the handsome-man

Today, after a very long while (exactly two weeks and maybe two or three days), the handsome-man was back. (That is all one word. Handsome-man.)

I am threatening to march over to his table and leave my business card on it.

Which, to be sure, since I can't even manage eating when he is sitting at the next row across from me, up one table, is not exactly something I would ever be able to do.

It would, however, in theory, blow him out of the picture, because men don't like it when women are forward.

Or at least, I don't like it when women are forward.

Today, however, he looked and looked and looked at the sky, peering at it in a most exaggerated fashion to determine something that must have been awfully important, before sitting down to eat.

I buried myself in my taco bowl, so I wouldn't be thought to be aware that he was there.

I think he needed to determine the degree of sunlight.

Were I him, I wouldn't be sitting in a Southern sun at noon, in the summer.

And the little outdoor eating area has more tables under the patio roof than nakedly in the bare sun anyway.

I am like that.  Always like to sit at the same exact table, every day.

But about the time I got calmed down enough to manage noticing again what I was eating (and had even cast a wee glance his way. To be sure, I did not have my glasses on so could not have seen anything anyway, even if I had been glancing at him, rather than merely over at the exact table where he was sitting.

I didn't look but the merest of glances, anyway), he stands up, huge in his exquisitely tall thinness, and all of it in that very bright sun, shakes out his paper (as if one of those men of old who came home from the office, oxford shirt still as crisp as when he put it on, sat down to read the evening news while his wife puts the dinner on the table: she would be wearing a proper shirtdress and an apron over the skirt)...

And walks around to sit on the other side of his wee two-fer table!

The sun had been in his eyes (I could surmise) and he could not read his paper!

So he is facing me!

Needless to say, I buried myself even further in my taco bowl.

He really is a handsome man, and I can tell that even though I didn't look over his way one bit!

But he is a goof-ball, and rather like someone I hold very dear.

Err. That would be me.

He seems exactly like me.

And one me is exactly enough for my small life (and sometimes too much!)...

It has been at least two plus weeks since I have seen him. I did mention that.

You see why it would be much better to do something to get me out of this torture! But I really do not want a man that does not take the first step.

With him being as nervous/high strung as I am, however...

It would be a disaster. And I am still certain he smirked, instead of smiling, that day, so he is probably not made of the caliber of saint that I would prefer.

But the main thing is I am aware how much space men tend to take up when they invade a woman's mind and I just do not have room.

So.

There it is.

Washed him out of my hair again and that is that!

but a place without loss

Back to boredom.

Boredom reveals.

Terrible fear in me—I hide behind other portions of my identity because stories (which are truth, and the way people impact one another—read a very interesting article yesterday on that idea)—because the stories of my life are so severe that I cannot go there.

They are stories of loss.

But they have the power to hurt others.

And to let people in. I don't want people in, regardless of whether or not, being human, I must let them in.

People are not kind, and I cannot trust my need to be treated kindly to them. Far better to keep them all "out there"—sometimes, a life allows the boundaries to be ringed by the score of individuals, hands clasped and singing—the long row of them, singing.

But not so often.

Can't see their faces, save one, maybe two. I do not know them. They aren't really there, anyway. I have found my solace and identity in ideas and in Truth and in images like flowers—the exotic kind, heavy in scent and as yet not known, vivid if not garish, hiding in jungles yet unexplored, then coming to the light of someone's microscope, notebook, pen.

My day begins. Yesterday, at the elevator, glad to be there again. The place clean, ordered, filled with that distant row of people, not clapping, not singing, just present.

-adapted from the morning pages, 25 June 2013

o sweet and lazy nigh unto summer

The lazy blogger had a lovely, lazy holiday. Saturday, doing Big Stuff by participating in the March against Monsanto, which headed out of Piedmont Park in Atlanta to march along a section of the BeltLine.

The Atlanta Jazz Festival was in gear, with lots of stalls selling delectables, from eats to drinks to tie-died and lushly curved and curling dresses waiting like doughtnuts slathered with chocolate icing to adorn favourite darlings to jewelry that would let arms and ears and fingers play exquisite mischief...

A single bag, imitation hippie, at best, seemed to be at all the stalls. I'd had to carry the items I needed to cover the March in my backpack—my wee camera, a notebook (in case I wanted to interview anyone), sunscreen...

My keys and a pen and pepper spray.

Plus, of course, my plastic card that, although I use as a matter of course now, does not mean I support a cashless society! It's just harder to get cash these days...

I keep five dollars on hand now for Marta emergency money. When the bar-b-que stall wanted cash, I wavered. Left to eat tacos at Willie's—but would return before I left the park to indulge.

Southern girl to the very heart of me, where bar-b-que is concerned, and I see it so seldom.

Knowing I had a post to prepare on the March for another blog, however, I'd started the morning out trying to figure some way to manage a carry-all that did not involve the backpack. So the bag quite caught my eye: it was exactly what I wanted.

And I could forgive that it only looked like authentic hippie...

Looked like hand-painted fabric squares...

Looked like distressed edges...

I needed one that would be rugged, however, and stand up to a lot of carrying.

The first one I stopped to eye and finger admiringly did seem sturdier than the others. Too, it had extras the others did not have. I guessed the stall owners had added the smart tassels and beads to differentiate their product from that wave of others, likely made by machine to identical items swatched together into infinity...

But I didn't buy until later, after I ate my taco and chips and had time to think that it really was quite okay to buy something I wanted and had a genuine need for.

What surprised (and the reason I write about my new hippie bag) is that it so very much became one of those items that gives a girl new life. Red sports car style.

Haven't quite adored something and felt it let the secret me out in a really long while...

I carried it with me Monday when I walked down to Papi's for lunch. Had a Cuban sandwich and an order of sweet plantains and an iced glass of tea, half sugar and half not. The sandwich ended up so large that I ate only a third and carried the other two-thirds to eat in two separate seatings...

I worked up a draft for a new business card, late that lazy afternoon, and then I was back in my bedroom, having missed most of the news and all of M.A.S.H. and The Voice was on and all of a sudden, these two guys (I absolutely had no warning!) are playing the opening notes to Seven Bridges Road...

I live in an apartment. Terrace (pretty word for basement) with two floors (maybe three) overhead. A really old, early 1900's former boarding house, to the best of my thinking—it was never a private home.

EVERYTHING can be heard. Conversations.

Everything.

Eerie, sometimes, to be sitting here minding my own business and all of a sudden out of the middle of nowhere over to the right of my head a girl is...

Well. That thing girls do when they are with a guy that go under the head of things you'd never do otherwise.

And do have something to do with voice but not with singing.

Although, one can suppose that one might regard the sound as singing...

I never sing anymore (and I mean the more literal kind, there). Haven't for years, because of the closeness of the city.

But not sing Seven Bridges Road?

Not possible.

Oh me. It was an abbreviated version, because it was The Voice. They only do abbreviated.

But oh, I miss that song.

My voice is huskier than it used to be. And it's been alto something or 'nother for a long while. Always wished I could have become a singer...

You have to belt it out, at my age, because it's like riding a bicycle. More inclined to wobble unless you really move over and let it roar out.

Don't know what my neighbors thought. Be willing to bet they all heard, top and beside and across the street..

And thought it amusing, but nice to hear.

But it all made for a very pleasant holiday.