for all that i talk about myself and life here and elsewhere, it’s very hard for anyone to truly get to know me. i don’t express my deepest feelings easily. there is a lot of shame and fear associated with revealing my true self to others.
i’m afraid you’ll be appalled and horrified, disgusted and ashamed. you’ll run screaming from my life, alerting the neighbourhood to the presence of such filth.
you have to listen very carefully to what i say and how i say it. there are very few people who’ve done this in my life. i can count on one hand how many people i would say really get me. that’s why it hurts so much when i realize that i was wrong about someone’s level of understanding me.
he wiggled his fingers then slowly made a fist with his new hand.
this feels real.
he stretched his hand open. he pulled backwards on his pinky finger until the nail almost touched his wrist. it didn’t hurt.
they promised me no pain. i can feel it, but it doesn’t hurt.
letting his finger spring back into place, he turned his head. first to the left, then to the right. up and down. side to side. it felt almost unbearably real.
he slowly experimented with moving each part of his new body. hadn’t he asked for this; to be remade, reborn, in this cybernetic form? why was he surprised that it had happened? why did he doubt it so much? he’d read the research, seen the prototypes, talked to the first, defective, recipients. he’d risked everything to reach this moment, yet he still disbelieved.
how is it that even with an artificial brain, i still have these debilitating human thought patterns?
even in his thoughts, the word “human” was uttered with such contempt that anyone overhearing would have cringed at the malice it contained.
he’d searched his entire life for a means to escape the unbearable existence of his own flesh. now, on the dawn of his new life, he was coming to the realization that it wasn’t his cells which had held him hostage. it had been him all along. the core of him. his thoughts. his mind. his soul.
i’ve become frankenstein’s monster. i’m pinnochio in reverse. a boy made a puppet. why didn’t i see it sooner? now i will never be free.
he would have sobbed then, if they’d built him tear ducts.
i wish i had known. at least i would have died.
i just realized that “equilibrium” would be an entire first or last line of a haiku.
cute electrician boy’s name is dustin. he’s a first year apprentice and he’ll be in school for the next three months. he drives a white pontiac sunfire & wears long, baggy cargo shorts. my source will be finding out other important things such as his age, marital status & whether or not he wants to ask me out.
i look insanely cute today. it must be the mascara.
i was sitting here at work, plugging away, slowly working my way through the mountain i call an in-tray, when i suddenly smelled toast. burning toast. i immediately thought i was going to have a seizure:
“I soon realized that a bizarre sensory phenomenon I had experienced off and on all my life was actually something called a “simple partial seizure.” During these seizures, some people see flashes of light, or smell specific things, like burning toast.”
then i realized it was just someone making their lunch.
my new objective is to ignore the existance of cute electrician boy. i will no longer imagine his beautiful eyes or bright smile while i work. i will not pre-enact scenarios in which we have a meaningful conversation and he falls madly in love with me, pursuing me with harlequin romance determination. i will not go downstairs in a vain attempt to “run into him” just to get a breathtaking view of his brawny frame.
i can do this. yup. starting n… in five minutes.
i’m getting serious butterflies when i’m around cute electrician boy. he’s everywhere i don’t expect him today. i turn a corner and there he is, staring at me. i feel stupid and nervous and i can’t for the life of me think of anything to say to him to get a conversation started. argh.
see? this is exactly why i’m 29 and single.
not thirty minutes ago, cute electrician boy talked to me in the hall! *sigh* he’s so dreamy.
i have a friend with an asian fetish; although, he hates it when i call it that. he’d rather name it — if it has to be named at all — an asian preference. bullshit. it’s a fetish. he lusts after asian chicks. he’s a rice king; although, he hates that name, too. he calls himself a rice prince. it’s all about the perception of impropriety, you see.
we were talking last night about all these beautiful asian girls he’s meeting and lusting after lately. i got quiet after a while. i didn’t have much to add to the conversation. i don’t see anything special about asian women. just as i don’t see anything special about italian men. “people are people,” to quote depeche mode.
getting to the root of it, it made me feel inadequate for not being asian. for being a hulking, caucasian girl with brown hair and round eyes and white skin. for not being a sylph. for not being mysterious and demure. i said to him at one point, “us poor caucasian girls just can’t compete.” he didn’t reply. he knew i was right.
i’d like to think i’m pretty open-minded about the people i lust after. yeah, i have a thing for accents; but, i’ll take almost any accent. i’ve had crushes on just about every kind of person i’ve been exposed to: white, black, asian, indian (east and native), european, boy, girl, old, young. i’m an equal-opportunity luster.
if i’m completely honest with myself, part of my discomfort with his preference is that i’ll never be one of the preferred. he may love me and value my friendship, but i’ll never been that “cute asian girl” he’s always talking about. it hurts. then again, it usually does when you reveal truths.
i spiffed up my templates page. take a look. tell me what you think.
in other giraffe news, i’ve added a new blog to my list of reads. we must all stand to welcome mecawilson, yet another minnesota blogger, to the fold. there must be something in those 10,000 lakes which breeds smart & funny.
sometimes i wonder about people. not about the stupid things they do; those i expect. i wonder about how the few of us who don’t accomplish these amazing feats of cruelty and stupidity manage to live beside the former in relative peace and ignorance. well, that’s until we find ourselves in their path, of course.
estivate (ES-tuh-vayt) verb To pass the summer in a dormant state.
that’s me! i’m estivating, baby.
it just dawned on me the amount of preferential hardware treatment i get at work. as mentioned earlier, i got a new computer yesterday. thinking back, this is the fourth computer i’ve had since i’ve been there. and, i haven’t even been here four years.
looking around the other offices, and even within my own department, there are people using older, slower machines while i keep getting upgraded every time a new batch of pcs arrives. i’m not sure why this is, maybe mike just likes me enough to let me have new bits. he knows i understand them and appreciate the upgrades. could it be the camradarie inherent in the brotherhood of geeks?
he’s probably just hoping i’ll sleep with him.
i honestly thought today was wednesday. i suppose it was wishful thinking. although, considering how slow the day is progressing so far, i should have known it was tuesday. tuesdays always drag.
i brought in the rest of the marble cake i bought saturday for my lovely co-workers. they’re lucky i’m so nice to them. actually, they don’t realize the only reason i bring this stuff in is so that i don’t eat it while it’s in my house. shh. don’t tell them. i want them to think i’m a kind, generous person. we’ll keep the truth between you and me.
i have to think up some interesting stuff to talk about while i’m guest-blogging for andrea next week. i’m sure my day’s posts will be filled with giddy “i just got high-speed access and i’m hyper” babble, seeing as it will be my first day with the cable modem (if they actually install it monday, as they’re supposed to). then again, that’s a tuesday… i’m usually sarcastic and mean on tuesdays. maybe she should have given me wednesday, instead.
how? let’s see: i overslept, but was not late. i hit every. fucking. red. light. on the way to work. i’m having issues trying to set up the new computer they gave me at work. the bitchy new payroll person i hate just dropped off a shitload of work. *sigh*
i need more coffee. and some heroin.
upon browsing in an amazing little consignment store, i said to the lady at the counter:
“i’d get my stomach stapled to be able to shop here!”
i can’t believe that i, being the reality tv junkie i am, didn’t know about reality blurred. now i’ll know everything there is to know about all my favourite tv shows!
shut up.
percolation, conversation,
laundry, quake, ambling,
bread buying,
pawn shops & consignment clothes, toast & ketchup,
aromatherapy therapy,
roasted peppers, hemp conditioner,
banana bread mission, salsa obsession,
kisses,
crab leg tango,
jello tasting, dq licking,
guest-star driver, tetris war,
video review,
horizontal heaven.
i’m trying not to care that i don’t get as many readers as i used to, or that my blog hasn’t been reviewed, or that i haven’t been asked to guest blog on anyone else’s site. i conveniently forget that i have a core of loyal readers who care what i have to say and, i believe, care about me, too.
if i wasn’t so nosy, i’d get rid of the site tracker. i need to get rid of the site tracker. someone please forcibly remove the site tracker for me.
i realized earlier today that wednesday was the eleventh anniversary of my grandmother’s death. i find it interesting that i’d remembered it was looming earlier in the week and then remembered that it had passed today, but was completely unware of it on the day of. what was certain was that i had been out of sorts at work all during that day. i was also sure that when i came home and was faced with an evening alone in my apartment, it was the last thing i needed. luckily, my friends were there to keep me company, no matter how subconscious my desire to be around the living was.
gummy, as i called her for the first half of my life, was my only living grandparent. both my father’s parents had died in the early sixties of alcohol related illnesses; my maternal grandfather had run his car off the road when my mother was only twenty-one. she was my only link to my family’s history. i treasured her more than anyone. i still do. but, her death scarred me. i still pick at that wound today. if i let myself think much beyond the surface of her existence in my life, i have a difficult time pulling myself out of the sorrow which follows.
i remember so many specifics about her: how she always had a package of chicklets in her purse; the way the soft, wrinkled skin of her cheek felt; the can of mandarine oranges she always had in her cupboard when i’d go to visit; her gravelly voice; her small, strong body; the fight she had with my mother outside my bedroom door when i was four years old — she wanted to come in to comfort me, but mom wanted me to learn a lesson; how, even when i was young and energetic, she could out-walk me so far that i’d have to call out and ask her to wait up.
the one thing i wish i didn’t remember about her is the way she looked at her viewing. i wish with all my heart that the last time i had seen her was while she was asleep in the bed she died in, not laid out on the table in the funeral home. they had brushed her hair back from her face and put makeup on her; two things id’ never seen in my entire life. i understand a person’s need to see the dead, to say goodbye, to obtain closure; but, that was not how i wanted to remember her. it’s taken me a long, long time to have that one, last memory fade. it hurt me to see her like that. to hear my uncle say “she’s so cold” after kissing her forehead.
eleven years i’ve lived without her in my life. it seems so short sometimes. i believe it is because her presence in my life was so pervasive that every memory from the first to that day in 1990 were larger, more important because she was part of them than any in the eleven years which have passed without her.
i love you, gummy. wherever you are. i will always love you.
i watched this great movie on showtime the last night (well, okay… i *taped* it and watched it over several days this week; but, i *finished* it last night.) called strange fits of passion. it’s about this woman’s quest to lose her virginity and come to grips with who she is. of course, this describes it much better than i ever could.
it’s an australian film, and we all know that australian films are generally smarter, funnier and more thought-provoking than any north american endeavours. i doubt you’ll be able to find it at blockbuster or video update, but if you have the chance to see it, do.