Just Good Friends…

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a little FISH (as in Derrick William Dick, that is) – I hadn’t heard this song in so long, and tonight on the way home from Aikido I heard it, and I had to replay my favorite verse three or four times:

So are we left to chance meetings,
Is that all we can depend on?
Resigned to raise glasses
in anonymous cafes.
Reciting our failures,
as if we really needed that proof of regret,
Over what we have and what should have been
Darlin’ are we just good friends?

chorus:
What would you do,
If I got down on my knees to you?
Would you hold it against me?
Would you stand me in line?
What would you do,
If I opened up my heart to you?
Would I just be another who’s wasting his time,
Darling are we just good friends?

the first flower [with apologies to Thurber]

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for Kathy, and David, and their yet-to-be munchkin…

 

One day, the first flower appeared on the Earth (perhaps the first in the entire Universe).

It was a mutation, of course. In today’s parlance, we would call it a misfit, an oddball; an outcast.

Mother Nature had grown plants before, short and tall, green, with flowing leaves of various sizes. But this one had a genetic “tic”, and some of its cells morphed into something new. A bud formed, and the cells took on color, a color different from the green of its stem and leaves.

The rain and sunshine fed it and the cells in the bud filled with color and grew and grew and grew until there were so many of them the gentle skin of the bud burst and the petals of the world’s first flower faned out into the air and caught the glint of the sun.

There was no one around. There were not yet animals of any kind on the planet. There was life, but it was plant life, and sea weeds, and moss. Humans were not even yet a possibility.

But there it was, the first flower. And though no one was watching it, though no one was around to applaud its arrival, though no human was there to water it, stroke its soft petals, pluck it, put it in a vase, place it in a lover’s hand, or lay it upon a loved one’s grave, there stood the first flower blooming, showing its new-found colors to the whole universe, soaking up the sun, drinking in the rain, and dancing in the wind.

prove it…

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I spent another afternoon at yet another temp agency doing tests. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I am in the position of having to sit down and take inane (and might I add, badly designed) computer based tests to show that I can:

 

A) type

B) use a number pad

C) navigate MS Office app’s (because all businesses know that the only way to get something done is to do it in an MS application… not like there aren’t more elegant/efficient word processors or, say, layout programs)

D) can fill out fifteen forms; by hand

[this includes a work history form, despite having brought a much more thorough, beautifully laid out resume with me]

 

As I made my way back home, three hours later (no joke), I thought about the time that had elapsed; I thought about how, in general, so much of my life these days is spent… proving myself.

 

I think it’s something my partnered, happily employed friends can’t possibly understand; between job hunting and online personals an enormous amount of time and energy every day goes towards continually proving myself — proving myself worthy of being hired and worthy of being loved.

 

This is energy my peers who have already found their dream job (or at least something stable and in the field of study they spent their college years pursuing), and a mate, do not have to spend. And no wonder, then, that they seem more well-rested, buoyant, and productive. They simply don’t have to prove themselves every day.

 

Now, I understand – jobs of every stripe can be challenging; and relationships, even well-balanced, loving ones, take work. But that’s different; having to take time to talk something through with a spouse is different than having to earn their initial trust, affection and support.

 

I can’t help but wonder what I could be accomplishing in my life if I didn’t have to expend so much energy every day constantly trying to prove my worth as a human being.