sometimesaway

http://kevan.org/johari?name=adambgoofy

my personality?

--------------


I'm watching Charlie Brown's Valentine special. It's so damn cute. Poor Charlie Brown's got all kinds of women up in his grill, but he never gets the little red haired girl. Poor bastard. All the ladies on the street like him, but he never understands it when they tell him so. The only one who ignores him is the little red hair girl...and she's the only one he wants, of course.

I looked at the results of my Johari window, and found myself reflected there. It wasn't the quantity of my friend's responses, nor the details of their choices that struck me most. What reflected me most, I think, is the wide variety of what was picked.

No two people picked the all the same things. No description was chosen by more than a few people. On everybody elses list, there's a part in the bottom that says something like, "90% of people thought John Doe was intelligent," or something of the sort. I had no such part on my page, because nothing was chosen enough to go over 50%.

I had no high percentage on any single description. Every word that was chosen was chosen arough 10% of the time, rarely higher. The highest were loving, searching, and reflective...all just above 30% or so. There were only a few words left that somebody, at some point, had not picked to describe me.

I am, it seems, just a little bit of everything. That suit fits me well. It gives me curves, brightens my complextion, and leaves no details to my contours. If I were a car, I'd be one man's sports car and another man's family vehicle. A transformer, of sorts. A cameleon, perhaps.

This leaves me wide open. It forces me to take up no space, by being so spatial. Just what and who am I, if those I know and love have such widely held intuitions on what I represent? I am, sometimes, just whatever it is that you may need me to be. Other times, I'm whatever I have to be. More often than anything else, I'm too confused to know the difference.

What do I feel like? I feel like the confetti poured over a crowd during a celebration. Volumes and volumes of bright pastel coloring, filling up the streets with its size, yet being so small and ineffectual at the same time.

Today is Valentines day. A holiday created for the economic success of a society. Let me be clear...there is no holiday that is not created for the success of the society. All holidays were created with will, and with thought. The fact that Valentines day was created a bit later, and with a bit more bluntness, does not make it unacceptable for practice.

I sent some flowers here and there. Called my mom. Spoke to a friend who broke up with his girl only yesterday. The time passes and I'm now here in front of my computer screen. Another day without work and more money spent than what was really needed. The coffee from my last drink grows ever cooler as it sits next to my clicking and clacking fingers. It's ignored, for now. Nothing a microwave couldn't fix.

I can hear the clock ticking in my kitchen. It sounds just like it should. It's the space in-between the clicks that defines the life that slips out of my fingers. The hard stacatto beats of the clicking clock do not frighten me, but the silence inbetween them shakes my soul up like a dry matini. Or like confetti poured over a screaming crowd of celebrants.

I fill up the spaces between you with all that I am. All that spatial success. All your opinions on who I am. I'm so much. So much but so little of it all. I sometimes might fall on your head, that you might brush me into your hand to hold me. I might fall to your feet, for you to walk with more grace. I might, on occassion, flutter before your face, so that you may have something to be angry or annoyed with. Or dissapointed at. Whatever it is you need, just let me know. Let me know with all that you can't say...all that you try to hide.

When you hide a truth, it seems to me like it's like painting that truth with ever more intense layers of day-glow paint. Over time, everything we're ashamed of is neon pink. We carry it around like a brick on our shoulders. A bright, shiny, neon pink rock, screaming with life. Oh what joy and folly we find, as we pretend nobody can see it! What wonderful plays of magesty and might we make out of our short lives, while we dance around one anothers neon pink secrets.

With all that I am, there is so much to land on. So much to feel and be. So many nooks and crevices to leap down into. With my heart being so much confetti, I could be anywhere.

I'm here for now. Doing this for now. Playing this part once more.

Some people have asked me, in the face of my job troubles, why I don't move home sooner. The quick answer, and the most honest, is that I want to leave on my own terms. I don't want to be chased out of Portland with no money and nowhere else to turn. I want to walk away with my head up, and my life in my hands. Things have been too precarious for far too long. Once I get my house in order, I'll turn over the key to the landlord.

I hope you all had a good day. I know I did.

May your glowing pink neon rocks shine bright and beautiful tonight. May your dance around yourselves be particularily stirring this evening. May all that you need fall exactly at your feet, and all that you fear pass silent into the night.


I love you all


Adam