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2 de Mayo 2009
if Dave Chappelle approves
Maybe John Mayer isn't such an embarrassment.
and this is helpful:
Not Myself by John Mayer
Suppose I said
I am on my best behavior
there are times
I lose my worried mind
Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?
Suppose I said
Colors change for no good reason
words will go
From poetry to prose
Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?
And I, in time, will come around, come around
I always do for you
Suppose I said
You're my saving grace?
My grace
My self
Not myself, my myself and I...
When I'm someone else
When I'm someone else
When I'm someone else
When I'm not myself
Myself
Myself
We went out last night and the waiter accused the birthday boy of attempting to kick an entire family out of the restaurant. he said he felt sick and didn't really want to eat and we all understood.
but we couldn't understand any of it: why would a waiter step in to solve this kind of problem? why would someone assume they were being kicked out of a restaurant by another patron? and then, why would they tattle? why would the waiter even believe them? wtf
and then we were at kareoke and sang to the drunk driving woman who had crashed several cars on caro's street just a few years ago, on the eve of the fourth of july parade (the next day caro pointed her out on her perch, atop a turqoise thunderbird). she is a notorious morgan hill drunk and she was there, in all her long-legged, hunched-back glory and drinking with the best of them and singing and dancing. and i kept thinking that she would be crashing her way up caro's street in just a few hours.
it was one of those nights... a quintessential morgan hill night that leaves you painfully aware that this is a smallish town and we all have to get along together until we grow up and move out... to seattle, and then, even then, we will sometimes return and refresh our memories as to why we had to get the hell out.
and did i mention that i stick out like a sore thumb here, and i always have? my fuzzy hair and lack of fashion sense are only the beginning. the flippant remarks i make, a little too loudly, are going to get me into trouble, i just know it. my friends have to live here, they can talk all the smack they want but i am nervous i will say or do something, open them up or shut them down and then catch the next flight out and what will they do then? call me?
we are finally able to see each other growing up and we are past the initial worries over each other's sex life or lack thereof. but the next step probably involves letting go or holding on and i am afraid to make choices like that... so i drag it out, failing as a friend because i am such a dabbler.
i feel in turn impotent and overinvolved. i was invited here to keep company, enjoy sun and giggle. and i'm trying my darndest to do all those things and it isn't really that hard but there are also tiny shining moments of shock over how we are different and how we are alike, and these moments are storing up like static electricity, and i'm not sure i have rubbed or will rub against this place, the wrong way and we will both ignite.
ironically, i feel that way about friends in seattle too... it isn't just a matter of geography-enforced long-distance relationships.
today my class, the students i know best, graduated from mhgs. i think our lives seperating even circumstantially creates a certain long-distance affair.
but i wasn't there to witness their march across the stage.
i heard it was pretty normal: people said stuff, walked across the stage, got stuff, gave stuff...
but in the end i am reading it all from far away, far-sighted as i am, and i see them all moving on without me and i am not sure how to respond.
so i change.
i have one choice now and that is to become more myself, less of myself as you knew me and it seems to you that i am not myself because i am responding to the differences in you and the way they brush up against the differences in me as we grow our separate ways.
but the truth is, this is more of who i am than i have ever been.
i am more capable of betrayal than ever before, more prone to rupture and wilderness. more compassionate for the lone stars and businessmen, more sympathetic for the trees without their leaves, more inclined to stare at the couple making out on the screen and then draw their faces in the journal i will memorize and surrender. i am willing to let go, but only a little and angrily at that.
it has to be ok, all of it. for your sake, for mine, for the silence we keep on a cold day, for the way you shy away or laugh when i tell you i know you cried for me.
it has to be ok the way you hate to shave your face or respect expectations. i've come around and i keep coming around; i am always around but you are busy, i know, with your life, your studies, your job and paying the bills and i will take responsibility for the ways i fail to want all the minutiae that compose daily life because i know it is what you want
but i won't like it. i'm not built that way. i am just not built to do the daily grind. and you are moving toward it and i am doing all i can to avoid it and yet
i love you.
i need you.
and you love me
you need me
to ask you to stop, to come between your face and the screen, to show up unexpectedly and draw a heart on your post-it notes. and write a period at the end.
because that is all i have now that you have to go to work more and more, have to work hard more and more, to juggle expenses...
that is all i have to give you. think of it as a tip, a supplement to your income:
i come around and i give my heart and it all comes to a full stop after that.
heart.
helpful | By crymytinyflood | 4:24 PM
