Indeed. I seem to have that perverse craving to redeem myself, from time to time; you know, to be the good guy I want to be, to do the right thing. Lucky for me, as fate would have it, I did get a chance the other day.
I had visited my father, and as those visits go, they tend to leave me pleasantly inebriated, glowing with conviction and a desire to justify my fortune in life (the fortune that is an operational body, a good intellect and the emotional intelligence to be able to know right from wrong) by helping others.
I had wlaked to my father's place without a coat, given the sun threatening to scorch me seven ways from sunday, and no dark skies on the horizon. Well, at least none I'd managed to see.
So, walking on from there, the rain was of course coming down in spades. Folk, let me be the first to drop this gem of wisdom, a t-shirt and a 1 mm thick black shirt does *not* repel rain all that well at all. But then, quoting Sin City; "There's an old Samurai saying: Rain is only a problem if you don't want to get wet."
So, I was ambling along, ablaze with purpose and zest; when I realised someone was lying on the pavement about ten meters in front of me. Halfway on the sidewalk, halfway on the street.
Not particularly clever, by my standards. But then, it did indeed appear he wasn't really in a state to realize it himself.
Given my state of mind, the path was pretty damn obvious. Help the man out. Two random passerbys were milling about, apparantly trying to find out whether to do something or ignore it - a few choice suggestions had them helping me dragging the poor unfortunate off the street, and into a doorway. Part shield from rain, part shield from him toppling onto the road again.
Next step; making sure someone had called an ambulance, while trying to find out whether the guy was actually mentally present.
Once all the immediates were taken care of, and the other passerbys sent onwards into the evening and the rain, I tried to get the man back to lucid form. He was able to speak, but not to make a whole lot of sense. When he did speak, it was in a broken strand of danish, mumbling to himself in what I suspect was indian. Weird stuff.
He mumbled about needing help, in between lolling back and forth, smacking himself against the door a few times, fortunately without any visible effect; and slowly, he became more coherent. Well, as coherent as someone who's drunk enough to pass out on the road can be, I guess.
Funny thing was, apart from him every now and then looking at me, telling me that I was almost like John Lennon, he talked about that I'd saved him, and he told me about good karma, and how my future was going to be better than it would have otherwise been.
Ironically, I'd say the present then was actually good enough. When the ambulance finally came, and took him along, I felt positively radiant. Doing a good deed rarely feels worth it once done, but I might as well have walked on air for the rest of the journey. The rain felt warmer, and I couldn't stop smiling.
Cheap thrills, I'd assume, but it's damn good when, for once, doing the right thing is enough. No broken bottles and broken heads, no 5 seconds too late.
Obscenely naive I know, but I felt grateful for that I got the chance, and that I did it right.
And to think, it wouldn't have been possible, if I had not stayed to drink at my father's place.
"Thanks to beer, my good karma has increased!"
I am now Captain Awesome...at least until the next time, I almost pull off an incredible stunt, and once again my amazing story ends with "and then I stumbled, and fell over".
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Grey dawn, sparkling dreams, and the beginning of a goodbye?
So, yeah. Life's looking to do the good old curveball once again.
Work looks stranger than ever, with teamleaders being hot-swapped like, well, something that gets hotswapped a lot. Feel free to supply your own metaphor for it. It leaves very little room for stability, and it looks like two departments will be merged together, due to the departing of our departments' Operations Manager. In short, it means that the plans, sketches and projects I've had underway with the current OM are pretty much dead in the water; given that our soon-to-be OM alledgedly is a corporate hardliner with little time and inclination for creative, efficiency-improving ideas. Scrapping over 10 hours total of various projects isn't something I'm particularly fond of, not to mention that I have particularly little faith in the merger. That, and not to forget that the company's just changed name *again*. This brings it up to, by my count, the 4th time since I started in march last year. Ugh.
Well, that's what that is. Work's work, and while it's easy to wish for different circumstances, I don't have the influence to affect the outcome...yet, anyway. Here's to hoping it'll pan out reasonably.
More influential on my sleep and waking hours, though, is a long talk I had with my girlfriend recently. I've, for a while, had my thoughts on what the deal really was on the emotions involved. It didn't really fit inside any of the known boxes, which has been gnawing somewhat at me. I'm pretty good at thinking myself into deadends, so often I deliberately try to stop thinking, because I might end up creating entirely unrealistic situations. Well, I had decided to get the thoughts out of my head and on to the table - and so it happened, although not at all in the manner I had expected.
We were talking, one evening, and the topic came to fall on the future. Not ours in particular, but more of a generic discussion. That's when she said something I haden't seen coming.
She told me, half-way jokingly, that in the future, that she saw me living in a glass-and-steel, high-tech apartment, with a bisexual, industrial/gabber listening, EVE-playing girlfriend.
From the outside, it sounds like a fairly innocent comment, highlighting the things I enjoy in life - said in jest, except that she's neither bisexual, nor does she listen to gabber and industrial, nor does she play EVE. Nor is any of those things likely to change.
She asked me where I saw her in the future, and I answered her truthfully. I saw her living in a cottage, or a farm, with her children, in the neck of the woods, waiting for her viking-looking, neofolk listening husband to return home.
Suffice it to say, I may be a good deal of things, but I'm neither viking, into neofolk, nor am I likely to wish to be a father in any foreseeable future, if ever.
After we'd both said our piece, the joke, if there was really one to begin with, had stifled the smiles. Then followed a minute or so, of us just sitting there, looking at each other with new eyes.
...And that's how it began. We talked for the better part of the night, talked about what we actually felt, not that we haden't done so before - in fact, we have always been very open in our communications, but there's always seemed to be some things that just didn't come up naturally. I once told her that I was a little worried that she might become dependant on me, in that while I might be occasionally bleak and weary, she takes medication to help safeguard her against panic anxiety. That I was worried that she'd place too much faith in me and see me as a saviour, rather than her boyfriend. Dependance in a relationship can ever so easily kill the emotions that set romantic love apart from its more platonic form.
I told her how deeply I cared for her, which is true. I told her about all I've been thinking about, wondering and doubting and worrying about. And she looked me straight in the eye, and told her about her own thoughts. And her story was surprisingly similar to mine.
I felt odd, at the time. Anxious to finally set words to the feelings, uncertain as where this would end up. I felt like standing on a theatre stage, waiting for the curtain to rise. Just on the brink of seeing something entirely new. I felt melancholy, as if the words were the beginning of a goodbye, a mild pang of sadness inside for the good times. And I felt ready to face it. Honestly admitting that one's feelings aren't entirely befitting neither friendship nor a relationship is upsetting in a way, but I was able to look her in the eyes and say it, and feeling the elation of finally putting words to the thoughts that had been clouding my head.
Nothing was definitively ended, no doors were shut closed, but the emotions were set into action.
Horrible clichés were said, but in the first light of the sunrise outside, they didn't feel like clichés at all. There's a reason, after all, that clichés become just that; it's because so many say them, meaning them as they say it.
I told her about the devotion I felt, something I once thought was inexorably bound to the caring you'd only feel in a relationship. I told her of how I, a few years back, learned that one can indeed care that much for someone without being in a relationship with them. I told her of one of my closest friends, who once pulled me, all the way back from the bottom, with a dedication that I thought a friend could not possess.
There was a significant amount of tears that night and morning, but they weren't heart-wracking sobs and wails. They just flowed, quietly, constantly, caused by the gravity of emotions worded. Like some people sometimes wake up, tearful after dreaming, not of something immensely sad or frightening, but simply because what you dreamt was so beautiful, so serene and perfect, that you can't react any other way.
I've felt strange since then. Not bad, but restless. I find that I wake many times each night, but it's not nightmares. But I wake up feeling the same melancholy I felt that night. It feels as if I, every night, say goodbye.
But for the first time since I can remember, I wake up knowing that the words aren't just in my head. I've said them, given them life and reality.
Time will give me answers and serenity; and while I might not fully understand my emotions, or what form they take, and what direction they are going, I am glad that I had the courage to say them to one I claim to care deeply for.
All relations are temporary correlation of life paths. You meet, you find that, for an indefinate amount of time, your paths in life go parralel, so you walk a path seemingly made just for you, alongside someone else. But one day, you find that your paths part, and if you want to follow your own way, you may have to say goodbye to the one you've been walking through life next to.
Maybe one day, you'll find you're walking the same way again, meeting someone you once shared life with. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll meet again, and remember the good things you had. Maybe you'll only remember the bad.
The only thing certain is that if you stop on the path, you'll never know if you one day were to meet them again, further down the road. That's why we go on...to see whose paths we'll cross one day.
Work looks stranger than ever, with teamleaders being hot-swapped like, well, something that gets hotswapped a lot. Feel free to supply your own metaphor for it. It leaves very little room for stability, and it looks like two departments will be merged together, due to the departing of our departments' Operations Manager. In short, it means that the plans, sketches and projects I've had underway with the current OM are pretty much dead in the water; given that our soon-to-be OM alledgedly is a corporate hardliner with little time and inclination for creative, efficiency-improving ideas. Scrapping over 10 hours total of various projects isn't something I'm particularly fond of, not to mention that I have particularly little faith in the merger. That, and not to forget that the company's just changed name *again*. This brings it up to, by my count, the 4th time since I started in march last year. Ugh.
Well, that's what that is. Work's work, and while it's easy to wish for different circumstances, I don't have the influence to affect the outcome...yet, anyway. Here's to hoping it'll pan out reasonably.
More influential on my sleep and waking hours, though, is a long talk I had with my girlfriend recently. I've, for a while, had my thoughts on what the deal really was on the emotions involved. It didn't really fit inside any of the known boxes, which has been gnawing somewhat at me. I'm pretty good at thinking myself into deadends, so often I deliberately try to stop thinking, because I might end up creating entirely unrealistic situations. Well, I had decided to get the thoughts out of my head and on to the table - and so it happened, although not at all in the manner I had expected.
We were talking, one evening, and the topic came to fall on the future. Not ours in particular, but more of a generic discussion. That's when she said something I haden't seen coming.
She told me, half-way jokingly, that in the future, that she saw me living in a glass-and-steel, high-tech apartment, with a bisexual, industrial/gabber listening, EVE-playing girlfriend.
From the outside, it sounds like a fairly innocent comment, highlighting the things I enjoy in life - said in jest, except that she's neither bisexual, nor does she listen to gabber and industrial, nor does she play EVE. Nor is any of those things likely to change.
She asked me where I saw her in the future, and I answered her truthfully. I saw her living in a cottage, or a farm, with her children, in the neck of the woods, waiting for her viking-looking, neofolk listening husband to return home.
Suffice it to say, I may be a good deal of things, but I'm neither viking, into neofolk, nor am I likely to wish to be a father in any foreseeable future, if ever.
After we'd both said our piece, the joke, if there was really one to begin with, had stifled the smiles. Then followed a minute or so, of us just sitting there, looking at each other with new eyes.
...And that's how it began. We talked for the better part of the night, talked about what we actually felt, not that we haden't done so before - in fact, we have always been very open in our communications, but there's always seemed to be some things that just didn't come up naturally. I once told her that I was a little worried that she might become dependant on me, in that while I might be occasionally bleak and weary, she takes medication to help safeguard her against panic anxiety. That I was worried that she'd place too much faith in me and see me as a saviour, rather than her boyfriend. Dependance in a relationship can ever so easily kill the emotions that set romantic love apart from its more platonic form.
I told her how deeply I cared for her, which is true. I told her about all I've been thinking about, wondering and doubting and worrying about. And she looked me straight in the eye, and told her about her own thoughts. And her story was surprisingly similar to mine.
I felt odd, at the time. Anxious to finally set words to the feelings, uncertain as where this would end up. I felt like standing on a theatre stage, waiting for the curtain to rise. Just on the brink of seeing something entirely new. I felt melancholy, as if the words were the beginning of a goodbye, a mild pang of sadness inside for the good times. And I felt ready to face it. Honestly admitting that one's feelings aren't entirely befitting neither friendship nor a relationship is upsetting in a way, but I was able to look her in the eyes and say it, and feeling the elation of finally putting words to the thoughts that had been clouding my head.
Nothing was definitively ended, no doors were shut closed, but the emotions were set into action.
Horrible clichés were said, but in the first light of the sunrise outside, they didn't feel like clichés at all. There's a reason, after all, that clichés become just that; it's because so many say them, meaning them as they say it.
I told her about the devotion I felt, something I once thought was inexorably bound to the caring you'd only feel in a relationship. I told her of how I, a few years back, learned that one can indeed care that much for someone without being in a relationship with them. I told her of one of my closest friends, who once pulled me, all the way back from the bottom, with a dedication that I thought a friend could not possess.
There was a significant amount of tears that night and morning, but they weren't heart-wracking sobs and wails. They just flowed, quietly, constantly, caused by the gravity of emotions worded. Like some people sometimes wake up, tearful after dreaming, not of something immensely sad or frightening, but simply because what you dreamt was so beautiful, so serene and perfect, that you can't react any other way.
I've felt strange since then. Not bad, but restless. I find that I wake many times each night, but it's not nightmares. But I wake up feeling the same melancholy I felt that night. It feels as if I, every night, say goodbye.
But for the first time since I can remember, I wake up knowing that the words aren't just in my head. I've said them, given them life and reality.
Time will give me answers and serenity; and while I might not fully understand my emotions, or what form they take, and what direction they are going, I am glad that I had the courage to say them to one I claim to care deeply for.
All relations are temporary correlation of life paths. You meet, you find that, for an indefinate amount of time, your paths in life go parralel, so you walk a path seemingly made just for you, alongside someone else. But one day, you find that your paths part, and if you want to follow your own way, you may have to say goodbye to the one you've been walking through life next to.
Maybe one day, you'll find you're walking the same way again, meeting someone you once shared life with. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll meet again, and remember the good things you had. Maybe you'll only remember the bad.
The only thing certain is that if you stop on the path, you'll never know if you one day were to meet them again, further down the road. That's why we go on...to see whose paths we'll cross one day.
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