Sarariman

Went out Saturday night.

My usual scheme these days is:

- to attend some event purposely

- not to ask for company for specific attendance but to go alone

- to come just before the event, to minimize idleness (also mingling)

- to have just 1-2 drinks while there

- to leave as soon as the event ends

Yes, it is just as cautious as it sounds.

I’d rather err on the side of caution than on the side of having to explain my unwillingness to share.

Not that I mind explaining, it is just people being offended by explanations.

But Saturday night bucked

so I got summoned

to share some drinks and some words

before everything I had planned

so I idled

and I drank

and felt just like sarariman let loose from his noose

and it felt fuckin’ great.

I’m truly sure I was a pain in the butt

But it felt as good AF

And it took me two days to come to

Since being in venues that allow smoking gives me the worst hangover

THE WorsT

But it freed me from myself

And from this overbearing need to control

Everything.

Dream poke

Part 3 of TBD

So what about much younger, extremely attractive, formally dressed man from my dream?

Well, to my knowledge I do not have preference to:

- younger - as no age gap can compensate for lack of common ground

- extremely attractive - as I often find most interesting brains in quite inconspicuous vessels

- formally dressed - as formal attire usually signals conformist restriction

- man - as interesting minds are being carried around in various-gendered cases, engulfed in various-gender-role beliefs

So with whom has my dream connected me?

It is not someone unattainable (as I do not seem to have trouble connecting with that demographics), it is the sum of specifications that are bound to get my attention because I would just not consider them together.

So, my curiosity is piqued. What now?

Truly solo

Part 2 of TBD

So, what does my vibrant dream have in common with reality?

Honestly, not much.

It's almost two years now for me being truly single. Not hunting and not nursing some sadness and licking my wounds. Last person I had some noteworthy connection with was the guy from few posts below and I have also documented the finality of the decree here on the blog when the connection ended.

I remember speaking with him about this at that time, about me believing that I will go solo for a while now, and I remember it because it was a funny and strange conversation, one with me defending not myself from accusations but rather defending the premise of happiness of soloism.

I was not truly solo from when I was six.

Recurring dream

Uncannily similar fashion statement found on http://www.ownonly.com/product/763-solid-purple-oxford-shirt

Part 1 of TBD

Lately, I have this recurring dream
that I'm paired up with a much younger man.

It begun few months ago and the dream was so vibrant I had to write it down:  

I had a dream that I am married to a much younger, extremely attractive man. 

We live together but - as it is the rule and not an exception for a very long time already - I am clearly completely ignoring him. At times, in the comfort of my own mind, I admire his beauty and, when lifting my head from some imminent task, I catch him watching me across the room, half longingly and half disapprovingly. Day turns into another day and at long last we find ourselves brought quite close to each other following some unknown chain of events. He is beautiful, gracious and extremely well dressed; wearing beige formal pants and pale purple shirt. 

I'm standing next to him, looking straight at his face and I'm asking: 

"Are you moving out?", 

and he shakes his head, looks at me defiantly, with a smile, and snuggles closer to me.

What I think I would like is more questions and less shortcuts

After this prolonged period of blog silence
blog hiatus so to speak
brought on by my unwillingness to share
(alleviated by writing food notes with some recipes in Croatian here on my other space)
I feel I want to air the contents of my scull
by verbalizing my thoughts
which is an exercise I rarely take part in.

Maybe it is time to clear the cobwebs and see what's in the corners.

Since I wrote my last post here on Tuesday
people have expressed their compassion and wished me well
which is all great and I encourage it
but I also think we're speaking different languages
and maybe that this should also be addressed
in an interest of clarity of this here situation described in the last post
and also other instances of emotion inference.

I am not hurt, angry or remorseful or disappointed,
am not wishful or riddled with doubts
and when I say that hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation skipped a beat and that my hands shook
it means I sensed the effect of stress in my body
and not that I felt bad.
This a common misconception, I feel,
in many many situations
and it is not brought on by my need to rationalize
but with unclarity of language and personal interpretation of physiological, sense-ladden and not emotion-ladden speech.

What we sense
(opposed by what we "feel" - which is clearly not sense related but thoughts/interpretation-related)
is the input to our cognitive system
and we, on occasion, emote subsequently
yet this emoting is rarely straightforward and often prone to interpretation.
Same wet palms are sometimes sign of stress
and other times proof of love
and I do not really care much about jumping the conclusion
emotion-wise
mostly because I see that lots of people are fully inept to understand or take responsibility for translating senses to responses to stimuli and prerequisites to actions.

Did I or did I not feel bad when I sensed the effect of stress in my body by way of hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation skipping a beat and by my hands shaking?

I felt...
startled, surprised, stressed
but also I felt certain I've made the right decision at the time
and sure that by consequence of that decision our eventual meeting would be unpleasant and unfavorable for any of parties involved,
not like earth-shattering extinction event but rather exercise in futility.

"Sometimes you've got to bleed to know, that you're alive and have a soul"

When returning to this here space
there is never a silence inside and consequent search for words
oh no
there is always such insane overabundance
it would be a word salad if I would only permit it to flow, to grow.

This morning I stopped at a red light behind the other car.
The car containing a person I was involved with
at one time.
My hands shook, and my hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation skipped a beat or two,
and  after I convinced myself that I was unnoticed
I spent rest of my drive to work thinking how extremely good it is that people seldom notice the effect they have on other people
(even when not separated by different moving vehicles).

I am not yet saved
but were I not extremely unpleasant and insulting
we would still be imprisoned by our good manners.

At an earlier point in time it was really difficult to me to accept the fact
that sometimes there is no way around
lovely and well mannered people
becoming prisoners of their own unconflicting nature.
There is no need to fignt, really,
or resolve conflict with violence of any kind,
and yet, the assertiveness and honesty and clarity of intentions
are sometimes still not enough to communicate
unambiguously
especially if mere existance of conflict is denied.

Were I not extremely unpleasant and insulting
I would have still wanted it to work
and if I am any judge of character WE would have still wanted it to work
and yet it would not
'cause it can not.

Primrose

I took a photo of the primroses above in friend's garden day before yesterday.
It grows warmer and, since CET time changed this weekend, it is still day when I come home from work so we can go for a walk and admire the colors of budding nature.

This weekend I went for a run in late morning
and all I could think about during the run is
how much I hate runing during the day.
People were everywhere
staring
not maleficent and rather good-spirited and curious
but everywhere
and other than fulfilling my workout task for the day I found no solace in that run.

The End of the Tour

Original theatrical release poster

I watched The End of the Tour few days ago.

I loved the movie and it also left me quite pensive. Turmoil’d.

Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg are both great, with Segel being absolutely, hauntingly awesome.

Hauntingly.

I have this trouble with knurd, can’t seem to suspend it for the duration of some things. I do not dislike that, in fact I usually revel it, but I acknowledge it is sometimes impractical. Like while trying to believe an actor is a character. In this case Segel was so perfect and so persuasive it was extremely hard for me to believe he’s not just reciting somebody else’s words - but THAT would be just the point of him doing an awesome job of being an actor transformed to a character. But the character in this case is a biographical sketch, likeness, a ghost of the person once existing and now deceased. Crazy. And beautiful. And crazy. Convoluted stuff.*

Segel’s Wallace is haunting.

I am not much of an expert on David Foster Wallace. Most of the things I know about him come from This Is Water, from opinions, reviews and obituaries. That really is not much, and yet … yet I acknowledge we share a few characteristics and many of them were the axis of this movie.

I used to be somewhat of a prodigy. I used to write a lot and to stir things up with my writing. I drank an awful lot and medicated myself to assert control over my life. I committed suicide.

That was 20 years ago and I was 18 at the time. In a month I will be 38 and later still, somewhen beginning autumn, there will be 20^th anniversary of my second life; life of practicality, moderation and adamant exclusion of television entertainment.

I loved the movie. I loved how we are only jumping on that train just for one final station. I loved how we are making the jump with bundle of conventional-ness and insecurity (Lipsky). It is well-paced movie and also a movie with definite feel of prose; few interactions brought to the top of the stream of life, to be noted and to be representative of writer’s impression of things. I loved the natural feel of happenings; the hanging out, the smoking, the stuffing of bellies with treats facilitated with being in company - to comfort and ease social awkwardness - sacred ouroboros of misfits everywhere.

In many a scene I could not help taking it personal and being moved, borderline insulted, with… how things are. It poked me right into my sense of appropriateness, that notion of people taking for granted that author is known through his work, implying we only write the things we are. We do not. Sometimes we write the things we most definitely aren’t, sometimes we write things we wished we could be, sometimes we write the people we loathe. That is the magic of creation. This need to attain security through elimination of ambiguity I find...

tiresome.

* Opposite, yet also knurd-unsuspensing thing happens when people are presenting themselves in movies, never really being persuasive enough to fill in the expectations.

Type.ING

Sometimes

 - on a particularly trying day on the job -

when I raise my eyes from my hands typing frantically on keyboard

(can you believe this is how I concentrate?!)

and I grab mouse and click send

I am just so unimaginably glad this is my work

and am so happy I was brave enough to pursue my dreams.

I freakin’ love this job.

Every day I am out of my comfort zone

and every day I learn something insane,

interesting

and amusing

and when I look inside myself

I can hardly believe who I grew up to be.

"Let's embrace the point of no return."

As time goes by

I,

as a creature of discipline and intense introversion,

feel that I’m getting closer and closer to my true self.

Immersing into experience more

And also wielding the sword of truth with yet unprecedented resolve,

Dividing reality from fiction.

Pain is no longer bordering with pleasure.

I went for a run night before last.

It is finally cold enough to run comfortably

And it was so late it was almost tomorrow

But the night was cold and crisp and beautiful

And even the dog-walkers were absent from the world.

Such unearthly bliss.

I’m listening to Disclosure’s Caracal while running now.

It dissolves daily toil into nothingness.

Incubus

You already know I dream rich when I am down.
Engaging.
Vibrant.
With feel.
Using a lot of color to paint a lot of pain.

When I woke up this morning,
minutes before the alarm,
I still felt the touch and the emotion
and I knew - for a fact - that the dream was a lie.
Often it takes me minutes, sometimes days, to be certain that the dreamstuff did not happen.
But not this time.

The pain is fierce and fresh.
The decree final.


Thoughts whistle through the silent void.

Dancing With Myself

Q: If you had to summarize this whole marriage dissolution situation in one word, one word that would encompass all the heartache, anger, emotional and financial loss, image management, relationships management and all other material and immaterial consequences of this proces, which word would that be?

A: Educational. The word would be educational. Like not having something valuble in the beginning and then later - having it! It is a powerful word and a powerful concept that is deceptively difficult to grasp in all its simplicity.

Q: Have you ever regretted not staying in that relationship considering all the personal and social specifics of this dissolution, single parenting included?

A: No, I have not. Not because I was not thinking of it or because of the emotional load. I am not angry now and haven't been for a very long time. Anger was acute emotion, in use while there were still things to resolve and agreements to respect. After anger was spent and disappointment took center stage there was nothing more that could be done. Regret was prevented by thousand and one action I tried to make the relationship work while still in it. At one point losses were acknowledged and defeat accepted and the whole affair lost all of its value in one fell swoop.

Q: WTF? What you're saying feels a lot like wisdom distilled by thousands of rationalizations and lot less like true closure. It just takes once to hear you speak about some current crap he did or about some issue your opinions substantially differ to see that there's still fire in that furnace. What about that?

A: They are not truly dead when we divorce them even if they are dead to us as partners, LOL. Not everything about him was matter of dispute then nor is it now. I'm acknowledging that during the years following the dissolution I have seen also the things that made him appealing in the first place, but in the large scheme of things they are not enough to sway my opinion based on experience at hand, not only during the marriage itself but during the whole period we know each other.

Q: Let's speculate that he would be interested in getting back together. Are you afraid you could like him again? Or are you actively trying not to be in the situation to have to think about that?

A: Being afraid of that would imply that liking someone is a condition like contagious disease, one we cannot predict or avoid. To like someone you need some common ground and some trust that things which are not openly common have possibility to be common. Here that is not the case. We already know that our common ground is too small for comfort. I am not afraid of liking him. I'm not avoiding the issue. With the information I already have I can make better than educated guess that even if we both consciously worked on getting along that would not work. And there is ridiculously small chance of us both consciously working at anything, be it pizza pie or relationship.

Q: Why are you talking about this so much then? Writing posts? Re-visiting experiences?

A: Just like I already mentioned in the beginning of this topic exploration  there were open case studies that made this experience, my experience, more accessible and I chose to revisit it to see how it's holding up. I'm a experience connoisseur and would like to keep this one nice and fresh for reference. 

Q: Fresh for reference?! Meaning that you will inspect other relationships through the prism of relationship demise??

A: That is an interesting assumption but I do not think I will do that. At least not in a doomsayer's kind of way. I love relationships. I love their ups and downs, getting-to-knows, opening one's heart in trust to embrace the possibility of success. I also love learning about myself in those situations and I think I would like to keep having opportunities to keep learning. Experiences school us, that is true, but people are not so predictable that they would not be awesome and wonderful packages of characteristics, skills and mores - bringing surprise and joy just as often as bringing some less desirable content. 

Q: Big talk from someone with so prominent proclivity to non-belonging.

A: Yeah, well. Nobody's perfect :-P But there's still hope that there is some belong-worthy material out there.