To love the moments we live in.

i had a beautiful walk all over the city today. i took a half day from work for an afternoon of doctor appointments. this wandering is something i rarely do. i walk with purpose even when i have no purpose. i walk very fast thinking of other things. i'm not in the moment. i also listen to my iphone or check apps. 

today i had no headphones. i let the world fill my ears and eyes. also, getting purposely lost, i had to focus on the little things to figure out where i was. it was great fun and i need to do it more often. now that the weather is good, i'm going to try to more. 

i wrote this on my "notepad" on my phone. when you get the feeling to write, you must write. and it was just one of those moments when the words were floating in my head and had to get out if i was going to remember the images i had seen today. 

Little girl bouncing along the hopscotch - the beads in her hair following suit. Jazz notes falling down the club stair case, floating through the air and taking a ride on my pounding of the pavement. I think Seaton street is my favorite. It's dripping with roses and ivy and all the houses are painted in the color of "home." To love the moments we live in. How easy one forgets.

and here are the pictures i took of Seaton street. I couldn't help it. 

Bee-friending

Bee-friending yourself

The apiary is a small one, which only a select few know about. It’s located in the courtyard of a monastery.  You can see the monks walking around, or visitors who’ve booked a weekend to get lost from their lives.  There are no cell phones or laptops allowed, and the rooms have no clocks. Yet, no one is alone at the monastery and everyone depends on one another for encouragement, love, food, and peace of mind. Like the bees I tend to at the monastery, the monks and visitors depend on each other to make a thriving community. The stronger the hive the sweeter the honey.

A year ago, I sat on the DC metro thinking about what it would be like to live here.  What would a new life in DC look like?  What kind of friends would I have and where would I get my haircut? I’d have to leave everything I had built to find that out. 

As I was flying back from DC to Austin I got the call.  I was offered the job and four weeks later I was migrating from Austin, Texas to D.C. After three years of living a sweltering, magical existence in Austin, scarfing down breakfast tacos and causing a ruckus on east 6th street, my time in the city had come to a close.  The thirst I felt in Austin was getting drier and I needed to search in another direction. I loved my friends, but they could always fly to come visit me. I had no family, mortgage, or paramour.  I left in three weeks.  If it didn’t fit in a box it was sold on Craigslist.  If it couldn’t be sold it went to the curb and was promptly gone the next morning. Austin being a city of transients, everyone there likes a good deal.

Bees leave their hives for many reasons.  One type of flight is called a “foraging flight” in which the bee flies out of the hive in a random direction in search of nectar, honeydew, pollen, or water. I was seeking sweeter nectar.

I left with a bang. My last weekend I managed to have a fling with the co-worker I’d been infatuated with for a year. It didn’t help that he wasn’t single, but the intensity felt in such a short period made my takeoff that much more charged with rocket fuel.  I felt I had come to Austin how I was leaving it; open to change, slightly heartbroken, confident I was making the right decision.  For the second time in my life I was ready to live in a city where no one knew my name.

The first few weeks you move to a new place are thrilling, exhilarating. You walk around the streets with a smile on your face.  Every face entrances you; every building arch you’re enamored by is one you’ve never seen before.  The inevitable daily drudge has yet to muck up this new city you live in, and for those first few weeks all you can see are the possibilities, the promise, places you never knew existed.

After the first three months faded, real feelings began to set in.  Not the fun ones. I felt achingly alone.  I’d moved before to a different city without knowing anyone, but this time I felt hollower on the inside. I missed the fast fling I had left in Austin, even though I knew there was no way it would’ve worked out with him anyhow.

A week later I got into my first bike accident ever.  In Austin I had lived as a commuter cyclist, with no car for three years and never got in an accident.  This accident in DC seemed even scarier since I wasn’t wearing a helmet. There I was, glass and blood coming out of my forehead from the cut above my eyebrow, dribbling down my favorite late-summer slip dress onto the Adams Morgan concrete beneath me. I could hear the shrieking ambulance sirens approaching.

It was harder to make friends in DC.  Unlike Austin where I had had a grad program acting as a crutch for early friendships, here it was different.  No community to lean on.  Who was I in this new place?

I guess I thought that once I finished high school, studied abroad, graduated college, got my Masters, paid my own bills, lived in a city as a single, independent woman, every question mark I ever had in my head would turn into a period. Instead they all just turned into ellipses and I wondered what I “needed” to do next.  What was next on the checklist? I couldn’t move to a new city again. There was no escape plan in that exhausted idea. 

A man! A man was the only thing missing from my checklist. Maybe once I had him all the ellipses would be periods. Finally, I could take a nap and get some rest. If I had only known the ways of the bees months before I wouldn’t have come to this fear based conclusion. In the hive community the Queen bee births all the brood (offspring). She is the sole source of life. Without her presence there is no hive. It is not a patriarchal system. Although the Queen bee does need Drones (male bees) to produce brood, she relies on her fellow Worker bees (sterile female bees) to help her and the hive thrive and stay strong.

Did I mention I have a proclivity for Ernest Hemingway-like men who are much older than me and make me feel like shit about myself? Well I started dating one of those men. He would fix it all. These months of my heart being high-jacked were ones of struggle, no appetite, and tears. All my energy was spent trying to impress him, getting to know him, lusting after him.  I had no energy or foresight to go make new friends. He would be my key to new friends, a new life; happiness. I was constantly trying to convince this drone that I was worth loving. I listened to him talk a lot, but never did much of the talking. I nodded so much I probably looked like a bobble head. I felt like one too. My head wasn’t really connected to the rest of my body so my soul felt like a big jumbled mess, confused between the head and the heart of my plastic existence.

I was being inauthentic.  I remember sending a “Merry Christmas” email to Ernest Hemingway only to get a response a month later saying, “Sorry we lost touch - you know how that happens when people date?” Another bold, searing question mark. I was back at the beginning. I couldn’t take anymore question marks. 

Darwin was bothered that he could not rationalize the fact that sterile Worker bees would display altruism towards the Queen.  Where did this will come from if they were unable to be encouraged by the possibility of offspring? One theory, “Kin selection,” explains that worker bees are more related to each other than they are to their parents. By helping each other, they are helping themselves to produce a strong, thriving hive, in which genes can be passed down for the generations.

 I didn’t need a drone to complete me. What I needed to practice was Kin selection; find a hive to shelter myself from this raging tornado of abandonment. I didn’t know it yet, but by engaging in a community, I would find strength as well as enhance the community’s purpose. This was the only way I’d feel I was helping myself find the periods to the sentences.

Ever the academic as my student loan debt can confirm, I signed up for an urban bee keeping class. Why Urban bee keeping?  I had never been stung by a bee in my life, much less kept a bee hive. I live in an apartment complex in DC with no backyard. I knew I wouldn’t be building a hive my first bee season, but I wanted to learn about bees. They seemed like a blue print for a perfect community. They seemed so in sync with one another and mysterious to me. 

When a new Queen Bee is introduced to the hive, she is lowered into a hive encased in a glass vessel, with a cork made from sugar.  As the weeks go by, the bees get used to the Queen and her pheromones as they slowly eat away the sugar cork.  I desperately wanted someone to eat away at my sugar cork and let me burst free from this glass house I’d been living in.

My class became my colony; the hive from which I entered and was enriched by. Each Saturday I woke up early to get to bee class.  I even had a man ask for me to sleep over at his house after a long night of kissing. I wasn’t feeling him that strongly anyways, but it was fun to say, “I can’t, I have an urban bee class tomorrow morning!” and receive the strangest face ever. That’s how I knew he wasn’t really for me. The bees saved me from another Ernest Hemingway.

I no longer cared about completing my checklist. I only cared about the bees, and questioning the question marks. What else did I want to do now that I had freed myself from a checklist existence? What else was I here to do?

My purpose is not to be the world’s greatest bee keeper. But taking the class got me out of my comfort zone, led me to question my insecurities, embrace new people, and make new friendships. Even if I was a newbie and had no clue what I was talking about when it came to bees, I was now a part of a community. There was no winning or losing and all my hellos were received with smiles when I sat in my classroom chair.

 

Because of bee class I had someone to spend a Sunday brunch with. And not just one person, but a swarm of people. As I sat on the patio that Sunday, sipping a mimosa under the early spring sun in the cool breeze with my new found friends, I realized there were periods at the end of the sentences in my head. And the ones that ended in question marks did not scare me anymore. I had found my place in the hive.

my tribe

i hate it when people bail on me.
moving to a new city is so much harder than you think it will be. i figured since i did it once, the second time would be easier. but sometimes i feel like it's just as hard.
i can't wait for when i finally find my tribe. i think i've found some of them already.
i have to remember to be patient.

one thing i've learned in the past year is that this cliche is true:

quality relationships take quality time. you can make fast friends, but it is the amount of time and how open you are with them that makes them worthy friends, friends that will be there for you. this goes for romantic relationships as well.




PHOTO CREDIT: Daasanach tribe girl - Omorate Ethiopia by Eric Lafforgue, via Flickr

Connect the Dots.

Last night i went to a 90s cover band with my friends and had lots of fun. We danced to santaria and hootie and the blowfish - "i only wanna be with you". I texted the guys who asked for my number last weekend and neither of them came. One was "in Baltimore" (i don't know if that was true) and one JUST NEVER ANSWERED.

It's weird when guys ask for your number, text you saying they want to see you and then never respond to any of your texts. But I think it's just because they were bored when they initially asked you for the number and weren't actually into you. Maybe they thought they were when they were alone at a bar. Mostly though I just think that's inconsiderate dick-like behavior. But who am I to judge.

We then went to the corner bar at 1:30 am where all the black men thought i was hot and all the white men were way too young, too handsy and i had to call them out and remove them from my general dancing circle. Race had nothing to do with this, it was just the weird unexplainable thread of the night.

It was beautiful to be out with a group of girlfriends. i really liked that. There is something about drinking beers and dancing to good music with women; and you don't care if men are there or looking at you.

After the last bar i walked to my apartment with my roomie and was hungry and wanted 2:45 in the morning food. She did too. So i went to the pizza shop around the corner and got in line. While in line i see THE WHITE WHALE in the corner of my eye with his fellow photo journalist friend chatting. "FUCKKKKKK," was my first thought. The next thought was, "REALLY?  ... ... ... really...?!" Then the third thought was, "pretend he isn't here."

But of course he was an adult and mature and came over on his way out to say hello to me. Which included a European kiss on both cheeks - I'm attributing that to his suspected drunkeness. He introduced me to his friend. I was graceful and appropriate (yet again) and felt ok about that. Although I've forgiven him, I'm not ready to see him on a 3 times a month basis. I don't want to think about him anymore. It's like when you're happy that your ex is married but you don't need to look at the Facebook album of his wedding day. It's like that. We never ran into each other this much before we dated, why is it more now???

This leads me to question what the Universe is trying to tell me. Am I not getting over this fast enough? Am I being tested by the Universe to prove that I'm "really" over him? Or maybe it's not cosmic at all. Maybe it's not telling me anything. Maybe it's just the truth and that is what happens when you live 10 blocks away from a guy you used to date and abruptly crushed your hopes of a new romance in half and then threw it like dust into the garbage.

Maybe the Universe is just telling me "you gotta keep on trucking, protect your beautiful sass, and cut the assholes off the team."

I don't know what the lesson is and i most likely will not see it until next year. Things that happen in your life are like a "connect-the-dots" picture. You don't see how it all makes sense until you are done and realize that point 1-2 is the arm and 5-10 is the nose and well duh, of course it was a horse!!!! Really though I hope i don't see him anymore it sucks.

Recent Obsessions of late

• Marc Maron - his unlikely sexiness, neurosis, sexy old man-ness, humor, sound of his voice, the fact that he dates women half his age (i realize it's wrong, but i don't care - and it's probably because i am half his age that i approve of this).

• Suki Waterhouse - her hair, face, fashion, and the fact that she has charmed the pants off Bradley Cooper. Girls must have something goin' on. And she's only 22. At the very least she'd have some great stories to share over tea time.
  

• Surfer music and surfers

• Beaches... in general

• Plantation houses - minus the whole slavery issue - that is the one part about liking them i could ignore. 

• Spain. Spanish men. Anything to do with Spain. 

• Swimming in the ocean naked ... off of a Greek island.

fish hook

You Fit Into Me

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

Margaret Atwood

IHOP

I went to a show of one my favorite bands. They are from the area where I grew up. They sneak in geographical name places that only someone from there would know ... that is why i like them. their lyrics are all about nostalgia, memories, smells and images they hold close to their past. it's like they are trying to document memories that no one else knows about, but by putting them in a song, they take on a new life and recycle themselves into a song that is now in everyone else's brain - set to live on forever, or until someone doesn't hear that song anymore. clever.

At the show i met two people who were there for the music as well. At first when i sat at the bar top i felt rather lonely. But then i started talking to a fellow lone bar top sitter and everything was ok.

The show was AMAZING. the band came off the stage for the last bit of the show and did it acoustic. and of course i was in front! lyrics and harmony get me every time.

After the show we were all a tad drunk. And hungry. So we went to IHOP. We all ordered the pancake combo. I got strawberry pancakes and sausage links and scrambled eggs. We proclaimed we were the Breakfast Club.

I woke up the next day and we got a Snow day.

That was been the best Monday ever.

ahab goes to an art gallery.

I'm going out tonight w/ the white whale to an art gallery....of course. last night we spoke on the phone for 2 hours. This seems to be becoming a regular occurrence. Once we start talking we just have so much to share and we want to get it all out, like we don't have enough time or something.

he told me a lot about himself. he was an open book and shared some pretty major details about him and his life thus far. i deeply appreciated this. but I'm not so ready to tell those things about myself. it's too soon and i gotta trust before any of that happens. and that takes me awhile. i can pretend trust, ignore it's absence - that's easy. but actually trusting with a whole heart is difficult for me.

to love someone too much is a great risk; but miracles still happen and sometimes things come true.
It reminds me of the scene in "Moonstruck" when the mother says to the daughter:

[Loretta announces she's going to marry Johnny Camareri]
Cosmo Castorini: I don't like him.
Rose: You're not going to marry him, Cosmo. Do you love him, Loretta?
Loretta Castorini: No.
Rose: Good.
[She looks at Cosmo]
Rose: When you love them they drive you crazy because they know they can.

 Then later in the movie when Rose decides to marry the man she is REALLY in love with:
Rose: Do you love him, Loretta?
Loretta Castorini: Aw, ma, I love him awful.
Rose: Oh, God, that's too bad.

The White Whale has lived longer than i have. He has more experiences. Yet, we click. We never run out of things to say and i find him devastatingly handsome, like so handsome it has a sweet pain attached to it. sort of like "la dolore exquisite" only i think there is a big chance i will be with him. He's irresistible.

He tripped me up a couple times on the phone with questions and he got quite a kick out of making me go silent. Not many people do that to me.
"So how is it that you don't you have a boyfriend?"
...

I cherish the fact that he wants to go at a glacial speed. I've had to many failures based on lightening speed lustful attractions. It's time to try something new. I want an exclusive partner who wants to get to know me, the true, real me; not just the physical. I'm over that and want the full experience of truly loving someone else.

My hood.

I like the subtle little characteristics of my neighborhood.

Every morning i am awoken by four bitchy Pekingese dogs yapping at each other. In the beginning of this custom i wanted to strangle all of them, but now they are a sort of alarm that rings to let me know it is time to get up.  They yap at each other every time they get outside, like they are biting each other. it's weird but it's amusing in a similarly weird way. They are walked by their mom or dad, who live across the street from me.

There is a middle-aged single mom who always talks to her old male neighbor every morning, in between yelling at her child to "get ready because we NEED to GO!"  they always seem to share a laugh though.

This morning, while walking to the metro to go to work, a little Hispanic boy maybe 7 years old, with striking green-blue eyes was walking towards me on the sidewalk. He smiled at me with a huge grin and said, "Hola!" It was great to get that enthusiastic of a greeting from a complete little stranger. He most likely thought i was some other old lady, but he was a sweetie.

Random things like that make me like my neighborhood.

i also love the fact that everything happens so close to where i live. last night i got to get drinks w/ girlfriends and saunter home to my little place. i am doing yoga tonight at the studio in my hood and pub trivia with some co-workers.

life is long and life is good.

party prose.

my favorite sort of night is when you have a glass of wine while putting your makeup on. but not too much wine, because you don't want to put on too much makeup.

you go out to your favorite bar. with your friends. and then other people show up that you don't know and you exchange names. everyone is friendly and talks and gets along.

everyone likes hearing what you choose to play on the jukebox. everyone likes motown so you play motown. everyone likes Sam Cooke.

you continue on with beer because that's what you started with, or you move on to whiskey. and moving onto whiskey is usually always a bad idea, but you chose to do so anyway. you are little older now, so you know to sip it and it won't be as bad as you know it could be.

everyone gets sick of the first bar and you go to another bar. the second bar is never as good as the first one, but you needed to leave the first bar. right now you couldn't say why you did if anyone asked you.

someone is restless like you and invited everyone back to there place. it is not yet 12am but everyone still wants to go back to someone's place. some of you go and some of you take cabs home together to make love, and some of you go home alone to watch a movie, eat drunkenly and bitch.

you go back to the house, because you are restless and still want to meet all these people and talk about their lives and talk about how they see the world. this all sounds better while holding a glass of wine. you sip that too though, because you want to enjoy every sip, every word that is coming out of this new person's lips.

the lights are lower in the room you all sit in. slowly, everyone goes off to bed, except for you and an attractive man. you stay up and talk. you exchange stories, know where he is from, what he did in high school with his friends - however nerdy, although you don't find it nerdy you find it endearing - who he is or who he is not in love with, his favorite drink, what he likes about women, what he hates about women.

he is fascinated by you and everything you say and you can tell he wants to kiss you. but you both don't do that because all this connection is too comfortable to mess up this late at night. so you fall asleep on the couch and the next morning you walk home and you see him in a month and you feel like he forgot about all of it, but you look at him like you didn't. 

Being Your Own Best Friend

“When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier.”
― Diane Von Furstenberg

“The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Because no matter what happens, you will always be with yourself.”
― Diane Von Furstenberg

We are far too hard on ourselves. And not only the own voices inside our head, but the media that implants little nasty ones as well.

I've realized this week i need to remember to be kinder to myself. If I said the the things i say to myself to a friend, that friend would probably think i was a big B-I-T-C-H.

It was my first time back at yoga since my bike accident tonight. My left side is bothersome, but I can finally do downward dog and arm stands again. Or so i thought. I couldn't even get up to the wall!

And from that discouragement I spiraled into thinking everything about me was horrible. i think i may have shed a tear during Savasana.

But after the class, the teacher came up to me and said it was nice to meet me. i told her i hadn't been in since the accident and that i couldn't do any of the moves-

and she interrupted me right there and said, "no, no. Stop right now, that does not matter. it's not about the moves." and then she had a big smile on her face and i felt a little better.

my room is messy sometimes. and sometimes i don't forget about men as fast as i'd like to. i let them linger like favorite songs and poems. sometimes i stay on pinterest for a whole hour or leave all my clothes on the floor after i wash them, instead of folding them in neat piles. and sometimes i eat mac n cheese for dinner that's not organic.

but i need to remember to just forget about all that shit cause i need to be nicer to myself and see all the good things and encourage them and not dwell on when i fall short.

i'm actually pretty good at being alone and surviving that way. i've never lived w/ a man who was my lover and i no longer live with parents. so in that sense i feel confident. but loving the person i am with alone is a whole different thing i always need more work on. why is it so easy to listen to the bad shit?

i am reminded of the wise words of the poet-prophet, singer-writer, the myth, the legend, Leonard Cohen:

You'll never guess

Ok. So now i am seriously thinking the Universe has moved beyond playing pranks on me and is actually trying to tell me something significant. cuz nothing makes sense anymore!

You'll never guess who emailed me to mention "that we should hang out and catch up soon - and did i see you walking down the street last week?" And yet i then saw him today running with his lady friend of last Sunday??? I don't even know if he's single. Does he really JUST want to be friends. He's just too sexy for me to do that with him.

The WHITE WHALE, the RPJ, returns and i really wanna know the beginning of this story, or the end of it.

if anything does happen and Ahab finally catches the White Whale, you'll be the first to know about it, dear reader.

like i said. BIG if.

i really think he's just playing tag with me, adult style.

You're gonna make it after all.

I finished a project management seminar my company sent me to for two days today. It was at a hotel in downtown DC so i got to pretend I was Mary Tyler Moore in the morning business crowds. No hat to toss though. Can't stand the hat hair. I settled on wearing tights and a skirt from Banana Republic.



I learned a whole lot. I was reminded of the Work Breakdown System (WBS) I studied for a semester in my masters program. The seminar leader said many good sentences that related not only to project management but also real life. One that resonated with me was:

"I cannot reach perfection but I can reach excellence," shown bright on his power point.

He also said procrastinators tend to be perfectionists.

Obviously, he was talking about me. I had no idea it was common knowledge that both traits typically resided as a pair, but now, suddenly, everything makes a whole lot more sense.

Besides my basic personality trapping me into a nasty perfectionism habit, I believe growing up as an American Woman is a big part to deal with it as well.

I feel as an American we emphasize competition, being the best, being "special", standing higher than the "average" crowd.  There has always been a pressure to be "the best" - and sometimes one can equate this need to be the best with being "perfect."

Besides this American ideal of being an independent, self reliant being at all times, throw the WOMAN factor in there:

As a woman in America there is a tremendous pressure to be all the things everyone in your life needs you to be. You must be the "perfect" mother, daughter, sister, lover, employee, artist, mother goddess, yogi....the list can go on as long as you think it can.

The media perpetuates these two beliefs through ads.  I found a recent article in the Atlantic to be really disturbing regarding how advertisers try to market to women when they "feel their most ugly." This graphic below is from that article.




SO THAT'S PRETTY MESSED UP.

The fact that the media is targeting women, and trying to feed off our already deflated esteem is pretty sick.

We must strive for excellence - not perfection - in order to stop these daily assaults our self-worth experiences.

I'm going to add this idea to my daily practice. Instead of perfection, I'm going to seek excellence. I'd rather chase after something I know I may eventually be able to catch.

It reminds me again of one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

PSA: To Men who DROP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

Saturday night my friend asked me to go to a DC comedy showcase with her.  I had nothing to do after i came back from the exhibit and i thought, "well sure, what the hell i have nothing else going on."

She told her friend J that i was coming with. WELL J is friends with the LAWYER. the lawyer that took me to Le Diplomat - the lawyers that took me on a bunch of awesome dates and reminds me of the comedian Louie CK - for vague reasons - the lawyer i wanted to see more of..sorta.  And this LAWYER was going to the comedy show as well.

My roomie texted J to tell him i was coming. He responded with, "um no. don't bring her." So I guess J didn't want me to go, due to his friend not liking me. The lawyer hasn't spoken to me in 3 weeks and dropped off the face of the earth. It sucks, but it's ok.

Here's my issue with this situation.
Situation: When you go on multiple dates with a man and nothing is wrong and you have fun and that man you went on the dates with suddenly drops off of the face of the planet.

I'd much prefer that instead of you DROPPING OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH, to tell me in person/via text that you want to be friends instead. EVEN IF YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS, at least humor me and tell me in person, "you'd rather be friends". If you tell me "i want to be friends" i will take it as you are no longer interested in seeing me," not as "we are friends." i'm not stupid and i know code words and phrases just like you do b/c i have used them before as well. Idiot.

This way, i do not have to have you in the maybe category. i can have you in the NO category. i can give my attention to the other men i am dating and stop wasting a thought on you.

I realize why you don't want to tell me and would rather DROP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH than do so. I realize you want to have the easy way out. You think that if you never say anything it's better than possibly hurting my feelings. you think i will forget about you OR you think if you never CLEARLY break it off, at some point you can call me again months later and i will respond with wanting to fuck you. SOMEHOW THIS MAKES SENSE IN YOUR MIND.

#1 - if you never clearly break it off, i'm MORE likely to remember it, and MORE LIKELY to be MORE UPSET WITH YOU - not forget it. It's decent to tell me you're not interested. I realize it's hard BUT PUT YOUR BIG BOY PANTS ON AND COMMUNICATE. TELL ME THE TRUTH. i promise it is better than letting me just be irrationally mad at you. if you told me, I'd know it was because you were not attracted to me - physically, intellectually, ___________ly.

#2 - if you think that I'm going to WANT TO FUCK YOU after you avoiding me for several months like i have the bubonic plague THEN YOU ARE AN IDIOT and need to not ever meet another woman again, in order to spare future generations of carrying on your stupidity in their genetic make-up.

So since i was DIS-INVITED to the comedy show b/c this LAWYER could not gather the balls to simply text or tell me in person he was no longer interested in me - I went to my friends' M & B's house and watched the Red Wings game. It was very fun. We won! And then i went to a Bocce Ball bar w/ my cousin and his friends - which was drunk and good and what i wanted to do that this Saturday night.


At this point if LAWYER contacts me it would just be pointless, so i don't really care now. I'm fine with the idea that he's "just not that into me." I just wish men were more able to eloquently express their feelings. It's totally cool if you don't dig me. Just don't DROP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH or give me silent treatment. It just makes me feel shittier than if you would've told the truth in the first place.

commodifying love

In the recent days, I've noticed many posts on my facebook relate to weddings and babies. and that's all fine. There are different stages we go through in our life and when we are happy about those stages we want to celebrate and share them with others.

My issues with this is when it becomes a carefully curated thing, losing all genuineness and sincerity - it's more about what others see than what you see or how you feel about it [loving relationships]. Because in the scenarios I'm about to mention, you're seeking approval from the world,  not your own self or your partner.

I've been seeing a new trend in wedding videography where people HAVE TRAILERS for their wedding video. What is this? Besides your family and close friends who will be buying this? What is the purpose of sharing intimate moments ("first look", walk down the aisle, notes from each other, vows) to every person on the internet, including people who do not know you?

I feel like weddings and private celebrations have become sick opportunities to "out-do" your peers, show-off. Prove or perhaps create a life you don't actually lead. What does it matter what strangers think of your private life?

What happened to proposals being a private affair between two people who are madly in love? I know see proposal videos everywhere - extravagant, choreographed flash mobs??? What has society become. Nothing is sacred I guess. We are not celebrities. We are not significant public figures. We are people living our lives.
 









 



Another thing I've seen is posts about newlyweds cooking for their husbands - IN PICTURES WITH APRONS ON. I understand your excitement. But you have been raised in a post-Women's movement generation. You're essentially back-pedaling when you post patriarchal, old school photos of you "cookin' for your man." It's great you are a loving partner. But where are his pictures of himself in AN APRON COOKING FOR YOU? or does he just sit and watch football and drink beers while you slave in the kitchen? BECAUSE IF SO, THAT'S BULLSHIT.  You love your husband and your life - but why not show that in a non-misogynistic way? Gardening together, out together? These things put you on even levels not in a demeaning, old-school social realm that needs to die off. You are re-enforcing a very bad stereotype.

 










Or perhaps, if you do get joy out of that why do you want to show that on FB? Why would others who are not you or your husband care or be happy about that happening? If you do that does that mean you have a perfect marriage and are a "good" partner?




I guess if it is important for you for people to know every moment in your life and approve of the way you live your life, that's fine. Whatever floats your boat. I just think the constant commodification of love is really disgusting to me as an outsider and I feel it takes away a lot of the private mysteries you share as a couple.


 



It seems with my generation everyone needs to know everything about you and "if there are no pictures it didn't happen."

I think that is a horrible way to live one's life. It also feeds into some sort of self-entitlement or ego problem you need to get rid of. The ego can be a very ugly, ugly thing if fed too often.

Peter Higgs

Today, the new Nobel laureates in physics are 84-year-old Englishman Peter Higgs, after whom the particle is named, and Francois Englert, 80, of Belgium.

Peter Higgs could not be reached by phone. It is rumored he "disappeared" a few days ago to a remote location. Perhaps in the Shetland or Orkney Islands? Or maybe somewhere much farther away. 

I love the fact that Peter Higgs has gone into seclusion and did not bring a cell phone with him. Perhaps one of the few sane men left in the world. 

I also hope he is relishing a scotch, neat, in the sun somewhere and laughing to himself. 

Things that do not matter

I got into a nasty bike accident this past Saturday. I was at that busy, bustling, breathing intersection of Adams Morgan; between the McDonald's and the Starbucks.




I flew over my handle bars onto the concrete road. I didn't get up immediately because the wind was knocked out of me. So a bunch of people came down and scooped me up with my bike. I sat on the sidewalk with everyone staring and asking me questions, "What's your name, how old are you, what day is it?"

As soon as my head was pulled off the ground, I saw the blood.  At first it came down like a leaky faucet. but soon it just started a steady stream down my left eye, my cheek, neck, down my dress, and all the rest of it on my arms and hands. My arms and hands were scratched too though, so that could of been from those cuts as well.

Someone called an ambulance and i went to the ER. I now have a black eye and a shoulder that won't move a lot.

I WASN'T WEARING A HELMET.

I'll never do that again. I am SO LUCKY that nothing else happened to me. It could've been really really bad.

My accident also set the recent laundry lists of daily stresses in my life on fire:
feelings
past shit i can't change
boys
job
other bullshit

After i was catapulted from my bike I realized nothing really matters except:
my health
what i do with my life to positively effect others
how i live my life
and who i spend it with.


At least until I forget about my mortality again, I'm done caring about stupid, pointless, meaningless shit.

I choose the rooms that I live in with care.

Sometimes I find I get to
Thinking of the past
We swore to each other then
Our love would surely last

You kept right on loving
I went on a fast
Now I am too thin
And your love is too vast

But I know from your eyes
And I know from your smile
That tonight will be fine
Will be fine, will be fine, will be fine
For a while

I choose the rooms that I live in with care
The windows are small and the walls almost bare
There's only one bed and there's only one prayer
I listen all night for your step on the stair

But I know from your eyes
And I know from your smile
That tonight will be fine
Will be fine, will be fine, will be fine
For a while

Oh, sometimes I see her undressing for me
She's the soft naked lady love meant her to be
And she's moving her body so brave and so free
If I've got to remember that's a fine memory

And I know from her eyes
And I know from her smile
That tonight will be fine
Will be fine, will be fine, will be fine
For a while

And I know
And I know
And I know

Friday night, the 27th

Friday night i went out with the HCMW (hawt canadian man whore) lawyer.  We went to Union Market for some tasty sea morsels of raw oysters. I ordered the Cava, he got a beer i forget the name of now. Oh and we also hacked away at a glorious crabcake, crispy on all sides, laying on a beg of pretentious (in the best sense) slaw.

The HCMW went to Berlin last week and told me of his travels. He spoke of beer and beer and sausages and bread. and lots of art. and people with crazy hair styles who will be cooler than you no matter how hard you try. He also said the bars were all hole in the wall, divey places with dark dark lights and a band that would consist of violinist and bass - or pick any two other instruments.

After that we then went to a bunch of other fine H Street establishments. They have great bars on that street. They are the kind that you can hide away in and will not see anyone you know. They are a bit smoky, loud and secret.

At the Old Queen Vic we had the most beers. Mostly of the Scottish fare. Then the HCMW continued to romance me and i was done for. We've been dating since August, so the jig is up.

After our fun night we went to the Crafty Bastards Craft fair.  I bought a beautiful print from an Asheville, NC's Marisol Spoon, http://marisolspoon.com/category.php?category_id=2 I got the "Librarian" one. So fitting. She is so cute. I can't wait to stick her in a frame.

The HCMW wears a St. Christopher necklace under his clothes, over his collarbone. He brought me back 3 huge bars of dark chocolate (70%+). He told me he wants to fatten me up so he won't have other men competing for my affections and he can have me all to himself. Ha! I thought that was very saucy to say.

The Cultural Queen About Town....i suppose.

i am going to a Physicist lecture,

A Curator of the National Gallery private tour.

Andrea Bruce talk @ Corcoran.

Nicholas Sparks talk on Friday.


I'm a Renaissance woman, I am!