Tag: talking

Sleep talk

Do you talk when you sleep? I don’t mean merely talking in your sleep, saying things aloud as you interact with your dreams. I do that one. I mean right now talking to others while you sleep. Conversations that, when referenced the next morning, you have absolutely no idea what the other person is even talking about, and you have zero recollection of a full-on conversation or series of verbal exchanges… even though most of them happened with eyes open…

Yeah, I find it rather spectacular and bizarre, too, but it, as I have lately learned, is real.

God, bless us with beautiful and good and restful sleep, please, as well as clear conversations that we actually remember. Amen! 😛

Post-a-day 2022

Whatever happened to movies?

Whatever happened to watching movies?

And I don’t mean simply in the theatre. I mean watching them period.

It feels like everyone my age and younger doesn’t watch films. They put on a film – or sometimes attend one in a theatre – , and then spend a handful of seconds or minutes here and there, all throughout the film, checking their phones, or giving their attention elsewhere entirely.

Many of them talk during the film, too, and not just at the music or quiet parts – when actors are in active dialogue.

Half the time, that all then leads to their missing some vital piece of the story or a character, they end up asking questions and talking over even more of the film and dialogue, or they just miss it all completely and have no idea that they missed anything at all.

I no longer wonder at my being given so many recommendations for terrible films – none of these people are even paying enough attention to know if the film is terrible or not. They only see snippets, in the first place, and most good films will seem boring, because they are missing all the wonderful parts that make a great film great.

But does this really surprise me much? I think not. I have experienced consciously for years a lack of people’s being present in life. The same person will tell me the same thing multiple times, as though it is important and new… I pay attention and am present in those conversations, and therefore could tell the story myself, in his or her own words, I’ve heard it so many times.

I’m growing tired of this. Conversations on repeat is exhausting, especially when they carry so much emotion on the telling side.

I watch a film to be an immersed observer of an alternate world for a short time, to experience life from another’s perspective. I do not watch it to fill the time between my comments, to keep me company because I am uncomfortable being with myself. Sure, I have put on a movie to keep me company before, but it is always something I know well, and I don’t talk all over it, even then. Just like I don’t talk all over others, when they are talking to me.

But, even in the cinema, people have their phones out, and seem to have no idea of their disregard for the story that is telling itself on the big screen up front. That is someone’s hard-worked art – a lot of someone’s’, truly. If people aren’t here to experience and honor the set, why bother? They can look at their phones at home or anywhere else, talk with their friends (and over their friends) anywhere else. But either be here or be there – do not pretend you are in either place, if you will not be there fully. Pick a place, and be present there, fully. Period. It is a disservice to all creation to do any less.

Post-a-day 2021

Back on the log*

I stayed in bed – with possibly six bathroom breaks (number one only) – from 7:45pm to about 6:45am this morning. My sleep was fitful. I did my feel entirely rested when I got up. However, my bowels functioned somewhat normally, and without any pains, and that was a total win.

I still felt slow, my lower belly and lower right edge were still uncomfortable (but not in pain), and I was somehow a bit clumsy, but I felt significantly improved overall. It still took effort to talk, but a whole lot more came out, whenever I did attempt speaking, and much sooner than it had taken every time yesterday. My mom noticed that part immediately when we finally spoke later in the morning.

I wasn’t sure how the day would progress, and was worried I might have to be home and, possibly, in bed most of the day. By nine o’clock, I had determined that I likely would go in to work. It was only for three hours today, and the prospect of being at home all alone, especially with the discomfort and all, was not a delightful one. So, I took a fitful nap, after eating some, and then got up and went in. I was slow-moving still, with a light sensation of my guts being as of yet undetermined as to when they might escape my body and in which direction they might choose to do that escape.

I adjusted after a little while to being able to talk to people quite normally, and eventually was at almost full normalcy on that front. I was able to walk around a bit faster near the end, and even jogged back inside, when I discovered that I’d left my smoothie near-dregs in the fridge. That surprised me, even.

I did my grocery shopping, and headed home to change. Since late morning, I had been messaging a buddy from the gym about running together this afternoon/evening. He hadn’t replied to my inquiry yesterday (about running today), and I knew he probably had been out drinking.

Turns out that he had arrived home around 3:30am last night/this morning. I told him that 13+ hours was plenty of recovery time, and that, though he claimed he felt like he was dying, I had almost ended up in Urgent Care, and so he and I could die together – it would be better to die in good company than all alone, after all.

He allowed that we could make it work, assuming he didn’t feel quite so terrible by the evening. We agreed that we would be in touch after I finished grocery shopping in the afternoon.

By the time, however, that he responded to my messages in the afternoon, he told me that he was out drinking… right then. Can we get a facepalm, please?? ;P

I considered running to the bar to meet him, partly for getting back at him for leaving me hanging, and partly for my desire not to be left alone with whatever was going on in my belly. It was gorgeous outside, and I knew it was an outdoor patio kind of place, only a 5k from my house. However, he was actually doing some one-on-one time with a friend from out of town, and so I did not do that.

(Okay, but when was he planning to run with me, if he had the friend in all weekend, anyway?? Either he’s a sneaky liar or wasn’t thinking, I dare say.)

And so, I went running in my own. What had intended to be a short little run, maybe two miles at most (plus a .05 as stretch beyond the goal), and at a slower, we-are-ill pace, turned out to be a full-on ladder run – with the 10lb vest, recall – that ended up being the third-fastest 5k I have ever done. Period. That means without any weighted vest for those fastest times. And I did my third-fastest with a 10lb vest on me, wondering the whole time if I might hurl or just sh** my pants at any given moment.

That is some other-world Goggins stuff right there.* Nearly end up in a hospital in the morning, have a panic attack, work out late morning, nearly fall apart trying to work in the afternoon, so go home and get ready for bed at 4:45pm. Sleep forever, wake up still sick, go to work again anyway, and then do one of the hardest and most successful runs of my life, considering if and when I might need to crap or vomit on the side of the road somewhere. (I actually did come very close to vomiting right after I set out!)

So, yeah… what a day…

*If you don’t get the references, read David Goggins’s book, Can’t Hurt Me.

Post-a-day 2021

Talk

“The pleasure was All mine.”

What kind of comment is that? I know, I know: it is typical in the US. But how did we get there, and why have we stayed there? It was a pleasure for me, too. I even said so. So, why is someone degrading my experience and my statement, declaring them to be false?

Or had no one considered that that was what was happening when claiming the pleasure all his own, instead of having been shared by us both or all?

Post-a-day 2021

^Still had to think about it, but I got it the first time 😉

Speedy chatter

Riding in the car with my mom today, I kept noticing how quickly I was talking. I was just so excited to share all that I was sharing with her, say what I was saying, that I was saying it as fast as I could manage while still being understood.

I felt silly yet cute at the same time, like a little kid who’s just super excited to tell his mom about what happened at school today(!). 😛

I haven’t been calling my mom quite as much the past couple weeks, intentionally so, and that has been good for me. I had gotten really, really lovely for a while, and so called her way more often than usual, just to have someone with whom to speak. But I was able to settle myself down and focus on other things I want to do in my day, instead of calling her several times a day. Now, we are back to talking only once or twice a day, for the most part.

But that leaves me with more to say whenever we are together now, especially considering how we don’t talk for very long whenever we do talk on the phone now. It is usually just a quick check-in, not real conversation on much. So, when we are together, I always seem to have so much to say, even if I hadn’t realized it beforehand.

Though, I think I am also just really excited to have someone in person with whom to speak…

In other words, I really am just like that little kid who is super excited to tell all about his awesome day at school today(!). 😀

And I love it.

Post-a-day 2021

^Whoo! Almost missed it this time!

Frenching

Today, I posed a question to myself. Though, I didn’t actually have words to the question until after I answered it. You see, I was looking at myself in the mirror, about to go downstairs to go on an afternoon walk (since I still can’t run after my accident three weeks ago). In my head was French and the excitement of living in France as an adult – something I have only dreamt of doing, but have tasted as a student – due to this Netflix show called Emily In Paris.

I was somewhat lonesome today, and wanted a movie or series to keep me company while I cooked for a long while. I somehow ended up with Emily In Paris, and fell in love. We had a full and satisfying relationship all day long today (think Jim Gaffigan on Netflix shows being like dating), and I was taking an unwanted but necessary break to go on my walk (got to get those hundred miles in somehow). And so, I’m looking in the mirror, French and Frenchmen and France and chocolatines in my head. And I somehow answer this unsaid question aloud, in French.

I say first, before seeing myself in the mirror, “Bah ouais. Je ne parle pas le français comme langue maternelle. Ce n’est pas ma langue maternelle. Mais j’adore le parler….”

Pourquoi ? someone asks in my head.

“Parce que quand je parle le français…, je me sens…,” and I now look directly at myself in this Masaie mirror on the wall, halted just before the first step downward. “Je me sens… un peu sexy…,” and I smile as I admit it, adding raised eyebrow as and a head tilt at the second feeling, “tellement à l’aise… et,” and this last is he hardest to admit, “comme quelqu’un qui en vaut l’envie. Je veut dire, quelqu’un qui mérite être envié…,” and I look at myself with these words having been said aloud, experiencing the fullness of their truth, and somewhat being that person envying his girl in the mirror – woman in the mirror – and I smile, fully content in that moment, give one final glance to the freckles around my nose, and head down the stairs and out the front door for a hearty walk in the chilly late afternoon air, under the overcast, Fall sky.

As I began my walk, I realized that my unsaid question – it felt a bit like playing Jeopardy, I suppose 😛 – was, “Why learn a foreign language?”

I contemplated this on my walk, and even recorded myself for a bit, just to see what it was like as a means of keeping track of my thoughts. (It was cool, but I’m not sure it is my style for sharing those thoughts with others.) I repeated my earlier statements on speaking French, but added the question to the beginning, and continued my statements with a further idea: When I speak English, these are not the ways that I feel. By speaking French, I have discovered and continue to discover things within myself that I previously had not known. By speaking a language different from my native language, I get to experience myself and life in a new way. And that is possibly the best and most valuable part of speaking a different language.

And, to be clear, this is not due simply to saying words in a foreign tongue. It is by having learned the language, which means experiencing its people and culture, as well as its use, that I have gained access to these formerly-foreign parts of myself. It is the Frenchness within me that I have learned and found throughout the process of learning to speak French, the language. I always support immersion as a necessary part of learning a language, because the language and culture not only go hand in hand, but cannot be separated from one another and still remain true to who and what they are.

So, why learn a foreign language? To discover how life and you are better than you ever imagined. 😉

Yeah 🙂

P.S. For those who do not know French and have not already stuck that paragraph into Google Translate, what I had said roughly translates in English to, “Well, yeah. I don’t speak French like a native speaker. I’m not a native speaker of French. But I love speaking it. Why? Because, when I speak French, I feel… I feel… a bit sexy…, entirely at ease…, and that I am someone worth envying.”

Post-a-day 2020

Late-night calls

For the second night in a row, instead of going to bed when I was feeling like doing so, I ended up on the phone with a good friend of mine in and from Australia.

And, because it was early afternoon for him, he wasn’t in much of any hurry to get off the call…, so we talked for a good while.

However, both times we ended up spending some good, dedicated time to my playing around on the piano, singing songs for him (and for me) to enjoy. It was actually quite funny yesterday, because he was just on his way home from a tough day of work, end of the workweek, and had been thinking about a nap… so, once again, we came very close to his falling asleep while I sang to him. How adorable, right? Haha

Anyway, I love it, and I love this friend. As we discussed tonight, we both really would like for scientists to get their acts together around the world, and figure out this teleportation thing already. 😛 We miss seeing one another (and I don’t just mean because of the current state of affairs, but because of our being all the way around the world from one another$.

By the way, did you know that Australia is approximately 77% the size of the USA? I had absolutely no idea that Australia was that large – not a clue. And I have definitely looked at it on many a map and many a digital map… nonetheless, I was utterly unaware of this fact… approximately 7.6 million km squared to 9.8 million km squared. Crazy, right? But, yet, also not… also, they have a huge dessert in the middle, in which no one lives, so they don’t have as much habitable land, but still… Alaska has a bunch of uninhabitable land, too… hmm… I’ll have to check what the habitable land of each country is, because the population of Australia is ridiculously low for its land size.

Anyway, I’m exhausted… goodnight!

Post-a-day 2020

Fear

Tonight, I had a conversation that I was worried about having – I was afraid of it, and I didn’t know how to have it, and I was afraid of it bringing forth shame for myself regarding past events (although I am not ashamed of them anymore, it felt like this conversation could bring back those upsetting thoughts of shame)…

And I knew the conversation would be best had, and not left milling in my mind, making me ever the more uncomfortable, eventually to be come ‘comfortable’ by familiarity with the discomfort…

And so I had the conversation.

I was honest and open, and I shared how I wasn’t sure what I needed out of the conversation, other than merely having it, and how I wasn’t sure what would be best to do about the concern I had/have, and that I was afraid to have the conversation, but knew it was best had and not left quiet – staying quiet and convincing myself that I was overreacting was what got me into trouble with the last stuff in the first place…

And the conversation went really well.

We don’t yet know what all is best to be done about the concern I had/have, but we have come up with a start.

And that feels good.

And it feels good that it is a “we” working on the matter, and not just a nervous “I”.

I am so grateful.

I told my cousin that this is a week about trusting oneself, and tonight’s conversation was just another one of those amazing moments of how beautiful it is when we trust ourselves truly.

Gratitude.

🙂

Post-a-day 2019

People

You know that feeling when you enjoy spending time with someone, and it’s unofficially time to leave, but you don’t want to leave, because you’d much prefer to continue talking with that person, but you know that any lull in the conversation likely would bring about the awareness of it being time to leave one another’s presence, and so you grab for just about any topic of discussion, and you suddenly realize that you’re talking about what feels like some of the most pointless of subjects, but you simultaneously know that it is fully point-filled, because all you’d wanted was to continue talking with that person, and here you have achieved just that?

Yeah… it’s a silly feeling, but I enjoy it anyway.

It has me wonder if things wouldn’t be easier just declaring that ‘I like talking with you and I want to continue talking with you,’ but then I recall that the whole reason I didn’t do that in the first place was out of concern for the person misunderstanding and being weirded out…

It doesn’t mean necessarily anything beyond just wanting to continue talking…, but it often is difficult for people to see that I might not be hinting at something else, but I might just mean exactly what I say.

(People really don’t do that, I find…)

In some cases, however, I want to continue talking because I just want to be around the person and be interacting with the person… that’s most of those cases, actually.

I really am not aiming to jump your bones here – I just like spending time with you.

But when do people say that?

When do people hear things like that?

When do people mean that, even if they don’t say it aloud?

I recently did this, actually(!!!).

I told a guy that I really enjoyed talking with him, and then he tried to kiss me(!). (Little bit o Hashtag outrage, right?)

So, yeah… that didn’t really work out well… I just enjoyed talking with him, and I meant exactly what I’d said with that statement…, but he totally didn’t believe me, nor that my words were exactly as I’d chosen them to be because they were what I’d meant, and not because I’d wanted to hint at something else…

Hmm…

Anyway, it’s a thought…

Post-a-day 2019

Friends

Tonight, we had a dinner: three moms and three daughters.

The mom’s could have talked all night, if we had let them.

We daughters could have talked all night, if one of us hadn’t had to get to bed for an early morning and long day tomorrow.

When we switched to any combination of us talking to one another, the conversation hit a new seemingly infinite possibilities for continuing all night.

In short, it was a dinner of friends.

I have felt for a while now that there is always something that can be said with friends… yes, silence is comfortable, but it is only there when wanted…, otherwise, there is always something new and exciting to be discussed – friends often can hardly wait to share about this or that, and they love listening to the this or thats of one another, and they always inspire new this and thats for one another to share…

With non-friends, we run out of things to say, and then sit in odd silence (which is in great contrast to the comfortable silence that can occur among friends).

And tonight was a night of friends, despite the fact that I’d only met the one mother-daughter once, and my mom hadn’t met them before tonight.

There’s something about friends that doesn’t necessarily have to do with time… more a matter of connection, I guess it is…

I’m not sure we three daughters could have been much different from one another on paper…, but we connected so comfortably, that we might as well have been friends for years.

🙂

Yes, it was a very good night.

I love true friends.

Post-a-day 2019