warm night. lots on the brain.

Swimming didn't go so well this evening. I may even have less confidence than the last time I was in the pool. Not giving up, though. Nope.

I haven't written back to the H-bomb yet. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I'm glad L is coming back in a coupla days. I like a houseguest, yeah, but having this particular houseguest has given me not only the wisdom & perspective of somebody who's been through stuff like stuff I've been through (and knows most of the players in my recent and less recent dramas, and has been with me through that) but also a lot of thoughts on deference, and on something I've been thinking about lately when talking to vjsmom: how the influence of persistently negative people, bless their hearts though you may, drags yer ass down.

Sounds all facile and new-age, don't it. I suppose it is, sorta. A little new agey, and more than a touch facile. "Facile" is a term of contempt in rhetoric, yet it means "easy"---and easy isn't always bad, even if yes in these troubled times it's really inappropriate for us Americans who have it so easy in so many ways to want it to be easy. Even if a buncha even ifs.

I'd seen many "EASY DOES IT" bumper stickers before I found out it was kin to "ANOTHER FRIEND OF BILL W.'S" (probably from bumper sticker combos on the same bumpers). Before I knew that, I thought something like "What a cool bumper sticker." (Kinda like a road sign I used to like---tell you about that in a sec.) When I found out it was all utilitarianly focused on alcoholism, it lost its charm for me. "Oh, it's a catch-phrase crutch," I thought, dismissively, not unlike how I was hardly charitable seeing the affirmations the guy in the first floor apt I used to cat sit for had on his bathroom mirror, along with the list of prayer focuses. (His fiancee was third, below Father Somebody and his mother, I think it was.) (He sure seemed queer & in denial---I used to imagine his prayers not to be a fag.) (He also had a chart of average angles of erection as a man ages on his fridge; that I liked.)

S'anyway, don't get me wrong---the trite & facile still seem to me to merit suspicion, and won't be earning instant agreement or acceptance from my tired old knocked-about soul. But something. But something about being serious, and something about letting the optimist back out. She can take the razzing. I need her to help me take it easy. She needs me to make it easier for her.

Okay, if you're still with me after this tripe, you've earned the story of maybe my favorite road sign ever (and I'm a lover of road signs).

( Back in the late 1980s, Baltimore's Jones Falls Expressway, or JFX,... )

Sure, it's a dorky kinda thing to take pleasure in. I don't care. I own it, and do all kindsa other not very cool new-agey verbs about it and to it and around it. And it's hot tonight, yes, but I've got a breeze with the fan & my naked self & the open windows. And it's just the weather. If you're going to get, routinely, upset about the weather, then you're going to be upset routinely.

warm night. lots on the brain.

Swimming didn't go so well this evening. I may even have less confidence than the last time I was in the pool. Not giving up, though. Nope.

I haven't written back to the H-bomb yet. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I'm glad L is coming back in a coupla days. I like a houseguest, yeah, but having this particular houseguest has given me not only the wisdom & perspective of somebody who's been through stuff like stuff I've been through (and knows most of the players in my recent and less recent dramas, and has been with me through that) but also a lot of thoughts on deference, and on something I've been thinking about lately when talking to vjsmom: how the influence of persistently negative people, bless their hearts though you may, drags yer ass down.

Sounds all facile and new-age, don't it. I suppose it is, sorta. A little new agey, and more than a touch facile. "Facile" is a term of contempt in rhetoric, yet it means "easy"---and easy isn't always bad, even if yes in these troubled times it's really inappropriate for us Americans who have it so easy in so many ways to want it to be easy. Even if a buncha even ifs.

I'd seen many "EASY DOES IT" bumper stickers before I found out it was kin to "ANOTHER FRIEND OF BILL W.'S" (probably from bumper sticker combos on the same bumpers). Before I knew that, I thought something like "What a cool bumper sticker." (Kinda like a road sign I used to like---tell you about that in a sec.) When I found out it was all utilitarianly focused on alcoholism, it lost its charm for me. "Oh, it's a catch-phrase crutch," I thought, dismissively, not unlike how I was hardly charitable seeing the affirmations the guy in the first floor apt I used to cat sit for had on his bathroom mirror, along with the list of prayer focuses. (His fiancee was third, below Father Somebody and his mother, I think it was.) (He sure seemed queer & in denial---I used to imagine his prayers not to be a fag.) (He also had a chart of average angles of erection as a man ages on his fridge; that I liked.)

S'anyway, don't get me wrong---the trite & facile still seem to me to merit suspicion, and won't be earning instant agreement or acceptance from my tired old knocked-about soul. But something. But something about being serious, and something about letting the optimist back out. She can take the razzing. I need her to help me take it easy. She needs me to make it easier for her.

Okay, if you're still with me after this tripe, you've earned the story of maybe my favorite road sign ever (and I'm a lover of road signs).

( Back in the late 1980s, Baltimore's Jones Falls Expressway, or JFX,... )

Sure, it's a dorky kinda thing to take pleasure in. I don't care. I own it, and do all kindsa other not very cool new-agey verbs about it and to it and around it. And it's hot tonight, yes, but I've got a breeze with the fan & my naked self & the open windows. And it's just the weather. If you're going to get, routinely, upset about the weather, then you're going to be upset routinely.