PlatKat.com

The armpit incident from earlier this month ended up taking a nastier toll on me than previously thought, so I visited a doctor this morning. A new, handsome, amazing doctor who gave me magical pills that should make all of this go away for awhile. I’m really surprised I haven’t passed out on my keyboard; I’ve actually had quite a productive day so far. I guess not being in pain all the time can help with that.

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Every now and then, I have a dream so vivid that I feel like it’s still happening even after I’ve woken up and reacquainted myself with my surroundings and life’s circumstances. I spent all morning feeling queasy, unable to do anything but the bare necessities of a morning routine.

Last night began with an impromptu bike trip down 520, beginning at 40th Street. I don’t know how I got there. I can’t name the place I was going, but I think I was going to work many miles away. Maybe at an ice cream store.

I started riding down the hill with some amount of control, but had to stop soon after because I had run out of shoulder. Someone had also cleaned up all the random furniture and trinkets that usually lined the side of the road to create a half-way decent yard sale… on the side of this giant eight-lane highway.

I set my bike down and browsed the makeshift sale. It was covered, like a shop. Other people browsed alongside me, planning to make offers to some faceless person in a nearby house.

Someone offered me a ride in his car. I’m not sure if it was because I’d found something too large to take with me, or if he was just being nice. He had a large group of people with him. We were all talking and moving toward the car, and soon I was inside it, in the middle of a phalanx of nine people in a small hatchback continuing down the highway.

“Where’s my bike?” I asked suddenly, alarmed.

Everyone was quiet. They didn’t bring my bike. I wanted to turn back and they wouldn’t. I didn’t need to return to the shop to know it was already gone; maybe stolen by an accomplice to the group who so hurriedly whisked me away, but at the very least, sold by the faceless vendor to an unsuspecting customer.

I lived in house with my mother and sisters. It resembled our house in Naperville, but brighter, closer to things. My sisters are calmer and happier than I. They’re looking forward to attending the carnival taking place in full-swing right outside our window. I try to fix a toy for one of them, but can’t seem to get it right. I may be making it worse.

I can see the red, yellow, and blue top of the carousel spinning around. I can see feet dangling from some spinning ride. I won’t be going to the carnival, but I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m too old, maybe I have to work.

Later, I’m in a different house. I’m staying there while the owners are gone. It’s full of someone else’s muted brown furniture and wooden decorations. It’s not a decor I would have chosen, but I think it’s pretty. The house is very quiet, and a large sliding glass door leading to the backyard lets in the light.

Out from the floorboards jumps an angry, snarling monster. It’s about the size of a wolf with a thicker body, but has the head of a grotesquely ugly man. Its nose is enormous and its eyes are big and yellow. It has paws instead of hooves, but its skin is multicolored and scaly. It hunches over on all fours with its back arched and starts to walk toward me. I can’t tell if it intends to harm me, but it certainly isn’t friendly.

Keeping my eyes on the beast, I mentally scan the room for objects to defend myself. Nothing! This place has nothing! All I have on my person is a small bic lighter. If I were even close enough to burn it, chances are it will have already made some headway in mauling me to death.

So I looked it in the eye. We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds. It decided not to kill me, and the event was over.

I lay awake in my dark room in Seattle with street lights shining through my blinds. I had been asleep for less than four hours. Still rattled and unable to return to sleep, I was left to wonder why those people took me away without my bike, why I couldn’t go to the carnival, and why that monster appeared, and what it wanted with me.

Somewhere in Capitol Hill, dozens of toilets are herded into a small area to live out the rest of their days in a deserted porcelain paradise.

Things I am thinking about right now:

1. I have not eaten pie today. That is sad.

2. How long will my win with 5-2o stick with my opponents until I have to pull another garbage hand outta my ass?

3. Who do I have to blow to get a reuben sandwich around here?

4. Why do the patrons here feel like they hold some badge of honor for playing Michael Jackson songs? Yes, you were alive in the 80s. We get it.

I just realized that this picture represents more than merely a collection of contorted, arbitrarily tangled office supplies.

Enlarged to fit both of my 20-inch work monitors, it has served as my desktop wallpaper for over a month. I won’t bother taking it down; as far as coworker relationships go, I think I’m well past the point of no return.

So there I was in the zendo last night, sitting on a cushion, staring downward, miiindin’ my ooown business… and I did something that I’ve never done before.

Reach enlightenment?

No.

Make headway in my quest for self-discovery?

No.

What did I do?

I laughed. Oh gawd, I am such a disrespectful jerk. I can’t believe I laughed. Perhaps some people who know me well might find it surprising that I’ve been sitting all these years and haven’t laughed until this point. But really, it’s true: Ever since my first zazen effort, around age 20, I never laughed, neither alone nor in a zendo. I also made a point not to cough or itch my nose or do anything unless I absolutely had to. Although my mind is always running at a million miles an hour, unnecessary restless physical movement bothers me. I welcome the chance to be still, and to be around others who are still.

I used to silently applaud myself for having such a firm grasp on my mental state with respect to its relationship with my body. It may come naturally to most people, but some of us were born with a few screws loose. I had to work for it, but everything was mind over matter, and if I could maintain control, I didn’t see how other people couldn’t. But if someone had told me my mental strength and maturity would peak at age 23, maybe I would have been more forgiving.

So what was I laughing at? This is probably the most embarrassing part of my misdeed. I was laughing at something from a Fark thread. Something I posted, no less:

Someone else posted the original pic and caption, but I added the spider part. The angles of her appendages remind me of a tarantula at rest. Anyway, I posted that and someone responded that they were imagining her crawling backward up the escalator with her head bent back all creepy. And now it’s haunting a few people’s dreams, including my own. But not in a scary way, in an I-can’t-keep-a-straight-face-during-meditation way.

To make matters worse, the group was small last night. There were two priests and two girls who were visiting for a UW class. I was the only “regular” person who had simply come to practice. And I messed it up!

No one cared, of course. Hell, someone took a phone call in that very same room two weeks ago. Still, extra noises are something I’d prefer to avoid when possible… kind of like spiders.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever talk in depth about the social climate here, but this article inspired me. It has put into more objective words what I’ve been expressing through g00bing (and then g00bing under the radar) all along. It also explains why some of my favorite people here aren’t from here at all.

Well, maybe it doesn’t explain exactly why, but it offers a few theories and at the very least supports the idea that I’m not nuts for openly pursuing friends, love, interesting conversations, good times, etc. It’s just not something a lot of people here do. I must admit though, the periodic “what the fuck?” looks I get for talking to people at work, parties, and so on have started to wear on me a little bit.

I thought I spent more time alone more than the average person. The activities I enjoy most like reading, writing, and running don’t incite much social interaction. But that’s what drinking is for! However, almost like in New York, you can hit a bar alone and sit there till closing time, but all you’ll leave with is a 100-dollar bar tab and maybe some enterprising young man’s business card. (Read: “Networking” not “friendship possibility.”)

Still, even though I now live in virtual isolation (i.e., my tiny Fortress of Solitude) and people at work are off-limits (I don’t get a senior citizen’s discount at Denny’s), I think I’ve done okay for myself in the short time that I’ve been here. I’ve met many nice folks and remained friends with some of them. I even managed to scare up the courage to throw a party, which was exciting.

I think the catch 22 in this whole mess is that by acknowledging such a problem, you foster its growth. It’s similar to how certain women, blacks, and gays feel the need to remind the world that they’re minorities, whether it be through special clubs, ostentatious displays of stereotypical dress or behavior, or simply inserting some aspect of their “unique” vital statistics in conversation. To give “the freeze” a name and discuss it as an intrinsic characteristic of a whole population, one that some seem to be proud of, leads to further unproductive alienation. And I realize that in posting this thought, I am illustrating my own catch 22—Thanks for noticing.

If the article is correct, more than half the people here are from out of state, so the social circumstances might say more about the type of person that would want to live here, and not the people who were already here to begin with. I think social opportunities are always available for those who want them, no matter where you are. Some places just take more effort than others. You’ll obviously meet more people in an environment where the weather is pleasant and people are out and about all the time than a place where it’s always raining.

But it’s so easy to blame a city’s weather for all the missed social opportunities that lie within it. While I’m on it, I might as well cite proof of all the rest of the article’s theories on why Seattle bitches can’t hang.

I think no matter what school of thought you follow, your time and actions belong to you. If you prefer to be alone, keep your thoughts and emotions bottled, and wear dull clothing, that’s what you’ll choose to do. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t feel like you have to do those things just to fit in somewhere. You may have trouble finding “your tribe,” but if you’re not even an active member, then what?

It seems to me like a lot of people here aren’t inherently bad or mean, they’re just scared. I’d bet almost everyone would be glad to have a larger social circle, provided that it meant knowing more decent, interesting, well-meaning human beings. But like the article states, so many people are worried about “just being nice” that they don’t take or make communication with their peers at face value.

Yes, it’s risky, and oh gawd does rejection suck. I speak on this as a full-blown expert: rejection is one of the most important things that can happen to you and it will always feel like the end of the world while it is happening. You could be asking someone to marry you or asking someone out for coffee. It doesn’t matter. Hearing, “No” without any follow-up or alternative suggestion whatsoever will put the smackdown on even the most confident of folks, if only temporarily. It can make you strong or break you entirely.

The nice thing, perhaps the only nice thing, about this is that you can decide how you want to take it. I guess the course of action that has made me at least semi-successful here is that I keep asking around until I hear a “Yes.” It’s a long, shitty process, especially when you care about the people you’re asking and the outcome of your question. Plenty of hurt feelings come with the territory, but maybe it’s more ego than anything. Some people just don’t want to hang out, and I’d like to believe it usually has nothing to do with me as a person.

It may sound silly and obvious and deserving of a smack in the face for a girl who appears to be just figuring this out at 27. Still, coming from a warm, vibrant place like Austin, you figure such a similar city like Seattle would offer you a similar welcome.

Nope. But this whole post is to say that despite my relentless snarking of the drones who reside in my current home city, it’s still okay and I do appreciate the blog fodder. I can handle swimming in a sea with pallid weirdos, as long as I can find a few fun, no-bullshit sharks circling them every now and then.

(And thank you to Josef, for sending me the article.)

Chirag, King of the Internets, has made the front page of Wired.com for his SXSW scheduling application. Where were you several years ago before I got burned out on this? No, chatting with me is not an excuse! :-p

Cheers to all the folks in Austin, BTW. Especially those who live out of state now and made the pilgrimage back for the festival. I’m significantly less hardcore.

But I’m GETTIN’ PAID!!!

Around 32 people were there…

And they seemed to be having fun. There was a cake, magnets, and some cleverly designed place-holders. The bar was nice, but not as accomodating as I’d hoped. That’s okay though, because I’m sure our tab was not as large as they’d hoped.

A pretty good effort for a first-timer in a new place.

OM-NOM-NOM-NOM-NOM.