No SERIOUSLY guys!

I would win the Hunger Games!
...
I've been working out, and running through these scenarios all the time....

If Elton John ever writes a song about my life

it'll be called "Wind in the Candle."

The worst part will be during the chorus when he tells me, "Your legend burned out long before your candle ever did."

http://xkcd.com/513/

What more is there to say?

Oh, I know! In my experience, the parts on the 3rd and 4th row don't happen.

From My Directing Proposal:

I find missed connections fascinating, maybe because that’s all I seem to have in my life (the sad part is that I couldn’t make it through a proposal without downing on myself. But then, that’s the funny part too). 

I'm thinking about directing a play

It looks like I'm going to propose a Christopher Durang play that's funny because it is grotesque, but disturbing because it is funny. The Marriage of Bette and Boo has missed opportunities, misogyny, anti-Church tendencies, intellectual witticisms, and a running gag of throwing dead babies on the ground. Betty's Summer Vacation has a laugh track, a serial killer, two gruesome murders that involve disconnected penises and heads, and the feeling that modern entertainment has desensitized us towards violence and depravity. I still have a few more one-acts to read, but those look like the best options for full-length plays.

If I did either, I could easily send squeamish audience members running for the door. I'd like that as long as I was laughing. I want to make people uncomfortable. I'm not sure which I like better. I found the humor in Betty's more accessible (and more outrageous), but I think I might like the underlying theme of Marriage better. This is a conundrum indeed.

I thought about becoming a Pick-Up Artist for a while

then I read The Game and realized that they were, for the most part, significantly more screwed up than me.


Also, their goals don't really line up with mine. I don't really want to sleep with lots of good looking women. Well, I mean, I do, but that's not what I ultimately want. I think I'm more interested in the romance than the sex.

Breaking sexual tension must be an art

I'm so good at it naturally that I can't be anything but an artistic prodigy.

I know I'm a good actor

because girls never figure out that I like them.

When I see a girl I like

my natural instinct is to hide.

Sometimes I get like this

I'm sad and I'm not sure why. But I like it. I don't want to be happy because I feel like being happy will somehow reduce the meaning of this moment or of my life. I can feel things when I'm sad that I just don't feel when I'm not. I can see the patterns that I refuse to see in normal life.

On the other hand, I'm not studying for midterms.

But that's okay, because right now I can feel the importance of things, and while courses are sort of important, they aren't as important as I usually think they are. This will not end my life.

The more important question is what sort of life I want to live. And maybe it is important that I don't know the answer. Maybe it is as it should be that I can't decide if I want to be a starving artist or a rich hedge fund technologist. Life only lasts so long. It's these little moments of beauty that we need to stop and recognize. I'm not even sure what if beautiful about this moment I've made. I'm just sitting at my computer typing on a blog that I originally thought was going to be cheeky but has suddenly become sincere. And yet something makes it beautiful. this little moment of time I'm making now that could be scripted on the internet forever. And I hope it isn't just the fact that I have the music from American Beauty playing in the background, although that is probably helping.

I can see so many roads stretching out in front of me. I know that I'll wind up on one or another, and that no matter which I choose, there will always be more choices and I'll never get to stop until my journey is completely over. Maybe then I'll have a moment where I can see the journey in its entirety, where I can finally understand what exactly I am. Or maybe I don't want that.

And of all these paths I see, the one that draws me is the one I'm too afraid to take. It is the path of declaring love when I shouldn't. It is the path of starving and screaming and living and trying in vain to be famous and successful at something that maybe I'm not that good at. It is not the safe path.

But what's so exciting about being safe. If I went that way, I know I would retreat into imagination. I would waste my life away reading, playing games, pretending to be something I'm not. And then one day I would wake up and realize that I had been fooling myself all along, and that realization will destroy me.

There's this depth of feeling here in this moment that I know I won't be able to recapture when I'm happy again. All of the numbness of everyday life is gone, and I feel. Sure I might feel like shit, but I'm FEELing something. There's something inside my chest that wants to get out, a palpitation that can't just be my heart. There are tears in my eyes, and that is where they'll stay. And I know I am alive.

I've always wanted to write poetry. I've always wanted to be a poet. I just never have the words. What can you say when life is good? Hell, what can you say when life is bad? I don't know. I don't know what I can say other than what I do. I'm sure you don't understand. I'm speaking in vagaries and generalizations.

I think if there is a God, he doesn't care if things are perfect. I think he was sad one day and wanted to make something, just so that he could point to it, and say, "Hey, look I made that. It's not perfect, but that's okay because it is beautiful. Maybe it's beautiful because it is not perfect."

That's what I've always wondered. Isn't it our imperfections that make us beautiful? The veins that I can see running down the side of your face. The way you snort when you laugh. The times you get mad when there isn't anything to be upset about. The burdens you put on yourself when you know you can't take any more. This is what makes us beautiful. These little struggles against the universe are what makes us people.

And right now I'm picturing your face. You probably don't know it. Even if you read these words, and there is no guarantee you will. What I can guarantee is that I will not tell you. I will never tell you. I'm afraid. I don't know what I want from you, and it would be unfair to put that on you. So I will bear it alone, perhaps into my grave. I will always wonder what could have been, and even now I realize that it might be still be. But I also know that I will not let it be.

I always I assume that I'm imposing. I don't just assume in this case. I know that I would be imposing. And you deserve better than that. You deserve to be happy. Maybe I deserve to be unhappy, and maybe I want to be unhappy. Either way, us being together could only result in one of two things: us both being unhappy or both being happy. And I can just feel that that is not what is store for us. That is not what the universe wants.

And I will just go on finding the little pieces of beauty where I can. I will do like I did in high school the one time - I will watch your taillights fade into the distance as I am covered with the moisture of a misty night under a red sky, and I will feel.

That's what I'm most afraid of. I can deal with being alone. I've been picturing being a hermit since I hit puberty. I can deal with failure, and rejection, and losing my family and friends. I gone through all of that. I can deal with being a virgin, and I can deal with whatever else the world throws at me. But I cannot, could not ever deal with not feeling. I lose it sometimes, and right now I feel as if those times were shorn out of my life. I fear death. I fear it more than anything else. I fear it because I'm afraid that when it comes I will no longer feel. I would welcome hell itself, if just for the continued sensation.

So what are you doing here? Are you here to laugh because you know me? Are you here to laugh because pain is funny? Are you here to laugh because of my witticisms and charm? Are you here by accident? Are you here to cry?

Every day I can feel myself becoming more accustomed to the world. I used to stop and look at things. I walk too fast now. I don't remember how I got places. I only remember arriving.

Sometimes I wonder if I truly believe in people. Do I think that other people feel like me? I'm not sure. Sometimes it seems like I'm playing a game, where the goal is to get people to like me and my tactic is to be the most pathetic person in the room. Everyone wants to pet the sad puppy. But what if underneath that is a level of cynicism I won't even allow myself to recognize? And if that's there, why do I care what people think? Am I saving up for a day when I can use it against them? Am I preparing for when things inevitably go south? Or do I genuinely like people and want to be around them?

I know that I hate people. In the plural. Crowds annoy me. I think the masses are stupid and scary. But do I like persons as much as I think I do? What if I am a sociopath and I don't even know it.

And now I'm thinking of you again, and my stomach jumps back up into my chest. That can't be the reaction of a sociopath, can it?

Sometimes I wonder what I am. I feel so separated from other people. I can never bring myself to say "we". I also never call people by name. It's always you or hey or a gesture. I remember reading someone saying, "We are born alone, and we die alone." I wonder if we must live in the middle alone. Everything I know about everything comes in through my senses, but I know that my senses can deceive me. Like Descartes, the only thing I can be reasonably sure of is my own existence. But I want you to exist, and I want you to love me, and I want endless nights snuggling and whispering little nothings to each other, and I want to feel your skin against mine, and I want to watch sappy, romantic movies with you, and I want to ask you about the beautiful things in your life and the small things and the strange things, and I want you to be one of the beautiful things in my life, and I just don't know how to say any of that.

So I write it down on an anonymous blog, knowing that even if you do read this, you probably won't think it is about you. But it is. And it is about me, and it is about life and love.

I think I used to be happy. I remember that when I was little, the thing I disliked the most was being bored. I always had to be doing something. Maybe that is happiness - the dichotomy between being bored and entertained. Maybe I just know too many things now and I can never return to the Eden of my childhood, and the best I can hope for are moments like this. These little pieces of clarity.

A long time ago, my life would have been preordained. If I had lived to adulthood, I would have had an arranged marriage, expected duties, a life laid out for me with nothing to choose. I would be free of existential crisis, because who has time for a crisis when they need to be working the fields? Maybe I would have been religious, and I would have thought that there was something good waiting for me after my death. Maybe I would even look forward to it, like a birthday when I knew I would be getting a really good present. Maybe I would love my predestined wife and our children, and maybe I would play a hand in shaping their destinies. It could have been a life.

It seems like there's so much more talk these days. You can put whatever you want on the internet. And soon it is going to be that anyone with a long pdf file can self-publish a book. And for all that extra talk, for all the quintillions of bits zipping around, do we listen any more than we used to? How much do I know about the people around me?

And now I'm back to you. How much do I know about you? It feels like I don't know anything, but I know your face and I can hear your voice even now. I don't know what you would say. Or perhaps what you will say. I can only tell you that I have never wanted to hurt you.

I've been writing for so long now, but the words keep coming. I can't make them stop. Something more wants to get out, and I won't know what it is until it gets here.

I don't know what is art. Maybe when you throw a bunch of people into a room and out of their minds and bodies and opinions and talents comes something new, maybe that is art. Maybe art doesn't need any structure or purpose. Maybe every game of charades and pictionary and Cranium is art. Maybe we are just surrounded by art and we don't know to call it by what it is.

Someday science might outstrip art. Someday we might go to the stars and ultimately escape this planet. Maybe we'll even abandon it to its fate, to be swallowed whole by the sun billions of years from now. Everything that is art now, every thought that any of us have will be lost. Will it all have been for nothing.

And I come back to you. I imagine wiping a tear from your cheek. I imagine telling you that everything will be okay. That it will all work out in the end. But this time I know what I should tell you. Maybe I wouldn't actually say this, but I should. I should tell you, "Life is what we make of it. It is full of little twists and turns that we shouldn't expect to all be good. But in the end, life is beautiful, however short and painful. And perhaps what really matters is love. Our love for other people, our love for each other, will leave a mark. It may not be physical or electrical, but something about our love influences the entire universe, and long after we are gone, someone or something will be here and they will know that we lived and we loved. And that will make of this worth it. Our love is timeless and perfect, no matter how flawed and transient we are. And I love you so much." Maybe I should leave out the last part. Maybe I should never say anything like this.

And maybe I don't love you. Maybe I don't even know you. Not really. Certainly, this can't be love. But I feel something, and I want for it to be love. I want to have that feeling, and I want you to have that feeling for me.

Maybe then I won't have to be sad to feel.

I found the official song of this blog

(at least until I find the next official song of the blog)

I found a passage that is MORE depressed than I am:

"I shall immerse myself among men. I shall be silent and attentive, an appreciative companion. There will be many acquaintances, friends, women - and perhaps even a wife. For a while, I shall have to make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand and perform the thousands of little gestures which constitute life on Earth, and then those gestures will become reflexes again. I shall find new interests and occupations; and I shall not give myself completely to them, as I shall never again give myself completely to anything or anybody. Perhaps at night I shall stare up at the dark nebula that cuts off the light of the twin suns, and remember everything, even what I am thinking now. With a condescending, slightly rueful smile I shall remember my follies and my hopes. And this future me will be no less worthy a man than the me of the past... nor will any man have the right to judge me."
- from Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (from the English translation from the French translation from the original Polish)

The story of my longest crush to date

It was the second or third day of my freshman year of high school, and I was sitting in Latin class. The day before, the teacher, who was new to teaching, had dumped all of the declension charts on us. The only thing that was keeping me from dropping the class was the realization that I was much smarter than the other people in the room and that in such a small class, things would inevitably be graded on a curve. 


And then in walks a sophomore girl, there to tell us about the wonders of Latin competitions. She wore rectangular glasses, and my first thought was that this must be the nerdiest girl I had ever seen. I thought she might be a tad insane.


Naturally that wasn't the end of things, or this wouldn't be even a remotely interesting story.


It wasn't long before I was auditioning for the first play of the year - The Pink Panther Strikes Again (which, by the way, is a horrible show that was only slightly redeemed by the not inconsiderable comedic talent of the actor who ended up playing Clouseau). At the first read-through, I was nervously looking around. I saw some familiar faces from Middle School. And then her. I was kind of shocked that she was an actress. I was even more shocked to find over the next months that she was a very talented actress.


Slowly I came to appreciate Latin - mostly because it was easy, but that's really besides the point. I don't know when I realized that I had a crush on her, but I'm sure it was before the casting of the next play (Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare, a much better show that I somehow managed to get cast as the lead in). I remember standing in the theater hallway, asking her to help me with my Dramatic Interpretation in Latin. I could feel myself blushing the whole time. Well, I'm not sure if I actually blushed, but I definitely felt warm inside. Did I mention that she was definitely the best Dramatic Interpreter of Latin in the state, and possibly the best in the country? Meanwhile, I continually managed to get second at state behind some douchebag I never met. 


That was the start of something beautiful in my mind. I must have inflated her into something she wasn't, but as far as I was concerned, she was perfect - she was beautiful and talented and funny and smart and fun to be around. I even liked the way she snorted when she laughed. 


The way the schools were set up in my district, sophomores and freshmen were in one high school, while juniors and seniors were in a separate senior high school. So, at the end of the year, I was facing the prospect of seeing her almost never for an entire year. The night before the final theater party, I couldn't sleep. I pulled out a sheet of notebook paper, and tried to write down exactly what I was feeling. I avoided the words "crush" and "love" and everything like that. I think it probably came out a bit like a yearbook message. I told her that she was amazing and that I loved being around her and that I would miss her and wanted to be around her more next year. I slipped it into her Converse while people were playing Freeze (it's a theater game that's sort of improvisational and usually ends up being ridiculous. My go-to move was an alien invasion). She read it and then gave me a hug. It never came up again. I told a couple of people that I liked her that night. It never came up again.


Lo and behold, the next year I did not see her much. She dated somewhere between a couple and a few guys that year. I remember thinking maybe I had a shot with her at the National Latin convention. Nope.


Turns out she started dating one of the Latin guys from our rival school (who just so happened to also be an actor and one of the funniest people I have ever met). And that relationship lasted more or less up until her graduation. They were adorable (see spoon story). I, of course, kept quiet and tried to pursue other girls - unsuccessfully, but those are other stories. 


She's had a few boyfriends since she started college. In fact, facebook tells me she has one now. (For comparison, I have had no girlfriends, ever, and the only time facebook would have lied to you was for a week in high school when I decided to change my relationship status to see how people would react - it was impressive how fast I started getting huge reactions).


The last time I saw her was after a show at my high school during my freshman year of college. We both happened to be back in town break during one of the big shows. We talked a bit after the show. I was awkward, but not unbearably so. She said that I should text her and we could get coffee. I didn't have her number. 


I haven't talked to her since then. 


There are so many unresolved feelings there. I think they will remain unresolved. It might be better that way. Honestly, I'm not sure she knows that I had a crush on her for that long. Every now and then I long for the simplicity of the old days when I had a fallback crush. A constant in a world of variables. 


I guess the good news is that we're still facebook friends. That's better than I can say for some of my other crushes. 

I don't want your pity

I have enough of that for myself.

Hey, everything,

Just shut up and go away, okay?

I'm going to go buy a decent sized house out in the middle of nowhere, and live off the land and freelance computer science work, writing novels and plays that never get published. I will be a computer hermit. Just go away and stop making me think about you. It hurts and I don't want to deal with it anymore.

I never do things I shouldn't have done

I can always tell when something is a bad idea. I know which girls I shouldn't hit on. My problem is that I can never tell when something is good idea. I don't know which girls would want me to make a move, or when. On some level, I don't know what a move is. I don't even know what I would do if I was successful. I don't believe in relationships. I have no mental picture. It doesn't mean anything to me. I don't believe it.

Today is just feeling pretty shitty all around

I was going to put something clever here, but I decided against it. Instead I'm going to recount the story of why I quit playing baseball.

It was a hot summer in Texas, and I had signed up to be in the Jewlympics. Okay, they were actually called the Maccabi Games (their slogan is "Building Jewish Pride Through Sports"), and I hear a lot of people had positive experiences with it. I mostly just wanted to play sports and meet people. Okay, I mostly wanted to play sports and meet girls. I was fourteen, what can I say?

The summer started out pretty well. I went to camp and had fun there. I got back and started going to baseball practices. I played a lot of first base during practice - I felt like I was really consistent about making plays and I'd occasionally make a really good snag. There was one other first baseman who made the plays less consistently, but also made more of the impressive snags. I figured we would probably trade off innings or whatever. I'll admit, I wasn't the best batter on the team, but I also wasn't the worst. I figured I would be towards the bottom of the line-up most of the time, and not bat sometimes. I made some friends on the team. We weren't great friends, but I figured I could hang out with them for the duration of the week that made up the actual games.

Then that week came. Things started out fine. I got a couple of cool guys from Miami Beach rooming with me - they were tennis players. At the opening ceremony, all the cities got different get-ups to wear. Since it was the Dallas games, and I was on the Dallas team, we went extravagantly Texan - Mavericks green tear-off warm-ups, white hoodies that said Dallas on the front, and a straw cowboy hat. My hat didn't last five minutes - my teammates decided to snatch it off my head and rip it to pieces. Fuck those guys.

I figured it would be okay though, because I would be playing baseball and meeting girls.

Then came the first game. It was August in Dallas - which means that it was over 100 degrees every day that week. It wasn't that bad though - I was in the shade. Riding the bench. I played a total of 4 half-innings in the field that week, and only one of those was at first base (and it didn't come to me). The others were in right field. Fuck right field. I got to bat exactly twice. Both times the game was already more-or-less decided. The first time was against the best pitcher we saw the whole time (I could barely see his fastball. I was told later it clocked around 80 mph coming from a close mound). I struck out in four. The second time, I got a double. They didn't let me bat again.

And then the coach had the nerve to scold me for trying to fall asleep on the bench. - "You should be rooting for your teammates." Fuck him.

Oh, but the good news is that my bench-riding really paid off for the team. We got fucking third of six.

Still, I was optimistic that I would be meeting nice and attractive Jewish girls. No such luck. The parties were in huge, intimidating venues, full of thousands of people I didn't know, most of whom were older than me. And the only people I did know were two kids from Miami Beach who had a lot of friends that didn't know me and didn't particularly need a dork from Dallas hanging around and my fucking teammates. I had hoped that I would be able to break out of my shell. Instead, I sat in various corners eating barbecue and wishing I was at home reading a book.

Lest I forget, I did meet two attractive girls. They came up to me at a go-kart place and asked me if I was okay, out of pity because I looked like a lost puppy. I don't remember anything about them except that I thought they were attractive at the time and that I was resentful that they were talking to me out of pity.

And now playing baseball is irreversibly associated with all of that in my mind. Maybe I'll take up softball when I settle down somewhere.

Actually that reminds me of an old review:

The only mention of me in that one was:

"A couple of early scenes, notably the ones set in the streets of Brussels and Liverpool, suffer from some confusion, exacerbated by lapses in diction (Mr. <Terrance's last name>), but these are minor distractions in an otherwise captivating evening."

From a review:

"Some of the other actors, like Terrance <lastname> 'XX gave less powerful performances. Their characters did not feel believable and would sometimes bring me out of the world of the play."

How I Met Your Mother

I watch it and think, "Wow, Ted has much more success with women than I do."

Finally, I've found the theme for all my Saturday nights

At dinner:

Terrance: "How does one go about becoming un-repressed?"

"I don't always smoke"

but when I do, I smoke a kazoo. *blows into a kazoo forlornly.

To my imaginary mistress:

Of all the things I do, you are my favorite.

Yesterday I said something really confident and self-important

Then I rushed around telling everyone about it because it was so unusual.

No Time

Sorry blog. I have no time for you.

Also, this will be my excuse if anyone asks me why I don't have a girlfriend because it makes it sound like I'm doing things with my life.

So, here