I’m back. After three years of pleasing someone else/others, I’m doing things for me – I’m spending quality time with my reason nearly every day and we have a great time together and despite being broke am getting out of the house, when Im not working or writing, and meeting lots of people.
Realization One – apart from having enough money to survive (still working on that one) it is important to work doing something you love and are passionate about. I used to know this and stopped doing it a long time ago.
Realization Two – When given the choice of spending any money on things (possessions) or experiences – choose the experiences.
FRIDAY NIGHT
After work I staged an impromptu drop-in at The Matador in Tacoma where I met three different groups of people. All were interesting and fun, but the last group took the cake. They were a group of young women on a girls night out who beckoned me over to their table where their friend Social Inhibition’s place had been taken by Heavy Drinking, who was accompanied by Indiscreet Flirtation and Outrageous Admissions. The table gave new meaning to the phrase “stimulating conversation”. In between under-the-table leg massages and stories of girl-on-girl action at public events; MRIs brought about by excessive partying and drug use; and the confession from one of the girls, that she would like to be kissed by everyone else at the table AND our waitress, I managed to meet Dawn who seemed as out of place and gobsmacked as I was. Once my amusement, which had changed to shock, had changed to fear – I made my way home – alone. Hi to the girls, especially Dawn, I hope the night was everything you wanted it to be, although I cant possibly imagine how that would be possible given our human condition and its physical limitations.
At the end of the day I really am a vanilla-icecream one-woman-guy kinda guy.
My bill at the end of the night $5 – for the one beer I went in to have.
SATURDAY / SATURDAY NIGHT
Spent Saturday morning writing for The Bloke Show, the afternoon early evening at appointments for work. Saturday evening met with some people at Doyle’s for a quick beer. It was arranged through meetup. I arrived early – dressed in business attire from my days work; ordered a drink and checked out the scheduled entertainment a band called Atma – who billed themselves as sci-fi soul groove – curious.
The meetups are always an interesting assortment of people, I like going to them very much , I’m a people observer so I can hardly lose. This meetup was better than most – I almost gave up on meetups after my very first was a group of singles and if I had to make a movie title of the evening it might have been something like – The misfits, the desperate and the heartbroken – and although I fitted into the last category a misfit or desperate I wasn’t. I didn’t stay long that night.
Saturday night on the other hand was very interesting and provided a most unusual collection of people including a fascinating example of the heartbroken variety. I met Tim who had been dumped by his ex after a three month relationship only a week prior. There is no question that people behave strangely after a painful relationship break-up. I know I did. It is very sad and difficult to be with anyone going through this process and my heart goes out to each of them. Tim had an interesting approach to his recovery , apart from being very upfront with his break-up news he proceeded to show blown up, badly over-exposed, glossy 8 x 10 photos of himself in fields of tulips to whoever was willing to look at them – what connection the photos had with his break-up I’m at a loss to say, and by the reaction of the other people in the group I’m guessing they were too. Perhaps the photos were taken by his newly insignificant other? Perhaps they were the dramatic leaping pad to a deeper, more meaningful conversation? Who’s to say? I didn’t make it that far. When Tim’s ex left him I’m hypothesizing that she took the most interesting and compelling components of his personality with her. The poor guy was really suffering.
What is fascinating is that I can draw comparisons with Tim’s strange behaviour , photographs and my own weird post-relationship behaviour. In my case I took my favourite photos of she who is unmentionable and made one of my first excursions into the amazing world of photoshop with it. I brushed, erased, patched and cloned til every wrinkle ,every hair, every semblance of human imperfection was erased from her face. I whitened teeth and the whites of her eyes I highlighted the color of her pupils. I played with color tone and hue and every damn mechanism within the program I could find. I must have put 40-80 hours into it – and I’m not exaggerating. I created what I thought was the most beautiful picture of the most beautiful woman in the world – I genuinely loved it , well, I knew it wasn’t perfect but it was the best I could do at that time. What I now see is a picture of a plastic , twisted she-devil with luminous green cat-like eyes. I sent this picture and similarly photoshopped photos of she who is unmentionable’s truly beautiful daughters (who I love and miss like crazy) to her father as a Christmas gift. God knows what he thought of them… or me. Maybe he thought this was a symbolic revenge token or something? I don’t know. He won’t talk to me. I don’t blame him. Sorry Rex, my intentions were honorable I assure you.
Anyway back to Saturdays motley crew, I met Kim , Kevin, Linda and Jeff the meetup organizer. We had a really good time – Kim and I danced to a couple of songs and Kevin Linda Kim and I laughed a lot .
The best way to give an overview of the night and the band is to draw a comparison between Atma AKA Paul Fischer Writes Songs and the fictional band Munchausen by Proxy from the Jim Carey movie Yes Man – minus the adorable Zooey Deschanel. I could actually imagine Paul Fischer standing at the front of the stage area pointing at each one of us saying “Hello Simon, Kim, Linda, Tim, Jeff We are Atma!
I’m going to write to Paul – who I met along with the band – lovely guys btw, and suggest they invest in some seahorse heads – I think it’d go down a treat.
I felt like we were on-set filming – Linda commented they belonged in the Village. Anyway heres a side-by-side comparison –
Paul Fischer Writes Songs – Rich Guys and Trophy Wives I cant up this vid cause the file size is too large …so navigate from the home page to videos and watch the lower right video.
Munchausen by Proxy (feat Zooey Deschanel) – Uh-huh
Total cost for Saturday $14 (two Jamesons and ginger ales – recommended by my bartender – and she was right – very refreshing.)
Im going to try to write Paul Fischer Writes Songs into an ending of one of our shows…so watch out for that – the guys seemed to be keen to do it – so we shall.
SUNDAY
My day with my reason – FANTASTIC!! Yet another outing to The Children’s Museum in Seattle …my reason cant seem to get enough of it ..it was warm enough outside so we also played on the whale sculptures near the fountain outside The Seattle Center …cool.
