Subtitles

I like to watch movies with subtitles.  This probably came about since I love foreign films, but I put the subtitle option on even when I’m watching films in English. Especially if they’re in English.  I find that having white or yellow letters at the bottom of the screen help me better concentrate on the movie and what is being said when I can read it at the same time.  Sometimes I wish I had this option in real life. Sometimes I wish I had subtitles for when I’m speaking to people.

I notice this often in English language films where the subtitle doesn’t quite match up to what the character said.  It’s just a word or two, and it still contains the same idea. Real life is like this often because I experience a disconnect between what is said, and what I hear.  Am I hearing what they are saying? Am they saying what I’m hearing or will my own interpretation come back to haunt me?

Early in the movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton passionately converse about art and the beach, but the subtitles below show their thoughts are centered around sex.  He wants to sleep with her and he’s trying to devise the most witty, stimulating comments to give her the impression he’s one worth sleeping with.  Conversations take place like these every day.

Or maybe I’ll give a more current example.  Let’s say, me, goes to an event (like a party, an art murmur, a museum, etc) and I meet someone I like.  I tell person I like that I’d like to get together some time, and they say sure!  But of course this doesn’t happen.  Whenever I’ve said, “Can I see you again?”  there’s usually some child like voice on the inside saying, “I like you. Do you like me?  Am I worth some of your time?” And maybe person I like may think, “She seems desperate” or “I have enough friends” or “She seems cool and I’d like to spend time with her too.”  I say this because this response is standard in the Bay Area.  I meet people I like all the time but I can never tell if they like me too, or if they like me in the moment.  

Here’s where a subtitle option would be useful.  It’s not the same as reading someone’s mind (I don’t even like being in my head sometimes.  I don’t want to be in anyone else’s) but it would help to see if the person is being sincere. Or better yet, am I being sincere in what I’m saying.  I try to make my words match up with my intentions, but sometimes it doesn’t happen.  Okay, it rarely doesn’t happen.

The easiest way to become my friend or to get me to do something nice for you is to just tell me you like me.  I’ve given up on hearing someone say they love me for the moment.  A few years ago I met a nice older man at a dinner party who stopped me mid-sentence to tell me he liked me.  And I felt relieved.  That older man became my therapist when I was in school, and I’m sure it’s all because he told me he liked me that it allowed me to listen to him.  

Even now, though, I still stumble with saying I like someone, even if it’s true.  Mainly because it requires some sort of vulnerability and from my experience, it makes people nervous.  I told a guy I liked him one at a party and that started some weird discussion on how I was trying to push my expectations and decisions onto him and I wasn’t being fair.  That ended me liking him.  And the conversation.  But if I had the chance to read a subtitle where he might’ve said, “Don’t say you like me” I might not have said it.  And who knows, maybe we would’ve been friends, who don’t like each other.  

I bring this up because I could’ve used a subtitles option a few weeks ago.  At the Art Murmur I ran into this guy Evan who helped me with the purchase of my bike (finding an adult bike if you’re under 5′3″ is a challenge) and he made me laugh while he adjusted my seat. Miranda swore up and down that we were flirting, although I justified it in saying he was trying to make a sale. 

“But he was acting like that long after you wrote the check,” she said.

Good point.  Anyway, he was friendly, and I wanted to get to know him.  So when I saw him at the art murmur I found the perfect question for him — which was, which gears do I need to be in while going uphill.  He ended up coming back to my place for a glass of water and to see the fosters along with his best friend, and right before he left, he said he had fun with me. I did too.  I asked him if he’d like to hang out again, and right before we exchanged numbers he got all nervous.  Said he only calls 5 or 6 people on a regular basis.  I asked him why couldn’t be a part of this group for a week, just to see how things turn out, then he stumbled he couldn’t do it, he didn’t know if he was going to call me, and yammer yammer yawed, and I’m wondering, why the hell did this get so complicated.  All I wanted to do was hang out and have fun, and now, now we’re reduced to this:  sweaty palms and fumbling with cell phone and blushes on both sides.  Not the good kind either.

If there was a subtitle, in my mind, it would’ve read, “I’m not sure if I like you enough to spend two hours with you,” on his end.  Or perhaps, “You get the wrong idea and I don’t like you at all.  I was just showing good salesmanship.”  Whatever the case, I refused to hug him when he left.  Perhaps my subtitles was reading, “You don’t deserve it and you hurt my feelings. Kind of.”

Then again, it might have said more than that.

The Update of I’s

It’s been too long since I’ve updated this thing. Here are a few thoughts

 

1. I need to write as much as a run.
2. I like everything about my life right now, except my job.  I need a new one.
3. I’m glad I’m throwing potlucks
4. I went to the art murmur with my lovely vegan neighbor Miranda a few weeks ago, where she said she loved me.  She’s said it before, but this is the first time I believed her!  This is also the first time in five years I’ve had a positive exchange involving the words I love you.
5. I love kitten fostering.  Who wouldn’t love to have cute furry animals in their home only to return them when they start getting irritating?
6. I’m happy I have my bike.
7. I actually went vegan.
8. I am feeling a bit old now that 25 will be here in two short months and I’m having a quarter life crisis entitled, what am I doing with my life?
9. I miss being in a relationship. I don’t miss him.  But I would like to be with someone else in that way.
10. I am scared of the things that go on in my head.

Bad Mood

It feels like my entire world is caving in and I’m suffering from claustrophobia of the soul.  I can’t breathe.  I want to get out of here, but go where?  Everywhere else I’ll still have myself.  And I shouldn’t feel like this, because things are going really well.

 

I don’t feel good today.  I just needed to say that.  A real post will come soon.

Thoughts on Love

I might as well get this out of the way:  my love and I split up a couple of weeks ago.  It was right before I was to buy a ticket to go to his sister’s wedding, which thankfully I didn’t buy.  Otherwise he would’ve owed me a couple hundred bucks if I couldn’t get a refund.  I didn’t quite understand his reasons but it doesn’t matter.  He is gone and his stuff has been returned to his place.

 I’m trying to look at the positives of this:  Now that I’m single again, I can hog the bed.  I can sleep as late as I want!  I can chew on ginger like it’s tobacco, put fruit in all my pancakes and flirt with people when I go to the bar because I’m single and I get to do whatever I want –

 And I miss him terribly!  I mean it.  I miss him like crazy.  For the first week I was having serious withdrawals.  Who’s going to go on scenic bike rides with me?  Who am I going to cook breakfast for?  Who is going to make love to me, buy me flowers, and take me out to sushi?  Of course I have all the answers to these questions.  I’m getting a bike in a few weeks if I have to work it off, I invited a few friends over and woke up at the crack of dawn just to make them homemade crepes with fresh strawberries, bananas and whipped cream (and I even had a brunch vegan potluck which looks like it’ll turn into a monthly series) and my friends raved about the breakfast.  And I can get a vibrator, order my own sushi and buy my own damned flowers.  I don’t need anyone to do those things for me, but it helped to have someone around who wanted to spend time with me and give me an occasional compliment.  Looking back on it there were a few things wrong with our relationship which might have made him question if we were a good match but I won’t discuss them here.  He still wants to be friends, and I could open myself up to that possibility – it’s not everyday I meet someone with my exact same birth date.  But not right now. 

 I thought about him when my friend Stephanie loaned me her copy of bell hooks’s All about Love.  How I went through five years of college and never reading a single book of hers, I still don’t know. For those who haven’t read the book, the premise is that the word love is used in very messy terms.  We use it for everything, as a noun, when it’s really a verb.  She gives a working definition, which states that love is care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect and knowledge.  I like that definition.  That fits into the love that I hope I give others, and the love I want to receive. 

 One of the things I’m oddly ashamed of is that no one I’ve ever been with has ever said that they love me. In fact, what ends up happening, as things did with my love, is that they don’t feel “emotionally connected” to me, and they don’t think they’ll ever love me.  Some have said that I seem “green” or “high maintenance” and I wonder if there’s some sort of short hand that I’m missing out on.  I genuinely want to be nice to people, but it seems like they don’t pick up on that frequency, or they want premium channels of excitement and high drama and I’m just a basic NBC station.  This analogy isn’t working.

 Anyway, I had a strange experience reading the book.  Seeing the word love typed in paragraphs multiple times felt invasive.  I almost would’ve preferred to see the word “fuck” everywhere, but that was probably hooks’s point.  As a culture we speak more about lack of love, as compared to finding an embracing love as a choice, as opposed to something we fall into.  It also stated that a lot of people get in relationships where there’s extensive care, but no love.  I believe this is also true of many of the relationships that I’ve witnessed, but I’m not the one in those situations so who’s to say that’s what they experience? 

 Often I wonder if I even know what I’m talking about, since hardly anyone says that they love me.  My own mom won’t say it to me.  A few months ago I went out with my old roommate for lunch and we started talking about relationships.  She asked me the length of my longest relationships, so I told her three months (which is true), and her reply was “Are you a terrible girlfriend?”  I didn’t respond.  She then bragged about how she always has a man, that her longest relationship was her current one at four years, and she only did long term relationships.  When she started to rattle off all these exes, I did the math in my head and calculated she hadn’t been single for longer than a week since she was 13.  A mixture of awe, envy and confusion surged through me.  She talked of her relationships as an accomplishment.  These number and length of her relationships meant that she was mature, marriage ready, and a good girlfriend.  But I also saw her serial monogamy as a sign that she couldn’t stand being alone.  And her relationship with her then boyfriend wasn’t the greatest.  It seemed like the only way they could communicate was in anger.  It scared me.  Their relationship was one of power struggles for control on both sides.  It didn’t look very fun.  Or loving for that matter.

1. I figure either I’m looking for love and seeking others or I’m not looking for love and I’ll be alone.

 Even after writing all of this I think I’ll be able to find the love that I want, and I’m trying, desperately not to write off what happened between my last ex and I as a failure or time wasted.  I want to believe I can find someone who wants the same things as I do, but it’s hard.  I still wonder if there’s something I’m doing wrong, or if I have a completely naïve Pollyanna vision about relationships and what I hope to bring.  Is it about love, or is it about something else?  Can someone else tell me what it’s all about?

Free write 14: Daydreaming

I daydream more than I breathe.  Like the article in Psychology today, I am devoted to distraction.  I love to think.  Think about thinking about the thinking of thinking and such.  And I wish so many of my fantasies were just that fantasies but they’re so rooted in reality I don’t know how to escape it.  So what am I daydreaming about when I’m so desperately trying to look busy at work, or when I’m in the grocery store, or when I’m with friends?  Lots of things.  Real things, like, how much fun I had in London, or how I’m glad I’m out of school, or how I’ll be gladder when I can return to grad school, and if after close to two years being here, do I really want to make the Bay Area my home?  And if I don’t did I just waste two years of my life when I could’ve been getting a masters?  Of how much I still want to get my MFA but then I wonder why, and how badly I want to quick this job out of general purpose but then I wonder why, and what’ll be eating today, and what should I have as a snack today, and why does getting naked with someone turn me off again, and why don’t books sound as awesome as they used to, and what’ with me running off to hibernate in the spring (I should be happy I’m single with all this hot weather to scope out hot people  in) and am I really gay at heart, and do I want to leave, and do I want to read, or why am I so afraid of writing, and afraid of falling in love, but yet I’m falling in love with writing again?  It’s scary!  How marvelous!  I have something to look forward to in the hours of silence after I leave my dead end job.

 Summer always reminds me of the summers from childhood, when I could find soft serve ice cream or when I was trying to give my friends a definition of masturbation when I really meant a nocturnal emission (this was during my encyclopedia obsession) or when penny candy was a penny and hanging out at the park past six was the baddest thing ever.  I think a lot about love, failed love, why can’t I ever say I love you and be happy – or be accepted, or is there something wrong with the love I am offering and am I just on a completely separate wavelength as the rest of the population.  I wonder about that often too.  I wonder about leaving the country again and teaching abroad, to embrace the adventure of being alive the way I did in London, when I thought about the Peace Corps, when I first moved up here. Even though I know what I’m looking for is to fall tumultuously, dangerously, relentlessly, and financial irresponsibly in love again and feel the freshness and the new because I haven’t felt it in a very long time.  I told Stephanie that I was thinking about it again – what was important to me and how to do I achieve it – and if I could achieve it being in Oakland at some dead end job.  I really don’t know at the moment if I need a change in location or a change and perspective.  I may be getting ahead of myself.  Besides, I would have to stay here for another year anyway before plotting to leave this place.

 And yet I daydream, constantly about my needs, others needs, how do I go about meeting others needs and fulfilling my own? Am I even capable of loving people in the way they need to be loved?   Am I just crazy for drama since things are so cool for now?  Besides, I relish my apartment, the freedom to read, the employment which pays me just enough to afford this studio, and yet I am looking for a change, a constant change – I don’t know if I ever am ever evolving.