Suburban Sleeplessness

When you try really hard to elicit a response from an otherwise unresponsive individual, often the response is not the one you were hoping for. I field like a cricketer, and attempt to soak up other people. I am so aware of their responses, bodies, idiosyncracies. I notice the way mouths move and the way people hold themselves. And people are so contradictory, and you want so desperately to read them, and they continually resist your efforts. Sometimes I feel addicted to the response. Like poking someone in the eye until they punch you. I am resisting the urge to push things to their limits, to the ends of their possibilities. Perhaps I need for everything to be said, so it can expire and I can end it.

In the coming weeks I want to:

• learn to more adequately control certain impulses
• learn to feel physically without the need to for analysis and (negative) scrutiny
• stop seeking flaws and inadequacies
• learn to be less fervent, intense and insistent.
• make fewer assumptions about people's reactions to me
• not say everything at once
• hide the light slightly (under the bushel of course. God, I can't believe I am considering that, which in fact leads into the next point...)???
• make space for uncomfortable contraditcions.