Have a Glass of Whine

Good evening.
I have positioned myself at a tiny pink desk in my cluttered room, directly in front of a dusty mirror. This is more strategic than you might think. The slightly claustrophobic effect the princess desk amidst the labyrinth of boxes and hampers and books and weights seems to almost force the words out of me like a wine-press. The mirror provides me with a focus point and a subject of inspiration. I am particularly vain, you see. For the most part, I dislike myself. I possess the same degree of self-loathing as most humans. I am constantly surrounded by images of unattainable beauty which I cannot hope to attain. My mind is abuzz with a broiling mass of possibilities -- accomplishments and windfalls -- which I will never see through or be lucky enough to experience. I stammer and stutter and shy from confrontation. I am surrounded, at work and in my day-to-day activities by some of the most beautiful, intelligent, fascinating girl (women, I should say) I have ever met, and I skitter away from interaction with them like a cockroach from a kitchen light. I feel I'm wasting my potential.
But that, I suppose, is the key. Potential.
For I have as much misanthropy as I do self-loathing. I recognize that I do not get recognition and have not, from most standpoints, achieved success, but I despise most aspects of humanity and society, and so theorize that my situation is due as much to the world as to myself.
Wow. This has become a lot more free-range and maudlin than I originally anticipated. I blame the wine.
I have been more or less dry -- in solidarity with my lovably alcoholic brother -- for a few months now, outside of a shift rink here or there at work, and decided after a satisfying workout this evening, to relax and update my blog with a glass or four of wine. It's a dark, earthy red. Savory, almost. A Spanish Mouverdre. I had tried a French Mouvedre before, and found it jammy and perky. This is more smooth and subtle and agrarian. Didn't even know they grew this grape in Spain.
I've been a fan of blends as of late; no purist am I.
(Sidenote: My ex-girlfriend's favorite punctuation mark was a semi-colon and I loved her for it. I loved her for the fact that she even had a favorite punctuation mark.)
Anyway, the wine has loosened my fingers and thoughts, with the result that I am a shade expansive.
Wine was real big, as you might guess, in ancient Greece. I am listening to a series of lectures on the progression of Western Thought, the current cycle deals with the Hebrews and the Greeks. I listen to this partly out of curiosity and desire to improve my mind, but more so that I can sound uber-intellectual when people axe me what I am listening to. The followers of Bacchus were advocates of the lubricative properties of wine when used in philosophical discussions. I can see why.
Anyway! Fact is, I am constantly dissatisfied by my appearance, and yet not wholly repelled by it. I am, rather, attracted to it. I ham it up for the mirror, twirling my impressive new moustache and cocking alternating eyebrows. I simultaneously like and dislike the way I look, if that makes any sense. And the newly trimmed moustache is suh-weet.
A friend of mine recently deleted her Facebook profile, much to my chagrin, for I did so love stalking her profile for picture of her in belly-dancing costume. But I admire her decision. I hate Facebook. It irks me considerably to provide Zuckerberg with revenue. However, I cannot do without skimming through photos of myself, so captivated am I with my image. (I figure someone has to be.) Also, the tantalizing fact remains that I may get a message or a comment from a "Friend" at any point, no matter how remote the eventuality.


The air is redolent with the smell of oncoming rain. It is a deep, wild, promissory scent, and it invokes a feminine image in my mind. Granted, it's been a while since I've been able to appreciate any intimate womanly aroma, but the charged, pungent trace of wet grass and grey, water-laden clouds calls to mind that now far-off valley I can but recall through distant memory.
Christ I miss eating pussy.
There. I went all blunt and low-brow for those that I had left behind.
I was going to slip into a restless early-summer sleep but have decided to persevere and complete this blog entry.



I recently completed a little fourteen-miler trail race. It was in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, at the Reddington Rock Riding Club and the Shenipsit State Forest. The race is the home base of the Shenipsit Striders, the most represent running club in the circuit I run.
I had attempted it twice before and hadn't finished. The first time was when I was fat and lazy and I simply gave up. The second time I made a go I turned my ankle over twice and had to stop. I waited in a clearing at the half-way mark and chatted with a big, white-bearded Norwegian who was living in the Haite-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the Sixties and Seventies.
This time, though, I ran a decent race, trading spots with a brace of spandex-clad foxes and maintaining a respectable pace for most of the distance. The last two miles proved a challenge, but I was able to sprint the last hundred yards to the finish line. More importantly, I tired myself out. At some races I fail to push myself enough and finish with some fuel in the tanks, making the whole endeavor something a waste.
I do love these trail races -- the camaraderie and the warm wishes, the bursting, bulging riot of green all around, the chatting and joking with one's fellow runners. Then the trotting shuffle over the starting line. My favorite part of the race occurs when you cease to make glib remarks to those around you, tuck your head down, and gallop forward. All you're aware of is the soft scrape of shifting shale beneath your feet and the deep, heaving breaths, yours and your fellow runners.
I want to maintain a benevolent caring attitude towards my fellow runners, but a deep, primal, survivalist side of myself secretly thrills when I pass someone who has succumbed to cramps or shortness of breath. I take a malicious pleasure running by someone and knowing that they will not retake their position.
Wolves will kill deer not with their teeth but by running it across the tundra until its heart explodes. I think about doing that as I pursue the participants ahead of me.



I worry sometimes -- to return to the subject of missed opportunities -- that people will pass out of my life forever and I will not have experienced all that I could with them. Perhaps I didn't hang out with this fella, or ask this girl out. But then I think back on how my relationships have burned, flickered, and eventually re-lit.
A few years ago at the restaurant we hired a dude I had been best friends with in elementary school. Back then Rob was a fail asthmatic who liked doodling and ska music. Ten years later he's a burly, bearded snowboarder who listens to gangster rap, starts bar fights, and does every drug you can imagine. And our friendship rekindled in a week or so.
Years ago I met a college friend of my brother's, a curvaceous blonde with a wacky perspective on life and developed a crush on her. At the time I would never had guessed that she was friends with my future co-worker's future girlfriend and I would spend a pleasant night after a concert giving her a full-body massage, attempting to conceal a throbbing erection as I deftly manipulated her toes.
(Sidenote: Three of us went to the concert: me, my friend, and his friend. On the return trip, the friend's friend drunkenly bragged about how he would romance and bed this curvaceous blonde. I stayed quiet. When we got home he remained sullen in the corner while I straddled said blonde and kneaded her buttocks. I suppose I could have "closed" that evening, but one of my major failings -- and I have many -- is that if I discover I can achieve something I no longer care about it. It's enough to me that it is a solid possibility. Attainment is unnecessary. I am a perfectionist, but not the kind that will exhaustively finish every minute detail of a project. You know that saying, "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right"? Well, I feel "if something can't be done right, it's not worth doing." Thus, if there's a chance I can't do something the best I can, I don't do it. Also, if I attempt something and realize I can do well at it, it no longer interests me. Not healthy, I know, but it's the way it is.)
And my ex-girlfriend and I first met on a student ambassadorial trip to Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). We were simply friends at the time, and I was too chubby and awkward to pursue anything. I would not have believed, had you told me at the time, that just seven years later we'd both be naked, me on my knees, gently tonguing her perineum, with her fingers in my hair.
So you never know when people will leave your life, but don't discount the possibility that they'll slide right back into it.
This follows along with my life-philosophy of one's best days always being ahead.
I feel the best day of your life has yet to happen. I feel this mostly because the alternative is suicide inducing. Of course the flip-side of this coin is that the worst day of your life has yet to come.
I suppose the best attitude to take is that every day has the potential to be the best day of your life, so try to live it to the fullest. But that thought makes me tired, trying every day to live life to the fullest. Plus, if you mess up one day, maybe that was supposed to be the day. Now it's gone. Plus, I find the best situations come spontaneously. You can't plan for things to work out. Just trust in your stars and go with the flow.





There is much more I wish to say, but my bottle is nearly empty and I would rather post than put this entry on hold on the off chance that I'll come back to it and finish some thoughts.
I want to touch on films I've seen and movies I've watched. I want to expound on, triggered by the comments of a friend who refused to consider the Tough Mudder because it'd be uncomfortable, on the transcendent properties of pain and fatigue. I want to try out a little fiction on y'alls.
Sadly, I haven't the time, nor the mental capacity after three glasses of wine (man, I'm a pantie-waste).
And so I bid you goodnight.
I am looking forward to the weekend very much. Workouts, work, and rubbing elbows with some of the loveliest waitstaff the restaurant has to offer.
I will type to you again soon.