Basketball at Midnight

About Me

Ok.

About

me?

I never know what to say in places like these. I have a tendency to get sentimental and poetic or just plainly romanticize myself. I’ll try not to do that. I’m not a hurt little puppy most of the time, and I’m not really anything visionary, fabulous, or amazing most of the rest of the time.

I like miserable, sad songs, about being alone, and being broken, or losing someone important, possibly because I’m trying to relate to these things.. (not a very good start. I’ll try again)

I tend to be a person of extremes.

I tend to prefer to take paths that are new or enticing, rather than the ones I expect are faster.

I tend to be very concerned with efficiency.

I am never satisfied with anything I do. Ever. Includes writing, emailing, fixing things up, building things. I used to never do anything because I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied. I’ve learned to figure out what’s necessary, and what’s good, and what I want. Then, I act! and aim for #3 and accept #2 (and deal with #1).

I love lightning storms. I’ve been known to hoot and holler and yell with joy while watching a good show..

And downpours.. I like to run out and stand in them, especially when I have someone else with me. I’ve been known to initiate a long, sentimental kiss in a downpour into which I’ve dragged someone else. Most of my guy friends don’t appreciate that

I tend to get a hold of big, broad ideas and apply them to places they weren’t intended to apply, or to where it isn’t polite to apply them, or sometimes to where it doesn’t make sense to most people.

I think of things economically- in the true theory of economics- in which eventhing has incentives and disincentives that are pitted against each other.

I like sunny days with new snowfall..

I probably don’t talk about myself enough. People tell me that. People that have been very close to me. People I have felt were very close and very important to me. I think I’d like to talk more about myself, sometimes. I get scared people probably don’t care. I’m usually right (This is one of the ways in which I can be puppyish).

I like to peer into worlds I don’t understand, like waking down back alleys (or on the golf course behind my parent’s place) in the wee hours of the morning around Christmas, and seeing trees lit up in dark houses, or TVs on in upstairs rooms, or a couple curled up on the couch..

I have a huge, inner sucker for meaning, as a friend noted to me last month. That means I tend to be really concerned with intent, content, lyrics, commentary, implications, connotation, alliteration and consonance, thoughts, feelings, and reasons for things. I tend to be abnormally unconcened with what actually happens or the concrete aspects of what I do.

I like quotes. Good, meaningful quotes..

I tend towards melancholy. Sometimes I’m depressive. Sometimes I’m depressed for a very long time.

I reference things. A lot. In everyday conversation; in my emails. Sometimes I’m referencing family and friends, or the intonation of my uncle making a point. Sometimes I’m making using the structure of a quote as a template for what I’m saying. I don’t expect you to notice or get it.

I like to yell, randomly, passionately… At the sky, at buildings, in my car, sitting at a stoplight on the motorcycle. I like to feel rage well up (deep, inappropriate rage- unfounded, unnecessary, and only welling because I’m doing my best to coax it along) and scream. I squawk sometimes, too, and hoot, and holler, and feel great excitement and fervor along the same lines as the rage..

I critique things, and love doing it- making intelligent critiques of things everyone else naively accepts.. I really enjoy having conversations about such things with other critics.

It is really important to me that what I do is well aligned with my values. I have a lot of problems treating people in ways that I think are not true to what I believe is important. This isn’t the same as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Worlds apart. I don’t believe that silly phrase. It’s really important to me to treat others the way they can handle, they expect, they want, in which they’re comfortable. Unless it violates me in some way, or unless I’m trying to make them uncomfortable, or trying to push their narrow tunnel of expectation, or trying to put them in a place they can’t handle.

I pick up hitchhikers.

Sometimes, I hitchhike.

I don’t like to choose things. If we’re going to do something, it’s important to me that we are going to do something, not what we actually do.

I love Moon. Since I gave up my Car, she is the only thing constant in my life (she, too, needs to get away from me every so often, but she has always come back, at first peeking meekly at me from the corner of a sunset, and then eventually bearing herself to me fully in the middle of the night)..

I believe there are no people that are uncivilized. Evil. Ignorant. Malicious. No one goes out of their way to do me harm because they want to do me harm. They may go out of their way to stalk and kill me because they developed some infatuation with me the time I smiled at them on the bus, but that’s because of that crazy neurosis that’s probably the result of some damage they incorporated in their childhood… or young adulthood…. or last week. It’s not their intent to be malicious. It just happens. Sometimes, it’s because the action will get them something they want and they don’t care about the side effects.

I care about the side effects of my actions. Sometimes it makes me afraid to act.

Ok. Really. I really care about side effects. A lot of the time, it leads me to do things I don’t really want to do, or not do things I would really prefer doing. I tend to act, towards others, much more conservatively than my beliefs would otherwise allow.

On that note, I don’t date people I don’t believe I want to be dating. I don’t mess around with people that I believe want to date me, regardless of whether they say it’s okay (though sometimes I don’t realize these things as they happen).

I try to learn how cultural norms works- the games people play. I try to learn the rules and what to expect other people are really trying to indicate, and what other people expect from me. When it comes to them, I play based on the level that I expect that they want me to play, as long as it doesn’t violate something else I believe. When it comes to me, I try to get people to not play, at least if I trust that they are good enough people.

Powerful, confident people turn me on . Confident in themselves by themself, at least, not necessary socially. I don’t think I can expect more of them than I require of myself.

I love rivers, and standing or laying down next to them, watching them, standing in them! Waterfalls are not as nice.
I will name my first daughter Maenam if I have exclusive naming rights. “River” in Thai. I have dreams of most people calling her Mae like any other Western Mae, and I’d call her Nam, and sometimes Nammy, as a special, sacred name.

I challenge people: their beliefs and assumptions that have a connotation/side effect of discounting someone else, their beliefs, or their actions. I will challenge people who believe exactly the same things I do if they express it with these side effects. It’s important to me why they believe it, not what they believe.
I don’t hate wal-mart..

Picking up bottles or cleaning up in the middle of someone else’s party makes me feel good.. So does taking control of the food prep and sending the perfectionist, overworking host out to take a break and TALK TO HER (usually. occassionally HIS) FREAKING GUESTS .

I am really secure with myself. I know me pretty well, and spend a lot of time talking to myself and getting to know myself better. I have deep conversations about how things make me feel, and how I feel about them making me feel that way, and whether or not that is ok and acceptable and good for me, and how I react to other people when I feel that way, and whether or not that is a good reaction, and if it’s not, how I can react better. Usually, I can’t explain what I know about myself in a way people can understand, or in a way that makes them believe me.

I care about myself.

I am really really insecure with other people. I am afraid of them. I don’t know what they expect of me or what they want from me, and I try to learn and try to provide, but often fail. I “guess at what normal is,” to quote a list of common characteristics I once found.

I like to cry (though it’s hard for me to do… I try as much as I can).

I love the moment I see the bluish haze on the horizon in the middle of the night when someone is sleeping soundly and quietly in the passenger seat.

I don’t care what people think and believe. They can hate white people. They can be homophobic. They have the right, and that right is entirely, purely, complexly acceptable. I do not believe they can act on it, because action requires understanding of how people must behave for a society to function, but they absolutely, in every situation, have an inalienagble right to believe it and not be discounted in other aspects of reality because of that belief. If you ever discount the opinion of someone because they have a fish on their car, because they complain about affirmative action, or because they say women are too impulsive to be president….. It will make me mad (see, somewhere else around here, the way to really, really make me mad. Same.).

I’m a fool for symbolism.. That should be apparent by this point. I love the 21st of December, the shortest day, because… think of it!… every day… EVERY DAY!… from that point on will be longer and brighter! What a beautiful day for a wedding.

I like long spans of time by myself.

I love taking care of people, and having a sense that people feel safe because of me.

My cousin says I’m a terrible person in a relationship: I break up with someone if I realize I’m not wholly and totally sure that I want to be dating them. Usually, I care about them and really want to be friends with them afterwards. I haven’t done “mean things,” as she says, like say I want to be friends and never call them, or really have a clear, distinct, reason for breaking up with them. So, she says, they can’t say “He’s really a jerk because of this” or “Well, I messed up and so it’s over,” and that makes the typical person remember the good things about me, not have anything to counteract it, and then feel like there’s something critically and fundamentally inferior about them that makes them really-good-friendable but not datable. And that’s a terrible place to put someone.

My cousin is probably right.

I don’t take kindly to people trying to get me to say or do something because of some social norm or rule or sense of politeness that I don’t believe. Yes, you’re fat. No, you’re not a good person. Yes, she hates you because you’re boring.

I really like symmetry..

I think I’d be a good person for someone else to break up with. I think I’d become really good friends with that person. They know me differently than most people in the world, and I can probably deal with the baggage of not-being-datable-anymore. I don’t know for sure, though, because I’ve never been broken up with.

I can only deal with people for so long before I get tired of them or need to go off by myself.

I like modern poetry (but very little classical poetry)..

Being in a routine wears me out.

The best way to really bother me, and to drag me to a place in which I’ll kick and scream and actually be really unhappy, mad, and frustrated, is to discount my opinion, or my ability to have an opinion- or anyone else’s.

The next best way is to try to manipulate me, implicitly or explicitly. You can do this with realizing it. Be careful.

I like asking people what their story is, and I like getting a good story.

I really like incongruity. Not assymmetry, mind you.

I want to fall in love.

I need to feel useful..

I need to take breaks from things. I have to go for a walk if I spend too much time doing the same thing at work. My need to get away is so strong I can only get away for so long before I have to get away from getting away. I don’t think I could travel for my entire life. Six months was just about the max.

I like learning. Everything. Anything.

People who remember little things about me make me happy..

I want to “need,” to “be needy.” I’m too independent. As I responded to a friend who suggested people need other people, “If people really need other people, I’d have died hundreds of times.”

People let me down. A lot. Not just relating to hats and boa constrictors. And when people let me down, it shuts down a little piece of me towards them. I talk to them about things that they like, and who they are, and based on things I think they expect me to talk about. I’m not comfortable being entirely open with them afterwards because they’ll let me down again. It’s consistent enough that I don’t feel a need to try to change that expectation.

I’m a sucker for parallel structure.. It’s one of the very few grammar concepts to which I’m addicted.

I love stories.. Stores about what people are, or have done, or have heard about…. what they like and think and feel.

I don’t like things that are different because they are different. That’s no better, in the end, than liking something that’s the same because it’s the same.

People that do little, nice things make me happy..

I don’t have respect for things that are old. Or worn. Or shiny. Or tried and true. Or really innovative. Or anything simply because they are some simple little characteristic. There has to be some bigger meaning for why they are like that, and it’s that meaning that I’d respect. My worn, book of modern american poetry with the shredding spine has a lot of meaning to me because it is me that has worn it so much. The 49 cent The Litttle Prince from the ’40s in a similar condition has no meaning to me for its wornness because I didn’t do it, don’t know how it happened, and haven’t been told the ordeals its been through.

I am never totally comfortable.

I really like to hear what people have to say, and I go to ruthless ends to get people to say it, regardless of acceptability or any other tendencies to avoid these things..

I contradict myself, and I am fully satisfied that both statements are correct. I contain multitudes.

I want someone to break my heart. I’ve been hiring for that position for a couple years now. I’ve had several promises and a couple offers, but none lived up to their promise. I feel that I’m missing out on a whole range of emotions and empathy that so many people know and have felt. Sometimes I feel too much at a loss when people tell me about what they’re going through and I can’t relate. And yes, I would also jump out of an airplane without a parachute if I believed the recovery wouldn’t cost too much of my savings. Let’s be pragmatic.

I have a strong preferences for things that are bitter. Coffee. Whiskey. Gin. Scratching with claws and gnashing teeth.

I like things that are functional and useful. When making selection, I often consider the following:

• does it work they way I want it to?
• is it not more complex than its alternatives?
• is it not less efficient than its alternatives?
• is it something I know well? This is a positive sometimes and a negative sometimes. As a general rule of thumb, it’s a positive if the selection is a dependency for other things

I love tradition. (that’s meaningful).

I hate tradition. (when people don’t know why they do it, or don’t think about why they do it, or keep it up after the underlying reason for it is gone or has changed).

I like tautologies. Especially when they’re false.

I like making sacred space in my life. You probably don’t know what that means- I like making things special, endowing regular old artifice with meaning and incorporating them with specialness into my life..

I like things that are cold.. Ice. Snow. Seeing my breath. Steel. Rain at around 40 degrees.

I love paradoxes and contradictions and contrast and things that exist that don’t make sense. I don’t care about bumble bees, though (that should make sense!)

I like learning about other people’s traditions and what they think is special..

I like black and silver..

I do not have a fear of commitment, though you probably think I do (it seems everyone thinks so). I have a fear of hurting people. I will not stick to a commitment to which I am no longer committed, and that’s not the game most people play or on which they accept bending the rules. So, I avoid making commitments because of the possibility (ahem. Likelihood) that I will some day no longer be making it. A commitment, for me, is not a contract unbreakable, it’s an agreement that this is what I want, and I’ll let you know if I stop wanting.

I watch chick flicks.. They mock me at work for it: I like to curl up on the couch under a throw blanket on a lazy afternoon and watch a chick flick, and if I could stomach it, I’d probably eat a whole half gallon of ice cream by myself.

I like challenge. No, I love challenge.

People who try to trick me and fail make me smile..

I like waking up early on the weekend and going for cruises on the motorcycle or in the car with the windows up and the radio off, when it’s light out but no one is awake and nothing really is open..

I am restless and dissatisfied. A friend told me that a couple years ago. That’s one of my favorite descriptions, and I cite it often. I’m horribly afraid of finding a place that is too good in which I settle comfortably in and lose all the aspects of myself that exist as ways to deal with my restlessness or to try to make things more satisfying. What would help to motivate me?

I hate passivity. Probably because, at heart, I’m really passive.

I like things that are cute and sentimental.. like puppies and a little Kevin curled up, writing what he thinks about himself.

I don’t like hurting people. A little piece of me dies when I hurt someone. The times I’ve cried most in my life…. possibly the only sure way to make me cry for a full day (and, in some cases, a whole weekend)…… has been when I broke up with someone. Consistently.

I like watching flames..

I like people telling me I look sad when I am sad..

I try to take responsibility for everything for which I am responsible. Although I value people’s thoughts and feelings and values for what they do, in the end I hold everyone else responsible for the intents behind their actions. People who consistently don’t deal with themselves, or who react negatively or with unnecessary negative side effects, or passive-aggressively, frustrate me. At some level, they lose my respect (though I try not to admit that one).

I like saying that I cope with my faults. I identify things that are problems, or that aren’t ideal about myself, and do little things to change them to make them better, or at least less detrimental. The first time I really did this was when I decided I was way too passive and decided I had to begin to Act! even if I didn’t know for sure what would happen. I’ve come miles sense then. On foot. Step by step, with crappy knees. Miles.

I don’t believe in genetics as an argument for anything individualistic. It’s ridiculous. It’s a cop-out. There is not a thing that is in your DNA that cannot be changed. If you don’t like your eye color, you can rip out your eyes. You always could have done it. Oedipus did it. These days, you can also get colored contacts. If you don’t like that you get emotional and scream at people, you can teach yourself to shut up, pinch the back of your hand, and say in a very slow, restrained voice, “I am not happy. Now walk away so I don’t have to yell at you.”

I like waving my hands above my head when I’m excitedly talking about some great vision I have/had. Even if the cops come and ask whoever I’m with if everything is okay..

I think I’d try just about everything that isn’t going to fundamentally alter my brain chemistry once or twice, and maybe more.

I like feeling helpless. I like the momentary sense that I cannot do anything of any consequence in the world, or everything I do is for naught. Probably because it’s a rare and transitory feeling.

I like talking to strangers..

I really like it when strangers talk to me without any alterior motive..

I am most comfortable being a little bit discomfortable- being right at that fringe between someplace at which I feel safe and someplace where I’m so completely lost I would withdraw into the corner.

I love spirals.. Every iteration is new, but similar to somewhere else you’ve been before.

“That’s just how I am” is never how you are. Did I mention I don’t like dismissivity? I don’t. Don’t dismiss things. I try my best to attack things that I realize I have an anxiety about and try to dismiss.

I love people- most people- people that hate me and don’t know me. The guy who brings the samples at Bread Co, the woman who talks to the old guy on the bus, the late night security guard at work.

I don’t write enough about stuff. I’m going back through this right now and writing about stuff I like and don’t like. I’m marking them with “..” in case you actually want to see what I, by default, write and think about, and what I had to consciously add later.

This list isn’t a chronological stream of conscious. I’ve placed things that are too related deliberately in different places, and gone and put things that I get to at different times near things they’re related to.

I feel like I could keep writing for days… but the coffee is cold and the shop is closing…. so that’s what you get for now!

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