Well, on one hand it’s a good thing I didn’t write this when I first got the urge; on the other, there’s a lot of remarkable passion that I’m afraid has cooled to a war-weary directness. That, and I just finished giving my movie review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again, which always simultaneously taps me of energy and leaves me in a relentlessly sarcastic mood. It’s the sort of mood that wants to watch City of Angels again just for the unstoppable laughter resulting from the scene in which Meg Ryan, after having a night of wanton lust with an ex-angel who has just chosen damnation as an acceptable price for spending his life in the company of her profound ill judgment and mercifully under-explained sexual prowess, decides that this is just the cheery sort of morning in which one rides one’s bicycle down a single-lane mountain road with a lassaiz-faire approach to the handlebars and closed eyes, with the inevitable result.
This simply cannot be mocked enough. Darwinianism at its finest. Some of you watched this movie and thought this was tragically romantic. Consider yourself mocked as well.
In lieu of a segue, Life Endures. I’ve recently started a company with Bryan, entitled Splitting Hares Entertainment, which will no doubt have an irreverent and potentially disturbing logo when we get around to making one. We have three projects currently on the burners, one on the front and two on the back. We have a corporate account with Chevy Chase, the backing of at least two investors, an excellent advisor, more creativity than truly necessary, and just enough chutzpah I think to make it work. Our contacts range widely, and we’ll have our first game in production by next quarter, I believe. If you’re reading this and have artistic skills you want to advertise, let’s do lunch, baby. -Separately, of course. You can just e-mail me the business. JsmithPI@hotmail.com
I’ve wanted to own a game company for a long time, at least fifty percent of my life at this point, and now I’m in imminent danger of discovering the reality. Eeeehxxxcellent. [steeples hands] I was just visited by Rachel and Linda, who came home in passing, dressed as elves. Very . . . attractive elves, I might add. They dressed the same way to the Lord of the Rings premiere. I’ll post a picture, I imagine. The costumes, sewn by each respectively, are truly on the near side of professional, and would cost an arm and a leg, preferably not one’s own, at a Renn Fair.
Trapped and stagnant, is how I would have described the last couple months in reference to personal creativity. That’s not entirely a fair assessment, but accurately states my feelings. I’m rapidly approaching the point again where I must write. The work on Pest Control with Bryan is an excellent outlet, as is some work on the Mage story line, but ahhh, a true writing project is coming on; it’s inescapable. For someone as congenitally opposed to being forced into things as I am, it’s telling that not only do I not resent the inexorable pull of the need to write, but I embrace it with joy and even gratitude.
After I got off work today, I used a Starbucks gift card my boss gave me for Christmas, and spent an hour drinking enthusiastically overpriced bean juice and reading Terry Pratchett’s Mort, Pratchett being one of the liveliest, most entertaining, witty and imaginative writers I’ve encountered. Also, between sips of aforementioned bean juice and pages of said book, I noticed that a disproportionate number of attractive young females seem to congregate in, or at least pass through the unquestionably blessed doors of further said establishment.
Segue this time. Speaking of young females, as a 23 year old male in general, and myself in specific, I seem to spend a majority share of my cognitive time pondering various cases of the very sex in question. This has been a continuing process since, I believe, fifth grade.
I find that of that majority share of time, there is a further breakdown of those individuals who occupy my thoughts, and why. I’m not sure whether Sarah or Jenni gets the top billing, although now that I’ve put the question out there, I’m positive Jenni does. I don’t think nearly as much of Laura as I once did, and I’m sure she’ll be equally relieved and disappointed to know that I can find only scant vestiges of the attraction I once had for her. This is due, of course, to the significant changes in personality which she has undergone in the last year, transforming herself from who she once was to the person she now is, a change that, to be stupidly obvious, we all go through, with the possible exception that not all of us change for the worse. Oh, I can think of at least one person who is happier with the changes, but that makes a minority. Of course, you also won’t get people lining up to be as bluntly forthright as I am. Laura has no doubt observed the way in which what was at one point a warm and trusting friendship is now a passing acknowledgment of shared planar existence. I recall very clearly the day I realized the change which had occurred. This is going to sound like the sledgehammer approach to removing garden slugs, but she told me that my opinion didn’t matter to her in the slightest and she didn’t care what I might have to say, her mind would never change. This sort of willful ignorance and deliberate unthinking is in one way as close to an anti-personality as you will be able to find for me. It suddenly crystallized for me that I’d been going about caring for and respecting a person who no longer existed. My mistake.
Tragic, yes, but I’m getting to take this in stride. Adam Geary, Jon Beall, Linnie Tipton, now Laura-it’s no longer a shock to find that people I love have transformed themselves into strangers I can feel nothing for. Don’t mistake me . . . there is a Linnie that I love, and a Laura, but they have no real existence any more, and merely are cherished memories. This has never happened to Jenni before, though . . . she had her turn AS the friend whose unacceptable behavior and choices made complete approval and friendship impossible, but now she must suffer the same way Laura once did for her . . . but with less hope of redemption.
Since I firmly believe that if one’s foot is scheduled to be shot anyway, one may as well do it oneself, now would be a good time (“good” in the sense implied by the first part of the sentence) to talk of a strained relationship with the church, not in any way coincidentally run by Laura’s father. The last time I spoke ill of the church and its Pastor, Laura was looking for blood. I am in a quandary. I cannot in good conscience remain at the church, but nor can I leave, being relied upon to lead a monthly men’s discipleship meeting. Just this past Sunday the sermon was largely taken from a passage used so out of context as to be nearly angering. I had resolved early in the sermon to keep my mouth shut and speak privately to the pastor afterward, but alas, my Bard’s Tongue made comments I managed to keep inaudible only at great effort, and not entirely successfully. I shared the specifics with my Thursday Bible study group, who were as astounded as I was, and in certain cases even more educated as to the enormity of the error than I. Had this been one instance, I would have been able to do as I intended, which was to have spoken in private after the service and go on with merry life . . . but there is such a well-paved pattern of similar error and other faults that it’s tearing at me inside.
If I hear one more reference to Harry Potter as the Devil’s most recent attack on the minds of youth, I shall demand an explanation, and have it out then and there. [Author’s note: feel my pulse, right now, I dare you.] I have fully had it with this unbridled foolishness, this hysteria-of-the-month reactionary lockstep unthinking, this movement which is an embarrassment to Christianity at large and representative of a vastly precedented intellectual failure on the part of multitudinous Christians who willfully discard, as Laura did so demonstratively that one Sunday, their ability to independently reason.
I find I must exercise freedom of choice now, as well, and turn myself to other issues. How about Sarah? I quite doubt she thinks as often of me as I think of her, and it’s possible that’s healthy, although I have to confess a certain dissatisfaction with the possibility. I told her relatively midpoint in our relationship that we were destined to go separate ways after achieving a certain goal, and she did not believe it was so. At the moment, our parting is well true, physically, although I can’t say that I love her any less. And who knows how long, and what nature of separation it will prove to be in time? I still pray for her, for her strength, for her protection, for her wisdom, and the answers to the questions she seeks. Good luck in the Tetragrammaton, kiddo. As long as you’re sticking to the etymological and historical sources, you’ll be all right, but forgive my affectionate wry eye-rolling as I consider the possibility that you will look into something OTHER than the most pseudo-scientific arcanism to be found. If it hasn’t been repressed and hidden for three thousand years by successive patriarchal regimes, converted into and out of Hebrew three times and explain the mysteries of the cosmos using an independently developed systematology almost universally shunned in Western culture, it just isn’t good enough.
Well, I think I’ll temporarily close with that. =P Must be off to relax, read more, work on game mechanics, etc.
Cheers.
Ok, now I’m back. There were an intervening six and a half hours, most of which passed for me at the Davidson’s in the company of Evan, Bryan, Bjorn, Carrie, Jimmy and Gary, all quite lively company. It occurred to me, as it has on occasion before, that Jenni is quite different from most of them; a fact which, depending on whose bias you are encountering, is either a warning sign or a signal that she is the appropriate counterpoint. I’ve always held great stock in the view that the best marriage will involve people who are as much like each other’s friends as possible, but with that important vibe which, in the case of one’s other friends, would lead to feelings of ick. I’m not sure what to make of this, since those friends of Jenni’s which are further dissimilar from myself are also increasingly less her friends as well, meaning we may be becoming more alike ourselves. But then . . . sigh. I don’t know, but that’s the point of dating, isn’t it? To give it that old college try, and see what comes of it, breaking as few hearts as possible along the way. I have conflicting feelings that I’m trying to figure out . . . a possibility which may explain the phenomenon I shall shortly describe is that we have different love languages and aren’t communicating properly. Of course, if two people are too set in their own modes, it can be fatal to a relationship. I can’t say she doesn’t care about me, because it’s all too obvious that she does, and I’m picking up on it just fine in certain ways . . . for instance, she made me a mix CD for Christmas with music representing different thoughts she has of me, selecting specific songs and writing liner notes explaining each choice. It was really sweet, and took much planning, thought, and effort to produce. She calls me because she wants to talk to me, she plays with my hair, she hugs me if I need it, she hugs me anyway, she remembers things I like for the most part, she tells me that I’m handsome, she likes being close to me, she wants to talk to me about her life . . . but --- jeez, isn’t that a horrible “but?”
When we talk sometimes I feel like an accessory, as if I could be replaced with a 180-pound blonde-haired pillow that says “mhm” and neutral phrases. This is important for her. She needs to be heard, to feel that someone’s listening, but so often I feel like we aren’t sharing a conversation so much as I’m a bit player in a conversation all her own. I can practically interject “Yes, but I was swallowed and regurgitated by a rabid emu on Wednesday so I couldn’t make it” and she would, between sentences, stamp “Yes, right” on top of it and breeze right along, never registering what I said. I feel really lonely sometimes in conversation. This isn’t a surprise, mind you . . . she’s always been this way, but it isn’t that way all the time, and besides, we weren’t in a committed dating relationship before. There are times when conversation is perfectly normal, and we truly communicate, and in those times I feel warmly and securely supported and cared for.
In so many ways not involving direct personal interaction, she’s deeply thoughtful, kindhearted, forgiving, and many other wonderful traits. So, how important is that feeling of true connection, that utter bond of personhood, or “esprit de spirit” to very nearly be witty? I’ve always stated and lived by the view that it’s imperative. Are we “meant” to be very close friends and instead were led astray by errant chemicals and the ticking of two biological clocks? These are things I don’t know. Do I love Jenni? Oh, yes. I have always loved her . . . but what type of love? It’s something the two of us will have to work out. I respect her level judgment highly. Whose judgment is level?
We share many of the same attitudes, have close, if not identical, viewpoints, and moral/religious beliefs of almost precise likeness, the points on which we differ being of nil eternal consequence. Plus, she’s really cute. Well, I need to pray, sleep, talk to Jen, get her take on things, and keep on trucking with this mysterious “Life” business. Good night, world.