Honey

I’m so mad at you. I haven’t quite figured out why you’ve made me so angry, but I thought perhaps some direct communication could help.

We’ve been together for a really long time now, and I’ve put a ton of energy into making this relationship work. I’ve spent more time with you than anyone else, and I’ve tried to be as open and honest as possible.

Even though you’re always there for me, I feel like you’re elusive and sometimes extremely cold in our interactions with each other. Sometimes I feel like I know you so well and then I’ll wake up one day to discover that I don’t actually, really know anything about you at all.

Whenever we get together, I feel expectant that you will satisfy a loneliness inside of me that no one else understands. I think that you will enable me to be honest with myself and as a result, I will be more connected to the world as a whole. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of that connection and I’m inspired to make things work between us. Other times, like now, I just feel sick and tired of giving and giving and never feeling like you actually care one bit about how hard I’m trying to understand and relate to you. I have literally dedicated my life to you. What have you done for me besides made me feel empty and alone?

I think maybe I’ve had enough of you for a while. It was better when we took that little break and spent less time together. It doesn’t do any relationship any good to overdo it. Ever since I started taking you everywhere with me, I’ve become more and more overwhelmed with you. I don’t want our relationship to be about need or addiction and I’m tired of looking to you to make me feel good about myself.

I know I can’t get away from you entirely, but we need to spend less time together. I know you’ll still be there for me if I ever want to be more deeply involved.

I’m writing this from my iPhone, so I can’t link to Barney’s blog when I tell you about how Barney had a deep, philosophical thought today. Perhaps having deep, philosophical thoughts are contagious through the iPhone, since he started using one yesterday, and I just had a deep, philosophical thought of my own.

What was Barney’s thought, you might wonder. Well, perhaps he’ll post about it on the blog I can’t link to, but probably not. I can tell you that it had something to do with beer, reality, and of course, the iPhone. What else would a new owner of this miraculous little device be thinking about?

As with most of my thoughtful thoughts, I have connected two dots, or two experiences in my brain, and I wonder how a successful experiment can be extended. Usually I think, how can this new piece of information add to my quality of life?

It all begins on rollerskates.

I’m not a very good rollerskater. I don’t look very cool, and I certainly don’t have any fancy moves. This is in stark contrast to Agent, who skates like an angel, smoothly weaving in and out of unpredictable bands of people, skating forwards then backwards then forwards again. Even after years of going skating with Agent, I’m typically going slower than everyone else, my butt sticking out for balance, my arms windmilling, and my body tense and rigid.

Agent tries to help me have more fun by loosening up. “Bend your knees”, she says encouragingly. The main reason I’m so tense is because I get really nervous when I do happen to be going faster than other skaters and I can’t seem to see a way around them. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into, and I just feel terrible about it.

Agent’s been offering some new advice lately that seems to be helping me out a great deal. She says, if you look ahead to a spot you want to get to, you’re likely to reach that spot with little trouble. And I’ll be darned, this little piece of advice actually works! I just focus on a place on the floor I’m aiming at, and usually I’m able to get there without running into anyone and more importantly, I get there without stressing out about it.

I started using this technique on my bicycle today. I’ve never been very good at turning corners and leaning into the curve, but as soon as I applied Agent’s advice and looked at the spot I wanted to get to, it’s as though my body let go, and I was able to naturally and easily meet my own expectations.

Once I see something like this apply to at least two different scenarios in my life, I quickly attempt to align the idea with my personal philosophy. The idea I’m having actually might feel a little familiar, especially if you’ve watched or read The Secret.

Oh, you haven’t seen The Secret? Do it now! Seriously. I’d provide a link, but…

Anyway, I’m gonna get all life skills on you for a minute. The idea of looking ahead and trusting that you’ll arrive can easily be applied to all sorts of personal goals. Once you acknowledge your intention and express trust in the desired outcome, a funny thing happens. It’s almost as though something else gets to work on it for you. Perhaps your own intuition gets involved or maybe the universe is harnessed to your will. I think mostly, you allow something to happen, rather than forcing it.

So the idea is to identify the intention and then to let it go. No matter what, it’s a much less stressful way to get there.

I am about to finish Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. I checked out the book from the Multnomah County Library four weeks ago. I’ve never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut before. The book looks like this:

I’m enjoying the book because it feels easy to read. I’m not enjoying the book because parts of it induce discomfort. There are many things in the universe that make me feel the opposite of discomfort. One of those things is a lava lamp.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

A lava lamp emits light but also contains a bulbous wax that forms, rises, and falls with the help of heat provided by an incandescent bulb inside the base. The lava lamp reminds people of the 60’s, when life revolved around love. My lava lamp looks like this:

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Listen: On the base of the lava lamp is a sticker. The sticker is a picture of me and Agent in jail. In the picture, both of us stare out forever from behind bars. Agent and I are not actually in jail, but if we were, we’d probably be happy anyway.

As many of you are aware (or at least those of you who subscribe to my blog through a reader), I attempted to post from the new Wordpress app on my iPhone last week, and rss readers everywhere were subjected to a random post that had a funny title and linked nowhere.

That was a very long sentence.

So here I am, trying again. I’m at the bus stop, listening to Radiohead this time, and still a little quiet and introspective, maybe even sluggish. I’m almost entirely sure that I’m extremely hungry, and starving my brain. I wish I could jump online and type in my feelings somewhere and have a service respond with the appropriate next steps to feeling better. I would enter “I’m tired and slow, but happy.” The all knowing wisdom of the web would say, “Follow this easy three step plan to recovery.” That would be nice.

Here’s a random picture from my phone, my favorite hole at Golf-o-Rama in Vancouver.

They say you never fully recover from your first fall over the precipice of love. Time and distance eventually, mercifully tarnish those horribly (and wonderfully) intense feelings that you thought would never be abated. Surprisingly, you don’t spend your entire life, every waking moment, thinking about the love you lost, even though at the time, it felt like the world had ended, and in a lot of ways, it had.

I was 15 years old, a sophomore attending Holy Names Academy for Girls on First Hill in Seattle. Since the summertime, I had followed a long succession of crushes on girls, innocent but inspired by holding hands and giving back rubs. I was a naive, athletic, excitable kid with some emotional problems, seeking intimacy and love.

Those emotional problems got a little worse toward the wintertime. I was in a support group for adopted kids that was making me feel stuff I wasn’t really comfortable facing. I was chasing after a friend, wanting more attention and time, and I was losing my grip. I had a hairline fracture that made my usual outlet, highschool sports, inaccessible. I started smoking, too. I was a mess.

The mess that was me started whittling on my arms and hands with sharp objects. I don’t know what gave me the idea to do such a dramatic thing, nor do I really know why I did it. It was certainly the climax of my adolescent angst, a cry for help (of course), and a precursor to my admiration and love of self mutilation in the more acceptable art of tattoo.

In the midst of all this pain and suffering they call being a teenager, I met a schoolmate who, in many ways, saved my life. I didn’t know her very well, but I was drawn to her anyway. She had soft blue eyes, a compassionate smile, and a propensity toward caring for sad and needy kids. When I asked for her help as a friend, she immediately dropped everything and came to my rescue, full of empathy, crying the tears I didn’t have the courage to cry. Our love for each other was immediate and true, deeper than anything I had ever known in my life. I had finally found everything I was looking for.

And then, we fell in love.

I really hope you had this kind of experience with someone, the falling in love for the first time. It’s a consuming, life altering, spirit lifting adventure full of joy and fear. I was so happy and connected and impressed. When I looked in her eyes, I witnessed the universe as pure, divine light. I wasn’t alone anymore. It was the best feeling in the whole world.

We certainly didn’t label our relationship in any sort of way that would be shunned by our friends and family. We were best friends, the best friends there ever were. That didn’t change even after our first kiss.

I will always savor that moment in my memory, the moment when all my experience and my assumptions flew out the window and when something else, something greater than me, guided my lips to kiss a girl for the first time. What a frightening moment that was, my heart pounding and my mind racing. I couldn’t believe what was happening, and yet it was, and everything felt so right and good about it.

Things got a bit more complicated after that. Neither one of us was willing to out ourselves to anyone, especially in a Catholic highschool. We spent almost two years keeping things on the down low. It was sad that we couldn’t be open with the world about our experiences, but it also kept the intensity high, always afraid of getting caught.

I had fantasies about us getting an apartment together after highschool and living our lives happily ever after, but it was not meant to be. She went off to college and I was left behind, broken hearted and confused, wondering if my love for a girl meant that I was headed for a life a little out of the ordinary.