Smoke

We were close to my hometown; we used to play in this tunnel as kids. It was dark as the coal back then but we would run down there to drink, to get high or just disappear. It was a long tunnel but she was right, people held their breath through it believing if they could last the entire length, their wish would could true. I would watch the kids do it on the morning route and I’d seen old women try to do it in secret, their faces growing red before they gave up and stared off at the past. It was on top of us now, the first cars already deep inside the moss covered blackness, Hailey’s chests rose, eyes grew wide; she took her breath and smiled-wishing for love, for forever. Hands held, he mimicked her. The couple in the front continued snoring. I closed my eyes but still I heard it, faintly, over the hum of the wheels, over the echo off the walls, I heard him, Hailey's new fiance, head turned to the aisle, I heard him exhale. I walked out the back door of the train into the screaming wind and lit my first cigarette in three years.

In Sickness and Grace

I've been sick lately. It's been getting worse. I used to get sick all the time and finally it stopped a few years back. But, last ten days or so I have been awful. Sick nearly every day and just miserable. Tonight is by far the worst. I've been so ill the past few hours I could hardly move. Part of it is that I frightened myself but after hours of misery I am ready to concede the rest of it. 

I went out with him the other night, Eduardo. We went and ran these errands and got his dry cleaning and some groceries and had a wonderful evening. 

You know the worst part of an affair? I mean naturally the trust is gone and the betrayal and the hurt are hard to deal with it but there is something that I think we forget. 

I want to have grace. I want to accept people but I am not sure how. I was so inspired by Nicholas that Grace has become my word of the year. To learn to accept others without judgment but to be there for them, through everything and support them even, and perhaps during, times of errors. That is hard to do. I remember clearly the day that I realized that I loved Evan and his faults not in spite of his faults. But, Nicholas, to his credit, has never judged me, he has been there for anything and at times he has pissed me off and ruined many, many of days but I truly believe on some level he has never meant to hurt anyone. 

I complained to him recently that I don't always know to whom to listen. I hear friends telling me that I am being used by this person and the other and then other friends will tell me that friend is manipulating me when he says that and still others say the third friend is pathological. But the second and third like each other as to the first and third...

I'd like to know how to have grace and morals. Eduardo tells me the problem with this group of people he and I know is that there are no boundaries. The way that it is set, everything is ok, everything is encouraged and no limits or justifiable ends are established. At no point is it ever viewed as ok to say 'no, that is not ok anymore. That is wrong.' everyone is just so busy being encouraging and open that we forget that sometimes there are limits and should be limits. 

I attended this wonderful little showing of a movie where a woman asserts she lives with no money. Instead she housesits, lets others buy her travel and masquerades as laboring and bartering for food. What she doesn’t ever account is that money isn't evil; it isn’t as bad as she insists. She is so busy telling everyone that they can do with out these restricts and arbitrary conditions and forced worship at the foot of the dollar that she neglects to see that money is simply a tool. And sometimes it is for the better, sometimes it helps. In fact, money is simply a way of bartering with an established cost where the buyer is as much protected as the seller. 

So how do I know when something is just wrong and when it’s ok to say its wrong? How do I still be open while saying 'no. What you are doing is immoral and wrong.' and do I still stand by that person? Lets look at some examples shall we? Lets say that you know someone who shoplifts regularly. Clearly this is bad but its not awful and its hard to pin point exactly who is being hurt. But the action is wrong. Ok so if we go by action or motivation perhaps? The motivation there is arguably not to hurt someone so perhaps I could be more forgiving. What about an affair? How do I stand by and watch my best friend have an affair and hurt his girlfriend? How do I watch my best friend profess his love for someone while slapping me on the ass and flirting with me? I mean if that would ever happen. Maybe that is harder because people are being hurt. So is that the rule? Be accepting of things as long as everyone involved is saying its ok? It seems like at some level that shouldn’t be enough. That at some level it should be expected that I jump in and say no. That I should defend and protect those who cant or aren’t protecting themselves. I mean its all fine and good to say oh yes I am open to everything and whatever you say is good and I accept it but its far harder to say this is what I stand for, you are in violation of that, you don’t want to change, but I will continue to be your friend. On some level are you obligated to make them change or walk away? I’m just not entirely sure. 

How do I have grace there?

The worst part of an affair is that those are the moments you need your best friend to talk to and when he cheated on you, he took away your best friend at the same time. The person you needed to have around the most, the one you needed to talk to, and that’s whom you have been robbed. 

I dream of my father nightly anymore. I don’t believe in recurring dreams but this is close. I see him and he looks fine yet he knows he is going to die and he is going along with it. No effort to stop it just letting it happens. In the one two nights ago I was going to an opera and he was there as well. I was wondering why he was in attendance and was being a little odd. I went over to see him and my mother stopped me and said he was busy and I could see him after. I knew then that he was about to die and yet it meant nothing to him that I still wanted to see him, talk to him. He just let it happen. Nicholas told me how he asked for permission to propose. I realized that cant ever happen to me. To be honest, my father had no right to give me away anyhow. It always should have been Fred. My father didn’t know me, didn’t care for me. He left me right? How many times over. 

I don’t need a relationship or want one. But there are some nights when it would be nice to be held. Scientists say we fall in love seven times before getting married: I'm at three. I've said it a few more and thought it twice more. I wonder what changes in us. Maybe it takes that long to learn to love a flaw or to get over our own. Sometimes I wonder if it is just that after that many we learn to accept compromise. Maybe we will never love anyone the way we loved our first love and we just slowly accept it. After seven loves... who has seven loves?! 

The groceries we bought should make a nice dinner for him. I should have recognized that he has never gone out of his way to purchase food before. But I didn’t. I was too happy to be with him, to see him. Took me a few hours to realize I was assisting him in his preparation for her. I want to be the one who makes him happy. I want to be the one for whom he lights up and smiles. It so rare that he does. I wish that could be me. 

I’ve been trying to take it the best I can as I ant to be there for him, I want to support him. I want him to be happy. More so than anyone I know. I wish I could be the one that did that for him but I cant. So. Grace. The only trouble is that grace is hard. And my body isn't quite sure of it. And so I lie on the floor, sick in pain, sore throat, dizzy, running a fever. It’s easier. It may not quite be grace but I’m pretty sure it is the true and moral thing to do and that is what I want for him. 

Train Maps of The World

It is nearly Valentine's Day and I will be subjected at any moment to defend my dissertation: Valentine's Day is not evil, even for singles. I adore Valentine's Day. It is a day to celebrate your love for someone else, a national day where we recognize how important love is to each of us. I think that says quite a bit. Goodness knows it has to be more lucrative, more joyful, more celebrated than president's day, labor or half the rest of the insanity we get off work. I love Valentine's day. I admit that i am frequently jealous of those in the perfect relationship where they will celebrate Valentine's Day with their loved one and be happy but even still, I am happy.

I suppose I could do what half the single women do which is go out with their girlfriends and raise a toast to the single life, to their rebellion against the institute and pressures of the world to conform and show off a ring. Not happening. If it was them getting together because they were first in each other's world and that is how they wanted things to stay I would be swayed but I'm not.

I have this incredible new book about the railway maps from across the globe. The maps are beautiful ranging from technical to charactures. Some artists render the complicated maps in shapes of alligators to help it be more memorble. THen, naturally, we all remember the most beautiful subway map of all time? With it's straight lines and a focus on the route instead of the geography above, Piet Mondrian's map changed the context of the map and made something that is still used today.

Want to know why the maps of railways are so complicated and awkward? It's because of how the railroads developed. Most the railroads, especially in Europe, were intended for short trips between two not very far destinations. So many of these small little tracks sprung up that it began to make sense to connect them and much as with our golden spike, there was soon a massive empire of wood and steel. That was never the intention but eventually it turned out to be a good thing, it solved numerous problems and built cities were there was literally nothing. In one case a city went from 400 people to over 6,000 in the course of half a decade. It made sense to change the goal and how much was compromised?

On Valentine's Day there will be an assumption that everyone will do what they can do to get a date no matter if that means you scramble back to an ex or ask someone out that you think is beneath you, or perhaps it means going out with someone you don't like as much because your primary partner is busy, perhaps it means sacrificing and going to a party where everyone can be together. People use Valentine's Day like New Years to establish a commitment, a sentence, a status. It becomes about the outcome for some: not being alone, getting a ring. If a good bottle of wine accompanies it though I mean is it truly a loss?

I woke up this morning wanting to have sex. Yes, all of you know my stance on sex and my strong religious beliefs and the aggravation it causes for so many of you who do not want to understand. I started my believe of no sex before marriage well before sex was a possibility. I was quite young and confidently asserted that I wanted my life to be for God and that he should come before all else until the time when I find someone that I am willing to give my life to. This is probably a little confusing but it is important to me. Waking up and wanting to have sex with someone then should be a warning sign to some degree right? Does that mean that I am losing my connection with God? That I think I should go and sleep with all these people? Not really. It simply means something I had admitted for a little while now which is that I don't think God cares. How much of this though was ever about Him.

People often go on these tangents to me about how I have been hopelessly deceived by religion and the Church. In fact, there is a youtube video with a million hits about some poor boy who loves God and hates the Church. He uses all of these lines from the Bible that prove the inconsistencies in Church practice, raises questions about the money that people donate to the Church and a host of other egregious actions. I have no trouble with the Church. I view it as a tool. I don't care if you eat an cheese bagel. The point, to me, of having these rules is that, as I have previously heralded it gives a method of order. I think these monstrous and controlling rules are for our bennefit. You know how people fast to get closer to God? You know how they isolate themselves for years and go without speaking to obtain meditation? I have never believed that God needed someone to do that. But its out there. It's there for us. As a method to help us. As a way for us to feel closer to God. Not because He demands it but because we then know what we are willing to do for God, because we have an idea of His suffering and appreciate him more, because it helps us appreciate the things and people He has given us.

I heard this idiotic argument the other day on a television show about a girl who died and came back to life. She had been the ultimate goodie two shoes. WHen she came back from the dead people asked her what it was like and she responded only by saying there was no God. To her that gave her free reign to do whatever she wanted: sex with everyone and anyone, drugs, even murder. Ok crazy people chill for a second i am not saying anything with that yet. The point to me is that if you are doing these things simply to appease God, well, you have already failed.

If i have grown out of my need to wait until I'm married to have sex than that's that. It has protected me from things I couldn't begin to describe to people. It was something I needed to stay alive. If that's not there anymore than I need to ask why I am continuing to do it. It wont matter to God one way or the other but is it imperative to something else, something, I'm sorry but I can't even tell you.

Did you know that New York didn't want a train? Originally it was planned with the intentions of using canals to transport goods. I find trains to be beautiful, endearing and timeless. So much has changed but there is a timelessness, a sense of might that disappears with every cloud of steam. There is a beauty in the constantly hum of the wheels on the tracks, the weight of the cars and the fading light on the caboose. I suppose it is true that the purpose of the train was always simple, transport objects from one place to another and it has done that. For so long.

Those girls would be happy to leave that table when Mr. Right came in the door. How many would look it? How many of them would let that idea drift off into the fog?

There are these massive maps to dictate where things should go, how things should work and we pretend that if we follow them, or if we do the opposite and ignore everything because we want to rebel, that they will get us somewhere. Either way, we still use them, every day, to tell us what to love, what to do. I am just advocating something a little different. Recognize that we made the maps ourselves. We begged God for the commandments. Moses when back twice right? He needed them. I needed them. I created my own. I heard my own. We all have.

We needed this. All of us did. It is easy to stand on the back of the train car and wave goodbye. It is hard to watch the world drive farther away and stand there in God's true goal. But that is why He gave us maps, why we created rules, so we could find it, so we could stay there, so we could hear it, so we could do it, so we could find our grace.

Happy Valentine's Day, I hope your journey goes beautifully.

To the victor the spoils; to the loser their pride

To the victor the spoils; to the loser their pride

Myopia is a condition that approximately 25% of the population currently has, simply put, it is when you can see things better that are close to you than that are far away. It is associated with a higher IQ. That's right, all those kids you teased for wearing glasses really were smarter than you. Sorry. Then again how many idiot studies have we all read. The more interesting part to me is to consider why that might be the case. I think it is a bit like video games. Did you know that people's IQ have had the most dramatic increases in the past few decades? IQ is a truly odd measure though and seems (from someone uneducated) that it is based on one's ability to learn. Therefor, it would mean the ability to figure out how to win in your current environment. Video games train us to think that way and with the increase in logic puzzles we give children, they certainly should be learning this faster. There is a video game principle that talks about a pay off level, forgive me geeky people for not knowing enough terms, but essentially the principle follows that people will work towards obtaining a goal, like an extra life or a prize gold coin, and they will be willing to under go challenges to do that for hours and hours and hours as long as they are given small encouragements. There is a burn out level though, where you find it is too challenging and you will simply turn off the game. So, as long as we can keep that build up coming, that small treasure, we should continue to keep playing the game.

I asked a friend of mine about the history of myopia and the development of it. He suggested that it is, for all intensive purposes, growing, quickly. He brought up an excellent point that a few hundred years ago, not being able to see as well was an impressive disadvantage. Now, we don't need to worry about it as much and you see it far more. Why would it be linked to a higher IQ though? I think I have a possible explanation: it increases IQ but you have to work harder to win in the same environment as everyone else. You, with a weaker sense, have to still navigate the same world, the same obstacles, and put the same things in order. You learn to do this through an impressive filtered lens-just a thought.

But if that were to be true, perhaps that could explain some other things as well. It is, at this point, relatively easy to correct nearsightedness but what about other problems with vision or hearing. Having ones that are less easy to solve, does it make people feel isolated? Literally having to see the world differently than everyone else, does that make one feel less able to connect?

Not to return to my perpetual thread of poly bashing but I have had a few odd realizations lately. It was asserted by a friend that I have more partners than anyone he knows in the poly world. I was taken aback by this announcement because I, at present, view myself as completely partnerless. I implored him to take it back as I was uniformly offended by such an accusation-with the strong positions I have taken against poly, seeing myself as the worst offender wasn’t something I was up for. The friend pointed out several people I have a good connection with as my partners but to me, they are all friends, they are people that I enjoy being around, people I trust and confide. He suggested that any intimate connection, including emotionally intimate, could be considered a relationship. I keep percentages instead. I have 30% friends for casual folks who know one aspect of me and to whom I say hello when I pass, I have 60% friends that I call when I want to go do something, want to talk for a while, and after that, it gets murky. Usually people higher than that are people I have kept as a significant partner and someone I imagined myself with; sometimes, it is a friend that I have had for a long time.

I had a fight recently with someone that I considered a friend when he thought that we were moving in a different direction, towards dating. He is poly and I simply don't want that for myself but he thought that our closeness, my desire to talk to him so often, my desire to be near him, meant we were moving forward. The problem with the scenario is that we were both using different vocabulary.

To the victor goes the language.

I think back to Eduardo and I felt with him and realize he was lying to me at some point but I don’t know how intentionally I think that was. He keeps insisting we had been friends the entire time: while I slept in his bed, while we talked as often as we did. If that’s true though, why is he so against that same thing now? I saw him briefly last week and had a wonderful conversation with him, felt close him, was energized by him. Then it crashed again. I hear it in his voice when he speaks to me, when he doesn’t use my name. Eduardo takes precautions, kind precautions; he never say her name, never alludes to her but we know she won. Ironically, I know more than I want to what she has won. When I am with him, when I hear the condemnation in his voice I hear my father too, I see my father at his desk, judging me, judging himself more and I see Daniel’s dream: my father about to board a train and Daniel telling him that he cant leave me again, that I need him but my father shakes his head and says he wanted to be there for me but never was. I know what that house is like and sometimes winning means staring through the pane glass windows at the picture perfect house. I want him to kiss me, to tell me he loves he, that its ok, that it’ll be ok, and I want to be the one to make him smile and I want to see him smile, more than I ever could put words to or let my mind even think. But I also don’t want my father. I already had to live through it once. Maybe forfeiting is winning but I miss what I lost: I miss my friend.

Then I think about this guy who wants a relationship with me. I think that I have said clearly what I want and what I don’t but it’s never that clear. Sometimes I enjoy being around him and sometimes I am reminded of everywhere else he would rather be and I know I shouldn’t have to give up. I think the problem remains in the vocabulary that is being used. I expected this guy to enter into our friendship with my vocabulary as I am the one against poly and I am, frankly, in the majority. But he has surrounded himself with like thinkers so naturally he is accustomed to using a different vocabulary and, as I was entering his life, he assumed I was take on his. Where could that leave a poor little lost girl?

Deaf.

When I tried to end things recently with someone he became defensive and insisted that I was young and silly. I have to assume that even in my world, he found a way to win. Since that point any time I have mentioned anything of slight emotional significance with another guy he has put up this wall announcing why he is not able to pursue any type of relationship with me. For a while it would hurt me, as I would feel like it was yet again someone telling me that I wasn't good enough but it happened again last night. I was driving home from a wonderful evening with a friend and telling this guy about the night and he did the same thing. He said that I was simply a guilty pleasure and he didn't gain anything by talking to me, which started to set me off till I thought about his actions. He asks me to date him. Tells me he wants me. Calls me many nights. I’m not a waste of his time in his mind, he enjoys it but he needs to have this, to the loser goes the pride. And that’s ok.

This boy questioned me about it over and over since the conversation and I finally had to concede to him that I didn’t have the attraction to him that he required of me. I didn’t find him sexy I didn’t want a romantic spark to develop and that frankly his bourgeois bored me. He doesn’t want anyone in his life that doesn’t want him in every single way. In some ways he is much like me. I tried to explain to him how I felt-I don’t need anyone who only has the capacity to view me as a guilty pleasure, I am far too smart, too interesting for that but then when we can only get to one conversation, well he has every right to be bored. I just wish that were the entire truth. Truth, like language, favors the strongest. And I was escorted out, a lecture about my failure to be more than one-dimensional followed along with some harsh words about how shallow I was for not appreciating him. For him, he won a moral victory against a heathen. I’m not so sure I would have agreed but to the player, his pride.  He had a way survive, not matter what words he needed to speak.

There is a lake in Russia that is 25 million years old and because its in Russia and buried deep in a country that loses much to darkness and ice, it has remained minimally touched, hidden and it thrives with over 200 species that exist only there. Is that winning? Is being forgotten and living in a state of perpetual motion the victory? I suppose it will always be survival.

It’s in the Bible too right? God will only throw at you what you can handle? How much can I? Lately, I've thought maybe it’s more than I ever knew. I used to be addicted to checking facebook, seeing how evan’s relationship was progressing. I haven't in half a year now. I think still think about it but I have a way to survive and that is without checking. I used to think that I wanted all of these things: marriage, career, amazing friends who would be there for me unconditionally, a cute little house near the ocean. For the first time in years I can honestly say that I am tremendously content being single. I don’t have to explain why I missed a call, I don’t have to worry about which friends he gets on with, I don’t have to think about who has to sacrifice when this bill comes in twice as high, I don’t have to do that right now, and I’m kinda good with that. I can just make one decision and that can be enough. I don’t have to make our decision. I feel good about this. Consolation prize?

We have a winner and we have a loser. For a second lets talk about what happens when you win. Was out the other night with someone who won a small prize with me and he let out the most fearsome scream I have ever heard. Think primal scream after you have slaughtered a beats type scream. Walls shook, animals scurried. I quizzed him about it for a while after regaining my precious and fragile hearing and he heralded that all men did that, it was a way to be free, to not be contained. Yes, in fact my first thought was ‘oh no, not hippy liberal’ but, thank goodness, I don’t believe that was it at all. For him, it really was a moment to release and it is something he values above all else: a lack of confinement, rules and restrictions. He fired back with an equally pressing question for him: why didn’t I scream. I didn’t answer him. Took me a while to know why I didn’t need to do that and in the shower the next morning (best thinking place besides under my tent) I realized that I hated it because of what it was: a way to not be restricted. For me, winning is being safe, means not having to burry my head under covers when I turn the lights out at night, it means not having to run up the stairs when I’m home alone. All of those rules and restrictions to me are winning; they are the mark of defeating chaos and to a stretch, beating the devil. Announcing that I have figured out how to make the rules work for me, help me. Moreover, they are a mark of cooperation, of acceptance and respect. Think of it like this: for him, screaming meant he didn’t have to be bound by silence, by the acceptability of being quiet; for me, keeping quiet meant that someone would have to invest in me to hear me, it meant someone would stay in control of themselves when during an intense moment and wouldn’t be the one to lose control and hit me again. His winning celebration meant I had just lost.

If you think about who goes on to be successful it is entirely about how you win, it is about maximizing the rules, using them to get the attention you need and then stretching them just enough to further your belief. It is about using the vocabulary that is out there to make a new sentence. Evolution is about winning.

I say it all the time: I don’t understand poly. I hear about marriage and am confused. What does that even mean? I have a traditional view of marriage and don’t understand why another community so against tradition would want to use the same word. So I ask. Well the word has been around for so long (not as long as you think) it doesn’t have anything to do with religion (so what does it mean to you exactly), government stole the term when they appropriated it for business mergers etc. (are we equating all of this to a barter). Truth is I think I would do better if I could understand the terms but they get muddled. Pretty sure I am losing that battle quickly but I suppose I shall eventually have the home turf advantage.

I have the most amazing book that I need to permanently borrow from the library, and yes Eduardo has already frowned upon this idea. The book is a collection of wins from losses: haunting stories that remain only because of their tragedy but remain they do. A story of an island that is going to disappear, an island with homes, with people, with a history, that has eight inches left above the water. A story of an island that emerged entirely from bird dropping, do with that what you will. And a story of an island where a man grew up hearing a voice playing in his head, conversations entirely in another language, a language he never knew existed until one day he was introduced to someone who had actually heard the same language spoken years and years early; they married, the only woman who would ever understand him. He won.

In the end that is who shall always win, what shall always win. We set up the arguments and these obstacles for ourselves constantly: what did he mean when he said this? Will this lake be polluted and die? Over and over we strain ourselves to come up with that extra life, but that's who wins. Now we all need glasses. Now we all adapt. Its in what we tell ourselves after disappointment, its in our justification, its in the vocabulary that paints us the hero.

I needed a friend the other night, when I was told being a guilty pleasure wasn’t ever going to make me good enough to talk. I was up for a long time thinking about the losses, the pain that goes with it, of the moment you know that you’ve lost. Thinking about whom I've lost. Experiences I've lost. My trip to Spain. My perfect photo. My late night phone call to someone who understands. Then I got it. If I just changed my game. If I changed what it meant to win, if I allowed my loss to have a hint of victory, a small component: then I win. Then I survive. And I evolve.