what's been happening in our backyard:



i noticed the smoke in the taxi home from the airport. it looked like a volcano erupting. the fire is insane, spreading without wind. i've been feeling very sluggish. the air dries out my head. performance at gym has been uninspired. i don't think i function optimally around heat. i've always been someone, who no matter how cold it is outside, likes the window open and one foot outside of my blanket.

shit. i'm feeling pretty difficult things coming in. i need help. i can feel questions i can't answer coming in. i see a dark hallway with shadows, and all the shadows are women. we are learning what it means to lose. you try to give strength but can they take it? how do you maintain balance between your insides and theirs? how do you maintain balance between inner and outer worlds when you live in a world of backwards and forwards? why is time so dimensional? it's so hard for me to understand a 2 dimensional understanding of time and place. that's why when i get confused, i do shit like score in the other team's basket, even though otherwise, i seem fairly intelligent. time and space are outward projections to me, infinite expansion, everything in existence existing in exactly one tiny, specific place. if you can understand that concept, you can create things. or at least that's what seems to happen when i become focused on this perspective. but then an ounce of negative emotion hits (all you really need is just a small drop of poison to kill a human), my focus gets pulled into that tiny flash of pain and all i can see are really small things. and because my world is now so small, everything seems big and threatening. clearly, i don't want this. this state doesn't have to be permanent, but it's hard to crawl out of.

i've been reading the happiness hypothesis. i thought i was going to like it. but then the guy becomes kind of a talking head. starts talking like a virgin talking about sex. and it made me feel that because i follow my intuition, and quantitative scientific results are often counter-intuitive, then because i'm one of those who still hold beliefs despite the research data means i'm a moron. but then i feel like, sometimes the exceptions to the rule make the new rules, which create the new exceptions. like 80/20. so to think that any point is static, any view of "what is" a destination, is still not the summit. and to straddle the line between opinions has no direction. maybe by the end of the book he ties it together. i'll still finish it, but i've lost interest.

i've been threatening to disappear for a while now. because i need to have my own life, be able to go deep into my world without people manipulating me while i'm vulnerable. and for the most part, people are learning to understand and respect my boundaries. i always believed, the people who truly love me will know i always come back. but they have to let me go. i've chosen seattle because i can be amongst friendly people, but be alone.

one night in seattle, i saw the number 24 (for griffey jr) on a guy's back and decided to see what would happen if i followed wherever that number wanted to lead me. he led me down alley after alley filled with restaurants and bars, and stopped at kell's, also my favorite bar in san francisco. it was like having a piece of san francisco here, too. so i went in, found a table in the corner and watched this live band featuring a jovial (drunk) irish guy.

there was a period of time, when the band was on a break, and there was just crowd noise. i was close enough to the tables near me to hear their conversations, but i opened my ears, losing the individual words and listening to the noise as an entire river. i sat like that for a while, lost in the rushing of sound created by the vibration of nameless words.

on the way to the bathroom, noticed a 2nd room. went there and it was a dj playing hip hop. it was less crowded so i sat here.

first, the strangest thing happens to me sometimes. people froderize me. i can be in a room that's pretty open, with no one behind me, and people will squeeze by me, rubbing themselves against me like they're squeezing through, even though they have plenty of room to move. the time i started becoming really conscious of it was at a bar for a birthday party, this girl did it twice, on her way to one side of the room, then coming back. when i turned around, there was no one behind me. there was about 15 feet of space for her to cross. then i looked at her, like she was playing some joke on me, but she never looked over or acknowledged anything. since then, i notice it happens quite often, men and women. sometimes they'll just touch my skin or pinch me. sometimes it's a little more egregious. but i'm still trying to understand what it's about.

so i was sitting on this stool against a bar, with about 6 feet of room between me and the tables in the back. the first girl crashed into me and i figured she was just drunk, but then she leaned against me and stroked the bare skin of my arm. i'm sitting there staring at her hand on my arm because i really don't understand what's going on. the guy next to her started giggling, and they ran out of the room. they seemed young, like a girl and her gay best friend, so maybe it was a joke.

then there was this girl, heavy make-up, cat-like eyes, looked like trouble for guys with any bit of sweet innocence left for her to shred.. i'd noticed her but never made eye contact with her. i just stayed in my world, listened to the music. the next thing i know, she's squeezing by behind me, digging her breasts into my back. big hard fake ones. like pool balls. it was, unpleasant. boys...really? i don't know how you deal with fake breasts. they're weird feeling.

the move felt really aggressive, actually. it raised all the hair on my arms. but i didn't turn to look, i didn't move. just didn't acknowledge it.

the last incident was this guy with an army fade who had been hovering. i'd glanced over and saw him making a tentative approach and i felt pins and needles in my right arm and leg. something about him made me feel hyper-vigilant. i didn't acknowledge him at all. at some point, he'd gotten behind me and kept leaning into me, like he was being pushed into me. it was such a strange way of trying to get someone's attention. he did it three or four times, each time a little more pronounced, so i casually just leaned forward to give him more "room" and he quickly moved away to the other side of the room.

this was a lot of weird unauthorized touching, but yet, no conversation. the only one who talked to me was this guy who will always look like someone's goofy little brother. he had a half empty beer in each hand (or half full, doesn't matter how you see it), and he wanted me to drink one of them. "which one do you want?" he asked. "whose beer is that? it's half empty. i'm not drinking leftover beer." i just don't know him well enough. so he wants to play rock, paper, scissors with the loser drinking. i say, "fine." we agreed upon "on 3" but i shoot and he doesn't. he said "on 3" means "one two three shoot" and i said it's "one two three," shooting on 3. because what he was saying was technically "on 4." so we played with the 4 count and i flashed scissors every time but one, winning 3-1. "dude, i flashed the same thing every time but one. how did you not catch that?" "don't try to get into my head," he said. (what?) he wanted to play again right away and i asked him, "what happened to the loser drinking?" he said we had to play for me to drink the other beer. i said he should drink the one that's his before we start another game and he called me the sneakiest rock, paper, scissors player he'd ever met.

right. i told him, "whatever. i'm done playing with you."

saw fausto from the jazz club. he was with a slim, older brutha. if it were stanley jordan, i would go over and say hi. if it's anyone else, i will not. i couldn't tell. didn't want fausto to see me.

slipped out, went home.

i like to be alone amongst people, or be with people alone. these are the moments within which i get the most.