One is the loneliest robot

Joining my voice to the chorus: WALL-E is awesome. It's incredibly beautiful, poignant, important, and satisfying. The end credits alone are worth the price of admission (even worth watching it in a room full of restless children). The animation, the nuance and expression imbued in dialogue-free sequences of robot love, yes it's all you have read and more. And it frickin' killed me.

Earlier in the weekend I made a tour of iconic Bay Area subcultures, flitting from Berkeley hippie party to Dyke March Dolores Park madness to Karaoke Revolution with software engineers. What did I learn? Vegan mint cupcakes taste like toothpaste, Arab lesbians rule SF, and "Fame" is really hard to sing. Also, avoid special cookies in Dolores Park.

After all that exhausting activity, I made it home to start a re-read of Harry Potter 7. It's been a little less than a year since my first read, but I have found Harry to be therapeutic in the past and it beats Degrassi marathons on The N. Oh, who am I kidding? Nothing beats Degrassi marathons! Programming executives at The N who have chosen to make episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation 40% of all content shown on the channel, thank you. I will never be sated. Teen melodrama will never get old.

And then, this afternoon, despite all the friendliness of the weekend, I told my therapist why WALL-E made me so sad.

"So, you feel like you are the lonely robot," she shrinktalked (which is not quite asking, not quite stating). I nodded, tearing up remembering WALL-E's little robot pincers miming human hand-holding.

Pause. "And we need to stop for today."

"But you should really see the movie," I told her as I shuffled off the couch, "it's really good."

It's all the same oatbag

Here in this "space" I like to call my "blog" there are a couple built-in assumptions. First, here I am the center of the universe (the corollary therefore is it's all about ME and it's not about YOU), and, b) I aim to entertain, in some small way, all of humanity. That means I am occasionally guilty of generalizations for dramatic effect. As always, it's a dish best served with salt.

It's all over now, Susie Q.

This should be surprising to no one, since I have always counseled my friends to maintain periods of distance from exes before trying to be friends, but man, did this one blow up in my face. I tried to do it all the right way, did my best to keep anything awkward or hurtful out of conversation, to preserve the deep friendship at the root of the relationship, but there is no right way.

When the break-up happened, it seemed like there were almost as many reasons for us to stay friends as there were to break up. It was so mutual, so heartfelt. And we stayed friends, close friends, friends that weren't really friends for a while, but then friends that were friends. Friends who knew each other better than most, who cared more than most. That's just as much a dangerous situation. Because you think you're in on a secret, a testament to your shared past, and you think you're looking out for each other just a little bit more than the average person. And that means when the trust - the expectation of that mutual consideration - is let down, it's the most crushing disappointment.

When this kind of friend treats you poorly, it's like losing ten best friends at once. You're disbelieving yet painfully aware of the truth. It's like watching a car accident in slow motion, knowing there will be no survivors.

Suddenly every idea you had about love, the kind that lasts beyond romance, is so naïve. Suddenly there is nothing to show for your 5 years of caring about someone else. You're speechless. The lasting warm feelings about "love justly wagered and lost," of knowing you'll always be there for each other, are replaced with bitterness, with the shock that you don't know him at all, that your situation is not special, that you're walking away with nothing.

Great, now I get to be Fiona Apple!

Boys, you guys. Boys are the WORST. What is with that? If it's not leaving the seat up, or crumbs everywhere, or smelly feet, or, you know, intentional cruelty, then it's just plain thickheadedness and lack-of-clue-itude. They're worthless. I wish sexual orientation were a choice.

So what do we do about boys? Tear our hair out, cry in the shower, listen to music of the dejected/embittered female singer-songwriter genre? Those are the obvious choices. What do we do when they're small, petty, or mean-spirited? What do we do when they disappoint us?

Taking suggestions:

This is outrageous, this is contagious

Lifestyles of the unemployed include:

• ER reruns (currently on season 4), mornings on TNT
• Coffee
  
• Skimming the pool
  
• Email networking
• The Jeannie Tate Show
• Talking to myself while I drive
  
• Debating the likelihood of dying alone
• Walking

Most of the above items are enjoyed in solitude, except when Molly is there.

I throw my arms out in exultation

I've been told (by my sole Gentle Reader) that the picture in the Tuesday post looks like a stock image and that it's not clear that it's actually me in the photo. So, yes, that's me. And that's a stork's nest, which makes the overall effect a bit Willow, if you know what I'm saying.

This is also me (standing).

Sissy!

Who could fear dying alone with this one around?

There are two kinds of people in this world

The kind that drown in nostalgia and the kind that don't. The ones who bump over potholes big and small, and the ones who drive wholly off-road, on switchbacks, in an old Jeep Wrangler with no brakes. The neutrons, tucked in with the protons, all stable and shit in the center of the atom, and the electrons, negative charges swinging around, jumping off, never still.

Jeez, me and the metaphors...

Pete says no to nostalgia. I'm trying.

That is all.

What it's like

Wow, I sound optimistic there below. I was going places! Now I've lost the map. This feels like a Jeff Buckley song, tragic, absurdist even. Job-like, Sisyphusian? Maybe I'm overselling it.  I don't know what happened and I don't know where to start.

Seriously, what the fuck? 

Where did the time go? A year ago I moved out of my apartment, left my job and friends behind, in pursuit of adventure. It didn't work out. OK, I'll forgive myself that one. But the months since I came home long ago started to bleed together into a mass of time I can barely distinguish. There was Ecuador in there. There was NAMM. There were the Build kids, that's something. I think I remember feeling good about things. But what were those things? What were those feelings? It's all alien. 

Where is the joy? That's the question I keep coming back to. It must be in the future, because "you can't go back to somewhere that doesn't exist anymore." All the most tired clichés - they're true!

There's no distraction, not even for a moment. It's the weight on your shoulders every night you fall asleep and every morning as soon as you wake up. It's 100,000 tiny meathooks pulling you apart. It's a flint sparking in your gut that means you never want to eat (so, thanks for that). It's like in The Abyss when the bad guy in the mini-sub that slips off the ledge is crushed, imploded by ocean pressure. It's a million bad metaphors. It's an endless stream of suddenly, terribly meaningful song lyrics. It's shitty.

What's it all about?

Now is the time on HiC when we unpack and reflect, 6 months later. It's time for a new mission statement, a new plan. This thing (me) is going somewhere. If I were 14 I'd probably feel the need to change my hair color. Hm, except I did that at age 24 too, so I'm still a teenager inside.

You all remember the angst of deciding to come home from Cambodia, followed by the euphoria of nest re-entrance. It was a trying time, one I passed through in a daze, so only now do I recognize the tryingness of it. Tryingness is not a word - maybe confusion works as well. 

I often say (complain) that my life has "gotten smaller." I feel overwhelmed with evidence that I don't know as many people as I used to, I make fewer plans, move around in smaller and smaller circles of habit, and explore less. I feel lame. This has been a recurring theme since I moved home, which, HELLO, makes a ton of sense. This shrinking is in direct opposition to the standing atop a waterfall, endless potential before me feeling I had at 18, at 21. That has been elusive for years. 

I am going to reverse this trend, recapture the accelerating expansion sensation, jump.