Searching for the Sunrise

I'm done being mad at Adrienne, and on to thinking about smackerals.

As usual, I'm pretty excited for Autumn.  This weekend has been mostly overcast and cool, and more leaves have fallen. It gets noticeably dark sooner, and there's been lots of talk about the appropriate time to turn the heat on in one's home.  All of this brings a smile to my face, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Along with the excitement for, or perhaps because of my excitement for, this season, I am also pretty pleased and excited for other things in my life as well. Particularly, I feel quite enthused about the upcoming times I will be spending with Adrienne: study sessions in a cozy coffee house, going to a UM football game, Nightmare Before Christmas, pumpkin carving parties, Halloween/Costume parties, Thanksgiving.

In other news, I told her that I think I'm ready to start dating again.  It's something I've been mulling over for a while, and took extra time to give the thought it's due diligence, so we'll see how this goes. (Interestingly enough, she elected not to give me any response)

Dear Vox, please include a rotate button for your picture widget.

Jack Skellington

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Single-Disc Edition)

Well, I had intended on talking about self-denial last night, but instead got roped into watching Benjamin Button again.  Which subsequently led to the same outcome as last time, whereby I end up misty-eyed and making a hasty exit from the room.

This, because that final scene where he's an infant and she an old woman, and she's holding him close and rocking him--that scene personifies everything I've ever wanted out of life; a sort of deep-rooted bond that transcends time, and even in his vulnerability as an infant and senility as an old man, she takes care of him.

And it makes me sad because I do not feel I have found that

...more about me, Taylor, and our future family.

The short of it is between my discovery of You Belong With Me in July and the album Fearless in August, I've developed a crush on her.  This, despite my condescension toward the notion of a celebrity crush.  She just speaks to me, age be damned.  When I heard that song, it perfectly modeled the interaction with an old lady friend of mine who recently resurfaced as things were falling apart with my ex. 

Taylor is "Sitting on a park bench thinking to myself: hey isn't this easy?" -- and I'm sitting on Mandy's couch, those lyrics running through my head, and thinking to myself: isn't this so easy?  And there were a number of times where I had just gotten off the phone with my girlfriend, upset with me yet again.  But Mandy and I always got each other. She said I got a smile that could light up the whole town, she said she hadn't seen it in a while.  "Can't you see I"m the one that understands you, been here all along so why can't you see, you belong with me?"  Maybe I hadn't considered that very fact. How insightful Taylor; how loyal of you to stick it out for that guy.

Interested, I download Taylor's entire album to find that the whole thing is a great listen.  She plays with certain motifs throughout the album--dancing in the rain, 2 AM, others.  She has two tracks where she hums a melody in a lower alto range that just kills me every time I hear it and I can just imagine her sitting next to me humming some whimsical melody in my ear.  She sings of a head-first, fearless kind of love that I now remember experiencing myself, and so sorely miss. She sings about Romeo and Juliette, how she's been feeling so alone.  She sings about such folly, that she's really not a princess and this isn't a fairytale.  She cleverly sets up a march under lyrics about the 'ideal' guy, only to counter the chorus with a rock anthem as she sings about the guy she really wants to be with, closing the song with a subtle clue as to what ended up happening there. It is a concept album of sorts; and this, from a 19-year-old who writes her own songs.  She transcends her age.

Curious of her achievements, I research her story to find that she has a developed understanding of English Literature, wrote a full length novel once, writes poetry quite well, writes her own songs, had vigilantly been trying to get noticed on the country music scene from a very young age, and was picked on at high school.  Basically, she's smart, well-versed, has her own tormented past, is motivated, and sings like a bell, and looks like an angel in a sparkling dress with stage lighting upon her.  I watch a few youtube vids of hers (she makes sure to note they are 'self directed'); she's got touching home video footage for "Best Days", and a hysterical and endearing capture of her watching the CMA award announcements as she screams and smiles and gets excited as her name is read, and...she's affecting.

Taylor Swift writes mature, telling, and deep lyrics. She writes and sings clever melodies.  She's got academic chops, I love the sound of her voice, and she has a wild, crazy, adventurous, and fun side.  And this is how a 25 yr old develops a crush on her.

I miss screaming and yelling and kissing in the rain, it's 2 AM and I"m cursing your name, you're so in love that you're acting insane--and that's the way I loved you.

This idea came to me about a week ago. Not novel, nor requiring any great intelligence for discovery -- some may even say 'self evident' -- for reasons which I may never reveal, or possibly in the subsequent paragraph, I'm seeking to start writing again.  That is the idea; told you it wasn't novel.

It would appear that the revelation of my return will, indeed, occur here: writing in the moment is meritorious, particularly for future endeavors, interest, and reference.  It allows one, if not explicitly, nevertheless the opportunity to relieve the moment, event, or idea in the spirit of the moment in which it occurred.  So, that is why I am endeavoring to return, because there is a whole 2 year period (or worse) that I've gone dark, and now I have no record of how I got to where I am today (other than those blasted mental constructs known as 'memories', prone to fault).

Half the reason I ceased writing was because of a perceived lack of time; it invariably takes me probably three times the amount of time to write anything once as it does anybody else--the benefit being that I only need to write once (a sort of perpetual/living draft).  So, that being the case, I will try to limit the subsequent posts, as holds true here, to stream-of-consciousness, else I will never get anything written, and I will certainly abandon the entire task.

Lastly, please no preconceptions that what I write will have any interest to you whatsoever; the function of this blog, as it currently stands, is a tool, or a means, to some other, broader , goal--which would be the same one that I just conjectured I would not be divulging two paragraphs ago, and shan't be after all.  Of course, this entire paragraph assumes I even have a 'you' to speak to, which I very likely do not.  Either way is quite fine, you may come along for the ride, if 'you' indeed exist.

Next order of business (and I may need a reminder, as I forget everything these days): I've been mentally rehearsing a blog about Taylor Swift that must be put to paper.  As I am a 25-yr-old male former engineer, this will also require a bit of explanation.  Stay tuned.

I'm in the mood to write.  Write this second!  Or, right this second.  But, alas, I really don't have the time.  And what would I say anyway?  I've been away from the blog scene for what seems forever and a day.  My old haunts have grown and gone, the new, or young, forgotten.  And I, after all this time absent, am someone else. 

The last time I blogged, in the truest sense of the word, was Summer 2007, and the last time I had anything true to say was in November.  Now here I am on this rainy day in May, staving off work with a last ditch effort: peeking into the old, dusty chest of the internet which contains the blogs of friends from days gone by.  One in particular, with whom there is a torrid tale and dynamic history, brought back a twinge of excitement--nostalgic though it were--of those days when we used to write.  She, too, has vacated; there is nothing left but an overgrown lot in the center of a city where once stood an oft-frequented boutique of the most valuable treasures.

Maybe somebody looks at me and feels that way?  Remembers 'the good ol days' and, for an instant, almost tangibly, returns to that era, grasping the effervescent?  I can see it, too, when I read over my memories, and I don't want to be that dormant lot; abandoned.  For if nothing else, blogging has given me the ability to re-experience those memories as I experienced them in the moment, and to plunge into the darkness of silence, is to ultimately lose the vivacity of them.

What do you think about Ryan Seacrest being chosen to host tonight's Primetime Emmy Awards?

I think Ryan Seacrest is wack.

We had our company's interdepartmental barbecue yesterday afternoon, and my goodness you would have thought the engineering group was a bunch of kids in a candy store.  Consider, engineers work in a mostly male setting with little female interaction and are specialized in a trade that doesn't exactly lend itself to social discourse.  So when the finance group, purchasing group, and others showed up--ie - pretty women--we were like: "who are these people?" and devolved into middle school-like chatter.  Seriously, I didn't know so many attractive people worked for the company.  Surely I would have noticed anyone that desirable working in the same building as me.  But somehow this was not true; speaking with the resident gossip monger and fountain of other-people's-information, Red Fox (we'll call him), I was told "you must not get up to the fourth floor very often, huh?"  He then went on to list a roster worth of people throughout the event, gesturing this way and that periodically.  Which always begs the question why does he know who all these people are, where they came from, what they do, who they're married to, and with whom a scandal is about to break?  But I digress.  My point is that when one spends >40 hours of his week, every week, in same-sex solitude the sudden appearance of young, beautiful, professional women is astonishing; we forget they exist!