Sundries Aisle Twelve Five AM

Hello again.

You see: freeing up the space I would have to hand wash the sweaters right away instead of storing them in the bottom drawer. I imagine I could free up two drawers and space in the summer closet.

Oh: I dream of these things. I don't see why I can't now.

I would be super-organized if I had no extra space to keep things lying around.

Even now: I went on the Container Store website and bought a 24-section lipstick holder because I just have too many darn lipsticks and if I can't see them easily in the makeup drawer I regret I won't use half of them.

The cubic zirconia earrings look nice and are larger than the old ones yet do not look gaudy or cheap. I will wear them on Wednesday when I go to the museum. Browsing art and dining out warrants the short skirt. I will wear the mocha lipstick which is a brownish pink. The short black skirt. A sweater that looks good on me.

Again I go back and forth between donating the purple wool sweater and keeping it. Most likely I will try it on one more time and then decide. Although it is not a petite size the sleeves are not long and it does not hang low on the hip, it hits the high hip. So you see I'm torn. What I most likely will do is take it to the dry cleaner to be cleaned along with a pair of black pants. I can do this to preserve the life of the sweater.

All night I've been listening to Jazz88 WBGO that broadcasts out of Newark, New Jersey. Some good music. I realize not everyone likes jazz. You either like it or you don't. I met a guy who likes CBS FM and that doesn't detract me from him even though I cringe when my aunt plays that radio station in the car. It could be a lot worse: it could be Lite FM.

Suddenly lately I remember the ex-boyfriend and memories come flooding back in detail in my mind. It's like I can replay the events of our courtship on a drive-in movie screen they are that vivid to me. Luckily I did not lose myself in him and we went our separate ways. He was a Tiger-the mortal enemy of a Snake so it wasn't meant to be.

Women have to pine for what was and move on because the universe has something better for us down the road. Sometimes only in retrospect do we realize it was a mistake. Yet is reaching out ever a mistake if you get experience and there's something good however fleeting in the union?

I'm glad it ended. A woman asked me about the guy and I couldn't articulate exactly what I meant when I told her he had expectations I couldn't live up to. For one: I'm not always a talkative person and he criticized me for being quiet. To him this was a big deal it was a deal breaker for him.

Interesting. I do not consider it a deal breaker that someone listens to CBS FM and I like modern rock and jazz. I step out in other ways so to speak. Yet I respect that each of us has our own quirky needs.

In retrospect it seems almost scary that the ex-boyfriend expected me to be someone I wasn't. Truly I'm more of a listener and I like to ask people questions to get them expounding on whatever they're talking about rather than switching the topic to something I want to say.

K. asked me in what way did the ex-boyfriend think I didn't meet his expectations and now I realize it was all of the above: my not being able to perform on command for him.

He even told me [in a different way] to shut up when I asked him for detail informed about the people who lived where he did. I wanted to understand what made them tick and why they were content to wear polyester clothing that never went out of style in the Midwest. Like the Haband for Her clothes sold in the back of Parade magazine in the Sunday newspaper.

Do the women wear plaid? I wanted to know. The land was flat and cold all year. There were no museums or cultural events to speak of. That is how I should have known the relationship would go south like South Dakota.

Some things are important to me:

I could only live in a city where I had access to great health care and everything I needed was within walking distance or a bus or train ride away.

I couldn't live in a place where people existed on a steady diet of nothing.
Would rather be sitting at the computer typing with my mind going 90 miles an hour and the jazz station wafting in the background from the other room.

I prefer small, intimate spaces like neighborhoods. It is in the City where I feel the most rooted to the world and all its possibilities for creative self-expression. Round here it's never amateur night: you're on stage every day of your life giving a performance, even if you're just walking down the street.

A friend gave me a white tee shirt with black letters that proclaimed:
Brooklyn, NY: Only the Strong Survive.
I wore that shirt with pride although really it's a crummy thing: survival of the fittest. I wore it because I was strong and I knew I would survive.

I would have withered in the Midwest.

You wonder why this reflection has come on? It's the end of the year. I promise a juicy blog entry for New Year's Eve. "In with the New, Out with the Old." So I kick the memories of the ex-boyfriend to the curb. I make room in my life for someone new.

Come on: you cannot say this isn't the stuff of life: mixing and mingling. My psychiatrist told me I was like any other woman in the City and it had nothing to do with the schizophrenia. One can hope can't she?

So I have learned something I can pass on to you: yield on the things you can compromise on and do not give in on the things that are non-negotiable. A guy must adore you as you are or he's not the one for you.

OK buckeroos: you get that guys? Because if you don't get it trust me women can easily find other trout in the lake. I was hit on by a bus driver the other day even though my hair was sopping wet and I wore my funky eyeglasses in the rain. So there you go if you worry your boyfriend finds something unacceptable about you go find someone else who will like and maybe even admire that trait. Because you can get a guy sopping wet on a bus no problem all the while you look like a drowned cat.

The moral of the story? Be true to yourself and you will attract a guy [or a woman if you're a guy] who is true blue. Acting false drains your energy and is the root cause of much distress and stress and physical ailments too. The body reacts to the mind and the mind reacts to the body. So do yourself a favor: be true to yourself.

That is about all I can give as this has been a long and winding road the blog entry went down. Truth be told the bus driver asked me if I were seeing someone and I told him yes. The guy told me he would rather see someone than date someone so that he could keep his options open to see someone else. Writing that last sentence it sounds like the bus driver was a player. Trust me he was just burned by the ex-girlfriend he talked to me about in great detail.

Either you're in a relationship or you're out. I don't believe in the "one and a spare" philosophy of dating where you keep an extra guy on the side while you're dating someone else. One dating coach recommends you see seven people at once-count them: seven.

Now are you as exhausted reading this as I am writing this last section of the blog?

The women told me I was right to tell the bus driver I was seeing someone rather than my having to turn the guy down when he inevitably asked me out [because I could tell from his line of questioning where it was leading].

Oh: it was just another day in the Big City. You can't buy moments like these driving down a two-lane highway because the nearest attraction is two miles away via car. What kind of blog could I possibly write if I wasn't privy to these rich details? I wonder if I could twist into poetry the image of a french fry factory on the road or a cornfield. Could there really be seven ways of looking at a cornfield and writing about it? Please someone prove me wrong if I'm mistaken in that a flat world is really flat. Maybe in the summer the light plays on the corn in a golden way. Maybe in the winter the corn is sleeping. Those are two ways of looking at a cornfield.

I'll take the microphone at a poetry reading any day over the long drive to a pastel mall in a car the size of a boat.

Cheers.