🙂 the archive format for my blog looks pretty nice.  iiiiiiiiiiiiiii think.

http://millionindentationsofhappiness.tumblr.com/archive

i am craving a alcoholic  beverage.  this does not mean that i am an alcoholic.  far from it.  in fact i am quite the tea-tootler.  and when i say i am craving an alcoholic beverage, i am pretty sure it is the taste… like in a gin and tonic or margarita.  but i guess i do like the taste of the alcohol because virgin versions of these drinks just do not taste the same.  and it is not so much the tipsy feeling that i am going for as it is the taste and the way my muscles (the stubborn ones in my shoulders) relax.  no more burdens on those shoulders… and if i was to be honest, i suppose the soft buzz that comes with it is sort of nice — that warm and fuzzy feeling that consumes every sense.  it’s like chocolate.

not to worry… i have the warm and fuzzy feeling when i do not drink as well.  that one is like ice cream.  just as dreamy, but leaving me more alert.

just a few more hours to go. 

and then it’s miller time. 

figuratively speaking.

!

🙂

i’ve been seeing the true colors of friends lately.  some of it has hurt, but most of it has been reassuring, heartwarming and beyond pleasing.  i have this chameleon like ability to get along with everyone, while trying not to compromise myself.  i do pretty ok at it.  but a special shout of gratitude goes to my true blue friends [i still have to figure out why it is called true ‘blue’ friends; it should be yellow for sunshine and happiness] who always have a shoulder for me to lean on, and an ear (or 2) to listen with.  they are total sock rockers.

so i was was thinking about this tumblr blog i have resurrected.  it’s really a megalomaniac-istic diary, carefully edited, a place where i would never put the real, intimate, more… human… details of my life’s struggles, embarrassments, questions and  postulations to the great unknown.  at least not unless they were comical. with one follower, knowing that it is ‘out there’ automatically implies that it is being written for the public domain.  i guess that’s why it’s called a blog or a journal, and not a diary.

so here is my first attempt at being the ugly human.

i wonder if i would have blogged if blogging was around when i was younger.  in 11th grade, we had a psychologist come to our high school and during E block, every one of us had to draw a picture of ourselves.  we had no idea what the pictures were for, but found out a week later that they were being studied in order to get a quick psychological snapshot of each student.  i never drew my picture.  i had asked the really nice exchange student from greece, natalie, to draw mine for me because i thought i wasn’t good enough to draw it.  that alone spoke volumes.  and the school and psychologist never knew.

i spent the first half, actually the first two-thirds of my life trying to remain unseen by the public yet seen in my home.  i succeeded in the first, failed in the latter.  ultimately, i mastered the art of becoming invisible.  i didn’t really like it, but it was safe.

time and choices have changed me so that, although i sometimes go through periods of feeling invisible, i finally want to be seen.  in fact, now i have become needy for occasional attention with this blog as my almost desperate plea for visibility — for anyone who is remotely interested in tumbling upon my words and pictures and borrowed quotes and other preferences that begin to define me.

i want you to know me.  laugh with me. cry with me.  ponder with me. smile with me.  the painful introvert is now a borderline extrovert and i like it.

but at the end of the day regardless of whether someone has read this or not, i have made the now easy effort of being kind to a stranger; invited conversation with the lady at the pediatric dentist’s office; had lunch with a good friend; helped my neighbor get the generator into the back of his car; scratched my dog’s rump until i thought he’d pass out with joy; sang in the car with kelly and jennifer after picking them up from art camp; stubbed my toe on the driveway while barefoot getting the mail; i am happy.

how strange that it is so easy for people to talk in cars.  it must have something to do with the enforced temporary proximity or, with the proportion of space, or perhaps the sealed, cushioned interior silence which must resemble in some way, the insulated room of a group therapy of sorts.  it is as though the automobile were a specially designed glass talking machine engineered for human intimacy.  and, in a car the need to watch the road diverts and relieves the passengers, giving to their conversation an unexpected flowing disinterestedness.

the intensity of the conversation is usually proportional to the number of times getting lost while driving.  missing exits, taking the wrong route and paying extra at unneeded tolls indicates an especially intimate conversation where being an hour late (for what should have been a four hour drive) is gladly welcomed.

whether 20 minutes of 5 hours, i’ve had some of my best conversations in the car.

most of us are desperate for raw experience.  we work in offices, dealing with intangibles; we go to lunch and talk to other people surrounded by intangibles.  no one actually makes anything anymore, and our so-called experiences are about climbing mt. Kilimanjaro on our 2 week vacations of snapping a picture of the dalai lama in central park.  but we’re so powerfully aware of all the stuff we’re missing.  it creates this frustration, this craving to get out of ourselves.  tv tries to satisfy that, books, movies — they try, but they’re all so lame—so meditated.  they’re just not real enough.

today, i am tired of this shit.