Adventure

eHarmony, with its "guided communication" option, provides all sorts of low-commitment, pre-defined ways to interact in order to shepherd its users through the initial "getting-to-know-you" stage.

The first stage involves multiple choice questions and answers. A long list of possible questions are provided and the "questioner" can pick 5 from that list to forward along to his/her "match."

One of those questions is the following:

Your idea of adventure is:

A) whitewater rafting
B) karaoke singing
C) trying a different route to work
D) ordering a dish you've never tried before
E) *write in own answer*

I understand the intent behind this question, and I understand what the different answers *might* reveal about a person. And while "adventure" can be infused into any activity, no matter how small or trivial, the full concept and value of adventure is so big and frightening and compelling and fierce that I dislike seeing it trivialized.

Being adventurous is different from being curious or flexible and open to change. Curiosity and flexibility are highly important and attractive traits, and are important elements of (or even prerequisites for) being adventurous, but they should not be viewed as equivalent to it.

Adventure involves risk; it invites change.

True adventure, requires daring.

That can be expressed in a myriad of ways: starting a relationship; trying one more time, after a history of failure, to learn something new; ending a relationship; leaving behind a familiar life to explore the unknown; staying in a life and making it your own...

I had a conversation last night about the desire to have a completely new start, to have an ADVENTURE.

It is a topic of conversation near and dear to me.

Conventional wisdom makes a distinction between running AWAY FROM and running TO different situations, and I "get" that there might be a sub-sect of people who carry around their unhappiness and discontent so much so that they can never escape it, so that a change in venue or environment can't change their fundamental outlook on life.

I've already quoted Eudora Welty in a previous post: "...the most serious daring starts from within." Adventure doesn't necessarily involve picking up and leaving for someplace new. It can be embodied in firmly digging into an existing life.

But the "high" in going someplace new is addictive.

So what happens when you always have one foot out the door, always carrying around the knowledge that any day now, you could LEAVE?

I suppose that's the opposite of adventure. Because risk and daring must be accompanied by something else: the commitment to follow through. Otherwise, "adventure" does indeed become diminished to little more than ordering something new off the menu.

Celibacy Is Looking Better And Better

I need to share.

The following is a sampling of the emails I have received while on match.com, in all their insane, ungrammatical, inappropriately punctuated, misspelled, unedited glory. The italicized comments in parentheses are mine.

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41-year-old man

Minneapolis, MN, US

what if I agree to move??? ;-)
dont be chicken! ;-)

(I have nothing to say to this. I mean really. WTF.)

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43-year-old man

New York, NY US

I make money to support woman. I will marry you if that is good to.

(He had the right idea of looking online. He's just on the wrong website.)

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41-year-old man
Hoboken, NJ, US

I read your profile, saw your picture and immediately fell into this DEEP trance where my hands began automatically typing this message to you......it was a serious out of body experience...

so now its up to you...write me back and jolt me out of this trance or you'll have to live with the knowledge that there's some poor guy somewhere out in cyberspace stuck in front of his laptop in a deep trance...and its all YOUR fault :)

(I do NOT want to know what this guy's hands are doing.)

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39-year-old man
Chicago, IL, US

short hair suits you well, are you wearing it short these days?
do you ever find yourself in chicago?
i have a tatoo, love to skinny dip and specialize in sarcasm.
with someone as pretty as you a public display of affection would be my pleasure.

(I've left out the picture, but you can use your imagination. This is not someone you would want to see naked. As for PDAs? *shudder*)

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28-year-old man

Long Beach, NY, US

hey cuty. Im an amater boxer. We have lots in common.

(Almost wrote back to him. Hey, he was cute in that youthful firm fresh kind of way.)

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39-year-old man
Milwaukee, WI, US

hi, Goddess.im a business man,currently in NY.You have a lovely profile here and i would love to get to know you..thats of course if you dont mind.i will be in NY for 3 weeks and definitely i hope at the end of my visit i will take a Goddess home with me..smiles..hope to hear back from you soon

(Another guy who is on the wrong website.)

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34-year-old man
New York, NY, US

Caro Ciao

Firstly, I like your photo! You've a warm, open smile- that I think renders many defenseless... ( creates desire in men! And fills your mail box ;^)

(OK. Now this guy (according to his profile pictures at least) is gorgeous in that thighs-like-tree-trunks, biceps-the-size-of-my-head, swimmers' shoulders, 6'3", dark-haired, green-eyed, Italian, who-cares-if-he-can't-really-write-or-speak-intelligibly kind of way. Will reply to him ASAP.)

A Literary Meme

The instructions: Bold the ones you’ve read, "asterisk" the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. Meme via MomVee.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
*Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
*Don Quixote
*Moby Dick
Madame Bovary
*The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
*A Tale of Two Cities
*The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
*The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
*Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked
*The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
*Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
*The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
*Oliver Twist
*Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
*The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
*Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-5
*The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
*Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
*The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
*The Aeneid (Tried to work my through this in Latin. It didn't work so well.)
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
*David Copperfield

I have always had a problem with James Joyce. It started when JN and I were 13 and 11 respectively and tried to read Finnegans Wake.

We got stuck on the first paragraph:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

We concluded that it was written in a different language altogether - a language that somewhat sounds like English, but isn't.

I have since come to believe that JN and I hit the nail on the head.

Mother's Day and Psst... A Secret

Reminded of the significance of today by a plethora of spam email, I called my mother this morning and we had a nice long chat.

And this afternoon, I received the following text message from Gorgeous Hunk O'Man (JF):

Happy Mother's Day, ex-wife! I know you gave our baby away to the Scientologists, but still. I'm sure it loves you wherever it is!

I wrote in reply:

We know EXACTLY where our kid is. Haven't you ever wondered why Tom-Kat's baby, Suri, looks vaguely Asian, and why Katie was only pregnant for like, a week?!?

Insomnia and Ovulation

According to my sitemeter, numerous people have been stumbling upon my blog as they google search: "Insomnia and ovulation."

Yes, I did write a post about ovulation, but that's neither here nor there.

But apparently, there is indeed a link between hormonal activity and insomnia. Women who are menstruating might sleep less. Those ovulating, might sleep more.

This seems counter productive, if you ask me.

A Poll

It makes sense that one is more aware of nationality (one's own and that of others) when traveling.

And while getting to know other cities, other countries, and other people ultimately reveals basic commonalities shared by all people and cultures, it also becomes comically easy to engage in broad generalizations vis-a-vis the differences.

Overheard in Public in Foreign Countries:

"And the best part: she's Dutch!"
"Oh don't be ridiculous - that's the American side of you speaking."
"You are too smart for your country."
"She's Italian. And you know what THAT means."
"I suppose you want to prepare meat outdoors in your backyard?"
"You speak English remarkably well for an American."
"She's German, but she's spent a lot of time in Italy, so her shoes are fabulous."
"This year, let's just go to the Australian Ball. We can skip the others."
"Is he gay, or just British?"

I spoke to MMdvi (a fabulous Brit living in Beijing) this morning and she evinced absolutely no surprise that I am still on my man fast:

I've had sex with Americans, and that's why I now only date European men. If you've only ever shagged American men, it's no wonder you've lost all interest. Let's find you a Brit. Or maybe even an Italian or South African.

This has sparked another creative project: a comparative study of sexual skill across different nationalities.

Since collecting the first hand data for such a study might be too time consuming (not to mention messy), I will poll my friends. So friends, speak up.

Blame It On The Spring

I blame Spring. For what, you ask?

I've "reactivated" my online dating accounts.

But this is not a good thing. I've already posted about the problem with such "goal based" dating endeavors: the inherent expectations. I'm not actually ready to be in a relationship, as evidenced by the fact that I still cringe at the word "penis." Although, the other day when I was mindlessly surfing online, I stumbled on a tattoo art site. I admired a tattoo of a lotus and an "Om" symbol that was tattooed on the back of some celebrity's neck, and then came across a picture of a naked man with a tattoo that ran from his lower abs down one thigh. I immediately flinched and looked away, but then I looked back and studied the picture and tilted my head to one side like a dog hearing a high pitched noise for the first time and said to myself, "Huh. I remember those. Don't remember what they're good for, but... huh." Keep in mind that it wasn't a particularly exceptional specimen - the man or the penis - but, whatever.

And then I immediately emailed the picture to AM since I know she's probably forgotten what they look like as well.

I talked to Gorgeous Hunk 'O Man (JF) this morning and shared this with him. It's really too bad that he lives so far away. Because with him, I actually have the relationship (minus the geographic undesirability) that I want with a man: someone brilliant and gorgeous with whom I can engage in an orgy of mutual appreciation for our respective physical and intangible qualities, AND he has no interest in showing me his penis.

He did (gently) tell me that I should meet someone with whom sex isn't a nausea-inspiring prospect.

Yeah yeah yeah.

I think the next time I feel that I need to be reminded of what a penis looks like, I'll just make JF email me a picture of his. I know AM would appreciate that too.

Gaming It

MG forwarded me an article which pissed me off. Not because I didn't love it (I did) but because I wished I had written about the topic first.

The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox and how economics and game theory explain the shortage of available, appealing men, by Mark Gimein.

In countless conversations (with others and with myself), I have wondered why I know SO many attractive, intelligent, funny, successful, eligible single women, while the commensurately eligible male counterparts seemed to be elusively rare - so rare that rather than talk about them as a group, I end up trying to NAME them, and it always ends up being a distressingly short list. I've wondered at this phenomena both as a married woman, and as a newly single woman. And not just in NYC. I've thought this in DC, Beijing, Hong Kong.

While I've wondered whether this was an objectively real and measurable "truth", I've tried to explain it in different ways. Remember that episode of Seinfeld where George discovers that club where all the gorgeous models hang out? I've tried to explain it by pointing to networks. The network of my friends (and all their respective networks) are mostly comprised of "similar" people. And in our cases, that means women with whom we feel some sort of connection and solidarity and similarity. So perhaps it's as simple as not yet tapping into the appropriate network of attractive, smart, funny, accomplished single men?

From a sheer physical attractiveness standpoint, I have also tried to explain it by pointing to the simple fact that women have an easier time improving upon nature. Makeup, clothes, and hair can all be altered to accentuate the positive. But these are tools less easily leveraged by men.

But the first few sentences of Gimein's article lay waste to all my theories (hopes?) that perhaps this phenomena is NOT real, and only perceived to be real:

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"It is a truth universally acknowledged that the available, sociable, and genuinely attractive man is a character highly in demand in social settings. ... The shortage of appealing men is a century-plus-old commonplace of the society melodrama...The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn't there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women? Actually, no."

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His explanation for this numerical imbalance rests on the recognition that in a marriage proposal, it's the woman who chooses. Yes, traditionally, it's the man who asks the question, but it's the woman who chooses to be asked and then chooses again to say yes or no. But the primary "choice" here, is the woman's choice to receive the question in the first place. After all, it's fairly rare that a man asks and the woman says "no." (I'm eliminating from this discussion those completely random proposals which come out of the blue - because I mean really, those are just weird.)

Over-simplified, yes, but I accept this. Whether simply by the virtue of staying in a dating relationship, working or contributing to the work of making the relationship satisfying, or actively dropping hints, promises, threats, ultimatums, there is a choice demonstrated - the choice to receive a proposal if/when it is offered - making women far less passive in this scenario than it might, at the most superficial level, appear.

Gimein likens this search of marriage partners to an auction. (And this is where we get to the modified game theory that his subtitle promises us.)

He says that in this "auction," there are women who are more confident of their prospects (because of looks, social ability, or any other reason). He refers to this group as "strong bidders." Now, one would think that the "strong bidders" would consistently win in this auction paradigm. But apparently, according to game theory, it's the "weak bidders" who more often win, because they bid more aggressively as compared to the "strong bidders" who hold out and wait for the "perfect" prospect.

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This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders."

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Obviously, this is an almost egregious over-generalization and over-simplification: I know many "strong bidders" who are/were also aggressive bidders in this paradigm. But I only have to take stock of my many, fabulous, "strong bidder" single female friends to think that perhaps there might also be something to it.

My conclusions?

On one hand, this tells me I should break my man-fast damn soon and get out there and start aggressively bidding, 'cause the pickings are only going to get leaner.

But on the other hand, in Gimein's own words: Game theory deals with how best to win the prize, but it works only when you can decide what's worth winning.

So maybe there's another element at play here. Maybe my "strong bidder" friends who have been happily married for years share an additional trait - an ability to see through their plentiful potential options to recognize a prize worth winning when he's standing right before them, flaws and all.

Going Potty

I have soil embedded beneath my fingernails.

I received my 2-3 year old Dwarf Meyer Lemon tree, my mini herb garden kit (cilantro, parsley and chives) and assorted pots and potting soil.

The lemon tree came in a narrow box which was disturbing in its narrowness, but when I opened it up, out emerged a lovely little tree. It arrived unpotted, with the bare root ball packed in moist wood shavings which I have duly mixed in with the potting soil. I purchased it from Four Winds Growers in CA. According to my google research, they have excellent customer service. So I put it to the test by sending them inane emails like: "So, I probably shouldn't ash my cigarette into it?" To which they replied, "Depending on the level of ash (if you do it once or twice accidentally), it probably won't hurt. But as a general rule, no, you probably shouldn't." This has earned them my undying loyalty.

I have placed my African Violet plant next to it. I am hoping the African Violet can provide some reassurance that life is indeed possible under my care.

I imagine their conversation to go something like this:

Myer Lemon Tree: Is she for real?
African Violet: It's really not so bad. She grows on you.
Myer Lemon Tree: I don't know... this just doesn't seem right.
African Violet: Dude, I get it. But look at it this way, I'm still alive. Check out my flowers.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

Is it possible to talk about sex when you don't remember it?

Sort of.

AM was in town last night so we met for wine and paninis at my favorite wine bar in NYC (Bar Veloce in Chelsea, in case anyone is interested).

After a couple glasses of wine on empty stomachs, we were using our outdoor voices to discuss our celibacy.

AM came up to NYC after a quick trip to DC to visit some friends. She had told our mutual friend, SS, about our respective man fasts and SS's response to her was: "WTF? How can ho's like the two of you be celibate?!? You with your double D's and CK with her "I can throw both legs over my head" thing?!?"

Obviously, the man fasts are self imposed. It's just not hard for women to find willing sex partners if they are motivated to do so. But we've been just too busy, too focused on other things, too non-motivated.

And yet, it's still an interesting situation worthy of loud discussion in a quiet wine bar.

It's one thing to say, "I haven't gotten any in fill-in-the-blank-period of time" if that fill-in-the-blank time period is measured in days, or weeks, or even months. But when the easiest way to say it is: "Not since fill-in-the-blank-YEAR," that becomes disturbing.

Since neither of us could remember sex well enough to discuss the act in any detail, we discussed the potential pitfalls we might experience when we finally do break our fasts.

Do we 'fess up to the long fast? Because that could be weird. It begs the question of WHY. Were we sick? Do we have all the appropriate girly bits and pieces? Are they all in the right place? Do we have a litter of children stashed away somewhere? Were we previously men and had to take that time off to get our sex change surgeries? Or do we go the opposite route and pretend that we just had sex a few hours ago with someone else?

We decided that it might be best to just avoid the topic altogether.

I told AM about my efforts in writing sex scenes for my epic and decidedly non sexy trashy novel. I had read a book categorizing different kinds of sex scenes. There's the "my first time" sex scene, married sex, angry sex, and even a category for grateful sex.

That last one caused us to gasp in horror. What if it's OBVIOUS to the breaker-of-the-fast that a significant fast was broken? What if we are just a little too "enthusiastic" and afterwards, he asks, "it's been a while for you, huh?"

I called Gorgeous Hunk O' Man, JF, when I got home and told him our concerns. After he finished laughing, he suggested that we say in response, "Not at all. I'm ALWAYS like that." According to JF, that would be reason enough for the guys to keep us around, at least for a few more bouts. Cool. Now THAT'S what I call turning lemons into lemonade.

But AM and I did spend some time wistfully remembering the old days, when we were carefree and sexually active. One lovely, warm, Sunday afternoon, SS (Black), me (Asian), and AM (Blonde - yes, "Blonde" is a valid ethnic identifier) were enjoying the weather and drinks at our favorite waterfront bar. A man approached our table and said, "I don't want to disturb you, I just wanted to let you lovely ladies know that if I were three different men, I'd want to sit down at this table three different times."

This was also useful in bars. The bartender (if a straight man) would inevitably like one of us enough so that all three of us could drink at heavily subsidized rates.

Ah, the good old days.

Endangered Species

I just read about the Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled.

Older goats, however, are more adept at leaning against a barn or fence so they don't appear to have just fallen over and died.

Still, this seems to be a poorly thought out survival mechanism.

"Are You Listening To A Word I Say?!?"

I've never read the book, The Secret, but since you can't turn around without seeing/hearing some sort of reference to it, I feel that I might as well have. (I will admit that I watched a 15 minute abridged "film" version of it on cable one night.)

According to the website:

The Secret reveals the most powerful law in the universe. The knowledge of this law has run like a golden thread through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages and saviors in the world's history, and through the lives of all truly great men and women. All that they have ever accomplished or attained has been done in full accordance with this most powerful law...

The Secret explains with simplicity the law that is governing all lives, and offers the knowledge of how to create - intentionally and effortlessly - a joyful life. This is the secret to everything - the secret to unlimited happiness, love, health and prosperity.

This is the secret to life.

Essentially, it boils down to the power of positive thinking.

But you have to be highly SPECIFIC about what it is you want. So, according to The Secret, if you want a new car, you should imagine THAT SPECIFIC CAR. You should sit in a chair, pretend you are in that specific car, imagine what it smells like, pretend you have your hand on the gear shift, imagine the dials on the dashboard, if it's a Mercedes you want, feel the heavier pressure you need to apply to the gas pedal.

The "secret" is that the universe wants to shower you with good fortune, you only have to ask specifically for it, and be ready to receive it. (My rational, non mystical, takeaway is that perhaps people make different choices when guided by "positive thinking," but I won't go into that in this post.)
Positive specificity is the key here.

The film featured an example of a man who was sitting in his study one day with his young daughter who was going through a box of junk to amuse herself. She pulled out a large corkboard covered with various papers and photographs and she asked her father what it was.

He explained that it was his "wishboard" that he had created for himself many years ago - that all the good things he wanted in his life, all the things he wanted to achieve were represented on that board. He had made it when he was a young man, just starting out in his career and life. But as he stood there pointing things out to his daughter, he realized that there was a photograph of a beautiful house on the board. And he looked more closely at it and realized that it was a picture of the VERY house that his family currently lived in. *PROOF* that The Secret works!

But you have to be very very specific. And use very few words.

If you spend your time bemoaning the fact that you are depressed and stressed and sad - because of money woes or the lack of a happy romantic relationship, etc. and you wish you had more money or a partner or whatever - the universe only hears your depression and stress, and delivers more of that to you.
This leads me to wonder why the universe is so stupid - it's the UNIVERSE for chrissake, why can't it listen to your entire sentence?

I have experienced, first hand, the power and the potential pitfalls of The Secret.

Just a couple weeks ago, I said to SK: "I haven't heard from the sociopathic alcoholic stalker in a while. Yay!" The next day, I got an email from him. Again, why can't the Universe listen to a complete sentence? Apparently, all it heard was "sociopathic alcoholic stalker" and delivered accordingly.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with my ex-husband. Apparently, I was EXCESSIVELY repeating myself to make sure that he knew what I wanted for Christmas and to remind him of the location of the store because I had already had the store put the item aside for me (him). He informed me that I didn't need to tell him this for the 32nd time, because he had heard me the first time, and that he actually listens to about 75% of what I say.

My response: "75%? That much? Shit. I should watch what I say."


So I have been trying to remember to pepper all my conversation with the following phrase: "wouldn't it be great if David Boreanaz or Clive Owen or Johnny Depp or maybe all three of them showed up at my apartment to let me know that I won the lottery?"

Pelting Lemons

Because my African Violet has stepped back from death's precipice, I have taken that to mean my black thumb might merely be sickly grayish yellow in color. (I chose to ignore the fact that African Violets have a reputation for being very hardy plants that can weather through the most outrageous neglect).

I have also finally accepted the end of winter.

These two things have driven me to order a 2-3 year old Dwarf Improved Meyer Lemon Tree, suitable for growing indoors as a houseplant.

In preparation for the delivery of the tree, I have also purchased an assortment of rice hull flower pots (very eco-friendly while being minimal and elegant in design), bags of soil and fertilizer, and a meter to measure water saturation levels in soil.

However, I haven't the faintest notion about what to do with all the lemons that this tree is supposed to produce all year round. Lemons do not feature in my once-a-quarter cooking forays, except as the occasional garnish. And don't even mention lemonade to me.

I suspect my lemons will be quartered lengthwise and hanging off the lip of glassware, which is really their natural place in life anyway, at least when there aren't any limes around.

Additionally, I suppose I can lean out my window and pelt them down at the drunk straight men and offensively unattractive women who have been loitering outside my building ever since that ridiculous sports bar opened up on my street.

I'd Rather Watch A Movie

Transformation is at the heart of any story - whether real or fiction.

Movies and novels would have us believe that a single breakthrough moment or revelation is enough to profoundly alter one's outlook or behavior. We all know these scenes... the hero/ine is walking down the street. Suddenly s/he sees something across the way, usually obscure and/or trivial. Suddenly the world is a different place, they are different people, and the old mistakes are never repeated, and brand new paths are forged. "Aha! It's a bad thing to be an alcoholic, will never touch the demon liquid again!" or "Aha! That person I treated like crap is the love of my life, I will never be an asshole again and will suddenly have the ability to resolve conflict and effectively communicate!" or "Aha! I thought I was a nobody but it turns out I am the heir to the throne and I will live up to expectations and embrace my destiny!" or "Aha! In the last 15 minutes of the movie, I had this random conversation with this random character played as a cameo by some absurdly famous actor who is really good friends with the director and now I will change my life for the better!"

But real life is far more recidivist. In real life, COUNTLESS "breakthrough moments" are required for actual transformation to take place.

The lack of realism in fiction makes sense in a very practical way. In the span of 2 hours or 200 pages, there's limited time, and besides, it would be incredibly boring and tedious to watch the main characters continually backsliding before they "transform."

So when someone tells me that they have had a transformative, revelatory breakthrough and that everything is now different and shiny and new... I'd rather just watch a movie.

Thumb O' Death

My daffodil plant that AN got me for my birthday died INSTANTLY. Perhaps I should have watered it.

My jade plant, despite SK's valiant life saving efforts, is still uncertain about whether it wants to rally, or just give up the fight and go quietly into that good night.

My new plant (it's green, that's all I know about it), is still settling in.

However, my African Violet plant, which I thought had checked out for good, is now blooming again. I will try to speak encouragingly to it.

Wisdom From A Five Year Old

AG (MG's 5 year old daughter) just informed her of the difference between a crush and a boyfriend and MG shared this nugget of wisdom with us:

Are you guys aware of this? Your crush, you kiss on the cheek and then you run away to your hiding place and blush. Your boyfriend, you kiss on the mouth and then you stand right there next to him and blush.

Yep. Pretty much.

Romancing The Scale

I have been obsessing over scales. The do-re-mi kind. Not the fishy or dry skin variety.

IC told me today: "I feel that you've been romanticizing the scale a lot these days.... not that that's a bad thing."

What she leaves unsaid, but is still clearly heard, is :"But really. ENOUGH."

Scales are not only helpful, they are foundational.

I used to spend the first two hours of my daily piano practice on scales. And that's pretty much on par with the norm. My yearly piano jury exam (final exam) at music school featured scales - a fact that further demonstrates their importance.

But I think what IC was reacting to was my latest monologue during which I waxed on and on and on about the fabulousness of scales, and how a good scale ROCKS.

As a refugee from music school herself, IC understands this completely. I think she just wishes I were able to talk about something else occasionally. And apparently, informing her that I just cut my nails while on the phone with her so I can better play my scales doesn't quite count.

Tax Day

My accountant scolded me when I sent him an email this morning asking if it was too late to send him all my info so he could do my taxes for me.

But because I am just too damn lazy to find the nearest fax machine, I decided to e-file, and to do it myself. It was astonishingly easy, suspiciously easy, and I'm getting a refund.

All of which makes me suspect that I either did it wrong, or that my identity will be stolen in short order.

I will keep you apprised.

Fun With Spite

My sociopathic alcoholic stalker is relentless.

Seems to me I have only two options: 1. resign myself to hearing his pathetic, delusional dribble regularly for the rest of my life, or 2. make use of the fact that I have a friend who got top marks at sniper school.

I don't actually mean that. I feel guilty for just having written it. But it's fun to fantasize about being so completely ruthless that I could actually say, write, and think those things without the associated guilt.

But since I already feel guilty for being unkind, I might as well share more details: He sent me an email telling me that he can't stop thinking about me and that he is in the process of ending a relationship with a woman he met while at his recent inpatient rehab program (I strongly suspect it was court-ordered) because she has decided that she wants to go back to shoveling everything she can up her nose.

If you ask me, it sounds like a match made in heaven. I'm rooting for them. But I also have selfish reasons for hoping that they stay together - when he's otherwise occupied, he leaves me alone. Everyone reading this, clap your hands to root for them! Clap your hands if you believe in catastrophic yet time consuming and therefore stalking-minimizing dysfunctional relationships!

Interesting... that bit of unkindness on my part did not make me feel guilty at all. I will have to explore this mood elevating effect of spite. Pity and disgust and anger weighed heavily on me and caused me to question my generosity of spirit and my ability to forgive and be kind. But spite? I feel as light as a feather.

SK told me: "This should fall under the category of 'I wouldn't wish this on anyone', but yet here you are!"

Yup. Here I am, clapping!

Back To Bach

I'm not embracing Spring.

I'm still disturbed by it.

So I spent the morning working my way through Bach's Piano Concerto in D minor. It's a good piece to nullify any changes in weather.

Back Pain And Humility

Do guitarists generally have bad posture, or neck and back pain?

My back hurts. And my back NEVER hurts. I can do the craziest things to my back in yoga. A backbend is as easy as pie. I can do a backbend not only with my hands on the ground, but also with my forearms on the ground and grab my ankles with my hands. I can lay on stomach and raise my torso and legs and arch my back and rest my feet on my forehead. I can balance all my weight on my forearms, lift my legs into the air, arch my back, throw back my head, and place my feet on my head, making an almost perfect "Q" shape with my body.

And doing these things cause me no pain, it actually feels GOOD. During my yoga teacher training, I once stayed in wheel (a backbend) for an hour as the yoga master teacher had all the other students take turns closely examining my pose. (OK, that one made my back a little sore the next day).

But playing the guitar is wreaking havoc on me. After practicing for 30 minutes, I no longer feel like a gumby-like yoga guru, but like a little old lady hobbling down the street with a cane.

On Manners

MG and EA and I have been swapping our usual emails about boys and dating. And in the context of this conversation, I was reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's book on manners, and another part of the email exchange reminded me of this song:



According to O'Rourke, being good looking is very polite. Being RICH is the MOST polite.

Also polite, is a guy having an erection when, say, kissing you good night after a date.

So my takeaway is that if a good-looking, rich guy has an erection when kissing you good night after opening your taxi door and helping you out onto the sidewalk, that's REALLY good manners.

Stress Reduction, Upside Down

I spent an hour today looking for the remote control for my bedroom television. It's not in its usual "lost" place - my fridge.

So I'm at a loss. I was actually driven to closely examining my TV and cable box to see how I could manipulate channels and volume WITHOUT the remote.

That didn't work so well.

And it irritated me so much I had to spend some time standing on my head to relax. I find it strange that I just wrote that. I remember the good old days when I'd just crack open a bottle of wine to achieve that effect.

Not that I'm averse to the liquid method of stress reduction. It's just disturbing that head standing has somehow sneaked into rotation.

But then, spring has so far brought with it a general feeling of disturbance for me.

Do I Make You Randy, Baby?

Spring has sprung.

And I have to admit, I'm a bit disturbed by it. I had accepted the fact that nature's hard drive was stalled at the "bitter cold of winter" setting.

CK (not me, but my cousin) has been scolding me about my man fast. She thinks that with the advent of warmer weather, I should prepare to break the fast. Or, at least, stop throwing up a little in my mouth.

To that end, she's been forcibly dragging me out of my beloved gay Chelsea. "You've GOT to talk to men who don't admire and pet your faux pony clutch and ask where you got your shoes!!!!"

So earlier this week, we were in an adorable little oyster bar in Soho. I did experience a moment of extreme culture shock. I turned to her and said, "there's something weird about this place... I can't quite put my finger on it..."

She glared at me and replied, "Yes, the people here are HETEROSEXUAL. Well, everyone except that guy over there. Stop smiling at him."

Apparently, while I am very popular with the gorgeous, young, firmly fleshed gay men who populate Chelsea, I am equally popular with the fat, old, loosely fleshed straight men who populate everyplace else.

It reminded me of one evening in Beijing. A fat old straight man was chatting me up and informed me that he's been told frequently that he looks like Mel Gibson. I informed him that he looks like he ate Mel Gibson. This did not discourage him. I suspect he assumed that my English wasn't very good and that I didn't know what I was saying. *sigh*

But I understand my cousin's perspective. At SOME point, I have to break the fast.

But that's not today.

Today, my beloved JF is in town and he will be my date as we lurch drunkenly, yet still gracefully, around... Chelsea.

And on that note:

I've realized that JF is my boyfriend. Albeit one whom I do not have sex with and see only twice a year. MG has told me that I need to look up the word "boyfriend" in the dictionary.

State Of Mind

I can't account for a year of my life - 2001. Not sure what happened to that year. I told SK about this and she told me that a missing year was rather romantic.

However, I am dead certain there was nothing romantic about it. But rather than maintain the possible mystery of it all, I have placed phone calls to various friends to ask them if THEY remember what I did that year. I'm beginning to hear back and all I can say is that a lot of people out there have better memories than I do.

But I was right. There was nothing romantic about it at all. I think I forgot it simply because it was so utterly unremarkable.

And I formulated a theory to explain the WHY of it to myself. And the catalyst for my theory is this video sent to me by SK:





I believe this was the year in which I was living in the 3 bedroom house with the husband and two cats and contemplating the unremarkableness of my life.

This was also the year I was seeing shrinks and getting MRIs and polygraphs for the prospective employer I'm not allowed to talk about. (I pieced this together from my total lack of recognition of the stories I heard from my friends, all of whom I had been instructed to flat out lie to about what I was actually doing that year). On the face of it, this may seem somewhat interesting. But since I completely forgot about it, it clearly didn't strike me so.

Funny how truth can be discerned from lies. But that's another post.

SK watched this video and her takeaway was that she should abort her short lived experiment with online dating.

My takeaway? "Remarkableness" is just a state of mind. Because I think my future memories will prove that I find the utterly mundane details of 2008 remarkable indeed.

Gotcha!

For those of you who read my post from earlier today (The Breaking Of The Fast) and called/texted/IM'd/emailed me with questions and excitement and even scolding...

"OMG! Who IS this guy?!?"
"Is he there RIGHT NOW?!?"
"That. Is. How. It. Happens."
"That NEVER happens!"
"Your life is right out of a movie!"
"Did you practice safe sex?"
"Your bed sheets?!? Eek!"
"You're making him breakfast?!?"
"Where did he go to school?"

And my favorite:

"What's he doing that he's not at work on a Monday!? You sure he's not a deadbeat? I bet he's a deadbeat. I thought we discussed this, you are not allowed to have sex without Board approval. You have the WORST taste in men."

... please note today's date.

The Breaking Of The Fast

Do you believe in love at first sight?

I never have before. But then I met someone yesterday.

It was out of a movie... a random meeting which turned into coffee, which turned into an afternoon strolling around the city, oblivious to the cold and the wet, which turned into dinner, which turned into shared bottles of wine, lingering over dessert (yes, I actually had dessert!), which turned into... well... let's put it this way, I was glad I washed my linens this weekend, and I will have to do so again, at least when my bed is no longer occupied by someone who looks angelic and vulnerable and beautiful in his sleep.

While I'm vaguely aware that the sky is overcast today, in my world this morning, the sun is out, the sky is blue blue blue and the birds are singing.

The fast is over. And thoughts of throwing up a little in my mouth? Never crossed my mind. I'm not even humming Bach. I'm humming Sheena Easton's For Your Eyes Only.

Off now to the deli where I can get supplies to wake up a certain someone with breakfast in bed.

Egg McMuffins And Civilization

I got the following email from WC a couple days ago (March 27th).

"The inventor of the egg mcmuffin passed away today at the age of 89. Moment of silence, please."

Very few things are happier than pulling into the drive-thru to order a #1 breakfast meal (Egg McMuffin) with a large OJ and an extra hashbrown.

The McDonald's breakfasts were not available in China until just recently, so when I first moved to Beijing, I was bereft.

Eight months after moving to Beijing, my first trip out of Asia was a quick trip to Brisbane, where I made it my mission to collect my rental car and head for the first sighted golden arches so I could get my fix.

Of course, the first thing I did was cut in line (I had acclimated a bit TOO well to China) and was yelled at by a big burly surfer dude. I pretended I didn't speak English and told him in Mandarin that he was fat and that his mother was a bad egg. I then felt vaguely guilty that I was single-handedly propagating the image of the non-personal-space-and line-respecting Asian tourist.

I told this story to my Chinese teacher, CZ, who nodded sagely, already familiar (from other of her American students) that in much of America (and most especially in NYC), line-cutting is on par with murder.

But here's something interesting: McDonald's is widely credited for beginning to teach the all important skill of queuing in China. When the golden arches first started popping up there, they hired all for the usual sorts of roles necessary for running fast food restaurants. But they also hired a cadre of additional people whose sole job was to browbeat the customers into standing in orderly lines. Even today in mainland China, there are no orderly lines at the bank, or the subway ticket counter, or the market. But walk into a Mickey D's? Beautiful lines aplenty.

And I mean really, isn't that what civilization is all about? The ready availability of toilet paper and diet coke, and respect for queuing.

And, of course, egg mcmuffins.

Dreams

I must have been emoting something in a major way Thursday night.

AN had a horrible dream about me and wanted to make sure that I was OK. A colleague of hers (whom I had met once before), confessed to her that he had dreamed of me too that same night - a "naughty" dream, however.

Thursday night was unusual in one regard. I slept as poorly as I ever do, but I'm used to that. Friday morning, however, I was unusually exhausted. Now I know why. I was busy dreamwalking.

Anyone else dream of me Thursday night?

Predators And Prey

I loved this comment (on my post titled More On Dating (see next post below)) from Robespierre so much, I thought it merited highlighting:

Robespierre said...

Does this not beg the larger "Sex in the City" question: Can straight guys and girls be friends (when they are not physically repulsed by each other)? How many straight guys are you friends with? And by friends I mean friends like you are with your coterie of "BFF!" GFs? From my vantage if you put me in a magical world where I were no longer married [the last part of that sentence was written with my best Homer Simpson "beer" voice], I would be in full-blown leopard stalking baby Thompson's gazelle mode in about 15 seconds. Yes, yes, I know how hard it is to be single in the twilight of our youth where we are no longer so needy and don't want to put up with anything. But I think normal straight guys are for the most part not going to fit into your paradigm.

I do want to stress that I am by no means advocating against romance in any way. If you like a girl, then the courting process will take however long the courting process takes. But in the end you will ambush her and she find herself being dragged up into a tree away from other predators.

First off, it's Sex AND The City (all caps mine). But Robespierre, given that he is a straight man, gets huge bonus points for that very relevant and appropriate reference. Although some points are deducted for his married status since I have no doubt (actually, absolute certainty because he's already told me this) that he watched every single episode of every single season with his lovely wife sitting by his side. But those points would be added back on if he initiated that viewing marathon.

Second, leopard-stalking-baby gazelle mode? *LAUGHING* Would have loved to see that!

Third, with the prevalence of cougars and so forth, it's now harder to determine who is the predator and who is the prey. I myself am VERY uncomfortable in the role of prey. Actually, it just pisses me off. I prefer to be the one doing the stalking.

But those initial observations aside, I think friendship is indeed possible between straight men and women who find each other at least somewhat attractive. Of course, I am the first to say that my CLOSEST friends are women and gay men because of the simplicity and purity of those relationships ("pure" defined as unclouded by sexual attraction). That said, friendships peppered with the additional frisson of flirting and heightened aesthetic appreciation and even sexual awareness might sometimes be more precarious propositions, and might require more effort to avoid slippage, and might not be as CLOSE, but are, inherently, no less solid or real. I remember once being told by a straight male friend: "I would drive you crazy, and you would drive me to drink, so it's good that we're just friends."

But I digress.

The primary issue here is expectation and goal orientation. When people meet as colleagues, as friends of friends, or as classmates, etc., sexual attraction and romance might erupt at any time, much like cold sores. But romance is not the goal of the initial dynamic. And hence, there are more opportunities and time to collect the data points necessary for BOTH parties to be on the same page. Nakedness is not expected shortly after the third class together, or third business meeting, or third group happy hour or dinner. And given the meeting I just had this morning, all I can say is, "thank goodness for that."

As for a long courting process, that's absolutely fine, as long as there is no undue or obvious pressure. After all, it's a time honored practice to sneak in under the radar as a "friend" for positioning purposes. Many a battle has been won by steady attrition.

And especially given the boo-on-dating-and-relationships stance that I have been hearing from so many of my single female friends, a slow, low-key, non threatening siege might be the only effective strategy to breaching the castle walls.

As for being ambushed and dragged up a tree away from other predators? That's acceptable as long as it is according to our timing, with our permission, by a predator of our choosing (after consulting all close friends and comprehensive stalking on our parts), and our hair and nails don't get mussed.

But of course, this is only applicable "advice" for those predators who just HAVE to pursue the gazelle that happens to be bristling with "No Trespassing" signs and sharp pointy weapons. Otherwise, there's far easier prey out there.

Now this cougar-in-gazelle's-clothing is going to take some tylenol for her multi-metaphor induced headache.

More On Dating

There is an epidemic infecting a number of my single female friends: aversion to intimacy (physical and/or emotional).

We all have our reasons, whether those reasons are coherently articulated or not.

On one hand, I think the vast majority of "single" people out there, should they be asked the abstract question of whether they want to be in a satisfying romantic relationship, would answer: "of course."

But the next question is: what are they willing to do to achieve that?

There are other issues involved which complicate the matter: are they in a place where they can or even want to carve out the time and attention for a relationship or even look for one? Despite any stated man-fast, is it just that they haven't met the "right" person? (This second question is what has motivated my own recent dating experiments - the possibility of meeting a person who could, in a blink of an eye, cause me to rethink my own state of readiness or desire to take on the high-maintenance prospect of a man in my life). Does the usual process of achieving that goal - dating - just seem repellent and/or ineffective?

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine that was striking in its similarity to conversations I've had with numerous others, including myself: that the thought of dating, and the usual "meet someone, go out on 3 to 5 dates, have sex with them, suddenly find yourself in a relationship or in the turmoil/annoyance of unaligned levels of interest" is REPELLENT.

In recent conversations about online dating and much of dating in general, SK described it perfectly - "goal-oriented dating."

With most endeavors, having a clearly identified goal is necessary, or at the very least, helpful in achieving that goal.

But with dating, at least for those "suffering" from this particular epidemic, can being "goal-oriented" hinder rather than help?

Have I met my share of freaks? Yes. Have I also met perfectly nice guys whom I rejected after a date or two or three because in that allotted time I never had the slightest desire see them naked, but for whom I could have developed the tingles had we had the time to get to know each other as people? Possibly. Am I aware that my lack of readiness for or interest in a relationship might be preventing me from recognizing a perfectly good candidate when he's sitting across the table from me? Yes.

I have posted before about the necessity of collecting a myriad of data points about a person in order to determine attraction - data points you can't always learn after one date or two or three. And while sometimes chemistry can hit you over the head upon first laying eyes on someone, sometimes it develops slowly with lots of time and repeated exposure.

But with "goal-oriented dating," comes a slew of expectations and in most cases, a ludicrously short time line. Very rarely do men or women want to be "friends" with a dating prospect when the paradigm has already been set up as "goal-oriented." And that works both ways within this paradigm - many of us don't want to be resigned into the friend category, and many of us don't want to try to be friends with someone who is clearly interested in more.

This brings me to the heart of what I have been thinking for myself and hearing from numerous women: we want to be friends first, with no expectations, no "goal" in mind. And in this expectation and goal free environment, to be able to simply enjoy someone's company, get to know them, and naturally, almost subconsciously, collect all those necessary data points about who they are, and play the rest by ear.

Maybe what I've been hearing recently is backlash against a dynamic inherent in online dating or any kind of dating that involves a stranger or near stranger to you. Or maybe it is due to the epidemic of emotional distance and exaggerated caution and aversion to intimacy that seems to be sweeping through many of my single friends.

One thing is clear though. The question that used to clearly signal the kiss of death when it comes to the possibility of romance, might now signal something else entirely: "Can we be friends?"

Pearls of Wisdom

MG needed emergency childcare this afternoon for the lovely and precocious AG, so I came to the rescue.

I called KK beforehand for advice. What does one do with a four year old? I mean, I was pretty sure smoking and drinking wouldn't be on the agenda.

KK interrupted me, astonished: "She asked YOU to take care of her child? Does she KNOW you?"

So AG and I watched Jurassic Park together and AG covered my eyes during the scary parts with a hand that smelled suspiciously of ham.

And then we played Cinderella. I was pleasantly surprised that AG wanted me to be Cinderella so she could be a wicked step sister. But as I then proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes being bossed around mercilessly, I saw the cleverness of her choice.

She deviated from the story somewhat by producing two princes: a large comfy looking bear and a small, gnarly-looking frog. The princes chose their respective mates. AG got chosen by the bear; I got chosen by the frog. And then we were to sit on the sofa with our blankets and princes to watch TV.

As we were getting settled on the sofa, AG told me: "You can sit next to your prince if it is uncomfortable to sit on him. But no kissing until you are married."

From the mouths of babes.

Nothing But The Music

I remember thinking recently that I got through my tumultuous teen and pre-teen years by playing the piano.

No need for a therapist, no need to act out in potentially destructive ways, not when you can empty yourself of everything difficult through your fingertips.

Some composers are better than others for that. Chopin, Schubert, and some Beethoven, are marvelous for their cathartic effect - you can overplay them when alone, without fear of criticism from one's piano teacher, and be self indulgently self-pitying or angry, playing yourself into every note, and feel better afterwards.

But Bach is what I played when things seemed so bad that the thought of catharsis was dreadful and unbearably naked, when the last thing I wanted to do was play myself into the music. Because Bach was always... wholly Bach.

I placed an Amazon.com order last Friday and received it today. I am on page 67 of my newly acquired copy of Madeleine L'Engle's The Small Rain and just read this:

Katherine looked down at the keyboard. "Mother said when you were unhappy or confused, Bach was the person to play. With almost everybody else you can think, but with Bach there's nothing but the music. It's true, you know."

"Yes, I know," Tom said. He stood leaning on the piano. Twice he seemed about to speak; then he waved his arms a little, helplessly, and wandered out.

The best writers can do that - magically pull out something important, and mostly forgotten, from your own experience, phrase it far better than you could have possibly done so yourself, and remind you of it.

Protecting The Innocent

At yesterday's guitar lesson, I asked my teacher for more details about the upcoming recital. I knew it was going to take place in a bar, but I wanted to get a better sense for the venue. Inviting friends to a recital such as this raises some concerns. Especially given my friends, I wanted to make sure that they would be able to... how should I phrase it?... drink copiously. It's one thing to go to a bar and listen to great live music, another thing entirely to listen to a bunch of students earnestly working their way through Freebird or Stairway to Heaven.

So to stack the odds in favor of this not using up all my "friend credits," I have worked it so that I will perform last, or near last, and my friends can show up late. Not the best recital etiquette, but I think very advisable in this case.

I asked about the audience thing too - not that I would blink should the norm be to bring just one or two friends and I bring an entire posse - but I wanted to know nonetheless.

While we were discussing this, I made some joke about how my friends have been instructed to applaud wildly no matter what I do on stage - even if it involves ping pong balls.

My teacher looked at me with a charmingly confused look on his face. "Ping pong balls? You mean like beer pong?"

I looked at his earnest face and just said, "Oh, dear."

And I changed the subject.

What was I to do? How could I say to him: "There's a whole genre of stripper acts showcasing women shooting ping pong balls out of their hoo hoos and aiming them at the audience."

I can't be the one who opens that particular world for him. Sometimes virginity is better left alone.

Hope for HuMANity

Gorgeous Hunk O' Man (JF) has graciously given me his permission to post a recent picture (including his head) on my blog.

I find it strange that admiring this photo cheers me up. It really should plummet me into the depths of despair - the entire "doo, doo doo doo, doo doo, doo doo, can't touch this."

But instead, it makes me giggle and feel more hopeful and upbeat about humanity in general. I'm hoping if I get him drunk enough beforehand, in addition to wildly applauding my performance of Carcassi's Etude No. 9, he will rip off his shirt and throw it on stage.

Now I'm wondering how many of my loyal blog readers will suddenly want to come to my guitar recital?

A Fairytale

I read Neil Gaiman's Stardust last summer, and when I turned the last page, I felt that I had finished reading a book that had entertained generations of children and grown-ups, not one that had been written and published just recently.

I watched the movie version just the other day. And I enjoyed it immensely, but as with all movies based on books, it was tremendously simplified.

I won't give anything away. But to say that the book, compared to the movie, was far more nuanced and its ending sadder should come as no surprise.

Yvaine realised that she felt nothing but pity for the creature who had wanted her dead, so she said, "Could it be that the heart that you seek is no longer my own?"

The old woman coughed. Her whole frame shook and spasmed with the retching effort of it.

Star waited for her to be done, and then she said, "I have given my heart to another."

"The boy? The one in the inn? With the unicorn?"

"Yes."

"You should have let me take it back then, for my sisters and me. We could have been young again, well in the next age of the world. Your boy will break it, or waste it, or lose it. They all do."

"Nonetheless," said the star, "he has my heart..."

Not So Much

VBD (Very Bad Date): "You are Korean? I thought you said you are Chinese."
Me: "No, I said that I lived in China briefly."
VBD: "I'm pretty sure you said you are Chinese."
Me: "No, I didn't."
VBD: "I'm pretty sure you did."
Me: *chugging champagne*
VBD: "Well, I loved Tokyo - went to Japan on a business trip 10 years ago. I even learned some Japanese. But I have an ear for languages. I learned French in Paris. Paris was Tray Beeyan"
Me: "Nihongo ga dekimasuka?"
VBD: *looking confused* "Oh. Is that Chinese?"
Me: "Er, no. Japanese. You just mentioned that you learned some Japanese."
VBD: "Oh. But you are... Korean?"
Me: "Yes."
VBD: "So, is Japanese a lot like Korean?"
Me: "No, it's not."
VBD: "Do you speak Chinese?"
Me: *being an ass* "Yidianr. Sukoshi."
VBD: *looking confused*
Me: "Un peu."
VBD: *looking confused*
Me: "A little."
VBD: "So you must have an ear for languages too."
Me: "Not so much."

The Sound of Trying

In Sunbeams: Sages, Saints and Lovers Celebrate the Human Heart, edited by Sy Safranksky, Thomas Powers writes an anecdote about Stravinsky, and a new piece the composer had written with a particularly difficult violin passage:

"After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'"

I haven't read the book; just from the title alone, it sounds like something that would probably piss me off, but I'd like to think that that anecdote about Stravinsky is true. And now I'm going to be mildly irritated until I figure out which piece it is so I can listen to that passage.

Playing Mozart

My guitar lessons are going well, I am progressing by leaps and bounds.

After 2 months of lessons, I am now working an a Carcassi Etude which I will perform in a student recital in the beginning of April.

But, as I predicted for myself, I am now at the stage where I am acutely aware that my "musicality," which has been very expensively developed by years of classical musical training, is vastly NOT matched by my technical ability on the guitar.

I know how the piece SHOULD be played. But I have to accept that in the next couple weeks, the most I can achieve is producing a clean performance - all the correct notes, no incorrect ones, and, more or less, in the appropriate tempo. But a clean performance is hardly a GOOD performance.

This has made me think of when I studied piano. My piano teacher introduced certain pieces to me when she judged that I had sufficient technical ability, and had me revisit them at regular intervals. She had me first play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata when I was 11. I worked on the piece and was eventually able to produce a clean version of it. But it was only as practice, never for performance.

She had me revisit it at 13 and I performed it then.

At 16, I worked on it again. And although it was indisputable that I was a far more capable pianist at that point, with greater technical proficiency and deeper emotional expressiveness, my teacher's reply when I asked if I would perform it was: "Let me think about that. No." I think if she had been less measured in her response, she would have phrased it differently, "Hell no."

The bottom line was that I was a near prodigy when I was younger, but I peaked at 12, and while I kept progressing, the rate of that progress had slowed measurably, and by 16, I was merely average when compared to the pool of young pianists who were my peers.

In my last few years studying piano, I focused almost exclusively on practicing and performing Bach and Chopin - two vastly different composers. I was most proficient at Bach. His almost mathematical precision lent itself well to my strengths and my performances of Bach were not only clean, but also GOOD. But I enjoyed playing Chopin (and Schubert) much more - and I performed those pieces with a certain romantic, over-the-top quality which played well with audiences. I NEVER played or performed Mozart. Mozart requires all the technical precision of Bach, but also an ability to emote with restraint and delicacy. And restraint and delicacy have never been my strong suits.

Every year, my piano teacher would have all of her students perform in her student recital, and the final performance of the recital was always reserved for her best student. I was not her best student. There was another girl who had far better pedal work than I. SHE was able to play Mozart beautifully. But I held that coveted final position for years. Why? My teacher phrased it this way: "She's better than you are. But you ham it up. I can't let anyone follow you. It's not good, I don't like it, but what can I do?"

With my current guitar playing sparking this self-indulgent walk down memory lane, it has occurred to me that perhaps I need to do the life equivalent of learning to play Mozart.

But first, I will play Carcassi at this student recital, hamming it up for JF, DP, JD, et al, in the audience - JF in particular has promised to shriek wildly and pull out his hair and maybe even pee a little, no matter what I end up doing on stage, even (or especially) if it involves ping pong balls.

Post Date Initial Wrap Up

I am home, greatly relieved to be so, and looking at pictures of JF to get rid of the "ick".

Why, you ask?

Well... I do not want to be unkind.

So I will limit my comments to the following:

1. If you want to talk about how much you work out, you should LOOK like you work out.

2. It's generally better to use your indoor voice when indoors.

3. I should have gotten WASTED before going out.

I'm going to stop there.

And oh - per my experiment, I was decidedly non charming. But ovulation trumped my completely bored demeanor.

I did, however, stay long enough to finish the bottle of champagne he ordered. Hey, a girl's gotta drink.

Pre-Date Advice

IC: "You shouldn't drink before your date. Remember that one incident."

Me: *LAUGHING*

IC: "You know I'm being serious, right?"

Me: *MORE LAUGHING*

I'm Ovulating

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to the Time Magazine article Why We Love which summarized a number of studies which use biology and chemistry to shed light on love and sex and relationships.

One particularly interesting study focused on men's reactions to women who are ovulating. The study monitored strippers' menstrual cycles and the tips they earned during specific stages of said cycle.

While men generally are not able to explicitly identify the women who are menstruating versus those who are ovulating versus those who are at neither stage, SOMEHOW, they are able to "tell" and that affected how much they tipped the various strippers in this study.

Menstruating strippers were tipped the least. Ovulating strippers were tipped the most. Those strippers neither menstruating nor ovulating received tips in the middle of the two extremes. So the study hypothesized that somehow, men are able to sense ovulation and are "nicer" to those women who are fertile at that moment.

I had an "Ah Ha!" moment reading this. Perhaps every time I have attracted a stalker, I was ovulating at the time? I consulted a calendar and determined that when I met Creepy Skincare Product Guy who called and emailed me mercilessly for weeks afterwards, I was ovulating. When I met Yellow Fever Guy who told me that I inspired him to write a song, I was ovulating.

Well, I am ovulating RIGHT NOW. And I have a "date" tonight.

So tonight will be a truncated experiment of sorts. If all goes according these studies, I will acquire a new stalker by about 10PM.

But there is one possible causal relationship which the ovulation study did NOT discuss: Is it possible that women (unintentionally) behave differently during that point of their cycle? Were the ovulating strippers more... strippery?

Could it be that I (unconsciously driven by a biological imperative to breed) am more charming when ovulating? That I do a better job of feigning interest in the incredibly boring things that men usually say when I am ovulating?

To remove that potentially confusing element from tonight's experiment, I will be surly and disinterested while on my date. Just surly old me, in all my ovulating glory.

Will report the initial results tomorrow morning.

Overheard in Public Places

"It's the hair I was meant to have. Just cost me $700 to get it."

"That's the kind of idea that makes stupid ideas feel good about themselves."

"I was pissed at him, so I took the trackball out of his mouse."

OK, fine. The last one wasn't overheard. Unless you count me thinking to myself as "overhearing." Just thought it would be better to attribute all of the above to faceless, nameless strangers. But I'm fairly certain the mouse and trackball guy has no idea I even have a blog, so why the hell not 'fess up.

Standards

EA and MG and I have been swapping emails over the last couple weeks, discussing our usual topic - men.

The exchange started with a description - "he looks good on paper." That led to a multitude of emails detailing the traits we consider "non-negotiable."

I'm still happily on my man fast, but this is an intellectual exercise which never grows old.

My list:

A guy who:

1. has the dark, brooding good looks of Clive Owen
2. the talent and quirkiness of Johnny Depp
3. can correctly spell and punctuate his sentences
4. can hum or play Bach

EA's list of non-negotiables was much more reasonable. But nonetheless, we decided that the only men who actually possess all the desired traits are gay - which violates the only TRULY non-negotiable trait: heterosexuality.

So it's really a matter of prioritizing and compromising - because at some point, you have to accept that one's expectations might be unrealistically high.

That said, I had a conversation the other day with a guy that I have no interest in romantically or sexually, but it was a good conversation - he was smart, thoughtful, capable of engaging in a lively conversation on a wide variety of topics and showed insight into how others think, and demonstrated interest in my opinions. This isn't such a remarkable thing, well, at least it SHOULDN'T be so remarkable, but given that such conversations with straight men have proven to be quite rare, I found it a shockingly new experience and thought him more attractive for it. Is this an example of expectations being too low?

A friend of mine wanted to uncover the specific reasons behind my man fast:

Friend: "Is it that you are just too picky?"
Me: "Well, think of some of the guys I have been with. Clearly, I'm not picky at all."
Friend: "You've got a point there."

The man fast is in place because I can't really spare the energy right now to take a man seriously.

However, despite the fast, I still keep my hand in the dating scene because there is something that would trump the reasoning behind the fast, something that would even trump any and all of the "non-negotiables": the tingles.

And the tingles happen inexplicably, unpredictably - and might not be necessarily inspired by washboard abs or broad shoulders, although, of course, those attributes don't hurt.

I have great respect for the tingles. And I have rarely ignored that siren call. Even with my self-imposed man fast, I would break that fast in a blink of an eye, if I heard the call strongly enough.

But in the meantime, I flirt with boys, usually those far younger than I am, whom I do not have to take seriously. It's just play, with all the control in my hands, no demands for more than I want to give, no compromise necessary on my part.

I find it rather amusing that I started this post by discussing standards and expectations vis-a-vis men, and I have ended it by realizing that I have not only somehow become a man, I've become the asshole version of one.

Schoolyard Wisdom

As we get older and more experienced, we become more complicated and "sophisticated", and the ways in which we interact with and interpret the world become more complicated.

There are dangers of over simplification. But there are also dangers of over complication.

When the book, He's Just Not That Into You, hit the scene and was read by pretty much every women who could read, I had my own first hand experience with the revelations it shared. I was living in Beijing at the time, but had come back to DC for a visit. During boozy brunch with the girls, JO had brought several copies of the book and distributed them as Christmas presents. We immediately cracked open the spines over our mimosas and egg-white only omelets and started reading choice bits aloud:

"If he's sleeping with other women, he's just not that into you."

"If he doesn't want to marry you, he's just not that into you."

"If he breaks up with you, he's just not that into you."

It was REVELATORY. We dug into our purses for pens so we could underline key passages and jot notes in the margins. CG even found a highlighter in the bottom of her Balenciaga.

Instead of endlessly analyzing and speculating about possible fear of commitment, or wondering if at some point the man in question had been deeply hurt and had resulting trust issues, or even that he just cared TOO much, or any of the other ridiculous multi-variate causal analyses which lend themselves to detailed discussion over brunch, it was simplified to a single statement which made further analysis irrelevant: he's just not that into you.

I had a similar epiphany very recently. There is a person who has been in and out of my life for a few years. And I have spent countless hours trying to understand the root causes of his inexplicable behavior. Poor impulse control? Rampant insecurity? Emotional immaturity? Untempered self-centeredness? Can any of these things be fixed? Can any of these behaviors be changed? Can he change?

But my epiphany is this: he is mean.

It's schoolyard wisdom. I've never read Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten, but this epiphany strikes me as the kind of thing that would be appropriately discussed in a book bearing such a title.

And mean people are bad. Lots of people manage to deal with stress or annoyance or anger or difficulty without being MEAN. Some can't. And while it's possible to waste time analyzing why a person is mean in those circumstances, why bother? On my recent post titled, Can People Change?, JR left a comment saying that a person's fundamental self does NOT change - we are who we are - but that we can learn or unlearn how that fundamental self interacts with the world. So part of me is tempted to consider whether "meanness" is demonstrative of the nature of one's fundamental self, or if it falls into the category of behavior that can be learned or unlearned. But another part of me doesn't want to engage in that analysis. Because whether a person whose first reaction to frustration is meanness is capable of changing is irrelevant because why would you want to stick around long enough to determine that? JR also drew a comparison to genetics and environmental triggers which I think is an insightful one. And my takeaway from that comparison is that it is certainly possible for people never to present a particular aspect of their fundamental selves if the environmental triggers for that aspect are absent. But frustration and anger and difficulty are not avoidable triggers.

When you were playing in the sandbox and the kid in your class got upset that you had the cool red plastic trowel when he wanted it and he decided to kick sand in your face and call you a name, you didn't give a shit about WHY, you didn't consider whether he had an unhappy home life or was simply a spoiled brat. You just stayed away. And in the interests of maintaining the peace, even GIVING him the cool red plastic trowel whenever he wanted it isn't a viable solution. Because the next day, it will be the blocks, the last seat on the swing set, the apple green crayon.

I think I've just found a title for a book I should write one day: Mean People Are Bad. Perhaps Oprah will endorse it.

Pet Names

I'm not a big fan of them.

Yes, I call almost everyone I know "darling." My close friends, I call "sweetie." And some of them return the favor. IC, in her texts to me, usually writes: "Hey QT." KD calls me "chica." MM in Tokyo often calls me "Sexy Bitch."

I rather like that.

So I suppose it's more accurate to say that I dislike it when MEN call me by pet names. And I make a distinction between pet names and nicknames. I don't blink an eye when I am called or referred to as "hellspawn" or "hoagie" or "C-belle." Again, I rather enjoy those. Makes me feel sort of warm and fuzzy.

But appellations such as "baby" or "schmoopy" or "bunny" and so forth make me see red.

A friend of mine was once seeing a guy who decided one day that he wanted her to use a pet name for him. She called me so we could discuss his request. She is not a pet name kind of girl so this request caused some consternation for her. As far as she is concerned, people already have names, so why not use them. I never really liked the guy in question, and I was going through my Owen Wilson phase, so I suggested the pet name "Owen."

She tried that and surprisingly, the boyfriend didn't take to that very well. I believe his response was: "A PET name, not some other guy's name."

But now that I'm thinking about this, I don't take exception to "Hey Beautiful" or "Princess" or even "Sweet Thang", but I think that's mostly because I really like the guy who uses the first and the guy who uses the latter two names generally makes me blush and giggle with everything he says - even when it's as uninspiring as "hello."

Perhaps I just dislike the overly cute pet names - perhaps warm and fuzzy pet names incite a reaction in me that is the opposite of warm and fuzzy.

OK, I've thought it through, and I've identified my rules regarding pet names:

1. My girlfriends can use pretty much any pet name for me that they think is appropriate
2. Only certain men whom I consider close friends can call me pet names as long as the names are not overly cute and do not reek of small infant animal
3. Only JF is allowed to call me "baby"
4. If a guy has abs like JF - so impressively cut that I can wash my lingerie on them - I might suspend all the above rules.

Bottom line, to the plastic surgeon I met at that happy hour last week who tracked down my number and phoned me yesterday and called me "baby" no fewer than three times during our very short conversation, know that right before I hung up on you, I threw up a little in my mouth and had to look at naked pictures of JF to rid myself of the bad taste and the "ick."

Can People Change?

In considering this question, I've taken inventory of the people I know. There are two people who come to mind who used to have lightning quick tempers.

They have both successfully learned to control the destructive expressions of their anger. But does that mean that they have CHANGED? Isn't a new skill (even a major one like that) just that - a new skill? Does it actually signify change?

Yes, life-changing experiences can have impact - traumatic events, becoming a parent, growing old - and sometimes that impact can be deep. But does even that signify actual change?

I was having trouble with this line of thought. I was getting lost in considering existential definitions of "change" and getting sidetracked by all sort of digressions which I think I will save for future posts. But then I had a conversation with JN who read to me the following:

Humanity is fundamentally conservative, as indeed is all of nature. No organism ever expends more energy than necessary, risks anything if it doesn't have to, or takes any action unless it must. Why should it? If a task can be done in an easy way without risk of loss or pain, or the expenditure of energy, why would any creature do the more difficult, dangerous, or enervating thing? It won't. Nature doesn't allow it... and human nature is just an aspect of universal nature.

Robert McKee, Story

That simplified the question for me. Change is absolutely possible. But it will be in step with what is NECESSARY. Sometimes people don't change in relation to their changing circumstances and therefore fail to adapt and suffer the repercussions. Others do adapt. But then it will be according to what is necessary, and no more.

I'm not even sure that this is a pessimistic view of humanity. Because I think there can be leaps of faith and imagination and courage when it comes to defining what is necessary. And that depends on the quality of the person doing the defining.

User Error

I have great faith in human incompetence. So user error as an explanation for why something doesn't work as it should makes sense to me.

But user error in applying face cream?

I was in a department store the other day on a directed mission but was distracted by something shiny, and as I stood transfixed, a salesperson pounced on me and asked if I wanted to try a $300 face cream.

In response to my polite "no thank you," she persisted and finally I had to tell her that I had used the product before and while it was lovely, it didn't really do anything for me.

"Oh, you must not have been using it correctly," she told me.

I disengaged myself as politely as I could, but really wanted to say, "OMG, it goes on my FACE? That's what I was doing wrong!" So I just thought it really loudly instead.