I had a day off today.  I have many days off.  But off of what? Work? Well that’s easy.  I’d hang out with a friend and have a nice three hour lunch and conversation. 

As much as I detest the lazy French and southern European peoples  (prefering the more industrious British, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples) and their respective cultures and ex-colonies, they do get one thing straight: life is too short for a 30 minute meal or even a 60 minute one.  How can one digest properly or even build lasting relationships with a short pit-stop to snort a crumb of food (have you seen Japanese people eat in a train station?  I haven’t, but I’ve heard stories of the snorting–isn’t that right Nan&Will? )?  It’s not about the food, it’s about the people!

I can say that most likely a good deal of all the broken relationships and loneliness in this world is because people don’t take time to break bread and just share unguarded moments of good food and conversation.  You can’t get that chatting on-line, I can tell you.  Real smiles, real food, real people.

If I had time off from life–well that’s another story, but I won’t indulge you in my Twilight Zone fantasies of revenge and comeuppance.

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How can I accept it?  It happens so often that I’ve just grown numb to it.  I was a romantic once and believed in true love and such nonsense, but I’ve found a solution, not that it’s a good one.  Here are the seven steps to dealing with rejection:

1. Don’t care about anyone any more.
2. Don’t expect anyone to care.
3. Expect only betrayal and rejection.
4. Be numb to people’s emotions.
5. Be numb to your own emotions.
6. Take advantage of people’s ignorance or weaknesses.
7. Build barriers to make you unaccessable.

You may not have peace or joy, but at least you’ll have satisfaction and revenge.  You won’t be a ‘good’ person if there is such a thing, and you may not be able to live with yourself if you have a conscience, but you’ll survive (and get rid of the conscience it only gets in the way of satisfaction).  You only live once right?

OR
  
Just deal with it, stop feeling sorry about yourself, and try to put it in the past.  Hang out with positive friends (not emo people–they can cut themselves to death for all I care–they like that feeling anyway) that won’t sympathize (sympathy is of the devil; it only makes you feel worse), but will pull you out with their own positive outlook in life.  Same
goes if it’s a family member that rejects.  Life’s too short to be
hanging on to negative emotions and trying to figure them out.  They’re there.  Move on.  Love & kindness always show up when you least expect it, it’s better that way.

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The Barista (1st draft)

Lithe she cleans with cloth in hand.
Punctilious with
Each cup, each bag, each display.
Then customer at hand, she stops
And glides–ponytail bobbing–
To attend.  Fluttering, elf-like,
She shifts away dexterously
Completing the order.

In that moment the sun hit her so
That through my yet uncaffenated eyes
She glowed:  Arwen at work.
And I, a forlorn ranger,
Scruffy and half conscious
Looked sadly into her brown eyes.
Then, as if to transfer her light,
She beamed her smile into my soul.

–In a blink it was gone:
Of course her boss was right there
Orienting the new hires on
Which bean and machine,
Holding filters to show.
It was her best and, for a beat,
I wished the magic lingered:
But the day wore on.

---

Well finally some time to write for myself and not for some blasted paper.  It took some time to flog my brain back into some form of creativity.  Dry analysis can be so–dry.  Anyway the day does wear on and I’ve got to meet with my thesis director–I fear that there’s going to be another draft.  *sigh*

Actually there’s two:

Being single and writing my thesis.

I just finished a draft today.  I think I need to sleep.  Writing for four days straight can kill you.
   

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Fried Chicken.  It has to be fried chicken.  Juicy, crunchy, savory fried chicken.  I vowed not to have fried chicken until I finished my paper on Job & an “Essay on Man.”  Yes.  I have stayed faithful to that vow.  It has been two years.  You don’t know how hard it is to not just get a bucket of KFC and chow down.  How many times have I looked with longing, as a buddhist for nirvana, as my collegues and I drive past Churches to go to Hollywood Park?  Innumerable.  I plan to have a full meal at Roscoes onces this infernal paper is completed.

Other comfort food for me that I have avoided, but not vowed to not eat are Niu Ro Mien, pot roast, prime rib, crab, lobster, and any delicious steak from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.  Just look at the steak on their website.  It’s carnevore porn.

Of course BBQ corn with satay sauce is a given comfort food.  The only one that I will allow myself of having when I am exceptionally depressed–like today.  

All I’ve done is write, write, write and what have I to show for it but 5 measly pages.  I’ve written more in my sleep!

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Well, it’s finally law in California (as of July 1, 2008) that using a mobile phone (except texting for adults–that’s bizarre) while driving is an infraction.  And that minors cannot use mobile phones at all.   Now I’m all for the minors part, in fact I think that minors in general shouldn’t drive at all–the way they disregard pedestrians, speed bumps, and traffic laws–teens especially.    Especially girls who try to look sexy making sure they take a powder ever three minutes and boys who have to look macho by blasting their stereos and bobbing their heads like some attention starved Romanian orphan–apes!  And we find it funny how Spider Monkeys behave on the Discovery channel.

But that’s beside the point.  Mobile phones.  Is it me or is it particularly disturbing when people use the cell phone while they’re on the toilet?  It’s bad enough that people talk really loudly on the phone in places like the library, restaurant, or stores.  Not to mention on public transportation.  But in the john? 

What’s up with that?  I know that certain people can have conversations in the restroom and that that’s been common since Roman times, but phone calls?  It’s one thing when you’re there with the other person and I can even barely understand if it is a quick receiving call, but to place an outbound call once you’ve settled yourself?  Take this conversation I had the *pleasure* of overhearing at my uncle’s wedding reception recently:

Toilet boy [dials his phone on speaker--either that or it's really loud]
Other end: Hey.
TB: Hey.
OE: Where you at?
TB: I’m at the Sam Woo [New Capital now] in San Gabriel.  I’m taking a dump.
OE: No, fuck.  So did they make you eat sea cucumber?
TB: Yeah, I tried to avoid it.  [farts] There’s all sorts of other shit they tried to make me eat.
OE: That’s what you get for dating a Chinese girl.  How are her parents like?
TB: They’re cool, they keep on trying to make me try every dish.  I had a little chicken’s feet. [farts loudly followed by the splashing sound of feces hitting water].
OE: That’s fucking wrong.
TB [philosophically groaning]: That’s the price I have to pay to get a hot Asian girl.

Yes.  Inane wasn’t it?  Disgusting wasn’t it?  Why does this happen?  Do you know how hard it is to relieve oneself having to listen to such brainless conversation?  To have to listen to conversation at all?  In that most intimate of moments when one is supposed to be communing with Mother Nature herself. 

Tiles make things echo.  Things like splashes and farts–so why call?  Why invade other people’s privacy with a phone call to some friend, or relative, or loved one?  Don’t rollover minutes roll over anyway?  Must one be so desperate for conversation, at all times, including pee-pee-poo-poo time?  Is anyone so busy that the only time to keep in touch is when your booty is touching the sanitary wafer on the toilet seat?  Or is it some perverted desire to perform a feat of multitasking to a captive audience?

I don’t know or presume the reason’s why.  I can only find the result disturbing and ill-mannered to the point of barbarism.  I mean I don’t want to ever have to hear (most likely will) again:

OE: And?
TB: I wanted to fuck her in the ass.
OE: Why didn’t you?
TB: Didn’t want to get shit on my dick.

Yes.  Only slightly less annoying than people who always have to wear their Blue Tooth headset at all times–as if they were so important that God would be calling at anytime to tell them they’ve won the lottery.

This is hilarious.  Almost as good as the movie Gamers.

I don’t know.  I’m not even going to guess because I can’t even conceve what it’s like to have a kid.

   

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This looks like something interesting: sample questions from the new citizenship test.  Try it out and see if you remember anything from your civics class.

Wrote this in the Marriott in San Diego last Wednesday.  The Health Educator’s conference was only two days, but it felt like a week.  I sat down that night to write my paper, but in the end I wrote only this.  Ah well.  Some things just have to be written or they’ll just float around up there bugging me.  There was another one that was vying to get written too, but this one won out.  I’ll have the other one soon.  Enjoy.

The Mail (1st Draft – working title)

The pile sits–
The box might as well be empty.

The litany of mindless arguments
Threaten either to make me pay
Or make me pay
For things gotten or things to get.

But the only one I want
Remains unsaid–unbegotten
By its absence.

A few scrawled lines:
A breath of hope,
Stamped and sealed
by your lips.

A silent testimony of thoughts
Breathed by your heart to mine:
A kiss of souls.

Preempting instant message, I wait–
Paying for nothing.