Babies!!! And Music.

Ahhhhh. Dug up some MP3s from two years ago or so. We're on Barstool Prophets right now -- I really should go hunting down their CDs again. I really like this stuff.

But! What you don't know is that two of the african violet leaves I started for The Other Woman have thrown up the first pup leaves. That's right, two of them are showing babies. Three left to go... I worry that they're not getting enough light in there because they do shade each other. They could probably go under her grow-lights at her place now, since it's pretty certain they have root systems enough to survive the move and maybe underwatering or whatever might happen there if I can't look after them.

So there, Other Woman. In retaliation for not being able to have the Juggler's babies I've had yours instead. ;)

I definitely feel the urge to quote song lyrics. Most of them are pretty depressing when it gets right down to it, but I'm in a sort of triumphant mood that makes them feel really nice to say.

Sometimes you'd send me a birthday card with a five dollar bill,
You know I never understood you then and I guess I never will.

My daddy gave me a name, and then he walked away.
Daddy gave me a name...

I will never be safe,
I will never be sane,
I will always be weird inside,
I will always be lame.

Now I am a grown man with a child of my own,
And I swear to you she'll never know all the pain I have known.

I'll admit I was pretty impressed when I heard that song for the first time. Sure, the whole thing isn't perfectly accurate, but it's pretty damned close. It's really, really satisfying to sing that bold part. Remember: it's a good weird, most of the time. ;) The whole thing is really satisfying, something along the lines of the way Pearl Jam's Alive sounds satisfying and buoyant. I do like a lot of Everclear, even though I can't relate to a lot of it.

I can't decide which Barstool Prophets songs to 'sing along' to, nor which pieces of them, so I think I'll have to leave that for now.

Bahamut on Otherspace's asked me to write a description for a war memorial, I need to do a garden round and start organising things by email for the poly retreat, I have those dishes to do and possibly the bike to release from bondage on the deck and put inside here. I need food today and I'll go running with Mom, and I think that's about it -- a nice quiet day that's not empty and not bursting at the seams.

Here's at it then.

The Livejournal Web

So I found an old and important friend of mine on livejournal. We'd talked for awhile a while ago and sort of drifted apart into various busy-ness or maybe just different-ness.

(Run with mom interrupts. We're getting faster! 54 mins instead of last time's 63 and almost no walking breaks, comparatively. Weird that it happens so fast when I'm only going out one day a week. Other Woman! Schedule!)

So anyhow, I mosey over there and pop him onto my friends list. And I realise: livejournal doesn't make me feel more connected to anyone. I'm not writing for them, I'm not communicating to them effectively, they're reading my general internal narrative that I just happen to have in a public place and misinterpreting it more than they would if it were a real conversation. then they think they know me better, and feel connected. I haven't talked to them, and don't have the same sense of connection.

What -does- it do? It establishes a baseline level of knowledge, assuming I read theirs too, so that we don't have to drudge through the details of the day. It provides a launching platform to talk about the important stuff when we're together while dealing with the rest when we have time. This means that a ton of opportunities to talk about stuff are missed (I don't say to the Exotic, hey, this this this and this happened, so he doesn't have an opportunity to say that that that and that. Instead he reads this and maybe only remembers one thing to comment on because of the removal in time).

It's definitely a mass-media 'modern' sort of way to live my life. I -do- talk to people less when I do this because the urge to let someone know about it gets out. I have fewer conversations about daily trivia, certainly. Do you people think you know me better than you would otherwise?

Is there a substantial difference between a livejournal-initiated friendship and a normal one? Do you find that a friendship that gets on livejournal changes a bit?

Lonely Night Blues

This is always the night that gets me. The first night back is fine, I just crash and sleep pretty much. It's the second night back where I get to be really, truly alone, where there's an alone-night behind me and one in front of me. I feel bad, like a church bell struck once in silent darkness and the sound echoes on and on and on.

The shape of loneliness becomes clearer the more people you know. The more that I find that people can really have things in common with me, that they can really feel and think like me, the more I notice the clear distinction between myself and that huge mass which isn't like me.

It certainly isn't as sharp as it used to be. I used to wake up in the nights and be certain I'd die, spontaneously break or shatter just because there was no one else even remotely close to me in the cosmos. It isn't breaking anything now, I'm strong enough that I barely notice it in the sense that it doesn't change my functioning. That's even worse, in a way, because I have so much of what I want. I can't rail against the whole thing, I can't even, really, be unhappy about it. I don't really want a change in circumstance, just someone to hold me every night.

I don't have anything to give up in exchange for what I want. I don't have a way to get it, or a real idea of how I'd want my situation set up so that I got it. This isn't practicality, here, and it's not even a matter of a chain reaction of feelings. It's just that one, solid and reliable like kicking a tire: I'm lonely.

And what will I do? I'll go to bed with my book and I might cry a little. The SO will kiss me goodnight and leave until morning. Maybe someone will read this and call me (it happened, once) and maybe they won't. In the morning the SO will come home, there will be sunlight and I'll make chili and everything will be... the word isn't tolerable, but perhaps unruffled. Everything will be unruffled again. And a night or a couple more nights will pass, depending on this weekend's plans, and I'll be close to someone(s) who cares, and then it will be Tuesday night and I'll come home and fall dead asleep, and then it will be this night again.

Seeing myself in this pattern is an odd mix of comfort and... despair? This is what I have, overall. It's a good thing, overall. This part of it hurts me, but that happens.

And now sleep for me. Thank you, and good night.

Dark Waters

Oh, but this is seduction.

The SO makes me feel interesting. The Exotic makes me feel needed. The Juggler, now: he makes me feel wanted, and sometimes he even makes me feel liked.

What sort of a thing is this? What sort of a way to treat me is this? I'm not some exotic creature, wierd and strange, to be treated warily and watched. I'm not some dark goddess to be held apart with awe and worshipped from afar. I'm just a person, really, not very much unlike anyone else, and he's asked me if I'd like to go biking Friday.

I don't think I can explain this to you, except perhaps to say: this hasn't happened before in a very long time, if it ever has. I'm accustomed to taking what I wanted, not having it offered to me as if it were something the other person had wanted before I did. I'm not accustomed to having my presence, not demanded or taken for granted or assumed or hoped for, but simply asked for.

When I first met the SO he broke through all those shields I'd had for so long by being brutally constant. He had a silken hammer and he never stopped pounding on the plexiglass with it; I had to trust, eventually, that he really was what he seemed to be and when I did those shields broke and there I was, really alive.

When I met the Exotic I gave that back.

Now the Juggler's found a velvet-cased scalpel and he's slicing into some of those deep secret sacred areas that, after all, may be no more than simple desire to be wanted on some sort of an equal and a ...kindred is too strong a word, but that level.

Understand that this is immensely frightening for me. Understand, too, that I really don't want to fight it. I want to walk into the dark waters until they cover my eyes and at some point I'll be forced to breathe. We'll only need to see if they drown me or not. I don't think they will. People haven't drowned me, yet. Only my own refusal to breathe when I was afraid has.

Does this frighten you? I'm such a changeable creature in the end, some core tucked away invisible to you and here on the outside all you can see is countless layers of peoples' fingerprints, your own and others, little shapings made by collisions over the ages that have nothing whatsoever to do with the core. Do you wish to shape me? Do you wish to see your own fingerprints more than another's? Do you wish me to remain unchanged, a sculpture hard as stone laid out for worship from afar because a hug would shatter the bones of any who tried it?

You really can't ever own another person. You can only love them, and sometimes they might let you look in.

In all incongruity I must add that the perfect red shrub rose is named Sevillana and I need at least six of them to landscape the front of The Other House.