dissonance

An ode to a summer day (in spring)

In pictures

 

Scene 8, Take 47

Sometimes at night when I'm waiting for sleep to overcome me, I re-live past experiences.  More often than not, they are embarrassing, painful, better-left-forgotten moments that I would normally not indulge in during conscious hours.

Except that they are fictional memoirs. I change my attitude. I change my reactions. I change other people's reactions.  I even change how I look (you wouldn't believe how often I'm suddenly 5'6").  All this to try and make things right again.  If I don't like how things are progressing *zip* I hit the mental rewind button and start again with different variables set.

I don't know why I do this. You can't change the past.  Is it like going over your midterm results so you're better prepared for the final?  Am I hoping it prepares me for the future?

But no two situations are the same.  There's no use in anticipating that which may happen because it will never be identical to the past.  It's another time, another place, another me.

Funner posts return tomorrow

I'm about halfway through Mrs. Dalloway and am once again reminded by how brilliant and difficult Virginia Woolf is.  She has crazy sentences that run on for miles.  Points of view change almost imperceptibly from paragraph to paragraph.  The story reads like a conscious dream... which makes no sense whatsoever, but that's what I'm typing and I'm sticking to it.

She has a way of writing that at first seems like she's isn't talking about shit, but at the same time I feel like she has focused in on life with a clarity that almost scares me.  What scares me is the reverence she holds for the ordinariness of life. 

There is a danger in defining our lives by remarkable moments, because then we have a false view of what life is.  Life is all the time in between those extraordinary moments.  It's the mundane details like choosing what to wear in the morning and picking up the mail.  It's waiting for the elevator and driving to work.  This is what makes up a majority of our life, they are our experiences and they ultimately shape who we are.  What happens in these dull moments is what determines our behavior during extrarodinary times.

I sit here. I drink my tea.  I stare out the window.  Makes a pretty boring picture doesn't it?  But what is invisible, what is important, is what goes through my head.  I think about my past; random memories jumble through my head.  I think about the future; plans are formulated and abandoned.  I think about people; feelings ebb and flow.  If I could describe all of this in words, you would know me wholly and completely.  Because it turns out that what you can't see is who I am.

You may blame the port

As I drove back from Kris' I noticed that there is a cheshire cat moon out tonight.  He kept me company as Orion guided me back.  Orion always reminds me of home, because he stands guard above the roof of the home in San Francisco.  He isn't quite in the right place in San Diego, so it makes me feel I'm not somewhere I can call home just yet.  (is that home? where the stars hang in the right place?)

I like cheshire cat moons, but my favorite kind looks like the very tip of a french manicure.  A mere sliver of silver that just suggests moon-iness.  It casts enough light so I don't feel utterly alone but it's humble enough to let a good number of stars shine through and remind me of my insignificance.

This is a note to myself to throw a wine/cheese/chocolate party.  If half a glass of port will produce this kind of gibberish, I'd love to see what happens after a whole night of it.

Really need to get that passport

Oh my gosh, the Quarter Life Crisis (aka the QLC) is everywhere.

I found a discussion going on at one of my favorite community blogs.

It's got it's own wikipedia entry.

And it is trying to make money off me  (shame on you!).

Here is a nicely written perspective on it.  A little sappy, but more or less relatable.

A popular recommendation seems to be to travel. 

Who I am is what I experience. And if I don't know who I am, maybe I should be having more experiences in life.

Instead of sitting around on my ass going, "This sucks, this sucks, this sucks" I should be out there *doing* things going, "oh my gosh, this is flippin awesome!"

And for those that can't relate, all I can do is say in an ominous voice, "Just you wait, Matt..."

What *was* in that coffee?

Today at the little shopping center where I had lunch, there was a bunch of kids with their mom playing near the fountain.  The mom was cautioning one of the kids to not play on the rocks.  His brother adamantly pointed to a sign and declared, "Yeah, see it says 'No climbing on the rocks'!"

The sign actually read, "No going in the fountain" or something like that.

But what the heck, reality is what you make of it isn't it?  For all his brother knew, the sign does say no climbing on the rocks because that's what Mom said and that's the reality of the situation (to him).

There must have been some mind-expanding drugs in my coffee this morning because I read Patty's post today and I swear it reads like a metaphor for life.  Life is about finding that middle grey, that balance, and it really isn't about managing proportions.

"there are no rules, if YOU think it looks right, then it is..."

Preach on, sista Patty.

Where I get relationship advice

I love Tiny Sepuku

When I read enough of them, I start to get a tad cynical because I start to think, "My gosh, you are right Mr. Sepuku. Love does boil down to a smart alec response and a crude drawing of what appears to be a duck."

But if I'm already in a cynical mood they cheer me up.  "Oh that poor bastard has lost all faith in love.  Life isn't THAT bad."

In other news, John somehow got last minute tix to see Pinback at Spreckels tonight, yay. He said they're not so good in concert, but he's willing to give them a second try.  Now that's a fan.

The Little Things

Things the piss me off
(only for about a 30 seconds... but it's with a very intense, white hot rage)

1. Sandwiches with all the ingredients off center and the bread is unevenly cut.
2. Shirts like this.  Honestly, are apostrophes that expensive?
3. When people say sweater when they mean sweatshirt.  I suppose 2 and 3 can be joined into a general "English/grammar/spelling anal retentiveness" category.
4. Missing movie previews.
5. Telemarketing recordings on my voice mail. Whoever you are, I will find you. I will find you and I will beat you senseless (for 30 seconds)!

Things that bring me joy
(if I had a dance of joy, I'd do it)

1. Sticking my hands in a pile of clean towels fresh from the dryer.
2. When the alarm goes off on Saturday.  I like being able to turn it completely off instead of hitting the damn snooze button.  Also, when I turn off my alarm it says, "Alarm. Off" with a philipino accent and it's kind of funny.
3. Getting off the chair lift without falling.
4. Getting comments on my blog.
5. Going to the register to buy something and finding out it's on sale.

Furniture litmus test

I finally got a dining room table today. Isn't that thrilling?  It used to be that I'd pair the word "thrilling" with things like college acceptance letters and prom (actually not really prom, prom sucked donkey balls) but now I get my highs off new furniture.  Another sure sign that time is passing and I am getting Old (says the 25 year old).

Anyway, I didn't even buy it. I got it from a friend (Thanks, Cindy!) so I guess I'm still in college mode if I'm just "getting" furniture and not "buying" furniture. (Not to be ungrateful, the table is practically brand new, Thanks Cindy!!). 

I think the furniture you have is a pretty good estimation of how grown up you are.

Most of the furniture I have is from Target.  My first non-Target piece of furniture I bought was a dresser, acquired less than 2 months ago.  Oh, I thought I made a big step with that one.  And yet my mattress and boxspring sit on the floor.

What would I furnish my dream house with?  Something along the lines of Ethan Allen, Restoration Hardware, and Thomasville.  Is it so wrong to like such generic and commercial brands?  If so, I'll try and make it up with quirky accent pieces collected from around the world.  ('Cause if I'm shopping at Ethan Allen, apparently I have a private jet)  They will make excellent conversation pieces when you come and visit.

I will invite you to Sunday brunch and we will sit on my veranda (hoooo, now I have a veranda) and we'll chat about how I want to remodel the kitchen and you will give me the number to "your guy".

Oh man, my stomach kind of turns over on itself thinking that my life ends up like that.

Friend zone breakout

Some say that the ideal relationship would grow from two people who have been friends first. But some also say that hooking up with your friends is a Bad Idea. So which is it?

Actually I think I'm the only one who thinks it's a Bad Idea. Most other people respond, "Why not? If you're both attracted to each other it might work out all right."

The key phrase being, if you're both attracted to each other. How do you even get to knowing that? With someone you just met, you can kind of tell. They might call you a lot, go out and pursue common interests with you, ask personal questions... But friends do all these things on a regular basis!

Communicating feelings (aka "Making a Move") is a vastly different experience for the friend versus the non-friend. Again, the non-friend has some of the above-mentioned clues to help them calculate their odds. However, the friend is basically left jumping out of the plane, hoping the parachute works but for all they know, they're carrying a backpack full of bricks. And they're blindfolded.

And what if they get rejected? With the non-friend, no big deal. Besides, they can kind of tell before then that they might not be interested in "that way". Again based on clues that they put together like Watson. But with the friend... can we say AWK-WARD? (on a side note, awkward looks awkward when it's all in caps) I would be mortified and worst of all, I'd be scared the friendship may never be the same again.

So I guess I take my opinion back. It *might* work out all right to hook up with a friend, but the balls necessary are just way beyond my reach. So to those of you who have had successful relationships with friends, I salute you and I hope you're very happy. It was a brave thing to do.

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On a slightly appropriate note, I'd like to make an apology to the white guy in the black pick up truck who waved and said hello to me at the Mira Mesa exit. I was a doofus and pretended to ignore you, which was quite rude of me. You were actually kind of cute.