2003-06-24 - 2:35 a.m.

Of Metarelationships and Forgotten Marbles

_{If you are searching for the bone-bare spotlight on the mundanity and monotony of life, it is suggested by the Editor that you skip this particular issue, since it contains descriptions of uplifting events, wherein the author finds happiness and possibly some love as well. Also, the Editor reminds himself to ask the primary graphic designer in his life about a particular tattoo.}

It's like that with the ability to live life happily -- it's not that I lost the ability to do so, just that I'd forgotten what it was like and consequently how to shape myself to act it out and make it real. Life skills can either be a lot better or a lot worse than lost marbles in that you have the option of finding them, however dark the day, without breaking your ankles in the process; inanimate objects give us no such choice.

Out of the blue, one fine day of posting on SomethingAwful, an AIM name I don't recognize bleeps into existence in its' own little window and says "hey, sup". I assumed it was a random annoyance who'd been bugging me for a day or two on one screen name after another as I got tired of ignoring him and blocked his accounts. Knew that prior annoyance hated reading anything longer than a couple lines. Sent something to the effect, if not the exact metaphor, of pondering the Vistas of Blah that lay stretched out before me as a future. Said AIM Name responded with a surprising, "Whoa, I thought I was the only one who felt that way."

If you've been around Diaryland, you know that BLAH is not exactly an uncommon sentiment, but I would venture to say that I'm among the most verbose on the subject, so I've at least got one place of pride among the measles, weasles, and gems that make their home here. It served, though, to start us talking for a few hours before they signed off for the night and I started playing Ogre Battle 64 for my recently-acquired N64.

One aspect of SA that I'd not adequately appreciated is the Buy/Sell forums, where prices on a variety of items are rather more reasonable than not -- like the N64 with thirteen games, four controllers, two rumble packs, and four memory packs that I picked up for $60, shipped. Most of the games were quite good, too. Moving on, however.

Next day, same person signs on and sends me a "hay womans 'sup", which confused me, but we talked for a couple hours anyhow. Said Person, hereafter referred to as S. because that is her name, eventually stated how nice it was to talk to another intelligent, well-spoken female from the forums and to not have the usual idiocy.

Whether it was because we both spent a bit of time muttering imprecations about "stupid bois" or because of a longstanding forum joke about my being a female (I'm required by the terms of the joke to swear at anyone who implies that I'm female), the conversations apparently started because she thought I was female. Once again, for those who are not in the know, as the French say, I am male.

Ensuing hilarity, some moments of predictable uncertainty, and ultimately no real change in the already high-quality conversations we were having. And so we started talking, and talking, and talking.

And talking. That day we started at around 6PM and finished up when the sun had risen and people were beginning their days. Twelve and fourteen hour conversations are not unusual when we both have the time. I've not had this much fun in years.

Years.

Last time I was interested in life, I'd discovered how much I enjoyed talking to one Traumensie and was planning to leave everything I disliked about life behind. To quit; the phrase I've used since I first understood what it was I'd been trying to do through all that.

I'm not saying the feeling wasn't real, but I am saying that my escapist mentality at the time gave it no chance at long life and no chance of life in the real world. A unicorn summoned from myths beyond time to stand before us would unarguably be real, but that doesn't mean that it would survive galloping over moonlit freeways in front of a semi-truck.

Falling for B. made me less satisfied with everything that surrounded me and everything that constituted my life to that point.

Which is why I say it's been years since I felt like this, if I ever have. I've never had a clean mind to start off an interpersonal Get to Know You session before, never had a near-complete awareness of where I've failed in the past and why. Never started off with brutal honesty and no effort whatsoever put into manufacturing, maintaining, or suggesting an image. Never deliberately hunted down and squashed any possibility that I was making myself look better than I was.

"Look," I said at one point when we'd been talking for several days about semi-serious stuff. "Just to phrase this as poorly as possible, what the hell is wrong with you?" I hadn't been able to find anything -- our sentiments on self-improvement echo and compliment each other well; our thoughts on personal growth likewise. Our lives, excepting some specific highlights and lowlights, are mostly shadowed at the moment, but that changes with time.

"Well, I swear too much."

I had to laugh at that. Here I am having already pointed out my track record for losing friends, betraying lovers, and otherwise being a dick to everyone in years past and she's talking about swearing.

"I have you beat," I said. Competition sparks. "I cheated on the only two people I ever loved, and they're the only people I've ever cheated on."

And because it was late and we'd already talked about things that required a good degree of honesty with each other and ourselves and because there was a growing suspicion that maybe something profound was in the works, we sat and swapped failures, mistakes, and pettiness for hours.

You can tell some things about a light from the shade it casts, if you're attentive, and I'm nothing if not attentive when something actually catches my interest. It's one of my saving graces.

And so we began marking our maps of each other with Points of Interest and Scenic Routes. Discovered, on the less profound level, that we are both highly competitive individuals who play Super Smash Bros. with characters that are almost diametrically opposed. Found out that we have theoretically identical taste in music, books, and movies.

That is, we both like "the good ones". Theoretical because it's entirely possible that our definitions of "good" vary radically at some point that we have yet to encounter. I'm open to the possibility, and will obviously cut off all contact with her if the subject of Yanni fandom arises.

But enough of that. The events aren't what I focus on here, but the mechanics of what they do to us. And here are the mechanics of being made happy in my instance.

She is a highly interesting person who is interested in me -- nothing changes my world like justifiably feeling interesting, you see.

Then there's the additional infinite difference between having something and nothing of value and interest in your life. If you've ever experienced the shift, you know what I'm talking about already, and if you havn't I do not think I can explain it adequately. I will say, however, that if you are one of the ones who has yet to experience that shift and find yourself doubting the reality of it -- take a few hours and read back through this voluminous exploration of What to Do When There's Nothing.

Then take a moment to realize that I feel it, and if you believe anything I've written prior to this, you have good reason to believe this as well. Things cannot stay the same forever, good or bad, and your life will not always be as it is unless you actively work to cause it to remain there.

Life requires fuel, you see, and it can either be in the form of energy or substance. If it's constantly devouring your old life, it doesn't need much energy from you; if you're pushing and prodding and prying and doing everything you can to keep the flaking-paint derelicts from your old life, it'll cheerfully digest that energy as a substitute and sometimes let you keep your crap that you've gotten attatched to.

..I'm having great difficulty taking myself seriously tonight, as I've been having for some time whenever I sit down and write like I used to every day.

It's like Zen. Everything ever written about it is a lie by virtue of the fact that it masquerades as some form of truth but is fatally warped by having been forced into the flawed vessal of words. Love and equality are not things we theorized, broke down into pieces, and then gave names to -- they're raw experiences that can, perhaps, be transmitted to understanding parties from understanding parties, but never given to someone not already aware of the content. One Zen Master knows another. If you've been in love, you know when a writer's been in love.

I'm not saying I'm in love. She's not saying it either. It's not part of the equation at the moment, though there is definetly a good amount of everything that would traditionally lead to the Grand Statement. The amount of attention to particular details, though -- we're both thinking about it, and we're both wondering and hoping, I do believe.

And laughing. A lot of laughing -- she's so very, very dearly and wittily silly that when we're in lighthearted mode I rarely stop chuckling, never stop smiling. And to be made to *think* after such a long time of settling for virtually nothing in the way of conversation, of stimulation and challenge..! She is intoxicating, and I can only hope that I am returning the favor.

Somewhere in the future there will be visits, and it is here and somewhere before we started talking and in our relationships with everyone that's come before that the Metarelationship part comes in. This is a post-modern relationship for both of us, in that we've already had adequate time to digest the mistakes and missteps of bois and girls past and will not make them again -- we're aware of ourselves as agents of action, and neither of us will accept a passive role an event of this great a potential.

It's like she said when we stood back from our conversation for a moment and marvelled at the abrupt openness, the transition from nothing to Something.

"Why would I be less than completely honest with someone who could be such a wonderful part of my life?"

Why indeed?

In a more forgiving sense, perhaps everyone deserves that level of honesty. Perhaps we are all untrustworthy because no one ever trusted us with anything of true value -- rookies and n00bs for lack of experience rather than ineptitude. Perhaps indeed, but I'm a selfish self sometimes.

You see, if I can fill a void in my own life, I'd rather do it myself than cater to the people I've had the experience of meeting in the past years. Narry a one to be understood by, narry a fulfilled hope but was followed by the cremation of the sparkle-go-lucky Christmas Tree.

Which is why I won't be this honest with normal people that I meet, and why I'm this honest with S.-- who is also, incidentally, the Very First Internet Person Ever that I have not only started things off with completely honestly but that I do not think of primarily by their game/forum/AIM name. We're diving behind the aliases and imagery for a backstage glimpse at what makes each other tick, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

I will write more another day, I think. For now, what I'd really like to do is play Ogre Battle until she wakes up, then talk her ear off while she gets ready for work, then go to sleep once she's again inaccessable.

Again, I have no way of explaining the wonder of being content with my life without the benevolant glow of modern chemistry for the first time in .. Ai. I do not remember the last time I was happy that I was reflective enough to be able to find self-deception and remove my own blinders.

Here, I'm finding no self-deception in my attraction to her. I'm not managing to dig out anything that I'm ignoring about her that will later annoy me or cause me to lose respect for her. If anything, she's exponentially more fascinating and respectworthy as time goes on and my knowledge of her increases.

I am finding rational reasons as to why I like her. A calm certainty that yeah, I'll do things right this time; simultaneously, the realization that this very closely resembles what you might assume I've been preparing for all along -- the meeting of the Horribly Interesting, Stimulating, Honest, Intelligent, Sarcastic, Witty Gamer Chick.

Sim gives her wholehearted approval for the first time ever. I can't say how much that means to me, either in terms of confidence or in terms of the bolstered feeling that I'm not entirely fucking nuts for liking someone this completely and securely this fast when there's no pursuit whatsoever involved and we both came to the table with nothing to begin with.

No writing, no reputation, no photos. No poetry, no flowers, no exotic skills or mutual friends. It's that meeting of minds they always talk about when they're discussing the positive social aspects of the Internet. I lost it for her brain -- the pictures were refused until later to give that very thing a chance.

All this and she was a swimmer. I have such a liking for shoulders and the upper-back, and as a result I never have found a reason not to want to look at and touch swimmer physiques. Au contrair.

Anyhow. I am going to go off and do the things I want to do now. This is what's been going on and why I've been AWOL -- and happy as a clam, I might add, which is definetly not a normal state for me.

Midelne happy. What's life coming to?

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