Sometimes there are people who go ridiculously far out of their way for you.  Sometimes there are people who go above and beyond anything you could possibly expect for reasons that you may never understand.

It's really hard for me when people do that.

I am not very good at taking kindness from people.  I'm rather suspicious of motives most, if not all, of the time.  I am not very good at telling people how important they are to me or how much the little things mean.  I am not very good at taking compliments.  I am not very good at believing that people do nice things (for me) for no other reason than they care.

It's just not in my nature.  But I still make the effort.

So, I try to find the perfect thing.

There is no one perfect thing.  It varies from person to person and situation to situation.  There are hundreds of thousands of perfect things, but for any given moment, there is only one that fits.  I have both given and been given perfect things throughout my life, but never have I seen them duplicated.  It's subjective and personal and, most importantly, it's a surprise.  The perfect thing is NEVER something that has been asked for.

The perfect thing is thank you and I love you and a thousand other things that I can't ever seem to find the right words for.  It is exceedingly rare to find that for any person, though some are harder than others.  For Parizad I found the perfect thing, in concept if not in design, when I was given the key to her heart.  Princess has found the perfect thing for me twice, once with perfume and again with penguins.

But the perfect thing isn't always an object, and it usually isn't something expensive or elaborate.  It can be something that comes from the heart, like a song or a poem; it can be something made, like dinner or a scarf; it can be a hand-me-down or a found object; it can be anything with meaning, no matter how obscure the meaning is, and the meaning is what defines it as the perfect thing.

There is a perfect thing for every person.  There is a perfect thing for every moment.  Finding it is hard to do.  I am constantly on the lookout for perfect things for everyone I know.  Sometimes I know what it is, but can't track it down, sometimes I know I'm looking, but not what for. 

I am in search of a perfect thing.  I found something that will suffice, but it's just not perfect...  and until I can achieve that, for this moment, for this person, I will likely never be satisfied.

What I find amusing and annoying at the same time is that I've known, for months, that I would *need* a perfect thing for one particular person and couldn't come up with the answer.  It was only ever a matter of time.  I hoped that it would be longer before I needed it, but now I'm stuck, not knowing, hoping that what will suffice will somehow actually suffice.

But it won't convey all the things that I want it to.  Then again, maybe all I really need to convey right now is "Thank you."  I think it does that.  I just wish it would do more.

One thing is for certain, though, I never EVER stop looking.  Not for now, not for then, not for the future.  There is always a perfect thing, and I know it when I see it.

~FG };^>

Seriously.  There are some things that are not supposed to be said out loud.

I should not have said that.

To him.

I should not be allowed to talk to people.

But I'm going to anyway...

~FG };^>

I love the Anonymous Message Server.

So I'm a talker.  I downright babble...  a LOT.  All the time, in fact.  It's just in my nature.  There are very few times when I don't have something to say on almost any given topic.  I've been like this all my life.

I can't say that I babble just to hear my own voice.  If that were the case, then I'm sure I would talk a lot more than I already do...  probably to myself more often as well, it's just that my thoughts race so fast that I can't keep up with them.  Saying some of it out loud allows me to rein in some of those thoughts, maybe slow things down in my head...  and also to better grasp what is going on, racing through my mind.

Most people tune me out.

No, let me rephrase that.  Almost all people tune me out at some point or another.  My mother has done it all my life.  My brother has done it most of his.  My closest friends do it.  It's a percentage thing, most of the time.  At best, my closest girlfriends can get, maybe, 75-80% of what comes out of my mouth...  but even that high a percentage is rare.

The reality is, for as much as I talk, I don't *say* all that much.  Mostly, it's just commentary on the mundane things, stories that I may have told before or am trying to perfect as performance stories (personal performances, not stage performances, but sometimes those too).  Verbose is not an unfair word to use in reference to me...  even those who primarily read what I have to say would agree.

This is what I'm accustomed to.  This is what I know.  All of this, I understand.  No one is going to listen to all the crap that comes out of my mouth and I do not expect them to.  As long as the important points are garnered, everything is fine.  As long as people know that they can ask about things I've already said, I know they'll understand eventually, if not in that moment.

All of a sudden, things are changing.  The way I operate, perhaps, needs to be reevaluated.  I understand how people react to me (as a whole) and I am comfortable within that, but all of a sudden (or so it seems), people are reacting to me in ways that are foreign to me.

I am a performer at heart.  I crave the spotlight and adore being the center of attention...  at least in groups.  I don't, so much, like being the center of attention in a one-on-one situation.  One-on-one I feel like I'm monopolizing things, and if I'm there with someone, I want them to be an active participant in the conversation as well.  It's the trading of ideas, barbs, jokes, wit, whatever that makes for good conversation, not me off on some monologue.  If too much attention is directed at me, by the only other person with me, I am uncomfortable, I feel exposed.

I was having dinner with a friend a couple of weeks ago when I first started thinking about this.  He's rather reserved and quiet, but somehow got talking about himself, disclosing things that I had suspected, but only because they are aspects (but not specifics) that apply to most people that I truly consider friends.  He became uncomfortable when he decided to start feeling exposed and said "You know, Fyre, this is why I hang out with you...  you talk a lot, so I don't have to."

Now, most people, when they say "You talk a lot" don't mean it in a complimentary fashion.  I believe that he did.  At least, I took it that way, and I think I remember him reassuring me that he meant it as a compliment, or at least not as a slam.  What came from it, though, was that same night, he started filling in details, petty, stupid details from things I had previously told him.  I was awed by the fact that he actually listens to a ridiculously high percentage of what comes out of my mouth.  Again, I talk a lot, but at the same time, I don't really say all that much in all those words.  For some reason that is beyond my ken, he absorbs the information...  even the pointless fluff.

I thought he was the exception to the rule.  At least, until today.

Today I had lunch with another friend of mine...  but not a close friend.  I suppose a friend-ranking entry will be in order one of these days.  Someone whose company I enjoy, but who I have no contact with outside of work.  Any word less than "friend" would belittle how I feel about him, but I seriously have no contact whatsoever with him outside of work.  At all.  Call me when you're single, babe. *wink*

*a-HEM*

So, anyway, I had lunch with this friend of mine.  He's usually the sort to laugh and joke and mock without getting too deep into things...  usually, but not always.  Today he decided to "try something different", so he sat there and gave me his undivided attention while I babbled on and on about falling in a hole and having to sit and not do anything for a full day and how I fell in the hole and how people reacted to it and all the sorts of things I babble on about.  But instead of his usual interjections, he just sat there and listened. 

It turned into a psychoanalysis of sorts.  I mean, I suspect this particular person to be a whole lot more psychic than he realizes, maybe even significantly more than I realize.  He asks the "right" questions and I think he already knows the answer he's looking for when he starts his probing and asks the questions that will lead to answer he already (thinks he) has.  I fell into his trap.  I told him things that I wasn't expecting to disclose, while keeping some things (odd things, don't know why) to myself.

It made me very nervous...  having him be so intently focused on me, on what I was saying, on the "hidden meaning" behind my words.  While part of that, I'm sure, is that it's not something I'm accustomed to, part of it was also being the center of this one person's attention.  By the time we parted ways, I was shaking.  He made me very nervous...  I'm not accustomed to that sort of attention.  It's unnerving.

But, you know, the part that really gets me about this whole essay that I've written is that I don't even know what I want from it.  I got used to people mostly not listening to whatever it is that I had/have to say.  I understand how to work within the behaviors that others have trained me to expect.  When someone, or multiple someones, change the rules on me, it leaves me flustered.  I don't know if I should try to temper myself around them, be more careful about what I say, or if I should just try to accept the fact that sometimes people actually listen to ALL the words that come out of my mouth...  and hope that I don't wind up saying far too much while in my comfort babble zone...

~FG };^>

My ex-mother-in-law used to use that phrase and it's an apt one for this moment.

I went to work on Monday, after falling into the hole.  I figured if I just babied it a little bit, I'd be ok, but I failed to think about how ridiculously far away my office is from...  well... everything.  Babying it or not, by the end of the day IT HURT.  It hurt a lot and I was almost in tears pretty much whenever I moved.  I could stand ok, or sit ok, but moving from one position to another wreaked havoc on my joints.

I took yesterday off of work, and that was (emotionally) almost more painful than the physical symptoms of my leg.  The pain moved through my left side.  It appears to be working its way up my leg.  So on Tuesday, my ankle didn't really hurt anymore, but my knee really did and my hip started to.  Today I'm not in so much pain, especially in the knee, but my hip is a little wonky.

I was bored to tears all day yesterday.  I spent a lot of time playing guitar and finishing my new song (which is done and it is GOOD).  Of course, I can't go to the open mic tonight and play it, because I should not, by any means, be walking as far as the Lark Tavern is...  either direction, but especially both.  I think that's the most horrible aspect of this whole hole ordeal...  not being able to play and having something new that I'm really excited about.

I don't think I'm really limping today, and I'm not really in actual pain anymore, but my left side is still a bit achy and I'm not walking right.  I realize that, at this moment, I have a hitch in my gitalong. 

~FG };^>

Yeah, I'm known for doing really stupid things.  So much so that Girl has even coined a phrase for them.  You know, it's not even like it's really always my own doing.  Much of the time, it's circumstances out of my control.

So I was changing a light bulb when I blew a fuse.  Lost all the power in my apartment.  I lit a candle and asked Chaos to come down to the basement with me.  He thought I was scared.  I wasn't, I just wanted someone to come with me, but I didn't know why.

The basement light was on in the back, where we went in, but as we approached the front of the building (where the fuse box is) I noticed that there was no bulb in that socket, and the string to turn it on was missing anyway.

I was looking in the mostly dark for the fuse box, by candlelight...  and then I fell into a hole.

I kid you not.  There was a 4x8 hole that was a little more than waist deep.  If it were any deeper I would be calling it a pit.  I probably already could.  My brother saw the hole and figured I had, too, but no, I was too busy looking for the fuse box that the hole was directly in front of.  I messed up my leg a little and needed help climbing back up out of the hole.  Guess that's why I wanted my brother to come with me.

Flipped the switch to reset the fuse and went back upstairs.

To still no power.  Apparently it was the wrong switch.  Chaos wouldn't go back down and try again, claiming that it wasn't going to work anyway.  I wound up sitting in the dark, playing my guitar by candlelight, with my leg elevated and iced.  It took about an hour to get through to my landlord's house and another hour for him to get here and turn the power back on.

When I took Spawn to see Everything is Illuminated, I fell in love with the song that played at the end of the movie.  We ran into Mom and Dick after the movie and Mom started telling me that Eugene Hutz was the lead singer for a Ukrainian punk band...  the band that played the song that caught me.

Well, of course, the first thing that I did was look around on the internet and see what I could find.  The band is called Gogol Bordello and I went and bought their CD.  I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I like it.

I really hate going out by myself.  I much prefer going out when I know there will be people around that I already know.  That said, my friends often don't want to go out and do the sorts of things that draw me, so it's either a matter of flying solo or not going out at all.

I can't say that one or the other is my primary choice.  It really depends on the night.  I do everything I can to convince other people to join me, but all too often they either don't want to go out at all or they don't want to do whatever it is I'm doing.

Last night was a CD release party for a CD that's not ready to be released - lol.  I like John Brodeur and I haven't gotten to hear much of his stuff, so I figured this would be a nice way to make myself out of context, be supportive to a musician I respect and see regularly at the open mic (he hosts) and to get out and have a good time.

Chaos and his friend invited me out to the Bleeker, but I don't see the draw to a regular bar with the same DJ that plays every week vs. a CD release party (of sorts...  or not...)  I was flying solo and not particularly happy about it.

Got to the Lark a little before 10, figuring the show would start around 10, 10:30.  No one really around that I knew, but Tess saw me and waved :-D  I halfway overheard her lean to her friend and say "She is such a nice person."  That makes me smile.  She also came up to me later to tell me (again) that she's my biggest fan.  LOL.  It makes me feel good that she reaches out as much as she does.  Now I just have to get myself to a point where I ask her to book me.  That's a stumbling block to consider.

That's the tagline for the movie I went to see last night.

It couldn't be more accurate.

*looks up at title*