We used to joke that six weeks was the gay relationship equivalent to the seven-year itch. Well the itch needed scratching and so after 7 weeks of ambivalent dating T. and I ended it last night. Rather definitively. I'm not sure why some feel the need to sever with cruelty when an unambiguous 'this has run its course' would suffice. It was what I was my goal. His was quite different. More of a 'let me give you a good reason to delete my number from your phone' strategy. And it worked.
I wasn't in love with him and was becoming sure I wasn't going to be. I try to pretend it wasn't his age. It was. Or his immaturity. It was. Or a basic lack of mutual interests. It was. We weren't suited, but I liked having someone in my life. Someone with whom one can experience basic intimacy. It had been far too long. It awoke a desire to be with people again. And for all of those things I should be grateful to T. Once I stop hating how it ended. I've never believed that relationships should be judged or remembered solely by their end, and it would be ridiculous to call that a relationship, so I'm hoping that after a good cry and a good pout and maybe a pint of ice cream I will look back on my summer fling with T. and smile.
3 Sept 2009
2 Sept 2009
Hello constant companion
I am spending the next two weeks on holiday in London, at home, with small projects and goals and desires to sort and heal some things and clear out others. I've resisted the urge to call it a staycation, to feel guilty about not chasing the sun and take my bad habits on tour, to worry if I'm hiding away. I need to concentrate on making positive change in my life and to find a desire to create again. To feel each hour passing. To pay attention when anxieties and fears surface. To connect to more of live around me.
So here I am. Not entirely sure what to do with myself. Letting myself feel tired and worn down, but being aware of why and what I am doing knowing that good decisions will bring good changes - even despite the immediate discomfort they bring.
I asked to change medication yesterday. I never felt right on the sertaline. Less anxious, but not focused, balanced or happy. I forced myself to feel positive, but it was appearance and not real change.
Changing medications brings short-term side effects that aren't totally pleasant, anxiety and nausea. Restless, dream-filled sleep. Meditation helps some, but mostly the knowledge that it is temporary and that real comfort may be coming. Will be coming. Will make it a bit easier to change, more equipped to deal with the positives and negatives that life offers.
More equipped to connect and to create. That is my focus on this next period.
A therapist once told me that I live too much in my mind, so much so that I've let my body fall into disrepair. I'm now trying to focus on living in this body again. Repairing the damage. Meditation helps to place myself back into my body and I spent a good deal of time in the last few days in a body scan. The gym and Justin are a great help in that. Moving the body, making it contract and stretch and pull and push and do more than I think it should or can. At first the pain made me anxious, but I'm starting to sense the difference between good and bad pain.
Now, I concentrate on how I eat. Not necessarily what, but how. How mindlessly I feed it. How little aware of eating I was, waiting for feelings of happiness and euphoria to come. How able I was to turn off the feelings of discomfort that would follow. How little I tasted of the vast amounts of comfort I was eating. It is hard. I am not consistent. It is the single most important change I can make and therefore one that I'm most resistant to. The mind and emotion rally to act as they did before. To protect what they know. To give breadth and permission to the bad habits. I'm trying to re-wire the pattern. It is difficult. It requires finding satisfaction in other places.
How? How I connect and how I create. Connect and create. Simple and powerful, straightforward and complex words.
I am spending the next two weeks on holiday in London, at home, with small projects and goals and desires to sort and heal some things and clear out others. I've resisted the urge to call it a staycation, to feel guilty about not chasing the sun and take my bad habits on tour, to worry if I'm hiding away. I need to concentrate on making positive change in my life and to find a desire to create again. To feel each hour passing. To pay attention when anxieties and fears surface. To connect to more of live around me.
So here I am. Not entirely sure what to do with myself. Letting myself feel tired and worn down, but being aware of why and what I am doing knowing that good decisions will bring good changes - even despite the immediate discomfort they bring.
I asked to change medication yesterday. I never felt right on the sertaline. Less anxious, but not focused, balanced or happy. I forced myself to feel positive, but it was appearance and not real change.
Changing medications brings short-term side effects that aren't totally pleasant, anxiety and nausea. Restless, dream-filled sleep. Meditation helps some, but mostly the knowledge that it is temporary and that real comfort may be coming. Will be coming. Will make it a bit easier to change, more equipped to deal with the positives and negatives that life offers.
More equipped to connect and to create. That is my focus on this next period.
A therapist once told me that I live too much in my mind, so much so that I've let my body fall into disrepair. I'm now trying to focus on living in this body again. Repairing the damage. Meditation helps to place myself back into my body and I spent a good deal of time in the last few days in a body scan. The gym and Justin are a great help in that. Moving the body, making it contract and stretch and pull and push and do more than I think it should or can. At first the pain made me anxious, but I'm starting to sense the difference between good and bad pain.
Now, I concentrate on how I eat. Not necessarily what, but how. How mindlessly I feed it. How little aware of eating I was, waiting for feelings of happiness and euphoria to come. How able I was to turn off the feelings of discomfort that would follow. How little I tasted of the vast amounts of comfort I was eating. It is hard. I am not consistent. It is the single most important change I can make and therefore one that I'm most resistant to. The mind and emotion rally to act as they did before. To protect what they know. To give breadth and permission to the bad habits. I'm trying to re-wire the pattern. It is difficult. It requires finding satisfaction in other places.
How? How I connect and how I create. Connect and create. Simple and powerful, straightforward and complex words.
12 Aug 2009
Techno-fabulousness
Waiting from My Robot Friend and Alison Moyet. Moyet at her most Yazoo-like since Yazoo
10 Aug 2009
The shake and shuffe game
Not as tragically gay, 80s, or pop as I feared it might be...
(1) Turn on your MP3 player or iTunes or whatever.
(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up--song title and artist
--NO editing/cheating, please. Doesn't have to be 25. Could be 20, 50, whatever.
(4) Choose some people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.
------
Who'd have guessed my iTunes is such a moody bugger, ha!
------
And on Yazoo
Yazoo, 'Yaz' were definitely on the soundtrack to my youth and this song about a friend's funeral fit my teenage black mood.
Icct Hedral Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin doing Phillip Glass. Good for moments when you need the mood to go absolutely creepy
Ceux qui n'ont rien, Patricia Kaas
'Moi je connais le bleu, des matins malheureux' and she's sexy as hell
Airplane, Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls came to UC Davis with Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey, Jr. to raise awareness for some campaign issue or other. We were all shocked at how bad his skin was. SJP wasn't yet SATC so no one really said much. The Girls sat with the students, listening to other bands play, signing autographs and hanging with whomever, which I thought was pretty cool
Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, Radiohead
A love song as only Radiohead could write
Early Autumn, Ella Fitzgerald
Tell me about it, Ella. She's definitely my go-to-girl on Sundays and it's been a really long Autumn here, already.
Some people, Belouis Some
There was a music video show on channel 36, only on Summer afternoons, that played music from the UK this was one I remember from it.
China, Tori Amos
I have way too much Tori Amos on my iTunes. I blame my need for medication on her, but I like this song.
This House, Alison Moyet
My most favouritest-ever singer. Another depressing song but one of the best. "Under these fingertips a strange body rolls and dips I close my eyes and you're here again. Later as day descends. I'll shout from my window. To anyone listening, "I'm losing"'
Overground, Siouxsie and the Banshees
I used to listen to KROQ at nights in my room with the lights out. It really bugged my father for some reason, but it introduced me to Siouxsie Sue and although I was probably clinically depressed, I remember it fondly.
Trains to Brazil, Guillemots
Most likely a iTunes song of the week, but I like the rawness of it.
Ay fond kiss, Eddie Reader
From the poem by Robert Burns. 'Had we never lov'd so kindly, Had we never lov'd so blindly! Nor never met nor never parted, We would never be so broken-hearted.'
Am I the Only One (who's ever felt that way) Maria McKee
We saw this pinup of AltCountry play at a club in Santa Cruz. When the first song applause didn't meet with her approval she shouted down the mic 'This ain't no f***ing folk band'
Promise, David Sylvian
My friend Tim turned me onto David Sylvian, former lead singer of 80s band Japan. Now, I go with him every time David plays in concert (and he gets dragged with me every time Alison Moyet plays.) His album with Nine Horses is brilliant.
Radio, Robbie Williams
Cheesy, cocky and currently out of favour, but I like him anyway
To the workers of the Rock River Valley Region, Sufjan Stevens
I love that someone's writing chamber music these days. We'll see if he manages to write an album for each of the 50 states, but I think he's a brilliant lyric writer.
Country Mile, Camera Obscura
From the music researcher in our office. Obscura, indeed.
If you leave, OMD
RIP John Hughes
Beds are Burning, Midnight Oil
I've no idea I had this song. I liked the anger in his voice
Pleasure is all mine, Bjork
From the difficult to like album Medulla even though I like Bjork immensely. I saw her once at the local butchers in Maida Vale, dressed head to toe in pink fleece
Feel Good, Inc, Gorillaz
I always feel good hearing this song. It's on my gym playlist.
Cavaleir Monge, Mariza
Mariza is arguably the world's most famous singer of Fado, a Portugese folk music born in the taverns of Portugal. Haunting and beautifully sung
Optimistic Radiohead
Radiohead? Almost never.
Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen, Kathleen Ferrier
Ah, nice surprise. I've been working my way through Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, a majestic survey of 20th C. music, and downloaded this scratchy recording of Mahler's lied because no newer ones bested Ferrier's mournful voice. " I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time, It has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead."
(1) Turn on your MP3 player or iTunes or whatever.
(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up--song title and artist
--NO editing/cheating, please. Doesn't have to be 25. Could be 20, 50, whatever.
(4) Choose some people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.
------
Who'd have guessed my iTunes is such a moody bugger, ha!
------
And on Yazoo
Yazoo, 'Yaz' were definitely on the soundtrack to my youth and this song about a friend's funeral fit my teenage black mood.
Icct Hedral Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin doing Phillip Glass. Good for moments when you need the mood to go absolutely creepy
Ceux qui n'ont rien, Patricia Kaas
'Moi je connais le bleu, des matins malheureux' and she's sexy as hell
Airplane, Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls came to UC Davis with Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey, Jr. to raise awareness for some campaign issue or other. We were all shocked at how bad his skin was. SJP wasn't yet SATC so no one really said much. The Girls sat with the students, listening to other bands play, signing autographs and hanging with whomever, which I thought was pretty cool
Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, Radiohead
A love song as only Radiohead could write
Early Autumn, Ella Fitzgerald
Tell me about it, Ella. She's definitely my go-to-girl on Sundays and it's been a really long Autumn here, already.
Some people, Belouis Some
There was a music video show on channel 36, only on Summer afternoons, that played music from the UK this was one I remember from it.
China, Tori Amos
I have way too much Tori Amos on my iTunes. I blame my need for medication on her, but I like this song.
This House, Alison Moyet
My most favouritest-ever singer. Another depressing song but one of the best. "Under these fingertips a strange body rolls and dips I close my eyes and you're here again. Later as day descends. I'll shout from my window. To anyone listening, "I'm losing"'
Overground, Siouxsie and the Banshees
I used to listen to KROQ at nights in my room with the lights out. It really bugged my father for some reason, but it introduced me to Siouxsie Sue and although I was probably clinically depressed, I remember it fondly.
Trains to Brazil, Guillemots
Most likely a iTunes song of the week, but I like the rawness of it.
Ay fond kiss, Eddie Reader
From the poem by Robert Burns. 'Had we never lov'd so kindly, Had we never lov'd so blindly! Nor never met nor never parted, We would never be so broken-hearted.'
Am I the Only One (who's ever felt that way) Maria McKee
We saw this pinup of AltCountry play at a club in Santa Cruz. When the first song applause didn't meet with her approval she shouted down the mic 'This ain't no f***ing folk band'
Promise, David Sylvian
My friend Tim turned me onto David Sylvian, former lead singer of 80s band Japan. Now, I go with him every time David plays in concert (and he gets dragged with me every time Alison Moyet plays.) His album with Nine Horses is brilliant.
Radio, Robbie Williams
Cheesy, cocky and currently out of favour, but I like him anyway
To the workers of the Rock River Valley Region, Sufjan Stevens
I love that someone's writing chamber music these days. We'll see if he manages to write an album for each of the 50 states, but I think he's a brilliant lyric writer.
Country Mile, Camera Obscura
From the music researcher in our office. Obscura, indeed.
If you leave, OMD
RIP John Hughes
Beds are Burning, Midnight Oil
I've no idea I had this song. I liked the anger in his voice
Pleasure is all mine, Bjork
From the difficult to like album Medulla even though I like Bjork immensely. I saw her once at the local butchers in Maida Vale, dressed head to toe in pink fleece
Feel Good, Inc, Gorillaz
I always feel good hearing this song. It's on my gym playlist.
Cavaleir Monge, Mariza
Mariza is arguably the world's most famous singer of Fado, a Portugese folk music born in the taverns of Portugal. Haunting and beautifully sung
Optimistic Radiohead
Radiohead? Almost never.
Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen, Kathleen Ferrier
Ah, nice surprise. I've been working my way through Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, a majestic survey of 20th C. music, and downloaded this scratchy recording of Mahler's lied because no newer ones bested Ferrier's mournful voice. " I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time, It has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead."
7 Aug 2009
27 Jul 2009
24 Jul 2009
Last updated in March? Pathetic. Apologies to anyone, if anyone, who has bothered.
A natty status and will put effort into writing something substantial over the weekend.
Reading: White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Watching: Pedro Amadovar movies from Lovefilm
Listening: Bach, the Goldenberg Variations and Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid (which I listen to over and over and over again.)
Tickets to: A Doll's House and the Proms
Preoccupied by: My personal training programme and how disrupted it's been
Working on: Creating more digestable strategies that demonstrate more brand, rather than channel, thinking
A natty status and will put effort into writing something substantial over the weekend.
Reading: White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Watching: Pedro Amadovar movies from Lovefilm
Listening: Bach, the Goldenberg Variations and Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid (which I listen to over and over and over again.)
Tickets to: A Doll's House and the Proms
Preoccupied by: My personal training programme and how disrupted it's been
Working on: Creating more digestable strategies that demonstrate more brand, rather than channel, thinking
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