So my life has been busy (a post about my life, for those of you who don't care). When did I last post? I can't even remember if it was before or after my brother got married on saturday. Oh yah, I remember whining about the unreality of it [laughs]. So, sunday was mother's day. I bought 9 roses at church and gave them to random mothers (and a couple of friends to give to their mothers), including Lara's mom, when I picked her up for dancing, and my mom at the end of the night. I didn't have LifeTeen, so it was possible to drive with people, but I couldn't go with Amy or Michelle because they've both been skipping sunday night tango. [shrugs] I find it to be good fun, but then I'm more of a dance whore than anyone I know [laughs]. Anyway, Grace called, so I got to talk to her for a while, which is always a treat. Granted, it took time out of swing dancing; I would rather talk to Grace than whatever I'm doing, in almost all circumstances, but I'm terrible about interrupting things to call her myself. [sighs and hits himself for being a bad boyfriend]. But, so I talked to Grace, then got in some good swing dancing, then went to tango and had some good tango dancing, and then Ron, Diana, Dana, Lara and I went out for Greek food (oh so good), and then Lara and I hung out talking all night, at which point I ran home to give dad his car, then get ready and go to work.
Work on monday was Fun, as it always is after having not slept the night before. People always think I'm an insomniac because I run around so much and get so little sleep on a crazy schedule, but I honestly do get sleep every night. So no sleep at all is a bit much. Work was long and tiring, since I was already exhausted and dragging, but I managed to get through it, get home, eat dinner with Ian and mom (I can't remember what it was now, but it was good), then crash from about 6pm until Tuesday morning at 7ish, where, not having work, I promptly went back to sleep and dreamed until 9:30. I think I posted that dream on my LJ. It wasn't anything special, but dreaming is better than not. Always [laughs].
Tuesday, I got up late. Lara had talked about either wall climbing or teaching me to paint, but I lazed around, messing with email and mail, and getting some reading done, and writing a poem that I'll post when I finish this. Then I had XLT at church, which is always fun. I don't know, christian rock plus time spent talking to Jesus with him Right There in front of me is really powerful. It was funny, at least to me: I told him that Raph and Kat had gotten married, and he rolled his eyes and said, "I know!" [laughs] I'm such a dork. Anyway, we talked about my life a little bit, and he says that my problem with dancing isn't because dancing is a bad thing, but that I'm not finding ways to include Him. I keep forgetting to invite him along. And it's true, I'm bad about that. I generally just assume people will be there, and I guess it applies to Him as well; if he's not there, as I do for any friend that doesn't show, I shrug and say to myself, "I'll see him/her later" or next week or whatever. I bowed to him, asking for forgiveness for my not treating him like a friend, and he laughed and said that it's ok, because he's the servant after all, and then he pantomimed washing my feet. [laughs] It was amusing, the way he did it. ...Thinking back on it now, maybe his pretending to wash my feet in such a way that I'd remember was giving me something to help me remember Him while dancing, by remembering that the use of my feet is a blessing from Him. [smiles and shrugs]. Anyway, Lara came up to XLT with me, to see what the whole deal was about. She's a heathen, completely unaffiliated with any religion, and yet she has always had a sense of God anyway. She's pretty strong willed. I mean, she became a vegetarian at age 3, and moved out of the house (even with loving supportive parents) at age 16 because she wanted to travel. [shrugs] We went afterwards to check out a salsa club Tropicana that I've been meaning to check out for a while. It was pretty cool; it even has a side dance floor for practicing or teaching! Unfortunately, it was a very different atmosphere. They played a single salsa song for 25 minutes, and being me, I kept waiting for the end of the song to stop dancing. [laughs] But, I saw a friend from Midnight Rodeo, and made a friend named Amy who taught me Bachatta (or anyway, let me practice with her, since I'd learned it at the tango milonga saturday night, which was a small party instead of a big dance), and we left early because Lara is allergic to cigarette smoke, and it was getting too heavy to stand. We then hung out all night again, including reading aloud, she a story from Irish Horror Stories that I love, me some random poems by Keats, a favorite of us both. It's so nice to find friends with whom you're never bored. Anyway, I ran home again in time to get ready for work.
Luckily, work on Wednesday was really easy. Tuesday had been pretty heavy, including 3 parties, one of which had 45 people that ordered off the menu all at once, so I had a lot of prep work, but the regular business was light. I went home afterwards and slept for about 3 hours, during which time I missed calls from several people that never call: Natalie (the one who picked me up through the taco bell drive through nearly 3 years ago, who drifted away because she would rather smoke pot than do anything real; she had a lifechange, is now drug free, christian, and engaged, and found the x-acto knives she'd borrowed and lost so long ago), Charles (who was on my side of town for a little while, having recently gotten back from his job as executive chef on an oil rig), and Mindy (Matt's girlfriend). So after I woke up, I ate dinner (spagetti and salad, yum), then did TangoHouston business emails while returning calls to Natalie (to make plans to visit her at her mom's house this evening), Amy (to make plans to pick her up for tango), Charles (just got his answering machine, and left a very tired message [laughs]), and I haven't called Mindy yet, while talking to Grace on aim. It was too late to get Amy by the time I left, but I got out to tango for the last 45-50 minutes of dancing, almost missing Lara, who left about 10 minutes after I arrived to get some painting done. Michelle wasn't there because she was sick, Amy said. I still haven't been available to call except while driving, which I don't like to do unless I have to because of plans. I hope you're feeling better! Apparently, I need to give Lara Ashley's phone number, because Ashley wants to photograph her, and finding out I knew her, asked me to connect them. [laughs and shrugs] I don't think I'll ever be enough of an artist to ask someone to be a model for anything. If I'm using someone as the basis of a character, I just casually observe and make more mental notes than usual. I don't think having them in any kind of special setting would reveal more character than normal life [laughs]. Anyway, I stayed about half an hour late talking to people, because they didn't kick us out immediately for once [laughs]. I then headed over to Lara's, because she wanted to sketch someone, but her mom never lets her, especially not late when she's trying to sleep. But when I got there, she was painting, so I just watched through the window for a while, not wanting to break whatever vision she had going (yah, I guess I'm a stalker, but not a good one, because she either heard me or the cat outside anyway). She was too tired to sketch by the time I finally let her know I was there; she was waiting for a phone call, but since Ian had the phone, I had to knock on the window [laughs], so I (being awake) read from Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence until bedtime (sometime before dawn at least), and she made me sleep in her room while she slept in the guest bedroom. [sighs and rolls his eyes] I tell people I'm not comfortable sleeping in their beds, but still they insist, so I slept on the floor.
I didn't have work, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed over. I woke around 10:45 and drowsed till 11:15, then got up and read for a couple hours, then headed downstairs to chat with her mom, who was working on the computer. We started breakfast around 1, and Lara's mom woke her up. Lara's mom made spanish eggs, scrambled with halved baby tomatos and cheese and salsa verde. I made a sort-of stewed vegetables, using two cans of mixed veggies, extra diced carrots and celery, some basil and ginger from jars in the fridge, salsa verde, a little jalapeno jelly, salt and pepper (they turned out really good but spicy). Lara made bagels with cream cheese and the jalapeno jelly, which somehow made them good (I don't like cream cheese plain on bagels). We then went swimming in her backyard pool, with a prelude sitting in a blow-up raft reading D.H. Lawrence poetry in a clear, declaratory voice (as one must do, when reading poetry in a boat...at least so I'm told [laughs]). He has a section in which he writes poems based on animals. Mosquito pits a man against a mosquito, in which the man blows the mosquito up into a grand adversary, much like a Don Quixote tilting at a windmill. And Elephant talks about a visitor to India observing a grand procession involving royalty and celebration and barbarism and hedonism and being first greatly moved by it all, but then afterward left disappointed with everything except the elephants. Englishman talks about how englishman make themselves to be the greatest things in the world, but the female narrative voice deflates them as a general group swiftly and easily. [laughs] Anyway, then the three of us swam a little, and I probably got a little bit of a sunburn, which is good, because it will give my skin a little bit of a warm-up for next weekend. Then we went in and, Drew canceling afternoon plans, had time to paint, and Lara taught me how to use oil paints. I was painting a fake rose on a brown nightstand table. It was really hard, the whole idea of squinting to remove the details and only see the lights and darks, shadows and illuminated surfaces, and adding the lights over the darks, working not merely from general to specific but also from light to dark. I was defeated in my attempt at realism by the black edges to the red petals, but the painting was pretty nonetheless. [laughs] When Lara asked if I wanted to learn the best way or the fastest way, I said, "Teach me how to paint something that I won't hate afterward." Whichever way she taught me, it worked. I'm not going to be buying art supplies anytime soon, but perhaps she'll teach me some sketching techniques, since those I might actually use. Anyway, we had dinner and watched a little Ann of Green Gables (her dad is in Atlanta right now, so she and her mom have been watching the series during dinner), then I ran off home, picked up the fryer I've been borrowing for so long and took it to work to give back to Josh. Then I met Natalie at her mom's house, and was neatly followed in by her friend Sarah. We caught up on things, and the x-acto knives were returned (I put them on my shoes so I wouldn't forget them), and then Natalie's fiancé Ernie showed up, and we chatted even more, and I'm going to go to a Bible Study tomorrow with him (Natalie won't be joining us because she'll be at her mom's jewelry party, and Eleasha canceled our Friday plans; we need to figure out something else because we keep having to cancel fridays). The four of us went for Starbucks (the strawberry and cream frappachino was dull, not worth buying, if you were wondering), and now I'm home to blog, listening to Andrés Segovia, and get sleep [laughs].
Life is funny sometimes. We run into people we haven't seen in forever, that we didn't expect to ever see again. We meet people that become super close friends rapidly and then disappear, their own lives taking them away. I didn't expect to see Natalie again. I run into random people from high school now and then. Sometimes these people have large impacts, and sometimes they're just reminders of the past, something which we ought not forget. And then Lara, whom I met back at Christmas break when she moved to Houston. She was here for two weeks, and we danced a lot, and became close friends and made plans to practice our instruments and play together during the summer (she piano, I cello). Now she's been here about a week and a half, and she has about 2 weeks before she moves to Atlanta, Georgia, still going to school in Florida next semester. So when she leaves, I have no idea if I'll ever see her again, rationally. Yet, like Delphine in Paris, I know I will. Like Kristin when LifeTeen was still in the planning stages, like Irina when my tango addiction was still but a tiny budding branch and I felt crippled, like Vanessa when we found out we lived so close together and shared a spirituality that both of us wanted to nourish, like Stefan when I was floundering in lindy hop unable to grasp it and therefore unable to make it a part of me, like Anna when I lacked a direction in my dancing that asserted myself. All of them part of my life, having been internalized, an integral part of my past, and in some way my future, but not my present. Lara is part of my present, and will continue to be important because of this now, because of the changes inside me because of her, and she will go her way, living her life as she must, no longer a formative present. She could be, but she won't be, because that is not my path or her path. It's a terrible thing to let go of something or someone that makes you happy because you know your paths to diverge. It is why I do not let go of Grace, because she makes me happy, and I know that while our paths do not run together right now, it feels right that they should converge again. Not to cross, but to run together again. [laughs] Oh what a romantic I make. To sleep I go, before my mind runs away with me. Au revoir, Senor Segovia. Au revoir, Mr. Lawrence. Au revoir, blogger.
Work on monday was Fun, as it always is after having not slept the night before. People always think I'm an insomniac because I run around so much and get so little sleep on a crazy schedule, but I honestly do get sleep every night. So no sleep at all is a bit much. Work was long and tiring, since I was already exhausted and dragging, but I managed to get through it, get home, eat dinner with Ian and mom (I can't remember what it was now, but it was good), then crash from about 6pm until Tuesday morning at 7ish, where, not having work, I promptly went back to sleep and dreamed until 9:30. I think I posted that dream on my LJ. It wasn't anything special, but dreaming is better than not. Always [laughs].
Tuesday, I got up late. Lara had talked about either wall climbing or teaching me to paint, but I lazed around, messing with email and mail, and getting some reading done, and writing a poem that I'll post when I finish this. Then I had XLT at church, which is always fun. I don't know, christian rock plus time spent talking to Jesus with him Right There in front of me is really powerful. It was funny, at least to me: I told him that Raph and Kat had gotten married, and he rolled his eyes and said, "I know!" [laughs] I'm such a dork. Anyway, we talked about my life a little bit, and he says that my problem with dancing isn't because dancing is a bad thing, but that I'm not finding ways to include Him. I keep forgetting to invite him along. And it's true, I'm bad about that. I generally just assume people will be there, and I guess it applies to Him as well; if he's not there, as I do for any friend that doesn't show, I shrug and say to myself, "I'll see him/her later" or next week or whatever. I bowed to him, asking for forgiveness for my not treating him like a friend, and he laughed and said that it's ok, because he's the servant after all, and then he pantomimed washing my feet. [laughs] It was amusing, the way he did it. ...Thinking back on it now, maybe his pretending to wash my feet in such a way that I'd remember was giving me something to help me remember Him while dancing, by remembering that the use of my feet is a blessing from Him. [smiles and shrugs]. Anyway, Lara came up to XLT with me, to see what the whole deal was about. She's a heathen, completely unaffiliated with any religion, and yet she has always had a sense of God anyway. She's pretty strong willed. I mean, she became a vegetarian at age 3, and moved out of the house (even with loving supportive parents) at age 16 because she wanted to travel. [shrugs] We went afterwards to check out a salsa club Tropicana that I've been meaning to check out for a while. It was pretty cool; it even has a side dance floor for practicing or teaching! Unfortunately, it was a very different atmosphere. They played a single salsa song for 25 minutes, and being me, I kept waiting for the end of the song to stop dancing. [laughs] But, I saw a friend from Midnight Rodeo, and made a friend named Amy who taught me Bachatta (or anyway, let me practice with her, since I'd learned it at the tango milonga saturday night, which was a small party instead of a big dance), and we left early because Lara is allergic to cigarette smoke, and it was getting too heavy to stand. We then hung out all night again, including reading aloud, she a story from Irish Horror Stories that I love, me some random poems by Keats, a favorite of us both. It's so nice to find friends with whom you're never bored. Anyway, I ran home again in time to get ready for work.
Luckily, work on Wednesday was really easy. Tuesday had been pretty heavy, including 3 parties, one of which had 45 people that ordered off the menu all at once, so I had a lot of prep work, but the regular business was light. I went home afterwards and slept for about 3 hours, during which time I missed calls from several people that never call: Natalie (the one who picked me up through the taco bell drive through nearly 3 years ago, who drifted away because she would rather smoke pot than do anything real; she had a lifechange, is now drug free, christian, and engaged, and found the x-acto knives she'd borrowed and lost so long ago), Charles (who was on my side of town for a little while, having recently gotten back from his job as executive chef on an oil rig), and Mindy (Matt's girlfriend). So after I woke up, I ate dinner (spagetti and salad, yum), then did TangoHouston business emails while returning calls to Natalie (to make plans to visit her at her mom's house this evening), Amy (to make plans to pick her up for tango), Charles (just got his answering machine, and left a very tired message [laughs]), and I haven't called Mindy yet, while talking to Grace on aim. It was too late to get Amy by the time I left, but I got out to tango for the last 45-50 minutes of dancing, almost missing Lara, who left about 10 minutes after I arrived to get some painting done. Michelle wasn't there because she was sick, Amy said. I still haven't been available to call except while driving, which I don't like to do unless I have to because of plans. I hope you're feeling better! Apparently, I need to give Lara Ashley's phone number, because Ashley wants to photograph her, and finding out I knew her, asked me to connect them. [laughs and shrugs] I don't think I'll ever be enough of an artist to ask someone to be a model for anything. If I'm using someone as the basis of a character, I just casually observe and make more mental notes than usual. I don't think having them in any kind of special setting would reveal more character than normal life [laughs]. Anyway, I stayed about half an hour late talking to people, because they didn't kick us out immediately for once [laughs]. I then headed over to Lara's, because she wanted to sketch someone, but her mom never lets her, especially not late when she's trying to sleep. But when I got there, she was painting, so I just watched through the window for a while, not wanting to break whatever vision she had going (yah, I guess I'm a stalker, but not a good one, because she either heard me or the cat outside anyway). She was too tired to sketch by the time I finally let her know I was there; she was waiting for a phone call, but since Ian had the phone, I had to knock on the window [laughs], so I (being awake) read from Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence until bedtime (sometime before dawn at least), and she made me sleep in her room while she slept in the guest bedroom. [sighs and rolls his eyes] I tell people I'm not comfortable sleeping in their beds, but still they insist, so I slept on the floor.
I didn't have work, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed over. I woke around 10:45 and drowsed till 11:15, then got up and read for a couple hours, then headed downstairs to chat with her mom, who was working on the computer. We started breakfast around 1, and Lara's mom woke her up. Lara's mom made spanish eggs, scrambled with halved baby tomatos and cheese and salsa verde. I made a sort-of stewed vegetables, using two cans of mixed veggies, extra diced carrots and celery, some basil and ginger from jars in the fridge, salsa verde, a little jalapeno jelly, salt and pepper (they turned out really good but spicy). Lara made bagels with cream cheese and the jalapeno jelly, which somehow made them good (I don't like cream cheese plain on bagels). We then went swimming in her backyard pool, with a prelude sitting in a blow-up raft reading D.H. Lawrence poetry in a clear, declaratory voice (as one must do, when reading poetry in a boat...at least so I'm told [laughs]). He has a section in which he writes poems based on animals. Mosquito pits a man against a mosquito, in which the man blows the mosquito up into a grand adversary, much like a Don Quixote tilting at a windmill. And Elephant talks about a visitor to India observing a grand procession involving royalty and celebration and barbarism and hedonism and being first greatly moved by it all, but then afterward left disappointed with everything except the elephants. Englishman talks about how englishman make themselves to be the greatest things in the world, but the female narrative voice deflates them as a general group swiftly and easily. [laughs] Anyway, then the three of us swam a little, and I probably got a little bit of a sunburn, which is good, because it will give my skin a little bit of a warm-up for next weekend. Then we went in and, Drew canceling afternoon plans, had time to paint, and Lara taught me how to use oil paints. I was painting a fake rose on a brown nightstand table. It was really hard, the whole idea of squinting to remove the details and only see the lights and darks, shadows and illuminated surfaces, and adding the lights over the darks, working not merely from general to specific but also from light to dark. I was defeated in my attempt at realism by the black edges to the red petals, but the painting was pretty nonetheless. [laughs] When Lara asked if I wanted to learn the best way or the fastest way, I said, "Teach me how to paint something that I won't hate afterward." Whichever way she taught me, it worked. I'm not going to be buying art supplies anytime soon, but perhaps she'll teach me some sketching techniques, since those I might actually use. Anyway, we had dinner and watched a little Ann of Green Gables (her dad is in Atlanta right now, so she and her mom have been watching the series during dinner), then I ran off home, picked up the fryer I've been borrowing for so long and took it to work to give back to Josh. Then I met Natalie at her mom's house, and was neatly followed in by her friend Sarah. We caught up on things, and the x-acto knives were returned (I put them on my shoes so I wouldn't forget them), and then Natalie's fiancé Ernie showed up, and we chatted even more, and I'm going to go to a Bible Study tomorrow with him (Natalie won't be joining us because she'll be at her mom's jewelry party, and Eleasha canceled our Friday plans; we need to figure out something else because we keep having to cancel fridays). The four of us went for Starbucks (the strawberry and cream frappachino was dull, not worth buying, if you were wondering), and now I'm home to blog, listening to Andrés Segovia, and get sleep [laughs].
Life is funny sometimes. We run into people we haven't seen in forever, that we didn't expect to ever see again. We meet people that become super close friends rapidly and then disappear, their own lives taking them away. I didn't expect to see Natalie again. I run into random people from high school now and then. Sometimes these people have large impacts, and sometimes they're just reminders of the past, something which we ought not forget. And then Lara, whom I met back at Christmas break when she moved to Houston. She was here for two weeks, and we danced a lot, and became close friends and made plans to practice our instruments and play together during the summer (she piano, I cello). Now she's been here about a week and a half, and she has about 2 weeks before she moves to Atlanta, Georgia, still going to school in Florida next semester. So when she leaves, I have no idea if I'll ever see her again, rationally. Yet, like Delphine in Paris, I know I will. Like Kristin when LifeTeen was still in the planning stages, like Irina when my tango addiction was still but a tiny budding branch and I felt crippled, like Vanessa when we found out we lived so close together and shared a spirituality that both of us wanted to nourish, like Stefan when I was floundering in lindy hop unable to grasp it and therefore unable to make it a part of me, like Anna when I lacked a direction in my dancing that asserted myself. All of them part of my life, having been internalized, an integral part of my past, and in some way my future, but not my present. Lara is part of my present, and will continue to be important because of this now, because of the changes inside me because of her, and she will go her way, living her life as she must, no longer a formative present. She could be, but she won't be, because that is not my path or her path. It's a terrible thing to let go of something or someone that makes you happy because you know your paths to diverge. It is why I do not let go of Grace, because she makes me happy, and I know that while our paths do not run together right now, it feels right that they should converge again. Not to cross, but to run together again. [laughs] Oh what a romantic I make. To sleep I go, before my mind runs away with me. Au revoir, Senor Segovia. Au revoir, Mr. Lawrence. Au revoir, blogger.
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