Not Again

I have this friend that thinks i should put myself back on the dating market. I try to tell her, uh, i am not the dating type and now that i have been out it for a while I am even less so. I don't want to dress up and pretend I care what they say or where they work or who their names are and all those things you must remeber when you date. Truth is, I am too tired and don't care about having a relationship anymore. I feel as if fate hasn't sent the correct person to me yet, well it's time to move on and stop dreaming.

Some people are just meant to be solo and i am pretty sure i am one of those people.

Sure there are days when i still hope and dream, but for the most part, I think I have come to terms with the future.

how quickly we regress

It's Friday and we are compactly packed into the first subway car so that once we arrive at our destination which is the same destination we are all destined to, we can file out first and not have to fight are way around a mob of people to get to the elevator from the overly filled platform clearly not designed to accommodate the number it receives daily. We all know the consequences of being in the this car because it is the same every morning. We know we will be pushed, and stepped on, and have to fight for a little spot in which we can hopefully grab on to something so as not to be jostled by the conductors heavy foot. We all know it's a bit unbearable and there are always some remarks, or some one who gives someone a look or someone who is so closely wedged beside you you are certain you know his/her face better then the persons significant other. Yet occasionally we get people who do not know all these things or who refuse" to comply to the first car inconvenience in order to get to work early and avoid the painfully slow moving mob on the extremely narrow platform. For just this Friday, there were these 2 woman who just don't understand these very basic ideas. Instead, they decided this subway condition we were all enduring was cause to fight over.

"you're stepping on my foot"

i said i was sorry

i don't like your attitude and it took you too long to get off my foot

get over it

and on and on this very circular conversation went in a loop as most arguments do

when thinking it would evaporate, i close my eyes to hear yells and everyone is looking at the two woman pushing each other on a subway car that is so compact i can barley turn my body around. They are forced apart by other passengers and one woman is told to get out at the next stop. The man holding the other woman is patting her back. How patient he is i think.

How can this be? That people are so willing to fight and demean themselves like children over a broken toy neither of them wants. Why don't they fight for a better life so they wont have to take the subway. No, they risk broken teeth, black eyes and humiliation over nothing. For their is absolutely nothing to gain. And even if they don't know how to behave in public, they must at least know that everyone had a good laugh at their expense.

Come Closer Please

Come closer please. He says.

I move imperceptibly a bare cm closer.

He smiles slowly. I don't bite.

There are lots of other things you could do.

There are a lot of other things i could do that don't require proximity.

I am mostly concerned about the ones that do.

But think of all you will miss.

And all I can lose...

What if I leave you no choice.

It wouldn't be the same.

You are right, an empty victory it would be.

Surely you can manage just a little bit closer in this obscurity.

You are wrong if you think this obscurity is a comfort.

But we cannot remain like this.

For now, this is all that can be.

Rendez Vous

I tell my friend lets hang out Friday and get a massage at the place in the East Village we always go to. It has several separate message rooms with low walls that finish a about a foot or 2 from the ceiling to provide ventilation. I like these rooms because i can have the seclusion I need but still know my friend is close by sharing the same experiences.

Anyway...she says she thinks she has plans and will let me know. On Friday, she gets back to me about Friday, not that we haven't spoken Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We have. she asks if we are going out but i have already envisioned taking the express train which only runs early and is refreshingly empty as compared to the other trains and taking a warm shower, eating and retiring to bed early with the book I am defiantly reading. (defiantly because I am not really enjoying it but continuing to read because it has earned recognition so I feel if I wander down the entire path and see it to the end I may better understand and consequently better appreciate it. Not that I don't comprehend the story, I do, but perhaps I will better understand it's finer points. The points that the author intends for his reader to realize and enjoy.

Anyway, as my friend was taking her time to make plans I had already made plans with myself. As strange as this may sound, it happens to be the truth. More so, when i make plans I usually look forward to them, whether they be with man, a woman, or myself, and as I look forward to my future plans, I have of course no desire to change them. There is also the idea of why I might want to cancel plans with myself to be with someone who didn't get back to me until she was certain she didn't have better plans. Right? Besides, if truth be told, even though she is a great person, a neat friend, and plenty of fun to have around, I tend to enjoy my own company more after having worked an entire week with people and having my space encroached upon for such periods of time, thought this too, I cannot tell her.

Crying

No need to cry it will be the same once you are done anyway.

three little Deadly kisses

Three little deadly kisses is what they are. No more, no less. On the lips and not further. A touch of an arm. A touch so light not to distract you but to assure myself of your existence. It's stretching the tips of your toes to the bottom of water in which you wade to assure yourself the earth is still there. But even this is not real. I have no fingers. I become only lips, there is no body, nor 22 floors holding the building underneath us, nor anything above us. No ceiling, no floors, no clouds, no moon, no life, no death. Eternity in an eternal embrace of souls connected only by barely touching lips. Too ethereal to remain, you disappear, and with you all else. I close my eyes, my ears, my touch, I have only this.

Come back

I came back. The door opens and the knob hits the wall making a hollow echo sound of an empty flat. I drop the keys on the little table by the door as i look ahead and they drop to the ground for the table is gone. Here and there are holes which were once filled by things, and moments and warmth but now lie gaping and empty. I call your name expecting but not accepting to hear the silence which answers me. I walk around and think I need something to grab onto something, a story, possibly the truth, because there are too many questions which swim angrily and fearfully in my mind. It is a warm summer day but i feel a cold spread in my stomach like a heavy stone. I turn into the bathroom to find a sellotape letter taped to the wall but what does it mean? I search in vain for an answer, a hint, a foothold. There is no address and the letter is so angrily written I feel the deep imprints of your writing with my fingers as if the answer lies in the touch and not in this scribble. I read it over and over sitting on the bathroom floor but the words bounce off of me like little pellets of ice in a grail storm. I write to you this letter which I have sent to every place we have ever been and every place we had planned to go in hopes that you might hear me. And remember and turn around.

Copy, Paste, Im my friend, Copy, Paste, Im my friend, etc....

Yes, i think my boss is slightly concerned about my lack of work. Or lack of work at my disposal. You see when ever he comes behind my desk to pick up something he printed from his computer, the printer is, conveniently for him, behind my desk and he notices my personal google searches or or me im-ing my friend, M.... He has recently attempted to rectify this problem. He has found work for me to do. We sit in a long meeting concerning how I would update the company brochure importing text from a power point presentation and our company website. He gives me meticulous notes written on the pages of the print out, some on yellow post-its. Insert this paragraph A here, delete page 7 and 8, integrate text from website, etc. A nice, neat, and precise package. It seems fool proof.

I try to nod and scribble notes on my copy of documents along side. I try to suppress my yawn. I try not to put my head down on my desk or close my eyes. I try to make reassuring noise....hmmm, yes, ok like this, at the right moments. He seems pleased, thanks me and the meeting is over. It seems as if everything should move along quickly now. I nod.

We believe by July it should be settled. It's all a matter of copy, paste and maintaining formatting. Problem is, I don't know quark and when i paste parts of the text it disappears off the page and my formatting tool bars are unresponsive to my needs and the Quark books is much too big and boring to learn in so short a segment of time for a one small project.

Uh, excuse me Mr. Supervisor, we have run into a problem.

Putting the Pieces Together

I am trying to put the pieces together. I don't know if i should try to get my bachelors in IT (my English one does't have much zing) or try to become a programmer or buy a new apartment in manhattan or move back to the carribean. BUT I feel something has to change because I have been in this chapter for much too long. And it has become a repetitive loop. Sure I have another job, but it's another job which I don't like same as my last job. But i had left that job thinking this was the all important change that was going to change everything. I had even changed my sector. But yet here I am again at exactly the same place almost a year later and so out of indecision I am running around in a loop. And I am becoming despondent and sulky. I go to work because i have too, i buy clothes because i have to, i eat because i have to, and sleep because i have to and round and round it plays.

I have to make a change.

Inevitable Actions - Acknowledging Gravity

She calls me as soon as I sit down at work. "i need some good advice"

"well i can give you advice, but good advice might cost you."

She has travel vouchers offered at about 1/5 of their commercial value. The person is getting rid of them because he can't use them. Now they are sitting enticingly on Craig's List - Buy me.

what do you know about the seller...oh I have everything, his phone number, a copy of a green card, school transcript from MIT.

uhhhh...you have a copy of a green card and a copy of someones transcript. That doesn't mean they are real and that doesn't they are even his. He doesn't even want to use PayPal but Greenpoint in which you buy money vouchers and can't refute charges like you would be able to do on a credit card if here were to use Paypal.

ok but i talked to him and we exchanged emails and i know he is legitimate.

How do you know this?

I can tell.

how?

He wrote me back.

Well he would, wouldn't he. He still doesn't have your money. And all the documents he provided, he provided without your requesting...so it only means he has access to some fake id or or possibly stolen ID. If you are really going to do this anyway, at least ask him to send an email from work stating what he will send you in detail prior to you sending any money. At least you have the domain of a company.

Some time later she calls back to tell me he refused claiming his work privacy is an issue and tells her to search for deals on eBay in which she can feel safer...

she takes this as proof of his sincerity and honesty.

She sends him the money.

She calls me again.

I've been scammed.

What can i do? (........she's asking for more advice)

Nothing, put it down to learning a lesson and move on.

I can't move, on I lost 350 amount of money. And this is not just about the money.

No, it was a worth while lesson. it wasn't a loss of money.

I can't let this go.

Do you really think you are going to catch him, this is how he makes his living...he knows all the tricks and you will just end up more frustrated at having wasted more time and energy on it.

(We argue back and forth for much longer then i care to bore you or admit to myself)

Ultimate result of argument: she decided she is going to look for him and teach him a lesson.

But all this time was not wasted, I am becoming aware of the fact that when most
people ask for advice, what they really are asking for is confirmation that what they really want and plan to do, is the best and possibly only correct course of action.