C a r o l y n ' s D i a r y diary.carolyn.org |
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vIRTUALLY yOURS:
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be warned: this is my diary... clb | page 41 | |||
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As aromatic plants bestow
No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crushed or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.
Oliver Goldsmith: The Captivity, act i.
I feel obligated to report on the stuff I've been doing. And yet this does not inspire me to write a single word. I'll make a brief list and move onto mind things.
Party, interviews good and bad, brunch with a stranger, beer with the intellectuals, organizing a party at my place, gleaning postitivity from the universe, walking home in the rain, a comedy club with the office crew, early morning and late night phone wake-ups.
So me... For the first itme in many many years, I've met someone who impresses me a lot. This gives me a lot of drive and energy. Let's just call the person M.
M has done things that I'd love to do. She is someone who seems to have lived in my mot postivie space for years at a time. This gives me a lot of direction. I'm not a copier, but finding aperson who embodies my own values makes the whole collection seem justified. I'll work harder and with more strength towards being who I think I can be, who I should be.
Step by step out of the darkness.
Endless searchings lead to higher energy levels all round. I single thought, enjoy things more, echoing.
Getting more involved in lots of ways. Simply avoiding persons who do not do it for me anymore. Life's like that. Taking a lesson from Kimberley really in this.
How to explain the exuberance - though a dull variety - that coarses through me knowing of M. I'll tkae this as a sign that there are higher orbitals to jump to after all. Nothing is so stale as living without hope for so long. Hope renewing, small birds sitting on the billboard's cutouts ont he way to work, holding my heart controversially. Are they allowed up there? Won't they be chased away by the purists who do not allow the city to be more organic? Exuberance tarring the grey walls. Will they come tumbling down?
Ecology
Coolest shades of evergreen pine
growing beside the garden
shading vibrant colours from the sun.
A small animal climbs the branches
in search of a smaller meal of nuts
above the vibrant colours.
From above on wings vibrant and light
swoop claws and beak cawing open
gathering the warm blooded lunch stuffed with nuts.
Time defines the edges of our existence. Holding close to the center, we look out past the extremes as sharp memories, sparkling pearls of life sense. Edges definging planes where travel is more familiar though adventure still a thrill. I'll wander in from the edges, I have done so already. Sharpest pain now the memory of ... something awful only, a memory. No longer cringing.
Perhaps a smile finally.
Two down. Not inthe same ways though, but fixed in any case. Now to maintain in similarity for a while. Establish a known relation ctrucutre around me.
And just when I thought I was over all the Tracey things, she calls, leaves a voice mail inviting me to RSVP for a lunch date. No time or place, just a day and lunch. I wish she had warmed up that much half a year ago. Now, I thinkI've met so many wonderful people that I don't wish to get back into a co-dependent comfy space with her again. Unfortunately. I haven't called her back. I hope it doesn't hurt her that I don't have space in my life any longer for her.
In this, I'll have to think of myself a little too. After spending years hoping that she'd get a job, or lose some weight or simply start to live her life more actively, I am through. Peter was telling me the other day about his own tendencies to reward people of potential, those who have great raw materials but haven't put them to use. He said he'd figured out that he'd been rewarding them to not ever put them to use. I tried to help Tracey a lot, and I enjoyed who she was a lot. But I look at M and see so much more life sense there, even with Tracey's self awareness. I'm surprised she called after sending me a letter dated back to january telling me the 6 things that were completely fucked about me. I didn't respond to that either. Nor to the phone calls she made to Peter when she thought something was up with me. Unless there is soemthing more to her life now, unless knowing me wouldn't simply be her vicarious life, I've had enough. God knows it was hard to get over loving her. But my heart is neither warm nor cold, simply uninterested. That is something I don't think she has room for. As I've grown over the years, wht I offer in friendship is more valuable, and my own interests have a higher threshhold of satisfaction, not lower. Perhaps this is true of her too, but I suspect that something more kin to a moral obligation to mend burned bridges is in the works. Ah well.
I've encountered a world in which the grass grows in spite of gardeners, in which the rain falls when we don't expect it. We try to control our feelings and then the world instead, and removing the hardships, we find we are less able to move around. Are we lazy?
Hold still.
Now breathe deeply.
Smile. Inside. Warmly.
An inspiring dream: A journey, outlined in 3d wire, miniature. Lessons from evil, fun, puzzling, satisfaction, and release. Waterskiing, nasty maneuvering, foldouts with opposition lettering, wire frame assembly. A discovery at the end that the journey resolved as he came out the doors of the coach, and grew. The journey from observation of another's journey, and the puzzle of saving his life.
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Getting lost in thoughts of the sort that leads to work. Outside surrounded by more attribution of cause than the needed feeling of self-sense.
Staring into my own eyes without the reflected love of another shall suffice I suppose. The loop closing in one iteration without recursion. Let's look deeper.
Satisfaction from a party here, fun. The morning after, yesterday, at the office with as many hangovers as persons. Smoother than silk. Knowing a convergence of energies from my own plusing. My own plusing, carrying me towards a peak. Self carrying, the Godel point of the passive / active dichotomy. Save the trees saving me.
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Of the several things I can do with my life, I putter along, back to work this morning. It's getting better. The misery I'll call summer is drawing to a close. I'll move into a more active state with an overcoat of humour.
I've been reading Bacon's essays. On Truth struck as pulling in differenet directions as it went along. Is truth of any value, and if it is, when? My thought to ponder on today while I embrace a more businessy life with fervour instead of trepidation.
Another trial is over, the last of my ancient kindnesses. I wish her well and in the end, I am relieved that the trial is over. It has been a journey for both of us, from unique and unspoken beginnings to this small end, as dramatic in itself as was the beginning. I doubt this is the final and complete end as friendship remains. We'll see. BS runs deep.
I am at the office within the next few minutes (in my plans). Taking over transition tasks as a couple of people move off into the world far away. And new one move here to fill in the spaces. Me, the HR person. Has a wonderful irony, much as the feeling of being a bureaucrat would, did. And doesn't anymore as the feeling of owning the key to the institution becomes background.
And on. Navigating the bounds of friendship. Where are the lines with each person? Why are they there? Are they even mine? I think comparatively they are mine. I have lived so tightly in a closed box. Opening up. Pandora style. And then hope emerges. In gold lame. And I was she. Tall dark mysterious benevolent. This has been me. Oh and grouchy and lonely. Hope was never meant to live alone. Thanks Mrs. Kingsman for placing this mirage of life inside of my soul.
There are times when I wish life were very different. Sitting over a nice dinner with Carey on her last night here... talking for awhile as if... as if she weren't leaving. And slowly over the evening the boisterousness diminishing. Her mind on her trip tomorrow. Mine on the lack of her around here. Walking back to the office to finish up some last thing with her before she leaves. I had just spent the whole day with her, and liked it. Missing her already. Funny. And now, although it is 8pm, sitting at one of the studio terminals writing, one of the other people here finishing up a site, funny the changes life brings.
Something always in the background, Carey's struggles. I told her this evening that I had never told anyone how we had met. She said she'd always wondered. SHe'd assumed I had. I won't ow either, only in my heart, only with close friends, people who should know more about my life.
A dinner conversation about Diana, and Teresa, about why celebraties are easier to talk about, about her plans going to Boston, perhaps to Malaysia, or Singapore. We talked about all the gossip we couldn't exchange while I was her boss. While I liked how she worked with others here too. For now as she moves, I lend some web page space out to her, the woman whose writing has always warmed my heart and sent chills down my spine together. How can sucha sadness keep still?
It's just a moment when the ears are out of sadness instead of anger. My moment in which finally I must step back from doing anything, and where relief fills the space in a way, I am already offering more where I can. Why am I like this?
Perhaps Carey is my friend. I think I never truly understood friendship after all of Peter's ramblings, how it was more important than love. Perhaps it grows on me now, like a covering mold, holding my plans in place, shaping my future. And perhaps she will truly emerge the butterfly. Perhaps not. I always thought she already was.
A few sad tears.
Nothing new ocurrs. I realized that I won the lottery last year. I met the VP of the US clearly through mystical methods. I know why and how it happened, but doing it again, wow, a lot of thinking and planning, etc. I realize that I expected something to catch there. I thought my life would change.
And I've watched lottery winners witht he knowledge that they did nothing repearable to win the lottery - buying tickets is necessary but not sufficient, by far. It is the caused parts of one's life that continues on, with extra tidbits of excitment embedded when lotteries shine brightly on you for a few minutes. I was listening to tv over the phone while talking to Richard - a movie where a fellow sold cheap junk by telling the called that they had just won something. "I've never won anything before." "Well you have now." It was that feeling right there in the broadcaster's voice - well you have now. I have now. I have indeed won the lottery, a fame lottery. Some pr person last year grinned at me. She laughed a little and asked if I was enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame. Of course I was. I beg to suggest however that the world will see more of me. Be patient.
Better yet, don't even remember. Suddenly you'll just notice the effect.
It's early, and yet I should daxh into the shower, ready myself for round 957 of the grey walls. It's getting better there, a lot better. I'll be speaking with FSC at WebNet in a month, and at Internet World in Toronto about this effort here in February. Do I need an entourage? (A joke describing Peter and Richard sometimes.)
a shower now.
Bon Voyage CO.
How do you measure the length of something without knowing where it began?
And of the 6 major events in my life, were there really only 6, I miss the first the most. There was a time when I knew I was sane. Now I know that my notion then had been naive. Sanity is really the ability to grasp the surroundings and to cope with them knowing your own ends. I suppose the ends you wish for should be evaluated as well.
If you know your beginning and where you expect to be, as Joe always did, you can evaluate. Really though, it is the end that closes the system, and it is the end which opens into the unknown. What do I know truly about endings? I watch and learn.
Mixing truth with ethics. My thought for the day.
Outside the light's falling radius, rain drops splashing. Wind scurrying between blind slats. I wonder about my grammar. Haiku with the is. A sense of being apart, creating descriptions of other things. Without being, only ongoing and seemingly eternal activity. Without propositions, in under beyond, no sense of there, but only here.
Traffic cops don't need propositions, nor do they sit in cafes all night with other poets where I can see them easily by accident. They don't need these in order to share their yellow invitations with me. The invitations come easily enough without further fanfare.
I should try to get this out. I spoke with Peter the other day, Thursday. In fact, Richard did. We wanted to address some issues that had been getting out of hand. It didn't go well. Over the years there are assumptions that have remained between P and I. I have finally questioned them. One was that he gets things done. After almost a year of full time at work, it seemed that P didn't really follow up on his activities unless they put him in the limelight. And then, I'm not sure he did anyway. His is a world of mental motion. Change happens through concept maneuvering. Totally beautiful if youcan see there. And totally uncausal in the world where cars move, money changes hands, cats get groomed.
What does it take for the thoughts of one's own mind to move the world? Richard makes this transition often and with high energy. I've learned that the thought and even the communication of it is not sufficient to move anything. Lists need to be drawn up, action items assigned wtih deadlines and resources to use. Accomplishments need to be noticed, the small and interim ones especially. And the results are the big lever that moves unevenly distributed cubic time / space.
How can thoughts change things? In the course of several hundred years, the greatest thinkers will have sent ideas trickling though the cultural ether.
From day to day, the greatest acters (not actors) will have mustered great leverage on the resources of yesterday makuing today into their own dream space.
These two create a tension. I'm perahps one of the few who have travelled vastly in both realms. I am one of the few who believes that both exist, and that both do change the future shapes.
The prophetic vision of the thinker and the acter are different. I heard much from Peter that he was both. But I think that in truth he still loves one and not the other. He should go there and learn that the changes will be in the long term and be satisfied with that. There is little limelight for the thinkers to share today. The acters get most of it.
When destinies collide, little pieces of fact splash outwards.
We went out for high tea at the King Edward hotel yesterday, quite a bunch of us. The brits are finally outnumbering the eastern european contingent. Even Peter went. And as with many of the occasions I've been lucky to attend lately, his new roomy and girlfriend (so say the rumours) came with him. Being a literary gype herself, she draws same out of many others around her. This has its sparkle and amusements.
Being more of what I've called a philistein (yes, as in the beer mug) myself, I've found this sort of witty and educated reparte almost impossible to understand let alone engage in. It's amusing to watch those with mouths quicker than a cat's pounce. I guess I'll stick to scifi yet again. Most of those around me have always been literary tummy fillers. I truly wonder at the pleasures they are engaging in, and in public at that. Do they feel accomplished, satisfied, successful? Is it more like filling in the last word in the Sunday Times crossword puzzle? Or more like telling a long and amusing joke successfully in a group of people you are trying to impress? I wonder.
Why is this fascistic? Well, I find that literary types generally [a brief flit of Moppins across the keyboard, and a though of Carey across my mind] don't show any mercy to us philisteins. Who was Pushkin? Oh, some other literary guy. When do literary people ever reference non-literary writings? I'll stick with Oblomov. I'll mention him over and over. I'll compare Oblomovitis to any play or poem out there. Look out world.
Moppins has become a supper pest suddenly. Just a sec...
She calmed down. Pretty feet.
So after high tea, which was quite scrumptuous, the group split up again. My half of the ameoba effect went off to sit around and play scrabble. I surprised myself both by winning and by being truer to my younger days, my childhood, in gloating overly about it. I haven't done that in a long time - but it did feel right. Funny. I tried not to, but...
Travelogue, travelogue...
All things considered, my life is the wa it shouldbe finally. Peter and I have reached a comfortable relationship boundary once again. Getting him out of my ambition path has always been necessary given who he is. I suspect the converse may also exist. Peter, the musician, the literary creature. Now FSC things can be uprighted, my depression will go away as I do not have to struggle ceasely with him to move certain moehills in their appropriate directions. Speaking of which, I must off to teh office early to orient new sales persons this morning.
With chilled fingers, I leave the sheep in their dreams.
Nothing to say but words. Nothing to know but thoughts. Nothing to see but colours. Where are the interpretations this morning?
I think I'll get ready to go. Beautiful cats and lots of work to do!
Another autumn. Cold fingers typing wishing for heated words.
An insular propensity to hold tight to our fea... fears? feats? I wonder which I meant to wrtie there? Letting the words flow out without pre-design is sometimes a mysterious prospect, and in this case, I know people who each word is true of independently. Of them?
Fear... that feeling inside when you don't believe that you will coipe with something successfully.
Feat... those things you have done that went beyond your expectations, or perhaps simply those of others.
Could they be related then?
I propose to myself that the newer feelings of accomplishment an dsatisfaction should grow further, and spread into a blossoming fragrance. With the grey walls lightening, beginning to colour with my sense of life once again, with the absense of summer's problem causers and their problems and their causes, I find colour there. Grey is dissipating. Wait it out. No. I know that I helped this to happen. Feat.
And my fingers shiver into numbness, I'll take a hot and lingering shower now. To purr in.
Will the world lok back at me with a renewed sense of the future history? I've turned the monitor colors into an awkward unreadable moray effect to tune my mind more into listening to the ether than looking at it. Everyone is eye-centric. Seeing is believing. Why is that? Shouldn't evaluating be believing? I believe so.
Will the renewed sense of the future possible awaken the best in all of us? Could there be some best way when the grey walls form the bastion of denial. Could there be good without letting go ambition and even perhaps love? [and still and forever, I'll miss her blue threads]
Will the possible actualize as we hope? But we all jostle for the same little slivers of pie. We cannot be creating a shred and joint future vision because we think that the future is limited, finite, and not enough to go around. For each of us fails to put a limit on our ambition. A fellow in a sales interview this morning [did I mentionthat with Carey gone, I am the sole guardian of the sales department. neat.] smiled at me when I said I'd be satisfied with makng 6 times 14,000... what's that add up to anyway. 84,000... guess I am satisfied making that. Wonder if I do. Accountants are for knowing such details I guess.
Actualizing hope. Causing nature to conform to the aspirations. But how many out there realize that this is the way that reality works. Dream something. Be a total organized how person in making it. Enjoy the results. This last is so important.
Travel away with me to a warm and sunny place, my own dreams go there. I should too.
Or perhaps a tv would do.
I've been wondering what life is for. I know the answer really. Round about 30, it came to me that it is not about asking that question. A big insight. Bothers me a lot though. I wanted the answer so much. Thought there'd be better results if I could find it. Perhaps I'd be a princess or an heiress. Acausal winnings. Lotteries. Being discovered.
So it turns out that the answer really simply is figure out what your heart says it wants. This is hard. So many voices telling you what you want - parents, teachers, freinds, media,... And those are just the official social categories. Of the others, such as observation, these too do not carry the appropriate member's conditions listed in bold print on their cards. Wear a nice jacket at all times, groom well, short hair, ... You must simply know. Or have parentals sophisticated enough to show you. The up and down of it is that your heart will be covered in layers of falsity. Your own heart will lead you astray.
Inside there after years of self-discovery, and if you are wise, of pursuing false dreams, you will learn to distinguish the true dreams of your heart. I don't know why these dreams differ from person to person. This puzzles me, that after removing social conditioning to find the spot of truth, there could be differences. Perhaps our DNA, our biology, our chemistry differs enough even then to make different options palatable. Perhaps. Whatever. If you are wise, and I will think you are exactly if you get to this point, you will find those true-heart desires and live them through.
I am wise in this way. Hugging skunks.
Ahhh the sunshine coming through the clouds peeking in the window.
Peter mentioned last night that he has been reading what I write here, saying that he likes my style. I knew then that I had been insulted and told him so. A diary having style? BS. And he of course added his little notation that of course he did not so much like what I chose to write of. That was better, an improvement. At least if my thoughts bother him I am going in the right direction, away from the litcrit arrogance he enjoys. But of this I am little interested at all.
I am stuck in a world without a partner, a lover, a playmate. Now. What shall I do. I times past I thought that this wouldn't bother me, and it does lessen as a bother slowly. But I see in front of me a lot people who are playing these games with each other and I grow weary of their company more out of jealous wishing. The company of people I fun when I do not feel like a third whell, like there is a competition going on for favour. I think I'll go solitary for awhile again. Perhaps I'll seek out other spaces entirely with other people in them. Tired indeed of the ebb and flow of those I know. Too many literary types, not enough business types. Just a balance thing I guess. I've never had a taste for homogeneity.
Traipse away again. Into novels, away from people. Stories from the minds of far away people instead of story fragments from my friends. Tickling the brain passages with cliched newness.
[The Designated Mourner, RR, NW; McKluhan talk on street art, RR; SST]
Am I?
We went out to the country yesterday to a farm owned by the university of Toronto, Hart House Farm. Gorgeous place. Down through the cedar and maple forest leads to a small log cabin beside a pond. The front room is for changing, and in behind it is the sauna. Chopping wood. Roasting corn and potatoes, warming some scotch, lots of apple cider. Light and amusing conversation. And then slipping into the cold autumn water. Relax for a change.
So I did.
Inside me.. a friend pointed out that I seem to be slipping again. I hadn't noticed yet. Am I? I think I'm wishing that my life was not so alone. I'd like to meet a dozen new people every day. I'd like to surf into a social lifetime. I will sail away from self-awareness. Letting go of the last vestiges of my mind. Leaving in my wake positive social vibes, endless encouraging smiles, flirtation, small and unhurtful jibes of wit, competitive meanderings through the cultures of our time. Is there more. Will I ever truly feel the wonderufl personalness that speaking intimately with another creates?
The close and non-public professional person. My dream in a basket, and yet even as my public image is more so this way, my private self is left alone. Point at my mind, that is where I point back from. I look into your soul and see -- an interestingness silent and gently nodding with approval vibes. There can be communication here without pain or fighting even. Letting me know about what I can already see, who I know you to be even if wrong. I am inside you. As sexual an experience for me as sex is for you. Are you there, a person who can also appreciate the insdie selfness of another, and even more simply of yourself? I am led to believe you do not exist.
I am led to believe that all is about the social surfing, a surge of collective public presence. Where I is the convention instead of we.
Thinking in the theatre last night. Watching a boring new movie in the third row. Looking around me and finding all sorts of single creatures sitting there too, each inhis own row on in the isle seat, just like me. I'm the only female version of the single lonely person. I must be truly awful to be unloved. Or perhaps I am the only female version of the single person who is brave / foolhardy enough to go out alone at night. A thought too. A little of both.
Little enough of meeting people is known by me. I know how to meet poets, and graduate students, people to hire and people in an arts class. How do I meet people who I want to meet? I met M at a party that Kimberley took me too. This was a terrific opp. The leverage needed to do this myself too. Hmm.
Sparkle and charm. Persistance and moxy. Kimberley style. Hmmm.
Aloof desireableness. Obscure education and literary values. Trish style.
I can't even begin to describe Peter style any more. I'll see tonight though as he speaks on Internet and Democracy at the McKluhan center.
And Richard style. Bold charming superior. Not me. I'm not an entertainer of others. And I am certainly not an entertainer in his manner, with that impersonal way of his. I am much more personal even when I should not be.
She was right to catch that I was getting depressed again. Waves of sullen sadness washed over me last night. Who did I think I wanted to be? Why was I so alone? Cast out the endings. I want to be bolder.
The edges do not grow near though. For that I am glad. MIA: Carey, Peter, Hella. I know that there are more still to come, still to go.
Adding helps too though.
And now off to perkify a sales team. Funny that I seem to be good at it. Now to get them selling better too.
And somewhere as in thought there are massive architectural feats of wonder that we will worship insdie of. And near these buildings we will establish our homes and loves, and our initials will carve themselves in the golden pavement for posterity. And in the earth the ancestors will collect. And on the earth the future living edge will push forward new growth waxing and waning with sanity. And we will still be human into the past.
And through the sparkling sunlit window of the greatest building we will see self created artistries that are our own handiwork. And as gods forgetting their worshippers, we will wonder out towards the stars as mere seeds. And our ancestors will still be dead. I will still be dead.
Can I hope this much for descendents? Or do I live for myself here and now.
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The Caroyn roller coaster that I ride. Up today. Down yesterday. Higher and lower than I am comfortable with. Both paralyzing. The middle space of bureaucratic pause, I miss it.
The scouring of mental lint though is proceeding well. Who am I? Perhaps: who am I not? To paraphrase another, I am not Niels. Then again, I never thought I was. I am not Richard or Peter or Tracey or Hella, or any of the folk I know well and not so. I am not even the collection of their desires and hopes. I am not .... I am not what ... I don't know this either I guess. What is a person? No not I.
I must be away.
Saw Peter reading an essay on Monday night. And then saw him last night casually. We bickered. And then we talked about having bickered. Seemed like we both want things to be peaceful, and we don't agree pn why they are not easily. Perhaps it is because we asked him to leave FSC. Yes perhaps that. And perhaps that was in turned because we didn't see eye to eye on most things. As ever.
I'm sure it is no surprise that there is little room between him and I finally for what we need. And I find myself being annoyed at having introduced him once again to people I know. Once again he dives in and takes over. The bickering is appropriate. Mold.
I said that our first impressions years ago of each other had been right. We did not like each other quite strongly - "YUCH," I said. I am back to that. Sure I understand the depths of the good parts of knowing Peter, and he me. But we've come full circle now.
Cold fingers. Cold heart. I feel very unwelcome in this world today.
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A shower had. Dressed. Still need to spend the half hour drying my hair -- it's cold today. Why do I feel unwelcome?
Because I can't have my way in everything. Right now I really need to too. Most of the time, I'm not so demanding. Now... I need a lot of warm hugs and no demands placed on me personally. I need to find that things are worth while.
I have been travelling wihtout a bank account this past week, living for the first time in my life on a credit card. Luckily I bothered to get some recently. I found that sharing a bank account with Peter finally didn't make sense to me. The whole sharing thing was an iossue between us since forever. It was the source of all of our scuffles. he believes in sharing beyond all boundaries, and I believe that some things remain personal. Funny, that, since I am the one writing everything online and he isn't. Rather funny.
What will I be doing in a year?
Coffee, hair drying, off to the office... the walls are less grey now. The grouch, the sorrowful, and the anti-social are all gone. I'm enjoying it more. Perhaps it wasn't officeness in essence but specific persons who I could not handle day in and day out. I like the perkier atmosphere.
No longer on the edge of doubt and sufferance, ok, I'll hold my shoulders back a little more and smile a bit. I'll run that ad to meet someone I'll enjoy, and endure the someone's I won't with that smile. I'll put the pictures on the wall, hold up the ... what. Hmmm.
Time to explore the bigger picture while I operate int eh details. Several ... my back up word to type when what is next is not known yet, with cold fingers.
At peace with everyone currently. Good. An awkward peace in most cases, but steady. I'm a little annoyed at being detail worker at the moment, and not so good at it either. Ooops. Can I really tell?
Niels and Kimberley to have coffee, er, tea in London next week. They both met me here originally, and now each other too this way. Wish I had a camera there to capture that. And what, saw Carey on Tuesday, and will visit the movie theatre on Sat with her. It's nice to see her so amazingly happy. Her journey is a great one to watch, even if she edits it for each viewer. Ah, I'm a little verbal babble fish this morning. No style, nothing to spell out or explore. Cool. Time to warm up my fingers with a hair dryer, and writing some business letters, and the new business plan. Truly something.
A poem of power. Some other time.
Tracking the antelope across the plains, footprints in the snow. Living the hunter life .
Yesterday. A day of trauma for me. My business partner a serious grouchy asshole for awhile, using his persausiveness for trivial ends, my end. I left for the afternoon. I must be glad though that he showed up to apologize, to charm, and let me know that we are indeed friends. He surprised me. Good.
Today I look through the pieces that my mind fell into. Should I weave them back together or spend a day or two apart.
A man on the street corner smiling beautifully at me. A compliment. Awhile later, another from him ' georgeous'. And I tried so hard to find a way to say yes to him. Please. Take this further. I'll say yes. But I didn't. I wonder if he will be there again today. Will I be too?
sore throat. sickness coming in like a cold front. knowledge that I may be out of the count for a few days. frustrated at this. fight back. say no. swallow many Cs.
spent the day with carey yesterday. fun. she seemed more open and relaxed than ever before. nice to see.
later: sick indeed. can't talk. feeling a little dizzy. wheee.
sickness settling n wthoutcoherent thoughts attached. can't sleep anymore though. perhaps to go to work would be fun - giggling at everything when not groaning.
I'll shower and see how that goes. Getting wet.
OK... that seemed pretty good. Dizzy me off to the office now. Miau
A little sickness still, sniffling.
Last night I went to another talk at the McLuhan center. An interesting phenomena, the regulars were for the most part missing, and a new crew, older and more lettered had taken the stage. Eric McKluhan was giving a talk on his good old dad. Charming man, spoke with a voice and rhythm that would make for a good CBC radio reader. I suppose he was educated as well. Older thanI expected by far. Head disciple of Marshall McKluhan as a career choice - spooks me. I couldn't do that. makes me think back to my thesis supervisor, Agassi, and his anger and frustration of only being a prince and never a king in academia - living in the limelight of the more successful, and knowing it will remain so.
I am glad to be out in the world where the territory is bigger, and the rewards easier to acquire. I am glad to paly a game which mars the soul less - funny as most think that the ivory tower is safer and easier. They have not wrestled with compromising their souls if they think that. Learnign to communicate effectively was for a compromise, a loss of who Carolyn was.
Was that loss worth it? Is having acquired a Master's degree, is working on a Ph.D., worth it? I cannot answer anymore. I know that I chose to do these things. I look back and believe that if I hadn't compromised there and then, I would have done so elsewhere. Like in the business world where I must still do some compromising. Perhaps a part of that though seems to be more to get along with my partner than to succeed generally. Then again, that is a good reason. I hope it is sufficient.
What have I given up though. What is this Carolyness that I now lack? Is it a unique viewpoint? A strength of committment? Yes. But I still have that. Perhaps my questions have changed. Ahh... yes. I do not ask the same questions. What were they...
What is the point? What am I? Am I like them? What are they? Do they make any sense? Why am I stuck here? When will the world change so as to include me? Will it at all?
Yeah. angst, existentialistic angst. Being on the outside.
I remember talking with a lover, Mark, about being an anarchist. He was befuddled. How could I want to live outside of society - there is no such place, he said. No such place. In my imagination, there was the all important outside - leaving society meant denying it the values it forces on all of us - social lubricant. Mark was astounded. He had never heard of such a thing, and he was a highly educated, though rather hedonistic, man. No such thing as being out of society. he couldn't imagine it. I don't mean he cou;n't imagine leaving the city. But leaving human contact and it's effect on the soul.
He truly was not able to grasp that I would not only embrace this idea, but also fantasize about it. Perhaps that is why our status as lovers did not last - our fantasies diverged rather a lot. I couldn't at the time imagine what sort of person he could be to be that way. He had taken me on as a lover mostly because I was willing. His own demands of pleasure were insistent. And I was willing, to the consternation of several friends who knew.
He is representative to me of a class of people, perhaps class is to loaded a term, who simply accept as a given that there have to be other people around, and in an orderly fashion. Eeep.
My dreams of being free of the current conventions have long since changed into a desire to master the conventions - a differnet direction leading to the same freedom. It is the inbetween, the having to follow them blindly, that lacks freedom. My parents lived there. Most people I meet live there. I will not. I will simply master them or leave.
With the decision quite a number of years ago now to stay and learn, the angst has gone away. I am no longer at war with the rest of humanity. Now I am in competition with you. And later, I will again be out of the game for after having mastered the convention space, I will wal with a freedom few know - and I do know it.
I spent these past two days wiht the sniffles, and I think the next couple as well. I took this sedentary opportunity to place a personal ad finally. I'm in discussion with a couple of possible candidates of the first date. A lawyer, giggle, and a business man, and a fellow with a background in the internet business. I think none of these guys will work out. Their pursuits are all over the place, none where I'd like. Casual, sexy, and warm. But having written so many flirty letters these past two days, I think my mind is a little more open to sexuality in general. I hope my mind doesn't become so distracted with this foolishness that I become silly, or like mark was, obsessed.
I'll back away if I get too caught up - though perhaps I am already. Can dating be addictive?
7:30 meeting to run off to. Must run now.
Well, my server is missing this morning. I'm writing offline for a change. Probably won't kill me.
I met Robert J. Sawyer yesterday on the subway. As an sf fan, this was very cool. He was one of the those subway chatterboxes, talking about his next novel out in a month to his student. I gathered details of what he was saying over the course of a rather long ride up the subway line on my way to my first internet ad blind date. So my nerves were already steeled. Instead of doing the normal subway glazed eye thing, I stared at these two, including myself in the conversation by dint of body language. Hell, they were interesting and in a way, entirely too animated for a subway. Just like me. I didn't know I was listening to RJS until after his 'how to get your novel published' student had left the train, and then in longest leg of the train's journey, I spoke up. I didn't let him form the pretense that I hadn't been included.
It worked. I asked him what genre he wrote in, and then what name he published under. Blew me away when it turned out I had been reading his stuff quite vervently ever since Starplex was serialized in Analog sometime last year - before it came out in book form. So, uh, that was neat. I think I'll pass the connection on to Peter. He might enjoy taking the course. RJS might be someone fun to invite to a party here or there with his wife, also Carolyn.
So the blind date...
f.i.n.a.l.e |
...continue into the future... | ||
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All non-daughter writings of Carolyn's Diary are not copyright © Carolyn L Burke, 1995, 1996, 1997, and may not be copied with permission except for non-commercial gain. See what your lawyers can't make of that. |