I left my heart in San Francisco

Many things to be said without eloquence or rhyme. A pervasive hallow feeling emanates from what would be my heart. But what is another lap around our cosmic track.

Today's Google search: Red Poop. Thankfully, the answer is I've been eating beets. They're delicious, but also turn your poop red. I was really freaked out yesterday.

In other news - while I've physically left San Francisco for quite a few months now - today I've officially (in my mind at least) left. I can't call it home anymore as much as I love it, circumstances have changed. As is other things with love, sometimes stuff changes.

Long delayed, but letting go

I'm beginning to forgot what your arms feel like, draped around me. My memory fades of the kisses you gave me, the embrace of your lips. Your voice echoes slightly less in my view of the past. And I miss you. And I sometimes hate you. And I need to forgive and move on. And I need to let you go.

I dreamed a lot about us. Our future. I had hoped. This reality of me & you, and not me & you. Just me. It crushes me and my heart sinks just a little more. I admit, it wasn't perfect, but I saw sparks, I felt something like gravity between us. And words just ripped us apart at the seams. For what its worth, I care about it. I hope you're well. I hope you find someone that fit just a bit more right than you and me. I hope you have gravity and fireworks and things click into place. I hope you find happiness.

But like sad love songs or most country songs, we weren't right, right? Right. So it goes. I wish things were different, but the reality is and just is. I'm sad I'm not in your life, but we're on different paths now. I really enjoyed the time we spent together.

Experimental: Giving Up...Stuff

Sometimes I want to try to give up something. Partly to see what will happen. Partly to see if I can. And maybe partly to see if I miss it or something.

I did this with meat. Not eating (land) animals (couldn't give up sushi). I did it pretty successfully for a few years. There were some benefits. But ultimately I chose to be a carnivore again. Because, bacon. And steak. Oh my $GOD, a good steak would be fantastical right now.

I don't quite know what brought this latest one on, or maybe I do but don't want to fully admit to it. Social Media. Facebook &  Google+ were the worst offenders for me. I work at a computer. I am almost surgically attached to my stupid (super smart) phone. I like facebook. I only kind of like Google+ (yes I work for Google, these are my opinions and not that of my employer). But I was checking it every goddamn minute. It was getting too much. I share a lot. We're social creatures right? I want to have a rich and fulfilling life. Faceblock (and to some extent, G+/-) makes me lazy. It does give me interesting things to read and shows me fun and pretty pictures. But it gives me a passive way to socialize with people I don't see often or don't make enough of an effort to see, call or write or ping even.

So what to do? Sign out of Facebook. Yes I kept Facebook Messenger (it's actually a really good way to chat with people 1:1 or in groups). Uninstalled the app from my phone. Whew. Do I still type in http://faceboo.. yes. Damnit. What about Google+? Well you can't uninstall it from your Android device. So I kept checking it yesterday. Fuck. But I could hide the shit out of it (what does that even mean?? I don't know, but it sounds like I'm serious) with Nova Launcher. The only problem is that I live in Google. The little bell shows me when there's a +1, comment, etc. I can't sign out of it or you know..consequences: no email, music, etc. Well let's see how the whole self control thing pans out here.

It's been hard. Not hard like manual labor, time in prison, or (damnit, I just opened a new tab and started typing facestupidfuck) whatever, but it's a habitual psychological crutch. I want to see if I make better use of those squandered seconds and get some mindfulness and presence... in the present. I want to see if those minutes turn into useful exercises in thought.

Will I go back? Yes, probably yes. Maybe this will help me, maybe this will turn me into a hermit drinking alone in my apartment while I lament to myself about how I should share this on faceboo..k. Or you know, Google+.

Disclaimer: Views are my personal brand of crazy, not my employer or those around me.

Fatum

The universe is not conspiring against me. Right?

There are times where it fells like everything is coming down on you. I feel that way now. On the precipice of some cliff of shitty feelings, I feel like sometimes I can just say fuck it, lay down and let the world pass by. But I won't, and I can't. I've dreamed! I've hoped, And the reality crushes these things into the pit of my stomach. They won't be. It's just a reality I will need to accept. The days turn quickly into weeks and months and then years. Reality isn't what I've hoped, dreamed or wished. But yet, here I am. I am here and the reality hasn't kept me from waking up, so I guess I'll keep getting up. Putting the past behind me... I'm going to try damnit. I'll keep fighting against the fucking dark otherwise what's the point?

Mal de coucou

Q: mal de coucou

“I’d like to know something about ‘mal de coucou’. I think it means something like ‘pain of the cuckoo’ (?), but I don’t see the connection between these words and the definition you gave them. Could you explain this to me?”  –waveringmind (ask me a question)

……

Here’s the definition of mal de coucou:
n. a phenomenon in which you have an active social life but very few close friends—people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time—which is a form of acute social malnutrition in which even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you’ll still feel pangs of hunger.

The irony of posting this to facebook would not have been lost. But I like the lexicon here. It captures this experience that some of us feel, but never had the right phrase to express such complex thing. mal de coucou.

dna

I'll be one of the first to admit that at times, it feels like the universe and maybe even fate itself, conspires against you and me. The nexus of bad timing circles every thought, but irrespective of how bad things are, we have reminders that there is ebb and flow to the universe, give and pull of all things connected. To remedy this karmic imbalance is a simple fix: Keep one foot in front of the other, stop. Repeat. Change is in the the dna of the universe. Keep going to see those changes. Plant seeds of positive change. One foot in front of the other. Repeat. Go back to step one.

Whole Wide World

When I was a young boy
My mama said to me
There's only one girl in the world for you
And she probably lives in Tahiti
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
Or maybe she's in the Bahamas
Where the Carribean sea is blue
Weeping in a tropical moonlit night
Because nobody's told her 'bout you
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her
Why am I hanging around in the rain out here
Trying to pick up a girl
Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears
When there're girls all over the world
Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere
Underneath the tropical sun
Pining away in a heatwave there
Hoping that I won't be long
I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her
Caressing her warm brown skin
And then in a year or maybe not quite
We'll be sharing the same next of kin
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her 

I love cover songs. I love this song in particular. Trying to remember what prompted me to think of this song again, but I remember hearing Will Ferrell cover this in Stranger than Fiction and I was hooked. Don't know why, but I find it hopeful and uplifting in a way. The Pretenders do a great job on this one too.

Happy Endings

I like happy endings. They are well, happy. Cue music, the monologue and the serendipitous turn of events. I love them. How could you not?

But...I don't know if I believe in them anymore. Hope is a strange thing. It can keep you going with literally nothing, raise you up in the face of abject darkness and propel you into motion.

And moving I am. But I'm tired. And my hope is fading and my heart is heavy, slowing down with every beat and every step. But I'll keep moving until it stops. Because hope, in all it's perverse half truths, is still a beautiful thing. So I keep moving, in hope of a destination.

A Late Start

It's almost been one lunar cycle of our Sisyphean journey around the burning ball of fire we call a sun. Our ride is short, but we can't lose sight that there might be something greater than 'me'. I don't do "New Year's Resolutions", but these seem à propos as any.

While this may sound overly trite, but everyday we wake up we have an opportunity for change. We have the ability to have degrees of change, but we also in turn, change. Effectively shaping the lives of those around us and the environment we live. Small gestures of kindness or the larger efforts we do - we are the collective energy that shapes our reality.

If I had to make a list (because I love lists):

• Be positive, be kind.
• Don't be an asshole.
• Be a better at my relationships, work, friends, dating, etc.
• Be healthy.
• Just be a better person.

2013 - it's what you'll make of it, right?

Sites I like

http://dating-wtf.com/

• wtf, female psyche?
• I liked the charts.

logically, logic & effort don't correlate sometimes. <- advice="advice" best="best" div="div" from="from" i="i" it.="it." paraphrased="paraphrased" took="took">

When you're not the one

It's just so damn hard to hear sometimes. Maybe it plays like in the movies and your heart sinks just a bit. Queue the slow motion frames and the drink drops to ground and breaks into a million pieces just as your heart shatters. I suppose you're not 'the one' more often than not. But how many even get to be in the race?

It's not easy. In fact it's impossible to not be hurt, burned, or broken in the game of love. It's important not too linger in the heartache too long. It's a comforting to be in sure, but you really can't stay there too long - life's short. But there's an upside maybe. You get some time to wallow and all those songs just make sense don't they? In the end it doesn't matter much about the details. The big thing is something wasn't right.

Keeping one foot in front of the other. Rinse, repeat. Wish them well, or not, but your life was not tied to theirs. Hopes, wishes and dreams, but what may have been - wasn't and life goes on. This is a fact of life and of love, most of the time you're not the one.

Everyday

Routine sets in, but we need to remind ourselves why. This is my reminder. It's a pretty scene, no?

Two-OH-Twelve

Fuck you Times New Romain. Long live fixed width font. TNR is like the asshole who doesn't know he's an asshole, until now.


It's a new year and things just keep moving. We change, things change, our circumstances change - if you let them change. Good things can happen. Good thoughts and good intention channeled though good actions are catalysts for these things.


Over the weekend I attended a Post Secret event in sunny Modesto, CA. There Frank Warren said (to the effect), if he had to relive all the pain in his life, every moment of heart wrenching pain, he'd do it all over again because it made him who he is today and appreciate the things he had in his life now.


Anyway, here's for change in 2012. Cheers all you assholes using TNR.

Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism – and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s elan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

Stanley Kubrick.

 Inner strength and struggle and all that. My perspective is always changing which may or may not be a bad thing. When things are down and out, I keep coming back to a nihilistic view of the world, but this is the very complementary to that in a way.

Three wishes

1. I wish we never met
2. I wish for more wishes.
3. ...

I

200 miles

200 miles to escape the familiar. Out to the ocean where people board wooden ships to cross time and space. Round the blue skies and on to the open roads till things don't make sense. You have to slow down once in a while to see those green rolling hills. Never more truer words etched into our minds of the journey is the adventure, not the destination.

Self Loathing in San Francisco

It's Friday night, 11pm and I'm going to bed. I hate myself.

Outlook, not just for mail.

When I get sad, then I stopped being sad and became awesome instead. True Story.  - Barney, HIMYM

I think every since I was a little kid, I tended to gravitate to what was wrong rather than what was right (in life). I remember my Dad would go on about how much my attitude sucked, which made me focus on how much I didn't want to be listening to that right then - a vicious cycle that perhaps is the root of my furrowed brow. Or maybe I was just a weird kid.

Who says TV doesn't teach you important life lessons?

The Shit I Read

Karen (not her real name) cheated on her husband twice* for her children to have better genes.

Wow. I really don't buy this bullshit. If she has a great and understanding marriage, would adoption be a choice? What about getting a donor? What if the husband said, look wife, I'm hot as shit, but you aren't and I want my kids to be pretty - let's go find an egg donor. I really don't think that would fly. In fact, husband would probably lose a testicle.  Chalk one up to another double standard.

Cheating. Affairs. Some people are wired that way. Doesn't that mean there are a lot of us that are wired for monogamy?

This world is full of fucking people.

*http://www.doccool.com/cheated-on-husband-for-better-genes/

I didn't know we died in pieces

"I cannot emphasize enough that my body is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel, harboring these diminishing, so-called 'vital organs'. Hope my heart goes first. I HOPE MY HEART GOES FIRST!" -  Los Campesinos!

So I put one foot in front of the other. And so it went until I was down the street, out of my town, and into the world I had turned away.