|
|
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
|
|
| |
more vancouver for the west coast junkies out there...
fountain near Vancouver Art Gallery
 Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park
Note: Not all these photos are mine -- some are from friends and some are from sites designed to lure unsuspecting people into our city so we can take your money and stuff you with sushi. I'll hunt up some credits tonight if I can find them, but the ones by my friends and I won't likely go credited at all. We're humble like that, yo.
10:15:17 PM 
|
|
all's fair in love and hair.
I don't have complicated hair.
It's dark brown. It's fine and straight, sometimes a bit frizzy when the humidity is high.
It hangs about halfway down my back.
You can curl it, you can put it up, you can wear it down... there's some versatility to the length and texture of it.
But overall, it's normal, semi-gloss hair, and it sits on my head most of the time without attracting attention or creating a scene.
Except for first thing in the morning.
Now, bear with me for a second while I undertake a risky metaphor:
If you make a big bowlful of spaghetti with a good dose of sauce, you'll notice how hard it can be (and those of you who find it easy, please go read another blog... mutants!) to actually get the pasta to wind around your fork and stay there. I don't do the whole spoon-as-twirl-base thing, because that always seemed kind of cheaterish (even if actual Italians do it... it's just one of those things with me).
Unless you've gone and overcooked it to a state of horrible smushiness or left it sitting in the strainer for about eight years, the stuff is slippery. It slides in sixty directions. It curls and coils and twirls, but as soon as you lift it to your lips, it hangs smooth and straight off your cutlery and leaves you to perform all sorts of awkward ministrations just to take a bite.
This is how my hair used to be. Mmmm.
If you make angel hair pasta, however -- which is infinitely more thin and delicate -- your stickiness factor goes through the roof. Getting angel hair pasta to be fluid is somewhat of a challenge. Even if you sauce it up something fierce with huge lashings of olive oil, it can go south on you in seconds flat.
I have angel hair when I get out of the shower.
Oh sure, it sits atop my head, apparently simple and straight up and manageable.
But try and run a comb through it, and you'll soon find that it snarls more than a rottweiler at a junkyard.
How can something that looks so calm and normal be such a deep, unrelenting mess deep down? By the time I actually get the tangles out, my scalp is sore, my wide tooth comb is full of strands, and I am feeling spent for the day. The thing that most people like about it -- the softness, the fineness of it all -- is what makes it an absolute nightmare.
My hair is the perfect metaphor (yes, I realize that I've already had a metaphor for my hair, but now my hair IS the metaphor. Isn't metaphor fun?) for the evolution of my romantic sensibility and capability over the years.
My ideas about romance used to be embarassingly linear. I just figured that one fell in love, one got married, and one stayed there. Sure, there would be bumps along the road now and again (a bit of a tangle, a touch of a wave), but in the end, the process made sense. I loved all the Hollywood movies with the sparring heroes and heroines who fought miserably before they made up rather spectacularly (the process of which my dad often tried to shield me from with a joking hand over my eyes), but I didn't think that was how it would be for me.
After all, I'm a simple girl. I'm nice, I'm normal, I make sense. Shouldn't my relationships follow suit? Indeed -- like a swift comb through silken strands!
Well, allow me to show you the giant knot I just combed out of my locks (yes, we're back into the metaphor now). I am not just someone with mild tangling anymore. I am a bona fide conditioner-soaking, brush-yanking, eye-watering gong show. I cannot just pull a comb through and smile. I have to negotiate and offer concessions.
My love life follows suit.
In other words, there is nothing simple about me at 31. Well, other than the desire and need for love. That's simple. But getting there? Feeling it? Working it out? Discussing terms?
Gosh!
It's like beating myself with a hairbrush just to make sense of the damn process.
I am an emotional tangle. I am romantically unmanageable.
It's going to take someone pretty smooth and patient to get past my ends down to the roots. And considering how many male hairdressers are gay, this doesn't bode well for my future. I just want to smooth out the snarls and feel the breeze blow through my mane without impediment. I want to feel that freedom!
But for now, the damn comb is still stuck in my hair.
Sigh.
7:14:26 AM
|
|
me, myself, and shy.
I'm shy, in a sense.
Not in the 'petrified to be in front of crowds' sense.
Not in the 'socially awkward' sense.
Not in the 'overstimulated by noise and chaos' sense.
Quite the contrary, to all of the above, actually.
No, I'm shy simply in the sense that I don't always run headlong into opportunities to share and relate and connect. I suppose that's not unusual -- there are few among us who are always up to being vulnerable and open, no matter what the occasion.
Everyone has a degree of natural reserve that makes them less animated in conversations or less likely to approach someone they don't know, depending on the situation.
My reserve has fluctuated in severity over the years, depending on what was required of me and how much of my energy was needed to affect my environs. If someone needs to be the life of the party or the team leader, I can step up to the plate. But sometimes, I'd just as soon stand back and smile.
I'm a natural leader, so I'm told; I possess some ability to direct a group and bring out the best in them as a whole and as individuals. I actually love the idea of empowering people to face challenges with energy and resolve. I often have a vision of, or conviction about, what is possible for a dedicated and passionate team.
But those tendencies sometimes leave me exposed like Moses on a mountaintop, wondering how I got stuck in such a precarious position and what I am going to do with the grumbling masses below.
For some reason, though, that's so much more palatable to me than staring down a single burning bush.
I guess the real deal is that my shyness kicks me in the ass on a one-on-one level. I can't seem to force myself to open up to other people at times and receive what they have to give me. I hold back from investing in their lives, just in case things hit some sort of bump in the road that I don't feel like I have the energy to handle.
Sometimes it's just easier to be alone and deal with what I know than to expose myself to the potential risks of getting tangled up in someone else's web.
Oh, I'm aware of what investment is worth. I know how small connections create social butterfly effects that are nothing short of miraculous, without even mentioning what they do for us on a singular heart level. But not even that understanding pushes me into the kitchen if I am reluctant at all to deal with the heat.
People want warmth, but I run the other way.
It's always so much easier to stand up in front of 400 folks and speak with conviction than to try and break truth down for a single pair of ears. It's always much more simple to make a fool of myself for an audience than to risk being thought a fool by seeking out a single soul in that crowd.
I always hear how much most people are just the opposite; how they love small groups but would hate to perform for, or speak to, or work with anything bigger than that.
Me?
I realized a long time ago that leadership exposes me in a way I don't fear, but intimacy terrifies me from my head to my toes.
So I cling to my reserve, my alone times, my quiet moments, and I stand back sometimes even when I see that someone wants to know me or at least try to figure out what I'm all about.
And I think it's time to change that.
Knowing how to be happy in and of yourself -- in the most solitary times in your life, when you don't have a choice but to go solo -- is an incredibly important skill. But choosing it as the perpetual default? That's not survival -- that's isolation.
I can keep people at the surface with my shyness or even shallowness; I can let small talk and jokes set the pattern for my relationships and never let others sink any further into my psyche.
Or I can risk everything and come away with something far more valuable. Even rejection -- if and when it comes -- teaches us lessons about ourselves that are worthwhile to learn.
So.
When most performers leave the stage, they escape into the wings to wipe away their makeup, take off their costumes, and renew the energy they just put out in the midst of some serious peace. Sometimes they even slip out the back stage door without anyone taking note of their departure. But I can't do that anymore.
It's time for me to walk out into the aisles and turn all those faces into friends -- or at least leave the monologue behind for a while.
We'll see if I get up the nerve.
1:00:39 AM
|
|
|
 |
© Copyright
2006
Meg Fowler.
Last update:
3/4/06; 2:29:49 PM. |
|
|
