I changed
Not "I've changed"--I changed. Not picking up phone calls, deleting texts, not checking Facebook more than once a week, hitting delete when the message starts out with sobbing tears (but still responding with "I love you" once it subsided at the end of the day), being and feeling what some would call shallow/superficial and others would call trendy/21st-century/American, goal-centered, wanting more, trying to climb social/technical/knowledge ladders, securing financial stability, bought a car this Wednesday and was extremely excited about a material thing for once, wanting to date around, spending days focused and pulling unthinkable scheduling and long working hours, my hands are in more projects than I have fingers, saying no without caring, being brief without caring, being stern about situations and outcomes and offloading everyone else's emotions and crises into their own empowering hands, finally reclaiming my own projects, I don't respond to "going away parties" with any more incentive than regular parties (I went to one friend's going away party because I would have gone anyway, but missed another party without stress that I wouldn't have gone to if it were a regular party because of time/health/energy/deadlines), I don't respond to leaping around trying to seize ahold of something that is progressing naturally, I'm helping to organize a Perl conference at the U this Feb, lunch/dinner dates with friends and acquaintances scheduled to the minute, saying no to "playing" and wasting away the summer days, not feeling bad about the engagements or prompts to hang out or events that I can't possibly (or just plain shouldn't) make, choosing friendships based on their independence rather than dependence... Etc.
Some days I feel like a robot. Ultra-fast thinking, actions and decisions are precision-crafted/executed, extreme productivity, everything is efficient. It worries me after it goes on for too many days. But then I test it, and the non-robot me comes back. The last day of music in the park in Minneapolis came around, the sun and weather and lighting and color pallette were as warm and tasty as butterscotch syrup, the free-love-life eclectic slow-hippie music steadily grinding down into my platinum-coated mind. And then I saw him, happy-baby-holding glowing face and all, his eyes brighter than the setting sun, gorgeous smile, olive-colored skin. Visceral, gut-wrenching memory pangs from a love past, unrealized, resonating with the usurped replacement for whatever it is and whoever it was that I fell in love with four years ago over and over on repeat. I was vividly paralyzed by the moment. Yup, I can still feel.
Today in the cemetery with Junko we held trees, she told me that you can get energy from holding them, especially big trees, with your arms stretched around their trunk. I believed her wholeheartedly, at least for the moment, and we went around hugging trees, feeling refreshed, and it was real at least then and there if not for longer. She said that one day we both will be underground, too, on the subject of the dead folks all around us. I said that I didn't want it to be that way and she said that this is the same for all people, that there are no exceptions. In the most poignant conversational context, with the most poignant yet delecate inflection, she said this. I lost it, internally, and a few tears crept out underneath my sunglasses as I choked, paused my speech, and tried to sound unaffected. Added to the first Fall-cool weather of the summer and the intense bittersweetness that brings, it was too much. The great majority of days I am absolutely ambivalent about death, I feel like I've already lived at least one life if not more and it would be okay if I died at any moment, I know logically it makes no sense to worry about it or think about it (and I told Junko that I surely wouldn't mind being dead after being dead because there would be no I of my current state to mind), but it's nice to know that I can still be ripped apart by the thought of it.
As Carrie said on our wonderful off-the-dock toe-dipping Punch-pizzabianca-and-wine night last Wednesday, I'm not necessarily being a robot or superficial or shallow---I'm just being smart. In love or relationships or life or death, whenever the time comes to fully embrace what's in front of you, slowly open yourself up to it, embracing it with control, poise, and strength. If what you embrace then starts to rock you out of orbit, tear you apart, or knock you down, then knowing how you got into that position (with control, poise, and strength) will help you know how to stand back up and get out of that position, to return to where you began, and steer a different course, possibly approaching it again from another direction if your strength and will is still there.
Ideally, I'd like to be a robot less and less over the next few years, but to do and be more than just myself and contribute to the world in ways that I feel are good, I'm going to be a robot once in a while, quite often, actually, and people are going to have to deal or they can say peace out.
Sometimes, though, I still like to approach situations and life like a vulnerable garden flower stretching towards the sun. It doesn't always pay to do what I said in the paragraph above, and it can get out of control and you can easily become overprotective. It's all about balance, I guess, and learning when it's okay, efficient, unselfish to be vulnerable and to what extent.
Some days I feel like a robot. Ultra-fast thinking, actions and decisions are precision-crafted/executed, extreme productivity, everything is efficient. It worries me after it goes on for too many days. But then I test it, and the non-robot me comes back. The last day of music in the park in Minneapolis came around, the sun and weather and lighting and color pallette were as warm and tasty as butterscotch syrup, the free-love-life eclectic slow-hippie music steadily grinding down into my platinum-coated mind. And then I saw him, happy-baby-holding glowing face and all, his eyes brighter than the setting sun, gorgeous smile, olive-colored skin. Visceral, gut-wrenching memory pangs from a love past, unrealized, resonating with the usurped replacement for whatever it is and whoever it was that I fell in love with four years ago over and over on repeat. I was vividly paralyzed by the moment. Yup, I can still feel.
Today in the cemetery with Junko we held trees, she told me that you can get energy from holding them, especially big trees, with your arms stretched around their trunk. I believed her wholeheartedly, at least for the moment, and we went around hugging trees, feeling refreshed, and it was real at least then and there if not for longer. She said that one day we both will be underground, too, on the subject of the dead folks all around us. I said that I didn't want it to be that way and she said that this is the same for all people, that there are no exceptions. In the most poignant conversational context, with the most poignant yet delecate inflection, she said this. I lost it, internally, and a few tears crept out underneath my sunglasses as I choked, paused my speech, and tried to sound unaffected. Added to the first Fall-cool weather of the summer and the intense bittersweetness that brings, it was too much. The great majority of days I am absolutely ambivalent about death, I feel like I've already lived at least one life if not more and it would be okay if I died at any moment, I know logically it makes no sense to worry about it or think about it (and I told Junko that I surely wouldn't mind being dead after being dead because there would be no I of my current state to mind), but it's nice to know that I can still be ripped apart by the thought of it.
As Carrie said on our wonderful off-the-dock toe-dipping Punch-pizzabianca-and-wine night last Wednesday, I'm not necessarily being a robot or superficial or shallow---I'm just being smart. In love or relationships or life or death, whenever the time comes to fully embrace what's in front of you, slowly open yourself up to it, embracing it with control, poise, and strength. If what you embrace then starts to rock you out of orbit, tear you apart, or knock you down, then knowing how you got into that position (with control, poise, and strength) will help you know how to stand back up and get out of that position, to return to where you began, and steer a different course, possibly approaching it again from another direction if your strength and will is still there.
Ideally, I'd like to be a robot less and less over the next few years, but to do and be more than just myself and contribute to the world in ways that I feel are good, I'm going to be a robot once in a while, quite often, actually, and people are going to have to deal or they can say peace out.
Sometimes, though, I still like to approach situations and life like a vulnerable garden flower stretching towards the sun. It doesn't always pay to do what I said in the paragraph above, and it can get out of control and you can easily become overprotective. It's all about balance, I guess, and learning when it's okay, efficient, unselfish to be vulnerable and to what extent.