“are you two married?” she asked, pointing across the restaurant table at us, as she put on her coat and waved her goodbyes.
the timing of the question–what was she going to do with this information on her way out the door?–was odd, but odder still was the fact that the “us” she was pointing to was the girl beside me (who i’ve only met three or our times) and me.
we hadn’t been close, or shared food, or made each other laugh a lot, or basically done anything that would have indicated an “us-ness,” so i don’t know where she’d pulled that from. b was across the table from me, and i’m sure moments of couple-ness had transpired during the meal, only moments previous, which she’d undoubtedly missed.
after she’d left, i was still shaking my head at how uninterested she must have been in us to not even notice who was together. i mean, b and i arrived together, for crying out loud! how self-involved did she have to be?
but then i turned the questions back on myself. and i realized i knew almost nothing about her as well; in fact, we’d barely even spoken.
it was not a large dinner party, so that wasn’t an excuse; there were seven of us, all at one big table. the questioner and her friend had been sitting right beside me. yet our interaction had halted after the introductions.
she had decided quickly that she wasn’t going to interact or really pay attention to us. her only blunder was to point that out (right before leaving no less, making it much easier to remark on). but i had made that same decision and gotten away with it.
my intentions had been good; several times i had meant to ask, “so you work with her?” or “how do you two know each other?” (anything but the dreaded “what do you do?” which i know will bring the same question my way), but the opportunity would pass, overshadowed by someone else’s words, or someone on my end of the table would say something to engage me.
it’s something that i’ve done my whole life. how did i become so socially awkward? sure, among friends, i can get as obnoxious as the next guy (some might say more), but among strangers or even acquaintances, i shut down. why?
the bottom line is that neither of us bothered to get to know the other–we each had a few friends at the table we already knew, or at least felt comfortable with, and a couple of people we didn’t. so we talked to the first group and ignored the second group. why?
i would say that i’m shy, that i feel awkward. i would venture that i just never got around to it. but these would all be glib answers with little thought or reason behind it. the truth is i wasn’t interested in them. i made a judgment within ten seconds of meeting them, and i decided i wasn’t interested enough to make an effort.
why do i do this? why do i sit on the couch at a party and not talk to anyone? it’s certainly not been helpful in building a social life. do i really just not like people? am i really just naturally anti-social to 85% of people i meet? most peopelare actually quite complex and interesting once you get to know them, so why not ge the ball rolling? why am i so uncomfortable asking people about themselves? why do i bitch about people that only talk about themselves, unless i want them to talk about me?
why am i so damn uninterested in most people? do i really think that i’m that much more interesting?
yes. yes i do.
“shallow” is the word you might use to describe that statement. “judgmental.” “unfair.” “stupid,” really, since i have very few friends in this town. i should be making an effort.
but maybe there’s more to it than just “i didn’t like them for no good reason.”
insecurity. fear. awkwardness. and yes, shyness. i don’t know them, and they don’t know me. why take a risk of being rejected when i can chat with the people that have already accepted me and have a perfectly fine time with no risk? this allows me to have a good time, feeling good about myself and my friends, without having the stress of starting a new relationship with a stranger: “do they like me, am i being funny/charming enough?”, “do they think i’m smart or pretentious?,” etc.
this is all valid; from a biological and evolutionary standpoint, we are not naturally interested in the the whole world. it would be impossible to indulge this interest if that were true.
at the dog park, my dogs rush up to some dogs, tails wagging vigorously. and other dogs they virtually ignore; half a sniff and then off to find other, presumably more interesting, dogs. we are no different, except we’ve evolved a ut more due to social convention, “manners.” if we were all being real and upfront, many times we would be introduced, and then just walk away.
the truth is, 99% of people asking about you at a party are not interested in your answer, but are only making conversation. this is inauthentic. if i ask you about yourself, it’s because i want to know.
so show a little respect next time you see me sitting alone at a party. i’m not anti-social, i’m just “keeping it real.”
i am a man about town.
and i have a camera.
so if i see something interesting at a light…
…i take a picture of it.
i see these guys a lot. they’re like my friends–
dentists, i always think immediately.
wouldn’t you? with their little white coats, serious expressions, and little tools?
but i’m at a gas station when i see them. what dentists advertise to people gassing up their car?
right.
they’re not dentists at all. they’re gasoline scientists. they scrape the engine of your car and show it to you. so that you can see how good the gas is that you’re already buying.
[insert well-written transition here]
and then there’s last night. at korean bbq. in the bathroom. washing up for a germ -free meal, when all of a sudden, i turn to get a paper towel and–
yeah. a toothbrush. in the public bathroom. just left there.
now, i can see brushing your teeth in a public bathroom. can’t always run home, and you are supposed to brush after every meal.
but leaving it?
and on the paper towel dispenser? that indicates to me that it was left on purpose. and look at the placement:
the reason for that is, every time you push the lever down to get more paper towel action, it shakes, and the toothbrush slides closer to the edge.
i have to admit, it fell as i dispensed towels.
but i caught it.
don’t want that thing to hit the ground, cause–
gross. and the guy wouldn’t know. that would be sad.
perhaps i should have done the guy a favor and just thrown it away.
You have been running around a lot lately, but are you getting anything done? Starting a lot of projects is all well and good, but if you are leaving them to be finished by someone else, then you can’t have much ownership in their success, can you? It’s time to learn how to see things through. Whether that means completing a do it yourself home remodeling project or just finally finishing an epic novel, you need to stick with something from the start to the bitter end.
ouch. weird when those things are on point, even though i know it’s pretty much the most general stuff in the world that anyone can relate to.
i did finish the remodelling project. and i’m almost done with old W.S. epic novel? i’m only just starting to type my own (read: nonacademic) words. maybe a novelette.
that or time to get that Big Idea going.
that or a job.
Filed under: school
a winter’s tale. so basically there’s king leontes of sicilia and his best bud king polixeness of bohemia, raised together since kids. like, they had the same nanny or some shit. and pol has been visiting leo for like five months, and leo’s all like, “please, stay” and pol’s like “no, i reallly gotta go,” and leo’s like “one more week” and pol’s like “i can’t” and leo’s like “maybe my wife hermione can help convince you” and she’s all “come on” and pol’s like “can’t” and she’s like “dude” and then he’s all “ok.”
and then leo’s like “whaaaa–?!?” and he gets all upset. he’s like “she’s cheating on me!” he gets his right hand man and tells him, “they’re bangin’!” and his best man is like “nuh uh, you crazy?” and leo’s like, “homey’s gotta go! poison the mutha!” and his man is like “cool” but he really isn’t cool, and so he’s all “um, excuse me pol? are your boats ready to leave, like…now?” and they jet for bohemia in the night, so then leo’s all “backstabbing punkass! now i know they was doing it!” and he locks up his wife even though she’s packin’ a preemie. he basically kills everyone, even his son (not on purpose, but the gods were mad at his going crazy for almost no reason at all).
but then see, a couple of his bros went to see an “oracle” who prophesied all this would happen, and says that leo was wrong (no shit, cause huh?), and he’s like “oops!” the end of part one. sad.
then part two: the romantic comedy. somebody playing time comes out and tells us it’s sixteen years later.
the baby is all grown up and thinks she’s a shepherd’s daughter, but happens to be in love with the pol’s son, who thinks he’s dating a shepherd’s daughter too, and the dad’s all “a shepherd’s daughter? i don’t think so!” the young couple runs off to sicily, and the dad follows, and they’re all running around and it’s all convoluted, and eventually they realize that she’s the long lost princess, so they can get married and everyone’s happy cause leo’s all “my bad!” and they go to have a big celebration dinner and look at this statue of the dead mom hermione, and then it’s not a statue it’s really her cause turns out she never died. happy. the end.
you just read shakespeare. nice one.
since the sun has decided to take the last week or so off, it’s harder to get motivated to, you know, “do” anything. sleeping in seems a tad easier. watching tv in the daytime has no glare from the window. the dogs just want to lay on your lap. the world is hitting snooze.
but for the first two weeks of this month, i was mr. busy pants, shooting out of bed to start painting/staining/building/washing/installing something. good landlord that i am. and now we’ve created this wonderful little space in the back. where people live now (and we can never go). but at least it’s done. and hey, the weather was nice right up until the day we were finished.
now the returns are done (my approach: go to home depot and buy twice what you need, cause you want to only do three runs a day, not six–if you don’t need it you can always return it later, the main purpose of life is gone again.
now, to finish that pesky shakespeare class.
it’s by completing the small goals that i don’t have to focus on the big ones. yet.
antony and cleopatra. basically, she was a saucy queen. she banged ceasar, and then when he died, she banged antony. for about half the play, everything she or her ladies in waiting say is a double entendre. amazing. (“bawdy” is the word the textbook uses a lot, as in, “a bawdy pun” under the word “come.” or “inch,” or “lay.” seriously.)
then war starts, and cleo becomes just kind of a distraction. the couple never hooks up again, and in the end, they both kill themselves. though somehow antony messes it up and has to get someone else to finish the job. and cleo has asps–like, i guess she picks up snakes by the head (it’s unclear how this happens) and puts them on her breast and then her arm, like basically using them as primitive syringes of poison. weird. that’s it.
but for that first half, the queen won’t let anyone else speak, is all dramatic, and talking about sex the whole time. it’s pretty amusing. almost comedic. far less tragic than king lear, or romeo and juliet.
i feel smarter for having read this stuff. maybe i should read the whole damn (185 pound) book, even when i’m done with school.
only one more to go! stay tuned kids, for “a winter’s tale!” woo!
when i saw “summer school,” it was with a bunch of people from my church youth group. i had missed it in theaters, and now here it was on videocasssette, and we gathered around the tv. at some point, a young guy in a trenchcoat and backwards hat and his gangly blond friend entered (they would come to be known as “chainsaw and dave,” as those were their characters’ names), hamming it up as the requisite comedy relief. it was about one minute after they’d appeared that someone mentioned–”hey, that dave guy looks like you!”
the next day, someone interrupted a conversation about something else entirely to run to the vcr, to show those that had not yet seen my doppleganger. it was weird first of all because though the guy was a funny part of the movie, he was not what you would call “movie star handsome” and i had yet to accept that i might not be the next tom cruise. but it was stranger still because it had never occurred to me that i wasn’t 100% unique–that there were impersonators out there in the world.
(NOTE: in doing research for this blog, i discovered that not only are there almost no stills from this movie featuring chainsaw and dave, but that the guy who played dave, gary riley, died last year. so you won’t get to see him here. (netflix it if it’s so important to you.])
everybody looks like somebody. and i’m not talking about “i had a friend in high school that you remind me of,” which i get with almost every person i meet. i mean, everybody has a celebrity they feel they look like. that they get told they look like. what’s yours? think about it. i know you have one in your head.
here’s mine.
this one i’ve gotten most of my life. halloween ‘97, i threw on a hat and some thick glasses as a half-assed attempt at a costume, hoping i looked like elvis costello in spite of my shoulder length hair. i have been told i look more like tom petty than anyone else, and that’s when it started.
once my aunt said to me: “i was watching a movie last night called ‘kelly’s heroes,‘ and there was a guy that looked just like you!” that was the first time i got donald sutherland. second most common.
the one i treasure the most is the one i still least understand:
(and) 
.
“you’re like a mix of an abercrombie model and tom green!” um. thanks?
and most recently, i got this one:
that’s thurston moore of sonic youth, youngsters. which is a petty cool guy to get mistaken for.
and that’s the thing. these are all really cool people. but look at them again:
with the obvious exception, they are all pretty damn…how shall i say?…unattractive people. it seems, as i’m always told when i point this out, that i am the “good-looking version” of them. yay. thanks.
but hey, none of them are lame. right?
Filed under: school
so school’s out.
i didn’t go back this semester. i had no more classes to take.
i’m thisclose to graduating, you see.
but the reason i’m not totally done is some silly correspondence course i blew off way too much over the summer, and as a result have not finished. so now that the renovation is done, it’s time to hunker down and spend some quality time with my good friend william shakespeare. herewith a recap of my thoughts:
midsummer night’s dream. my father played lysander in high school, so i pictured him the whole time–young and skinny and hyper. a lot like me at that age. that was cool. but for the most part, an extremely ridiculous play. so sitcomy! everyone is in love with someone who doesn’t love them, and than bam! everyone is in love with someone else. and one of htem is a donkey, or has a donkey head. um. seems like w.s. was mocking the concept of “true love,” or at least “love at first sight” as nothing real.
richard ii, henry iv, henry v. the king ones start to blend together. i picture ian mckellen for all the richards and kenneth branaugh for all the henrys. right or wrong, that’s how i do it. interesting how it’s all based on real english history, but none of it is anything close to factual. the people that lived in real life live, and the ones that died, die. that’s about as factual as it gets.
twelfth night. girl posing as a guy in love with a guy who doesn’t know she’s a girl. wacky! i think i’ve seen this movie before with rachel leigh cook, or patrick dempsey back in the day. nothing really new here. though i suppose, like citizen kane, i have to acknowledge that here is where it was probably done first. so there’s that. way to go, w.s.!
othello. here casting gets blurry. othello looks like laurence fishburne sometimes, and mekhi phifer in others. but iago is always branaugh. messed up how evil iago is, and how it just seems like he’s doing it for almost no reason. and he keeps telling the audience how messed up it is and how much he likes that, so it makes you so mad as you watch othello believe him. it’s the closest i’ve ever come to “yelling at the screen:” “don’t do it, o! he’s lying! talk to cassio!” really good use of tension.
king lear. just finished this one. basically, the king asks his daughters to say they love him one more time before he divides up his kingdom for them. two blow lots of smoke up his ass, and cordelia, the youngest one says she loves him, but won’t get all poetic, and says she will love her husband just as much. this is not what lear wants to hear, so he banishes her, and the two older sisters turn out to be evil, ignoring him and treating him like a pathetic old man they’d rather see dead or in prison than get in their way.
and there’s this whole other plot with the Earl of Gloucester, who has two sons, the Good son, who’s legitimate, and Edmund the bastard (which they call him all the time, so i guess it wasn’t such a stigma, back then, though it’s clear that he would never inherit the…kingdom? fiefdom? whatever). so the bad son tells the earl that the good son is plotting, and good son has to go into hiding as a homeless madman, and the earl tries to help lear, and basically gets his eyes plucked out for it, and cordelia dies , and just basically all the good guys get fucked, and tha bad guys kick ass, and win.
but then at the end, a couple of good guys come back, and they win, but all the other good guys have already died, so its a sad ending.
not to seem too callous here, cause like i said, a lot of the good guys die, including the title character, and his sweet daughter, and the kindly old earl, and none of them really did anything to deserve it, but in the end, the bad guys do lose. so basically, it’s sort of a happy ending. the play ends with a mournful drum beat and a sad death march in honor of the fallen king. so that’s sad. but england is saved!, and all that.
roll credits! i’m just sayin’: could really go either way. it ain’t no comedy, but it isn’t necessarily a tragedy.
so now, the paper to write on lear. stay tuned! two more plays to go! woo excitement!
it’s not like in the movies. or at least, for the most part. it’s rolling hills, and winding roads. it’s a big net hanging from giant telephone pole-like posts, reminiscent of a golf range. it’s a nice old lady who tells stories about her grandparents working for the dump back before they had to put them in lined containers, just buried it all in the clay, and who doesn’t answer you when you ask if she has health insurance.
but after all the winding roads, you finally come to the area where you can just back in your car and dump your shit anywhere you like. really. anywhere. don’t worry, the guy with the bulldozer will pile it all up for you.
an apartment so gross that walking through it is like a gross-out gauntlet from an “indiana jones” movie.
everything i know about home improvement i learned from the first “karate kid.”
tools that seem to teleport from right beside me to…who knows where. i think i lost three screwdrivers, two wrenches, and a tape measure.
so many home depot trips that i get raised eyebrows from certain orange-aproned guys; i’m a “regular.”
so much work i’m there from dawn till way past dusk. can’t decide if i’m the slave driver or the slave.
hands so sore their default position is “gargoyle claw.”
so nice back there now that i want to raise the rent–by a lot. or live back there myself.
whenever i think of all the words I want to flash across the for the movie about my life (“soldier. rebel. lover. warrior. king.”) i never put “landlord” in there. or “painter.” or “remodeler.”
but now that the guy renting the back apartment has moved out and new people are waiting to move in, i find myself with a lot of trips to home depot in my daily routine. (though i prefer lowe’s. man, do i prefer lowe’s. it’s like, they don’t hate you for not knowing everything, and notice when you look lost. that’s about all i ask from anyone–ever).
muscles hurt every day. hands feel like i just came in from playing in the snow. but all the time. when i wake up in the morning my brain is at its most ready, thinking of all the things i need to do, while my body is at its least ready, really feeling all the aches and pains from the previous day’s labors.
the place is getting beter. paint, stain, tiles, a new sink, new cabinets. it’s going to look nice, but it’s a lot of work, and honestly, i don’t really know what i’, doing, so…
but that’s boring. this is not a blog where people go to talk about the different ways they have learned to stain concrete floors, or what kind of adhesive glue works best on small bathroom tiles (those sites really do exist. i’ve looked at ‘em. recently). so i won’t go into specifics.
it’s weird, though, to be living this new life for a little bit. it’s like little house on the prairie days. i get p, walk out into the fields and am not seen again until it’s time for dinner and/or bed. i mean, i know it’s just out back, and b comes out there all the time, has actually helped every day, and i’ve been hiring a good tile guy named misael, so i’m not alone per se, and of course, it’snot a field to harvest, or anything, but the point is, work from sun up to way past sun down, then come in, eat, and go to bed, falling asleep before i have so much as one thought about what i’ve got to do tomorrow.
it’s the kind of dreamless sleep that feels especially good right now. nice to have a moment where nothing’s going on to balance this insanely busy time.
