A Toast to Getting Paid!

How much independence would I have if I didn't have an income? How much trouble would I be in if I couldn'y pay my bills and socialize with friends? All important and relevant questions in order to better appreciate the contents of your paycheck.

Consider these questions from friends:

Wanna go see a movie?
Wanna go to the diner?
How about Clubbing?
Want to go rollerskating?
How about a picnic? I'll get the drinks if you get the food!
have you read this book yet? It's great you should get it!
Want to take a drive down to see so-and-so? I'll spot you for gas! Or hey, you can spot me if you don't wanna drive.

All of these require: what? Money! Thats right! So raise your glasses to the direct deposit paycheck! Toast to the cashed - check paystub still lodged int he backseat of your car! Raise your glass to the establishment of rich assholes paying you pennies for your valuiable time!

Huzzah!

Oru

"A Warm Place"

-Nine Inch Nails. Downward Spiral Album.


I am off the 'single' bandwagon.

But I can still party, damnit. No one can stop Oru from partyin'! Many have tried and all have failed.

I feel pretty fantasmagorical today. I think I shall clean the house. And perhaps do some writing at work. And perhaps I shall be contented with my lot in life. And then perhaps I'll daydream anyway.

*wink*

Oru

Dangerous Threshold

"And here we are. On the ragged Edge. Don't push me." - Captain Malcolm Reynolds

Every once and a while, I can feel the updraft from the chazm stretching before me. It breathes on my face like the amorous winds from a lecherous drunk. It wants me to jump into it's arms, rocky teeth in a jagged smile as it measures me up.

Will I survive the fall?

The open air, cooled by the breath of the chazm, becons me, tendrils outwards to cool my heated cheeks, dab at the dampness beneath my eyes, smooth away the creases of worry on my face. They even reach out to uncurl my fingers from the fists they had formed during my journey to the edge. Something about me balks them though - perhaps the grim determination in my eyes, not to budge. The conflicting forces ripping at my insides telling me to both fight and flee. The battle is visible on my face. Perhaps they like to watch my confusion, want to see what I'll do - who knows, maybe I would run screaming.

I've lifted my foot and dangle it over thin air, an act of Indiana Jones Faith, eyes open and glaring across to the other side, willing myself to grow a set of wings and get ON with it.

...And thats how I stand, frozen, suddenly aware of how terrified this chill air made me.

Of course, thats just one dark corner of my mind. The rest of me: keeping busy and staying out of most trouble - except the fun kind of course. Distracting myself from the numb pains and the dull aches, you know the usual.

I think I shall go bowling soon.

Oru!

Know Me?

What is my favorite color?

Seeing people yesterday that I haven't seen in months really puts certain things in perspective for me. They were friends of a certain former significant other, and the location was at the mall.

Why do I always see these people at the mall, exactly? Is there some sort of commercial magnetism that draws people together? People I haven't seen in months, or on the rare occasion, YEARS? And I wasn't even there for more then an hour.

I was actually very glad to see them both, all sarcastic smiles and asinine jokes aimed at my current companion in crime. The same old guys, meandering about and doing ... what they've done for the past years and years and years I guess. I wish it was that simple, I really do, sometimes.

Now, upon meeting up with them, we all go out for a smoke, lighting up and puffing like movie stars, letting the smoke curl up our cheeks with narrow-eyed pretensions. They pull my comrade to the side (He's been friends with them for much longer then I have) and I get the distinct impression that I am one of the topics discussed, and for some reason it doesn't bother me. In a sick way I wanted to pull my friend aside afterwards and drill him for the juicy details, but I refrained. Instead, we talked about my Former Significant Other as an outsider, the boys telling me that they were shunned for behavior that they frowned upon.

I found myself pleased.

Then one of them looks at me and grins, saying, "man, you weren't like this before. You're like, all high strung and happy now."

"I was happy then, you know." I retort, cigarette dangling from my lips.

"Right. But now you're high strung. More out there. It's cool."

I don't really know what to say to that. I merely smile and nod, grinning with a shit-eating smile, and then we all swap numbers. I let them convince each other that they're actually going to call me to hang out this weekend. Then, we part ways.

Now my concern here:

How well did they know me that they could make that observation about me now? Have I changed that much? I have to say yes, because even I, in my delusional denial, can't avoid the obvious changes in me. But these boys that barely knew me saw it? I find myself slightly unnerved, but... strangely glad for it.

Which brings me to the real meat here. How well do you know your Oru? I don't want pretenders who feel me after never having met me. I don't want the kinds of people in my life that think they know everything about me after one encounter. I have had enough of people looking into my eyes and telling me what I'm thinking - and being right. I don't want to be an open book, and I most certainly don't want to be predictable.

So I won't be.

Oru

Time Share

My mind is divided into sections. Like a cubby system. Or, if you want a better image, like those mazes that lab-rats are let loose in. On occasion, items in certain cubbies will ... create a kind of spill over. And in that case, I have to re-allot my thoughts, and assign more groundspace for these unfinished projects.

Of course, - those are for the nice, smaller issues. Like my cubby for 'writing.' Within that cubby are hundreds of ideas, just bursting out of the tiny space like fireworks. So on occasion, I have to regroup. Try and switch cubbies with another train of thought. (Like 'school', which is retiring anyway, and thus needs far less space to live.)

Now all this shuffling around leads to inter-office dating. Which leads to other things, which leads to a marriage of thoughts in a sense, which can on occasion lead to a duality of subjects in the cubbies. I could write about school, for example, or go back to school for writing. This creates unavoidable parallells between cubbies, and thus moving them far from their homes can be dangeroius to my very psyche. so instead, I rent the space out to my thoughts, and They share the space.

Time Share.

And amid all those cubbies -are my memories, providing the framework of the thousands of little thought processes eternally being bartered for, traded, shuffled about and thrown around in the post office of my mind.

...And amid those shuffles, i completely forgot what it was I was going to SAY about all this. Ah well, better luck next time?

Oru

Memories Drift

Standing perched on one foot behind the front desk for hours on end often gets my mind turning. I need something to distract me from the way my feet are pulsating from the constant pressure my body pushes down on them. On occasion I will be gifted with a task that involves more movement then mindlessly shifting my weight - but unfortunately those times are few and far between.

So, I think.

I think about things that have held me together. Then I think about how those things inevitably tear me apart. To avoid an onrush of unecessary angst, I will change gears, and dwell on any good spots of light in my darkened little heart. Dispite the row of pristine flourescents being sumarily blown to pieces by an M16, (whose name I try my utmost never to utter again, though fail on occasion,) there are still little runners glowing down the hall, and every hundred feet or so someone will have lit a fire in a barrell, or mounted a wall-sconce to light their way.

I am somewhat of a maze to begin with. And the fact that the lights are out isn't making it easier for anyone else to get to know me. Get close to me, become my friend... And I feel that this is driving a rift between my memories, myself, and the real world surrounding me.

Time for a deep moment. Cover your ears and hum please?

I find myself, every once and a while, craving his voice. I wonder how he's doing and part of me hopes his family is well, and wishes to see them again. I know he doesn't deserve the dirt on my shoes, or the spit in his face, but for being in the light for so long, basking in it, enjoying the warmth... how could I not want it back? After being thrown headfirst into the darkness following the burst of rapid-fire, the shimmer of sparks, and then the inevitable silence?

Think what you want. It happens to everyone. I wish I could taint every memory of him with a doubt, but there were none. I wish I could look back and say, "I should have known. I should have been ready for this. I set myself too high." But everytime I try, I can only think good things, I only hear his laugh.

I wish I could hate him as easily as I have been able to hate other deserving parties in the past. But I am dismayed to see that it isn't as easy as I hoped.

So now my mission is to make new memories. Better ones, ones that outshine the sterile brilliance of an old love. I will break down the walls of this hall and let in the blinding sunlight of a new life, filled with genuine smiles, affection, and ties only to those who won't do me harm.

I've taken the apropriate steps. And now to have it completed.

I have chosen to accept this mission. The only thing - no self destructing message please.

I'm not that kinda gal.

Oru

Self Defense

For a brief period of time, I took martial arts and self defense. I took one sample of Tai Kwon Do and hated the uniformity of every gesture. I let my brother try and teach me fencing, but found that I didn't posess the inherant grace needed to perform quite as well as I wanted to. Then I took a few months of Jeet Kune Do and found that I didn't necessarily need grace to defend myself. At least physically.

When it comes down to defending myself mentally, however, I'm convinced I am very well equipt to avoid any serious damage. Or perhaps - I am just very efficient. Efficient enough to get damaged and then work around the depleted part of me. It's just like Rome - when it was firts built, it was pristine, marble lined and grand. Then of course, as it happens, time eroded pieces. Society crumbled. It was raided and destroyed. And then, as civilizations often do, they built their great city over the ruins, making it whole again. Not necessarily better, but different. Incorporating the old with the new.

So, my fortifications aren't particularly as durable as I would like, crumbling to dust like disentigrating mosquito netting; however once past that screen, it's like assaulting an amorphous blob of water. Ever shifting and moving to accomodate around the newly severed piece. But never really falling.

Meh, at least thats what I'd like to think.

Oru