No, I didn’t learn this meaning of the word from grade school, or even from the ebonics primer at Dolemite Dot Com.

(Actually, I learned it from 2Pac’s Life Goes On)

Yeah.

I only recently had a modern day poseur pointed out to me. This isn’t the same as an intellectual poseur, this is the poseur of personality. The one’s who want to be quirky, eccentric, different.

At first, I didn’t notice; I was just annoyed. Then Loo’s perspicacity put a name to it. I can’t stop catching others now. I find that the one distinguishing behavior is the over-statement of character traits they wish to have, such as, “I did this funny thing because I want you to see me in a certain way, and by telling you this, I will make you believe that I am who I want you to believe”. Or “I like this song too₀ I listen to anything because I have widely varying tastes!”. Over-statement such as this may or may not be based on some kind of insecurity; some do it to hide because they’re uncomfortable with themselves, others just want to be memorable and only end up being remembered for the wrong reasons.

Sometimes it’s even worse on blogs, where people write one line posts that don’t say anything because they think they’re cool and cryptic and that people are interested in what they have to say. Or others who post conversations, and expect everyone else to understand or appreciate the humour behind them. Or even people who actually write about how they’re fucking INTELLIGENT, or GRAMMAR FREAKS, or ATTRACTIVE. Why the fuck do you need to state it? LET THE WORDS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. The key to writing is to SAY not TELL. Telling an audience how someone is feeling is nowhere near as effective as describing direct actions/thoughts/reactions related to those emotions without actually stating the emotions themselves.

In the end, it all makes me even more zealous about being humble, unassertive. I’ve always been one to “speak softly and carry a big stick”, as Teddy once put it. There are tons of great surprises when one doesn’t present all of oneself from the start. And after all, when one is revealed as a true self that doesn’t match the false image that’s projected on others, one ends up being a phony.

And I fucking hate phoneys.

I think my alarm woke me up this morning.

In university I would dream of differential equations, logic gates, algorithmic proofs, anything that I crammed in my head the night before. If I didn’t dream it, I wasn’t ready. Everything was sterile, unemotional. I wouldn’t be watching myself write an exam, I’d be writing it. My conscious thoughts would take over my subconscious mind.

This is different. All day I think. At night, I try to sleep but can’t, and all I do is start to think again. Then, somehow, my alarm wakes me up. Have I slept? Was I actually thinking, or just dreaming about it? My jaw is sore. I’m clenching my teeth. When did I start? Was it before or after I got in bed? My eyes are sealed shut again. Have I been crying? Did I cry in my unconscious, or did I do it consciously and forget?

A little while ago, I shared a correspondence with a woman who once found this site by searching for “cool futon covers” on the web. She was a single mother (the search was for her daughters’ new futon), and she told me that she gained a new consciousness after reading my entries. She led me to believe that this somehow changed her life, a woman who was beginning to realize that she had come to the end of the direction of her life in her early thirties, and that she grew up too quickly, and couldn’t relate to her teenage daughter.

She had always been nervous, and what I believe was a little intimidated, with our correspondence; I could tell that she was putting up a wall, a sort of separation to keep her distance. When I brought this up to her, she acknowledged it. Later, she sent me this letter.

This is me. Without spellcheck or the comfort of a cut + paste option. Ink is honest. Even more I hesitate before completing the thought/sentence. But I wanted to give something more and this seems like an acceptable amount for now.

What if I am just “trite”? I established that opinions are irrelevant, so what the hell.

I had a massage tonight + I feel better, physically. I can move my neck and look over my shoulders. I was beginning to look like a little old lady when I drove, turning my entire body at the waist to look left or right. It cost me $80 to not be in pain. Funny, that’s about the amount that my company paid me to get in this shape. Ironic.

I just climbed into Jessi’s top bunk of her bed + hugged her. She didn’t hug me back, but she didn’t push me away either. That’s progress. We argue over the most insanely stupid things. It is usually by accident that we find ourselves getting along these days. Putting forth an effort doesn’t seem to work at the moment. I suppose that will change over time….but I sure do miss her.

It is late. I’ve had my bath, I ate dinner (egg salad + cheetoes). I won’t read tonight. I have enough in my head right now. Besides, I’m afraid I will be tempted to stay up too late. I can’t function on a few hours of sleep like some people. I need a solid seven hours minimum…and that’s been rare lately. I have a big closing at 8am with a very important client. She is there because of me. I’d love to tell the primadonna bitch to kiss my ass, but she pays my bills…so instead — I will kiss hers. Being a grown up sucks.

I wonder what it would be like to “check out” of this world? To give in to the notion of insanity and be forgiven anything + everything for lack of a functioning mind? Perhaps that sounds a bit dramatic — but for me it sounds like peace. If only I could somehow be sure that I could find my way back — maybe then it would be a viable option. I’d never have the guts. I couldn’t let go of the controls. Voluntary insanity — — now there’s a fantasy I could play with. But alas, I would never make it in a world without logic + order. Wow. I have written non stop. No more hesitating. I realize I’m no longer breaking up the paragraphs correctly: and I’m sure I’m starting sentences with the word “and”. Ha! I haven’t reread one thought, haven’t ripped out a page + started over — see — it’s just me.

I could tell that just from talking with me, learning how I understand my life, she was beginning to understand many parts of hers that she wasn’t comfortable thinking about. Raymond Lindquist once said, “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar”, and I admired her for what seemed to be a great effort to share herself with a stranger.

For a while now, our correspondence has stopped. It was her decision, and something I assume to have ended only because she has given no response and no reason. She always told to me of her dreams, to one day buy a motorcycle and take the highway to the woods, instead of her exit home. From there she would save the world, one tree at a time. I’ve always hoped that that’s what happened. That the reason why she stopped replying was because she took Jessi with her, and left everything else behind.

And I wish her all the best.

Did some portraits of Trolley. The one at the bottom right is my favourite. I always wonder, what do photographers do when their subjects are ugly? There’s no good angle.

Shirley is a funny woman. Really. Someone had recently noted that she uses the phrase, “Well this is it!”, a lot. It’s usually for situations of agreeableness, and spoken with iambic dimetre, emphasized on every other syllable.

Shirley’s in denial about the whole matter.

There are always news reports and stories of mass murderers, pedophiles, rapists, sociopaths whom no one ever suspects. In my head I always think that it doesn’t matter how someone may be perceived on the outside, that anyone could be the next notorious psychopath. Shirley, however, is one of the few people I would have a very difficult time believing as being able to hurt anyone. Some may think that it’s sad to be so cynical, so untrusting of almost anyone, but that’s just the way my worldview has developed.

Put simply, she’s an innocent person. Not innocent in the ignorant sense, which is something that I had only recently begun to distinguish, but innocent in the good, wholesome, true, honourable sense. I realize that this makes me trust her about as much as I trust my other friends. I honestly feel like I can divulge almost anything to her without worrying about being judged or misinterpreted.

Yet there are things that I don’t let her know, because I firmly believe that our working relationship isn’t worth the risk, if there just happened to be something she found out that she couldn’t deal with.

So doesn’t this mean that I don’t truly trust her?