Beginnings are deceptively simple.
Find a striking word, just one meaningful statement. That will do. Just enough to hook yourself into trying to understand what you've just said.
At least, that's what I'm trying to do.
Once again, I'm at a place where I've begun diary entries with no endings. Not to mention middles. But this time, though the symptoms are the same, their cause is, once more, deceptively different.
Rather than being unable to drive the logical point home, getting lost in a morass of uncertain wishes and tediously tender desires, I instead struggle to feel any one direction for longer than a paragraph or three. If I were to be writing more directly about my emotions right now, I should be scattered to another, hardly related wind by the end of this meticulously ridiculous sentence. Or did I mean ridiculously meticulous?
Anyway. Distractable? Something like that.
Perhaps I'm still battling with a sense of unreality about me. Suddenly I'm *actually* supposed to be asking Lisa out, rather than continuing to push myself in the general direction of finding out whether I really want to or not. Baby steps have been replaced by one wompum big step.
I'm afraid I'm too tired this morning to provide myself or my readers anything resembling a reasonable argument. I can't even decide whether I'm excited out of my mind or terrified or oddly numb. Or if, as I suspect, all this has more to do with my empty refrigerator and less to do with the possibility of Lisa being more than a pretty face and a happy spirit.
I blink. I nod. I yawn.
My weekends are gone. I do not complain, but it seems so strange. By the time Friday morning has rolled around, I pretty much know how my entire weekend will go. It's an odd experience, especially since I used to (and probably still should) get a number of my work hours in over the weekend. Such is the life of a slack at home employee. ;-)
I should think of a nice date to go on with Lisa, this Saturday. And yet all I really want to do is spend a timeless time in a comfortable room with her and lots and lots of hot cocoa or lemonade, depending on the weather, and all the rhyme and reason in the world.
I know how to go on a normal date, and I know how to get to know someone, at least a little bit, through such a thing. But my heart rebels at anything normal. I tried to be too normal for my date with Bonnie -- the date itself was too normal -- and so, no sparks. Hell, I kinda found myself a little dull that day. :-P
Ahh, getting distracted again. Or something. I swear, I will write something down here, and five minutes later will disagree with myself intensely. I just feel that way right now. I will be fully convinced now, but in ten minutes I'll have struck upon three or four other soul-defining moments.
Ah, the joys of sleepiness. One can exaggerate beyond care. :-)
Stumbling blindly (and blithely?) over landmines and daisies...
We talked a little about museums today. I feel so painfully uncultured. Some days, I wake up to the fact that I have become such a nerd... where did the Renaissance man go?
I don't actually much care for that designation, though it may be more apropos than any other cliche available. (Oooh, playing with fancy words like a kitten with a ball of yarn... they keep getting fancier and longer and... oop! No more yarn... my brain's all pooled out...) What I mean is, I always fear that folks who call me Renaissance think of me as stuck in the past, an SCA throwback, one whose philosophy and spirit looks more behind than before. I don't want others to think of me that way; I don't want to think of myself that way. I don't know if either is likely, but it's a small worry of mine.
I ramble. Moo. Wooden ceiling, with carpet on top.
I wonder how Lisa perceives herself. Does she truly truly not believe she's beautiful? It's almost impossible not to look at her -- I've felt that way since I first met her. It doesn't hurt quite as badly now, so I can understand how she might be a bit more used to her own appearance, as I've gotten a bit more used to it, but still... Physical beauty has always seemed to be her domain, her bailiwick. What blemishes can she possibly see?
Is it a beauty of the spirit that she questions? That doesn't seem to be the case; and if it were so, I'd have to admit that I simply don't know her well enough to speak towards Devil or Angel or Ordinary Person. She has always come across as joyfully ebullient, virtually impossible to get down. It staggers me sometimes.
And now, to learn there is something more. I think somehow I'd allowed myself to reach a point of believing it was all "just there", like a leopard with its spots -- any reason or wherefore was more mythological than possible. She was just that way, and no need -- chance? -- to dig deeper.
I wonder what she's always thought of me. No doubt I'll ask her that. I always want to know that of people. The real deal, you know? The good, the bad, the ugly.
Who am I. Reflections of the mirror.
We talked about mirrors, and sunlight and universes and dreams... well, she talked about them, I mostly listened. I guess I'm a good listener, though that can get in the way of people knowing me. Funny how much I want to be known, but I don't want to tell. Scared to tell, or, scared to fail to tell. Or to be understood.
And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am...
Days are, I don't care who the who is in that song. I just want someone. I haven't been fully open to anyone since I was a kid. Anyone.
Sangeeta really wanted to talk to me the other night. I feel like we're ships passing, sometimes. I see the glimmer of her sails; at one angle she's a pirate, at another she's the most promising yacht in the harbor. Not to compare people to boats or to simplify them too much or anything. Sleepy time.
I miss the theatre. Not TACIT; TACIT is hardly theatre, though sometimes it came close. Theatre involves more than just doing a show. It involves a cast, complexity, interactions, humanity that I not only can stand but yearn to be with... my first two experiences with TACIT were Revenge of the Space Pandas and Inherit the Wind. That was theatre. It's gotten weaker ever since.
Maybe I just miss the days I thought I was a good actor. Speaking of the things that my days at Caltech ground out of me. :(
I wonder if this diary entry had a point. Oh, yes. To replace the other one. To write something. To be written, whatever it was. That'll do.
Perhaps I should leave that last paragraph as the ending. It's pretty pat. Not so much a wrapping up as a philosophical patting down of the soil. Feels like I end a lot of my entries that way, as though I'm Jean Luc channelling Roddenberry one more time.
So much to do, so much to say. So little time.
I need to write the Shirley Project. Damn good story got started there. I just need to put it together. Somebody said in my Writer's Digest that it's the rule and cardinal sin of writing that writers always start things and never finish them. That's true of me; when I write, at least.
I wonder where Ms Thomas is right now. She was my favorite teacher ever. She taught me how to really write, challenged me for the first time in that field in a long time. And inspired me, and drove me, and comforted and accepted and supported.
Oh my... that's funny. I just remembered, after I graduated, she wanted me to call her by her first name -- Lisa.
Nothing like a non sequitur random coincidence to end your day, huh?
Bedtime for Henry. So it must be bedtime for Joey. Zzzz...