So what's up with me being light on the wit and wisdom lately? Well, I'll tell ya. Not only does the New Job take up a lot of time, but it also has my imaginative and intellectual faculties engaged as they haven't been in years. So, a lot of my excess thoughts and ideas that I couldn't quite pour into doing budget modifications to our various government contracts in the last job are now finding a deep reservoir in the New Job. Which is great. Feels wonderful.

Oh. And one other thing, too. About a man. We've communicated some, not a lot. But I am totally liking what I've seen so far. Totally. Tragically, my work life is decimating the hours I used to spend hanging out in coffee bars and flirting and going on dates and bellying up to bars and the like. So, I haven't been able to speed off in hot pursuit. Which might be a good thing. And, this guy very could be a reader. Sooooo... I don't want to go spilling too much here. A guy with whom I had one of those prolonged 'yeah-we'll-definitely-have-to-get-together-sometime' relationships recently told me he would basically never date me because he didn't want to show up in my blog. "But... but... but... it's anonymous for everybody else but me... your name would never appear." Regardless.

How come Carrie never has these problems on Sex in the City? None of the men she dates read her column? Big or Aidan never mind seeing themselves in print?

Why was this never an issue for Special Guy? Because he never read my blog. I told him--several times--that I had a blog, even describing it as an on-line diary, but he never, ever expressed any interest in reading it.

Here's an entry I wrote on my Visor about my trip to Chicago this past weekend to attend the Chicago Hellfire Club's Associate Member Applicants weekend. (I am an apple-li-cant.)


Life is good.

11/10/02 11:31 pm.

I would have been touching down at Newark about now, but no. I'm still at O'Hare. I won't be home until about 3 am.

Regardless. The Chicago Hellfire Club Associate Applicants Weekend was a blast. I will live my life for love alone.

I was worried (of course) that I'd spend the weekend standing quietly by. Consumed with shyness and lack of self-confidence, disturbed about a phone call from my former Board Chair that I got at work on Friday, and the perpetual phobia of being evaluated and judged.

On Friday night, feeling pretty sprightly despite the fact that I got off a plane, took a taxi to the club house, and basically had nothing to eat that day, I was watching a whipping scene when I got woofed by a way hot man. So I ended up flogging him. One stroke was off (got his ear), but overall, I did well. He was a wonderful, wonderful bottom.

So then, as we were finishing up, one of the elder statesmen of the club called us over. He proceeded to complement me, and went on to compare me to a younger version of a world famous German whipsman of whom I am in awe. Oh. My. God. Or as Joe the Barber would say, "Hello!"

I was--and still am--pretty stunned by that.

And I and the gentleman (a fellow Miss. Manners fan, I learned) I flogged continued to bond. And what better way to do that than by him hopping up in the sling and having me fist him. Which was wonderful. (And later in the weekend, a boy who had watched me at it complemented me on my technique in that area, too.

Anyway, it turns out that Gentleman is a former president and longtime member of the club. And a great guy. The next night after the banquet, back again at the clubhouse, I asked Gentleman what he would recommend as far as getting a full member sponsor. He proceeded to grab every full member who passed, tell them I needed a sponsor, and extol my virtues. Extoling my virtues included showing them his back, where there was a red mark in the shape of a heart. Several members voiced their enthusiastic support of my application.

Earlier on Saturday, I had gone with my hospitable host to see the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio in Oak Park. That was really wonderful....

--------------------------
Yo. Me again. The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio was pretty wonderful. But there was also a surreal element, too. The guid talked about the fact tha Frank had lived there with his wife and children from (something like) 1889 to 1927), but they never mentioned that what broke up that happy home was when Frank left, abandoning his wife and children. The place was broken up into apartments for decades until a trust was formed to buy the place and do extensive restoration work. Those apartments were necessitated by the fact that Mrs. Wright had no income when Frank left. Now, speaking as a spouse-and-home-abandonner myself, I don't entirely condemn Frank. Although, making sure that my Ex would be able to make things work financially (i.e., contributing to the mortgage even after I wasn't there for several months) was something that I made sure was in place, I can totally get behind what drove Frank to take such a drastic move.

Day after day after day, you just think, "I hate my life." You feel like you're playing a role, cast in a play, but you have to make up the script as you go along. You focus on activity, stuff to do. You keep your head down (if you're living with someone for whom flying into a rage is like water seeking it's own level, anyway). It's mostly pretty negotiable. But every once in a while, like when you get junk mail about retirement communities in Arizona, and you think, "Gosh, I'll be retiring in only 23 years," and there it is all spread out before you, like the fog clearing and revealing the road ahead. At the end of the road is death. You can see, clearly and unobstructed, everything along the way. Life without adventure, or novelty, or mystery. For along time, you think that you've made your bed, and now you've got to lie in it. Like some Bronte heroine. But then, you think, "Anything has got to be better than this," and that's the beginning of the end of the your life. Then, you realize that all you really have to do to change your life is to walk away. To go. Head out the door. Popular culture is tough on people who do that. In movies, they usually end up coming crawling back, or falling back in love, or getting punished (a la Thelma and Louise) for walking out.

Here's what I've found: it's great. It's fantastic. You get the wisdom of experience, and having taken that bold step out the door, you find yourself waiting on the other side of the threshold. And then it's all wonderful; the world is your oyster. Possibilities open out in front of you. Anything is possible.

Tillie Olsen wrote in her essay, 'Ironing': "She resolved that she would never give up her solitude, never again to have to move to the rhythms of others."

Here's a thing I love: it's midnight; I'm walking down some street in New York, or Chicago, or Fort Lauderdale, or Seattle, or Amsterdam, or whatever. I can, if I wish, go home to bed. I can, if I wish, go have a beer. I can, if I wish, find a place to get a cup of coffee and read a book. I can, if I wish, go talk to that sweet looking bear that just cruised me. I can, if I wish, sit on a bench somewhere quiet and notice how night smells and feels differently than the day. No one knows where I am. If I get mugged, or my cell phone rings and I get terrible news, I have to take care of it myself. But I'm good like that. I am my choices, and my choices are mine, clearly and unambiguously. And that's just great.

Life is good.