Seclusion: A Continually Elusive Desire

The noise bothers me still. These thin walls don't allow for much silence. The house seems made for eavesdropping. I need time and more time to read. I need to concentrate more. I would like to focus. I listen to music or Youtube videos to drown out the noises here. My father working from home, taking calls, doing his job from his basement. He gets offended, or lonely I guess, if you don't say something to him everyday. He says I'm withdrawing into myself and becoming distant. The closer truth is that I like being by myself more than around him at times. Withdrawing when conflict looms is not a weakness but a strength.

The coughs of these people, these smokers, still reach my ears. I'm not like them in that I don't smoke, or that I don't know my place. They have jobs and wives and ex-wives, things to do with their days to make ends meet. I'm just here for now, trying to figure out what I want to do. Sometimes it seems these people never have days off. My father is home a lot, but he complains that his job is so hard. I realize he may always be on call, but how hard can a job be that can be done from the garage of his own home?

He doesn't always stay here, but there are days he does. Days I'm off from school, I wish that no one were here. I just want a day to myself. I want a day to be able to think without all their voices and coughs and marital problems and grandkids. Should I have kids now? "Why aren't you married?," someone once asked me. I haven't met anyone willing to marry me who I would rather not just be alone than with them?

Talking still my father. He's solving problems from the basement. Good work if you can get it, I guess. Should I go to graduate school like I want or get a job like some people are telling me to do? The phone is charged. My remedial class phone is nice to stay in touch with people, though there are some I wish didn't have the number. I love texting. It seems so simple and is a nice way to stay in touch without having to talk on the phone. Talking is okay, but texting seems so simple.

Thank goodness, it sounds like a car is starting. Two are here still, but one less soon it seems.

...
Some have left now or are quiet. Another boarder remains: the cougher. He awakes and coughs. Cursing and mumbling to himself, he seems to hold conversations with people who aren't there. "Why doesn't he f-ing answer his phone?," he seems to say to no one in particular. Cursing and mumbling still, he trudges about the house, making more noise. I've manage to finish a bit of a book.

Reflections of Desired Solitude (Blog)

 I sit here on the couch, studying for school, just having listened to her confess, hearing the boarder in the other room, sounding like he's dying, coughing his head off. I can't escape the sounds of other people living here. I come in my room, and I can almost hear everything my Dad and his other friend and boarder are saying. I realize I have it good, but I'd like some solitude.

My dad plans his life financially around his friends living here. He buys as many lottery tickets as he wants. Buys whatever else he wants, because he has extra money, because the other people who live here pay most of his bills. Sure, they are slaves to his emotional will and are pretty much obligated to hang out with him; I kind of think that's why he keeps them around. My dad doesn't keep friends; they don't put up with the way he treats them unless they have to. He expects his friends to be a certain way. You want to tell him that nobody's perfect including himself and to get over it.

I know my friends aren't perfect. They don't approve of everything I do, or don't do; don't approve of the women I have crushes on or pine over. There aren't really that many of them, no matter what you say. Still, now, at 11pm I hear the sounds of someone moving in the other room. I think I'd just like to live on my own a while, or with people I chose to, anyway. This being stuck with a crew of my dad's cronies is becoming tiresome.

My dad lets me live here, pays for things for me, too, I realize. I just need a place that I can make a life that doesn't involve him as much. It's okay for him to be in my life, but I'm surrounded by him, by his friends, by the people he lets leach off him. The cougher I mention is not that bad; I'd almost say he was being taken advantage of more than he was a user. He pays way too much rent to live in a converted den. That's his business, though he does keep it like a pig sty. I went in there before, and there was literally a pile of trash on the bed. No exaggeration: a pile of actual trash on the bed. And his grooming habits leave something to be desired. Once or twice a week he showers, if we're lucky. 

Now the rain falls outside, hitting the window, and I start to get a little peace it seems. I've slept a lot int the middle of the day, and I may not sleep tonight. Snacking on individual packets of cookies, Pringles, Hawaiian Punch bottles. It's not a bad life I know, but I want more. I want to have a car and drive and take a girl to the movies, or better yet a bookstore or museum, not just shenanigans in the back of her friend's car. (Fun though that was.) 

I want to have my own place and be able to invite people over without having to worry about one of the boarders here walking around without a shirt on in just his boxers, chatting up the woman who's spending the night. Or having the cougher drool openly to see an attractive women half his age in the house. I want to be able to entertain on a Saturday night, or have the Super Bowl at my house and not worry about everyone here smoking and not being able to invite friends over who don't. 

Sitting here just short of midnight, reading literary theory. This is what I signed up for, and it's delightful. I really do think I want to go to graduate school. It's a bad reason if it's just because I like school, but maybe it will further my career. Some people say it won't, but how can it hurt. I just need to get the money together and apply and get the right tests taken. I know I'm smart enough and hard-working enough to do it.

Drinking Dr. Peppers, too, in vast quantities, to stay awake, and because they taste good. One of my first girlfriends liked them, too. She still talks to me, sweet girl that she is, sends me a text of "Happy New year" every year, when I have a phone. 

Myself Revisited (Poem)

Inspired by and while listening to Heart's "Alone."

I hear the ticking of the clock
I’m writing a poem for you in the dark

I wonder what you’re thinking about tonight
Don’t want to text you on the telephone.

And my life’s going by so slow

I hope it doesn’t end before I know myself.

‘Til now, I always got by being detached from myself.

I never really thought until I met you.

And now it chills me to the bone.

How do I reconcile my abstract concept of you with the reality?

You don’t know how long I have wished

That someone would think I was a decent and cool person (And then you did).

You don’t know how long I have waited

For someone who would listen to my song (It was probably an Elvis song).

But the secret is still my own (I don’t know what I’m doing.)
And my concept of you is still off the mark.

‘Til now I always got by thinking about myself as unworthy

I never really thought until you made me.

And now it chills me to the bone.

How do my thoughts of you reconvene into a semblance of realistic peace I once held for you?

A Good Day Disguised

On a bad day, on a really bad day

You may wish that it had never happened.

You may lament, you may regret.

"I wish this day had never happened;

I wish I hadn't said that."

Speaking in anger

Told him what you really think, not caring how much it would hurt him.

Messing up your friends' day, when you told him and her you were having a bad day

Bringing them down with you, the ones you told of your pain.

A horrible spiral of bad that wouldn't seem to end.

Also, pretending the world would end, if not just for fun.

Trying to cheer yourself up

Sending love her way.

Pretending you didn't mean what you said

When freed of the fear of caring what she thought

When really you meant it in every case.

At some points that day, it felt the sky was falling and things seemed grim,

But then you think of some good things that happened that day

Reconciliations long time coming

The emotions expressed at the end of the world.

Being wild and unruly is never a bad thing.

The laughs you had on the day you wish never happened

Would disappear, too, if those tears were gone.

You gave in to anger, and not a little, too,

But persevered and banished its influence.

Time it seems has healed the wound a bit

And morning brings the wisdom that even bad days can be good ones.

Speaking one's mind effectively

I will offer some thoughts here about speaking my mind, as it seems that's what you do when you write. I'm taking rhetorical theory this semester in school. It seems to be linked to seduction, in the sense that you are trying to change someone's mind, or alter their thinking, or maybe more specifically, align their own thought pattern s to match your own vibrations. I've read the book The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene and I've even read Neil Strauss' The Game by the Rolling Stone writer turned pick-up artist. I see a lot of rhetoric in their writing even. I took to Green's work more because he uses literary examples. (I've even read Tucker Max's book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Max seems pretty classless in his dealings with the opposite sex to me, but he is a good writer. I enjoyed his style at least. There were times when I read it that I didn't really like him, but I kept reading it. I'm digressing...)

The point I want to make about rhetoric involves speaking your mind. Our professor had a discussion one lecture about speaking your mind. She said that there are some people who watch everything they say, because they are concerned about what other people will think of them. As has been the case many times in the semester, I felt like she was speaking directly to me. (The other time was when she said that there are people who get by as English majors by being good writers and tricking a professor into thinking you know what you are writing about.) I am very much that person she described who was concerned about what everyone thinks, or at least I was.

In my personal dealing with people, I tend to over-think everything. I am that guy who is about to send you a message on Facebook, but looks it over before he sends it. Did I spell everything right? Would this joke offend you? How will you interpret that the wrong way? Will you like me less for expressing an opinion that you do not share? The truth of this equation is that people tend to like those individuals who speak their mind better than the ones who watch everything they say. Sure, you don't want to offend everyone, or anyone I suppose, if you can avoid it. But people are going to get offended. People are going to disagree with you. If a person likes you and agrees with you because you watch everything you say, is that person really your friend?

I have tried an experiment over the last few weeks on the recommendation of a friend. She advised me to speak my mind without filters to at least one person that week. I've tried it and I've tried it a few times more as the weeks have gone by. I've yet to have someone tell me they were offended by the specific times that I consciously tried to do this. I was very afraid every time I acted without filters, but it has become easier over time. And I feel so much better.

Speaking my mind to a few select people has been freeing in many ways. (This is not meant in the way of 'telling someone off' at all, only in expressing general opinions.) I like to think that I am an honest person, but maybe I was being more deceptive than I thought that I was being. Speech, and the power of speech, is most effective when it is not filtered. Certainly there are ways to manipulate it, there are ways to mold it, adapt it, and shape it to your purposes, but if you are afraid to say something, you limit yourself and your effectiveness to convince someone to think like you are thinking.

To use an example from popular culture, I give you Raj from Big Bang Theory. If you're not familiar with the television show, Raj has trouble speaking to beautiful women unless he is intoxicated, to the point that he can't say anything to one unless he is drunk. This is mainly because his filters are down when he's drinking. Now I have sent a drunken message or two before in my time. Though mine are never rude, I can come across as a little more forward than I would be if I had not had a few drinks. Why can we not choose to act more in touch with how we really feel without the influence of alcohol? Why am I more willing to tell you that you are one of the coolest women I've ever met when I haven't had five glasses of wine? Raj and I both need to tap into that primal feeling of speaking our minds without resorting to an altered state of consciousness. I feel I can carry a conversation with a beautiful woman without turning into a babbling, stuttering mass of sweaty insecurity (most of the time), but I would strive for a more forward demeanor in specific interactions that has been lacking in my conversations in the past.

This very blog was an attempt to speak my mind. I would like to say I don't care if I've offended anyone, but I would be lying. Take it as it is, friends, and practice speaking your mind, too.

Coat of Letting Go, A Jacket for Freedom (Poem)

I once had a coat, a hoodless hoodie of sorts.

I let her wear it because it was cold.

She gladly accepted because it was cold; I could put up with the cold better than her

Though she could probably put up with life better than me.

She gave it back afterwards and thanked me for my kindness.

I loved her and held on too long.

But how do we define these things?

What's too long and what's not long enough?

When I wanted to think of her, I simply wore the coat

And I wore it often. It became my go-to jacket of choice.

When things didn't work out at first those many years ago

But only a year before I let her wear the coat, or less even,

I became lost and wanted to die.

That moment of losing the will to live was more about me than her

And it took me a long time, or so it seemed then, to learn how to want to live for me.

It's been so long since then, since that afternoon when I wanted to end it all.

Her wearing the coat seemed a beacon in the night to my young self

I was only 17 then, so long ago it seems,

A lifetime and yesterday at the same time.

I've been there since, the place of wanting to die, though not as bad, if one can measure these things,

And not for as long, or as intense or as close as I was to it then,

The pain that I felt would surface in fits, though now it's a dull memory,

A nostalgic bad memory that seems so silly now.

She was so kind and I had read her poetry; I was lost to her then.

The lines of pain and love that washed over me completely,

Her heart poured out, as if only to me, her words a testament to young love and pain,

A recipe that was new to me then and a loving memory now.

But the coat when I wore it was a memory of her, a tangible link to the past and her life with me.

The coat had become tattered and stained in places that wouldn't wash out.

I wore it still because I couldn't let go.

I sat thinking about her again and wearing the coat.

Could it have only been four or five years since I'd seen her? It didn't seem like it then.

This all seems so silly now; it was just a coat and her just a girl.

What did it matter that she had worn it and I might never see her again?

Even now, my friends advise me that I hang on too long to things that need to be let go.

But I sat there with that coat on and looked at the blackened sleeves,

The bit of gum that wouldn't come out, the tears here and there that likely couldn't be fixed,

And I took the coat off and held it thinking of her.

Then I walked to a nearby trash can and put it inside.

I was in a public place and it seemed it wasn't quite cold enough to wear a jacket anyway.

I still like wearing jackets, coats, and hoodies, and take any occasion at all to do so,

But I thought about her a little less after that coat was disposed of and in a trash can.

Tempered Passionate Logic (Poem)

Why does love always feel like a battlefield?

To be fair, it doesn't always feel like that.

Sometimes it goes right, but often it feels I do it wrong.

Should it be easy? Should I have to fight it? Fight for it?

I make mistakes, I've made mistakes, I'm making mistakes

Every once in a while, I feel right, it felt right, I'm feeling good.

Are those moments worth the times when it doesn't feel right?

Are you even aware of what you made me feel?

But that's not fair, because you didn't really do anything

Except be you.

And it doesn't matter that you don't believe me

It doesn't matter that I was believed to be disingenuous

I asked for this battle, because apparently I don't like anything to be simple

Difficult is good; difficult is safe   Because if I fail, it's not my fault

At least not entirely.

Where's the challenge in accomplishing the possible?


I listen to that song and it reminds me of you

I remember how we laughed, or how I cried

When I realized I had hurt you.

To realize I could do that was a realization I didn't like, I didn't want.

I wanted to forget I could do that or how to do that, but maybe not,

Because then I would know how to not do it, right?

I cut myself off from that feeling and couldn't believe I could be that person,

but it seems obvious now that I was.

And how wrong I was; and how it didn't matter if you had hurt me, too, my justification for it,

My reason for being so mean, when I never wanted to be, though I was hurt.

It seems I was mean right back, though spite is never solved or answered by more of the same.

I am sorry, but it doesn't matter: the world has moved on and so have we.

 I can resolve to be a better person going forward and not lash out with angry words again.

I can promise to act with honor (and honor myself, too), act with patience,

and communicate with reasonable reason tempered with a modicum of passion,

While still burning when I need to, want to, have to...

And maybe next time the process will go a little smoother.