Rubber boots

I wore my yellow rubber boots today.

"I like your rubber boots!" Dave, the Newfie bus driver said to me this morning as I got on. "Remind me of the ones back home."

I love my yellow rubber boots. I had a pair once before but they met their tragic and untimely demise years ago in a fire. (My grandma borrowed them to use in a fall display at the church. Hay bales and candles were involved. I don't like to talk about it, really.) I just found them this spring at Old Navy for $15. It was a magical happy day.

I missed going to yoga on Tuesday at lunch because I forgot my yoga attire at home. So I decided I would go to the Wednesday class after work. The class started at four so I killed a bit of time at my desk before heading from the fifth floor to the basement of the other building. Almost at the fitness centre, I realized I had forgotten my swipe card. So all the way over to the other building and back up to the fifth floor I went. With card and attire in hand, I marched up to the bulletin board to sign up for class before changing. I crossed my fingers that the class wasn't full already.

CLASS CANCELLED

So I went all the way over..., well, you know the route now, back to my desk. I phoned my mom to tell her the story.

"Maybe you just weren't supposed to exercise this week," she said.

This made me laugh. Not meant to do yoga? Isn't the whole premise of yoga the fact that you have been drawn to it by some kind of fate so you can meditate and open yourself up to more fate? But hey, who am I to argue with Buddha? That happy little round soul, who could argue with him?

So I pulled on the yellow rubber boots and headed out into the saturated world to get, well, saturated myself. I came home grumbling, wondering why I didn't look harder for a rich man at the wine festival last weekend to throw myself at so that I could ensure my future rainy days would at least end with a fireplace in a cozy room in a very large home on Wellington Crescent. Love shmove. I'm going for money. I can always have hot and passionate extra-marital affairs. Hey, as it is, only the married dudes ever hit on me. Whoa, did I just order a round at Pete's Pity Bar? It must be happy hour.

For no particular reason at all, I would like to take this space to remind you that this is just my blog. I come here to 1) practice my writing and 2) have a conversation with my friends who come here because they care about me and care to know what I'm up to. If you think that by simply reading this blog you have some kind of insight into who I am, you are blissfully off the mark. Anything I write here is a mere snapshot of my thoughts at the particular moment I typed them. You have no idea the journey those thoughts took or the filters of experience they passed through before they ended up in a post. You have no idea the context they came from. Don't try to read between the lines. They are never meant to be taken that seriously.

On top of all that, once I hit "Publish Post" my thoughts on something may completely change. That's called "being human". I am a mere 27-year-old female. I am realizing now more than ever before that what I know is nothing compared to what I will learn, and what I will learn is nothing compared to what I will never know. If you try to get some sense of who I am by pouring over my posts, you will get nothing but a large headache. I will contradict and argue against myself from post to post. I will be evasive with the truth so as to protect myself from getting hurt. I will choose a point of view that suits the purpose of the story best.

Every once in a while I am reminded that people come here and they think that they are getting inside my head. They think they can use my words as proof that they are better than I am, that they are smarter, more experienced, more perfect. To those I say, I'm just a human. And I'm still a pretty young one at that. I'm on this spinning Earth ride just like you and everyone else, trying to make sense of it so I can give myself a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But if you want to use my thoughts to make yourself feel superior, go right ahead. I don't think you need me to also tell you how ridiculous that is.

And for some reason now, I feel that I want to say something about my thoughts on intimacy. I think the ultimate goal of love (whether it is truly attainable or not) is for two souls to be able to stand naked in front of each other, warts, baggage, issues and all, and still make the choice to love each other. By building up to that ultimate level of trust, two people can start to shed their defenses and reveal their true selves.

Defensive attitude aside and heart in hand, If you really do care to know more about me, give me a reason to trust you and I'll let you in. Yeah, I've been hurt a lot before, I've got trust issues.

You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.
And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.
Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.
--Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 26. Write from the heart., 08-22-04

Electronic communication is an instantaneous and illusory contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships.

Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil, 1995