if possbile, we'd like, you know...

Heroic badges
Epic quality: purple.
A new collection.

Trivialize me
Go home, go to bed, go now
Your old ideas suck.

Biblical dreaming
On a Thursday afternoon
Boysenberry junk

Obituary
For your creative nature.
Time to never care.

What follows this scene?
Is it the bus or the crane?
Lively monstering.

Never fade away
When images become real
Expectations met

Goodbye

Graphic designer looking for Asian girlfriend who plays bass…

…or something along those lines.

You may be asking yourself,“Self, is this position right for me?” and if you are, in fact, asking yourself that very question, let me remind you: 1) this isn’t a position and 2) you should probably stop the whole impersonal third-person thing, it’s just weird.

If, by some mercy of god, you have an evolved sense of humor coupled with the competencies necessary for witty banter, I implore you to make yourself known. Prove that intelligent life not only exists, but thrives in the darkened depths of Jacksonville and/or its surrounding counties and sub-communities.

Furthermore, notwithstanding, and in reference to other questions that may arise: Romance, quality-time and quirk all included in the generous benefits package that accompanies this non-position. Chemistry and intangible compatibility required at the outset.

Juno + Underwear

My personality profile

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

You are important. So are other people, especially if they are in trouble. You have a tender heart, but you know how to establish and keep personal boundaries. You are empathetic and compassionate, but you also believe that it's best if people solve their own problems and learn to take care of themselves, if they are able. You are deeply moved by the needs of others, but you know that if you don't take good care of yourself, you'll wind up being of no use to anyone. So yours is a thoughtful compassion. You strive to be fair and sensible, taking care of others while also taking care of yourself. When someone really is in trouble, you like to collaborate with them toward a solution; they do their part, you do yours. You consider carefully, and respond in a sensible way; they do their part, and together you move through the difficulty.  You seldom act impulsively; rather, when a problem arises, you take your time to think through the situation. This contemplative quality usually means that you'll arrive at a diplomatic solution, one that's fair for the other person and also fair to you. It's frequently a win/win situation.

Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You

For people who are ruled by tender-hearted compassion, your more diplomatic response to problems might seem too cool, too focused on fairness and not filled enough with sympathy and selflessness.  For them, when someone's life is on fire, what is needed is not collaboration but rescue. And the person who experiences their life on fire may resent the time you take to contemplate. "I need you, and I need you NOW! This isn't about fairness, it's about the fire." "All deliberate speed" may seem too deliberate and not fast enough, either to the more compassionate or to people in genuine trouble.  At the other end of the spectrum of compassion, those who believe people should take care of themselves may find even your thoughtful sympathies too soft. They expect people, themselves included, to work their own way out of trouble. They are convinced that the helping hand you lend just fosters dependence and is not good for the development of character, either in you or in the person you assist.

Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You

Many people, perhaps the majority, will come to appreciate your balance as a compassionate person. The more they get to know you, the more they will admire your thoughtful compassion for others and its compliment in the sensible ways you take good care of yourself.  Those whom you help will appreciate the way you leave them with their dignity by expecting them to collaborate in their own rescue. Those who are more tender-hearted will find in you a balance they lack; when they've run out of energy because they fail to take good care of themselves, you will still have enough compassion left to lift others out of trouble.  Even the tough-hearted, those who believe people should solve their own problems, might come to admire your tenderness which they don't find in themselves. So the people you help will be grateful, and the people who see your balance between self and others will admire you. Certainly, balanced is not bad at all as a way to be known among your friends.

"Lost in the Jungle" or "Is it Wise to Let the Tigers Know You've Forgotten How to Get Home?"

Portia's stomach ached.

Too much caffeine was most likely the culprit. That and the fact that she had trouble with loss. She felt like she had lost so much over the past two years. She didn't know what the hell she was doing and, as long as she'd tried, she couldn't get used to this feeling. Sometimes, she just thought she was totally full of metaphysical bullshit. A way of trying to assuage the gnawing feeling that she had totally fucked up her life and there was no undoing it. Hey, if she was on a "journey" and was here to learn some "lesson" then it must be the right thing, right?

In all truth, she was faced with the same old Lady and the Tiger conundrum. Behind this door was Fear. Behind that door was Everything Else. She stood there, staring at the doors wondering behind which the Tiger of Fear paced hungrily waiting to consume her. Then it occured to her, that perhaps, just waiting and wondering, unable to put her hand on a doorknob and turn, meant she was already in the death grip of Fear. Perhaps in choosing either door, she would be Free.

She didn't know anything, anymore, if she ever did. And all that kept sliding through her head was "what if this is all there is?" She didn't like that thought. It made her sad.

It was funny.

She knew that she was living a weird life that did not feel authentic. When asked if she knew she was loved, she would say, "Yes," but the answer was actually, "well, what do you mean by you love me?" Because she was pretty sure it wasn't what she meant when she said those three words. And so, in reality, she did not feel loved. She felt, well, stupid.

"Stupid is as stupid does." Forrest Gump's Momma used to say. Portia knew she did a pretty fair impression of Stupid these days.

Her head ached.

She bought some incense online that was supposed to help clear her head. Like that was going to help!

Bottomline:
Her stupidity couldn't come to the surface and be recognized until she finished one thing so she was completely in the other. Then the truth would surface in the form of "I love you, baby, but..." As any good writer will tell you, nothing before the "but" counts. And then she would be off on the New Adventures of Being Alone for real.

She hadn't been there in awhile and it looked a lot scarier from where she was today than it had 25 years earlier. Now she knew a lot more of what could go wrong. And now she could spot that exact moment when girls really became women and boys really became men. Adults with all their idiosyncratic crap rather than idealistic kids Becoming. Men and Women have Become and it ain't all rosy by a long shot. There's lots of sticky goo there.

She wished she was still Becoming.

And as soon as she wished it, even as Stupid as she was, she knew it was True. But the feeling was fleeting and hard to hold on to because that's just the way Truth is for those who are not ready...

and if Portia didn't know anything else, if she was honest with herself, which she tried to be but seldom was, she wasn't ready for this Truth.

The question was: How long could she stay in this place of indecision without losing everything. She'd already lost so much but there was more that could be lost. Much more...

Is it wise for Rolex to sponsor an event where the median income of the attendants is six catfish?

Pull your pants back up…it’s haiku Thursday

Hard to remember
A catalyst for motion
Satisfied to hum

Elitist rhetoric,
I hate your sympathetic
Placebo mentality

Women taking flight
Shuttles blasting their hair off
Appropriateness

Master skill Bullshit (300)
Artisan skill Photoshop (375)
Apprentice at life (50)

Vacant and deprived
In matters of soul and heart
Eff the rest of you

Pierced tendons
Unemployment
You’re scum

Words are excreted
Like noxious after-thinking
STFU ass

No relationship:
Black suit jackets and rockets
Yet somehow so right

Disparate wandering
Into the forest of self-approval and righteousness,
A place I don’t know.

Snogger me inside-
Outside-all-around until-
No more snoggering.

new gear

Where, Oh, Where Has Wallace Gone?

Catharsis

Some weeks are just seven days strung together. Others are a journey which just happen to be seven days long. Portia had just been on such a journey. One might even suggest that it was part of her quest for her personal Holy Grail. 

As it turned out that's exactly what it was. She hadn't known it at the time. It just seemed like a really bad week, frankly. And on Day Six, she pretty much spent the day crying or trying to hide her crying from others. She pondered and considered the reason for this intense sadness and tried on one explanation after another. None seemed to quite make up enough of a reason. At one point, it occurred to Portia that the sadness was really an accumulation of weariness. She carried so much in her soul. So much of her personal sadness and regret and pain that she tried to hide, or dress up as something else, or deal with on a philosophical-slash-spiritual level. 

But on Day Six, it all just oozed out from under the doors she'd bolted tight and everyone could see her sadness. Even her superficial efforts to cheer herself failed. There was no sushi so fresh and tender, or shoes so cute and on sale, or chocolate-covered strawberry so luscious that would lift the curtain of this- this- grief of hers.

Portia made it through her day, but not without being found out. Though she declined to explain which was quite easy, actually, because she had no explanation to offer. She climbed into her car which was a source of annoyance because it needed to be cleaned inside and out. The car's messiness only further agitated her. She slipped a new disc in the player and skipped through to a song that would contribute to her morose mood. 

When she arrived home, she stayed in the car for fifteen more minutes, listening to music with her eyes closed, crying.

At last she went inside, changed clothes, and quit trying to Not Feel. She let if sweep over her like the tide and once it did, the tide kept coming... wave after wave of sadness... wave after wave of Thing She Could Not Control... wave after wave of The Way Things Are... wave after churning wave washing through her psyche and soul ripping out the Everything is OK foundation which supported her Wall of Denial. 

Portia spoke with her lover about these things slowly. She was wary of trusting these things out in the open where they might be interpreted and judged. But as she did, Truth came upon her and a certain Calm... yet it would be another 24 hours before she began to understand what had happened to her that week. And it was just the beginning... 

Team Building Addendum

Okay, so one last thing on this that I didn't think of until last night. The comment was made "we're doing all this team building because studies show that when you're friends with the people you work with, you work better." I didn't even realize the slippery slope of this until hours later. The core idea is that you work with people all the time, but you aren't friends with them for whatever reason. But, if we contrive a social setting, you are more apt to become friends with these people. I'm not sure why this bothers me so much, it's probably right in line with my dating philosophy. Thinking of any friends I have at work, the statement is true, you work better with people you are friends with. Nonetheless, no artificial situation would have perpetuated the process of me being friends with those people. Perhaps that works for some people, but it's much to akin to speed dating. How often have you met a couple that got married as a result of a speed daing session?

Everyone in the Pool.... Its Haiku Thursday!

always running now
always needing to flush twice
it annoys me so

slit my supple wrist
with your jagged rapier wit
dripping garnet stains

bleach away my wrongs
scrub until my knuckles crack
invisible lies

shrouded gaze falling
turned away, never looked back
failing his harsh light

thumping hollow man
echoing across... across
returning to me

Waiting for Dessert
you were there laughing
those black and white checkered coats
so matchy matchy

houndstooth sisters watch
a cake he would not buy me
sliced or otherwise

leaving the toilet
you approached, searching for me-
or was it the pie?

maybe i was drunk
or maybe i wasn't yet
just kind of tipsy

friday night ended
with coffee and smuggled cake
by the light of a star-bucks

it was nice- your call
checking on my arrival
we were safely home

Poster Child for Doubt

Portia didn't know a lot of things and every day she was more certain that she knew less than she did the day before. Not an uncommon thought for Portia, but a subject she found herself mindlessly returning to with greater regularity over the past couple of years.

On this particular day, she listened to a young, new girl's voice emmitting from her car's speakers searching the songs for any lyrics she could cling to. As she did, something in the girl's voice made her think of all the voices of all the female vocalists her former lover had so admired. She realized that if they were still together, she would've shared this new voice with him. The next realization was that they weren't, and she wouldn't and, for some reason, the loss of this part of their relationship... their friendship, if that is what it had been... made her begin to cry.

And it wasn't even a sad song.

Suffering as she was, though the suffering was self-inflicted in every way, she decided to offer herself a kindness to get through the morning and stopped most inconveniently at a little coffee shop she favored. Not because the coffee was so good, but because it was a local establishment with a cool girl at the counter who was always nice to her. She had a hot pink stripe in her hair, a ring in her nose and never treated Portia like some kind of preppy pariah... although at times, she did masquerade as such.

Portia even persuaded herself to purchase two fresh cranberry walnut muffins that she had no intention of eating just to prolong the morning coffee conversational exchange a little longer thus delaying the inevitable arrival at her workstation.

So, much for comfort, coffee and muffins. Back to the Epiphany.

Oh, I didn't mention that yet, did I?

OK. So, there's this epiphany. Let's call it, "Portia's Epiphany on Being a Poster Child for Doubt." Turns out that, as she is caught up in her Emo-Moment of Loss pertaining to a certain satisfaction she once had, she realized why she is so stuck in the moment.

It was like a closet full of barely used shoes.

Many things in Portia's life seemed to boil down to a shoe metaphor and this was no exception.

She had two pairs of shoes in her closet. One pair looked gorgeous but pinched when she wore them and, eventually, caused a blister. Once the injury was incurred, it took about a week for it to heal. About that time, the beauty of the shoes lured her back for another session of pain.

The other pair didn't really go with anything in her closet. But it was the most comfortable pair of shoes she'd ever worn. So, considering her desire for something comfy on any given day, she would sometimes turn to this pair of shoes. However, every time she did and caught a glimpse of herself, she realized these shoes didn't fit her in any other sense... they didn't even look like they belonged on her body... and she didn't like them at all. Then the comfort dissolved into discomfort as halfway through the day they began to make her feel she was trying to be someone she wasn't.

Those two pairs of shoes seemed like relationships. Some parts of them worked, some parts of them didn't. But until Portia cleaned out her closet and got rid of both pairs of shoes, she knew she'd keep trying to make them fit and work for her- though they never would. They would always be the shoes they are.

So, Portia realized, to find a pair of shoes that complimented her more satisfactorily, she needed to keep trying on new pairs of shoes.

Yet she knew she was in no way ready for that. And this thought made her sadder still. What had she learned in the past three years? It seemed she had learned nothing at all except how to put on a different, yet still somehow inappropriate pair of shoes.

Or maybe there was just no right pair of shoes for her feet. Nothing to protect her from the cold, uneven, stony path. No cushioned insole to ease her march across the days of her life and lift her as she jumped at the Joy of Just Being Alive.

And that thought made Portia the Poster Child for Doubt.

That thought made Portia realize that some kinds of cold have nothing to do with the temperature. This other Cold could seep deep down into every pore of her skin bringing her to the brink of freezing- so deep that she could be shattered into a million splintering shards of glistening ice.

That thought made her believe she should seriously consider the possibility of the life of a recluse, of a solitary life. A life lived without shoes at all... toes wiggling in the dewy, green grass, free and unfettered.

In those moments, she pondered, a barefoot life seemed the best alternative for such a girl as her.

An article about Wallace...

what precisely would it say?

Do You See Right Through Me?

Wallace haphazardly drove into work today, about an hour later than usual. Bitter and cold. Insomnia is getting the better of him. Two, maybe three hours of sleep every night. His mind, a racing playground, his body a lump of slump. Beyond that, he mutters through the cold and slips into work. He tries to slide in his office, only to realize the door is locked. A lock to which he doesn’t possess the key. So obviously, a fantastic morning so far.

When Wallace did sleep, he dreamt of a certain engineer, initialed LR. One that has a lot of offer women. Nonetheless he was at a Best Buy. He brought in a giant glass board. Wallace was there with a high school friend he hadn’t thought about in years. So Mr. R. takes this board to a salesman and asks for ideas to repurpose this glass panel. Wallace immediately things this will end badly and quickly. Instead, the salesman walks over to the TVs and turns over a chalkboard and rounds all the customers up for an impromptu brainstorming session. The salesman acts as if he’s been waiting for this moment forever. Any bits past that point are unimportant.