bad date

Since I have a somewhat sizeable on-line presence, I feel it gives me the position to contemplate the "new age" in ways I wouldn't offer to people who sit on the sidelines, making judgments about the rest of us.

With over two years logged in on social networking sites, I had stopped casting doubts about the effects they were having on my life as I was remaining in touch with long distance friends, getting linked up with misplaced friends, and keeping up to date with new ones. For a time, I had this conception that there was something unnatural to being able to "stalk" the pages and pictures of old lost friends or even re-entering their lives and consciousness entirely.

I have found myself (in part) going through reunion after reunion seeing my roster of on-line friends swell like a massive movie trailer for "My Life Passing before My Eyes". One of the first long gone friends to re-enter my life I knew for a few years in high school - we were pretty good friends who got along together and were both positive spirits in one another's existences.

Starting up again was easy and pleasant and there seemed to be a mutual feeling of "why'd we let this fade?" We've since gone past the need to return to chats about high school and really connected via instant messaging and e-mails about the current events in one another's lives as well as a smattering of the lost time. To a point we are closer now than we were fourteen years ago. So, we'd been making some attempts to arrange visits to one another's town for a while now.

Such a chance for an occasion occurred for her and her friend to visit my town this weekend. The wife and I already had a longtime, good friend staying with us, but there was an embracing spirit of "the more the merrier", so we planned to meet up for dinner.

Dinner has since gone down - and oh, how wrong I feel things have gone. I don't even recall what any expectations were at this point, but they were hardly met. In fact, what happened almost felt like a really bad date. I am exceedingly bummed and I'm so lost about what to do about the way I'm feeling.

Now, there was a truly joyous moment when she and I saw one another again for the first time after so many years. The smiles, the embrace, and all of that simultaneously brought me back and bridged the wide gap of these years - like one might feel after long term distance. This is common for people who do stay in touch.

Dinner was a low-key, no frills affair that honestly can be seen as the good first act of the evening. It was the after dinner coffee at our favorite coffeehouse that saw our evening struggling for air. The place was unusually understaffed and conversations seemed to have stuttered to a halt, leaving only a vague suggestion of conversation over an ill-advised game of Trivial Pursuit.

I'm upset and I’m confused about how things turned out. Things felt awkward and out of sorts in a way that I don't feel my friend and my communications had been previously. I wonder whether it was the dynamic of our five-some or any of the variables beyond us two - who maybe should have grabbed some coffee alone for this first reunion. I don't know how but suddenly all of the communication we've had during the last two years disappeared and to a point it seemed no one knew what to say.

It makes me think about the way we represent ourselves in writing. I know this blog occasionally echoes of altered interpretations of self - sometimes a better, more assured, better edited version. I want to think that I was uncomfortable, nervous, and a bit regressive as so many different things were stirred to the surface from my youth. Perhaps she had her own version of this and maybe this evening represents an unavoidable hump that leads to better things.

I am certainly hoping...

foreign territory

I have found that the familial relationships in one’s life are some of the most peculiar and the most dysfunctional. Friends of similar connection and who may treat you with similar disregard might be told to hit the road or might become merely a mirage in our theoretical mirrors as we travel farther down our road away from them. This is not always true with family where bonds can hang by a thread yet somehow remain sustained and nourished enough for us to not lose title and a place in the family unit.

My brother and I have shared such a life for many years. I came into the world hindered by the nine years he already had on me. This says nothing about all of the myriad personality differences than became evident early on, even though we did have some periods of bonding over musical tastes and filmic interest. There’s not much more to share in together these days with hundreds of miles between us figuratively and literally.

As painful as the expectation that I will never have the sort of brother relationship “they” stack films, books, and television with, there are occasional glimmers of subtle change. The other night we were chatting on one of the on-line chat options and things felt somehow different.

As expected, things began roughly like the interactions between two people who encounter one another in a downtown plaza after many years apart. Perhaps the first strains of conversation have eloquence and excitement to it, but it doesn’t take long before the two people seem to run out of things to say no matter how much life has passed by. This is how things began for me. I wasn’t sure what to say or what to ask. Everything felt like an empty slate in certain ways. There was a foreign nature to the entire situation. I was reminded how little we really know about each other.

The wheels began churning with talk of his many children and I began to open up about some of the creative endeavors I have my dirty little fingers in. And it seemed that the only real commonalities we have are our steadily aging parents who recently dropped by for a brief visit. They were in their usual form, rubbing in their one foot in the grave status. This never comes off as some mid-sixties clarity about life and mortality, but instead as emo with an aged patina. They have been brooding in this way for years.

What really surprised was an unexpected interest in some of my artistic projects I have on the horizon. They have rarely diverted from their original “hope this is a phase” mentality, so as years have toiled on an upswing in interest and supportiveness always catches me off guard. I don’t know what to do with it. I know how to work with the resistance of the world and those in the presumed inner circle, but what do I do with an open door. My brother suggested I embrace it. I have to wonder what makes it worth it to just ride one of my waves when a small group of others have been by my side for the whole trip and should be the only ones who should bask in my positivity, or at least that’s how it appears right now.

At any rate, I found myself sharing things with my brother that I would not have normally. It was interesting and telling. As the conversation went along, I started to recognize how this – this instant messaging – might be the perfect forum for us to connect in some small way. With the distance and the conflicting lifestyle choices, in person seems unlikely. E-mailing tends to be much too inconsistent. Phone calling is completely out what with all of the uncertainty and quiet and impatience to hang up that tends to swell up within me. However, these words scrolling across the screen actually felt like a representation of both of us making an effort to hear the other.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s something. Or maybe I just want it to be.

the ceiling

My mind has been mulling lately over the concept of the figurative “ceiling”. Career-wise, I feel I may have seen all this town can offer me and what I can reasonably gain from it. I have slowly sloshed through several different spaces, putting my feet in shoes that barely fit, while looking for opportunities that allow me to do more than bide my time.

Whether it’s rationalization or truth, I think I have recently hit my head on the ceiling of this town. I mentioned this to a good friend and filmmaking colleague whose journey over the past two years has been nothing if not impressive and international to boot. So I wait to see what develops from the slow process of creating a business plan, followed by looking for financing, and then making my film should I have any energy or inspiration remaining in the vault. I don’t know what the other side will look like.

The way it’s seen, the ceiling is the visual metaphor for things when they have gone as far as they will. This is when we get too small for our proverbial box. I have thought of this a lot in terms of relationships, as they become less satisfying than they once were, or perhaps when they become plain weird. People drift apart. I suppose it’s how we react to this drifting that makes the difference? Is the answer in letting the connection take its natural course? Or is it important to put up a fight and likely create a more permanent rift?

What’s strange to me is how I have been feeling about someone I knew only vaguely, someone who I knew from parties and other gatherings, and who I first met randomly on my front porch. He was someone in the periphery of my life, part of one of the circle of friends, someone I might never have known any better, and now clearly someone I will never know more. I have just found out that he was tragically lost in a river boating accident. I am friends with several of his closest friends, so there’s a general energy around that is both disconcerting and revealing.

What can I take from this? Is it the lack of guarantees in life? Is it about standing up, opening up, spreading one’s wings, and breaking through those ceilings of life? Is this a reminder to find the adventure in life, one’s river to travail, one’s journey to take, and those passions that are approached with full gusto?

Probably.

trimming fat

My sister-in-law is considering selling her business. It's about more than merely an economic decision and one that I view as impulsive as the inspiration to buy it in the first place. I keep wondering why I take such offense at this prospect. I think I might have figured it out, though.

Recently I was reading through a ton of old e-mails during a purging effort and I came across one from February 2006. A friend of mine was talking about giving up writing. This is what I had to say in response:

"What gives, man?

You think you can escape the clutches of the writing bug just like that?

I remember a guy I met a year and a half ago who was all revved up and ready to take Hollywood readers by storm - by whatever means necessary.

Where is that guy?

Why did you pick up that first screenwriting book? Why did you start watching the movies on TBS in a different light? Why did you create a Yahoo group from the remains of that Meetup group? What was that guy all about?

It's because you got something out of the deal. So you hit a wall. So - the hell - what? Fine. Take a little break, but don't give up. Sometimes what you have to do is reassess your direction, but you - my friend - would be pretty starved without this thing you love so much. I'm sure of it.

I saw you on your really good days. This stuff kicks your ass in gear and shows you what you are all about. Don't put that pen down, because it's not the writing that costs money. You can sit down with pen and paper and write. For free!

Take a break from the screenplay game. Write something more personal, some story you already know about, something where act one-two-three is well-known in advance. I am sure you will be reminded of what drove you to pick up that first screenplay book, etc!

There are plenty of people out there to doubt you. Don't get their job done for them. Show everyone, including yourself, just what you can create from your fertile mind. People driven to writing stories are a special lot. Let that part of you be fully tapped! Just be honest to yourself and you'll know quitting is not what you really want."

I hadn't meant to, but as I look at it now I was encouraging myself to continue. I was almost defending that position. For the past two years since my sister-in-law has been running her business, I have felt much more akin to her as someone outside the box living their dreams - a fellow traveler, wanting to take the world by storm on their own terms. I guess when people choose to leave that behind, it makes the rest of us wonder what the hell we're still doing, dangling out here over this pit of uncertainty.