This time last year I was spending a conspiratorial week traveling from Orlando to Southern California and then up to Northern California and back with my brother and his bride-to-be to do their wedding. It was meant to be in secret for reasons that escape me at the moment but the plot had been uncovered by older sister Kathie earlier in November, resulting in a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of shrugged shoulders from moi and brother Matt. Family. I guess the secrecy was an ill-fated attempt to keep things simple, and given all of the little elements Marty planned for our few days in Northern California, it wouldn’t have been possible to pull it off given the huge entourage any family event tends to create for us Bustilloses. Ack. We say that we believe in Family but the belief is a lot more manageable in theory than the real thing when planning a four-day adventure/wedding get-a-way in Sonoma.

One full-day was spent slowly creeping through Southern California traffic resulting in a 10 P.M. arrival in Sonoma, with a 6 A.M. call to meet at the front-desk the next day, which happened to be Thanksgiving. Ugh turn oh-my-god when we were driven out to an open field where two giant hot-air balloons were being prepared to take us and those others gathered aloft over a cold but sun-drenched Napa Valley. Once we were back on earth we were treated to a hearty breakfast buffet, which required naps when we got back to the bed-and-breakfast. The day ended with a Thanksgiving dinner aboard the Napa Wine Train.

It had pretty much been a perfect day with a good measure of adventure, beautiful sights, family and wine-induced reflection. So, a number of co-workers had been sending Thanksgiving emails and there were still some family tension over the “secret wedding,” all of which led to the following email sent to co-workers, family and friends:

Subject: Many Thanks Indeed 

Date: November 25, 2010 10:48 PM 

T-Day On the wine train in Napa. OMG I ate way too much. I thought, before I drop into a over-eating induced coma, that I’d drop y’all a line. I just wanted to share how thankful I am that I get to work everyday with some of the most dedicated, brilliant, creative and funny people I’ve ever known. I know that there have been more than a few times over the past year when I’ve been a little too quick with the quip or verbal jab and with the double load I haven’t always entertained the most positive attitude or disposition. I apologize for not giving y’all the support or attention that y’all deserve. I’ll strive to do better, but more than that, I just want to say thanks for being there for me and for making me feel like an important part of a fascinating family. Happy Thanksgiving, xo, jbb 

You know what’s changed in the past year? Well, no secret wine-train wedding ceremonies for me this year. That was fun. Sadly I still haven’t been as connected with my work-team as I’ve been in the past and tend to spend too much time with my nose to the grindstone and not enough enjoying the journey. Ack. Well, one thing that’s changed: I’ve been fortunate enough to have spend the past ten-months trying to step away from the wall of computer monitors and enjoying the journey with a very classy and secretly-geeky lady. Damn. Happy Thanksgiving y’all. The next 365-days are going to be amazing.

I love this subway commercial. The boy’s “this is too good to be true,” reaction when the beautiful girl asks him if he wants her to be his girlfriend and then the disappointment when he realized it’s just a rouse to steal his lunch is priceless. Ain’t life grand. Reflecting some of that innocent realization, I had a wonderful conversation recently with a high-school girlfriend. The conversation with Peggy drifted back to the first time I asked her out and for all of the years that we’ve known each other I was surprised at how differently she remembered this particular event.

I think I even began by saying that I usually pride myself at having very vivid memories. Well, that was until another conversation we had years ago when she surprised me with a few stories about us that I had absolutely no memory of. That said, you’d still think that I’d remember something like asking her out the first time with a bit more clarity. Ha. So, the story goes that my wonderful girlfriend at the time, not Peggy, decided toward the end of our senior year that “we should see other people.” Perfect. Senior prom, grad night and I’m left to hustle to find a date after being with said girlfriend since our sophomore year. Ack. I did end up going with the old not-girlfriend to prom but was determined to not repeat that underwhelming experience for grad night. Okay, to be fair it was an okay but more than a bit awkward to share with someone who has decided to “see other people.” [fail trombone].

Anyway, I knew Peggy because she was a good friend of a girlfriend of one of my football buddies. I do vividly remember walking up behind her in a crowd as we were all shuffling to get to our afternoon classes, touching her on her shoulder and when she turned around asking her if she’s like to go with me to grad night. There was a bit of an expected blank stare on her part and then she said that she’d have to ask her parents first. She is still embarrassed that she had to ask her parents because she was only 15 and her mom had said that she couldn’t date until she was 16. I remember being happy because she didn’t say “No” outright or laugh. But what I didn’t remember, and what Peggy told me in the recent conversation, was that me asking her out was the very first time that we’d actually ever spoken to each other. I was flabbergasted. I assumed that we’d talked at least a few times because, if this were true, than this had to be the one and only time that I can ever remember (which clearly isn’t as reliable as it used to be) ever walking up to someone that I wasn’t first friends with and asking them out. Wow. After all these years, I was stunned.

Grad Nite 1976 - Two Very Young Kids

What was it that enabled me to break out of what would become a life-long pattern just this once? In that that version of myself is over 30-years in the past, I was kind’a impressed with that version and wondered what happened to that guy. Oh yeah, life and experience intervened. In all fairness, life is different in ones hometown in that I may not have talked to Peggy before that fateful day but I knew who she was, so she was not a completely random stranger. So, to continue the tale, we went to grad night and dated a little that summer and then in the Fall I moved to Los Angeles to attend Loyola Marymount University and we stopped dating. Well, not quite, but that’s a tale for another time (and probably another phone call so that I don’t get the detail too screwed up). Ah, memories of youth. I love the boy’s last line, that no one hears, “ah, I don’t think this is working out…”

P.S., Peggy recently had a monumental birthday and her lovely daughter wanted to get a lot of her friends together. I wasn’t able to make it to the party but I sent the link to the following video to her. It’s good to have friends.

Journal Classic: Following the Logic of Feelings

Heart, why are you pounding like a hammer?
Heart, why are you beating like a drum?
Heart, why do you make such a commotion
when I’m waiting for my baby to come?
Oh heart, don’t do it if it’s not the real thing
Heart, I get so easily deceived
Heart, there is no other I can turn to
if not you, heart, then who can I believe?”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I vividly remember when it first happened. It was in the seventh grade when I walked up to Mary Hinck and said, “Hi,” and she said rather unfeelingly, “Oh, it’s you.” It’s like I didn’t even really know that it was there until it came crashing to the ground in front of God and everyone. Jesus, I thought, if this is what love feels like, I don’t want any part of it.

I didn’t mean that, of course, and have spent the intervening 17 years demonstrating it to no one in particular. But something very definitely changed after that first brush with emotional death.

photobooth iowans by 3Neus/flickr

Back at home, though I never once for a moment doubted my parent’s love for me or my siblings; emotions, especially anger, seemed to be like Steven Spielbergian pyrotechnics. Like the much-feared nuclear holocaust, there would be a blinding flash of emotional light: my father would explode over some such reality of living with five children. My mother would then deploy her tactical arsenal. Another flash, then children running in every direction, vainly hoping to avoid becoming part of the scorched landscape. Then just as quickly as it had begun, it would be over. Father would be about his business and mother would continue hers. It all seemed to my childish mind to be quite unnecessary.

So it only seems right that at one point in my life I hung around with a religious group that held to the philosophy that “feelings” could not be trusted. “Feelings, they come and go, but objective truth, now there’s the ticket.” Of course the objective truth that was being referred to here was the Bible, the Scoffield Reference Bible in the King James Version to be more specific. And Love, well that had something to do with some Greek word and God and Jesus dying and . . . (all of which of course made no sense whatsoever to my teenage mind, but who was I to scoff at the insights of my elders?).

I don’t know why I always seem to use this column to take pot‑shots at Evangelical Christianity (no doubt an unconscious attempt to pay them back for the emotional trauma and near fatal brain damage I experienced while getting my Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies). In fact, before this starts sounding too much like “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” I have to question the wisdom of attempting an article that would argue following the logic of emotions. I mean, either you understand it or you don’t.

I guess it’s just one of those things that pisses me off. While I was playing my little religious game, going to seminary and all, reading Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, thinking about Pluralism and other “important issues,” my own wife was suffering from emotional deprivation. Perhaps this isn’t unusual for couples where one of the partners is working full‑time while carrying 12 units of graduate school course work. It’s called, “I love you, but I don’t have any time for you”—a rather mixed message.

Quite inevitably she announced to me one day at lunch, rather unceremoniously, “You know, if you were just my boyfriend or if we were just living together, I’d leave you.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to look up from the book that I was reading. I knew it wouldn’t be a pretty picture. This was not at all what I was expecting.

So off to counseling we went. A well-meaning Christian friend told me about the horrendous percentage of couples who go to counseling and end up divorced. I think she was trying to caution me against the practice. Of course she failed to mention that no one goes to counseling because things are going great. Someone in the relationship has just about had it (a la, “if you were just my boyfriend . . .”) and it’s either this or the door. No doubt the percentage would be even greater had they not at least tried counseling. Still, it didn’t sound very promising.

Once a week we’d arrive at the counselor’s office. She’d outline the gripes of the week and I’d patiently listen, mentally preparing my counter‑arguments. Then the counselor would turn to me and say, “So Joe, how do you feel about what she has said?”

“Well . . . .” Feel? Did he say “feel”? Most of the time I’d say something about the supposed logic behind my actions and nothing about my feelings. This went on for months. Then one day it dawned on me. It happened while she was complaining about her needing to use the new  Nissan sedan, which had an air‑conditioner, ’cause she had to wear nice clothes to work while me and my Levi’s could put up with the un‑air‑conditioned Toyota pickup. When it came time for my little meaningless counter‑argument I let it out. “You know,” I said rather matter of factly, “if she was convinced of my love for her or that she was number one in my life, than none of this other shit would even matter.” Opps. Did I say that? They both stared at me like one does when a toddler unexpectedly makes an adult‑like observation.

“So Joe, how do you feel about her then?” It took another five months before I could clearly say how I felt. In view of the fact that I write a column called “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” it should be obvious that we were to become another statistic.

“Oh heart, there must be no mistake
Beware, special care, from the start
Oh heart, though I’m glad for the first bit of love to have
Be certain now, else you’re gonna break
Oh heart, motor of emotion you’ve never been like this before
Heart, at first I thought you were joking,
but I know deep down in you that you’re sure.”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I realize that the above narrative is a rather odd way to set up an argument in favor of following the logic of feelings. Those who consider the concept to be little more than a dangerous dose of pop psychology will no doubt feel justified. But, like I wrote before, unless you understand the concept you’ll have little appreciation for my argument (which is really no argument at all).

The reason for my sensitivity about this subject is no doubt the result of my own struggle with the concept of “feeling,” starting with the amazingly disarming question: “what the fuck do I want out of life?” Laid out like a raw nerve, the question began to unravel the reasons why, two years ago, I would have recoiled at the idea of following feeling’s leading.

Simply put, an anemic sense of self worth prevented me from thinking that I was an adequate judge for determining the meaning or direction of my own life. “What the fuck do I want out of life?” It’s just a simple question. But there was a silent yet pervasive lack of self‑trust, which perhaps extended personally and culturally to a time when authority figures were depended upon for making the decisions of life. And feelings were the luxuries of irresponsible youth and melancholic old age.

“She said, ‘you know, if you were just my boyfriend or if we were just living together, I’d leave you.’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to look up from the book that I was reading.”

Just below the surface was an ancient belief that if I were left to my own devices, judging things on the basis of what I “want,” I’d no doubt do damage to myself and evil to my brothers and sisters. This was somewhat based on a twisted application of King David’s repentant song and Solomon’s words of advice:

“But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me, mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.” (Psalm 22:6,7) “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5,6)

Not long after the news of my marital separation broke, my well-meaning father strongly suggested that if I turned this dilemma over to Jesus than all of the fuzziness would clear up and I’d make the right decision. Perhaps. But equally possible was the proposition that I got into this situation because over the course of the last 14 years I’d “turned over” such situations to the Lord, in my own feeble way, and failed to read the writing on my own heart. Ha. How was God going to talk to me anyway except through my own heart?

A child no doubt lacks the common sense and self‑discipline to negotiate the troubled waters of life without parental instruction and example but I have, for a long time, ceased being a child. And when I turned to the judgment bench of feelings I didn’t find a power hungry madman bent on my own destruction or the lording over of the lives of my loved ones. Quite surprisingly I found a mirror image of myself, perhaps a little more insightful, perhaps a little more excitable, somewhat like a profile of ones self that until this very moment one has failed to even notice.

I took feeling’s leading and made some difficult decisions. Perhaps out an inability to read feeling’s messages or like myself, out of a lack of trust, many fake their way from sun‑up to the evening news thinking that this vague sense of dissatisfaction is all part of life. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Right?

Someone once told me that there was more to it than that. Risking the possible dissolution of our marriage, she courageously challenged me to confess what I already knew about my feelings. Among other things, this difficult experience has shown me that feelings, whether acknowledged or ignored, have a way of making themselves known.

Sources:
Following the Logic of Feelings (“The Editor’s Wild Hair” column)  by Joe Bustillos. Air, Dirt & Ink (ADI), Vol 1, Issue 4, January‑February 1988)

image: photobooth iowans by 3Neus. http://www.flickr.com/photos/motherscratcher/2267589346/ retrieved on 2/3/2010

cover image: La Estrella esperaba, pero nadie llego by Mercedes.. Life as I picture. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mercedesdayanara/366501299/ retrieved on 2/3/2010

Sources:
youtube video: “Christian Side Hug” by 1337ven0m07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91J37qcRfI retrieved on 12/13/2009

The end of a long week, needing to get the energy together to pack & toss things for the Florida move (and find a damn place)… so it makes perfect sense that I’d wander over to my favorite watering hole for a few beers, some live tunes, food and friends. Anyway, I’d noticed this very cute couple some time ago, at a Neva concert and took pictures of them because they seemed so cute together. Tonight I happened to sit next to them at the bar and we got a chance to chat and I got a chance to lose their email address. Damn. They wanted some of these pics and they gave me their email address. Somehow between then and the next morning the precious cocktail nap ran away…. ugh. I gave them a link to find these pics on Flickr. I can only hope that that cocktail did a better job making it to it’s destination. Life is funny that way. I’m gonna miss taco beach. Of course, if I have a girlfriend when I move to Florida I’m not going to really care… oops, did I “say” that out loud. No really, I love Taco Beach. I mean, based on the Taco Beach pix in my flickr account one would be justified in thinking that Taco Beach is the only place I ever go to. Damn, I hate being being predictable/boring. Time for another beer. L8r. jbb

Music/VideoPodcast: popSiren – Build Your Own Lightsaber, Turn Old LPs into Bowls and The Science of excessive H20 from the album “popSiren (Large Quicktime)” by Revision3

Technorati Tags: friends, iPhone, longbeach, love, lust, tacobeach

is this bloggers’ remorse? Haven’t heard from juls since posting “Enchanted” but I can’t imagine a positive response. Why do I do that? #
@akamrt thx bro, just the anxiety of change #

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Text to my video-blog:
This past weekend I went with the siblings, significant others and offspring to the Disney pic, Enchanted. Beowulf was my first choice but bloodshed and computer-generated nudity would probably have been a bit too much for my nieces to endure, so “Enchanted” it was. Cute flick, nothing unexpected or earth-shattering. Far less snarky than Shrek but it did manage to poke a little fun at itself,nonetheless. In fact the only reason for me to make a comment about the movie is that afterward my friend, Juls, felt the need to laugh at the idea, central to the movie, that there in nothing more powerful than true love’s kiss. While i would have to agree that life is not a fairy-tale and most of the time there isn’t someone there to catch you when you fall. But at the same time, having known the power of love I was sadden that she felt the need to be dismissive about the sentiment.

Life is not a fairy-tale and Juls has had one hell-of-a-year, but as the male lead in the movie, a divorce lawyer, needed to learn, we can’t let these difficulties and setbacks cause us to set aside our passions and connections with each other. Or maybe it’s like the one couple touched by the lost princess, it’s more a matter of remembering these passions and connections that we used to have. I know there was a time when Juls knew this. I know that it was something that changed my life.

Here’s a video I made some time ago celebrating loves power to change lives. Enjoy…. jbb

To recap, we broke up late last Spring and kept in some contact over the summer. Just before we’d broken up, she got her breast cancer diagnosis and that, obviously, weighed very heavily on both of us. Toward the end of summer I stepped up and tried to help her with a couple things around her place and thought seriously about moving closer to her, the distance between our places having been a frequent complaint of hers in the past. Then everything went on the back-burner when she went into surgery and began her recovery.

I met and spent time with her folks during the surgery and early-recovery days and spent a little time with the boys from coming over to work on her computer, etc. I felt like this was as close to a normal relationship as we had ever had. Then several weeks ago I had a very unsuccessful visit and since then daily communication has pretty much dropped off entirely. At one point I thought that I shouldn’t pester her too much and decided instead to just send a simple text-message in the morning, the analogy being that maybe we could keep this alive by just making sure the “flower” got just a couple drops of water every day. For whatever reason that was a failure, with almost no response coming from her except maybe once a week. And then when she did respond I almost immediately realized that I needed something a bit more than a single text-message a day. Ack. So five weeks after the surgery, the week before Thanksgiving, things seem to have come full-circle. Sorry, that was one hell-of-a recap… I’m just stalling… Anyway, here’s the note:

“Sorry to hear about Dan not getting the subpoena, but that would explain his recent cooperation. Beyond that it seems like you’re slowly but surely getting back to “normal” (define normal as you may). It was good chatting with you the other day. I’m not entirely sure what happened to our communication over the past couple weeks but it does kind’a bring home what Brian said to your mom about our “friendship,” saying that i was wanting more, but that you’re not ready for that. After our chat I felt like I had a small impression about how busy you’ve been and how hard it’s been for you to try to put things back together, balancing recovery with the need to work. Anyway, as i said, I’m glad that you’re getting somewhat back to normal.

“I think I’m going to see if taco beach is going to be open on Thanksgiving so that I can get my fill of football games before joining mich and the girls at the Quinby’s. I got the impression that going with you to your folks created too many problems for you and now that the boys might be with you, I’d be out of place at the family gathering. No worries. I’ve resolved in my heart that this is best for you, and it’d be a little inconsistent of me to make a fuss when I began this whole thing saying that all I wanted was to see you happy and to have what is best for you. The Lord obviously has something else for me and I have to quit fighting against his purposes. At least that’s the theory.

“Anyway, you and your boys will always be in my thoughts and prayers. It’s not the “normal” I would have preferred but I am good with this because I know you have those around you who love you unconditionally. It’s mostly a matter of who you are going to let “in” and how far you let them in. I know that you are so much usually in survival mode that you don’t think about any of this or don’t realize how much “choice” you have. You’ll get it. And God is going to remember His promise to give you the love you need. That’s a good promise to hold on to. jbb”

p.s., shortly after posting this I heard back from her and she wasn’t at all happy with my attempt to frame the situation as “normal.” She more or less handed me my ass and I felt entirely idiotic for my attempt to communicate. ack.

So the question became how much personal shit I should write about and where do I have to respect the privacy of those whom I might write about. Beautiful Aimee loved that I just laid the frustrations out there, but others no doubt hate that about my writing. Oddest thing might be that those whom I work with on a daily basis know almost nothing about me but some random stranger on the ‘nets has such complete access to whatever shit might be coming down in my life. I mean, shit happens and my natural reaction is to pull out the iPhone and start writing… er, venting. I can’t help the writing, but does anyone else need to be exposed to it and when does it become a relationship liability? Again, God knows my former love has sworn off ever venturing to the pages (but always seems to land here and catch my worse possible ramblings), and anyone even remotely thinking of hanging with me might well and wisely steer-clear rather than risk becoming part of my taudry and generally frustrated musings. For example last Saturday…

0 for 3

10/13/2007 8pm
Well so far I’ve pretty much failed on all accounts. I wanted to see you-know-who, spend a relatively quiet evening with her at her place. Her folks were coming over Sunday so I thought that I’d take the Saturday evening slot. I thought, foolishly, that there wouldn’t be too much traffic on a Saturday evening. Wrong.

I was making great time then ran headlong into completely stopped traffic because Knott’s Scary Nite took one lane. Then, someone in the fast lane was completely stopped, apparently stalled in the traffic. Then we stopped a third time near Tustin Ave. because a car had flipped over and was resting partly in the slow lane on its roof and a group of people were gathered near the on-ramp probably attending to the people who had been in the car. Scary and frustrating. Now I was running late.

Then when I got close to Corona, I called to find out what they wanted for dinner so that I could pick it up for them on my way. Alas, her littest couldn’t wait and had already eaten so my In-n-Out order was for one less. Ugh. While I was waiting in line I thought to tell the in-n-Out guy to bag my double-double with cheese separately from the double-meats for her & her son because her son is allergic to dairy. I was feeling pretty happy with myself for being so thoughtful. Alas, that moment was entirely crushed when I delivered the goods because I was supposed to get two double-meat PLAIN not just double-meat (her son can’t tolerate the thousand island dressing). Then I made the fatal error of asking if we could eat the food then get the correct burger for her son (’cause I knew that the fries were going to suck by the time I got back). She grabbed her purse and said that her son comes first and rushed out of the room. When I caught up to her to tell that i would go get the burger she repeated that her son comes first. Yeah, it was stupid of me to ask if we could eat first, but I didn’t need for her to yell at me for asking a stupid question. Strike Two.

So, whatever good feeling hoped for because I was doing them a favor was crushed as I returned to In-n-Out. Then I thought, ’cause I only had one item to order, that it might be faster to order from inside instead of waiting in the drive-up line. Wrong! (Strike Three). A group of three ladies at the head of the line took over ten-minutes to order what looked like enough food for a hungry village. I was getting mad at their inability to place a simple order until I remembered that I wouldn’t even have been there if I hadn’t f-ed up my earlier order. Shit. The whole order screw-up cost me over 30-minutes. When we finally sat down (her son got his burger and disappeared upstairs) you-know-who quipped that the fries were cold. Ack.

Thus the highlight of the night was giving the dog a long long walk. But when we got back and were sitting on the couch the ungrateful canine growled at me whenever I attempted to rest my hand on her leg. Yeah, not exactly feeling the love. So it only seemed entirely fitting that at the end of the evening she all but turned away when I went to kiss her good-night. Not that I was going for a major smutch, or that her youngest, who was too tired to walk upstairs to his bed and was laying on the couch in the den, could see us. I’m sure there’s probably something wrong with me that I’m bugged enough by this evening’s turn of events to be writing these words. I’m not feeling so positive about where this is going. This whole thing feels like an episode of “no good deed goes unpunished.” Fuck. Of course, how screwed up am I that I feel the need to put this shit in my blog? JBB

She got so mad at me last year when I felt like giving up, saying “who gives up in the ninth inning?” And maybe my continual complaining hardened her resolve to do the divorce thing and not allow herself to be have any “relationship entanglements.” I don’t know. How did I miss the obvious emotional disconnect? I kept giving her credit even when she warned me to not count on her for anything (her exact words!). I just kept leaning in her direction, ignoring the fact that I knew she wasn’t ready to have anything with anyone and especially with me. So after anticipating for years a life with her, I’m having to re-imagine a life that doesn’t include waking up next to her and hearing about the latest crazy idea from her youngest or paintball adventures from her eldest son.

It’s hard saying good-bye to an image of my life with her that I’ve been anticipating and waiting for for over five years. But that’s what I have to do. Given the last few difficult turns hee life has taken, she may want me there but not as… not as her acknowledged lover or boyfriend. Just someone to lend support and then go away (someone important but not… a “significant” other, regardless of what she may have said about wanting kids with me or begging me to never leave, I was never meant to be part of the real picture of her life; I was never meant to be a part of the whole package). A friend, a needed friend, but never anything more. So I need to redirect the course of my life, which for five-years I’ve been steering to be about a life with her, and go in a completely unanticipated and unknown direction. Irony is that I always prided myself in being comfortable with the open ended question and living a life fully conscious and emotionally self-aware. I guess I’m getting what I wanted. jbb

Sent from my iPhone

Ignoring my brother’s admonition against going out with someone that you meet either at church or at a bar, I discovered tonight that the cutie I was thinking of asking out has a mostly absent fireman boyfriend. Thank God I asked around and found this out from a mutual friend before embarrassing myself. It’s good having friends to confide in, regardless of how hard it was for me to reveal what I was thinking about to this friend. He was very cool about it. Yeah. Good to know that she already has a hunk fireman boyfriend. But somehow it still hurts to still be alone and not really have someone to go to a damn concert with. Dumb.

I know that I could probably ask one of my sisters or brother to go with me to the concert and that we’d have a great time. But then afterwards they go home and I go home and I’m still alone. I mean, if all I wanted to do was go to hear music I probably would have bought just one ticket and gone by myself, but for me the idea of doing these things is to share the experience and possibly create memories that help one establish a connection with another human being. Yeah, most people spending hundreds of bucks on Police concert tickets this summer probably don’t give a shit about “connection” or “shared experiences” and just wanted to hear good music. I guess I’m pretty weird that way. I know my former love went to her beloved Journey concerts for years and probably would have rather not had her “date” except that he was a convenient designated driver. But that’s not me. Damn. I hate this shit. JBB

Of course the first project I tackled was my usual comfort activity: tweaking the furniture arrangement in my tiny studio.

I have known for some time that this is a form of therapy for me because most of the time I can’t control a lot of what has gone on in my life, but I can control my living environment. Then it was pointed out to me a few months ago by my not-quite-significant-other that she felt that my drive to fix up my place was a sign that I was going to be in my place “for the long haul,” that I was nesting. I guess it somehow bothered her. I don’t know, I could say something mean like it’s not like anyone was making me feel like I was welcomed to visit them at their place (much less contemplate where I was going to lay my head down every night!). I was just making my place a little better.

So week one was about finishing the whole DVD collection improvement project I’d begun during winter break. Week two has been mostly about the web sites/blogs. I put in a few days working on the school web site (still very much unfinished) but spent most of the time updating lumbering thru life and jbb’s desktop and moving jacob’s ladder to WordPress.

I guess none of this sounds like much fun. it’s not like going to hawaii or doing something “more constructive.” But these are some of the things that I haven’t had the time to do during the school year. I have no vision of having hundreds of readers. That’s not why I went without sleep last night adding the last 50 entries to Jacob’s Ladder. I just love getting the thoughts out there and looking for something visual to add to the words. It’d be great to have a lot of readers (beyond the pissed off woman who deservedly called me an asshole a couple entries ago... sigh). I’d do it any way. Knowing that someone out there gives a shit is an added bonus. jbb

Loneliness

1:46 A.M. Much on my mind.

I feel lonely. An odd feeling. Or perhaps a feeling that I haven’t paid much attention to in the past. My wife sleeps in the next room and I am lonely. I remember Sting once saying that he felt lonely, that there was no bridging the gap–even when he made love to his wife (ex-wife). This sense of isolation is my humanness, my refusing to let go of something, of breaking down the barrier, of opening myself up to my other, my wife or perhaps my God. Is this the point where I wandered off the path, the Way? Refusing to let go.

Something in my nature refuses to let go of my miserable bit of happiness—my security blanket, though I’ve been promised riches beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve been let down before. I’ve been misunderstood and hurt and neglected and unloved. The worst thing is to be unloved. Even in my Christianity I was not whole within myself. Something I yet lacked. But I proved unwilling to sell all. What was there that I needed to sell? I owned nothing, but I was not free. I sought nothing and nothing was my reward. “Greater is He who lives in you than he who lives in the world.” I knew very little of this greatness. “God help me,” I prayed. But God knew that I prayed with one eye opened and only one hand folded; as feable as the sound of one hand clapping.

So my wife sleeps in the next room and I masterbate in this one. Little wonder I am an isolated infant who only knows a single painful tune. The infant sings this tune when he is wet. He sings this tune when he is hungry. He sings this tune when consciousness is fleeing from him and he doesn’t understand why. We are all infants singing one tune and our mother is not in the room to soothe us. She has gone away and left older brothers and sisters to watch us. Watch us they do, but we are not satisfied. Neither are they, they have forgotten what it is they are here for; And we never knew. We just went on crying. Crying. I am alone. And even though I long to crawl in bed with my wife and feel her near me, her warm body, her acknowledging embrace, I fear the silence that will separate us and the darkness that bids our eyes to sleep. I am alone. God help me. JBB (February 11, 1986)

For whatever reason I seem to have been “gifted” with the ability to remember, in pretty vivid detail, all of those pivotal moments in my life. The time of day, the way the sun shone in the sky, the rush of the crowd going by, the split second when she looked at me and said, “oh, it’s you.” It’s quite a collection stored between my two ears. One doesn’t want to live in these past memories, but so much of today’s world was built on this stream of events, that having an active relationship with ones memories can add value to the moments one is experiencing at the present moment.

There are memories, such as my childhood with my older sisters, that I seem to remember, but admittedly are mostly remembered because of photographs that I’ve seen that were taken during that time. Even something as emotionally imprinting as my wedding, I seem to remember more based on the surviving pictures and recollections of friends. So there’s definitely a part of this that is triggered and stored externally in these photographs.

Another, more powerful, means of maintaining and adding to my storage of memories are the thousands of pages of journals that I have written. I have been writing some form of journal since high school. Thus, what others may remember through a fading collection of terse cards, snapshots and other memorabilia, I possess in written form in my own words in painful, explicit, sometimes silly detail. Now the reason this even came to mind recently was that one benefit of putting Windows XP on my MacBookPro was that I would then be able to pull up all of the journals I’d written from my pre-mac days (1985-2002). Naturally I spent a couple evenings reliving the events recorded when I was supposed to be A) finishing Pepperdine work, B) writing units for my computer classes, or C) grading work for my 6th – 8th graders. Gotta love how technology boosts productivity.

The first thing that struck me was how the problems from all the different eras all seem to be so similar. The drama and struggle of falling in love with someone only to have it cut short seemed to be an ongoing theme. Now, is that a case of consistency or an inability to learn from previous negative experiences? I don’t know. I wonder what would the 1980′s JBB think about all of this? Well in my trip down digital memory lane I found the following passage written to a friend about my first post-divorce relationship (circa 1988):

“Like most things in my life of late, my relationship with [girlfriend A] has been a bit quirky. At the end of June I thought we were through, mutually agreed that we were thoroughly miss- matched, etc., etc. But then with my birthday party (sorry you couldn’t be there) she opened up a bit up to me and stood by me like a true friend. And since then we’ve stumbled our way along, gradually confiding in each other and trusting each other with some our deepest and darkest personal secrets. And amidst all the bumps and misunderstandings we’ve actually found ourselves in something of a relationship. Imagine my surprise.” (August 1, 1988)

Where have I heard these words before? Hmmm. Then there’s this much longer passage entitled “I Wanted to Tell Her” about an evening together with said girlfriend. This picks up after we’d concluded that my upset stomach (from taking antibiotics) was getting in the way of us having sex:

“So we laid there and held each other and eventually she got dressed while I made another trip to the bathroom. When I got back into the room I said, “Hey, how come I’m the only naked person in the room?!” And she giggled. We kissed and necked and I found something to wear and walked her to her truck (even though she said that I was restricted to my room until the morning, ha! it was after midnight, so I told her that it was already morning).

“Before we left my apartment, when I was standing hugging her, my naked body against her clothed body I looked into her eyes and knew I wanted to tell her. It was right there for me to say. But I hesitated.

“And when we were standing by her truck I saw it in her eyes again. It was right there. I intimated what I wanted to say, but used the excuse that I’d already unloaded enough skeletons and didn’t want to freak her out. Now, if she didn’t know what I was thinkin that comment would have made no sense whatsoever. But she just looked at me, deep intensity pouring from her eyes.

“I wanted to disentangle myself from the web, from the inevitability of saying it. But I could do so, only so carefully. And it was doubtful whether it was worth delaying this disclosure. I wanted to tell, and perhaps I should have. But I didn’t.

“For all of the insanity and the illogical basis for our relationship, in spite of the confessed lack of compatibility, when I stood there looking into her eyes, feeling her hands run through my hair and her lips pressing against mine, I wanted to tell her that I love her.

“But I didn’t.”(July 19, 1988)

It does make one wonder, that after almost twenty years I find myself battling with the same issues of intimacy, communication and seeing things through. Maybe the value at most people not having “digitally enhanced memories” in the form of endless journals is that they never realize that they’ve been through this before and thus are not held responsible for repeating the same mistakes or moving any further forward in their emotional maturation. At the same time, the fact that I have made a point to continually force my emotional (and often frivolous**) experiences down into writing may also indicate the choice I’ve made to go through all of this with my emotional eyes open and to be accountable for this life that I’ve been given. And maybe it keeps the wounds from the past from completely healing because I can re-experience the poignancy of love cut short and the pain following the demise of these relationships. Funny thing was that when I began to write in ernest in the early 1980s my catalyst was a quote that I heard from the singer/songwriter Sting, that one cannot expect to write (song/novel/lifework) unless one continually writes. Granted going through a divorce then then the subsequent journey into a completely unknown territory of being single again provided more than enough to chew on.

So maybe the point isn’t to find any one solution as much as to share the experience along the way. It would be nice if I could learn just a little from all of these experiences and maybe even change some of my behavior patterns and maybe even make a few better choices… nah, what would be the fun in that? Seriously, I do see this as a sacred trust and endeavor to make “improvements” but I also have to acknowledge that despite the painful similarities, all of these situations are different and require that I not go into some kind of “automatic” mode when faced with problem X because this and that is what happened last time. My best bet is just to keep my eyes wide opened and pay attention to all that is going on around me and with me. Here’s to the next 18-years of “ah shit here we go again.” JBB

[**SIDE NOTE: A fair number of journal entries seem to be about whatever technology lusting and difficulty I'm dealing with... funny that that never changes either... JBB]