Posts tagged with "responsibility"

The Spot

If a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not for­give: if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

—Zorba the Greek

There exists a spot on every woman that needs to be kissed.

It can be as innocu­ous as the curl of the lip, the web of the hand, or a mark on a land­scape of skin.

It’s the respon­si­bil­i­ty of a man to find this spot. Not as a ser­vice to the woman — some­times she isn’t even aware of such a spot — but as a ser­vice to the cre­ator of such things.

Trinary Maturity: The Girlfriend (or The Lifestyle)

It’s easy for some­one to asso­ciate an expe­ri­ence with the last mem­o­ry involved. I’m not with­out guilt in this issue myself. I’ll admit that the rough patch­es near the end of my rela­tion­ship with Loo have come to define the expe­ri­ence a lit­tle unfair­ly. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how much it’s helped and changed me.

In real­i­ty, I learned more from my time with Louise than from any pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship. This was a per­son who inspired (and pushed) me to be bet­ter, but it was­n’t only her, it was the lifestyle as well.

I try not to have too much respon­si­bil­i­ty at this stage in my life, so when I do have it I take it seri­ous­ly. Being a dom­i­nant means that respon­si­bil­i­ty is assumed over anoth­er per­son, anoth­er being, anoth­er liv­ing soul. To be giv­en this respon­si­bil­i­ty, as a bond of supine trust, pro­vid­ed me a sense of con­fi­dence I had nev­er felt before.

And with this trust came a reju­ve­nat­ed zeal for self-improve­ment. She was strong her­self, so I had to be stronger. If Louise’s con­tri­bu­tion was to push, my con­tri­bu­tion was to grow. It helped me fig­ure out what I want in the next few stages of my life. I stopped slouch­ing. I start­ed speak­ing with more author­i­ty. I start­ed walk­ing into restau­rants first, some­thing I could nev­er do before, for rea­sons I could nev­er explain. I demand­ed more out of life.

In the end, it did­n’t work out. The dynam­ic was­n’t right. Unfortunately, I nev­er felt like I was able to com­plete­ly han­dle every­thing until it was actu­al­ly over. Funny how life works out like that. What I’ve lost is only rel­e­vant now.

But what I’ve gained is more impor­tant.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion

The Big Brothers Test

I had an intense inter­view with my Big Brother case­work­er, Stephanie, today. It last­ed for three hours, and the ques­tions ranged from whether I had firearms in my apart­ment, to what my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents is like, to what I dis­like about peo­ple. It’s quite a long process, and can­di­dates are very strin­gent­ly cho­sen. I first had to fill out an appli­ca­tion form, fill out a police report form, and give them three ref­er­ences. They then send my ref­er­ences a ques­tion­naire each, then inter­view me. They also need to inter­view Pita, to make sure that my apart­ment is a suit­able envi­ron­ment for a lit­tle broth­er to spend time in. Stephanie told me that they have to reject quite a few can­di­dates, based on the grounds of imma­tu­ri­ty, improp­er lifestyle, or even health issues, for exam­ple. After all, both the orga­ni­za­tion and the big broth­er are respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of the child.

It’s odd that this will be such a test of my respon­si­bil­i­ty. I always believed that I would be the one to dic­tate what I was ready for. After all, after months of con­sid­er­a­tion, I did decid­ed to adopt a cat, even when I held back while peo­ple were encour­ag­ing me to. I don’t believe that there would be any oth­er rea­son for being declined as a can­di­date. My suit­abil­i­ty as a big broth­er will be deter­mined by a board of peo­ple, and it will be the great­est test of my matu­ri­ty to date. It will be quite objec­tive, of course, since I have no part in the deci­sion mak­ing.

So why am I not ner­vous? Could it be that I am final­ly gain­ing some con­fi­dence? I did ad-lib the inter­view, and I feel that I answered the ques­tions very well. Perhaps I sim­ply real­ize that I answered every­thing to the best of my abil­i­ty, and that I can’t change the out­come when it arrives. Or sim­ply that, although this would be a great expe­ri­ence for me, it’s not the end of the world if it does­n’t work out.

I think I can opt for all three.

k

This kit­ten is so impor­tant to me right now. I think that this will be the clos­est thing to hav­ing kids for me. But as a human infant is dynam­ic and ever chang­ing, cre­at­ing a volatile envi­ron­ment of order, a cat is more sta­t­ic, leav­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bore­dom. This would be my worst night­mare. I hope I nev­er grow tired of her. I hope “the nov­el­ty” nev­er wears off. This life is my respon­si­bil­i­ty, and it will be the great­est test of my tol­er­ance yet. Of course, there may be noth­ing in it; she may sim­ply be a won­der­ful pet, which she is so far, cre­at­ing a mutu­al­is­tic sym­bio­sis which I would glad­ly be a part of.

And, as one can tell, I’m get­ting ahead of myself. I’m see­ing some­things a lit­tle too far into the future, while I look at oth­er things too unfo­cused to be viewed prop­er­ly. If the jaguar is tru­ly my totem, then I should be able to find pat­terns with­in this chaos, find some mean­ing in my present sit­u­a­tion.

“a sol­id in the rip­pling water”

Living With A Cat

I’m extreme­ly tired. My kit­ten kept me up all night. She took the mid­dle of the bed, so I kin­da had to sleep around her. I kept wak­ing up, every time I need­ed to shift posi­tions, scared that I would crush her. I’ve been play­ing with her dur­ing the evening so she los­es a bit of the noc­tur­nal instinct to go crazy at night. I named her Dolly, after Nobokov’s char­ac­ter Dolores Haze. I need­ed to keep the name under two syl­la­bles, and I think that it’s a good sym­bol of the way one can nev­er tell whether a cat or human is the mas­ter, just as you could­n’t tell whether Dolores or Humber was in con­trol.

I feel so unor­ga­nized. I have so many things to do it seems. Take care of this, take care of that. I think that I’ve brought a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ty on myself, adopt­ing a kit­ten, apply­ing for a Big Brother posi­tion, doing this and doing that. I think that I feel much more mature and impor­tant when I do all this. Perhaps it’s a cry for atten­tion, but I doubt it. It feels like I’m sud­den­ly being over­loaded with things to do. I did­n’t fin­ish a sin­gle one of the three assign­ments that I had due this week. I’ve actu­al­ly been los­ing sleep, which is an extreme­ly rare thing for me.

I felt so guilty about those assign­ments. I’m pret­ty sure that I failed one of them. I just need to keep every­thing in per­spec­tive, some­thing that Sam taught me so long ago it seems. Everything feels so chaot­ic, spi­ral­ing out­wards like Yeats’ fal­con from the fal­con­er. Not that I think the Second Coming as at hand, of course, but things just seem so com­pli­cat­ed right now. They’re noth­ing com­pared to oth­er peo­ples’ prob­lems, I know, but I’m not use to being so respon­si­ble.