in fremont recovering from the surgery. arm in a sling, limited mobility. can finally somewhat type, albeit standing up as i can't lift my arm f0r a month. surgery went well and the pain can mostly be relegated to the background, just bad in the morning. i've got percocet but have been trying to keep it minimal in power. i hate pills. am watching about 4 movies a day, reading about 3 books a week. not writing. fell into a bit of a low patch where i hate my creative output, not happy with self, place in life. i know it's just a phase, since my mood can be influenced by how i feel physically. also suspect my left knee needs minor surgery. i really went to town last year with my training-like-a-professional-athlete objective.

watched 2012 and got more anxious. whatever is supposed to happen 12.21.12, we'll get a hint of it on 12.12.12 as well, which is a date i'm more interested in anyway. they're both 9 days incidentally. i'm thinking it's the revelation of the higher consciousness but who knows...if it changes life as we know it, it could do away with our physical attachment to this reality. whatever happens is going to happen though, so it's best to deal with it with three eyes open.

watching mass media though, i'm noticing a change in creative output. there's been a huge wave of media dealing with the concept of Others, both showing them in a collaborative, humane light (Avatar, District 9) or fetishizing them (the whole vampire 0bsession). it was most disturbing in the past, when films showed a terror of Others as a threatening, malignant force (ie Aliens, Independence Day, that Tom Cruise movie that escapes me right now). those spread an ignorant kind of fear but were also indicative of the overall terror of the unknown. collective consciousness is evolving. this new era coming up is definitely one i feel more comfortable in. i feel like most of my life i've been out of place, waiting for the rest of the world to be at an open-minded enough place to accept me instead of being afraid or threatened by me, and it's happening now. for now, i'm just observing. i'm out of the loop, on the bench, healing. feeling the vulnerability of my human body, the precariousness tied to this level of life. we are so much bigger than our bodies. we have to find a better system.

outside of that, very little to report. i recorded an "interview' with a guy i met a couple of weekends ago in seattle. he had a moustache tattoed on the side of his finger so when he held it up below his nose, it looked like he had a moustache. he was really into me but i kept it friendly but platonic--he's very interesting, a bit of a muse connection, but not someone i can see myself with as a partner. i met him on a friday night and when he found out i was a writer, he told me he had a lot of stories. he started telling them to me and i soon realized that i would need to record him to capture everything...he was overwhelming me with details. so he agreed to meet for lunch the next day but asked me to not call before noon because "i plan to do some coke tonight so i won't be up early tomorrow." everyone knows how i feel about cokeheads (not to be trusted). the next day, he regaled me with stories about going to boarding school and at 17, seducing his english teacher. about his travels across the country, about the many times he'd been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. he was coming 3 weeks off a break-up with the mother of his son (a woman who's half chinese and half vietnamese, thus explaining why he was so zoned in on me), and his eyes would well up with tears every time he talked about it. he told me that 3 years ago, he was in a bar and a drunk guy had threatened his friend so he got in the way to protect him. the drunk guy smashed a pint glass in his face and it required surgery to stitch his face back together. he and his wife used to go out a lot but after that, he looked like frankenstein and he was self-conscious about going out. i used to be a pretty good-looking guy, he said. and then suddenly, it was all gone. i didn't even look human anymore. it's taken until now for the scars to heal, and outside of a small scar on the tip of his nose, there's no physical evidence of the disfigurement though psychologically, they're still deep.

i listened to him for a good 3 hours. i could tell he was self-editing, more careful about what he was saying because of the tape recorder, but there was plenty there. to be honest, i'll probably never listen to the tape. sometimes i think i meet these people and talk to them more for them and their catharsis than me really trying to get direct "material" out of it. i know that i was exhausted afterwards and felt really heavy, and slept 5 hours through the afternoon, into the night. as he had spoken to me in those hours, i was somewhere deep inside him, feeling the core of pain within, trying to siphon it, understand it, release it. this man was very strong, very kind, but whatever it was he was carrying was very painful and heavy. i never got a good look at it or a good handle on it, but i hoped it helped.

that night, he called me and invited me out again. i happened to be in the area, after giving a writer who had very negative energy and was frustrated about the state of publishing some ideas about electronic publishing. so i met up with him and his friends. he confessed to me that he'd had mixed feelings after meeting, like he wasn't sure if he felt used. i told him he shouldn't feel used, that my intentions are always good. he said that he'd never told anyone a lot of the things he'd talked about, and i told him it's okay, strangers often find themselves confiding in me and it's because i don't judge...i just listen and try to understand. he confessed that he'd invited me out because he'd been worried, that after he'd talked to me that i would think he was a really fucked up person. i told him that he was a good guy, just going through a lot right now, trying to get a handle on the rest of his life. i bought him a drink, but still kept it friendly, even though i could see he was working through his ambivalence, wondering why he felt so deeply connected and having told me so many personal things when he didn't really know anything about me (he actually wondered this outloud. the truth was, he never really asked me questions about myself. i sensed my value to him required him to subconsciously keep me mysterious so he could use me as a mirror. that's usually how it is. that's how "work" connections tend to feel, rather than "personal" connections). at the end of the night, he said, "i really like you. you're really smart, and analytical. you're not like other girls. and you're incredibly sexy too, but that's obvious. i really like you, but i don't know if i like like you, or like you as a friend."

"you want to like me as a friend," i said quickly.

he looked a little hurt, and asked why.

"i just feel that's the optimal distance to really appreciate me," i said. for most people, trying to push for more erases all the positive that the connection as it was meant to be produces. i have many connections that seem to make sense on such a deep level, but not so much in the mundane world. i don't know why they happen, but i find that by going with them and letting them naturally the way they seem meant to unfold holds great benefit to both me and the other person. i've learned that my life generally goes better and i seem more tangibly "lucky" if i'm open to them, even if sometimes, they put me in contact with people i would normally never interact with. i think on some level he understood this (he was clearly still in love with someone) but on an ego level, he wanted to be able to place a label on his feelings so that they could be more comfortable, so he kept trying, putting his arm around me at one point like i wouldn't notice. i told him it was late and i had to go. i wished him the best of luck. i remember the look on his face as he watched me walk out. like he was trying to memorize me.

i learned a long time ago, you can't save people. you can't make their choices for them, as it's presumptious to think you could do such a thing, and it defeats the purpose of each man living his own life and learning the lessons of his unique life journey. but i've learned that i can listen, and i learn that as i understand things, people seem to understand as well. at least, there's a comfort to this, that for a brief time, even with a complete stranger, they felt present, seen and known. i remember almost everyone i meet. inside me, they're all there, their stories, their hearts, their souls. in the deepest of nights, i can feel their echoes pulsing in the darkness. there's very little difference in terms of what goes on within and what goes on without. everything happens for a reason, including why we meet who we meet, and what happens when and where it happens. i'm still learning what my purpose is here on earth, and perhaps when the time and place have arrived, it will all become naturally clear, part of the flow, and all this is part of getting me to where i'm supposed to be; i'll never know until i'm in a position of looking back. when the footsteps stop and i've finally reached the end of the journey, the top of the mountain to observe the meaning of my life in its entirety. until then...it is what it is.