make_yourself_a_mystery raze you take a picture of yourself on the day the world met you. you leave out half your face, more than half your face, and someone who isn't you and hasn't seen the pieces that aren't there couldn't slot them into place and keep them there with all the glue they've got in their mind. they could guess, or they could try to see you somehow to give guessing a kind way to die, but even then, they wouldn't find you unless you wanted to be found. seeing isn't being seen, isn't understanding, isn't anything more than you set it up to be. there's always an angle. more than one. so invent your own, and don't let anyone give them names you wouldn't give to them yourself. 150827 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Back-to-back poetry nights. I was surprised when I saw an old friend at both (the first I knew she was reading at, but I didn't think she'd come out to the west end of the city for the second). Anyway we got to talking about my inconclusive break-up and she advised me to read a book by a TV personality that said to do something like this in relationships (specifically, women to men). Plus, don't be clingy, don't talk about yourself too much, don't be overbearing. All of which make sense. But then she got to specifics, as if there are rules, like don't call first when you're just getting to know him, always let him pick movies... and I winced inwardly at that one. Why? I hadn't told her, but when we'd gone for a movie, I'd swayed him over to my choice (an action movie). His first choice was an art documentary. Clearly if he were a Strong Manly Man he'd have wanted the action movie, though, so maybe everything else goes out the window? I'm grinning now, but last night I was annoyed, stung by a lingering fear that I'd done things wrong, that I didn't know how to do relationships. So I fired back with a different cliché, "Well, it's no use anyway if there's no chemistry." I meant things in common as well as a mutual attraction, but I attached this concept to a signifier that properly stands for a scientific discipline bearing only tangential relation to this concept. No points for either of us. Nobody wins. Nobody loses, either. But I shouldn't have shown that she annoyed me. I should have applied her own secondhand relationship games to the situation. I should have let my thoughts stay a mystery, my aura soft and fuzzy rather than prickling with perceived offence. Discretion is the better part of velour. 150829 what's it to you? who go blather from