I'm not waiting on a lady, I'm just waiting on a friend

Sitting in 14U on this ever so snowy afternoon. It's been an interesting week to be a DC resident. Take for instance Wednesday, which was warm enough to walk to and from work, and on the way to the office I spied a very interesting woman outside the Columbia Heights Giant. She was maybe a bag lady, maybe a little crazy. She work layers, and black boots, and a skirt. She had a grocery push cart and a hat and a cane. As I was about 2/3 of a block away she was hollering something that I couldn't understandt (I was quite fixated on listening to "Neon Bible"). As I got closer I was able to watch her a little bit. She walked forward a few steps, planted her cane on the sidewalk with authority, and brought her head down to rest on the top of it. She then hollared something at the ground, and after a moment lifted her right leg into the air. To me it looked like particularly slow motion interprestation of an old jazz dance move, though I am sure to some it could have also looked like a woman doing an interpretation of a dog peeing on a tree (sans tree). She did this a couple more times before I was far enough away to not be aware of it.
Yesterday a friend and I took an excursion to go thrifting. We braved the wiles of Northern Virginia, specifically Arlington and Alexandria. We found the Salvation Army. Two different Salvation Armies, across the the street from one another. And the Barnside Diner. If you're ever there you should try their gyros. Not that we did (we are both vegetarians), but they posses a very convincing sign suggesting the gyros. There was an old man who smelled like pot, and they cooked an epic amount of bacon and sausage while we were there. Which was strange, considering that for the majority of the time we were there we were two of the three customers in the entire establishment. But the food was decent, and it's been a long time since I had good diner food.
Last night was Wonderland. Which was disconcerting, because on a Saturday night it was full of middle aged men. We finally found some of the regular patrons, all of whom seemed to have been relegated to the smoking patio for some reason that I couldn't fathom, other than that middle aged men are scary folk to be around.
And today it is wet and snowy. And soon it will be dark and I will go home and perhaps I shall watch the Academy Awards with my roomates.

Slipstream

I just went through my flickr stream and deleted slightly less than 100 photos. This is my continuing effort to make all of the things in my life better. To reduce the amount of medicority in my life. And I choose to begin with the fact that my flickr stream is full of mediocre photos. It is weird to go through the stream in the organizr, looking at the different photos, looking at when i uploaded some things, and thinking back on why i felt they were worth sharing with the world. And in many ways it was very cleansing to get rid of many of them. Like cleaning my room. Well, more like moving. A little bit scary and a little bit exciting. I think I have a very odd relationship with flickr.

O'Tasty

O'Tasty
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Last night I needed to buy quart grocery bags and wet cat food. Because today I am in Florida. It was not warm enough to go outside and sit on the beach, so instead I slept, because I only got four hours of sleep last night, because I decided it was reasonable to take an 8 am flight.

Anyway, getting back to the grocery store.

My sister was in town and at the grocery store with me. And there we were, standing in line, waiting to buy the ziploc bags and the cat food. There was a man in front of us in line buying two bags of frozen fish and some other stuff. I don't recall exactly how we ended up in conversation, but we did, and he spoke with a thick Jamaican accent. And that's when it got amusing. He told us about how he likes to go to the Jamaican bar on Georgia Avenue. How he goes to the bar on Friday nights and drinks two beers and feels "much better". About how he's glad that alcohol is legal, and how he thinks you should be able to drink and smoke the weed if that's what you want to do to feel better.

But don't smoke the crack.

Then he started singing the refrain from "One Love" and talking about drinking and smoking, but not the crack. Then it was time for him to check out. And he went through the whole thing about being Jamaican and "One Love" with the cashier, sans the comments about crack. And she found it just as amusing. And my sister and I could not contain our laughter. We clutched one anothers' hands and resisted the urge to collapse into fits of giggles.

Then he asked for my phone number.

Because he wanted to take me with him to Jamaica in October.

I told him I didn't have a phone (thank you to all of my friends who did not call me during that five minute period of my life). He said "How will I find you?"
I said "Oh, I come to the grocery store quite frequently"

He found that acceptable and went about his business.

That is that, and this is this (a bitter unsent letter for Valentines Day)

Dear (name removed, but some jackasses know who they are),

Last year at this time you and I were exchanging instant messages from across the globe, contemplating our respective patheticness at going to concerts of bands that we love by ourselves (I didn't end up going alone, so I was less pathetic than you. loser). For the record, if I could go back to that day and convince myself to stop messaging and e mailing you, if I could erase the ee cummings poem you e mailed me from my journal, I would do it. I would take away the few good times I had with you, if it would save me the pain that you have caused me.

A year ago I never would have thought I could write those words. Such is the absurdity of youth. I never thought I could regret something so thoroughly as to want to erase not only the experience, but all of the things that occured in my life subsequently. I have always been able to look back at miserable, painful experiences and gather some solace from something good, or at least reasonable, from it.

My interaction with you is bereft of anything good. Yes, I had good times with you. I might not have seen Jonathan Safran Foer in person if not for you. I might not have seen the Dresden Dolls, or gone to a free Spoon show if not for you. But I remain confident that I could have achieved all of these things, and that I inevitably would have, without your intervention. It might not have been at those times, but it would have happened. Yes. We had some good sex. But in the words of Tori Amos "so you can make me come, that doesn't make you jesus".

So I may be bitter. I suppose many people would, if someone had seduced them with the downright contrivingness that you did. You listened to my fears about betrayal. You understood my intolerance for dishonesty. I told you I was not interested in dating you. And then you were perfect. We talked long into the night about the various ways we have both been damaged, and damaged others. You acknowledged that I am, perhaps just a little bit... fragile. You held me close in the darkness. You wrote me letters. Beautiful letters. (by the way, i didn't deign to set them on fire. when i moved leia and i just threw them in the trash. with the cat litter and rotten crap out of the fridge) You were deliberate. And even if you weren't quite scheming... well. It's enough.

I moved because of you. I was going to move, I was planning to move by September, and it happened to work out that I moved in September. But knowing you made me jump a little faster. It doesn't make me proud to think that I ran away. And in many ways I was running towards something different than where I was. My friends tell me that they admire my ability to have decided to move and just picked up and done it. Like that. Poof. What they don't understand is that I was running away. I was running away from the room where we lay until 2 in the afternoon. The floor where we read the Sunday New York Times. The diner where we had breakfast in the afternoon. I was running away from the Bluebird, the Gothic, the Tattered Cover, Coors Field, the lightrail, places that were mine long before I even knew you existed, and that by knowing you, by experiencing them with you, have been tainted. I was running away from Washington Park, and my favorite place in the entire world. A place I wanted to take you, I dreamed of walking there with you, explaining how I used to go there for comfort, and telling you a story I have never told anyone else. Ever. I was running away from that dream. Thinking back on the ways that knowing you has made me into a coward makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

I met with you about two months ago. I almost didn't tell my best friend about it because I didn't want to know what she would think of me when I did. The entire time I was with you I felt nauseated. I don't understand how I can still like someone, still care about someone, still be attracted to someone who has shown me the deep and disgusting nature of humanity. I'm not talking about you and what you did and did not do. Because that is the oldest story. The fact that it hurt me does not make it original (in fact I am quite certain that nothing I feel is unique, but since I have nothing to compare it to I have to own my pain in the only way I know how). I am talking about the ways that knowing you has changed me. I disgust myself, thinking about the glee I felt in hearing that you had been hurt. The smile that plays across my face when I think about the ways you are not who you want to be. The fact that I can remember being crumpled on the floor, the same place I fell when you told me the information I didn't want to know, sobbing uncontrollably and without the strength to move. The recollection of having to literally force myself out of bed every morning for a week, past the physical illness that accompanied waking up in the morning and any thought of you during the day. The fact that I would keep myself awake until I passed out from exhaustion every night because whenever I closed my eyes I remembered you, and imagined you in ways that made my want to removed my brain from my head and soak it in bleach. The fact that I can have all of these small loathings, and still have sat across from you and thought "I want this person to like me". That, more than anything, is what makes me wish I could go back to a year ago and erase you from my life. Completely.

This is just the latest in a long stream of unsent letters to you. Some of them have been written down, some of them stayed in my mind, some of them made their way out in conversation with people who were better able to guide me through my subconscious than I was able to stumble along on my own.

Please don't take any satisfaction in thinking that I feel this way any percentage of the time. That point has long passed. I may not be happy right now, but that has nothing to you (blasted winter and brain chemicals). No, this is really just my response to the fact that I hate Valentines Day, and this year I have just one more really good reason to want to throw snowballs at the disgusting couples I see on the street.

me

Come here, pretty please, can you tell me where I am?

DSC03463.JPG
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I have learned an important thing about myself in the last year and a half. I am not *good* at people. I take a book to the bar. I wear headphones on the train. I scribble in my journal during the free moments of my life. These things are not conducive to meeting new people, and certainly not for my dating prospects.

My efforts to learn how to meet people have changed who I am. Who is this person, who goes up to a complete stranger and strikes up a random conversation? She is certainly not me, although she has a tendency to wear my body.

In college it was seamless, everyone was new, it was like you got points for getting to know new people. Of course sometimes it would backfire, but for the most part college was an awesome experience. Made all the better for the myriad opportunities to meet interesting people worth dating.

Out here, in the real world? We all say that we don't play games, but really we all do. I can't tell him how much I actually like him, we've only been out on one date. I can't tell him the truth about why I won't let him closer, because it might scare him off. I am in the outside world, where I am not going to see these people again in the course of my day... probably not anyway. So what do I do? I troll the Craigslist personals, I put up profiles on social networking sites, I get drunk enough to talk to someone in a bar, or trashed enough to give them my number. And they are never all that interesting. And I start to wonder how many people end up going to graduate school because they are concerned that they will end up old and alone. And I wonder how many of them then find themselves, old, alone and overeducated.

Such is life, I 'spose.

I've got a bird that whistles, I've got a bird that sings

DSC_0221.JPG
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Trust is an evolving beast in this world of internet and casual encounters. I am occasionally struck by the incredible urge to delete my internet presence (blogger, livejournal, flickr, last.fm, musicmobs, google, facebook, myspace, friendster, librarything) because it frightens me to see how comfortable I have become with the reality of inviting strangers into my world.


Who are the people that I have become friends with? They live all over the world, but most of them are people I know to some degree in the "real" world.


I often believe myself safe, because who would want to steal my identity? I wouldn't want to steal my identity, and I've created it. Perhaps that's why I so enjoy my internet presence, it allows me to control what other people see of me. I only share the words I like, I only upload the pictures that I think make me look good.


For a control freak with low self esteem, the internet allows me to control what my "friends" learn about me. Unlike my co-workers (the largest group of friends I have outside of the internet) they don't see me when my hair is uncooperative, when my skin is blotchy, when I am bloated and have bags under my eyes. Unlike my friends from college and high school they haven't seen me at my worst (though perhaps my longtime livejournal friends have come close), emotionally drained and ready to quit.


I wonder sometimes who the people I find online really are, the consummate peeping tom, I peer into the windows that they open to the internet. Much as I often wish I could step outside of myself and observe myself as others see me, I sometimes wonder what the internet collage that is Ariel looks like to someone who has never met me.