(no subject)
friends always draw me out of my funk. without dwelling on the negative aspects, today took on almost the same form as Sunday with me having quiet time again (in a café this time) before moving on. and then I met Ken while at the thrift store.
facts Ken told me about himself over pizza (really good, cheap and plentiful pizza at Cindarella's in Central Square) and later:
● Ken hated visiting the Hare Krishna temple so much (though he did it compulsively) that to cure himself of doing so and as a kind of ritual he drank salt water to make himself vomit. either he shot a video of himself vomitting. either that he vomitted while watching a video shot outside the temple. not sure which.
● Ken and his mate visited Russia during the "Boris Yeltsin era". they witnessed grotesque inquities of class. loaves of bread ("really big, really good loaves of bread") sold for $.05. a restaurant meal (the Mafia owned all the restaturants, he said) cost $50. the police would drink beer in uniform. they had him arrested and stole his money, polite the whole time, calling him "sir" and seemingly meaning it. then one of the police hit him and left him out on the street. then he smoked a joint with some kids hanging out on the street.
● Ken doesn't like having friendships with men because of the homoerotic aspects. equally, he doesn't like having friendships with women because men want to have sex with every woman they see. he doesn't have friendships, really, except that he runs into me at times. his wive who I remember having met and liking, also doesn't have any friends.
● Ken, over the course of only a few days, fell in love with an English girl over the internet and said he had hallucinations of them together in past lives five hundred years ago. he went over to England (how he got the money for this I don't know) and met her and over the course of three days fell out of love with her. his wife, he said, had no problem with this.
his appearance and demeanor: the aura he projects, vulnerable and un-selfconscious, attracts women. he has Nordic Iron Age looks (but no beard). six feet tall or more, surprsingly, as his self-effacement seems to make him take up less space. sitting with him as he ate I noticed how much like a living anatomy lesson he looks. you can see all his bones in his shoulders and throat, his muscles, his veins through his skin. as he grows older his face looks more and more like a skull, with temples receding. he has a contrary nature but he regards himself as a holy fool. I once (may have written a LJ post about this) intervened to defend an anti-gay protestor who got attacked, not because he agreed with the anti-gay message (he definitely didn't) but because he could not bear to see another person made the object of violence. (the protestor ended up preaching even after and got arrested for disorderly conduct.)
we ran into a traveller named Diana spare changing in front of a convenience store and got to talking with her for an hour or so. Diana left home to travel at 14, fourteen years ago. she told us all about Hawaii, where she came from, which sounded like a wonderland.
it has edible plants everywhere, no biting insects, no thorns, temperature warm but comfortable tropical with five kinds of ecosystem. she showed us photos of the mountains. yes, it has mountains, snowcapped and somehow rounded like no mountains I had ever seen (created by volcanism, I assume), they literally took my breath away to see the photos.
Diana's godmother bought land and lives completely off the grid in a spare, spiky yet organic beauty of a home (Diana showed us photos) she built herself. living off the land, own water supply, not sure about the electricity arrangements but that works somehow.
she just about persuaded me to hop on a plane there. I forgot to ask her about the size of the queer scene in Hawaii, though.
Diana also told us of her friend who belonged to a native tribe which lives on an archipelago in Panama. her friend owned a island. (big deal, my paternal grandfather owned and lived in a medieval fort in the hills of rural Spain. however upon his death his much younger lover took possession of it so my family never got a hold of it.) the colonists never conquered, however, their customs about marrying outside of the tribe so consequently they have gotten inbred especially as all the regional tribes have died out.
I told Diana about my grandmother, also named Diana, and showed her a book of photos of Avebury And Stonehenge I had bought earlier at a thrift store and told her a little about them. it amazed her, the size of the monoliths.
I like nothing better than to hear travel stories.
during the course of the day I had run into a number of friends and acquaintances. most notably Erika with whom I had a friendly conversation of all things, given one of the worst fights of my life with her. my sense of wonder and humor restored, I went home.
facts Ken told me about himself over pizza (really good, cheap and plentiful pizza at Cindarella's in Central Square) and later:
● Ken hated visiting the Hare Krishna temple so much (though he did it compulsively) that to cure himself of doing so and as a kind of ritual he drank salt water to make himself vomit. either he shot a video of himself vomitting. either that he vomitted while watching a video shot outside the temple. not sure which.
● Ken and his mate visited Russia during the "Boris Yeltsin era". they witnessed grotesque inquities of class. loaves of bread ("really big, really good loaves of bread") sold for $.05. a restaurant meal (the Mafia owned all the restaturants, he said) cost $50. the police would drink beer in uniform. they had him arrested and stole his money, polite the whole time, calling him "sir" and seemingly meaning it. then one of the police hit him and left him out on the street. then he smoked a joint with some kids hanging out on the street.
● Ken doesn't like having friendships with men because of the homoerotic aspects. equally, he doesn't like having friendships with women because men want to have sex with every woman they see. he doesn't have friendships, really, except that he runs into me at times. his wive who I remember having met and liking, also doesn't have any friends.
● Ken, over the course of only a few days, fell in love with an English girl over the internet and said he had hallucinations of them together in past lives five hundred years ago. he went over to England (how he got the money for this I don't know) and met her and over the course of three days fell out of love with her. his wife, he said, had no problem with this.
his appearance and demeanor: the aura he projects, vulnerable and un-selfconscious, attracts women. he has Nordic Iron Age looks (but no beard). six feet tall or more, surprsingly, as his self-effacement seems to make him take up less space. sitting with him as he ate I noticed how much like a living anatomy lesson he looks. you can see all his bones in his shoulders and throat, his muscles, his veins through his skin. as he grows older his face looks more and more like a skull, with temples receding. he has a contrary nature but he regards himself as a holy fool. I once (may have written a LJ post about this) intervened to defend an anti-gay protestor who got attacked, not because he agreed with the anti-gay message (he definitely didn't) but because he could not bear to see another person made the object of violence. (the protestor ended up preaching even after and got arrested for disorderly conduct.)
we ran into a traveller named Diana spare changing in front of a convenience store and got to talking with her for an hour or so. Diana left home to travel at 14, fourteen years ago. she told us all about Hawaii, where she came from, which sounded like a wonderland.
it has edible plants everywhere, no biting insects, no thorns, temperature warm but comfortable tropical with five kinds of ecosystem. she showed us photos of the mountains. yes, it has mountains, snowcapped and somehow rounded like no mountains I had ever seen (created by volcanism, I assume), they literally took my breath away to see the photos.
Diana's godmother bought land and lives completely off the grid in a spare, spiky yet organic beauty of a home (Diana showed us photos) she built herself. living off the land, own water supply, not sure about the electricity arrangements but that works somehow.
she just about persuaded me to hop on a plane there. I forgot to ask her about the size of the queer scene in Hawaii, though.
Diana also told us of her friend who belonged to a native tribe which lives on an archipelago in Panama. her friend owned a island. (big deal, my paternal grandfather owned and lived in a medieval fort in the hills of rural Spain. however upon his death his much younger lover took possession of it so my family never got a hold of it.) the colonists never conquered, however, their customs about marrying outside of the tribe so consequently they have gotten inbred especially as all the regional tribes have died out.
I told Diana about my grandmother, also named Diana, and showed her a book of photos of Avebury And Stonehenge I had bought earlier at a thrift store and told her a little about them. it amazed her, the size of the monoliths.
I like nothing better than to hear travel stories.
during the course of the day I had run into a number of friends and acquaintances. most notably Erika with whom I had a friendly conversation of all things, given one of the worst fights of my life with her. my sense of wonder and humor restored, I went home.