Posts in category "Thoughts"

Life Is Full Of Possibilities

How sim­ple a thing is hap­pi­ness: a glass of wine, a roast chest­nut, a wretched lit­tle bra­zier, the sound of the sea. All that is required to feel that here and now is hap­pi­ness and a sim­ple, fru­gal heart.

—Zorba the Greek

I feel like writ­ing.

Saturdays are usu­al­ly reserved for relax­ation, but I mixed it with a few errands through­out the day. Bought extra auburn foliage for one of my pots, and a fun­nel to get fresh-ground pep­per into my new pep­per shak­er. Picked up my week­ly gro­ceries. Sat down at the piz­za par­lor to start Beautiful Losers while my Hawaiian was being baked.

I watched Zorba The Greek tonight, about the adven­tures of an aim­less Englishman who goes to Crete, and the lessons he learns from a man he meets named Zorba.

Thumbnail: Zorba the Greek dances

Thumbnail: The Crete widow from Zorba the Greek

Though gen­er­al­ly jovial and light­heart­ed, it was heavy and heavy at times. There’s a scene where a beau­ti­ful wid­ow (the love inter­est of the movie) is rit­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly stoned and killed out of jeal­ousy by the men of the vil­lage, sim­ply because she would­n’t let any of them have her. The direc­tion is a lit­tle incon­sis­tent, but Anthony Quinn’s por­tray­al of the Grecian spir­it keeps the movie in tact. Many believe the movie to be an analy­sis of Apollonian vs Dionysian thought, but I saw it as a nod to Taoism as well.

Zorba’s a Taoist, whether he knows it or not. He shuns intel­lec­tu­al thought and analy­sis, and loves life with bub­bling spon­tane­ity. In the end, the Englishman learns from Zorba, not about life, but how to live it.

And it inspired me. Not just the dia­logue or the play­ful­ness, but the loca­tions too. It made me want to trav­el, to see new places, to meet more peo­ple, and explore oth­er cul­tures.

One day. For now, I’ll enjoy the com­fort of my house.

So here I am, stay­ing up late with my back next to the open win­dow, eat­ing but­ter pecan tarts, drink­ing Dragon Well tea, and writ­ing as much as I can.

I think I’ll go prac­tice the form now.

Tomorrow, I have noth­ing to do but live.

Revealing Vulnerability

In my book tonight, I was remind­ed of the time I was sit­ting on the floor of my room and you were lying on the bed when I felt the foun­da­tion shud­der beneath me. I mapped the escape route in my head, thought of the coats cause it was the end of win­ter, and was about to grab your hand to lead us out­side if the earth shook again, threat­en­ing to bury us in three sto­ries of wood and con­crete. I told you to be ready to run upstairs on my word. How I loved you then.

And I real­ized that I can write about it until my fin­gers are sore, I can think about it into the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, but I can’t tell you how much you hurt me.

For in doing so, I reveal my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

Feeling Particularly Single

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly lone­ly, but sin­gle.

Maybe it’s because I got accus­tomed to liv­ing with some­one. Coming home to anoth­er per­son in the house. Going to bed with a warm body next to me.

My cud­dle bud­dy has decid­ed that she’s off-lim­its1. I haven’t made out with any­one, let alone had sex, in months.

Dry spells are fun­ny things.

During my last one, I was too stoned to even think about dat­ing. The one before that was more of a chal­lenge.

Being sober and sin­gle isn’t quite the way I remem­ber it.

Sometimes peo­ple tell me they want to “intro­duce” me to some­one, but I’m always antsy about hurt­ing mutu­al friends or acquain­tances.

One per­son even gave me the card of a girl they thought was “per­fect” for me, whom she met while get­ting a mort­gage approved at the bank. “Perfect in what way?”, I asked. “Every way”, she said, “Gentle, polite, petite”. For months after­ward, she would ask if I called this per­son, and give me a dis­ap­point­ed look every time I said no, like a moth­er find­ing out that her son has­n’t borne her any grand­chil­dren. I wish I could meet this girl, just to see what some­one else believes I’m look­ing for.

My friends, who are in seri­ous rela­tion­ships or mar­ried now, talk about being sin­gle as if it was akin to their hous­es burn­ing down. They’ve been in their rela­tion­ships for so long that the idea has become for­eign to them. “I’m too old to date”, they say, “Trying to find some­one new, won­der­ing if they like you, fig­ur­ing out if you’re compatible..I could­n’t start over again”.

I always laugh, and think, “Then where does that leave me?”.

  1. I hope it was­n’t because she thought I was lead­ing her on [↩]

The Cut-Off Defence

Through all this, I’ve come to real­ize that I cut peo­ple out of my life as a defence mech­a­nism.

When some­one hurts me, I dis­tance myself from them so they mean noth­ing to me.

And if some­one means noth­ing to me, they can’t hurt me.

Often it’s an easy choice — just one wrong word or action — but not all the time. Cutting off my mom was by no means a rash deci­sion; it took years of con­sid­er­a­tion and plen­ty of chances before she final­ly went too far.

What sur­pris­es me the most is that even though I now know that I have this defence mech­a­nism, I don’t see a prob­lem with it.

I’ve been hurt by enough peo­ple, and I don’t want to be hurt any more.

Still Human

Crank it. Loud, and maybe you’ll under­stand how I feel.

I’ve been in such a slump the last week. Maybe I’m over-worked, over-tired, and over-stressed. Things haven’t been going my way.

It’s filled me with such frus­tra­tion, sad­ness, and anger.

Now I’m left to face the ugly world alone, and all I can think is to nev­er put your trust in some­one. Never be depen­dent, nev­er expect any­thing from any­one because you’ll only get hurt.

Pick your­self up, cause no one’s going to help you.

I try to ratio­nal­ize every­thing and fol­low the Tao, but I can’t. Everything is so over­whelm­ing.

As much as I’ve learned, as much wis­dom as I’ve gained, as far as I’ve come, I’m still human.