To-dos, or reminders, or whatever.

Name people actually use: Jos

Origin of name people actually use: shortened version of actual name, originally coined by an ex-girlfriend and it just stuck

Preferred room temperature: 66 degrees F

Roommate’s preferred room temperature: 72 degrees F

Does this cause problems?: yes.

Most creative thing ever done: hard to know for certain. perhaps has never done anything truly creative. tells himself this when feeling depressed about not feeling very creative.

Preferred karaoke song: Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody. Once won a ship-wide karaoke contest on a cruise ship to Alaska for his friend and roommate’s grandparents 50th wedding anniversary.

Food group most often consumed: what food group is caffeine a part of?

Preferred Simpsons character: Moe. mainly because of the episode he falls in love with caring for Maggie.

Does he ever find time to think about the feelings of people other than himself?: rarely.

but yes you will wait for me tomorrow by the downtown building

with the sneaking suspicion that I am with someone else

right now with someone else doing things I do to you

but if it weren’t true would it even matter

you are unsettled and will never be otherwise.

Rob: I’m tired of the fantasy, because it doesn’t really exist. And there are never really any surprises, and it never really…
Laura: Delivers?
Rob: Delivers. And I’m tired of it. And I’m tired of everything else for that matter. But I don’t ever seem to get tired of you, so…

I was at the driving range with my mom, hitting a bucket of balls and laughing at her ineptitude at this same activity (in a loving way, of course).  In the space next to ours, there was this girl by herself hitting a bucket of balls.  In total Max Clark style, I imagined her in her best sense.  I thought, “How nice that she isn’t out with a big rowdy group getting drunk. She is living a simple life, lacking excess.  I think that is a nice quality.”  My mom and I were in the middle of joking about my mom’s bad swing, and then the girl ruined all the admiration I had for her imaginary qualities by glaring over her shoulder at us (for being too loud?), gathered her balls back into her bucket, and moved several slots further away from us.  So she turns out to be a uppity-uppity.  No fun.  The fantasy never delivers, Rob Gordon, the fantasy never delivers.

“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public…The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes…Then there is the third category, the category of who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love…And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present.” pp. 269-270

I’m in the fourth category. Case in point: continuing to play Let’s Grow Old Together.

No one… is a collection of short stories.  Each one peers into the life of the character for 10 pages at most, capturing an interaction they’ve experienced with another person, often an inappropriate or fantastical one.  I take a break after reading each one.  Consuming several in a row feels disingenuous, like I’ve chewed up and spit out their life in my quest for the next one.  But it’s nice.  Real nice.  Each story delivers something real, pure, honest about our interactions with each other.  There is no fat.  After reading ten stories, I’ve understood the motivations, joys, fears (albeit a tiny fraction of them) of ten protagonists.

Contrast this with Skinny Legs… in which I’ve only begun to understand (albeit very well) the life of one or two main characters.  I work for my understanding.  And what if I want immediate gratification? If I have ten minutes to spend with Ellen Cherry, the protagonist of Skinny Legs and All, I may come in at a boring part of the book.  Where is the joy in that?  I believe that at the end of it all, I will, however, know her very well.

These are competing interests.  I must emphasize competing, as opposed to just differing.  It is not simply that one can have a taste for short stories some of the time and novels at others.  I have, on a couple of occasions, wanted to continue reading the novel, but settled for the short story in the interests of time.  Miranda July is actively taking my attention away from Tom Robbins.

Let’s drop the shoddy metaphor.  I decided today that you can think of people in two different categories: those whose lives are novels, and those whose lives are a collection of short stories.  My friend Nicole said that other day that, since moving to Seattle, she has felt like she is on some sort of life hiatus, like a permanent vacation.  I feel similarly, though I had never thought of it in those terms before.  Our lives, I would claim, are like a collection of short stories at this stage.  Vacations are temporary escapes.  One day you’re water-skiing on Lake Wahanawaka, and the next, you’re downing shots of tequila with Chevy Chase at La Casa Igualidad.  This is allowed on vacation.  You don’t go to work every day.  You don’t have the same morning routine.  Each day is a story, without much relevance to your long term life.

I know that this is a temporary state, as vacations are understood to be.  I wonder about returning to work.  I wonder when I will need to.  I wonder if it is good to be in this state of permanent temporality. I wonder when mine will be over. I wonder if I should cut it short, or appreciate it.

Appreciating each day as new and fresh always seemed to be a privilege to me, but what if you want to make a bigger, more meaningful, more extensive point?

I don’t think this is a permanent condition. I just was thinking about going to my friend’s softball game, and I didn’t want to go right away. I didn’t want to show up on time. ‘Why not show up on time?’ I thought. ‘You’re always late to everything, parties, hanging out, because you just put it off, waiting until the last second to go. Just try it. Be on time.’

And I imagined what it would be like when I showed up to the softball field. I thought about it twice, once for each outcome.

The time that I showed up on time, I felt responsible, as if it were necessary for me to be there for the game to start. I was greeted by the acknowledgment of my presence, a check mark off the list.

Then I showed up late, and I was greeted with great enthusiasm: ‘So glad you made it!’ It was as if the game were that much better now that I had arrived. I liked that feeling.

But my friend Chelsey’s dad missed her entire graduation, because he came late. Too late. There are countless stories like this. Dads missing baseball games, graduations. Coming late is like the rite of passage to being an irresponsible dad. ‘Welcome to the club.’ These dads get to show up and ‘Everything is great now that Dad is here!’ and it reminds me of my late arrival story’s softball game greeting ‘So glad you made it!’

I think I have spent a lot of time positioning myself as someone to be wanted, not needed. I say, ‘Don’t count on me sticking around,’ or ‘Well, I’m not going to make any promises,’ or etc etc etc…

Being needed is a responsibility, and being wanted is a joy. Being needed is heavy, and being wanted is light.

But sometimes people need people, so what to do with that?