2004-11-18 @ 12:37 p.m.....

i've been out of town. but i always come through with the recap:

post-nyc wrap-up:

a lot of people just aren't worth the time & effort to talk to.

i think of all the thousands of people i've excluded from my life every single day, my motto being: "i hate people i don't know", and i realize now that even if it was only one single person that i missed out on getting to konw who was actually worth the time - then i was wrong for excluding the whole mass in the first place.

that one person turns out to be the one who gets you to think about things from a fresh perspective. cuz conversations wi/in yourself, or even writing down what you've been thinking about, are essentially conversations between you and yourself. there's no innocence there. innocence is the lack of self-image (according to the way of the wizard), the lack of prejudice, the lack of definition. when you look at something your brain intercepts your pure vision and will tell you a name or a number or a fact that has been catalogued, filed and neatly stored in your memory bank. thereby letting the definition get in the way of what you are really seeing.

if you put all that aside, and you forget everything you've been pre-disposed to think, you reclaim your innocence.

meeting a person for the first time should be an innocent experience. but in daily practice it can turn into much more of a well-rehearsed play:

The lines remain the same, the actors are type-cast, the roles are defined, the characters one-dimensional. Small talk, chit chat, flattery.... I guess some would call it flirting?? But all that will get you nowhere quick with me. I'm not interested in your job, your car, your room at your mama's house, your preference for a warmer climate.... anyone can talk about these things. it doesn't take much: skill, brains, effort. we all come pre-programmed to say the same basic things and this small talk serves as a buffer around our real selves.

i've heard it referred to as conversational foreplay... but i disagree. all foreplay is not created equal. small talk -is. it's all the same. i don't care if somebody is really good at it. it's of no consequence to me. truth be told, i'd rather it was silent than chit-chatty. silence can tell you volumes more than small talk can.

i'm perfectly comfortable with silence and i'm perfectly comfortable with you not telling me i'm beautiful. say it with your eyes, actions or even using metaphors- that's better than approaching me and telling me: "you're the most beautiful thing in here".

first of all, are you saying that because i'm the only one with a different hue to my skin in the room? and if so, what does that say about you? that you can't equate the beauty of one woman to the next because of the color of her skin? you obviously didn't expect to find "someone like me" here tonight, so what exactly were you looking for?

i think all human beings are "beautiful" in their own unique way. dissect that: first of all, beautiful is just a word. it's is not a concrete thing, it's definition has never been absolute, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". a word is just as close to an approximation of the concept as we can get in order to communicate our ideas. now, if you think about all the synonyms and ways to express the concept of "beauty" my point is driven even further home. This has been used for centuries as an example, but I will go ahead and recycle:

SNOW. in some native cultures in alaska or the tundra, there are tens if not hundreds of names for snow. in english, we have ONE. being surrounded by snow, they needed different words to closer approximate the concept of different types of snow.

so you see, this discounts the notion that any one word can be held to a permanent definition.

so- labels. we see them with our mind when we observe the world and this in turn blocks our view. our lazy brains would rather accept the generic labels we made than come up with new definitions each and every time it registered a new idea.

i'm all for the new. i'm all for regaining (and re-claiming) my innocence. i've already started as far as the physical innocence of reclaiming my virginity through celibacy. in order to seize and regain control of my entire self-image, i have to disassociate sex with love and physicalities with connections.

speaking of physicalities: when someone approaches someone else, at a club for example, it is a clear-cut choice that was obviously guided on physical attraction. we are drawn to people that we like to look at.

i have always struggled with this, often times using my appearance as a barrier to the outside world. a lot of people won't approach me and call me a snob later on. no, i am just using my appearance as my shield. and all the while building an iron fortress in order to protect my fragile self-image. i feel so, self-conscious on the inside. wondering why anyone would want to talk to me?? it's insane really. because i get more compliments than the average girl and i used to take that for more than face value. i used to only talk to people who had the balls to talk to me first. except in the few rare cases where i chose to speak to people- who each and every one turned out to be a friend for life!

i should have more faith in my choices. and my intelligence. and my appearance. and my conversation.

i do have something interesting to say.

i must say, before i ramble onto my next topic: i think that diaryland actually helped me overcome my disenchantment with communication. by writing on here, i was able to re-gain control over my haphazard thought processes, and find myself able to have coherent conversations about my thoughts, ideas, emotions, without retreating into my fortress of solitude.

crazy, but true.

what had happened was.... ~ ....what comes next?