RELATIVE BEAUTIES

I grew up surrounded by great beauties: my mother, her mother and my sister.  I look like my dad, which is perfectly fine, except that I have always been aware of the difference, particularly after stumbling upon the photo album of some of my ancestors on my father's side of the family; most especially the women on those branches off my Great-grandmother's limb.  Putting it bluntly, if strong underbites were correctable one hundred years ago and I were a plastic surgeon, I'd move to Fall River, Massachusetts where I'd have enough money to retire on just from this one family.

Fortunately, I was spared that specific feature; however, not so the round, soft-edged, ruddy-cheeked, moon-pie visage of my Irish ancestry with its marginally comely but very indistinct impact not unlike that of vanilla pudding.   Everyone is indifferent towards vanilla pudding.  If it is in front of you, you'll eat and enjoy it, but otherwise it is an entirely forgettable experience and one you seldom find yourself repeatedly craving.

However, growing up with these extraordinarily attractive women alerted me at an early age to the beguiling and mesmerizing power of beauty while at the same time making me cognizant of the danger in accepting physical comeliness as the standard of beautiful.  Not that any of them were vain (well, my grandmother was, but it suited her larger-than-life, operatic presence), but I saw that, from most people, nothing more was expected or required of them.  They were easily accepted because they were easy to look at and in most cases, popularity was a given.

With my younger sister I was aware from the moment she was beyond drooling that there was a definite visual disparity between us based solely on the response she elicited from the friends of my parent's and even passing strangers.  In point of fact, she was usually readily noticed while I was regarded more like a beige carpet in an all-white room, if I was regarded at all.

My sister was more apt to be feathered with fascinated fingers; fawned and cooed over with gooey delight in a seeming uncontrollable response to her considerably ample adorableness.

In those awkward times when recognition of me was obligatory, it was all very polite and was often accompanied by a remark of vague neutrality like, "My....um... you've grown!"

This dynamic held throughout our childhoods and adolescence, (although the cooing was eventually replaced by deep, heavy sighs) and while we are quite different, in some ways, it remains the standard even today.  However, my sister is a very kind woman and did have the great charity to move to England many years ago, thus sparing me the frequent indignities of direct comparisons.

Actually, I remained emotionally scar-free until our twenty-one-month age difference placed us in the same high school simultaneously.  Then with the predictable burst of teen angst, I became officially bothered by this genetic injustice.  But that goes with the vapid and tentative emotional terrain of high school where vast quantities of otherwise healthy egos are consumed, so that, with few exceptions, by graduation day what remains are gilted facsimiles of peer pressure in corporeal form; all with an attitude.

In retrospect,  I was probably more comfortable than most with my own external shortcomings because I had never know anything else.  I was born into and could not escape the field of physical perfection that was genetically stamped on the women surrounding me and had no other choice but to find a way to individuate myself by other means, which I am sure was a major contributing factor fostering what became a full-scale, drug-fueled, counter-cultural rebellion throughout my teens and early twenties.

Yet even as I staked my claim to radical individuality, I was not unique.  My grandmother was not only beautiful but also a card-carrying eccentric as well as a matron of and participant in the arts.  She was a painter and a cabaret singer at Bill's Gay Nineties in New York City for many, many years.  Never one to shirk a challenge she then trained her voice for opera, and was a frequent performer at venues as well-known and respected as The Waldorf Astoria.

She was also a major drama queen whose insatiable lust for attention knew no bounds and often resulted in considerable residual damage being inflicted upon us, her only family; especially my mother, her only child.   But she was ours and that fact alone qualified her for lifetime benefits of unconditional love.

However, I noticed that among her wide circle of eclectic and eccentric friends; both celebrity and non, how willing they also were to repeatedly forgive her unbridled self-absorption no matter how often they had been cornered by the egocentric beast of her indifference to them.  It was obvious that, at least insofar as her friends were concerned, this forgiveness was more readily forthcoming because she was simply so beautiful and such a dynamic presence in the world.  Even so, I found it a confounding pattern.

My mother is different.  Her beauty radiates from a place of deep refinement and class and the older she gets, the more stunningly breathtaking she becomes.  She was voted the "Best Looking Girl" at her high school, and although now into her late seventies, she shows no signs of becoming less so.

Unlike my flamboyant grandmother, my mother's beauty is carried with an understated and perceptibly regal bearing that staggers onlookers almost to the point that you'd half expect them to ask for the privilege of kissing her ring or to bestow them with knighthood.

In fact, it is not at all uncommon for men or women to approach her when we are out somewhere and ask her who she is, if she is a celebrity, where does she get her hair done and comment on how beautiful she looks in the clothes she is wearing.

When my children were young and we lived in proximity close enough that we could occasionally go shopping at a mall or department store with her, I used to joke that I felt much like Quasimodo must have felt all hunched over slogging after Esmerelda while surrounded by these snot-nosed little gargoyles that passed for my kids.  It was a humbling experience, but also an extremely joyful one in that I was so proud of her and of the fact that I could also state, unequivocally, that I was not adopted.

But I was more inspired by the fact that she took herself and her appearance lightly.  She could have used her disarming beauty to manipulate and acquire whatever she wanted, but she never did, and I know she never will.  Of course, this humility makes her even more beautiful.  Darn it.

I remember when I was in high school complaining to her about the seeming inequity in the heart of God that he would place an average schlep like me in a family of favored graces like she and my sister, whereupon she would remind me of the story about the Ugly Duckling and how he grew to be a beautiful swan.

While I knew she offered this only as a helpful tether of hope to harness my woes to, I don't recall being much comforted by the idea at the time.

First of all, it was a fairy tale and everyone knows fairy tales were written to amuse, appease and morally instruct the masses.  They were a means to placate people into believing that there is always a chance you'll lose that frog face and take breakfast in bed with the queen (or king as the case may be) in that castle on the hill one day if you just keep a handle on that glass slipper, make nice with the seven dwarves, avoid indulging in gingerbread and steer clear of bad-tempered elves named Rumpelstiltskin.

Second of all, who wanted to wait for some unknown future date before they even found out whether they were in fact an ugly, life-long dependent of the Duck family or a truly long-necked Odette under wraps?

Everyone knows that high school is a short-lived, highly demanding time period without any do-overs, and from what I was told, beauty is fleeting!  I didn't have a very big window of opportunity there, so if the Makeover Fairy were going to visit my pain, I was hoping she'd get her ass in gear well before I turned eighteen!

Evidently, she took a wrong turn in Cleveland.

Oddly enough, it has only been since I've begun the half-century waltz with my fifties that I find myself suddenly being singled out and decorated with adjectives and accolades more in keeping with those I've heard directed at my mother and sister these many years.  It is purely genetic.

Rest assured, the irony in the timing of it all does not escape me.

I find it perfectly in keeping with my latent development to experience that blush of appreciation long after gravity has become a major shareholder in my future options.

To finally find myself on the receiving end of positive notice only now that gray hairs dominate blonde;  close observational demands require glasses;  and my abdomen has enough residual scarring from three C-sections and several surgeries that it looks like the switching yard of the Chicago Train Station, will not a narcissist make.

Honestly.  My body is far more tormented than toned, and the girth of future promise is notably eclipsed by the potential girth of my waist, should I ever decided to abandoned my resonant dance with that damned elliptical.  It is a blissful irony surely visited upon me for a reason.  Perhaps some ill-conceived life of hubris in the past or as a preventative measure against conceding to one now?  Who knows?

However, what is obvious is that this perfectly-timed system of checks and balances will ensure that my humility remains intact for the duration of my natural life no matter how wrinkle-free my complexion is.

Aging offers what no other consequence of sentiency can and that is the opportunity to drop all pretense and simply function as a mortal aggregate of all we have assimilated in a lifetime and as a dispensatory vehicle for all we have culled that is good.

Of course, this premise is valid only insofar as we are willing to deeply examine ourselves and rightly decide to end the game with more presence of mind and compassion than when we began, which is a lot easier to accept in theory.

In actuality, the lineage of egocentric behavioral models is long and wide and can be a much stronger opponent than our lilting altruism, especially in moments of weakness or faced with the prospect of one day melding into the faded and brittle-boned pit of geriatric anonymity.

Given the eventuality of our one day hobbling into that walker-laden realm of senior dimensions, it takes a whole lot of grounded focus and dogged introspection to refrain from wanting to lap up every last drop from the fountain of youth and cling to the worldly notion of beauty for as long as we can.

For the most part, I am very pleased to have reached this age and stage in life and don't begrudge the fact that experiencing the youthful, belle of the ball- status was not part of my earlier resume.  It granted my imagination and intellect, however limited, free reign in the experiential processing department and enabled me to discover some precious and invaluable truths about what beauty truly is; and, more specifically, about what it is not.

So, even though I may occasionally be graced with a compliment that has little to do with who I am, what I do or how I see myself and everything to do with what others believe they see on the surface, there is little danger of my assigning any great value to the observation.

And should there ever come a weak, indulgent moment of vanity when I am tempted to think otherwise, all I have to do is remind myself of one other reality:  They have never seen me naked.

Reality?  Check.

SWIMMING TOWARD SHORE

Most people have more apprehension about facing an unknown future than they do re-evaluating a questionable past.  They fret over potential problems, calculate the odds for survival and success and wrestle with the widely variable prognostications for personal happiness in an ever-shifting, unfolding paradigm of local and universal expectations.

Even with the utmost at our disposal in terms of our personal arsenal of preparedness, the idea that we will face all of our tomorrows with only a wide grin and giggles is absurd.  It is all those little black holes of the unforeseen with their impartial and seemingly hard-hearted tendency to throw us an anvil when we're expecting a feather that derail our confidence and shake our hopes the most.

Those inevitable pit stops in hell that we know await us and lurk perhaps within the upcoming month or week or hour create, for most,  an uncomfortable subtext of apprehension and anxiety that is so routine we simply accept that each anticipatory glimpse into tomorrow is accompanied by a slight tightening in the gut or precipitates the alternate: an instant anodyne (and my personal favorite) of compartmentalization.  Nothing relieves apprehension more effectively than sheer denial.

Perhaps it is just another earmark of this middle-age conundrum that has come full circle and again places more emphasis on the future than has been the case for many of us in the past two or three decades; distracted as we were by the demands and expectations of those passages that might have included the pursuit of higher education, carving out a career,  raising a family, self-reflection and introspection or spiritual exploration.  In short,  the general maturation that urged us to seek out and settle into the bones of the person and the life that reflected who we thought we were or wanted to become at the time.

But whatever the reason, it would appear that the present has shifted just enough to make the future a little less reliable than we might have assumed it would be at this point in our lives when we considered it thirty years ago.

At twenty-four, we assumed that what awaited us at fifty-four was fairly predictable and routine in much the same way we faced a day of classes when in school.  You knew your class schedule and the familiar faces you'd pass in the hall; you knew you'd have homework and a quiz or two; that certain classes would be a bore, lunch would be met without any enthusiasm for the culinary fare, and that, finally that blessed last bell would sound releasing immediate title to your time and mind but holding you to the obligation and promise of a return visit tomorrow.  There was just enough structure and routine defining those five days out of our week that it mitigated our fears of the unknown with the gentle stroke of predictability and life was manageable.

So what happens now?  There are no class bells to signal it is time to shift our focus or the expectation of testing to keep us on task and striving for a higher ranking and a passing grade.  There are no children, adolescents or teenagers clopping through the house with a boatload of half-met needs that your parental instincts compel you to assist.  There is no external structure that regulates the passage of time by a series of imposed conditions. At this point, conscience is our only taskmaster; common sense, our timekeeper; and integrity, our guiding principle; which leaves a whole lot of freedom to consider tomorrow and decide how we want to define and design it.

Personally, I find that oddly intimidating in the sense that since there are no obvious external conditions to blame for my failure to complete those hidden goals, the burden of how my future will unfold rests squarely on my shoulders, including the one suffering occasional flare ups of bursitis.  If a day passes where nothing has been accomplished, I can't fall back on the acceptable excuses of being overly-burdened with work in one class or misunderstood in another.  I can't even fall back on the standard loophole I've consoled myself with for the better part of three decades, which was the all-consuming obligation of raising my kids and managing four lives in addition to my own.  That was golden, and believe me, I dove behind its ample circumference of forgiveness on a regular basis.

Right now the future lays like a narrow band of gold-colored beach in the distant horizon as I fend off razor-toothed sharks of insecurity and bob like a weathered cork in a sea of waning excuses.   Although I'm equipped with oars of reliable mental acuity, in a relatively stable emotional raft  (albeit one seasoned with several generations of necessary refurbishments), and enough reserves of providential dreaming and imagination to navigate my way to shore; the reality of my actually reclining with mimosas on the beach one day still seems like a long shot.

I think this is true in part because, as already stated, there is no prevailing superstructure here.  I am in free-fall mode off the high dive and it is only now, in midair, that am I realizing I forgot to check the water level in the pool of possibilities below.  And for the first time, probably in my life, there are no swim meets or coaches;  teachers or classes; kids or domestic deadlines; and I am left to decide whether to sink or swim; to keep paddling toward whatever beach head is within view or sacrifice myself to the sea and the respectably noble excuse of going down with my ship.

No one would fault me or think twice if I were to completely submerge myself in an ocean of menial diversions and pedestrian preoccupations.  In fact, it could easily be viewed as a well-deserved retirement from a long career of loyal service to the firm of Domestic Allegiance and Freelance Meanderings, Inc.; and I could dodder off into the sunset with my AARP card and a generous fruit basket without the least concern that I might be letting someone down.

 People do it everyday, and in light of the ominous and daunting prospects of facing an unknown future with diminishing eyesight, joints narrowed in range by arthritic corrosion from too many years pretending that being chronically knock-kneed was not a legitimate deterrent from doing daily six-mile jogs, and the blatancy of my advanced years advertised in both face and form like the enlarged LED readouts on the side of the Goodyear Blimp, the thought of drowning in obscurity grows more appealing by the minute.

However, just as with everything else, there would be the tenacious foil of conscience heartlessly preventing me from attaining any real satisfaction or peace by relentlessly reminding me that the standards and promises I held for myself take effort and discipline to achieve.  As well as the fact that nothing of any real benefit or consequence ever evolved from the patent acceptance that gardening, reality television, scrapbooking and monthly runs to Costco are all that is required of a life once the high-gaited tempo has been leveled to a somewhat more rambling and unreliable trot.

At this juncture the future looks rangy and undefined and the past looks patchy and incomplete.  Retrospection has it's benefits as a tool capable of altering potential missteps in the present, and since today's present will be tomorrow's past, it quite naturally becomes the perfect strategy for baby-stepping our way towards what will come.  Of course, this all goes back to our obligation to lead a life of consistent and quiet examination, which is the foundation for personal success and peace on any front,  and because it is not a technique solely endemic to these mid-life years, it should be a pretty routine undertaking if we've put in any effort at all up till now.

I'm fully expecting to weather the rough seas of renewal and manage the tides of transition with pretty much the same random aplomb and sporadic enterprising that brought me to this point and has provided me with enough remaining chutzpah to still consider risk-taking to be a reasonable platform toward advancement and enlightenment.  I am definitely a lot older than I was the last time this level of unrestrained freedom and such an ill-defined future loomed before me, but I have no doubt that I am up to the challenge.  At least on a good day.

I've lived on the edge, unintimidated by open waters for most of my life.  For me, following whatever force next captivates my attention has been the best way forward, and I see no reason not to dive in and continue the process.  I probably won't change a thing with the possible exception of now having a lifejacket on hand.  This erratic bursitis in my left shoulder can be a real drowner.

What.   So doing standup will not be part of my future.

I think I can live with that.

2012: Bearing the Possibilities

M

On the edge of happiness there is a small blight of conscience.  It rests there without having been given any formal invitation and with an air of entitlement knowing that without it, you cannot reach whatever deep joy may be available to you.

Increasingly I'm finding it level me with an indifferent stare at each point in my day that is in any way inclined toward unexamined bliss or undeserved relief.
 
I can only assume it must be there for a very important reason.

In fact, I am recognizing that same specter of conscience restraining unearned joy from almost everyone I know, and I find it curious that it should now be surfacing in these exaggerated proportions all over the place.

Of course, conscience has always been there, but perhaps because we've chosen to live in such complete hedonistic ignorance for such a protracted span, it has grown more vociferous until now it has become a karmic hegemony under which all other emotions and thoughts are thoroughly subject?

It has been said by some that after December 21st, 2012 our world will cease to exist in its present form.

If this is true, I am wondering if the hardships that have escalated for so many of us might not be actual blessings; that they are preparing us for that point when letting go will not only be recommended but, in fact, mandatory or we won't be able to survive?

What I've noticed is not that happiness has been taken away from us or that there is no point in seeking it out, but rather that we are simply having to work harder to find and sustain it.  Additionally, we are asked to recognize it, treasure it and be grateful for it.

At the moment I cannot think of one single person I know personally who is not tackling an unusually  menacing beast of blockage or reckoning.  Judging from the circumstantial fallout, it would seem that the beast is the remnant of any shadow in life that is either destructive and has been overly indulged or one that holds much promise but has been denied nourishment.  It is now unleashing such a rapacious appetite it will either be fed by you or else you will become the meal.

Whatever the specific point of awakening, we have only two choices:  We can confront and control it or we can pretend nothing has changed and we will be torn to pieces.

The grace period appears to be over  putting us all under the gun of choice, and we had better do some heavy re-evaluating or we are liable to get shot in the head by the callous bullet of indecision.

There are many possible scenarios for the 2012 shift; some center on geophysical earth changes; some on societal, governmental and world changes; on fiscal insolvency or war.  Others bring us to a new paradigm of thought and are built upon the proposed quantum leap of consciousness that supposedly will occur once our planet passes through the Nuclear Bulge or Galactic Center of the Milky Way galaxy between Sagittarius and Scorpio on that fated December day.

The common upshot from all these scenarios is the ushering in of great change but one that comes with a certain amount of discomfort.  Of course, the metaphorical equivalent for this transition is the birth process.

If that is the case,  I think it helps to bear in mind the secondary process associated with birth, which is the willingness of the mother to endure the birth pangs and discomfort for the greater gift of what it produces in the end.

Before any transformation can begin, there has to be an absolute acceptance and a willingness to go through the labor pains with your only attachment being to yield a healthy, beautiful, bouncing outcome.

So, what I'm seeing in these varying levels of implosion in our lives are the beginnings of the birth process.
And what seems to be the central message to us is that our current state of denial about who we are and  the callous disregard we hold towards one another is no longer being treated lightly by the Cosmic Powers that be, so all those dark corners of our shadow sides are being driven out into the light for appraisal and either a redressing or re-calibration.

It is unquestionably painful but at the same time there is this sense of it being a purgative cleansing and intensely gratifying if we handle it with integrity and openness.

That is not always easy to do when you are in pain, I know.  When your marriage is imploding or your addiction is raging or your friendships are disintegrating or your finances are dissolving or your family is fracturing or your loved ones are dying; when there isn't a soft landing visible anywhere in your world and you are quickly burning up your last reserve of courage.

But those are the very situations serving as the crucibles that will either turn us into the victors over our worst selves or burn us to dark ash.

If we want to deliver a better future, the only real choice we have is to embrace the reality that if we  respond in love first, we will produce a healthy humanity and the resolutions that we arrive at with respect to our personal life situations will be in perfect alignment with grace.

Basically, we either give birth to the baby or get eaten by the beast.  It's pretty simple.  And that applies whether 2012 pans out like Y2K or not.

 We all got knocked-up by life and made some pretty self-centered, destructive and lame choices throughout our planetary pregnancy; but it's not too late to alter our habits and rise to the noble and sacred challenge of bringing this terrestrial baby to term with as much love, care and caution as we can muster in whatever time we have left.   And who knows how long that really is?

We may struggle now to find that comfortable position where we don't feel over-burdened by the weight of change as a better world kicks against our bellies and to ease the aching in our swollen feet as we gamely walk through our troubled days;  but while these impositions are necessary, they are also temporary.

Someday these shifts and challenges will recede into memory as we lovingly cradle the soft crown of a new and innocent humanity that requires nothing more of us than our gratitude and continued nurturing.

Someday, we will once more PLAY.


But for now it seems we bear the possibilities with the choice as to whether or not we will one day celebrate a new life or be crushed by the fissured and outmoded structure of the old one.

I guess we've got to do our pre-natal housecleaning to earn our post-natal bliss.

Maybe its time to start sweeping?

COMMUNICATION RESERVE

This is going to be one of those 'punch drunk' posts that I will likely later regret writing.  I've gotten very little sleep over the past three nights for a variety of reasons and have additionally been juggling balls of internal stress like a circus performer on psychotropic drugs; alternating tosses between denial and dismay with the occasional high throw of raw anxiety just to keep the show compelling.

And while this state of compromised functioning is not entirely foreign to me, it isn't very enticing or necessarily comfortable and it leads me down all sorts of roads that are not all fit for travel; at least not in the manner I prefer, which is without much preparation and only a small satchel of what I've discovered are usually all the wrong questions.

But it is what it is and being that this is an exploratory journey replete with candid opinions and often embarrassing  revelations, I see no other choice but to proceed with the public execution and let my fate rest on the conscience of integrity and intention, as I know my heart is innocent of any conscious or intentional wrongdoing.

After many hours wrestling the dark and to the detriment of my need for sleep, I've found there to be present in me a disquieting and superficially adverse actuality:  I don't know how to BE in this world.

What I mean is that I know what is expected of me, and I think I know what I am supposed to do or how to react and respond in most given situations, but that knowledge is far from natural and obvious and comes only after focused effort, conscious probing and much agonizing.  In other words, it takes a whole lot of intentional work and mental and emotional exertion to navigate the most mundane, routine and pedestrian avenues of daily life.

Part of the reason, I don't doubt,  has been systematically spawned from social failure, as it has existed  throughout all the years of my life.  You read somebody wrong enough times and you are bound to come out appearing somewhat socially retarded, if not downright stupid; and if it happens frequently enough, you begin to double-check your thoughts, words and actions with paranoid intensity in fear of repeatedly landing on your face with your foot squarely lodged between your teeth.

Of course, taking the time to do all that preliminary estimating and calculating gives an air of latency to your social skills; an immediate impression of cluelessness that then supersedes all subsequent reevaluations.  It's like being typecast as an actor.  No matter how divergent your current role, people will always see you as Superman or Mary Poppins and will forever picture you with a talking umbrella and bottomless carpetbag of delights or flying through the air in red leotards and dodging bars of Kryptonite.

But being typecast or misunderstood is really not the issue or the problem.  Of course, it can be a sore point, especially when you want to be taken seriously and you are met with the same regard given a jar of Marshmallow Fluff; but it is something everyone contends with by at least some of the people some of the time.  We are all guilty of prejudging and premature assessments at one time or another.  It is much easier that way because digging and paying attention require time, patience and interest, none of which come easily or in abundance these days.  Perhaps they never have.

And you can't really do much about the Other, but you can do a lot about yourself, which is where I find my thoughts right now; ferreting out the bottom line with the impatient constraint of an over-taxed C.E.O in a board meeting an hour before his flight leaves for his vacation week in Dubai.

I am anxious to figure it out, to get it right, and to find a solution before my time on earth is up.

 So, I look around and observe people interacting with one another without any hesitation or self-consciousness or second thoughts, and I am amazed.  I am often envious, too, knowing the amount of internal suffering and emotional flagellation I endure in the face of even the most casual exchange, and I wonder how do they do it?  How do they get out of their own ways and just BE?

For me, an ordinary conversation with someone has the psychological complexity equal to what it must take to execute a lunar landing in space.  I actually get nervous if I'm in a situation where I have to provide small talk.  I don't do small talk.  I can't do small talk!

Well, of course, I can but I suck at it.  I find myself so terror-stricken and preoccupied with concern over what I am supposed to say next or how should my facial expression be or do I have the right inflection in my voice or  whether I should make eye contact and demonstrate my sincerity or look casual and turn away or maybe just shut up and actually go away- that it makes my stomach tense, and I feel just as I did as a kid standing on that diving block ready to terrorize myself into winning another medal in freestyle.

And then there is the other side of my inability to BE, which is my fear that I won't understand; the unnatural terror that I am not computing properly and am misunderstanding or misreading the other person's words or signals, as so frequently occurs in spite of all my efforts.

Somewhere in the back left compartment of my brain is a group of frantic little neurons awkwardly colliding with one another in a desperate, bumbling attempt to transmit the proper protocols for human interaction and communication down to those waiting axons; and I can only assume that they are either improperly programmed to pull off the job or that whatever axons I have available are broken or seriously misaligned because, obviously, the instructions are not reaching me.

And as if these deficits in my inability to both cogently express and properly interpret information were not enough, there is the added but equally trying and exceedingly exasperating trait that has developed over the years as a means of rectification for the ineptitude of the others and that is simply the glaringly apparent problem of my excessive loquaciousness when pressed to converse one to one.

Seriously.  Unable to provide small talk, I will get on a subject that fascinates me but has little or no value to the other person and I ramble on like an automatic dryer spinning only an old pair of tennis shoes with maybe some loose change circumnavigating for additional volume and annoyance.

Though not being a complete human malfunction, eventually I do become painfully aware when that glazed, mesmerized, deadly bored look comes over whatever poor slob got caught up in the rinse cycle an hour before and just wants those damn shoes to dry so they can get the hell out of there and go back to the mall or the grocery store where the real people are.  But by that point, I'm unsure how to graciously shut myself down without seeming even more of a geek, so I just keep going!

The only real signal I am able to recognize as an alert that it is time to stop comes when I begin repeating myself....a lot.  By that point, I'm not only becoming thoroughly bored with myself, but also physically exhausted; so I can only imagine the debilitated state of the other person.  It must be like being rammed repeatedly by one of those little toy cars that hits the wall then backs up and hits it again and again and again until the batteries finally run out; only instead of the car and the wall, it is my words on the delicate inside chamber of someone else's brain!  I feel so guilty!

Perhaps I should work on not 'feeling' my way through every interaction.  My tendency is to invest my heart into the exchange first; to put it up as collateral against the possibility that something will go wrong.   I suppose I just want to make sure my emotional stock and intentions are public so I won't be accused of foul play or deception if communication breaks down.

Unfortunately, I've learned from experience that it really doesn't matter because if someone wants you to be at fault, they will find a way of making you seem so no matter how open or vulnerable you've allowed yourself to be; and all it ultimately ends up doing is threatening to bring your own heart to a point that feels much like bankruptcy.

Of course, no one can take from you something you don't want to give and nothing can deplete the limitless resource of love, so although it may feel like you have nothing more to give, it is only temporary.  Love is like fiat currency and your heart is the Federal Reserve.  If you find yourself a little low on funds, you just manufacture more only without the negative ramifications or penalties leveed at tax time.

Loving is always a win-win option in spite of the fact it doesn't always feel that way.

Communication, on the other hand, requires a little finesse and a great deal of trust.  With my tendency to lead with the heart and muck up the rest through pure, self-conscious terror and mental hysteria, there is a good chance I will continue to fail at relationships and that my awkwardness will be perceived as disingenuous or backward.

If this is the case, then I will assume that being among people in the traditional sense is not something I should be focused on because, possibly, I can be of more value and far more effective taking advantage of all this time I have alone, which is becoming increasingly plentiful.  I am comfortable here in this room communicating through my laptop and my artwork; with my dogs and all my books.  It isn't at all stressful and the dogs think everything I say to them is pure genius.

Most people earn their rich life lessons bartering with the currency of spoken language.
I store up a wealth of wisdom then distribute it through creative works and written words.

Sometimes it is lonely.  But the more I think about it, perhaps this is right where I am supposed to BE.