The Hearing

People walk by in their lives, in their well-worn shoes, looking at the world through different eyes than mine. I wonder what that must be like. I try hard to be empathetic, but all I get is a tension headache, splitting my brain not quite along the center. I am not someone else, I guess. So I don't try as hard. I don't wish to be them anymore. I just watch through my own eyes and listen through my own ears.

Exhibit A:
The four at the table below me have been friends for varying lengths of time. Tammy and Glenn both had crushes on the same guy in high school. That was five years ago. Jessica only started dating Annie in February. In between, there have been rehearsals and recitals, study groups and chats over coffee like this one. They all brought their books today, but they never managed to make it to the table.

Make that tableS (plural). Joe Bar is a tiny coffeehouse off the corner of Cornish College of the Arts that distinguishes itself with a decidedly French atmosphere that includes a menu of crepes and miniscule cafe tables scattered across the three small rooms it occupies. Glenn & the Girls had to push two together to make room for all their... conversation. It's not that books were the last thing on their minds. The tabletop was covered with topics ranging from classmate gossip to playwrights, breathing methods to personality theory. The content of their speech was equal parts opinion and fact, when, in fact, their opinions often clashed with the known universe. O, if they had only consulted the text in their backpacks!

But - honestly - where's the fun in being right? I admire the courage to be wrong. To believe that, I must then be one of the most courageous men alive never to have broken a bone. I am glad I am not smart enough to be right all the time. I used to be okay with that. Then I became the kind of adult who forgot what it was like to be smart enough to be wrong once in a while. Maybe I had a better answer. A more creative answer. But I kept it to myself and made the "right" choices. When I made my last, really bad right choice, I was left bankrupt - emotionally, spiritually and financially bankrupt - and I found myself looking over the dead body of that poor "correct" soul who turned into his 30s before he was ready. Looking back at me was the pimply, doughy teenager who could very likely have been the next to join Glenn & his Girls for coffee. I had opinions then. I would have shared them all. They would have spilled off the cafe tables and stained the cement floor with the blood of dead poets and the fathers of psychoanalysis. Cyrano was my hero. Orion was my protector. Jung was my mentor. Hitchcock was my muse. And I had two Hepburns as lovers. My life was a rich out-of-body experience and I have been trying to reclaim that experience lately.

I can't do that by being right all the time. Quoting statistics and facts is a waste of my time. The future of my success and the life of that young man I found living beneath the tension headaches deals in reading dreams and wishes, and letting other people share theirs with me without me having to walk in their ill-fitting, well-worn shoes. My eyes and ears work just fine. I would like to try living my own life with people like Glenn & the Girls and their parents and professors around to keep things moving on the sidewalk outside this great little coffeehouse with the French accent.

Tulip

Today, my mantra is different. Today, it goes, "I'm broke. Really, finally broke." I have my own motivation to blame because I was much more comfortable denying the situation. Instead, I looked for cheaper apartments and saw what my price range will get me - from the outside, at least. Looking for an apartment mid-week is difficult because even apartment managers have jobs. My day off is not everyone else's day off. Mostly, I got voicemail. The only one I spoke to was Bob.

Bob worried me. He didn't sound like someone who should be responsible for managing a property by himself. If he looked after the details of people's lives, I pictured him doing so on closed circuit television through surreptitious cameras in indecent places. Bob sounded like someone more comfortable with a three-day beard on his graying face. Bob bought beer on sale and fell asleep at the beginning of old movies that followed his baseball games. Bob was only lonely because he can't stand cats. He tried. Bob loved a cat once, but it almost lost him his home. An apartment manager's unit shouldn't reek of cat urine. Bob's cat pissed on the new carpet no matter how many times it was replaced, just to show her dominance over Bob. The cat's name was Tulip.

Bob tried to give Tulip to a better home. First, he tried the couple in the unit with hard wood floors. Then, the gay guy down the block who heard Bob venting about his predicament at Starbuck's. He even tried to "donate" Tulip to a retirement home across town that was featured on the news for using animals to comfort its residents. Each time, Tulip ran home to Bob and peed outside his first floor window. Bob immediately knew Tulip had returrned.

Bob loved a cat once, and the cat wouldn't let go.

The night the cat came back from the retirement home, Bob sat in silence finishing his six pack of half-priced beer, sweating profusely as he considered his options. Tulip pranced around her chosen home, weaving her way in and out of Bob's legs and the legs of the couch. She climbed into Bob's lap when she was through and demanded he pet her. She purred in arrogant delusion while Bob dripped tears and sweat.

Tulip's eyes shot open as Bob's thick fingers closed around her neck. She tried to scream, but the palm of his other hand clamped over her face and twisted with a force that solved Bob's predicament.

Bob lives with himself because he couldn't give up his home. How pathetic it would have been to see a scraggly old homeless man with a bedraggled cat walking the city streets at night. He couldn't do that to Tulip. If only he had loved her a little bit more, maybe...

Bob sits alone most nights, watching baseball, drinking beer and not thinking about what his tenants say about him. They say he's nice and cooperative, but sometimes cold, even creepy. They say (laughingly) that he's the kind of guy who watches through peepholes in the bathrooms.

There are no holes in the bathroom walls. None in the closets anymore, either. There never were any hidden cameras. Just Bob and his quiet life alone without a cat.

I don't think I will rent an apartment from Bob.

Comments on a life less lived

"Right to die" and "Right to live" aside, what matters most is being at peace with whatever decisions you make about your own life with the help of whatever light guides those decisions. Terri Schiavo lost the ability to make those decisions and family, friends and hoards of perfect strangers have been fighting selfish battles to make that decision for her ever since. It's a shame, really, that this case (we call it a "case" - it is no longer a "life") has consumed so much public attention when it is a private matter concerning the troubled life of a young woman nearly died in 1993 as a result of the bulimia that was slowly killing her from the inside out.

May she finally rest in peace.

Love rises. Love falls.

It comes down to the small things. Did they cuddle in bed the same way we do? Did they have nicknames? Did he use that same cute voice? Did they share the same secrets, or was the secret of their infidelity enough? The small things poison my thoughts, and then I question everything. Not his love for me, though. He says he still loves me and I believe him. Love is bigger than all the small things put together. Love is big enough to be taken for granted.

Stupid college kids...

I rely on NPR for most of my legitimate news now that I have cancelled my cable subscription and no longer get to watch The Daily Show with John Stewart (Oh, how I miss my nights with Johnny). During one ritual listening to Morning Edition last week, there was a story about the increasing risk of meningitis outbreaks on college campuses. There have been mini-outbreaks regularly over the last few years at campuses across the country. Some colleges and universities are considering requiring all entering freshmen to be vaccinated against the potentially fatal illness.

The article was very clear about why this is happening -- college students are filthy. They share everything from party cups and toothbrushes to boyfriends and stolen Biology 101 midterm questions. Considering the store where I work is located right off the University of Washington campus, it quickly occurred to me that most of my coworkers and many of my young customers are probably ridden with infectious diseases.

This realization came too late to save me. NPR may have had the best intentions to warn me of the danger of working with late-teen germ factories, but I had already been struck. By the end of that business day, my lungs felt thick, my tongue was all sweaty and the little voices inside my head blamed the college kids. Damn you, College Kids!

I spent the next two and a half days paralyzed on the couch with a high fever, respiratory infection and a really bad mood. Curiously, the only thing that seemed to make me feel better was viewing "Without a Paddle", which I had forgotten to remove from my Netflix list by mistake. It arrived just in time to further confirm my suspicion that my illness had its roots on pointless adolescent humor. I slept like baby for 90 minutes, but I didn't laugh once.

Don't get me wrong - a lot of the youngun's I work with are nice kids. Some of them may even graduate and lead productive adult lives. But I have learned my lesson. As an older American (age 37) I can't keep associating with these folks without risking infection. The NPR story suggested campus vaccination campaigns, but maybe a full-on quarantine would be in order. College kids are dangerous.

That's funny, I feel fine.

I spent the entire month of January being insane without realizing it. On the outside, everything seemed normal -- I was upbeat at work, eating well and going to the gym, and I even managed to put some finishing touches on the apartment my boyfriend and I moved into in November. Amazing how those last few boxes sit overflowing by the door for months, as if I had unpacked enough and I expected them just to unpack themselves or throw themselves away. It was a picture of boring domesticity. Only I was insane.

Maybe I didn't notice my warped state of mind because I was coming off of the crazy Christmas retail season. Maybe it was because there was a sense of "normal" to our lives again. The boyfriend was working on a big music project and got a part-time job (finally!!!) to get him out of the house. I just let my guard down and assumed "normal" was okay... but to any sane person, what had been normal for us would have immediately struck you as crazy.

My first clues should have come from this blog. I wasn't writing in it. Sure, I have made a few offline journal entries, but I abandoned this publishing experiment on blogger. One reason for lack of literary output: sleep. I was sleeping a lot. Too much. Lots of naps. That used to be my old life, my "normal" life. So the signs were there in front of me, but I was too crazy to notice.

Then the pressure really started to build. My boyfriend's jobs were suddenly driving him nutso -- one was soul-sucking his creative juices in advance of a new album release; the other basically lied to him and tried to give him barista wages for computer support job... Oh, and they didn't like paying anyway. There we were, two underpaid, overworked men trying to live off of my Crate & Barrel salary (love the job, love the discount, tolerate the paycheck). Rather than leave bills unpaid, we scrounged together and resented every penny we could find until the coffee nazis decided they could pay up (note to Ladro fans: they still haven't paid... can store closings be far behind?).

The stress of all this let the crazy in me finally surface. I went off the deep end, accusing the boyfriend of making the whole thing up like a bad season of "Dallas". I decided that he was just using me for sex and didn't really have any coffee or music related jobs. How could we be so tired and not have anything to show for it?

After venting my insanity, my pupils returned to normal size and the flame-spewing crack in my skull closed up. Bottling up my frustrations and pretending "normal" is good did me no good whatso-fucking-ever. I feel better now. I may still be crazy, but that's better than normal anyday.

Look for random writings and ravings to continue.

the best parts: Closer

For once, Julia Roberts plays a role that doesn't require her to flash her megalithic teeth too often. I rather liked her playing sexy, hurt, and emotionally confused Anna in the film adaptaion of a terribly frank play by Patrick Marber. The story concerns a quartet of emotionally confused adults messing up a series of very adult relationships with each other. There is no soft edge, no happy ending for these people -- they just go on hurting themselves the way folks do. Mike Nichols hasn't been my favorite director for about 15 years, thanks to tragedies like Wolf, The Birdcage and that lovely Gary Shandling vehicle, What Planet Are You From?. In the case of Closer, however, he proves how brilliant he can be making movies for adults -- the ones who have sex, fall in love, get into relationships and have doubts about themselves in random order. Hollywood doesn't make many films like this anymore, because most of the adults in this category are over 30 -- and what's the use in marketing a movie to people who are so old, right?

the best parts: Excellent casting all around - Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen and the stunningly talented Natalie Portman, who would deserve an Oscar for her performance if Cate Blanchett hadn't already won it in my mind; any shot of Jude Law; Natalie Portman as a blonde; Natalie Portman vamping; Natalie Portman as Pink; Natalie Portman with stripper pole; Clive "I'm the next James Bond" Owen's green eyes.