I've been stuck on this crush lately. Stuck defined means that I went from curiosity to intrigue to the girl showing up in my dreams, affecting the way I wake up and feel in the morning. It's been getting to the point where I knew I was going to have to do something about it because things have been getting increasingly engaged between the two of us. And not doing anything about it would cause me to deal with an absurd personal weakness I'm not prepared to deal with at this moment. As previously stated...I don't know why I feel the need to overstate this, but I do...maybe to try and convince any and all (myself) of my composure in the face of things like this -- anyway, I know the game well enough to know when I'm being gamed. So, I had a crush...have a crush...that she started...that got crushed this morning when one of my friends told me about the boyfriend he was almost certain she still had. And he, the boyfriend, is a formidable one, and for me to say that means something. It meant that I was able to let it go, for the time being, under the ominous and gray skies of an early LA sunday morning. And letting it go...got me thinking.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about what it was that I was looking for -- about what in a girl and chase appealed to me right now. I told him I was after someone above me, someone with only a touch of time for me, someone who adored and respected me and at the same time, may or may not be off fucking someone else's prince in a faraway country. He said I was out of my mind and I told him I'd long ago given up on trying to abide by the ever changing definitions of world sanity. I told him that my desire for her potential indiscretions weren't due to a lack of self-respect. Actually, quite the contrary - I have a great deal of respect for myself. Maybe, instead, it has something to do with self-preservation...that's what I said. But I think in the end, all I'm interested in right now is honesty. That was me being honest, I said. I don't know if he believed me...or if anyone ever believes me anymore and I don't know exactly when that happened.
I came home, collected myself and left to run a fast 12 miles, the last prep for the 2 week away marathon that is gonna slaughter me and me it and when I finished, I got in bed and let those thoughts parade for a while. It was around 3 when I got to my desk and I just started this roll. Me and Durban recently crossed 65,000 words and the first pass is starting to see the potential of its own end, and everything I'm writing now is big and its putting a mirror in front of my face and forcing me to look and examine and somewhere around my passing 2,000 words for the day, this song came into my ears that I had never heard before the weekend, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's called Buriedfed and it put a crack in me before taking something from me...some form of culmination of everything that's been loading and coming. I can't explain or maybe I just did.
After that, I went to a Sunday night cocktail party that was serving Haribos. I didn't know anyone, really. I never know anyone, really - and no one else did either and it was a surprisingly good time, watching everyone lean on charm and wit and alcohol to make things work. I had a couple of drinks and some good and memorable conversation and met some good people, and walking out with a late showing friend of mine, I started to hear something I think I knew was coming, something I knew I would have to handle delicately and with some form of ultimate love...ultimate love being the preparation of everything I've seen and felt and been dealt in life. She told me she'd been spinning before gifting to me what she described as this great admiration. She was this beautiful and sweet and kind girl and she was looking particularly stunning on this Sunday evening on a sidewalk in Hancock Park and I told her I could feel her, that I'd been her before and that I'll be there for her because I do adore her in many ways, but that I couldn't stop the spin, that I was incapable of being the things she wanted me to be. Incapable because I'm never the things people want me to be, never the things people think of me to be. We said goodnight and as I was turning, I kept asking myself over and over whether I gave to her hurt or hope and I couldn't figure out which was better to give.
I walked down the street alone with two red roses in my hand, the gift I was given, and I think I thought of the world and my place in it and whether it's dysfunction or clarity that rules my steps and which of the two I was going to be rooting for for the rest of my life.
Sunday.
