paid raze i paid her the best compliment i could think of, and then i suggested she chew on it a little. like a piece of gum. like juicy fruit. she paid me back with the way she smiled, uncertain at first, as close to laughing as a smile can get without breaking into laughter by the time i was walking away. 140723 ... flowerock I enjoy being paid compliments, I feelike I have compliment_debt. I am often nervous to give out compliments because sometimes they are misinterpreted or I am just too personal or detailed about it... I get caught up and go on and on about it like I am in love with them and possibly stalking them. i feel overly_sincere and cannot control it... I have been thinking of a co worker. She's also a girl so i feel that it is more socially acceptable to compliment someone of like gender. I thought up all the things I felt about her and tried to form an acceptable compliment but it was all so long and detailed, I settled on I just love who you are at work. but that doesn't sound quite right either... so I just smile and chat in passing... on another paid related note... I get paid tomorrow, I hope my direct deposit works, that d be sweeeet! 140723 ... raze i think "i love who you are" is a really beautiful thing to say to someone, whatever the context. but it can be tricky sometimes, not getting a little skittish about paying someone a compliment that really has meaning to you. which is funny, when you really think about it. i mean, i've had friends where i would have liked to have told them i loved them, in a non-romantic way, but i was pretty sure it would either be taken the wrong way or they'd look at me like i was nuts. it'd be nice if we could just say what we felt about people when we felt it and not worry about how anyone would take it. honesty and applesauce. that's the ticket. 140723 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Today I went to a restaurant for lunch with a photographer semi-friend - not a non-friend, just that I only knew him before from the picture-taking he did at poetry events. Before, he'd said he'd like to take pictures of my face sometime, and indicated that he thought I'd have good ideas about pictures in general even though I'm not a visual artist. The first time I didn't answer, ruling out flirtation (nothing against flirting in general, just that he's about twenty years older than me and it would seem incongruous) but thinking that he wanted to take studio portraits that I'd have to pay a lot of money for. But then he repeated his request a second time when I saw him again at the Tuesday poetry night and I asked point-blank about whether money would be involved. He said no, just that it'd be interesting to do some photo portraits. So. Restaurant. We talked about Kirsten-subjects like Ezra Pound (his views on poetry and rhythm, his fascism and adulation of Mussolini and what could've started that - he didn't really agree with the thesis of my MA project as I described it to him, but then I'm not sure I do either, and then his inaccurate but evocative translations of Chinese poetry) and Photographer-subjects like the light spectrums of streetlights, the steampunk aesthetic as relates to tobacco pipes, and his own life. He's tied to his parents' house right now more than I am; his mother is physically weak and needs care and cooking, but in a somewhat surreptitious way, since she doesn't like to think she's being coddled. And even though he lives in the richer part of my general neighbourhood, he doesn't have a lot of money of his own because work (like for me) is only part-time - and that right now is in tech repair and not photography. But he wants to get back into the art more seriously, not for money, but for interest's sake. The non-money type of interest. And then I felt embarrassed when he paid for my lunch. Even if it was only twelve or so dollars in all, it felt like I was being... would coddled be the word now too? Paying-for would be merely convention for a romantic date, a sort of compliment, gender-skewed as it is, but here I felt like I was suddenly the child in the equation. Silly, of course. I don't mind people doing nice things for me. I just mind the fact that money exists, sometimes. But good Korean food! I now know what kimchi is: vegetables in sour marinade. A bit too strong for me, so I'm glad I had the dumpling appetizer instead. And the main meal with beef and chicken and rice and vegetables with a light sesame-seed sauce was better than it sounds from a plain description like this. Why is money the thing everyone wants? I want food. Interesting and delicious food. And money, I admit. But I wouldn't want money if money weren't a thing. Stupid overdetermined number-paper (that's my academic Marxist critique - you can tell it's academic and all because it's got the word "overdetermined" in it). 140723 ... flowerock kimchi = fermented veggies 140723 what's it to you? who go blather from