Yearly Archives: 2007

A Difference of Love

“Love does­n’t end, just because we don’t see each oth­er.”, she told him

“Doesn’t it?”, he asked.

“People go on lov­ing God, don’t they? All their lives. Without see­ing Him.”

“That’s not my kind of love.”

I real­ize that on days like this — when the wind is cut­ting through the seams of my jack­et, when my stom­ach is so cramped that it twitch­es, when I’m uncon­trol­lably nod­ding off to sleep on the bus, when my trans­fer expires before I can use it, when incom­pe­tence isn’t keep­ing my appoint­ments — that I can’t call you. It just would­n’t help.

You aban­doned me when I need­ed you the most. I’ll nev­er trust you with any­thing impor­tant again. Including me.

You may say you love me, but I don’t love you. Not any­more.

This is how I real­ize that love is defined dif­fer­ent­ly by dif­fer­ent peo­ple.

My love is (was) bound­less.

Yours is of con­ve­nience.

Hugging Etiquette

She hugged me yes­ter­day. I thought I was over her, but maybe I’m still smit­ten. Physical con­tact does fun­ny things to the mind.

I don’t under­stand why girls are so into hug­ging. Often, I’ll go for a hand­shake, and as if it does­n’t take, they’ll lean in to hug after­ward. A girl once asked if she could hug me after I explained to her my pro­ce­dure for check­ing a cat before adop­tion. Figure that one out.

The fun­ny thing is that most girls aren’t very good hug­gers. They give limp hugs — more of a press­ing of the arms to the body — and it bugs the crap out of me. It’s like get­ting a soft hand­shake, also referred to as the “limp noo­dle”.

Bronwen’s an excep­tion. I always give and get a bear hug from her when I see her and when she leaves. Sometimes we fight for arm posi­tion­ing, because we both pre­fer to have the arms low­er than the oth­er. I like to have my arms around a girls’ waist, where­as she likes to have her arms sur­round­ed, so she feels pro­tect­ed.

The two Louise’s are/were also good at hug­ging. Nice and firm, with­out being too clingy. Maybe it’s a Louise thing.

It just makes me won­der; if girls are so into hug­ging, why aren’t they bet­ter at it?

The Case For Divine Serendipity

I sup­pose I should­n’t be sur­prised to find out you’ll be in town the day after I write about you.

The way the young man I just met is tak­ing the same bus home with me. The way the friend who’s been lost for­ev­er sud­den­ly shows up, pack­ing your bags in the check­out line.

But I know it’s not a sign. It’s not some cos­mic path, just the way things are work­ing out. At least, I think so. My life has been filled with such occur­rences, and I’ll be damned if it all does­n’t start to mean some­thing.

See you tomor­row.

The Weeping Sky

Thumbnail: Hurdman station on a rainy day

Thumbnail: Walkley station on a rainy day

It has­n’t stopped pour­ing since I woke up. I’m trav­el­ing through the city in my favourite hood­ie. Thinking about you and your del­i­cate wrists. The pho­tos I took of you smil­ing, always look­ing away. Wondering what it must be like in your world. Wondering if we’ll ever meet again. Wondering what you meant when you told me it’s hard to be alone when you’re told you’re grow­ing old.

I write this so I won’t have to write about you again.

Perhaps in a sim­pler world things would have worked out dif­fer­ent­ly, and you would have giv­en me a sec­ond thought.

But I have no tears in me.

The sky weeps instead.

A Truth is Worth a Million Words

You inter­pret my heart, my nature, as you wish to believe it.

— Onegin

People see what they want to see.

As I touched on a while back, some of it comes from inse­cu­ri­ty. Other times, from a fal­la­cy of pro­jec­tion as some peo­ple igno­rant­ly, and mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal­ly, believe that every­one must think and act as they do. There are a few oth­er cas­es that don’t fit into either of these cat­e­gories though.

An exam­ple: I once offered a guest in my house some yogurt. The first thing he asked was, “Is it going bad?”. He did­n’t believe I would have giv­en it to him oth­er­wise. It was a per­fect reflec­tion of his dead­beat friends who expect­ed you to eat before com­ing to a par­ty, and he had nev­er known any oth­er type of peo­ple. A more extreme exam­ple is if you offered to feed some­one at your house and they got insult­ed because they thought you were imply­ing that they could­n’t afford to feed them­selves. Some peo­ple see things that aren’t there. It’s an amaz­ing sub­con­scious sign of their char­ac­ters.

The way some girls inter­pret things is also an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. Some of them think a guy who’s talk­ing to them must be hit­ting on them so they drop the b‑bomb in ran­dom points of con­ver­sa­tion, just to warn you they have a boyfriend. Some girls think you’re gay because you don’t make any advances towards them. Some girls think you’re torn up, depressed because they declined your advances, and end up mak­ing a big­ger deal about it than you do. I want noth­ing more than to tell these girls to get over them­selves, but I bite my tongue because they end up embar­rass­ing them­selves more than I could ever do myself.

There are also times when a per­son is so pig-head­ed and stub­born that they see every­thing through a fil­ter, inter­pret­ing your actions in some crazy way, and believe you’re at fault because they sub­con­scious­ly refuse to see their own mis­takes.

The old me would have been insult­ed when some­one assumes I’m a cer­tain way. Nothing would anger me more than some­one pre­sum­ing to know how I feel or what I’m like, and I used to care des­per­ate­ly what they thought, even if I knew I was just mis­un­der­stood. It’s an inter­est­ing feel­ing to be passed that now1.

The truth leaves no room for bias, only inter­pre­ta­tion.

I’ve learned nev­er to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­er peo­ples’ inter­pre­ta­tions. Only take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your intent. You learn a lot about a per­son from the way they inter­pret things and from the way they see the world.

With the truth in your heart, it does­n’t mat­ter what any­one thinks.

With the truth on your side, noth­ing can go wrong.

  1. It’s actu­al­ly been qui­et a few months since I wrote this entry. I did­n’t post it at first because I want­ed to be absolute­ly sure that it was­n’t a fick­le feel­ing, and that my strength was firm. Reading back on it now, it seems more rel­e­vant than ever. [↩]