Friday, November 19, 2010

Babe Time

Gallery sat today.  Took along my ornaments for this swap thing, for something else and for one other thing.  If I find some time and energy, I will make some for my friends, too, but that has little chance of happening.

So, anyway, only one person actually came into the gallery today and it was a friend.  Several town people walked by and waved, but kept on going.

I got lots of hand sewing done in those six hours.  Sweet and icy nice.

On the way home I decided that I simply could not eat curry one more day.  I cannot remember exactly when I made it, but it was at least six lunches and dinners ago.  It is yummy, but I knew that the last three portions were going into the freezer.  So, that means stopping at the market for food and, gosh, I did hardly anything physical today and was just plain exhausted.

The way home, just a few miles before I leave town, passes a Chinese restaurant that I especially like.  Forty minutes later I was on my way again, with enough food for taking me right through to Monday dinner.  Yum.

Whilst waiting for my food, there was a steady stream of people coming in and going out, as well as the delivery driver.  Someday I will write about that very weird, although probably just as interesting as it is weird, situation.    Really, just plain weird.

A woman came in, and it was clear that this was an unexpected stop for her as well, because she had to pick up a menu in order to order her take-out stuff.  In the middle of ordering her order, she forgot what her husband told her to get for him and was going to leave to get her telephone from the car to ask him.

I offered her my phone and she took it, asking a couple of times if it was really fine with me.  I told her that as long as she was not calling Tunisia, that we would be fine.  Really.

When she finished her call and the order, she sat down across from me and we talked.

Now, I have to share that I love talking.  Hell, I will talk to just about anyone, despite being a painfully shy person.  There is something about people, in person, that makes me able to have conversations with strangers, which I guess are always people, except when it is a stray cat or crows or something, so I wonder what it is that allows me to do this random, easy talking to people that I do not know, but keeps me from going to to-dos at the homes of friends just because there will be people there that I do not know.

I am really digressing here, but a couple of weeks ago we hosted a traveling poet and a local poet at the gallery.  We have, host and offer public events all the time and I go to and often facilitate the daytime ones, but if it is in the evening, I just quail and end up staying home.  Sometimes I feel compelled to promise that I will show up for one of these things, but I almost always break those promises.  I know that I will do that when I make the promise and those who know me know that I will most likely break the promise, but they keep asking me to make them and I keep breaking them and it really is embarrassing and pointless.

But, I actually went out, in the dark, to this poetry thing.  It was nice, wonderful really, and I enjoyed myself.  The traveling poet is very much in the reality story-telling process, much like Billy Collins, whom I adore because he is the first poet of that discipline that I ever experienced and also because it is the kind of poetry that I have always written, except for the times when someone forced me to rhyme.  Bastards.

So, there I am at the poetry thing and all is going well and I am not panicking or anything outwardly visible, but I know that I have reached my limits, had endured entirely enough of late-night, O.K., early evening, sheesh, grown-up fun and I know that I should just pick up my stuff and leave before anyone notices.

But, nooooo, I have to be a big girl and stay and do grown-up stuff with the grown ups.  It did not take more than ten minutes for me to manifest how truly socially inept I am.  Man.  Even now, this moment, I can feel myself flushing and blushing and I am right back there, feeling that desperate need to just get the hell out of there.  Seriously, what is that all about?  Especially at my age.  I am already old enough that I will likely not ever, as in never, be able to figure out this sort of thing. 

And, then, there I am, sitting in the take-out chair, talking to another take-out chair sitter.  And, having a really nice conversation, and I am not feeling the teeniest bit shy or retiring.  Same thing happens when I teach or give workshops.  Maybe it is the total stranger part that makes this easy.  Maybe less threatening.  I do not think that I could do that with a man.  Too many cultural barriers.  Besides, despite how much I love men, and even though I have some wonderful men friends in my life, that direction is where most of the pain in my life has come.  You know, sometimes I really hope and wish that there is reincarnation and that I will have a chance to develop good, safe, wholesome and loving relationships with the men in my life.  A father who, well, that is not important to these musings.  But, a husband who could love me even a little bit for who I am, oh, that would be so nice.  I would really love that.  Next time in the flesh I hope I have that.

Whatever the dynamic, it was nice hanging out for that bit of time, talking to another woman and just, I do not know, being able to trust in the process.

Babe time.  It was really great, and I had a wonderful dinner that I did not have to cook.  Even better is that tomorrow is Saturday Coffee.  Life is so good.

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