Subjective Intimacies
3:20 PM, She told me that she likes my hair short. Then she smiled and looked away, shifting her body slightly. I don’t really know her. We danced together at a night club about a year ago: good for nods of acknowledgment when we run into each other now. She mentions the “glass half full or half empty” thing as we chat and I wonder to myself what’s half empty in her life. It’s late, though. The lights swoop and flutter around us. I tell her it was nice seeing her again. She gives me another smile. I leave.
It’s Thursday afternoon now and I have Bowie on the CD player.
I’ve been thinking:
Long distance relationships are hard. Decisions that would be quick and smooth as silk become fraught with complications and hesitant uncertainties. I can’t be with Julia now — we both know why, but that knowledge helps not at all. I once wrote a story about change and distance. It never sold but I like it anyway. Now it seems that I am learning a lot more about change, distance, and whether your glass is half full or half empty — much to my sadness at times. Perhaps I should re-write the story.
It was called, “Cherry Lipstick”.
Folks on the Diary-L mailing list have been discussing online journals in terms of maturing forms of expression, criticism, and quality or growing lack thereof. I’ve found the conversation to be both annoying and enlightening. Online journals are very much a new flavor in this nearly post-millennial land. Though they’ve been around for a bit it seems that notice is now growing more widespread. Critical analysis is happening, and I agree that it will continue, however “quality vs. dreck” assessments are pretty shaky. Especially in a medium so new and so intimately subjective. The taste of this wine is personal, you have to roll it around in your mouth and enjoy the shadings. Any journal, if true (and sometimes even when not) has the goods. Presentation and polish make some easier to consume, and a few experiential glasses are definitely more full than others — but you can catch a buzz from all of them.
Or: you get back what you bring to this exhibitionistic cocktail party…
So it’s all stuttering lights and heartbeat rhythm in the club: smoke, sweat, and alcohol-flushed skin. This guy is watching a girl. She’s pretty. He’s nervous.
I observe his approach. He leans in, smiles, says something. She’s polite — but not buying. He nods and moves away, bright smile, fingers snapping to the music. Once out of her view, the smile and jaunty finger-snapping go away. He’s just a guy moving through the crowd then. Looking for something he may not find tonight.
Everybody is looking, I guess. A quality journal, a close relationship — a dance.
What do you think: half full or half empty?
— JWR, 8/6/98