The People I've Met...

Why is it that the people I've met and talked to for about an hour and never seen again are better than the people I actually know? Some examples: In grade school I used to hang out all the time at Chris Town Mall. I used to bring $5.00 and somehow I was able to have lots of fun on those $5.00. We would take the bus up 15th Avenue. Usually, sneak into the movies. It was so easy then. All you did was stand on the outside balcony and wait for your friend to open the door. At a multiplex. Imagine. I know they must have plugged up this security leak by now.

Once in the 6th grade we met an 'adult.' So strange. We were always meeting kids but never adults. He was wearing a leisure suit. He was very short and had 'wings.' Kind of like feathered hair. He looked a little bit like Dustin Hoffman. He talked to us about his life. He was there trying to get a job. He had dreams but wanted to start selling men's clothing. Even for the late '70's he was a bit out of fashion. Bell bottoms were out. He had blue polyester bell bottoms. Then he told us that his wife had a heart condition and they were living out of their camper eating boxed macaroni and cheese. We all agreed on our love of macaroni and cheese. Eventually, his wife showed up. She was also abnormally small and had the same kind of gnome-like features (but pretty ones) that he did. She didn't look sick but she did look delicate. She gave us a gentle smile.

The thing is that I am 100% sure that I am actually older than both these people now. Maybe a lot older. Scary thought.

Then there was the Filipina woman I met on the bus on my way home from work in Oakland. We talked about her growing up in the Phillipines, about how she saw Americans as Peace Corps. workers, about how they always liked the Americans but were angry with the U.S. for using the Phillipines as a big army base.

There are lots more people like this. The thing is I meet these people all the time and never see them again. They seem more interesting, more compelling than the people of my everyday life. Sometimes I make an attempt to get to know them somehow. I leave them a phone number or an email. But they always vanish and I am never able to test whether their depths go on or if I got the best part.

Gosh, this one is so so good. http://shauny.org/iasshole/ Imagine a person who tells stories about dissolving jawbreakers in their vagina and at the same time making me realize that having children (which I cannot make myself avoid) is going to be a terrible experience. I never even read weblogs before I started this weblog. I just heard about them and thought I would. Now I see this whole thing is going to get me into trouble.

If the issue is time and the multiple ways one can fill it then is not something bound to fascinate me only going to make things worse? And hearing other people blab about their own irrationality is of course horrendously fascinating. I am afraid now. The point of this weblog was supposed to be to help me conquer my OWN irrationality.

In case you guessed we were parodying politically correct bumper stickers...

Like: I'm Pro-Choice! And I vote!

And: Why is it that when you own and animal it's called a pet but when you are hungry it's called meat?
(Wait! How does that one go again...)

This prompted a conversation with a friend of ours asking why we can't eat our pets? Then of course why can't we eat our friends?

Some of our possible bumper sticker ideas:

I'm a cannibal. And I vote! (see link re: cannibals)

The decaffeinated life is not worth living.

[I love my husband. This is his idea. He's just not very good at these things. I'm sorry...God, I pray he never finds this blog.]

Why is it when you marry a man he's called your husband but when you shoot him and kill him you get arrested for murder?

Why is it when you love a person it's called marriage but when you kill him and eat him it's called cannibalism.

(Oh shucks. We can't remember that one. It's really funny.)

Husband: "Don't put something of mine down on your blog."

Just confessed to my husband that I have a blog..It was going to be a secret from everyone. Yet, that might have been pathological. Fun, but pathological.

Sense of urgency...Yeah, that's what I need...a sense of urgency. When I realized 'I had time...' (or did I realize time isn't real? Still trying to explain my strange change) I lost the sense of urgency.

Now I am sinking into the quicksand of inactivity. Must get a sense of urgency. Yet, I can't even a have a sense of urgency about my lack of a sense of urgency.

Here's a little snippet from old Parmenides...It makes a lot more sense than it seems at first...

One path only is left for us to speak of: that it is. On this path there are a multitude of indications that what-is, being ungenerated, is also imperishable, whole, of a single kind, immovable and complete. Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one and continuous. For what coming-to-be of it will you seek? How and from where did it grow? I shall not permit you to say or to think that it grew from what-is-not, for it is not to be said or thought that it is not. What necessity could have impelled it to grow later rather than sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus it must either fully be, or be not at all. Nor will the force of conviction ever allow anything, from what-is, to come-to-be something apart from itself; wherefore Justice does not loosen her shackles so as to allow it to come-to-be or to perish, but holds it fast.
"The decision on these matters depends on this: either it is or it is not. But it has been decided, as is necessary, to let go the one as unthinkable and unnameable (for it is no true path), but to allow the other, so that it is, and is true. How could what-is be in the future? How could it come-to-be? For if it came-to-be, it is not, nor is it if at some time it is going to be. Thus, coming-to-be is extinguished and perishing unheard of.

"Nor is it divisible, since it all alike is. Nor is there any more of it here than there, to hinder it from holding together, nor any less of it, but it is all a plenum, full of what-is. Therefore, it is all continuous, for what-is touches what-is.

"Moreover, unchanging in the limits of great bonds, it is without beginning or end, since coming-to-be and perishing were banished far away, and true conviction drove them out. Remaining the same, in the same place, it lies in itself, and thus firmly remains there. For mighty Necessity holds it fast in the bonds of a limit, which fences it about, since it is not right for what-is to be incomplete. For it lacks nothing. If it lacked anything, it would lack everything.

8c"Since, then, there is an ultimate limit, it is completed from every direction like the bulk of a perfect sphere, evenly balanced in every way from the centre, as it must not be any greater or smaller here than there. For neither is there what-is-not, which could stop it from reaching its like, nor is there a way in which what-is could be more here and less there, since it all inviolably is. For equal to itself in every direction, it reaches its limits uniformly.

3"The same thing is there for thinking of and for being. 4Look upon things which, though absent, are yet firmly present in thought (for you shall not cut off what-is from holding fast to what-is, since it neither disperses itself in all directions throughout the order of the Cosmos, nor does it gather itself together). 8bIt is the same thing, to think of something and to think that it is, since you will never find thought without what-is, to which it refers, and on which it depends. For nothing is nor will be except what-is, since it was just this that Fate did shackle to be whole and unchanging; wherefore it has been named all things that mortals have established, persuaded that they are true: 'to come-to-be and to perish', 'to be and not to be' and 'to shift place and exchange bright colour'.

I'm not sure who translated this. It wasn't me. Check the web page to the side.

This log was supposed to help me get things done. How exactly? I forgot. By making me more aware of my mistakes, etc. My time wasting. The passage of time. The fleeting nature of time. The way in which it is going by like a little bunny rabbit attached to a ferrari attached to an f-14 Tomcat. And how I am letting it go by. And how I will pay for this. Soon.

That soon is really going to come. To show myself and make myself believe: Time does pass. It actually does. So far, it hasn't worked...exactly. Maybe I do need a comment mode for readers. Maybe there is someone out there who can convince me. That can make me believe in the reality of time's passage.

Where does the time go? Where does it go? It's not like a watched pot that never boils. In fact, the more I sit there and look at the clock the more it seems to go by rapidly. I last looked at the clock at 5 p.m. and now it says 10! After 10!

I'm getting frightened. There's some kind of conspiracy to make time move more rapidly. Something fishy is going on right now. I do love it that the time on my weblog is wrong though.

I woke up at 1 p.m. Now it is 10:19 p.m. No, really it is earlier. I could have called this web log 'transience sucks.' Yes, it does. I think it is about 10:06. This is why I put the link of the world clock in. I like to know what time it is EXACTLY. I bought a watch the other day. I've gone so long without a watch. It is pretty exact. Timex. Whatever the name of the kind that you can look in the dark at it. (Am I developing aphasia?) Indiglo. Yea! That's it. I was joking with mi chico that it would be a great watch for hookers to time their johns discreetly. Of course, for them there are probably those lit up alarm clocks next to every hotel bed in case the lights are off.

One of the major problems I have is knowing when to believe myself. One minute I am sure that my life is falling apart, I've blown it and there are only seconds to save myself. The next that all is well. The next that I don't care. The next that I am in control. The next that I am not. Who do I believe? How many of me are there out there? When should I trust my own assessment?

This is why it is a good thing I got married. Except should I believe him?

When you blog it is like you become pure consciousness. Particularly if you don't upload pictures. This is why I felt like the big pink head in the Samuel Beckett novel...the It? What was it called again. He was pure consciousness and just turned into a head. The template makes me humourless also. And then finally I like the illusion of an audience. Even when I don't have one. It inspires me to perform. Yet, as in ordinary venues such as novels and the theater my audience must remain silent. They sit in the darkness. And because it is very, very dark I can imagine the theater is full. I must do my best! I must play that death scene with all the passion I can muster! Little do I know there is only the janitor sweeping slowly in the back and thinking about whether it is worth it to join the union.

Ghosts...I smell my grandmother and sometimes both my grandmothers. One smells like smoky perfume, the other like a soft perfumed powder puff. My nana smoked but smelled like the outdoors, like the mountainside and the campfire. My grandma always had the softest, well cared for hands.

Strange...how bizarre I seem in this medium. I feel like a Beckett character...like that big hairless head thing. What was that called again?

Slipping. I'm slipping.

Now I'm going to make an observation which will only confirm my weirdness. It's about the slippery softness of my skin these days and how I have been noticing how it feels...inside my mouth. Awareness of the body can also be like awareness of mortality and that relates to time...so at least in the first week I've managed to maintain the consistent theme of my blog.

Dream...Strange dream about becoming a widow. I was married to this much older man. I was a young girl. It was like me in teenage years with 1950's thrift store dresses. He was murdered. It turned out he had been murdered by the husband of a woman he was sleeping with. He had seemed kind and reliable but had turned out to be a womanizer and a card sharp...

Of course, as his widow I wanted to know all about him NOW. When I thought he was good he had bored me a bit. Now that he had a secret life, I wanted to know all about it. I found his house and went there. He had a friend staying there--an old football buddy from college. The guy let me in. He was dressed sort of raggedy in beige cordoroys. He had a few sticks and leaves in his afro. He wouldn't tell me much about my dead husband. Just told me to look through the telescope. So that was the first thing I found out about my dead husband: He was an amateur astronomer.

I started wanting the football buddy to make love to me. He kissed me. We were about to do more together when I woke up.

There's so much I can't do with this little internet site here. I just don't want to think about that now, though...

OK. Now. There is the sound of someone's alarm clock going. When I reached my door tonight I thought: That is my alarm clock. My alarm clock is continuously going off. I cannot sleep and hence cannot wake up (one of the irrationalities this blog is supposed to uncover and explain). It is someone else's alarm clock. I am paranoid and self-referential these days. So I was thinking that maybe this is someone hoping to avenge themselves on me for my alarm always going off. Proving a point somehow. Probably, they just forgot.

I'm trying not to think about this alarm going off in the wrong way. It could say too much to me in my current time trap: Like--'Time's a wastin'...Time's up!

I need to take a nap though. I know that I can but it will innure me to the sound of an alarm. Unfortunately. I've already got 4 of them. Well, 4 I use daily. I have a few spares for emergencies.

For the more mundane version of the sweepstakes aspect of life why not go to www.pch.com?

See...there it goes again...and again...and again...and again...

Now it is late. It is 5:43 a.m. despite what it might say on the clock. This is the subject (one of several) of noodniks anonymous. The infuriating passage of time. Why must time pass so annoyingly? Yet if it stopped obviously one would get nothing done. Yes, there is always the 'I Dream of Jeannie' and 'Bewitched' time stoppage. But real time stoppage would involve utter statis and remove all possibility of causal efficacy. Alas! How I dreamed of stopping time. Now it is flowing through my hands like...like...jergens lotion...

Welcome to Noodniks Anonymous. Where I can be both a noodnik and anonymous. The current title is 'Divine Reward Clearinghouse...' Inspired by Publisher's Clearinghouse. Publisher's Clearinghouse is only a subset of the Divine Reward Clearinghouse--wherein some people get fabulous winnebagos, cash prizes, and so on and others are left with very little if nothing. Yes, it does matter if you submit your paperwork and submit it on time in the universe to be eligible for divine rewards but at the same time your chances of winning could be infinitesimal. And you have little or no control over them (after all paperwork is submitted). Excuse the extended metaphor...it's my first blog.