Metaphors Lend Importance

Today is the first day of the start of my new life. Unfortunately, the new life is exactly like the previous one, only I’m one day older and put a couple extra miles on this worn out husk.

So my new thing is to start running. Maybe I can gain her respect and her heart by diving into one of her pastimes, and that is long distance running. Right now, I suppose I have little to lose, since I have yet to enjoy just being with her, hearing her dreams and goals, diving into the thoughts and ideals of this other human being. Now, I have nothing. So, I have little which can be sacrificed, nothing which can be given.

So I am more than willing to try anything to grab her attention, sacrificing the only thing I have to offer, my body, to a sport that screams at you to stop. Hmm. Maybe a marathon is the physical metaphor for this whole affair in some odd way.

Slow Day at the Office

Time is mutable, or at least our perception of its flow is susceptible to the tremors of our hearts. It seems like several days ago that we went to the marathon, and I discovered the fantastic news about her boyfriend. The mind is a fragile thing, weak to the influence of perspective, prior experiences, and emotion.

Sorry to subject you to my bad philosophical ranting. Not sure what I’m trying to get out of this. Maybe some sort of catharsis. Actually, I don’t want a catharsis at all. Those are only in tragedies. This is certainly playing out like a comedy, at least for the external observer. Of course, it would make everything move a lot smoother if I were one also, another member of the crowd, in on the joke. Instead, I’m the guy in the spotlight, humiliated for the amusement of others. Please, enjoy my misery. Delight in my pain. Laugh, smile, chuckle, indulge yourself in the bliss which of some unknown face’s tears. Turn the pages, flip to the next story, move on with your lives. I’ll still be here, head on my hands, down on my knees, praying for something to change.

The Fabric of Reality is Toilet Paper

Somehow, my life has turned itself into a ridiculous cartoon, a caricature of itself, some cosmically endorsed satire of itself, threatening to envelop and rip a hole in the fabric of reality, tragically imploding all matter upon itself. No, really.

After the early morning, and a long uneventful drive, we made it to the small town hosting the event, parked and found our friends preparing to run. We took a few shots for posterity and for before and after comparisons. We then followed the course as they ran, meeting them at a few locations along the way, taking more pictures and cheering them on. Right after the race, we met them, took a few more pictures, and had the chance to congratulate them. All fine. Her boyfriend was there as well. I was a bit surprised when I first saw him, not quite what I expected, a little bit underwhelming at first glance. So I wondered why this incredible woman was dating this person.

I found out. At lunch, we discovered that this person was, swear to the heavens, a fighter pilot. Who went to Duke and was a big fan of both Duke basketball and the New York Yankees. He might as well be the villain from a Disney picture, speaking with a French accent and smoking cigars in a dark room, slowly stroking a smirking cartoon cat. Back in reality, he’s a fighter pilot. That’s what men tell girls when they’re lying, trying to get laid at the bar. Only half a step below professional bowler on the attractiveness to women scale.

My cohorts tried to comfort me by saying that if I had to lose, at least it was to someone impressive. This failed miserably. I can’t lose, even to this guy. This is much too important. A woman like this comes around once in a lifetime, if we’re lucky. And I can’t let her just go. I can’t.

Body Blow! Body Blow!

Tomorrow is a big day. I wake up at 3:30 AM, pick up a friend, and head to Napa to see her run the marathon. I have absolutely no clue how any of this is going to turn out and so I’m extremely anxious to say the least. More precisely, there are two emotions, brawling in the streets of my interiors (euphemism for the stomach and intestines). In the red trunks, with crushing jabs and the willingness to bite is dread. Wearing the blue trunks, and dedicating today’s fight to a young child with some incurable illness, is the delight of possibility. Unfortunately, a little like those cartoon angel / devil versions of ourselves which would pop up over our shoulders if our lives were suddenly transformed into bad sitcoms, the emotion we’re all rooting for is getting the crud knocked out of it due to the unfair play of the other side.

Dread is a nasty competitor, who really has no qualms about any questionable tactics. He dredges up the worst events of our lives, pulls at our greatest insecurities, and generally makes up feel horrible about things that haven’t even happened yet. He uses anecdotal evidence to make us believe that every hope we have ever had has ended in death, destruction, and agony. And so, once dread determines to enter a fight, he typically has a decided advantage over any other pugilists. Being a dedicated pessimist, I am easily convinced that any action by myself will only result in some sort of horrific failure, possibly involving mosquito infestations, boils, and a rain of toads.

So, the positive side of the equation, the potentially good ending, the hope for a better tomorrow, well, it has its work cut out for it. It must learn to counter all the dirty tricks that dread brings up, and still try to get in a shot or two of its own. This of course is made more difficult by the fact that I tend to magnify and focus more on the negative results, the times I’ve struggled, and the less fulfilling aspects of my life. And so, I’m pretty convinced that something horrible will happen tomorrow, and my next entry will be deciding whether I’d rather take rat poison or snake poison to numb the pain.

In the end I decided that if I didn’t go, then I would feel like I missed out on an opportunity. And I already did miss out with my own inaction earlier. Like I have tried in vain to convince you, I really am not a complete defeatist. There is a part of me that wants this to happen and is actually making the effort. I just wonder if the effort will be enough.

Motherfizzgoggler Has a Nice Ring to It

My word for the day is:

Fizzgoggle - Word used to replace more inappropriate words when in the presence of people. Also used as a replacement for the word after long discussion with friends over the innate aggressiveness of certain words, especially those relating to sexual contact and their other meanings and uses.

In other words, we talked at length about the role that the language and expressions we use, especially relating to sex (e.g., screw, bang, fuck) imply a certain level of aggressiveness towards women, and how such language shapes our cultural ideas of sexual contact. It also fuels violence to women and contributes to sexism, both the blatant and subtle forms. Thus, I now feel guilty about cursing, especially given my recent proclivity (I was described as a sailor with Tourette’s recently), and so have invented an admittedly ridiculous replacement word.

All this has accomplished so far is making me feel so darned embarrassed about my word choice that I doubt I have the brain power to even consider the extremely serious topic above, and wonder if I was dropped or briefly suffocated as a child.

The Torso and Limbs of the Storm

I’m torn. Although she did not feel it necessary to come to our little event a couple of days ago, I haven’t determined whether or not to go to the marathon. Actually, scratch that – I’m going to go regardless of how certain I am it is a terrible idea. Really, short of an avalanche of cow dung swallowing me as I wade through traffic on my way home from another delightful day of pride swallowing and humble pie eating at my computer (read: programming), I’ll be there Sunday morning, praying the effort is noticed. Because I can’t sacrifice the chance to see her, to be there for her.

When I was in high school, I went to every dance. Every one. Not because I had spectacular times at all of them (or any of them, really), but because I had the feeling that the one dance I missed, because I wanted to stay home and tend to my Belgium soda-pop bottlecap collection, or something equally satisfying, would be the event where A Tribe Called Quest appeared, put on a show, and other even more unlikely and fantastically too good to be true things would occur in sequence, resulting in the spontaneous lifting to heaven of the attendees. Every dance I attended just resulted in pimply faced teenagers making the letters of YMCA over their heads, because we all knew what it meant, and though it counter-culture to embrace it. Every single one of us. Pretty damn strong of us, all so willing to be uncool and not go with the crowd.

And this is like that, only with an even more hormonal, emotional wreck of a person at the center of his own tornado. Or at the edges, if the center is the quiet spot.

In Bold Italics, Metaphor

Forgot to mention – on the way to pick up the pizza the previous night, it began to drizzle and sprinkle a bit. I turned on my windshield wipers, only to discover that someone had stolen my wiper blades. My wiper blades. My mother fuckin’, jive-talkin’, ass-cleanin’, wiper blades. My wiper blades.

I am the only person in the world who lives this existence.

All Trilogies Stink (Except the Ones that Don't)

In Shakespeare’s Caesar, the title character was warned about the Ides of March, only to still fall victim to the stabbing of his closest friend and ally. On a relative scale, my Ides were slightly worse than that.

Before I made an ass out of myself and discovered that my inaction had cost me the only thing I hoped my action would achieve (how’s that for ambiguity – hope this isn’t your first time here, cause I refuse to further elaborate on the origin of this ordinary pain (look up the Stevie Wonder reference there) any further), I planned another Movie Night. Movie Night 1, good times. Movie Night II, like most sequels, was disappointing, and some cast members wanted larger contracts to appear (which were denied due to the producers wanting to purchase more beer). Movie Night III, excellent. Missing cast members, humbled by their lack of work, returned for beer, pizza, crepes, and average to below average banter with average to below average company. The first trilogy was complete.

We believed that we had mastered the elements which would contribute to the next event being another success. Clearly, like most Greek tragedy, our hubris was our undoing. We attempted to steal the same blueprint for IV as for III, believed that we could get the whole crew together.

Before I go further, it is my duty to explain that Movie Night is really just an elaborate excuse to see the girl outside of work, hopefully with these events somehow contributing to her finally coming to the obvious realization that her life could not possibly be complete without pinching my ass and being with me, for oh, however long this Earth lasts.

So when she failed to show (as I expected after the previous events), I was not surprised. But that stupid shred of hope left was diced, cubed, and prepared as hors d’oeuvres for our other guests. Pre-my idiocy, she had agreed to show. Post-idiocy, she was nowhere to be found, and gave no indication why she decided not to attend. Which filled my head with all sorts of fantastic reasons. The list:

1) I’m a stupid ass-fuck with nary a shred of personality, and no lady in her right mind would ever want to spend any time with me.

That’s pretty much it. Pretty sure it’s right.