-{ redgeek.net }-

Normally, my roommate attends our HOA meetings as I’m typically in my martial arts class at that hour. Due to an hotly contested assessment that’s coming up, and my roommates schedule not allowing him to be there, I attended in his stead.

Oh. My. Fucking. Lord.

I felt like I was in grade school again, although all my classmates were over sixty. There were very few of the younger owners present, of which are quite a few, and I can understand why. The centerpiece of most of these peoples lives appear to revolve around insignificant conflicts with neighbors: who have the lights over their garages at the wrong angle, those who parked their car in their driveway or a guest spot without the right color permit, all sorts of nonsense. And these people were incensed. Positively livid. There were three or four coronaries simmering, I’m suprised nobody collapsed on the spot.

After an extended diatribe on her neighbor’s poor parking habits, finger wagging throughout, the loud lady in the back was asked a simple question by the HOA director, one of the few voices of reason: Have you talked with your neighbor about this?

“Oh no!” she explodes, heaving her three hundred pounds off her bench to wag even more vigorously at some invisible neighbor, “Oh no, she’s impossible, she’s unfriendly, I’ve had issues with her since I moved in, and her son, oh! Her son’s on drugs, there’s no telling what he’ll do, it’s an impossible situation, she just needs to have her car towed!”

Yeah, that’ll fix it.

And then there were the gossipy old ladies camping out in the back, who never added anything to any of the discussions, but would lean in to their friend to “whisper” in condescending tones loud enough for everyone to hear, “She’s wrong, wrong, wrong, you know that,” “As if my rates aren’t high enough already,” “Yeah, right, like that will happen.” Ad nauseum.

Stand up or shut up.

At one point to two real estate lawyers get into it:

“Have you heard of the [such and such] act that prohibits HOA’s from doing this sort of thing?”

“Yeah, I’m just waiting to see you bring a lawsuit buddy.”

“I will.”

“So do.”

“I am. Just wait.”

“You know how far you’ll get with that? Not even to first base, mister, and I’m going to laugh.”

“You’ll see.”

“Yeah, I’ll see.”

No, my dad can beat up your dad.

At one point they asked for volunteers to count the ballots on the assessment. For all their vim and vigor, they don’t fucking volunteer to do anything. So I step up and become the tally validator, signing off the results, and have to forcefully call for quiet (nearly prefacing with “children, children”) in order to hear what the board is saying to me.

Duties complete, I retire to the back of the room and catch the eye of another owner, slightly older than myself but not by much. We look at each other and smile, her eyes rolling: can you believe these people?

If only everyone walked in to the meeting asking themselves, “What can I contribute?” or “Why am I here?” it would make everything much more pleasant and take half the time. We’d be in, discuss, vote, out, done. If you stop and ask yourself why you’re bitching just before you do, you’ll find that most of the time you actually don’t want to. You have some other point to make that the complaining is merely symptomatic of, a point that can be made more effectively by intelligent, productive conversation.

I’d think that after enough years, this group of people would realize such a thing. Perhaps, if you’re life is boring enough and you can’t be motivated to get out and do something, or stay in and read or watch a movie, you require such inconsequential drama in your life. If that’s the case, that’s sad, but it’s a prison of their own creation.

Did I momentarily connect with the young lady because we’re about the same age? Or is it that we realize there are much more important things in life, like love, work, play, friends – interpersonal communication skills – school, art, a myriad of other things? Did these pre-boomers grow up in such isolated environments that they never learned how to stop, take a breath, and give someone the benefit of the doubt? Did they forget?

Inside and outside of my extended family, I know many of the same approximate age that are not nearly so petulant or small-minded, so I’m not inclined to make the generalization, but the forty-five minute scene was astounding, shattering any illusions of sage old men and women. I guess you don’t have to be an angsty goth teen to be bitter, mean, two-bit drama-whore. Character, or lack therof, holds no prejudices.

I’d like to think that I’ll never reach that stage – I guess we’ll see in another thirty or forty years – but who knows, perhaps I’ll end up coming full circle, arguing about diapers and unwilling to share my crayons.

“Generally, the initial reaction of a thwarted animal is to try harder to attain its goal. A starving chicken (Gallus domesticus) prevented from reaching its food by a wire fence will make increasingly frantic efforts to get through it. Gradually, however, this behavior is replaced by another which has no obvious purpose. When unable to find food, for example, pigeons (Columbia livia) will frequently peck the ground even if nothing there is edible. Not only will they peck indiscriminately, but they start to preen their feathers; such inappropriate behavior, frequently observed in situations of frustration or conflict, is known as displacement acitivity. Early in 1986, just after he turned thirty, Bruno began to write.”

– Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

This scares me.

“I’ve never been to an art exhibition before. I don’t really know what to do.”

“Ah, well then, it’s time we broaden your horizons,” I smile. “Don’t worry, you pretty much just drink wine and check out the art – photos tonight – and I might excuse myself briefly, if it’s alright with you, to try to pimp my work to the curator, but only for a moment.”

When we arrive, we’re already a couple drinks in, but it’s a dry bar at the reception, so I’m not in danger of embarrassing myself the the curator, who, as it turns out, is also the owner and a presenting artists. We do the quick introduction, trade cards, and since she’s not terribly receptive (although she doesn’t know me from Joe), I excuse myself to peruse the works with K.

K is a girl I’ve been out with a few times, but only in a group, and she’s always been hot for a friend of mine, another guy in the group. I found it interesting that she called me last Wednesday, given the aforementioned fact, but she’s cute and intelligent, so I gladly accelerated her We should hang out sometime offer with How about this Friday? There’s and exhibition I’d like to check out.

So there we were side by side, staring at photos on the white wall.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

In my book, that’s fine. Admitting your limitations, or in this case, just a lack of experience in one area of life, easily remediable, of which we all have at least a few, is far superior to pretense.

“Well at one level, it’s just a fundamental ‘Do I like it or not? Does it move me, or speak to me, or otherwise change or deepen my understanding of myself or the world?’ Or perhaps, ‘is it just plain fucking beautiful?’

“On another level, if you want to go there, but it’s not necessary, you can try to ascertain what the artist is trying to get across, or try to figure our why the piece does or doesn’t do it for you.

“Take this one, for example. To me, it’s just … flat. I don’t see the relationship between the subjects, or the negative space for that matter. It’s cluttered, just a collection of … stuff. Without focus, really. Your eyes want to drift out of the frame to something else.

“Now this one over here, I dig this. Se how low the horizon is, how there’s so much sky? It imbues a sense of space and potential, and the soft blur of the field and trees yield a dreamy, ethereal quality, although it’s muffled, like you’re an observer trying but unable to participate. The sky is the subject but only because of the minimal grounding of the land. Your eyes latch on to the horizon, briefly scanning left from the grove to the open field, but don’t find the subject, so they float upward into the clouded sky, and you’re left suspended, although slightly unsettled, limitless potential with a hint of uncertainty, the possibility of disappointment and depression.”

We lapse into silence, fixated on the photo.

“Of course, I totally pulled that our of my ass,” pulling the conversation back to the lighter side, “I have no idea what the artist was shooting for. I do the same thing with my own work.”

“No, when you say it, I totally see it, it makes sense, it’s there in the photo.”

“You’re right, it is in the photo, or rather, it’s in one interpretation of the it. I mean, art by it’s very nature is perceptual. Like I said, when people ask me about one of my pieces, this is how I answer. Yes, sometimes I’m looking to capture a particular mood or message, but sometimes that’s just where I start and not where I end. Or, a lot of the time, I’m just struck by the the image afterward, and I have to sit and ask myself why I can’t look away. And since I work in digital, sometimes that happens on the spot, right there on the little screen, I find what I’m looking for, and re-shoot, modulating what I think will improve the presentation, refining the found message.”

This perception permeates my life, I use the same feedback loops in my code, my martial arts, my writing, and obviously, my photography. I use it in my platonic relationship as well as romantic.

Why am I friends with him, why do I like her? It’s not predicated on the initial connection, or first impression, although that has an effect, like setting up the initial conditions, but it is swayed more by the recognition of evolving perception. What I see today affect what I see tomorrow, but does not derive it. The system is too complex and is constantly re-evaluating and observing itself, but at the present moment, now, it is my reality, the one I’ve chosen to create for myself.

But I always remember the other half of me, the me that’s watching me in the background, that this is just my current perception, and I can change that reality when necessary. This is also one of the levels of Ninpo beyond simple punching and kicking.

It’s not a cop out, or unwillingness to commit or wholly experience life – it’s not doublethink. I act on this reality (but realize I may be wrong) and I’m fully committed to my actions, and these actions manifest in consequences, in things that neither you nor I can ever change. I realize that is is my current interpretation of my knowledge base, I’m free to change my interpretation and expand my knowledge base any time I want, and this changes my reality – my thoughts and actions. I experience reality as that which I am, and that which I can change, again, I am a system thinking of itself. I am the author, my will manifests. Generally, that’s a good thing for everyone involved, but if it comes down to conflict, I highly recommend staying out of my way. You don’t want to be in the middle of that reality change.

And since you’re probably wondering, yes, the rest of the date went well, in terms of much talking and laughing, but I don’t think either of us really felt a connection beyond platonic. And I won’t change my reality on that unless she indicates that she’s changed hers (or perhaps, I just read her wrong.)

I was pissed. I didn’t want to go to the football game. We never payed attention; our high school had been on a losing streak since my sister had attended CHS. We’d sit, do nothing, apathetic, biding time until the parties started. I’d rather blow time in front of my computer, learning, doing.

But I was faced with four adamant friends wanting to pick up two girls they’d met from the prep school. It was early sophomore year, and I was one of the first to get a license, and had access to my mom’s Jeep Cherokee.

Fuck. Another night carting my drunk friends around, watching them slobber over reticent females, as I wish I could. But I was out of the loop, and outsider, sober.

As always, after many excuses and much cajoling, they convinced me. I turned her over and pushed in Faith No More’s “The Real Thing” more violently than necessary.

“Dude, not this shit. This shit’s old.”

He was right. It’d been released at least two years prior, and was old. Passe, even. But I loved it.

I turned the dial delicately, appreciating each notch of resistance, the apprehension, subtle grinding, pulling it the length of my nerves into my stomach.

I smile for the first time since my friends showed up – wickedly. They know I have a habit of driving too fast, bordering on recklessly.

They all reach for their seat-belts simultaneously. If they’re going to have fun drinking with the two girls shoved in the back seat on laps, I was going to have fun driving. Fast.

When we arrive at C’s house, I step out, leaning against the fender smoking a Camel, letting the other boys deal with extricating C and M from C’s parents. I wasn’t in the mood.

Two and a half cigarettes later, they emerge.

I nod nonchalantly to the newcomers, attempting to disguise my immediate attraction to M. Stubbing out my cigarette, I pause: “Better buckle up.”

The rest of the way to the game, I can’t hear the conversation over my music, my radio, my thoughts. I do not participate.

As my passenger tumble out, horsing around, inexpertly flirting with C and M, I resume my position against the fender, lighter suspended before smoke, flame bristling. M slides onto the hood, my eyes involuntarily follow her, flame still heating the flint.

“I fucking love that album.”

I challenge her with my eyes: unbelieving, not in the mood for insincere small talk despite her looks, to be used as a foil to her true interest, to have my album defiled. I challenged: inaudibly: prove it. You may be hot, but this ain’t free. Prove it.

“Faith No More. The Real Thing. Mike Patton. ‘89. Still rocks.”

I lean over and light her cigarette, smiling.

She was the first, the first one to destroy me, with help from myself of course.

We were born on the same day, and that would haunt my birthday for years.

I’ve been a skier for over twenty years, although I’m usually not able to get in more than a week in any given year. As a remainder of a dying breed, particularly in my age group, I’ve been forced to befriend many boarders. There’s some low-grade friction – don’t chop up my moguls and I won’t steal your powder – but after hours, at the lodge, we’re all bound by a common love of a good day on the slopes. We warm the chill in our bones with Jagermeister and the replace the lactic acid in our legs with Sierra Nevada Pale.

It was early in the evening, and I was talking to Kelly, a petite red-head that hit jumps and rails better than most of the guys on the hill. She was good, sponsored even. Her boyfriend was a cool guy as well, but in terms of skill, her aerials surpassed his even on his best day.

In walks M, and many of the wool-clad heads turn to follow the click of her heels. She’s definitely not a skier or a boarder: not a spot of gore-tex on her, slender, lithe, draped in a loose black dress, intentionally uneven hem and plunging decolletage. She’s the only one in the bar in stilettos. She saunters up to Kelly and give her a familiar hug. Kelly sees me eyeing M, and performs the introduction before disappearing to hang with her boy.

M models for G—— off and on, but for the time being, is just trying to stay local and avoid work at all. She lives with four other girls, including Kelly, sleeping in late and getting fired from various mundane jobs. And she’s blazingly gorgeous. Tall and slender with dark eyes and a skin tone on the light side of olive. Her teeth gleam white and her eyes sparkle when she laughs, tiny, intense points of light in a sea of almond and black, she is young and her skin is firm and she cocks her head to the side for a three-quarter profile when she’s talking to you.

We make plans for the next weekend, same place, I’ll pick her up at her place at ten. When I arrive, she’s splayed languidly out on her bed, barely awake. Late night last night, she says, wine? We sip wine and she whines elegantly about having to work, and earn money to live, and how that’s bullshit, and that she should have to do such a thing. She floats halfway into the closet change, allowing me to catch glimpses of her bare shoulder and upper back as she slides into a new outfit.

Tonight is going to be hell. She has no drive, no motivation, a complete disdain for working for anything, an overwhelming sense of narcissistic entitlement. She has no respect anything she has, as she’s only ever been given things and never achieved them. Although she wasn’t like this the week before, I can see in retrospect I voluntarily overlooked the indicators, choosing instead to focus on her beauty.

As we stroll into the bar, those I know fire suggestive grins, didn’t know you had it in you, B, she’s high caliber smiles, before letting their eyes molest her for a precious few seconds. Soon after our first round of drinks, she’s off talking to other friends, other guys, already halfway to drunk, the martini mixing with something else previously ingested, inducing a inexpert tongue and slightly lolling eyes. I let her go, chatting with with some of the boys, getting knowing slaps on the shoulder.

She returns, and pulls me out to the patio.

“So you know, when we were talking the other night, how I liked how you said you don’t judge what other people do?” She slurs the so_ and _said.

“Well, I don’t know about that – I definitely judge peoples’ actions, but but I’m not about to step in and stop them from doing whatever they want unless it affects other people, like me or my friends. I mean, I don’t smoke weed, but if you want to, more power to you, I’m not going to give you shit about it. Have a ball – it doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“Right, well, so, I wanted to ask your a favor.” Looming puppy dog eyes.

“Shoot.” I have a pretty good feeling my answer will be ‘no.’

“I’m out of coke, and my connection here doesn’t have any.”

Funny how I just used drugs as an example … perhaps I was picking up on something. “I see. And?”

“I know another guy, but he’s not here.” She spills some of her martini without noticing. “Downtown.”

“So you want me to drive you downtown, a half hour into a date, do pick up coke?” Her face curls down, hurt. Somewhere down deep I hit a nerve.

“You’re judging me. You don’t have to do it, you know.”

“I know I don’t. I just want to know if you’re going to try to drive down there if I say no. If you want to get all coked up, that’s your call, but that doesn’t mean I’ll help. But I’d rather drive you myself than have you go alone, particularly in your state.”

“Lissen, I’m sssorry I brought it up. I juss thought, you know, that you’d do it, because, you’re nice and you don’t judge people.”

“There’s a fine line between nice and pushover. What you want to do affects more than just you. It affects me if I go, and everyone else on the road if I don’t. If you want to go, let’s go. But know the reason I’m doing it is I don’t want you to put yourself into more of compromising position that you’re already putting yourself, and I don’t want you driving, for your sake and others. If you want to go, let’s go.”

“Do you think I’m a bad pershun?” The question rises in inflection and intensity at the end, she’s armoring herself.

“You want judgement? Fine. No, I don’t think you’re a bad person, but you have some issues. And what pisses me off is not that you want to snort up, but that you could have taken care of this beforehand, or not done it this one night, or even waited until late in the evening. But you waited until I picked you up and bought you drinks, and you wander off to talk to other people, and only come back when you need a driver. How about some courtesy? Yeah, you have issues, but no, you’re not a bad person. Just inconsiderate.”

I’ve spoken too strongly, at some point, I injured her, and she’s burying it, beginning to apply a mask of indifference.

“Okay, whatever. Less juss have another round and you can take me home.”

“Okay. Fine.”

Not my kind of snow.

Several of my friends and readers have remarked that some of my most entertaining and revealing posts are those in which I recount my Entirely True Stories of Dating and Date-Requesting Purgatory, or as one friend so aptly put it, “messcapades.” Truly, I’m pleased that my hours of boredom, fear, antipathy, and (hopefully) undeserved deceit are amusing to others as well as myself. (Note that I most frequently receive comments from on these posts from my married and coupled friends, rarely from the singletons. As a further aside, most of you either end up commenting in person or via email – I’m curious as to why people rarely use the “comments” thingy – is the interface sucky or something? Let me know.)

On this tip, I resolve to begin dating more, if only to gather seeds for more self-effacing posts. Look, see how I sacrifice for you, my audience! I will drown myself in this SoCal orgy of miserable evenings and stilted conversation. I will gorge on faltered introductions, blind dates, and yes, I may even respond to Craigslist ads. I’ll take a girl to Turf Club for dinner before finding out that she’s vegan. I’ll endure public beratement for suggesting the Zoo as an outing while with the PETA activist, at which point I’ll find out she’s a PETA activist. I’ll go out with a fundamentalist Christians.

Well, I don’t know about that last one.

But I will do this, for you, for my writing, and through it all, I will not compromise myself – and most importantly, I’ll actually try to make the dates work. I’m not trying to trick or deceive anyone, and will not be revealing identities, but I hereby resolve to date more, and find something interesting, amusing, insightful, or otherwise blog-worthy in each encounter.

To kick off this renewed conviction, I’ll relate a short snippet of a conversation from a few nights ago, not from a date, but phenomenally indicative. I’d gone to the pub after teaching for a beer and a salad, and ended up running into with a former student and some of his co-workers. They all work together, so periodically I zone out as they enter discussion of inter-office politics, but it’s generally lively and tangential conversation, and everyone’s laughing and smiling. I notice there’s a very lovely Japanese woman in the group, but unfortunately for me, she has a rock the size of Hawaii on her hand. C’est la vie.

Skip ahead an hour – and hour longer than I planned on staying at the pub – and they’re trying to figure out how a some of them are going to get home. I’ve only had a couple beers, so I offer to drive them if they’re close, but they’re trying to get to North County. I actually received this backhanded compliment from the Japanese girl: “I like you … but you have nothing to contribute.”

Wow.

Then she gave me a high-five to soften the blow.

So how will I begin this misanthropic adventure? Well, a friend of mine wants to hook me up with several of her friends, although she’s trying separate the wheat from the chaff, or in her words, find the ones that “aren’t psychotic.” I say, give me the crazy ones, it’ll make for more interesting tales. It’ll be like that move 20 Dates, but hopefully, you know, not shitty.

And who knows, I might just meet someone.

Brief bit of [generic] product review here: the current-gen of alarm clocks rule.

Recently, my venerable alarm of fifteen years or so died. Gave up the ghost. Refused to alarm. Retired. About a year ago, I bought what is technically an alarm clock, but what I primarily used as a small radio and CD player when woodworking in the garage. Since I haven’t had the time to do much lately, I moved it up to my bedroom and was forced, in the process of trying to figure out how to set an alarm, all the new-fangled features. After some experimentation, I was table to the set the first alarm at 7:30am, to play track two of Talvin Singh’s _OK_, and a followup alarm to do the garbage-truck-backing-up-noise five minutes later. Considering I’ve never had the capability to specify particular music for an alarm – that’s like being able to pre-program your default mood for the next day – I was thrilled.

I was even more excited the next day when I realized that not only does all this magic take place, but that the alarm ramps the volume up, staring low and gradually increasing until it reached the programmed max. I have to say, even though it takes place in less than a minute, it has the effect of pulling you much more gently from slumber, and you find yourself waking to a simulacrum of natural emersion; much more enjoyable that the abruptness of a piercing bleep or klang. Even beyond that, this gentle tug leaves you waking refreshed even if pulled from deep sleep cycles, while a traditional alarm would be quite jarring and leave you groggy and more tempted to hit the snooze button for a few more minutes of unsatisfying sleep.

In short: get one. They roxor.

Ok, will return to standard programming shortly.

Shilo walks in to the bar casually, carrying his eternal smile and expressive eyes. He has the composure of a surfer fresh out of the water on an overhead day, but he manipulates his face as though a seasoned dramatist.

After the perfunctory introductions, Ron mentions Shilo has quite a story to tell, and experience in profound elegance. Shilo capitulates, holding up an open palm indicating dramatic pause while he whets his tongue with a sip of beer. We fall silent.

“So Ron and Tracy and I were hanging out at the pub the other night, just grabbing a late dinner and celebrating the end of a long week. I notice there’s this pretty cute girl camped out at the bar with two total tools, and I’m sitting there thinking, what the fuck? What is she doing with the ‘tards? So I walk up to her, wedge myself in, and eventually she ends up coming over to our table and drinking with us.”

He nods at Ron, and Ron node back in confirmation.

“So it turns out this girl is pretty down, and hot, and we hit it off pretty well. She lives just down the street from me, and surfs, and I’m thinking this is damn convenient. Before you know it, it’s last call, everyone’s a little drunk, people are milling about and catching cabs home, so of course I offer to walk her home.

“We start out the door with my hand on her back, then we’re holding hands, and by the time we’re halfway home, we’re completely making out, you know, like up against the random fence and whatnot. We finally reach the backyard of her apartment complex, one of those generic ones they have all over down here, and my shirt’s already off and somewhere in the alley, and we’re stripping down to our skivvies. It’s getting pretty hot and heavy, you know, so I’m like ‘So, uh, before this goes farther, we should get a condom.’ I was just out with friends you know, so I wasn’t boy-scout prepared and all that, so I’m like, ‘Do you have any in your apartment?’” His eyes twinkle.

“Now she’s just in her bra and panties, and I’m just in my boxers. She trots upstairs and disappears into her apartment. A couple minutes pass, and I’m thinking, ‘What the hell? What am I doing out here?’ I’m a little fucked up myself, so it took me a couple minutes to come to that conclusion.”

He takes another sip and snaps a grin into place.

“Anyway, I walk up to her place in my boxers – my clothes in her yard, the alley, wherever they came off, whatever – and I walk into her place, and there’s these two guys sleeping on the couches. I poke my head into one of the bedrooms, one that has a door cracked a bit, thinking maybe she just passed out, but there’s just some other guy sleeping. I’m sitting there thinking, first, ‘Where the fuck is she?’, and second, ‘How many fucking guys does she live with?’ I mean, there’s only so many rooms in this place.

“So I’m standing in her living room in my boxers, just kind of scratching my stomach, and she comes barrelling out of the bathroom – one of those bathrooms off a hallway – and slams the door. The sound wakes up the guys on the couches, and they see me standing there almost naked, and they’re like, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I’m looking at this chick like, ‘What the fuck do I do? Explain this shit to your roommates,’ but she’s just staring at these guys, and suddenly blurts out, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ All the commotion wakes the guy in the bedroom, and he bounds out, angry, puzzled, staring at a half naked man and woman in his living room, and shouts, ‘Who they fuck are you two?’

He pauses amidst an assortment of questions of from the peanut gallery, holding his hand up again, motioning for quiet.

“I decide this shit’s just getting too weird for me, so I bail, grab my clothes on the way home, and hoof it the half block home. This shit was so bizarre; I just cracked a beer and plopped down on my porch for a smoke. A few minutes later, I see this chick in a bra and panties haul ass down the street with a bundle of clothes under her arm, and she runs right past me on the other side of the street, and runs straight into another apartment complex. You know, another one of those generic looking ones.”

Everyone’s doubled over in laughter. This shit’s too funny to make up.

I’m trying to stay away from small posts without purpose, but there’s only so often you read, in a reputable science publication, phrases like “In some cases, breasts can slap against the chest with enough force to break the clavicle,” and “No one really knows the long-term medical consequences of ‘excessive breast bounce.’”

Here

(This is bound to get me some wierd hits from search engines….)

Out with some friends, in a partially crowded bar, I’m navigating from the patio to the restroom. Two girls ensconced in some private conversation are oblivious to the blockade they’re providing. It may be important, who am I to say.

My bladder urging me onward: “Pardon me.”

He eyes jog slowly to mine, heavy with intoxicants.

“Do I know you?”

I’m looking past her, only my voice is directed toward her. “No.”

She doesn’t move, I turn to look at her.

I want to tell her I’m not picking up on her. I’m not interested. I’m not drunk, I’m not checking out her ass, my hand is on her shoulder to guide her slightly to the side and allow me passage to the head. But I don’t, I can resist the urge to tear down her inflated ego (at least until I write about it later, which she’ll never know about, and really doesn’t yield any reprisal or warm fuzzy for me.) I can let her assume I’m aborting a poorly executed pick-up. Fine, whatever, as long as she moves and I can pee.

She rolls her eyes over toward her friend, casting rays of annoyance through the arc. I nudge her to the side, passing without further comment.

Everyone has shitty days, and every day there’s people undergoing more hardship than most of us that have access to the internet will ever experience. But most people, people I respect and can have interesting and intelligent conversation with, people I enjoy hanging out with, don’t automatically assume that everything revolves around themselves. They have an expanded view of the world and see themselves as just a part of it. Is it the insulation from adversity that allows one’s focus to drift from the world to the self? Is it a lock of maturity or upbringing?

More than your style of speech, your topic gives you away, your perspective is revealed. The high schooler tend to speak of I: I love this, I hate that, the self in relation to others, the self as the center. Through the collegiate years, it tends to be broaden to include more of you: what do you like, what do you hate, others in relation to the self, others in the center. The larger socio-political economic stage enters and exerts influence.

The high-schooler tends toward search for consonance, the latter, comparison. The world has expanded along with the scope of responses and elicited emotion. Later, the topics move away from the personal, toward larger world view and the place of yourself and your loved ones within it, interpersonal with talk of you and I. The scope of your perspective is the current of your speech, and reveals more than your language or vocal affectations.

I could attribute it to the alcohol she was drinking, or the pot she’d obviously smoked, but while the chemicals may contribute, I believe they probably just amplify. I’m inclined to attribute such a response to some adolescent narcissism, some sort of aberration in the cultivation of one’s place in the Grand Scheme, of an expansive social circle, that, regardless of our desire, we are all part of.

The world will keep spinning when you’re gone, babe. Just like when I die. We’re just not that special. What is unique, irreproducible, that which will accompany you all your life and you have the capability of cherishing forever, are is relationship with every one else come in contact with. Not me, not you, but the interaction. There’s far too much insignificance in the world to throw away that which has potential.