Tag Archives: writing

The Sunday List: On Not Wearing Pants & Other Vulnerable States.

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Sitting at my usual spot at Jo’s, I am (only slightly unabashedly) eavesdropping on my neighboring tables to compile a list of the gems I typically hear while writing on Sundays.  However, today is oddly quiet.  While the air feels perfect, the sky warns of an impending rainy day.  Jesus sandals are popular today.  A man and his baby are proving more popular among the ladies than a man and his puppy.  Entrepreneurs, Rent-a-Baby might be an excellent idea for a new dating service.  Just FYI.  The dominating conversation permeating the airspace is about sports.  Le bore.  I have no clue which sport these two dudes are talking about.  They are speaking a foreign language.  Today is not feeling like an eavesdropping list day.

The tree just outside of my backyard was acting like a jerk last night.  She was creaking so loudly against the fence post that she was keeping me awake.  I must have done something to piss her off.

The big jerk.

I surrendered to the noise and settled for veiling the sound with a movie.  ”Tiny Furniture” was the instant Netflix pick of the night.  The two things that I was left thinking about: 1. The last lines of the movie were a perfect example of a good narrative conclusion without slapping the viewer in the face with it.  ”Do you hear that sound?”  ”A little bit.  I think it’s the alarm clock.”  ”Do you think you could move it?”  ”Yeah. Hold on a sec… I put it away.”  ”I can still hear it.”  ”Yeah, but only a little bit, right?” 2. Dunham is real.  For half of the movie, she walks around without pants (which I adore her for) and has sex with a man in the most depressing place imaginable.  A pipe in the street.  She fails at nearly everything she does, but she deserves happiness, and I rooted for her.

I want what she’s got.  Not the pipe.  But the unrelenting search for happiness, taking her failures in stride.  She made failure look not quite so bad.  Pant-less and vulnerable and she didn’t care.

The other night, I had one of those waking dreams.  Petrified it really happened, it took me a while to get a grip on the reality of my surroundings.  I dreamed I had stepped outside into my backyard without my clothes.  The fence lay flat on the ground.  The tree in my yard had finally gotten its way and took down the fence, leaving me exposed, completely vulnerable, to my neighbors.

Fearing rejection, in nearly every risk-taking venture there is to take in life, I have slowly but surely convinced myself to play it safe in my thirties.  That’s the one thing I want to take back from my twenties.  Gut-wrenching nerves or not, I pushed myself to the limit.  Fearless?…. perhaps not, but there was a clear difference between what made me anxious in a bad way and anxious in a good way, and I actively sought after the good kind.  In the same good-kind-of-anxious vein… I’m taking my failure-or-not-I’m-going-for-it-ventures back.  In a refusal to lose my romantic ideals entirely to intellect, the following is a list of the risks I am willing to take:

  1. I want to write. For a living.  I’ve grown tired of refusing to say this “aloud” for fear that people will scoff at my confession, considering the nearly impossible odds that this will happen.  Though if I never try, I would never forgive myself.
  2. So what if I just finished my masters in the field of education–a field I may soon distance myself from?  If there is anything I’ve learned from my education, it is that I know exactly what I want for my life.  Exactly.
  3. Travel.  My summers are free, and nearly every summer I swear it will be the first that I venture out.  I want to see as much as possible in this lifetime, and there is no better time to start than now.
  4. See an audience again.  The dark stage looking out into the blinding lights and faceless oblivion once sent dizzying adrenaline through me.
  5. Allow myself to get “sweet on” someone else without the fear of vulnerability.  I want to surrender myself to just feeling what comes naturally.  Someone is relentlessly taking over my brain space in a way I didn’t see coming.  But I’m welcoming it in every way, until, perhaps, that fence in my backyard crashes to the ground.

The Sunday List: What I Want in a Man.

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SoCo, the surrounding area of South Congress A...

My beloved SoCo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My apartment complex is a small one.  It’s boxy.  All of the front doors face the center courtyard.  There was some sort-of man-party that spilled out onto said courtyard last night.  I assumed the men were shouting at a football game, which I think they were… at first, but then it lasted until about three o’clock in the morning.  I woke up this morning at 8:30 A.M. feeling as though I was recovering from a year-long coma.  Where was I?  Who am I?  And why does my head hurt?

Last weekend, when I first walked to Jo’s outdoor coffee shop on SoCo, my new haunt (I’ve always wanted to say that), it was about 8:00 A.M., and soon after I settled into a chair it became overcrowded.  So today, at 9:00 A.M., I was anticipating searching and failing to find a seat and then walking all the way back to my apartment juggling my laptop, oozing breakfast tacos, and a dripping coffee in my arms.  However, I was lucky because it’s a dark and cloudy morning in Austin, a residual from the rain we received yesterday, so the seats are filling up only as I type this.

As I walked over there, my mind led me to a rather embarrassing fantasy, which of course I’ll tell you, because I’m erasing the word “shame” from my vocabulary.  Lucky you.  That, or I actually enjoy laughing at myself because self-deprecation comes easy.  My fantasy:

 I arrive at Jo’s and find an empty table with only one other chair.   I set my laptop down and draw open the lid.  I begin typing and soon enough, a faceless (even my day-dreams never loan strangers a face), attractive gentleman pops over to sit in the chair across from me.  The seats are communal.  He asks me what I am typing on my computer.  I coyly do not tell him, but I slip him a piece of paper that has the address to my blog on it.  I tell him to find me.  When I get home, I write about it, and readers cheer me on as they wait for him to write a response.  He does, and thus we began the dance of a courtship.

I’m not sure which is more embarrassing.  My fantasy or my choice of words, “dance of a courtship.”

My reality:

I sit in a damp chair.  People glance at me with my laptop and immediately see the invisible sign of “not available” pinned to the lid and walk the other way to another communal table where people sit without laptops.  A black bird is trying to steal my food.

Nonetheless, my mind is suddenly somewhere other than work, and it feels good.  It feels right… at the moment.  I decided to take the plunge, to put myself out there and meet people in my new city.  I signed up for match.com, but immediately I regret it.  I’m not at all saying match.com is a bad choice, but I’m thinking it may just not be a big thing in Austin because the pick of the litter is not looking good.

I realize it has only been one day, but no one is actually reading my profile… a short one none-the-less. They are looking and responding, but it is clear that my picture is the only thing of interest to them, per their e-mails.  People who are the OPPOSITE of what I’ve described as potential suitors are responding.  I’m 31, so I thought it was reasonable to place a 30-40 age range on my profile, but I’m getting tons of inquiries from 25 year olds and near fifties.  I’m not one to pay too much attention to a number, but I still think my range is fairly reasonable, right?  Furthermore, it’s shocking what men find sexy about themselves… I have not found ONE man who understands that bathroom pictures with their cell phone in the mirror and/or kissy-face pictures and/or pictures of them “sleeping” are not okay.  You cannot be asleep if you are taking the picture!!!!  Big sigh.  It’s just not right.

I’ll give it some more time, but I’m just not sure about this being the way to meet people in a city like Austin where its famous motto is “Keeping Austin Weird.”  Now, if you think bathroom pics are lame, then get ready for this one… I am equally lame.  I fantasize about meeting someone in a natural, whoopsie-daisies-sort-of-way… having a story to tell the grandkids kind of way.  We just met because fate brought us together, not because I was looking.  Not that the other way can’t be romantic.  I’m defensive about this because I know that many people have met their match this way, and it was a beautiful experience for them.  I just don’t think it’s for me at this point in my life and in this city.

A fellow blogger, La La, said something to me in regards to my last post about learning what she wanted in a man through dating, and this got me to thinking.  What IS it that I want?  When I was out there dating in Dallas like a mad woman, it did in fact shed some light on what I wanted and didn’t want, but now it’s a couple of years later, and I am a completely different person than I was then.  Everyone says that, but I mean it.  If I got married to any of those men I thought I admired, even just a couple of years ago, I would surely be divorced by now.  That’s the scary thing about maintaining a serious relationship.  What if I grow, but the other person stays stagnant… or the other way around?  So this brings me to my first want.

  1. Someone who is willing to grow with me.  I don’t mean in the same way as me necessarily, but someone who refuses to remain stagnant and who puts energy into creating an exciting and interesting life with me.
  2. Someone who displays at least a small interest in reading.  If they don’t, then they will never have any interest in my dream.  He doesn’t need to avidly read or even show an interest in writing  for himself, but at least he should have an appreciation for something that makes me happier than anything else (besides my family of course… and hopefully him).
  3. On the same token, he has to have a passion for something.  I don’t care what he does.  I mean, I do, but as long as he is doing something he loves… whether for work or as a creative outlet, it doesn’t matter to me.  This way, we have an opportunity to capitalize on each other’s successes and cheer each other on towards our dreams/goals.  We have something to live for other than each other.  Plus, there is not much that’s sexier than talent.
  4. Family is important to him.  I’m not on a fast track to have kids.  I know I want a family of my own sometime in the future, but this is more about my immediate family that I have now.  I am extremely close to my immediate and extended family.  He must at least be comfortable with this fact.  My twin sister knows EVERYTHING.  Everything.
  5. He’s independent.  He doesn’t need me because he wants someone to pick up the pieces where his mom left off.  I don’t have to cook, clean, or wipe his ass.  I will do it because I want to (except for the ass part), not because he expects it.  And sometimes he returns the favor, not because he’s obligated, but because sometimes he wants to as well.
  6. He makes me laugh and tells terrible jokes (jokes that fail for everyone else are often the ones that leave me reeling), but he also allows me make him laugh, too. I have dated a wide-variety of jokesters, but the worst are the ones who crave ALL of the attention.  I’m no attention whore, but I dated a guy once who hated it when I tried to make someone laugh.  He refused to tell me I was funny, but I think it may have been a jealousy thing.  Whenever someone told me I was funny, he would chime in and half-joke (but there was always some truth in his voice), “She is not funny.  I’m the funny one.”  Let’s be funny together.  Witty banter is the tits.
  7. I must be attracted to him.  I don’t say he has to be attractive because everyone’s idea of “attractive” is different, but attraction to me is often found in the chemistry that happens in person.  There is a certain scent and a confidence that draws me in, sometimes more so than an actual look.  However, if I were to pin-point a look, I am more often than not drawn to dark hair and dark eyes.  Men who are artsy and put some thought into what they wear attract me.  Denim shirts and flannel are huge turn-ons for me now.  It’s all about the smile and the eyes, too.
  8. This one seems like a no-brainer, but he should posses qualities that build strong character.  He’s honest and lives his life with integrity.  Genuine.  Kind.  Light-hearted.  All of the obvious adjectives.

I’m now bored with my own post.  Can you tell?  Actually, I just got impaled by an acorn overhead, and a man is incessantly rubbing his girlfriend’s back, and I just can’t take it anymore. The combo of the repetition of his hand going up and down and up and down and the PDA are making kind of queasy.  I’m headed back.

**************

It’s now several hours later.  I took a break from writing and went to lunch with my sister.  We went shopping across the street as well to buy a gift for our brother’s birthday.  I can’t believe I am saying this, partly because it makes me sound like a teenage girl, and partly because I was just writing about this and it seems a bit unlikely, but…  A man who helped my sister and I find something for our brother made me giggle like a giddy school girl on crack.  Not that those two things are synonymous.  I haven’t been attracted to someone in a long time.  Perhaps it’s because my eyes are suddenly open once again.  There was chemistry and a scent.  Dark hair and eyes.  Obviously, as he was working at a clothing store that specializes in denim and flannel men’s clothing, he immediately looked like my cup of tea.  My sister told me she noticed he was showing interest in me, but my mother and my sister tend to see things I don’t see.  It’s that prejudice and affinity we feel for one another.  It’s sick.  My mother used to tell me in grade school if a boy wasn’t interested, “Lauren, I really just think that boys are intimidated by you.”  Moms are good like that.

That momentary exchange, even though it lasted all of ten minutes, made me realize how great it feels to open myself up again.  The wind is back in my sails.  I’m working HARD at this happiness thing.  Hard work was hardly the thing I was looking for, but it’s feeling less and less like work every day.  I’m noticing the small things and capitalizing on them.  Capitalizing on them all by myself, but my eyes are now open.  Watch out, I might just find you.

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Revisiting the Leaning Tree.

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I have never been one to go out alone.  My anxiety is an uneasy beast woman.  However, if you recall, I am no longer allowing her to take charge of my life anymore.

I usually listen to her when she says, “If you go out alone, Lauren, you will be awkward.  People will look at you funny.  You will say something stupid.  You will look like a loner.  An oddball.”

I am on a mission to erase my negative thoughts.

I have always wanted to walk to Jo’s coffee on a regular basis, make Sunday mornings at Jo’s with my laptop my church.  If you have never visited Austin, Jo’s is an iconic coffee shop, located outside, next to the hotel San José.  I live only a couple of blocks away, and I can stroll down the equally iconic South Congress alongside tourists and other regulars.  Besides, I have always believed that writing is my religion, and if anything at all, my meditation.  My previous negative thoughts have always told me I would look like a wanna be, one of those coffee shop writers, who never writes alone and fakes it to get attention.  But do any of them do this to seek attention?  Maybe they are like me.  Maybe they just need a change of scenery.  To get out of the house.  To allow their mind more space, rather than the regular confines of their apartment walls.

So, it is a lovely day in Texas.  Summers are long here, but today is one of the first days the air is bearable.  The sun is out, but the breeze is stronger, without blowing my locks into my eyes and mouth.  It’s cool without being cold, which a day of cold to Texans is probably the day Northerners dust off their bathing suits and lay out on the rooftops with foil on cookie sheets nesting on their breasts.  It feels good.  So I swallowed my negative thoughts, and here I sit, alone with my laptop and an Iced Turbo, a sugary asshole of a coffee drink.  I purchased a pack of American Spirits at the counter.  The teal pack.  The woman behind the counter argued with the man who handed them to me, “You just said ‘teal’, it’s just blue.”

“Yeah, but it’s not just blue, it’s a blue-green.  It’s teal,” he said.

“What would you call the yellow pack?” she asked.

“Canary yellow.  No, school bus yellow.”

I agreed with the man; I prefer the creative underdog.  The woman jokingly said I was mean.  I smiled and tucked the cigarettes into my bag.  I’m not a regular smoker.  In fact, I had no clue what the difference was between the blue… ahem, teal pack and the school bus yellow pack was, but I’m about stepping outside of my grey… ahem, cloudy grey box these days.  Judge me, see if I care.  Ahahaha!

I care.  I’m a terrible liar.

I shoveled down a couple of their famous breakfast tacos and cracked open the lid of my ancient Mac.  We have been together forever.  He and I are constantly fighting, but we always make up.  The make up is always the best.

Sorry, I’m a sucker for long-winded analogies.  And just you wait, I’m not done.  I’m never done.

I’ve actually forgotten that I am not alone.  There are families with their dogs.  Couples with their noisy children.  And other loners with their laptops, or The New York Times, and teal or school bus yellow packs of cigarettes.  Some have on bike gear and are resting after their Sunday ride.

My next feat is coming here again.  For some reason, I have other negative thoughts that arrive when I appear somewhere as a regular.  ”Oh, look, there she is again.  The loner and her ancient laptop.  Does she not have a better place to go?  Really?”  I know.  My subconscious is a mean girl.  She is also very unreasonably judgmental.

Now it’s getting crowded and a woman nearby is acting out a big scene. Apparently, there is no place to sit.  ”Should I get up?  She’ll see that my coffee is empty.  The foil from my tacos are wadded up and resting beside the now only open container on my table… my boyfran, Mac.  He’s now turned red and is alerting me that it’s time to recharge.  He doesn’t last very long anymore, if you know what I mean.

Today is that woman’s lucky day.

*******

And now I’m back home, writing on my patio, underneath the leaning tree, the one I wrote about in my Freshly Pressed post, the one that everyone probably refers to when they say they have no clue how some of the “shit” makes its way there.  Oops, some negative thoughts are more stubborn than others.  Strange thing.  The tree is not leaning so much today.  It seems to be correcting itself and growing more upright, towards the sun.  It’s funny how that tree is still somehow a metaphor for my life.

Ah, there she is.  Still a little unsure of her direction, but she’s finding her way.

And the Third One Was Just Right.

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This tree sits just outside my backyard.  As you can see, she seeks desperately for some company.  The person who lived here before me shoved a newspaper between the tree and a single post in the fence.  Whenever the wind blows with more urgency than normal, the post makes a terrible sound like an old door opening on its own.  Some days, I think she might break in through the sliding glass door, despite the efforts of the post and the newspaper.  Some days, I feel just like that tree.

That’s it.  That was all I was going to write.  I was about to hit the Publish key and walk away, but then I thought, “Wait, that’s not my voice.  That’s my temporary voice.  The one that sneaks up on me sometimes when I’m tired and thinks I am good at self-loathing.  So, I shut the lid of my laptop with fervor.  Not ever necessary, as I mostly keep it plugged in, but it always feels good, like slamming the door after huffing a silencing insult.  And you all know, that probably never happens to me.  Then, I turned on some Louis CK, poured a second cup of coffee, and now I feel better.  I feel differently about that tree.  Here is my edit:

This tree sits just outside my backyard.  As you can see, she seeks desperately for some company.  The person who lived here before me shoved a newspaper between the tree and a single post in the fence.  Whenever the wind blows with more urgency than normal, the post makes a terrible sound like an old door opening on its own.  Some days, I think she might break in through the sliding glass door, despite the efforts of the post and the newspaper.  Some days, I feel like telling that tree to shut the hell up.

And then I thought, wait, CK may have just rubbed off on me a little too much.  I don’t think that’s my voice either.  So I tried one more time:

This tree sits just outside my backyard.  As you can see, she seeks desperately for some company.  The person who lived here before me shoved a newspaper between the tree and a single post in the fence.  Whenever the wind blows with more urgency than normal, the post makes a terrible sound like an old door opening on its own.  Some days, I think she might break in through the sliding glass door, despite the efforts of the post and the newspaper.  Some days, I feel just like that tree, but when I do, I suppress the feeling by telling my subconscious, as well as the tree, to shut the hell up.

I think I need some more coffee.

Dilettante is a Dirty Word.

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Work by Banksy

Photo credit: Wikipedia

I’m going to think “aloud” organically on paper today.  I hope you don’t mind.  I left my peyote in the desert, but I think I can do this…

Last night, I rented the movie, Wanderlust.  Albeit a very silly movie, it inspired me to think about the levels of commitment throughout my life.  That, and Paul Rudd’s sex face.  There is a line in the movie where Jennifer Anniston’s character reveals, in a hallucinatory state, that she has never been committed to anything in her entire life.

Well, how many years does “commitment” take?  Or is it only the original intent that counts?  Let’s see…

At age 3, I began my years as a dancer.  I quit when I was in college, but not abruptly.  Every once in a while, I would feel the sting of loss and jump into a company as a guest performer, but slowly I began to lose my technique, and I let go.

At age 14, I began acting.  High school plays led to collegiate plays.  Collegiate plays led to professional plays and comedy clubs.  Then, I met a guy.  He introduced me to everyone important in the city with regard to theatre.  His circle of friends were all board members or directors of this company or that.  When I broke up with him, I also felt that I had to break up with my acting career.  My excuse; if I wanted it that badly, I wouldn’t have done it.  I lost two things at age 26.

At age 22, I wrote a micro-play for an acting course in college.  The director of the school convinced me that I had a gift in writing and wrote me a recommendation letter to a creative writing program at another college.  I said good-bye, packed my bags, and began writing.

At age 24, I didn’t know what to do.  Was I a dancer?  An actress?  A writer?  Really, I just felt like a miserable dilettante.

At age 24, I became a teacher.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a teacher.  I love my job, and more truthfully, I love the students.  I am actively learning every day of my life, and I owe this entirely to my students.  Besides, there is no greater reward than to take part in a child’s growth as a learner and human being.

Perhaps, I don’t have commitment-phobia.  Perhaps, I have dilettante-phobia.  I am so fearful of becoming a dilettante that I just threw my hands up and surrendered to, as my mother called it, “my all important plan B, the backup plan.”  I’d prefer to call it plan F.  The fear plan.  If you fail in the arts, then you have nothing.  Mediocrity doesn’t pay, and I have to make a living.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up.  Because the questions are still there.  One thing I do know is that, whether I ever make a living as a writer is irrelevant. Nothing will stop me from writing.  It’s one love affair I know will last forever.  In fact, if I believed in having only one soul mate in a lifetime, it would be Writing.

I think I just had a revelation.

Peyote scmeyote.

Anonymous in Austin.

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A white Apple MacBook.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I didn’t write this weekend. Instead, in my time spent with my bf, Mac, I tightened up my privacy. I prefer my reader pronounce it as, “privicy.” Makes it seem like I experienced an elegant weekend.

 

I like going to a place where no one knows my name. It feels safe. If someone judges me, the judgement will soon vanish into the thin exosphere of Cyberspace, where people don’t visit quite as often. Yet, I’m still having difficulty letting go.

 

We live hundreds of miles apart, so there is no fear of being physically harmed, nor have there been any such threats made. In fact, I feel positive that will never happen… no harm other than annoyance and an unwanted feeling of violation (I’m not willing to rule out that violation may always feel unwanted from someone else). I’ve received contact from a person who is well aware it is not okay with me, an unreasonable amount of times via phone and Internet, and now my family and friends have as well. The e-mail messages with copies of Facebook images in them, even though I’ve blocked this person, and comments made about a private blog, though I attached my name to it, is what set me off. All settings on my social media are private, and no contact information was given out. This person is an expert on all things Internet, and I am far from that, so instead of my constant foibles in monitoring and my incessant ignoring and deleting, I decided it was worth erasing everything. Though, I won’t allow myself to feel anger because of how I’ve had to alter a very small part of my life because these things don’t matter. In fact, I feel liberated, and titillated (this word is so great) about the absence of scrolling the pages of history, only to find talking cat pictures, declarations of vomitous weekends, and picture PDA. My absence from Cyberspace, with the exception of this anonymous website, makes me feel more alive in Realityspace.

 

None-the-less, I’m always in need of an outlet, a quick connection to others beyond what is possible without the Internet. I do understand it. Maybe there is a bit of a narcissist in me, though not without a splash of insecurity. Are all writers afflicted with this? Maybe not. Maybe just me. I’ll own that. And even though no one on here knows who I am, I am still hesitant revealing an unabashed me. Honest without omission. Brazen and free-spirited. But I want to try. Why? Because I want fear to excite me again, and not become a barrier between me and happiness. And I need to believe more that I deserve that. If not for me, for the happiness of the people in my life afflicted by my actions.

 

Ffff you, fear. I refuse to live in it.

 

For fear that I only have one life to live, of course…

 

Laughing at myself makes me feel better when I get serious.

 

Eye Boogers & How I Got Rid of Them… Once & For All.

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tissues

tissues (Photo credit: Judy **)

Two years in grad school may have earned me a Master degree, but it also took away my sense of social normalcy.  While most of my friends looked forward to the weekends with the same kind of fervor presented in an fbook postcard full of smarmy females drinking beaucoups of wine, mine meant I had extra hours in the day to dry my eyeballs out staring at a glaring computer screen.  Synthesizing research articles until my brain fried.  Pressing my wrists into the edges of the keyboard until I remembered that there was still feeling in them.  So you can imagine, now that I have graduated, I feel like a newborn baby.

…

I feel like a hormone raging teenage boy, actually.  Except for, I’m a thirty-year-old woman, and I’m raging for fulfillment in all areas of my life.

While at a table for lunch today with my sister, I found myself grabbing the waiter’s eyes with my eyes.  It wasn’t with any purpose at all but just for simple enjoyment, and I’m a terrible flirt.  I don’t mean terrible as in incessant.  I mean terrible as in horribly awkward.  When I took a sip of my wine, I paid special attention to the moment it first hit my blood stream and convinced it move a little faster.  As I walked down the street to the shops, I didn’t miss an opportunity to look a stranger in the face.  It’s as though I have been asleep for a couple of years, I’ve been slowly waking up, and I flicked the last piece of crust out of  the corners of my eyes.

Trying to hold on to this feeling of invigorating renewal, I entered a shop and purchased what I like to call a “date outfit.”  I know, I’m incredibly lame, but it was a rite of passage of sorts, and now that there is significantly less boogers in my eyes, I feel that I am more datable.  So, let’s not get too technical; I don’t actually have a date with anyone yet, except for Mac.

My laptop.  I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I got home, put on my new black-lace blouse and my booty-hugging pencil skirt, and I sat down to caress only keys.  And now I’m synthesizing my hormones and my once crusty eyes.  I can feel the edge of the keyboard burning a line into my wrists.  My eyes are now dry.  But I don’t care.  Because from now on I’m only doing what I love.