THE TRUTH ABOUT BEING DISABLED

TACTICAL

It has ALWAYS be difficult for me to talk about the adjustments that I make to my condition and all the small changes that I make not only to the major operations in my life but to the very small. In fact, it is the similarities to the differences in the functions in the ‘very big and very small’ in physics.

Einstein’s physics is ubiquitous partly because it gives you a relationship to the very big things that are seen every single day.  At night, when you are looking at the stars, you can simply pop in your head quite possibly the most elegant equation ever, E = mc2.  Its beauty is how simply it takes the incomprehensible and huge, and puts it the entirety of the universe your mind.  

Or does it?  See, that is where quantum physics and its incomprehensibility comes to play.  Because where Einstein physics gave us ‘Star Trek’, the physics of Brian Greene would give us ‘Quantum Leap’ and perhaps predating him, ‘Micronauts’. Quantum physics it the laws of the things that are very, very small.

And it is this ability of mine, this prescience that I have about my life, something that is difficult for me to explain precisely because it is as mysterious to me as religion is to the faithful, that I place so much of myself in.  The reason I gladly accept my fates isn’t because I have a low ceiling but that I acknowledge and understand that I did not follow my destined path.  But that is for another day, if ever.  The segue that I would like to make is why I think that losing someone that I have great emotions for is not that big a deal for me.

BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM KID, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF

I use Mookie Dee and my starter Wife as examples as well as the mythical ABBWC to define the more personal issues that I have with the actual women that I have been involved with.  See, whether they know it or not, I can show them where they violated either a maxim or a sacrosanct ‘Rule To Live By’, which is why that no matter how badly I would have like for Tee Jay and myself to reboot our relationship, I am lackadaisical in the actual endeavoring of making it happen.  Sure, I have spoken of my past often but I act with my eyes firmly set on my future and where I am intended to go.

The galling (to me at least) lack of understanding I have encountered in relationships reminds me of words that are found in those ‘Successories’ motivational series that Ken likes to poke fun at... “No one cares how much you know, until you show them how much you care.”  That is SO TRUE, and in my mind, this is most evident in the “Quantum Universe of Relationships”.

Growing up, I noticed how young girls and young women in their constant kvetching about love and what not, kept being drawn back to the ‘small things’ that they ignored or were willing to overlook in their love life that they now trace back to the fail they either recently experienced or worse, CONSISTENTLY EXPERIENCE in their lives.  A cat who would throw a rock or take a stick to a stray dog who is part of the neighborhood, or drink the last swallow of Faygo on a hot summer’s day without offering his girl ANY of it, or who has her go on food runs with not only no funding from his pockets, but in her car with her gas, even knowing how tight things are for her.  I never understood why that things like this seemed of little significance to female’s but were of huge significance to me.

But it is not like I am without my own moment of ignoring a sign of ‘clear and present danger’.  When my starter Wife and I were dating and she came into my house and dissed Tommy Hearns in front of my family and I stood there with a goofy smile on my face, as they recoiled in shock at not only her sacrilege, but that she was fully aware and conscious of what she was saying, was THE preeminent sign that ‘this was not going to work’.  And I blew through that like a drunk driver who saw fairies waving him on instead of a stop sign.

Another thing that I noticed is the self-righteous indignation in the sisters, which also exists in respective forms most  women of all ethnicity, and how that led them to continually cycle in and out men who were low-value stocks on the relationship exchange, and they were without a turnaround plan to boot.  

SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE

That baffled me.  But I accepted it as part of things that were beyond my abilities to quantify and it would become what I call a ‘behavior postulate’ as well as a factor in developing my own physics to guide me through my relationships.  My overall approach is to ‘do no harm’, and I mean that.  I am not going to wreck someone’s car, siphon from your 401K to get you to start up some super retro hipster beeper stand in Benson, or any other hair brained scheme that takes advantage of anyone. Not going to sex your friends or your loose Auntie who still thinks she can ‘drop it like it’s hot’.   And to be certain, if there was any advantage taken, it was not done maliciously or more importantly, with any deceit (besides, YOU asked me to ‘put it there’, it wasn’t like I pressured you to let me..!).

Astrophysics is based on the observations made in this physical world.  You can extrapolate known laws that govern life on Earth and make estimations of what things would be like ‘out there’, in what is Einstein’s ‘big universe’ physics.  And yet, it is in the big universe that the small, or quantum universe exists.  

Quantum Entanglement is when one observed element is measured and compared against another similarly conceived element.  But if I am correct, in the Quantum Universe, it depends on what each independent observer sees that determines their local reality.  In short, I cannot tell you what I am to you and your observation.  Nor can your observation reflect accurately on the observation of anyone elses of me.  So Mookie Dee did not see in me what Tee Jay saw, despite my being ‘me’.  And in my interactions with women in Omaha, I feel that past projections cast a haunting shadow over those relationships.  As Sweets Brown may have said about such a predicament, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

BECAUSE WITHIN LIES THE DEVIL

I have NEVER CARED, NOT ONCE what ‘him’, ‘he’, or ‘they’ did in your life.  Nor do I care about your personal observations and prior experiences, in such that they bear no reflection upon me and how we interact with each other.  Constantly I am amazed when a woman who is in good standing with me makes an obtuse statement about a supposed underlying intention of mine.  Nothing stokes the furnace of my resentment like that of poor logic being passed off as predicative of my behavior.

“I take more help than I used to, but not as much as I should.”  Whenever someone through my journal has offered aid, I have simply accepted, and devote myself to whatever the aid was for.  A few weeks ago I was in receipt of a gift to purchase an area rug for my apartment.  Now I did not ask nor do I petition for aid (save for the seldom used Pay Pal button over yonder!), but I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!  It is the ‘not as much as I should’ part that I have the most trouble with.

One of the reasons that I can allow my supervisor at work to take me to the hospital and have my badly swollen left hand looked at, is because she would not have done so unless she cared.  And I have the most problems with people who can say that they care, but when the chips are down, I am cueing up Sweets Brown!

See, friends, lovers, they don’t ask can you wait when they see you have a need.  They don’t tell you about other appointments or obligations that they have to meet.  When they see that you are in a dire situation, they stop talking and they ACT.  Of course, my hand and arm was swollen and painful... it had been for THREE WEEKS.  But hey, I had made it this far, and I was going to tough it out... after all, who locally was I going to call... Ghostbusters?

And yes, that was a dig.  But check it... I have been splicing in the physics of the very big and that of the very small throughout this entry.  And if you cannot grasp that which governs the very big, then you will never understand that which rules the very small.  While one is advised not to be lost to the details, they cannot be ignored either.  This is why I am not comfortable in asking people for help.  Invariably, like the bad relationships of Springer, Maury, and Mike Singletary, you just can’t count on their turnaround happening at the right time.  So, I don’t ask people who I already know are not committed to me and my aspirations, to being there “now” for me as I would for them (and especially when ‘they’ have to go ‘first’ in their mind), and expect my participation in a relationship that they are themselves pursuing on ‘impulse power’ alone.

“Today, today was good for me.”  There have been enough “today was good for me” days, and the thing about them is, I never suffer them in abundance.  That is what ate at me in the provincial town... because I was in that proverbial bad relationship with someone who has only been in bad relationships... and I was hanging around, unsure of when it was going to turn.  

I don’t care for the genuflections of the “Oh but you could have called...” when I am in crisis.  So if my hand had to be amputated, then dag nab it, it would have been.  I was in pain and had been for weeks, soldiering on before my supervisor took me to Creighton and got me patched up.  Evidently, I have enough evidence to the contrary to support my view of things... after all, I have been with the world … (and I am tired of the soup du jour!)

CHEM LAB

PROOF OF CONCEPT

To be honest, proof of concept was evidenced back in 2011, when Ken was in the AO for a visit that was related to his work.  I was in good spirits, living in a neat if sparse apartment.  I had enrolled in Metro Community College and was muddling through diligently.  It was shortly after Wisconsin had rolled the Huskers’ in their Big Ten debut season, and Princess had made her first appearance as a player in my life. Given how those two relationships were prosecuted, I think that I have also confirmed what I have asserted all along... that I was not moved by love or in the pursuit of a relationship to relocate to Omaha.

I could not be in a better situation given the life that I have led to get here.  While I have felt that I was on my path before, I do not want to take my opportunity for granted.  That is how I knew that finding a partner and all that was going to be a non-priority concern for me.

When I first contemplated leaving Mookie Dee and ‘the provincial town that I jogged ‘round’, it was another step in my life plan for this decade.  I had confirmed that I not only was ‘handi-capable’, but that as a person, I could expect to be ‘the man we know and love’ as well (which means that my self-image would match the projected image that people would see of me).  That was crucial to my hopes, as that is something that I account for in all things, but am unable to quantify.

So far, my Omaha experience has not been a disappointment.  And if these were the final moments of my contentment and happiness in my life, this time would have been worth all the agonies that may yet lie ahead for me.

WHAT IS YOUR FORMULA?

Because I am a ‘journey’ kind of person philosophically, I do not think that you have to have an exact formula for success to have a fulfilling life.  But I do believe that the closer you are to your own personal success, the more refined and processed your formula has to be.  I also think that people who want to have some sort of evidence and confirmation that a goal has to be implicit in life, are sometimes people who miss the point.  If you are going to be someone that has to have that kind of tangible vision that shows how something is going to happen, then they need to be the person for whom it has been a way that is vindicated in their own lives.

Living with both my starter wife and Mookie Dee, I felt that the problem between us was of this particular philosophical clash.  You cannot be dismissive of something because it is out of the range of your vision.  It was their inability to either press the edges of their imagination to conceive of, or believe in, their own ability to make their dream comes true.  When I think about people who are single, it has come to me that it is fear that is at the root of their condition.  They are afraid to dare, afraid to dream, to make the choice based on what they themselves feel will make them happy.  They are afraid of their own flaws and limitations, of being deserving of the love that they hope for, that they think they are worthy of.  Using a little wordplay with a quote of Henry Ford’s, I believe that whether you think you are deserving of love or not, either way you are likely to be correct!  Having matured out of the circle where the superficial alone is the measure of ‘likability’, I have learned to be more circumspect with regard to the qualities I require in a partner.

THE ECLECTIC METHOD

No one has anything simply handed to them.  Well, maybe there are a few people who have, but really, who cares about them anywho!?!

As an adult, more and more I am convinced of what elements compromises my individual formula, and that skeptics are a toxin that causes the components of my formula to break down.  When I look of this experiment called, ‘my life’, I keep coming back to having chosen poorly at critical junctures involving my intimate relationships.  They involved making the choice of remaining on my path or maintaining the relationship.  I feel that I made the wrong choices and that because of the ‘fog’ that is created by love in my mind, I would have to abstain or at least severely devalue how crucial that having ‘someone who is that someone’ is to my maintaining my own happiness.

 

There is a tautology to my philosophy that appears in the motivational posters, status updates, and in the ‘prosperity gospel’ of churches and public speakers.  It is also found in selfish objectivists, liberal radicals to orthodoxy and power, heroes and villains alike.  But there is one aspect that gets overlooked, IMO, because it doesn’t translate into kitchsky populist sayings and evokes of a non-secular appeal.  The glue that holds my philosophy together and keeps me intact spiritually, mentally and physically, is faith.

I am not just a confident person... I BELIEVE in my dreams.  And it is that part of me that has had a contentious time with reconciling in relationships.  From being heavyweight champion of the Nine Worlds, to being executive administration assistant to the Czar of all the Automobiles, and even to making the most of the most provincial towns ever to be jogged ‘round, believing that a goal can be accomplished, is as important as having a goal to pursue.

Getting over the ‘nothing’s easy’ part eof life is huge... and perhaps that is why I think people misunderstand my affable nature.  I have understood that without hard work, I would be one unhappy camper... so I don’t mind ‘efforting’.  But when it comes to relationship, finding someone to meet me halfway between two poles has been less-than-satisfying.  And yet, hope... hope always springs eternal, so prepare for contradictions and detours ahead..!

MENTAL FLOSS

STEPPING IN A RHYTHM TO A KURTIS BLOW...

No Tactical, at least none to speak of.  I am doing well, enjoyed low profile weekend, including a  cool NPR Sunday.  If anything, I am on the cusp of an epiphany of sorts.  Let me explain...

I was used to being alone prior to the dawn of the internet age in the 90’s.  But it did not change my social behavior, as the net was still a refuge for those who were similar  to me, a person who was on the fringes of society.  It wasn’t until ‘the Facebook’ came and took personal interactions to a new level.  Like it was for me in high school, it really has been laborious trying to navigate the social structure on the web... I mean, I still feel out of place, and it was something that Nixxie said that sparked the internal debate in my mind.

Going back to the phone call where we had a conversation about the pictures of KT and me as teenagers, she mentioned that she was going to block my feed because she was, “tired of seeing all those big white women on her Facebook”.  I laughed and we kept on with our conversation.  After we hung up, I thought to myself that I guess I do have a lot of white women on my feed and that perhaps I should seek out pages that post pictures of women of color, to show how inclusive I actually am!  And that is when like the crashing of an iceberg breaking into the sea, thoughts and emotions seemed to come apart into crystalline floes in my mind. WHY was I concerning myself with what others were thinking of me AT ALL and for ANY REASON..?

Though I can see myself continuing to blog, as it is a lot more interpersonal and I have developed great affection and relationships through blogging, I am going to wind down my “Facebooking”.  It suddenly has begun to make me feel as isolated as I felt in high school, but only on a larger and psychologically troubling scale.

It has been a small source of pride that I have my daughter’s Mother’s as my friends.  But they don’t Facebook much if at all, and neither does my oldest daughter, Skye.  And if any of the aforementioned parties DID look at the crap that I post, what are they to think of me?  Especially  my starter wife and Skye... geez..!  Still, the larger problem is what it makes me feel about myself, posting as I do and all to what end?

Walking around “think-singing” to myself, a set of lyrics from ‘Genius of Love’ struck me as a fine choice for a status update for my account.  to me, s

ocial networking is actually isolating and keeps us strangers, as we now do less interacting with other human beings.  I don’t think that I am alone in this viewpoint and that is what is the problem with socialization in the computer age.  We don’t actually ‘do’ anything with each other and it is plausible that ‘living through media’ is making things worse and the connections that are made and rooted online are as hollow and empty as the very medium through which they travel.  My personal quirks and eccentricities are not to be the fodder that gets overlooked in someone elses feed, dismissed without a second thought.  That was what high school was for!

Another factor for winding down my activity on Facebook is my “relationship status” and my friendship with Princess.  I don’t want to be the one who does the “unfriending” and that plays a small role in my decision as well.  Let her be the one to do that, I say!  Just as it did not matter to Nebraska when I unfriended her, I am sure that I am not a blip in Princess’ life anymore.  Que sera..!  I can cope with that kind of feeling but I cannot define what makes me feel lonely on Facebook.  But I do know that Nixxie’s comment struck a bell for me.  Just as I don’t watch television but I am not haughty about it, I am going to disentangle myself from the social network.  I am more than a caricature to make light of... and I think that you should have more than, “That’s a typical Mark post”, when people glaze over their feeds.  After all, I have already graduated from high school... and I left those kinds of non-relationships behind me...

THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH

Another thing that I would like to mention is that my general mood can be found in this song right here.  This is how I feel most of the time and whenever I stray a bit, I am not too far from coming back to where my mood is centered around ‘this’ feeling.

Finally, after years of wandering around in hostile and foreign places, living a life of a stranger, I have again found myself.  And this is what it sounds like:

It really feels good.

I am very glad that Ken was able to get my taxes done for me.  I have been looking through them ‘just because’, and I have not come up with the same numbers as the software program.  But just as importantly, having them done allowed me to file for my financial aid, so I don’t have that worry on my mind.  Though there may be a question of whether I get any, I have put myself in the best position that I know of to find out.

The notion of giving myself the best chance to find out, to create an opportunity for myself with regard to reaching my goal is one of the main factors to why I did not think I would be getting involved with dating again.  As it was, I had detected a trend among women as I entered my 30’s that went a lot to curb my enthusiasm for finding a partner.

Lovebabz in a recent post, expresses an opinion that I have not found expressed either in by actions or in tone by women these days, in fact, the main romantic attachments of my life in the past 10 years have failed to show these characteristics on a consistent basis.  Worse, IMO, I have had some first display the potential to be ‘in love’ only to pull back from working to actually ‘be’ in love.

I want magic.  With magic, comes passion, and passion ignites desire.  Magic went a long way  to pulling me here to Omaha to meet with Nebraska and it did the same with Princess.  Honestly, if magic was not present in one form or another, it is likely that I would still be a virgin, certainly I would not have the number of ‘notches in my bedpost’ that I have accumulated over my career.  So I feel cheered to see that a woman of the maturity level of Babz is open to making the necessary changes to allow for the magic of love to come into her life (now she needs to move about 1300 miles west to find it..!).

Wanting the ‘stuff of legends’ is the only way for someone to enter into my life.  I mean, it never escapes me that I took a huge risk in deciding to be on my own and to up and relocate to the hinterlands.  And I want someone who still believes in love and the magic that happens when it is shared.  I don’t have any truck with my ‘Western Foils’, just that our belief systems were incompatible.  What was frustrating in both relationships was that after the rush, there was an avoidable recession, avoidable because it was, I believe, consciously self- induced.

AT ANY RATE

Did I mention that I am happy?  Just as Nigel was in his work, so is Mark in his.  Just keep in mind whenever you drink your cup of tea or coffee, that you are having it with Teebs and Rebekah Raff..!

...AND SHE'S SAYING HOW SHE NEVER CHOSE YOU...

TACTICAL

One of the reasons that I felt obliged to post the Mother’s Day picture of my friend and her family was to show that I have not given up on the sisters, not just yet.  My friend has some emotional baggage, and while it is not like most of us aren’t carrying a bag or two around, hers is such that it gives me pause.  But I do have a genuine affection for her and I don’t mind being drawn into her galaxy, if it is only for a galactic moment.

My relationship with Princess was never a sign that I was abandoning the hope of partnering with an African-American woman.  But it is truly a “first come (pun unintended), first serve” kind of thing with me, and by that I mean, you act like you are interested and are interesting to me, I will make the move to find out if there is anything to “whatever” is between us.

EVERY MAN ALONE IS SINCERE

I think I need an area rug for my little apartment.  It is generally neat save for the floor tiles.  Maybe I will pick up a remnant or some inexpensive rug from the 2nd hand store.  When I would read Nebraska’s scouting report on Omaha and she talked about all the resale shops in that are here in town and I looked forward to going shopping with her.  SD and I used to flit about in the northern suburbs of the Motor, stopping at flea markets and such, and  Pecan Sandie and me would hit garage sales with a reckless abandon.  It has been to my chagrin to have been involved with such non-shoppers over the last decade or so, because I enjoy spending what I think of as ‘hidden quality time’ with a person.  

With being on my own and having to cope with my condition (even though it is labeled as a disability, it is a permanent state of being as well), there are times where I am grateful for the solitude that being self-sufficient provides me.  For instance, Friday night when I got off work, I rode to a nearby Baker’s for some groceries.  On the way back, I ran into a muddy, water-and-gravel filled space where a sidewalk block was supposed to be.  There were no warning signs posted and I went head-over-feet onto the ground.  There was nothing fragile in my bags and surprisingly, my pants were only dirty and not torn.  It took me a few moments to gather myself; as I did, a passing motorist came over to see if I was okay.  He said that, “he saw me riding one moment and the next it was like I had disappeared”.  I told him that I was relatively unhurt and that I would get it together, thanking him for his concern.  It made me think of when I was ‘bit’ by London last week and how my co-workers bandaged me up.  Who was going to stitch me up now?  I thought about going to the nearby Wal-Greens and purchasing first aid stuff, but I still would have several bags of groceries to haul around.  Rather than go to the drug store, I came home and took a bath, cleaning my wounds and dappling them with Neosporin.  “Good enough”, I thought to myself.  It had better be... as if there was any other choice.  Dusting myself off, I wondered briefly what kind of reaction I would have gotten from ANYONE who fancied themselves close and concerned about me, once they found out what happened?  Because it isn’t the collision itself that is the worry (after all, my helmet didn’t hit anything) but the whiplash effect that is the concerning part of ‘getting banged about’.  At any rate, I don’t have to listen to anyone’s heartfelt hysterics at the ‘wrong  thing’ in regards to my overall well-being.  It was reminiscent of what made mes so angry with the cat who hit me in 2011... I can do everything right and STILL get struck simply enraged me.  Anywho...

I feel care-free as I could possibly feel at this precise moment.  I don’t have to discharge myself of insipid thoughts or be exposed to the logic of the unimaginative.  The idea of responsibilities keeping me from what I hope is counter to the core of my being.  Having a dream and getting after it does encompass the responsibilities that come with my life choices... in fact, they drive me more now than ever before.  But they have never been a burden to me, and whether I lived up to them or not is strictly conjectural.  One thing that I do know, is that my choices were based on the best information available at that time, so there are no regrets, at least, not on my behalf.

I MUST BE ONLY ONE IN A MILLION... I WON’T LET THE DAY PASS WITHOUT HER

I was reading from the Thought Catalog about how a person dealt with getting over someone.  The connection was that though the author was indeed thinking of his past partner, he was not really “thinking” of them, much in the way that I don’t think about Nebraska or Princess.  There is only one person who actually pervades my thoughts in the way that would resemble the “light and it never goes out” when carrying a torch for a former love, and that is what remains of my feelings for Tee Jay.

So the thoughts that I think are not really about people (a.k.a. “the things that I think I am thinking about”), but are ruminant neuron fragments that never got to become anything more than mitochondrial floaters in my mind’s eye.  Sometimes when I am listening to a

song, a narrative springs from it and I try to apply it to the pieces that are
“gumming up the works”, so to speak.  I remember how the song “Endicott” by Kid Creole and the Coconuts felt as though it was written for me (much like I did when watching this performance of the song “Mr. Softee” on SNL).  Like the song’s narrator, I too was not part of the “status quo” and could never be like the titular subject, Endicott,  who represents to me all the gilded “hood riche” that is a part of the rap/pop/reality media culture.  Sure, he is also a stand-up guy, and while I do posses qualities that would make me a cat who would work a 9-to-5 in support of a family, I do enjoy my freedom.  I have seen relationships much in the same way I would see a barter situation, where one makes an offer in hopes of receiving either goods or services that one desires.

Introversion

, self-alienation, or be it due to a seething anti-social psychopathy, being alone does not trouble me.  And I repeat it here because that is what my cost of the bargain is, my guaranteed peace of mind, and no hindrance in my personal life from whatever path I am on.  And though Endicott’s foil sought and achieved freedom seemingly for freedom’s sake, I believe that I am on an appointment with one of the positive possible outcomes of my destiny.

That is what was and always has been most disappointing at the terminus of a relationship... how it went from “living a dream” to becoming “the kind of relationship that I strive to have avoided”.

THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

TACTICAL

I am going to take a few weeks away from studying for Algebra and try to get into better condition.  I have been running finally, embracing the hills and I look forw ard to getting myself back into rounds.

This is me at 16 or 17, and I had just won a tournament that meant a lot to me.  I don’t know how I was convinced to put on my outfit (lookit those trunks!!) and take the picture, but I am glad that I did.

My co-workers said that I look almost exactly the same when they saw this photograph , save for some graying on the fringes,

one of them remarking that they hope that they look like they did in high school when they are in their 40’s!

.  I sort of wish that I had one more picture, one that I took in third grade that shows my then-nascent apathy towards picture taking.  It was my favorite picture of myself, not just because it showed “me” but because you could really see where my girls got their looks from.

While I don’t mind repeating familiar stories (repetition saves LIVES!!), I do that I have worn out talking about my reluctance to be or take photographs.  I will take them without much complaint, in fact, people get the impression that I am quick to take pictures, or at least those who matter in my life.

KT went to the prom!  I don’t know if it was a junior prom or if she was escorted by a senior to the senior prom.  She really looks good, a real gorgeous young woman.  I am going to post both photos to the social network, and I am going to include an appeal to her sisters... she would LOVE to get to know them and as long as I am on this side of the energy equation, I am going to strive to get the girls introduced to each other.

Finally, I spent Mother’s Day with a friend, her Mom and her kids.  Keeping my focus, we all went for Ice Cream after they had their day together.  I was looking forward to meeting “the gang” and, that went over well, as did my meet with her Mom’s.  We are ONLY FRIENDS... man, I cannot stress that ENOUGH.  While we are all broken by life, there are some people who remain weak at their mended places.  And it is here that we get into the journal entry.

THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

Along with “First World Problems”, the phrase “The Price Of Admission” is another phrase that is part of the kernel of my brain computer.  And while I could substitute Princess, my starter wife, Mookie Dee, the reason that I am using Nebraska is because there is less nuance to what took place between us.

She did not want to become “the One” for me as she expected me to be certain things for her, things that she projected upon me, all the while she was not willing to meet me anywhere in between my images and hopes of what she may be, and that we may be together.

I would not have been surprised if I did not use the phrase “cost to ride this ride” as well... because when I had the feeling that there were people who felt that they could “introduce” a friend to me if I were local, and hey, you never know!  But while I would not have minded that at all, I did wonder if they minded knowing that their friend or daresay, family member, was doing things that would have had her stoned or burned at the stake a century or so ago?  Anywho, the “great offensive mind” that once was the architect of an approach that was successful, can still produce numbers, if so desired.  Thing is, it’s not.

The video that Dan Savage is speaking about the price of admission in relationships is one that  has kept me from wanting someone back again.  For Nebraska, the price of admission was too high, and I understood her actions as not wanting to pay the toll.  That we don’t talk, and it is rare for me to recieve a text message from me only confirms my observation on our relationship.  Princess, was a particularly strange case, as she still has a “positive account balance”, but again, there is no activity in her account.  A couple of vague Facebook posts is all I know of her comings and goings, and that also is the limit of my interest in maintaining a relationship with her.

Do I miss her and Nebraska?  Oh most definitely!!  It is particularly galling that Nebraska and I have gone down the route that we have, because the primary reason I kept her in my heart was that I thought that we were NOT going to have the issues that we do, and we would get along well.

See, I want to believe in “the lie”, believe in the stylized self of whomever I am with.  I used  to tell myself that part of my job as someone’s partner is to “make them the person that I think they are”, which is in line with Mr. Savage’s advice.  I know that women can crust  the heck up their underwear like men, and I also know that they fart in bed.  But I choose to see them as I do because of what I feel for them.  For Princess, it was too intense (among other things... limited by my anti-speculation policy), my passion and attraction to her... with Nebraska, she simply took for granted things she had no right to take for granted.  She did not want to see my “stylized self” as she did want me to be someone that she had imagined.  One of the “myths that I live by” is that I am upfront with as much as possible, and had she really thought to have that conversation with me, open and uncluttered by personal prejudice, we would have gotten off to a better stance.  And as far as my friend and I are concerned...

I think she likes me BUT she has issues... and I told her I can be a friend, but it will be quite some time, and I mean YEARS and not months, before we could possibly be anything more.  Yeah, sure, stuff could happen and we go skipping down the aisle hand in hand, but not really. Meanwhile, I am gearing up for a Carolina Girl summer... I think I am going to see if Lexxie can come for Labor Day... I know school will be in, but a cat can hope, can’t he??

SATURDAY NIGHT WRIST

TACTICAL

Had to drop my Algebra class... I only got a 75 on my most recent test and I would need an even more unlikely 1500 in order to pass the class with the grade I need.  When I announced my decision in front of the class, the sadness was palpable among the group that I belonged to in class, a few others and in the instructor.  She even re-crunched the numbers to see if there was a reasonable chance of my passing the class and there wasn’t.  I thanked the instructor and assured her that I will be back in the fall!

I got my first haircut of the year and I learned that my “barbette” had thought I moved back to the Motor, and that SHE is moving to Mississippi over the summer!!  And while I will miss her (if you saw some of the nappy-heads on these brothers here in Omaha...), I was really very excited and happy that she was up to taking control of her life by taking a risk and moving to Mississippi.  And that is that with me, and nicely leads into the body of this entry.

PROLOGUE

Just an observation...but it seemed like things changed with Princess when her son asked about you being his stepdad and you asking her how her sons would react to having sisters. Without knowing what happened...wondered if the idea of marriage or living together made her put on the brakes and walk away.

As for Nebraska...well, I can't comment really because I've never understood. Never a couple yet your posts seem like you were so if you were never together, where would the faith and devotion have come in to play??? (shrugs shoulders).

I got a comment that in its summarized observation of recent journal entries noted that Princess began to change once her younger son’s began to think of a future as my stepsons.  The comment also mentioned that though I spoke of Nebraska as a special person in my life, we were never a couple, and that our relationship was more confusing for them to follow, so where would “faith and devotion” have come into play?

Because I like words a little bit and occasionally with get fanciful with my writing and may sound like hyperbole on the surface.  Where would “faith and devotion” indeed come into play with such a relationship as the one Nebraska and I were muddling through.  What would either of us have to be faithful to, or have devotion for?

In team sports and sports in general, there is an appeal to deep emotions to inspire the athlete to perform at their highest level.  The movie “Friday Night Lights” contains a scene where the metaphor of “being perfect” resembles the appeal to “faith and devotion” I would make to a potential partner.  That is what a metaphor does, gives you access to a deeper understanding, a way to connect to the innerspace of the soul.  By using high conceptual (to me) abstract metaphors, I aspire to give you, the reader, a carrot of sorts to push and idea that gives a distinct flavor or understanding to what it is that I am speaking about.  So, when it comes to relationship, there are places where the lines of delineation are drawn in the sand, and others where the lines are to my being as the mountain ranges are to Earth.  By using such strong words to convey what I expect from a person in a relationship, I would hope to get that person to realize that there is certainly more than a “good f*ck” expected of them if, that is, they want to hang about with me.

Long ago, Indigo left a comment that is among those that have stayed with me throughout the years.  She said that whoever I am with will have to be “intelligent”, and in agreeing with her, I am interpreting “intelligence” more liberally than literally.  Life experience is a form of intelligence that counts with me, as well as being aware that there are more than one way to see the world.  Life isn’t binary, and the walls of stereotypes are falling by the wayside.  The future is happening each and every moment, it is here with us now.  Should adaptation to the moment fail to happen, I think that one would risk being left behind, wondering what is going on and lost.  Maybe,  they will even be alone as well.

AND WHOSOEVER LIFTS THE HAMMER...

Again in dealing with the metaphor of “Acolytes and Infidels” and comparison with the one of being perfect used in the video, I don’t believe that a person would have any problem understand how it is that I value relationships.  The point of the “tactical” section, the description of “things being thing “the things that I think that I am thinking about” is to let people know that I am on the path of Me, and that there are no serious worries or concerns.  I am well.  And this is what I could never get Nebraska to grasp.

See, the valuation of a relationship in my life is different from my PARTICIPATION in a relationship.  Having a partner does not mean an increase to my self-worth, my pleasure in  things.  The ONLY thing that a relationship can actually “do” is take the joy out of being, to make me feel other than how I would feel without this person in my life.  A lot of people talk that talk, but it is something that I have lived since the earliest days of my self-awareness.  I guess that is why I do  take and approach relationships the way that I do... because I see the world framed  by contentment, I owe it to that person to be a positive and not a negative in their lives. After all, I am happy by myself... perhaps they were happy by themselves as well?  Value-added” are the words that I use to describe what I am looking for out of a person.  Would sitting round and hoping that Nebraska deign to call me or even grace my humble existence with her physical presence got to be tiring.  Going through that kind of uncertainty is not part of my character.

My Saturday nite was reminiscent of my SNICK Saturdays in the middle of a true NPR Weekend, spent watching as much college football as I could.  I got off work at 1500, went to my apartment and sat in my rocker-lounge chair and napped.  When I woke up, it was almost 2100, Saturday was a “must work” day, I went downhill to my gym and got a good night’s worth of work in.  I posted a picture to Facebook (and yes, I DO wear the same workout clothes each time.. wanna make something of it..?  Didn’t THINK so..!) and that was that with that.  Now, what can anyone offer me that would have brought me more pleasure than that?  This is what many people fail to realize... there are sacrifices being made in relationships, some great and some small, but ALL are important.  Maybe to the outsider the importance is diminished, but to the person making the sacrifice, whether it is their role-playing figures or someone’s prized garden, who is to say that something should be or not be important to another person?  And, just as important, who would dare say to another that their priorities are misplaced?  That is what I confirmed about Nebraska... that what and how we valued things were not compatible.  It isn’t that we don’t care about or for each other, but I feared that because of this misunderstanding, that I would fall further down on her “list” as time moved on, and that I would never be what I wanted to be what I had hoped I would be to her and in her life.

THE PRINCESS DIARIES

Discounting the ethnicity and the genders of their three children, the biggest difference between them was that with Princess, I knew how she felt about me because she showed me straight away and clearly.  That is something that I never had to question, and she was there for me, at least as much as our relationship required her to be.  And in our “exit interview” she confirmed for me that I was able to return the favor.  That is why her account remains “open” because of what she put into it.

BUT... but whenever someone says we are done, that is good enough for me.  Very early, in 2011 (we met late ‘11, after the epic 1st conference game between Wisconsin and Nebraska) we had a “hiccup” that I partially wrote off to jitters brought upon by her past relationships.  And besides, she had already accrued emotional “interest” from our relationship.  And to be honest, things seemed like they were tracking along, until, as Change Is Awesome said in her comment, her youngest son’s began to really see me as a parental figure.

Now this is a murky area that many people wade through in relationships and get lost in the bog.  Whatever it was, whatever it is, that she felt, do not know.  I do not speculate on what is wrong with a person once they want to dissolve a relationship with me... I  can only control how I behave and project how I feel.  Trying to figure out the what, when and why to this kind of thing only leads to folly.  So it is not that there has been less to be upset about with what happen, and there is little contrast to how I feel towards both Princess and Nebraska.  I still care for them deeply and could easily see where we again to another shot at a loveship.

BUT... the overcoming of the “... the difference in between the things we need and the things we receive” is that the root of nearly all breakups and is certainly at the root of any cause.  That is a delicate operation and if new relationship is the gulf, then overcoming the damage done from one that ran aground...