One more time to the well, chop wood, carry water, but only in the metaphoric sense because here in modern city life, even a baby boomer retirement hippiedrome like Eugene in 2011, the water comes out of the faucet and the heat emerges when I turn the dial. 'mo wonder I'm alienated' (he thought cynically, as he went to the refrigerator to pour a cup of sweetened iced coffee). I need something besides metaphoric tasks?
Well, that may be, as the cobwebs start to clear and the first sweet swallow makes it's way down my overfed gullet. Yeah, overfed is right, it's just too damn easy to eat in this culture, too much money, too much food combined with lack of exertion makes us pretty soft, I can feel the process happening, but I'm gonna fight it hard, keep using my bike and my body.
But still I have the pang of 'wouldn't it be nice to curl up and watch a basketball game on the couch, have some food and just get lost in the vicariousness' Damn it's powerful, and I haven't found a way past it, even though I know in my heart that my essence is other than that. I'm in the Stockholm Syndrome of modern life in which my captors become my safety net (allegedly). 'Oy' (he said, kvetchingly)
I had a little setback this week, nothing major, but it was certainly illustrative of my mindset. I had a date a week ago with that woman who I know from dance, and it was pleasant enough, a little guarded on her part, but that's appropriate. I'm more interested in my own behavior actually, she can do her thing any way that she wants. She likes me as a 'friend and dance partner' but is pretty clear that there will be no sexual energy between the two of us. We had a couple of emails back and forth after the date, and that's where I got this particular information.
The setback wasn't in being 'rejected' or anything like that, it was more about my giddy reaction to her resistance. Here's a woman who I'm kind of attracted to telling me that she's pretty clear that we're not going there. First thing I thought was 'oh, she's not totally clear', there is an opening. And I was reminded of the scene in Dunb and Dumber where the girl tells the guy it's a one in a billion chance that they'd ever go out, and he says, Aha, there's a chance, or something equally ridiculous. That was my reaction too, just like in the movie.
So I was both very understanding and relaxed about 'hey, whatever', but at the same time, there was some giddy energy about what I call 'the happiness of pursuit'. (see what I did there?' It's supposed to be the pursuit of happiness, but for me, it's flipped and I have this energy that simply loves the juxtaposition of a skeptical woman, and a charming man. It conforms to some deep seated paradigm that I carry around inside, and when the places are set, watch out, here comes the charm, or something like it. And along with the charm comes a feeling of well-being and energy and 'the world is green' and spring is in the air and Boom Boom Boom.
(sigh)
I wrote her back a kind of giddy email, one of those, 'sure let's just be friends, but let's go on a hike or something tomorrow', that was a lot of wordplay and over familiarity, and I'm guessing that she saw through the alleged 'friendship' and into the giddy seduction, yes I know I keep using the word 'giddy' but that's what it was, and I got an email back saying 'I can't hike tomorrow, thanks for the invitation'. It sure seemed like the 'blow off email' because that's about how I'd do it, were the situation reversed, so I felt the air go out of the balloon and felt like I was busted. This might be totally in my own mind, and I could be reading into the situation, but that doesn't really matter. I busted myself anyhow, and that's likely more important than knowing for sure whether she busted me.
The result of it, however, is that things are not so green, it's still cold, it's still me, there's no Boom Boom Boom, and I have to still make sense of my life outside of the giddy fix. It feels good to write about it, because there is some sense of well-being in simply describing that thing that happens. I guess it's that old saw about a reflective life, not that I can remember how it goes at this point. What the hell is it? (he thought, trying to turn his brain inside out to recall that saying about a life worth living is one of reflection, or something like that. That's not even close, I realize, but I'll find it. OK here it is, (thank you, Senor Google) 'The unexamined life is not worth living' (Socrates, at his trial for heresy).
The unexamined life is not worth living. And my brain immediately goes to the question, 'does that mean that the examined life is worth living'. That idea is implied, certainly, but does if follow logically? Then it gets into the territory of logic and the 'if P and not Q', type of analysis. I just wrote a good typo when I typed 'anarlysis', because, yeah, it's gnarly. But I digress (again) And I wrote 'bit I digress'. Yes Dr Freud, my mind is a fertile field of incongruity. By the way, I took a logic class in college and I really liked it, mostly because we learned about many fallacies that people use in conversation or argument, and this was during the Nixon administration with the likes of John Mitchell, H R Haldeman, Nixon and the other criminals going on TV day after day and spewing their garbage. I could sit back and say, "uh, Mr President, that's a 'false cause argument', or Mr Mitchell, you have equivocated, sir". It's true, those lying bastards were a gold mine of logical fallacy.
So what's the takeaway from this post? And the reason I ask is because I think I will start titling these posts at the end of the story, rather than the beginning. That way, it will be easier for me to remember them and go back and have a look at something I wrote in the past, using the title as a reference marker, rather than wading through miles of words. The takeaway from this visit is something like 'gray giddy gray, OK.
