September 26, 2008

  • Dinner Party

    I blame Virginia Woolf for the ways in which I think about the world now. I have, perhaps, no right to do so, mostly because stream-of-consciousness is not really a novelty. It does not belong to one author, but is the process by which our minds operate on a daily basis. And yet, I can't help feeling that listening to To The Lighthouse on CD while driving to and fro in my car daily has something to do with my awareness and my observations lately.

    Like the way, at a dinner I attended tonight in honor of a friend's birthday, I was intensely conscious of the man sitting next to me, his discomfort at being the only one who hadn't had his plate brought out to him yet, his irritation at the fact the he may be the reason for the delaying of other folk's meals (since it's rude to eat when not everyone has a plate in front of him), and his further annoyance when, after a few more awkward minutes of waiting people seemed to pick up a fork here and there and sample and soon devour their meals (I was guilty of eating some ceviche). Or the way that Bill, across the table, whom I've met once before and who was the only one at the table I knew (my friend sat at the other table, and since we were a large party I spoke to her only twice throughout the night), kept looking at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention. How easy it was for me to pick up on his mannerisms, his eyes, his smiles. And the irritation I felt at being noticed in that way at all (which has nothing to do with him really, and everything to do with me). Or the way that Uriel, the nice man on the other side of me insisted on staring directly into my eyes as he talked of Columbia where he's from, which of course reminded me of how awkward I feel staring directly into someone's eyes as they talk, and which resulted in a flutter of eyelids as though a fly had just landed on my pupil.

    I am intensely aware of everything tonight and I am slightly irritated by it all. The person I spent hours on the phone with last night called me again today and I couldn't wait to get off the phone.The obvious things are too glaring, too forthright and the small things, tonight, make all the difference. The simple things are sexy. Like a man's forearm wearing a nice heavy watch. And small crooked smiles.

    Tonight I wish all I had was simplicity.

Comments (6)

  • The small things go a long way... I like going all out once in a while, but it's the smallest and simplest things that goes a long way...

    D

  • Sometimes it's the small things that add up to a bigger thing, a bigger feeling. You can't say why you feel or think a certain thing; because it was made up of all the small things you noticed along the way.

  • You know sometimes things get like that. I went to a Met game the other day and I swear I could not enjoy myself. The people were just annoying the crap out of me. Everything they did. Kids running up and down the aisle, people littering, the old lady in front of us constantly nagging her husband. I just wanted to go on a punching spree.

  • true

    simple things are sexy

  • "The simple things are sexy."

    Indeed. Like a strong jawline on a man. Or the way his eyelashes curl. Or how his eyes are the brownish color of almost too dark steeped tea when he hits the lighting just right. Lol! Sorry. You had me thinking. Apparently...

    Peace.

  • very attentive--i like that. and another thing that i noticed is that you write well, real well. perfect punctuation and everything. props just on that and the fact the your thoughts flow in sequences of first second third is even better.

    Rhetoric

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