Birthday Musings...

Rip-diddle-ip-dip-dip its your Birthday !!! - Tim and Eric

As I walked along one day
Thought I felt summer fade away
And give way to trees of gold
And suddenly felt really old
A subtle transition with no exposition
And still the story’s told…

I don't know how this exactly ties into the fact that it was my birthday but as I found myself alone yesterday afternoon, with my laptop and this newfangled internet as my only outlet, I was so moved by the resplendent birthday wishes I received via phone, text and Faceboook that I realized that the only way to receive the abundance of life was to not focus on what you don't have, as that only draws more of what you do not desire into your life. As I regretted aging, my current automotive state of disrepair and my stagnant personal and professional life said wishes (and the awesome gift I received from Dave, Carol & Miles) jumpstarted my brain back to the frequency of love and creativity, which is the vibration of life proper.

It all reminded me of something, or someone, who moved me recently and stream of consciousness ensued...

Ever meet someone and you just know? You just know they would make a great partner? Be it a relationship or a creative partnership or a business accord, your heart skips a beat and your neurons buzz sideways when one flash from their eyes starts the lightning inside. Like a Quentin Tarantino montage, seemingly unrelated yet somehow interconnected images and ideas flash through your minds' viewfinder, all sparked by this person you barely even know. You've said, maybe, five words to this person in your life. Maybe all you did was meet briefly, a quick handshake and a joke while leaning on a pickup truck, but the indentation they left on the soft wax that was your mind at that moment is as deep and meaningful as it is everlasting.

This is what Malcolm Gladwell talked about in "Blink." Sometimes, you just know. Your eyes lazily scan, or, more accurately, are drawn by something other than conscious choice, across the room, only to be met on that original information superhighway: the invisible yet unbreakable frozen rope of eye contact with a soul in-kind. The initial feeling is purity defined. Unmolested emotion. Uncorrupted by thought, avarice or ego. Like drinking cold, mountain water right from the source. Of course, inhibitions, prejudices and society, among other forces, immediately conspire to chalk the moment up as insignificant or ephemeral. A brief moment of whimsy distracting you from the cold, slate-gray realities of life. But I make a bold proffer to those forces that if they, just once, give the moment the benefit of the doubt, and they let the flower of this connection bloom in the lump of fecundity that is the very society that conspires to ruin it, I will not tell anybody.

I will not let what I have found rise up and choke the carefully hammered-in sensibilities out of society. I would let dictators stomp the earth. I would allow demagogues and heretics and false prophets to editorialize to no end. I would allow the muck and scum to run the streets. Peanut butter and jelly to be in the same bottle. Bert and Ernie to be gay. The pot to call the kettle black. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! I would bury my head in the sand to every societal transgressions if the Fates would please, just this once, let a ray of sunshine in on an otherwise cloudy day. For I have been out in the rain for far too long and though you may have tried your damndest to convince me that such offerings of shelter are nothing more than oases, I ask that this one time that the palm tree and cool, sparkling water in the desert actually provide me the shade and lubrication I seek, because I am muthafuckin' hot and thirsty.

When we thirst so, society wants us to be a hamster, carefully taking halting, quick sips off the water bottle while constantly looking over our shoulders. We wait for a properly appointed teat to come into our world and we do the dance. Like bees during mating season we hover over the same flower until its time to bump buzzers or go home empty handed. I envy those who get into and out of relationships quickly. With the detached air of nobility I have seen people come and go while I am constantly stuck in first or last gear. When holding on until the maximum pressure point and blurting has not worked in the past, one usually just stops the blurting. The feelings remain. The buildup continues. The holding becomes the relationship and this, in turn, becomes your reality. Thoughts become things. Choices are made. Even if you don't make them consciously, you've just let society make a passive aggressive choice for you, and that is fine, if you like playing the lottery.
If one doesn't come along we alter ourselves to be more teat-worthy. We alter our metabolism. Work jobs we hate. Drive inefficient cars. Get foolish haircuts. All to hold onto our teats.

How can it be that upon an initial, fleeting meeting one decides "I want to be the one who rubs her shoulders. Who soothes away her day."? Is it the fact that her face lights up like a meteor shower when she smiles? Is it because you can't decide whether her sculpted cheeks remind you more of rosebuds or two scoops of coffee ice cream? Is it the smoldering eyes, burning like charcoals at the end of a 4th of July cookout? Is it the all the witty sass-back and attitude you know is simmering behind those luminescent teeth?

Is it the sage countenance? It can't be the way she carries herself gracefully, because she actually floats. She's not mysterious, she just knows "why mess up with words what can be complexly conveyed in a easy look." A wise, or wisenheimer, smiles accompanies it. Is she tweaking me? Flirting with me? Just playing me? Is she my fingers and me the bass? Lord, I hope so.

Knowing that she will never bow to me she gives a wry smile that conveys what words will only send into disrepair. Her quiet is fabulously disquieting. She is in control, and I want her to be, but I don't want her to know that I want her to be in control. Then it loses its cache. A singular woman that stands out like a healed thumb among the sore, throbbing masses who yearn for attention and ice. She hangs in the corner, no wallflower but rather a sunflower too proud to allow others to see her soak up the radiance. The source of her beauty must remain a mystery, otherwise everybody would be doing it. The sense of satisfaction is not displayed not smugly but contentedly. Don't get mad at her, for she did her homework. Get upset with yourself for not even trying. She makes me want to try as hard as I can and to give up all at the same time. Inspiring and deflating. She'll stifle and liberate. Its hard to anticipate.

Although the interpretation of the feelings she is projecting is all up to the mind of the subjective subject, what can be rightly assumed is that she cares not what you decide. She pulsates success and honor and competence and beauty. The fact that her physical beauty is the third power I noticed I succumbed to is no accident. For, to me, no other part of a women is sexier than the brain. A fleshling I remain, to be sure, but the power to ingest and digest, to deduce, decide and declare, all with the lilting easiness of an early autumn rain does more for me than a room festooned with naked starlets. Gimme brain, I would declare, and a euphemism it would not be. A firm want of not only intellectual back and forth on a daily basis but the joy in watching someone smarter and more beautiful than I being such a vital part of my life that they are calling the shots as much as I am is true erotica. Not that I pleasure myself to thoughts of "ohhh, give me that commitment" but moving beyond the sensuality of it all its what makes the relationship an enhanced version of civility.

Now, what happens when all of the above is true, but the other person seems, which is the operative word, to dismiss this all as unimportant. A mere move in the larger chess game of life. How to convey this without sounding creepy? Nobody wants to hear right off the bat that they just know you are right for them. What if this is all in my head? Maybe she is right in not reciprocating. I realize that not only do I touch gold and it turns to dung, but so many times I've met the one to believe that she just is probably not even there. When would anything I've ever done make me good enough to breathe in her air?

And though the rational part of your brain harbors no illusion as to anything coming to fruition, the mere thought of her turns your heart and mind falconine and both fly away at a moment's notice. Its a beautiful feeling, as long as your mindset is sanguine. Its like having a germinating seed growing inside you. Maybe this is an inkling to how pregnancy feels. The beauty is, you can tap this feeling anytime you want. Unsullied by time or space, the relationship in your mind with this person you don't know flowers and needn’t ever be pruned. But how to convey? The puerile strutting of stuff and peacockian displaying of feathers is useless. Methinks she is too wise for that. Plus, as a Libra and middle child, I am not prone to proving anything to anybody. Determined to forge my own way my own way, I work better alone, but would live better with her. Time is but a door, thoughts are the windows.

And so the dance begins. The sideways glances. The coy avoidance. You name your instruments in their honor. As you process the experience the mere realization that a person like this exists makes you question the direction of your life. Makes you set new goals over the cresting horizon of the early morning sun, which you arise early enough to see each day because sleeplessness is accelerated by the notion that you just can't wait to get up and move from seeing her in your dreamscape to awakedness, where you consciously control the three act structure of a proper daydream.

Maybe I'm just going nuts. Anybody got any Adderall?