Lee tried one more time to make it a go.
The silence in his thoughts when alone with her told him otherwise.
He was sad.
But glad.
Nine days…
Tag Archives: family
Empty Cells at Empty Tables
As an actor and comedian, as one who treats tragedy with a flair for the dramatic, life as a writing human contains all the necessary ingredients for decades of fun.
Barely raise the hint of sarcasm.
Avoid cynicism like the plague.
Treat your characters with care.
Make sure they have fun, facing death with a laugh and a last chance for escape.
I pause from the story in progress to consider, to sidetrack, to meander off the path, the possibilities of characters whose lives partly parallel people I meet.
To show that we want gender differences in cultural references because it is the most common body form we deal with.
Yet our spreadsheets containing cells, rows, columns, tables and formulae are gender neutral.
How often do we look at a chart of data and exclaim, “Damn! That’s hot!” or “[She/He] looks fine!”?
I explore the sexuality of our humanness to understand where we’re going with artificial intelligence.
Robots or cybernetic beings which don’t interact with us have no need for gender identity.
It is in that future context where I always live.
Out there, 400 marsyears from now, when our future selves are looking back at us, they will see this day, or the result of this day, in one form or another.
Trillions of state changes later.
Some days living here in the daily struggle of self, helping friends and family, empathising with them and by extension their friends and family (ad infinitum), and living in a projected future tests my ability to think objectively.
Occasionally, I give myself permission to take a break from being everything and everybody to myself at once, let alone to those I know.
As I have done the past few days, enjoying the usual luxury and freedom of wandering away to think and write, causing hurt feelings to those I seem to ignore, confusion to those I barely know, giving them, if they choose, something to talk about when they briefly take a moment to notice my absence.
I give my full attention when I can.
Sometimes I wander off.
I just have to be me.
Where I’ll end up in the next few weeks is anybody’s guess.
I’ve changed.
That’s all that matters for now.
Four hundred marsyears from now is a different story!
Anachronistically creative, no anonymity allowed
Lee entered the small, narrow pub, a three-man band playing rockabilly blues on a stage at the back of the former offices of an old downtown lumberyard.
At first, he couldn’t see anyone familiar.
Then, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, seated at a long table across from the barkeep’s station stood his family financial advisor, Evanc, and a group of her friends.
“Lee! What are you doing here?” Evanc waved Lee over.
Lee looked around. He didn’t know his advisor was going to be there, expecting someone else familiar. As he walked over to join the group, which was arranging itself for a selfie, Lee noticed Nats was holding a camera to snap a shot, too.
As they posed, Lee also framed an off-angle photo to capture the wild outfits of the three amigas.
Lee kept looking around and didn’t find the friend who invited him.
“So what do you think of our outfits?”
Lee looked at Evanc and her two friends. They wore brown outfits with a dark flame emblem on their chests.
“Pretty cool.”
Evanc gave the thumbs-up and punched Lee in the shoulder. “You’re all right, Lee.”
One of Evanc’s friends leaned toward Lee, holding her hand on his chest to steady herself, yelling into his deaf ear. “We’re Ravagers.”
Lee couldn’t hear a word she said. “What’s your name again? I couldn’t hear you.”
The woman, who stood short of Lee’s shoulders, stood up on her toes and pressed her mouth against his ear. “I’m Neffie. We’re Ravagers. You know, from Guardians of the Galaxy.” She pushed back to look up at his face.
Lee nodded. He had wanted to party with some friends at the Yuri’s Night gathering earlier in the evening but the activity that kept him humble and honest — his job — required that he work a weekend shift to fill in for several absent employees.
Neffie leaned in again. “You’re cute. I’m drunk.”
“Uh-huh.” Lee had never grown used to looking nice, handsome, or cute to men and women. He still carried in his thoughts the image of his ten-year old self, chubby, nerdy and usually picked last for pickup sports games in the playground. Although he had grown into a good-looking man by his mid-teens, the ten-year old image was most prominent.
Neffie slapped Lee on the arm to get his attention. “Oh, you. I bet you think I’m drunk.”
Lee shook the momentary glazed look off his face as Neffie grabbed his hand and slipped her fingers between his. He looked over Neffie’s head to see Guin had entered the room, along with one of her students, Matym.
Guin glanced at Lee, barely sharing eye contact.
Their years of knowing each other had given them the familiarity of eye conversation. Her glance said, in a friendly, familiar, slightly standoffish way, “I recognise your presence and I just want you to know you don’t own me, you don’t have the right to think you know me and I’ll speak to you when I want to.” They also let each other know they were in a little bit of nonspecific pain that may or may not be between them and may or may not be resolved anytime soon.
Neffie pushed on Lee’s chest. “What’s your name?”
“Lee.”
“I promise you, Lee, I won’t remember your name at the end of the night. Right up front, I’m not going to pretend.”
Lee nodded, looking into Neffie’s eyes. Black eyeliner accented with iridescent glitter made her brown eyes stand out. The black and silver feather boa weaved into her hair, black with blond highlights, added to her slightly exotic look.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lee noticed Matym looking at him. They shared a smile.
“Excuse me, Neffie, I’ve got to catch up on an unfinished story with a friend of Evanc.” He unclasped Neffie’s hand and helped her sit down.
Neffie looked up and smiled at him the whole time. “You really are cute. Evanc says you’re only into guys.”
It was Lee’s turn to lean into Neffie’s ear. “Not really. I don’t discriminate.”
Neffie’s eyes widened. “Oh, dear. Don’t go away!”
Lee walked around the table, taking in the group dynamic. Evanc was chatting with Nats; another of Evanc’s friends was shoulder to shoulder with a young man, deep in conversation; Guin was laughing at a story Matym was telling; and Neffie was following Lee with her eyes.
The band switched to a blues song. Lee stooped down to hear the end of Matym’s story and held his hand out to dance with her.
Matym was still relatively new at West Coast Swing. They swayed to the blues song for eight beats to get the feel for the tempo and then combined a few West Coast Swing dance steps with a blues swagger. Lee had danced with Matym many times over the last few months and was impressed with her progress. Like many new dancers, she was not yet used to owning her dance moves, waiting for Lee to lead her, but Lee clearly saw the influence of Guin on Matym’s foot pivots.
They laughed when they bumped into each other, Matym turning on her special smile as she spun into Lee’s arms. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem. You’re fine.”
As the song ended, Lee dipped Matym for the first time and then walked her back to the table.
Nats stood up, proudly putting his hands on his hips for everyone to notice his manly kilt, English racing cap and hairy legs. “A round of beer and drinks on me!”
The barkeep took their orders, the members of the group taking turns to go to the loo, playing musical chairs.
Eventually, Lee and Guin sat across from each other, having slowly broken down over the course of thirty minutes a few barriers they had placed between them over the last few months — a look here, a laugh there, an agreement with a conversational statement, a head shake then a quick stare at each other when they disagreed, making sure they were on the same page.
They lived their friendship as they loved to live life, through the eyes and body language of dancers.
Guin tossed her hair back, a move that she knew told Lee she wanted to dance. He nodded at her ever so subtly.
They met in the space between barstools and tables that served as a dance floor.
They gripped hands, not looking in each other’s eyes, as they normally did when they hadn’t danced together in a long time.
Nats, anticipating Guin’s usual ownership of a large space on the dance floor, cleared a few tables.
The band began a new song, a hard driving Southern rock tune they had premiered a month ago at a local biker bar.
Guin looked up from the floor and into Lee’s eyes. They held their look for just a fraction of a second longer than normal, almost breaking into a smile. They instantaneously knew this song was written for them.
Guin pursed her lips and struck a pose.
Lee pulled back, putting a little bit of pressure on their grip, feeling Guin’s resistance as she raised her free arm in the air and spun past him, every footstep a work of art in itself.
For some couples on the dance floor, the guy always leads. For others, the woman always leads. For experienced dancers, it was not leader and follower but a partnership, an unwritten agreement of trust and physical focus, erasing all elements of the universe not associated with the space between them but pulling the whole universe into their dance at the same time.
It was in that space on the makeshift dance floor that Lee and Guin didn’t own or owe each other but they were fully committed to something greater than themselves, where all the barriers finally fell away and they could be everyone and everything they wanted to be.
As they danced, they lost the need to look in each other’s eyes to check the status of their relationship, looking for the simple joy of seeing unqualified happiness in each other’s eyes.
As they danced, they experimented with a new language they had written together over the years, creating a whole new subculture in a matter of seconds.
They were free.
Then the song ended and they walked back to the table.
Nats clapped. “Well done.” His band of ten years, specialising in Irish and pirate music, had broken up a few weeks ago so he was free in his own way, able to sit and drink with his friends rather than perform on stage weekend after weekend.
Guin pulled her hair back to cool off her neck.
Lee finished off the last half-pint of his beer.
They looked at each other again, Guin turning her head slightly and squinting through her glasses, her eyes asking if they were more than dance nerd friends.
Lee nodded, affirming their status.
He glanced at Evanc, the tie that still bound him to his old life. He had to figure out how to tell his financial advisor that his old life was going away, that a major life event was happening so he could go on with his new life, ending the legal agreement he had made 30 years before and felt honour bound to uphold until it was over.
Being true to himself tried Lee’s patience but he knew who he was, even when in times past he had wanted to end his life rather than cut the subcultural connections he’d been taught to hold sacred, despite disagreeing with their sacredness.
Lee was on the right path.
Guin looked away from Lee, letting him know that no matter who they were together, she needed no man.
Lee agreed. It was their independence that they cherished as much as their dependence on a dance high. He reached for Neffie’s hand and led her to the dance floor, pulling her in close for a fast blues song, showing off to the rest of the group, sending Neffie and him into their own closed zone of understanding, ending with an elated dip to the floor.
As they returned to the table, Matym looked into Lee’s eyes. “I bet you wish they played the extended version of that song.” She winked.
Lee smiled.
At nearly one o’ clock in the morning, the night was still young.
Despite what would happen the rest of the evening, including long sessions when the whole group danced in a circle, their body movement freely flowing, or walking away from each other in the carpark at the end of the night, Lee was certain he was making the right longterm choices.
Chips and salsa
As an experiment, I asked myself what’s the difference between attention and love. Then I tested the question on myself. Who around me do I love you and who in return loves me?
Of course, the easy answer is family, including spouse.
Can we see the difference between someone loving us and someone giving us attention, especially at our most vulnerable, needy moments?
Good question.
We ought to sense the body signals that signify the difference such as the teenager who wants attention and senses the pop music star singing on stage to thousands is speaking directly to her.
But often we don’t understand ourselves let alone the unintended signals we send others.
Which brings me here, drinking a Dos Equis beer in a Mexican restaurant on south Huntsville, waiting on my wife and her work colleagues, one of whom we’ve shared dance classes (and who I helped teach WCS the first time I helped Jenn teach with me playing the role of a follow (no, autocorrect, not a dollop) — my first step into the joy of teaching dance), with whom Jenn and I had fun singing and performing with a blues singer years ago near Madison Ballroom.
The decision is not instantaneous.
For that, I am thankful.
Ultimatum?
When your spouse tells you it’s either her or your friends and you’ve got 43 years of your 55 years of your old life invested in the friendship with your spouse…
The decision isn’t ending up as easy as it should…sigh…
I’ve waffled (?) back and forth for over a year now.
I’ve gone off on fictional character splits to examine the future value of a new life with my friends vs. the old life with my wife.
If only it was something as simple as falling in love with another person, I could just say I was moving on…
But it’s not that…
It’s loving the internal version of myself that I so desperately want but don’t have the balls to handle.
Financially the decision to be my truest self would be a disaster for me. At least at first.
And I’ve seen others put their self fulfillment ahead of financial security, living paycheck to paycheck the rest of their lives.
I can’t talk to my closest friends about this because I’m having to make decisions that involve them as well as the fact most of them are women and another decision I’m trying to make is whether I should seek a compatible mate with whom I could conceive and jointly raise offspring.
Why do I have to put values on any of the people I know?
For once, I can’t stick my ostrich head in the sand and write myself out of this situation (yeah, I know, ostriches can’t read and write).
The value of slugs
I’ve got to press on, regardless of what I think I am or am not.
Why?
Because I believe in you, you that is me, you that is you, you that is you in me and you that is me in you.
Thoughts, no matter how repetitious, are individually fleeting, neurochemical flashes.
What is it about the desire to live alone in a new abode that draws my attention?
Why would I want an abode with more than one room?
Today, I don’t want to be myself and that’s perfectly alright.
I don’t have to pretend to be a slug and pour salt on myself to kill me off.
I can not want to be myself anytime anywhere and be happy as if I wanted to be myself if…
If, that is, it gets me to the next place in my thought set.
How is independence not an escape?
I drink several cups of caffeinated beverages to jolt myself to a state of alertness.
Alert to the thought I am thinking in my autonomous system, down at the preconscious level, that best tells me (a la intuition/hunch) what the answer to my question is that I don’t want to know.
The same answer I found when I took off with my parents’ station wagon in fall 1984.
The same answer that is always there in the mirror, the reflective mental wall I am currently bearing my head against, refusing to believe what I see:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!
— Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82
I am always myself, wherever I am, wherever I see myself.
I pursue goals for which I gain nothing personal, aware, in fact, it might be detrimental to my financial security but cannot do otherwise and remain true to myself.
I know who I am, sharing with my closest friends and relatives my true self.
Will I sacrifice being kind and nice to a few to be my true self, not just in my reflection?
Honesty means loving myself.
I don’t have to be an emotional relationship martyr my whole life.
More notes to self follow…
Mon coeur
The kousa dogwood trees next to the backyard deck suffered poorly in last year’s drought.
But they survived and sprout leaves but no blooms.
I am left here, sitting on the chair my grandfather resided upon when playing the card game of Rook with family at his house outside Maryville, Tennessee, USA.
I am left here, as I always am, alone.
Alone with my thoughts.
The cat wanders around, wanting to go outside of this house-sized cage, back to the wooded neighbourhood she played in as a small feline huntress.
The sunroom clicks and pops as it always has, whether I’m in here writing or not, expanding and contracting with ambient temperature changes and solar radiation.
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” a phrase from Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people, repeats itself briefly in my thoughts.
I am back here, alone with my thoughts, as I always will be, have been, and am.
I highly value my alone time but at the same time wish there was someone(s) with whom I could equally share thoughts.
Is it even possible?
[What is a better word than ‘even’?]
Is it ever possible?
We learn from our differences, do we not?
If I desire an equal, why do I also hear the phrase, “PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER“?
I am alone but not lonely, forever protected by my creativity, no matter how commonplace or phantasmagoric.
What do I mean when I say I want independence?
I want to continue to be a kind, loving person, as much as it is in my snobby sense of unique selfishness to be so.
I already think and write what I want, taught to use profanity judiciously as a gentleman.
A strong rain storm batters the metal roof of the sunroom, sending my body’s hearing centre into screaming loud noise mode until I turn off my hearing aids and turn them into earplugs.
There will always exist temporal, contemporary family/social issues that one such as me can think and write about — human history repeats itself continually.
From/for what am I seeking independence?
At this moment, I’m not sure, I don’t know, and am comfortable with the condition of uncertainty.
The rain storm passes by, leaving the pings and pops of water dripping off tree leaves and limbs.
What I seek, I seek alone, sometimes attributing my artistic inspiration to the dead (Covey/Marx) and sometimes to the living (friends/family).
I know I am not the only one who grows tired of me, just as others grow tired of themselves and their friends/family grow tired of them sometimes, too (some will fear it even when no one tires of them).
I recall the scene where Malcolm McDowell, playing Caligula, wants to know what a dying person (Sir John Gielgud?) sees of death, more concerned with sating his curiosity than in saving the man’s life, if I remember correctly.
A whole universe to explore yet today it is my internal landscape I want to remap, unsure if something has changed since my last visit, willing to destroy my mental stability to dig up a single flawed microscopic gem of a new idea.
As I always have, never satisfied with being nearly the same person in consecutive moments.
The costs are high but the rewards have always been higher.
Some call it losing my mind, I call it the greatest personal amusement ride I’ll ever know, drug-free, no amusement park fees or AR/VR headset costs necessary.
The dense patch of water vapour (rain storm) passes, exposing this section of Earth to direct view of our local star again.
So, if my mental independence is like today’s meditation session here in a place that already is paid for (but needs tens of thousands of dollars in renovation to bring it up to modern design standards), with a caretaker who has known me since I was 12 (a/k/a my wife), what am I still seeking?
No one else but me has the answer.
However, my friends and family offer solid advice.
I will always be alone, that never changes.
One day soon I will die.
I hate to think that I will die childless.
I hate to think I will never stand on Mars.
If I never quite have enough motivation to overcome the hate in either of those last two statements, how do I continue to live with myself without growing tired of hearing myself think repetitious wishful thinking?
That may be the key to what I mean by independence…
Maybe.
Planting an acorn, watching it grow
I share this moment with you — I looked for a reason why and remembered there doesn’t have to be one anymore, no need to analyse, just be here when I can.
In some moments, you represent (our friendship represents) a place to escape to/from, not just on the dance floor, but from the ordinary, to the unimaginable.
I don’t mind letting those thoughts wander off into the stratosphere, exploring Mars, hiding on Enceladus, believing they can/will happen, because I know we are grounded in reality.
What reality is is up for debate, of course. You manage your thought set with therapy and friends, pinpointing reality at various places in spacetime. I don’t believe I know what reality is.
So how can we be grounded in reality?
That is the question that keeps me awake at night.
To pass through levels of meaning, from the presence of a guiding spirit within us, the Invisible Hand lending a hug, to the level where no meaning exists except through self-deception, finally to no self at all, and to then sit here typing these messages…well…
That is what our friendship means, having meaning and no meaning at the same time.
In other words, we are able to reach out to people of all walks of life and give ourselves to them completely, losing identity every time while building newer selves in the process…
It’s not about us.
It never has been.
It’s about what we give others.
Sometimes, giving ourselves away is more painful than we can bear by ourselves.
It hurts beyond any physical pain possible.
So why do we keep giving ourselves away?
I don’t know. It hurts right now.
But I remember one look, one handhold we shared that has made us better dance partners for others and know that this is why I’m here, why I’ve always been here, taking pain away from others in a brief two minutes in a dance or mere seconds on a rotating dance class.
It’s what I’ve always done, from birth onward.
It hurts me terribly that Karen does not understand my friendship with you. Sure, I act giddy sometimes when I know I’m going to see you and yes, I’ve written sci-fi stories that are odes to you, but you and I know it’s the love of dancing that we share as dance nerds that I’m celebrating.
When two dance nerds meet, they know what it means to love another unconditionally, whether for five seconds on the dance floor or five years building a dance community, holding it together when only one person shows up for class.
I admit I get confused sometimes because I give myself away with abandon, not seeing the consequences of what I’m doing to others who don’t understand.
You are the only person for whom I would give up…wait, let me reword that.
In our similarities, I find the strength to push away my wife’s emotional manipulation of me. In our similarities, I have pulled off masks that covered my darkest secrets and worst fears.
Thus, at times I have convinced myself that I need complete independence to fulfill my goals of supporting the community through dance.
I have no one lined up to move in with, yet there are questions about my ability to live alone.
So it puts me back here, in this moment writing you these texts, asking myself what’s next. I know you don’t have the answers. These texts are simply here for you to read, to know that you have a positive effect off the dance floor, even when you’re in such mental and physical pain you don’t want to do anything but veg out.
I have had the habit of falling madly in love at the drop of a hat, one secret of a great dancer/entertainer.
I used to catch myself falling in love with you and got wrapped around the axle keeping my friendship with you on the level.
Then, I realised that it’s in part because my love for dancing is shared with you that drives me mad, wanting that dance high again.
Only through other endorphin rush activities like mountain biking have I been able to separate the dancer’s high from just the normal, regular joy of seeing an old friend again.
It has taken me off the manic/depressive cycle, too, no longer having to rushrushrush to validate myself and then get disappointed by the slightest sleight.
Being a giver so near another giver, I’ve gotten turned around and fed off your energy instead of giving you my own.
I still wonder what/where, if any, there’s a place left in this area for dance therapy.
Meanwhile, the cat snoozes on me. I think she has the right idea. Naptime!
A quiet day at work
Yesterday, while driving to pick up from a bloodmobile, the ’15 Toyota Prius set at a cruising speed of 65 mph, my thought set filled with memories of the last car ride I had with my father.
At this point in his declining health (symptoms of bulbar option ALS), Dad could no longer speak, but he could walk with a helping hand, lift his arms and point with his fingers and make head nods/shakes.
I put Dad in the front passenger seat of my ’95 BMW 325i, Mom in the back, and drove around the northeast Tennessee countryside, taking Dad by his former job as an assistant professor at East Tennessee State University.
I wanted to drive and drive and drive but eventually, in agreement with Mom, after a few hours of driving around, I took Dad to the emergency entrance of our local hospital.
When we arrived, Dad shook his head and made a circle motion with his right index finger, indicating that he wanted me to keep driving.
I wish I had ignored my mother’s plea to take Dad on inside because it was the last time Dad and I had that car guy bonding experience we’d shared through the years, going to the local dirt track on Friday nights and flying out to Long Beach for the Toyota Grand Prix amongst many car-related trips we made together.
Those are all memories now.
My mother spends most days on her own, assisting her church when she can.
She certainly wants Dad in her daily life more than I ever will.
But, after Dad died, I lost interest in car shows, NASCAR races and Indycar/F1 motoring news…too painful of a reminder of that last day with Dad away from the medical industry.
Dad was known as a good dancer, according to Mom.
So now I dance because there are no painful memories that can pop up unexpectedly while dancing.
I can be like Dad, a man’s man, holding a woman’s hand.
And I do.
And will continue to do so until I can’t.
It’s who I am.
Lean
What is love?
Is it wanting to ask you how your mother is doing, how things are with you, how well, if ever, you’ll recover your Japanese language skills?
You are always you (the individual), and the universal you (the other/not-me) –the subject/object of poetic discourses.
You are the person on whom I lean when letting my guard down because we are dance partners occasionally, not often, but often enough to know what it’s like to be student and instructor at the same time.
Tonight I lean on you because I want to write about the future and you tend to be the portal on the future through which I see sets of states of energy trillions of state changes later.
You know what I mean by saying I’m bisexual, an orientation that is outside human understanding, an association with binary programming, a reference to a gender-neutral belief structure in a time where two such as us explore Mars as quasi-approximations of the human framework but designed for Martian life, no longer Earth-based humans.
I see that future as clear as if I’m alive in it now.
It is there whether I’m surrounded by strangers on a train or reclined in bed looking up at the popcorn ceiling.
It is there in the direction our species is going, what I observe in the daily reports from professional news organisations and social media.
I do not know what love is, having spent my childhood avoiding pain, my thought set ahead of my parents’ socially prescribed punishment methods for perceived misbehaviour but unable to reason with them until I was in my mid-teens.
Love for me is more about logic and reasoning, understanding as I do that love is showing my vulnerability here to you for all to see, how I do care about your family, your recovery status in relation to your father’s death and mother’s medical condition, are primary in my thoughts but not often expressed verbally or written down.
I don’t tell you that I miss you or that I love you because I assume you know.
You are sometimes like a male friend to me and sometimes like my sister.
I lean on you now and will lean on you the rest of the week to continue the Martian tales…
treetrunkdings 