I drove and drove, sometimes stopping, but then more and more hours of driving and driving. I drove and drove until I could drive no more.

there are so many other things i could have been doing that were of higher calling than driving and burning fuel. so many other ways for me to move about this world.

the night growing darker and blurrier with each RPM. it was so very dark and I was so very unsure of where i was, but somehow i had a sense that i was protected. perhaps after all, I am creature of the dark… call it my vampyric destiny.

But feeling lost on a dark and blurry road, one needs some protection

but instead, I drove… maybe 1000 miles since Saturday. it is a miracle i am here to tell the tale. but for now, i must sleeeeeeeeeep.

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walls with paper

Posted on August 28, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

I am writing to you from the Doubletree Hotel in Rochester, Minnesota. I have been here for about 6 hours and I just noticed that the wallpaper is a rather tasteful white with greenish tint. What compelled me to be here were appointments at the Mayo Clinic with my transcendentally great otolaryngologist and neuro-ophthalmologist. I never thought I would utter those 2 (or 3 words). I am 99% at the finish line from my long journey that began in 2008. Almost there. Like 99.3%, maybe more.

My writing has no spark tonight. I am road weary. A bit freaked about finances. Not at all comfortable with uncertainty.

But my bigger issue is now that I know of 2 people who might be reading this, this puts a whole new slant on blogging, taking me back to the days prior to last week when this blog was a vacant parking garage. I’ve always wanted to stage a performance in a parking garage. But this seems harder. Somehow somehow there must be a way for me to convey my inner and outer experience without shame. I can keep shutting down blogs and putting up new ones, shifting identities, creating passwords, changing privacy settings. But the walls remain the same.

But I am determined to walk through them. no matter what.  Promise me you will make me do this, OK? And I will do the same for you. I promise.

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Lori or Laurie

Posted on August 26, 2012 by The Lost Pedestrian

I slept last night on a fold-out couch at my sister’s place, with a layer of memory foam. I’m in love with memory foam, sinking into it. it’s so lush and comforting.

this woman appeared in my dream who I vaguely remember from work, but i’m not sure which work… trying to think of a job I stayed at long enough to remember someone who was simply a friendly work acquaintance for a while, and either she or I disappeared and that was it. it’s obsessed me since I’ve awakened. i think she may have been a real person. She was petite and nice.

in the dream, i was in love with her. if I’m not mistaken, the apocalypse was happening all around us. and we tried to keep together. buildings were crashing, lots of tumult all around us. I think her name may have been Laurie or Lori. In the dream, and perhaps beyond, she morphed into another person.

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