Another Sunday night in the eye of the tiger

As you wander through this troubled world 
In search of all things beautiful 
You can close your eyes when you’re miles away 
And hear my voice like a serenade
–Dixie Chicks/Lullaby 

Paddy came over for dinner. While we were on the back porch enjoying the weather and our drinks, he said he had something to tell me. Something I wasn’t going to like.  He told me that I’m extremely spiritual. All the time. Everything I think about and write about. I just don’t want to admit it. According to Paddy, every word I write oozes spirituality. 

Fucker. 

So then there was more talking. 

And some more drinks. 

Dinner was artichokes and pasta. 

Then there was more disagreement on my true nature, as well as a summary of all of the dating events he missesd while he was in Maui. 

We sang some songs. We talked some more. He tried to make me love Jaco. I still don’t. 

It got late. 

I got sleepy. Paddy covered me up in the armchair and sang to me. 

I smiled. 

Thanks for ending your vacation with me, Paddy. I’m glad we’re both creeps and weirdos who got to be friends. I know that I always say I know the best people, but I only say it because it’s true. 

You make my world a better place. 

Getting connected…

The opposite of love’s indifference
–the Lumineers

Brene Brown did a TED talk on the importance of something I am coming to appreciate more and more: vulnerability. She started looking at what makes people feel connected, and why some people are more successful at it than others. Why some people are more satisfied with their relationships than others. 

She started out studying connection, and out of that study she decided to do a deeper dive into the underlying factors of what made people feel more connected, more whole hearted, and what she came up with was that people who reported more feelings of connection also embraced vulnerability. 

People who reported high levels of  connection to their friends/family/world had somehow figured out that in order to be embraced for who you are you have to let people see that. Which terrifies a lot of us.  Which terrifies ME.  I spent decades trying to behave like what I thought a normal person would be like because I was sure that the person I am was not…right. Not good enough, too weird, too kinky, too intimidating, not enough like other people to be acceptable. I’ve talked about what that did for me before: it fucked me up, and it fucked up how I related to people. People can’t get to know you if you are acting like someone else.

You have to be willing to be who you are. And that is leaving yourself wide open. If you are pretending to be someone else and get rejected it’s OK because it wasn’t really you anyway. That’s what makes faking it so attractive. You figure you just weren’t doing it well enough, and try to improve your facade. In the process, of course, you eventually stop having any sort of intense feelings. Everything gets muffled. Comfortably numb, if you want to think of it in Pink Floydian terms. 

If you are letting people see who your really are inside, it is painful to be rejected. It’s you. Really you. It hurts. 

But.

It’s the only fucking way to have any sort of relationship with anyone that is real.

Can you be happy if someone loves who you’re pretending to be? A little bit. For a while. Pretending to be someone else is hard to maintain. Your body and mind work against you. All the time. It doesn’t feel right, because it isn’t right. It doesn’t feel right, either to you or to other people. 

Eventually, you have to pay..or they do. 

Things I like

You’ve probably noticed that I like a lot of things. Way more things than I dislike. Tonight, I am grateful for one thing in particular: guys who have perfectly messy  hair and are not afraid to commit excessive public displays of affection in sports bars. Or is that two things? I suppose they are different things. It’s not like the hair and PDAs are related. 

I also like Boneyard’s Hop Venom. A lot. That is also unrelated to guys with great hair or PDAs. I suppose there is a case to be made for an increase in the number of PDAs which occur after Hop Venom is consumed.

Then there are noodles. I love noodles. 

OK–usually I don’t edit…however….

I fell sound asleep while writing this. Woke up with my iPad on my pillow. I don’t even have the excuse of too much Hop Venom. I had 1.5 beers last night.  Not sure where the noodles came from…I must have already been sleeping when I typed that.

Oops!