Skater/dater intimidator creator or deflator... later.

Inorite? So as it turns out, people have a lot of ideas about me. I am mostly grateful for that (mostly). Other people's unique perspective is something I can't fake, take or otherwise break (like a code)... although perhaps my most poignant and evident flaw is my heartfelt belief that I know what everyone else is thinking (especially boys and especially about me) at all times : P... blergh. Are you seeing where this is going?

I may be perceptive and empathetic... (why thank you) - but I am sadly not a mind reader. I am also starting to realize that I don't understand men. Did I think I did? What? Seems crazy, I know, but I think I have been going on dates using this tenet as a key element of my modus operandi. "So... how has that been working out for you?" (I hear you lament... is that a perceptible air of friendly condescension I hear? Lovely, familiar, perfect). Predictably, not so hot to be honest.

My ardent protestation all along has been that I only start to do that thing where I assume I know what other people are thinking (usually in the form of some kind of (perceived) dearth of interest, attraction, affection or general estimation of me) and the consequent poor conduct decisions made based on apocryphal data - once things are pretty much going or have gone downhill already so what does it matter? Sure, it makes it worse - but it's not what makes or breaks the date... or is it? If I am wrong... then my assumptions about the people I am with prevent me from actually getting to know them (and they, me) and my confidence in this (non) ability to read and interpret all of what they say, do, don't say, don't do perhaps only further isolates us from each other. Certainly I am casting them in roles that they are unaware of and simultaneously making it hard to break out of it (MCing, leaving no room for improv, etc.). I dunno, I am not sure I buy this critique of me - when there is an instant connection this doesn't matter (or is it just overcome?). So confused...

I guess the idea (according to J, T, L and even M - I think) is that I need to stop assuming I know what people are thinking, stop trying to control what is happening and let things take their natural course. Can I allow silence... can I resist the urge to avoid awkwardness? Will I be able to find some kind of grace in just not. Not doing it - not playing MC to my dates, not hosting the KatyShea Show with no commercial breaks for 3 hours and then wondering why no connection was made. Good conversations can be created, manufactured, led, MC'ed - but the sharing of intellectual ideas does not a connection make. What am I missing. Why did this never present before? Is it really just the wrong boys? I will endeavor to find out I suppose. Practice makes perfect? Sigh... more dates it is.

Later lovelies.

"I tremble/They’re gonna eat me alive
If I stumble/ They’re gonna eat me alive
Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender
Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer"
-Emily Haines - The Metric

Read this blog entry while listening to this record on headphones and eating cherries, spitting the pits into a metal trash can your thoughts punctuated by the harmonic and uniquely percussive dings of each direct hit. Ok set? ...very well then.

Um... I don't know where to go with all of this. My hormones are a mess and the mood swings are on par with the 3rd graders and up only swings on the big kid's playground at Hatherly Elementary School in 1981 (the looming dark gray swing sets there used to seem about 75 feet high and constructed by astronauts when I was 8 at least, I swear).

Tonight I talked to a lot of the different players in my own little life's rich pageant and the overwhelming thesis evolving from all of this input and after all this tireless interaction is something along the lines of "blergh".

Don't get your hopes up about anything, manage your expectations about everything, don't care too much, don't be too nice, stand up for yourself, give more of yourself to the world, don't be too funny, don't be too silly, don't be too serious, avoid head bands, don't act too smart, don't act too geeky, be smarter, learn more, be less heady, don't be too mean, don't be too honest, don't be too vulnerable, don't be too closed up, care more about sports, don't be too pretty, don't be too ugly, don't be fat, don't be vain, don't try, try harder, look, don't look, love, don't love, know more, know less, think more, think less, dress better, talk less, go out more, listen more, relax, pay more attention, be yourself, be realistic, be practical, stop dreaming, grow up, work on yourself, have a baby, get married, settle down, settle.

My face feels frozen and stunned - eyes open wide and watery - leaning against the scratched cloudy plexiglass of the green line trolley and this song by the Metric is playing in my ears and I am rolling through the stations on the way home to Haymarket Station. The earth toned couple is smiling and laughing in the seats in front of me - unwitting stars of my personal maudlin music video and the Chinese man next to me picks at his teeth with a matches from Tedeschi's to accent the bridge. The familiar dark of the subway tunnel is interrupted at blurry intervals by spray paint on the walls reminding me of walking our graffiti laden high school hill as children staring at the ground reading familiar yet vague and unknown histories and eulogies.

I float home down Hanover Street, slipping through its boozy bustle as if I am not really there at all. Ray is tending bar on the corner but the 2 dollars in my pocket reminds me to go straight home. I set my lap top on the window sill and wonder if this is what I have. I am online and connected instantly - 3 IM sessions open, responding to emails, keeping an eye on the happenings of Prince Street below and still hitting the high notes (I am sure much to the non-delight of my neighbors - but no rotten tomatoes/ cabbages are connecting with my head just yet - so I have that going for me).

Yet I am profoundly disconnected and desperate for some kind of real(ish) connection and terrified that I have missed my chance and that maybe this really is all there is (my friends). M has a girl now, and all the boys follow L home begging for dates - my single friends are getting (it) together and everyone signs off now to go be happy and content I am still softly singing songs in my apartment with Ken's guitar (still unable to play barre chords) wondering why. More dates? M says more dates. Can I stand it? I am so awful at it. How do I get better? Are there lessons available? Sigh. I am here - I wish he would just find me already.

Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer.

Why (why?) Why? What? Why?... be more constructive with your feedback please? (this blog entry is the lamest thing I have ever created and I have no idea why I am publishing it - love, katy)

I just noticed the other day that several of my friends and friends of my friends who are kinda my friends also even though we don't live in the same state anymore... have links to this blog on their websites. Upon this realization I was engulfed with shame and disgrace... for I have been a recalcitrant blogger at best - dragged kicking and screaming to the lap top only to get sidetracked reading the Onion, listening to FOTC and watching LOST. Perhaps it is my disdain for the self indulgent nature of blogging itself that keeps me from dazzling you all with my eloquent thoughts about the world? Or... closer to the pith of the thing - maybe everything I have to say feels trite and played out - like SuperDrag once wrote "Who Sucked Out the Feeling?"

I mean - there's the general unerring sense of ennui that permeates the workday week for um, I dunno, everyone in my generation? So that's not interesting... not enough to write about it. Then there's what I am doing about sad ennui and dissatisfaction (cue crickets chirping...) so I don't want to think about THAT. Um... my grown up crush on Seth Rogen (lame), my girlcomedy crush on Kristen Wiig ("Awesome" ok, that blog entry is complete). I should feel liberated by my non readership - I should be able to talk about anything - banal or inflammatory - but what if I offend someone? What if someone takes something the wrong way? I am seized by paranoia and fear. I wish there were only SOME WAY to track who looked at my blog... but alas that is just science fiction!! : P

The there was PJ Harvey. In a strange confluence of events - I was packing up my belongings to take the plunge into moving out of my apartment and into another apartment (directly across the street) and came across a mixed tape (yes, a tape, fer sure) of Polly Jean's more excellent tunes. I flipped it into my boom box (period appropriate) and suddenly Peabody and Sherman were there with the WABAC machine and it was totally 1995 and I was graduating from college and listening to To Bring Me Your Love for the first time in a crowded Allston apartment amidst well worn hipster paperbacks, batik wall hangings and the overwhelming and unmistakable scent of clove cigarettes and hooker wine. Sigh.

The very next day Lenore posts that PJ Harvey is coming to Boston!! In June!! This was supposed to explain why I posted to my blog tonight... maybe that wasn't it after all. Maybe it's this boy I am talking to? People are funny - totally fun and inspiring and yet terrifying - all of it mystefies me - and yet, I am surrounded by non mystefied people who seem to "get it" and simutaneously, of course, no one seems to "get it". Sigh... wish me luck as I endeavor to sincerely connect with another human being - I hope I don't hurt anybody (seriously).

Ok - much more packing to do - later lovelies (whoever you are...)

I may have to adjust my previous attitude concerning my blog readership. Turns out the near miss Olympics has an audience. Albeit, an audience of 10 or so - but I have never been a great craver of fame. I am, apparently, a great craver of public humiliation, or at least one might imagine so. Alas, there is something sort of malignantly delightful about the delayed effect of laughter at your expense. Really. Ok, not really : ) But it's ok.

I will never be one to lose my sense of humor throughout it all. Life's lessons are not always easy to take, but in every quasi-tragedy there is something good you can take away. I do sincerely believe that this is true. Every day is an opportunity... or something like that.

Hey - it's Friday!! I've finally started watching the Wire and (after the initial shock that Detective McNulty is Kirk Cuddy from Rock Star) I am thinking it is pretty awesome. In other news... I am 52 days smoke free (woot woot) and 18 lbs lighter. Also the people in my life are doing good and brave things for themselves (inspiring me). I am almost feeling like everything might just work out : )

'til we meet again my loves

Is that all there is my friends?

I guess, in accordance with the song I should keep on dancing, break out the booze and have a ball (if that's all there is, that is). B and I broke up almost 2 weeks ago and I am stuck in a place that is, although somewhat familiar (unfortunately), not where I ever want to be. I feel empty and sad and have become a strange and separated spectator to everything and everyone around me. My friends are great and have been more than supportive, but it's almost as if time has stopped and I am still just standing here, unable to understand um... anything.

I want to believe that there is something more, something wonderful and fragile and beautiful and difficult and, well, something like love - out there in the world for me and I just can't find it. But I'm not as sure as I once was that it's true, or I guess more to the point that it will ever be true for me. He was a perfectly great guy (one of the good ones) and treated me with kindness and love and concern and what I did with that was become increasingly melancholy and distant until I didn't like who I was anymore, hated how I was acting to him and how unhappy and cowardly I had become and couldn't understand how it was that he didn't hate it too. How did that happen? Where did it go wrong? Do I understand anything?

Ending a relationship is losing a part of yourself. The part that believes in love and trusts and thinks that nuzzling couples in the park are cute and Valentine's Day is a sweet holiday. All that hoping and wishing and trying to make love happen casts a spell over reality and even the endeavor to love itself, however unyielding of the desired result, satisfies some part of us (me?) that wants to love and wants to find another person who makes us feel better when we are together. Trying to find that connection with someone, making the effort every day to pay attention and love with your whole heart and trust become a part of someone's life is so... Sacred? Impossible? Wonderful?

Now, alone, the faint idea of going on a date feels completely foreign and bizarre. The severed connection feels like a wound and I don't know how to heal it. I thought it could happen for me, I look around and see love, not perfect Hollywood love, but functional, everyday goofy, flawed, torturous love and I think I want that... but maybe some people don't get to have it? I don't mean to be overly depressive (um... too late?) but, I mean seriously, is that all there is?

At least the Sox are up by 1.

Laters Lovelies,
Katy

Boot Camp has been cancelled on account of the rain. I am going to a Yoga class instead for the first time in 4 years. This creates a cycle of fear and shame (fear of being able to do the class and shame at being afraid in the first place) and simultaneous elation and hope (elation that I am making a choice that is good for me and hope that I am turning a corner in taking care of my body) - and honestly, this level of emotional cacophony little difficult to manage. Do you think it would be weird to have a cocktail before yoga? I mean, it is after 5:00pm...

Yes, this really is my life : l

Posting, shmosting. It’s overrated. The sun is shining and I imagine the birds might be singing (were I to ever to venture outside of this cubicle fortress and, like, frolic in it all or something) and my body and head are aching with every request and key tapped and errand run. They ache with the build up of lactic acid, yes, but also I ache (metaphorically, natch) for sun soaked leisure and popular fiction and holding hands and all day movie marathons and popcorn and tacos (yes, Sluggo, I said tacos) and maybe a glimpse of the things that make us feel at ease with the world and calmed to the calamity and chaos that confronts us and surrounds us every day, every moment, relentless and without hope.

It would appear my re-emergence into the blogosphere is a little bit of a downer, huh? Yikes : ) Ok, let me try to redeem myself and say something interesting, entertaining and/ or informative (or all three if I am truly one of the ambitious). Me accomplishing these three goals would have to be predicated on you caring about what is going on in my life and also thinking I am wicked funny (just inherently, really). That was my caveat – and awaaaay we go!

I am attending a “boot camp” style work out club (KSett calls it “Celebrity Fit Club”) twice a week and it is the first steady exercise I have committed to in years. The gang is all younger and more fit than me (try to control your shock at that one) but I think I am keeping up – at least in my mind I am totally dominating the scene (i.e. not quitting in the middle, crying or passing out) So go me : )

The jazz group I have been singing with for a few years now recorded our first “demo” a few weekends ago and we are getting the mix this week from our lovely drummer/ sound technician S. We listened to the rough mix last week and I think, all in all (warts and all?) it’s pretty ok. A learning experience to be sure. I am proud of everyone in the band and excited that this might spur us forward in the world of actually (gasp!) playing out and expanding on what we do and what we get out of it. People who have heard it thus far have been pretty supportive – we’ll see : )

My HLP K.’s sister is getting married next month (yay!!) and the Chili Con Carnival is right around the corner as well. J & E’s new puppy Cy is now almost full grown and a welcome reminder that life should be simple and fun, even when it is really not feeling like either.

There is a boy. I shall refer to him as Sluggo (he really loves that nickname, it’s in the book). Sluggo (full name Sluggo Von Beejerstein) and I have been spending a lot of time together over the past few months gardening, dusting and eating tacos and are going to a wedding together in June (how’s that for random?). He is a book guy, a doting father, a great camper, an ardent admirer of bacon, a sea of patience and a lover of the Muppets. Also, when he looks at me weird things happen with my brain chemistry. It's not easy to describe... have you ever seen a cartoon where the animated person/ creature/ alien gets hypnotized and you see the psychedelic spirals turning in their eyes while sparkles pop out of the side and the get kind of a vacant happy look on their face? Anyway, I am a fan : )

Ok, better wrap it up. I would promise to post more often but that would be largely silly and none of you would believe me anyway (empirical evidence, blah blah blah) : )

‘Til we meet again lovey doves : )