Just Like Life

I'm feeling calmer today. I want to try to hold onto that. We've decided on the place we want; we put down the deposit tonight, then I can stop worrying. It's basically right behind/beside VCC, at St Catherine's X 6th. We decided against the little house because although it's AWESOME (well, old, not polished, but super cute and a stand-alone house with a yard) it would be absolutely stretching our budget and, well, I'm tryin' ta go to school here.

I had the most interesting and engaging dream last night. I was taking a philosophy class, and I walked in a little late-- it was the second session. I was handed a test, two pages, double-sided, multiple choice. And the test didn't make any sense. The questions went sort of like this:

1) How many kittens are in a basketful?
a) (picture of a circle with pink dots) b) (picture of an orange bar) c) picture of a pink circle with orange dots d) (a picture of a white-and-green circle)

So they didn't make any sense. The answers were mostly little abstract icons, when they had words they were nonsense. Neither I nor any of the rest of the class was worried, though. It felt like there was a point or a lesson to doing this, and when we were done the teacher would take them, look at them all, and show us whatever it was. I woke up before that point though. It was pretty pleasant trying to choose a 'best answer' and sort of puzzling over it all.

Well, here we are: another day. Today I need to pick up my last paycheque, talk to my old boss about my t4, get rat food & litter, lunch with Mom, and drop off the damage deposit/first month's rent. Then a nice dinner with Michael and I get to go to sleep again. These are all things to look forward to!

Look how social food is for me. I'm looking forward to living not-far from Tillie and CrazyChris, who do similar foodsy stuff. Nothin' like making a bunch of food and sharing it.

Meditation on the Present

First, I watched this ted talk. A day or two later there was some discussion of religious fasting as it relates to sex. I've got this crush going on. Finally, I had a good long poly discussion yesterday that touched topics like having 'feelings' (what a turn of phrase) for people outside of a primary relationship and sometimes overstepping boundaries based on that.

And so I've been thinking. One of my personal tendencies is to live in the future-- or maybe as the ted talk says, in my future memory of the present. I'm always one step ahead-- if we've decided on a place to live I'm worrying about whether I can get the rent cheque dropped off and still make it to dinner, or about calling and telling the other places I'm not interested.

This has served me very very poorly in the past in my relationship interactions. As Juggler will no doubt attest, even if I'm happy and snuggled up with you right now, if I have any suspicion that I might miss you or have friction with you in the future, I Will be worrying about that. I never really end up enjoying the moments of my relationships because of that.

Perhaps I should say I did that all the time. I am, as they say, recovering.

Especially in the relationship realm this is helpful. When I'm out walking and I see a magnolia flowering in february, say, it's immediate enough for me to forget myself, forget my little projected movie of the future, and just marvel. When I make that so for my human interactions, I spend all my time marvelling. I no longer worry about the point of friendship or whether this is what it's supposed to be like-- instead I spend a happy afternoon talking so someone who makes me feel good to be around about things we're interested in, and I feel connected and understood. I can look into someone's face and instead thinking about it all, just interface with them. And then afterwards I'm like, wait, I think that WAS the point. When I spend time with someone that makes me tingly, I just relax and enjoy the feeling, and it's good. If I spend the time in my head (in the moment, obviously I'm still going to think about it afterwards) and play potential videos-- sex or no sex? what does this emotional stuff mean? does it indicate x or y should happen -- things get confusing and snarled. I wonder if I should make provision for the future-- should I hoard time? Should I plan another get-together soon? What if I can't? What if this never happens again? What if I feel obligated (yes, that is the normal state of my brain, a hundred worries).

And with sex it's the same thing. It's much more satisfying to spend time with someone sexually if you're paying attention-- whether or not it 'goes this far' or 'doesn't go that far' or whatever.

And so this has relevance to poly for me, because I have had a tendency to push or jump boundaries because I was busy thinking about over there, and not busy enjoying what I had. And when I stopped to enjoy what I had, I realised it was enough. I need to run out the door now, but wanted to get that down.

Dragged from the archives

Sprign being what it is, I felt the urge to dredge up a particular poem. It's been a couple of years since I posted it here last. Thinking of it because I have been particularly aware of my talent for sadism today, and the total uselessness of such a talent in my life. I just have the knack, you know?

Self-Improvement

Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents' summer home,
Bruce's college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:

Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.

Imagine him at practice every evening,
more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,
the quadratic equation of her climax
yield to the logic
of his simple math.

Maybe he unscrewed
the bulb from his apartment ceiling
so that passersby would not believe
a giant firefly was pulsing
its electric abdomen in 13 B.

Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue's exhausted oar.

Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
met someone, apres-ski, who,
using nothing but his nose
could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.

Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.

Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.

The climaxes of suffering are complex,
costly, beautiful, but secret.
Bruce never played the light switch again.

So the avenues we walk down,
full of bodies wearing faces,
are full of hidden talent:
enough to make pianos moan,
sidewalks split,
streetlights deliriously flicker.

-Tony Hoagland