The last time I experienced real beauty...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Diana Krall...I Get Along Without You Very Well...
Topic: sex/love

I'm listening to Diana Krall, this morning, as I work on some papers/cleaning/errands and it all of a sudden occurred to me why I feel so nostalgic for my time with Brandi, especially our summer in D.C., even though in most substantial ways my life has gotten better since that time...

It's because, today, I have more freedom, more maturity and wisdom, better relationships with people, generally, a more substantial future in front of me -- personally, professionally, financially, and otherwise -- and a far stronger handle on life, generally...

But the one thing that I have less of in my life is what Diana's music is fully imbued with: beauty...

If you've really been in love, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about and what Diana is singing about...

It never ceases to amaze me how many people never take that kind of love seriously and, consequently, never experience one of lifes purest joys...

And it is that kind of sweet, soft joy that is the essence of Diana's music...

And I've only really experienced that particular kind of joy one time in my life...

I experienced it some during my time with Jenny and with other girls that I've dated...

But I've never quite felt it as fully as I did with Brandi...

That feeling of un-self-consciously living in the glow of someone else's life...being dedicated to someone else's joy as much as to your own...loving someone completely...for their faults more than despite them...where a smile or a laugh hangs more in the memory than a place or an activity, because it's that smile or that laugh that you live for...

It's so funny...so many of the things that Brandi and I used to hate about our relationship -- we fought endlessly in private, in public, and without shame, sadly and comically:):) -- are often the very things that I remember fondly, today...not because I want to fight, obviously...but because Brandi was the only other person I had met in my life who was like me in this respect...she fought openly, got angry openly, and was otherwise unashamed of her feelings, even as she worked to be as loving and respectful and decent to others as possible...

I don't think I've ever had that particular kind of relationship with anyone else, other than family...even close friends...

Brandi was just like family, I suppose...Brandi was family...

Which made the connection all the closer...and my nostalgia for it all the stronger...

I've learned in my short time here on this planet that our experience is life is often determined by the people we spend it with...

People like Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr...

...and Brandi Fisher...make that time a very special one...

They make it an experience of beauty that really can't be found in a book or a class or a movie or a story...

Thank you, Fisher, for giving me that experience...

Love, Ben

 

Safety...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Eternal Sunshine...Born into Brothels...
Topic: sex/love
I'm watching Eternal Sunshine for like the ten-billionth time...Melissa got it for Christmas...so it's not like we have to return it, anywhere...and the scenes of intimacy that Joel is trying to hold onto are just so precious and touching...

It's both strange and appropriate that I should be so love-longing on Martin Luther King day...it was something I was so proud of in Brandi's and my relationship...that we were both so eager to do good...especially around race and poverty...King's biggest issues...

I don't think I've ever met someone who was so eager to do good...on race or poverty or any issue, really...since Brandi...

I always said, when we were together...that it was something that we created together...that didn't exist independent of each of us alone...it was an idealism nurtured in our love and our friendship...

And I've never quite seen anything like it, since...anywhere...

It's this priceless moment in time...that's more valuable to me than anything else I might do or have...

What I love about these scenes in Eternal Sunshine...and the whole movie, really...

Is the feeling of safety that these two feel with one another...in a world that otherwise seems kind of cold and scary...

Other than the feeling I had as a kid with my mom...I've only had that feeling two times, before, in my life...that feeling of such total love...with Jenny...my first real love...

And then the second time...

I've only felt it once in the context of growing up and surviving in the big, bad city...in Washington, D.C...I don't think I need to say her name, anymore...

I feel more confident and self-assured and safe, of my own accord, these days...

But I miss that sense of vulnerability...and the sense of safety in the presence of someone who loves me in that way...

I miss it...

I miss having someone inspire me to new heights like that...pornography often doesn't even do much for me, these days...I miss that kind of unconditional love so much...

I've been practicing being more resigned, these days...

More resigned that Brandi and I will never be friends, again...more resigned that people close to me will expect less of themselves...or that I won't find someone to be close with who dares to expect more of themselves...

Maybe...I say to myself...maybe if I don't try so hard...others will try, more, with me...

I don't mean to intimidate people, if I do...I just care about this stuff that much...

But I am a little tired being treated like a pariah by some folks when I just want to have my own mind...and I don't want to be reigned in by folks who haven't earned my trust or respect enough to venture something so arrogant...

But it is lonely...trying to do good...in a world where so many people my age and older or so cynical about whether good can be done...and about the good being done...

Half the beauty of my relationship with Brandi...was having someone to be that vulnerable with...in the big, bad world...and to dream of a better world...and to work, together, and think, together, and talk, together, about how to make that happen...

There's a lot of truth in the line in Good Will Hunting...where Robin Williams is talking with Will and he's saying, "Who do you share your soul with?"...or something to that effect...

And Will (Matt Damon) is listing off names of authors like Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill...

And Robin Williams is like, "But none of those people are alive, Will"...

And that's how I feel much of the time...

The people I commune with are Joseph Nye...and Martha Crenshaw (the really brilliant terrorism expert I've been reading)...and Amartya Sen...and Abraham Maslow...

But they're in books...they're all alive (except for Abraham)...but Robin Williams' point was that they weren't flesh and blood...they were in books...

And I miss communing with someone flesh and blood...

It's what I love about movies...the ability to watch people commune in flesh and blood...in something like real life...

You just can't find that in books, often...at least not in non-fiction of the kind I like to read...To Kill a Mockingbird and Billy Budd had that effect for me...but the movies also brought to life what I read in the book in a way that the book could never completely do on its own...

Kirsten Dunst's character in the movie quotes Alexander Pope...it's the quotation that is the basis for the title of the movie...

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind...
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"...

So I'm practicing resignation...

"This is it," Clementine says, referring to the memory of the day Joel and Clementine first met...as it's being erased...

"I know," says Joel...

"What do we do?" says Clementine...

"Enjoy it."

It's brilliant how director, Michael Gondry, and writer, Charlie Kaufman, set all these scenes in extreme weather...

To bring to life just how safe Joel and Clementine feel in each other's presence...

Like nothing can hurt them...

I want that feeling again...

Not once do Clementine or Joel mention how much money either of them make...or will make...or any of the million stupid distorted priorities that so many older folks have, having lost touch with that kind of love and idealism...

Martin Luther King day is the appropriate day for me to long for that...

Because it was our mutual idealism that made Brandi's and my relationship so special...

And makes me miss it so much...knowing that it is only this kind of shared idealism...that I will ever call love in the future...

I remember walking and driving and talking and fighting and loving on the streets of Washington, D.C., the same way these two love one another in the streets of New York...

There's no price you can put on that...

That feeling of safety...

Why people settle for anything less...I'll never know...

Everybody's gotta learn sometime...everybody's gotta learn sometime...everybody's gotta learn sometime...

Have a great Martin Luther King holiday, everyone...

Love,
Ben

Love happens...
Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: Death Cab for Cutie...A Lack of Color...Damien Rice...The Blower's Daughter...Cake...Never There...
Topic: sex/love
I don't think I've ever been so open to love as I am at this point in my life...and yet, paradoxically...I have more people interested at this point in my life than any other...but I just can't find anyone who inspires me...

I had a good friend send me a link for a website called lovehappens.com...

It's a great little site...that's different than most singles sites...since it's more about getting to know folks and find love than it is with getting laid like a site like adultfriendfinder.com...

I've had some friends and family write some really beautiful things for me to introduce people to me that I really appreciate:):)...and I've seen profiles of some women who've interested me...

Though there's something that tells me that I'll just have to meet someone who really impresses me...

I'll have to meet someone organzing a Rock the Vote voter registration drive like I did with Brandi...or a RESULTS fundraiser...or, if I'm lucky, meet some intellectual/charmer who sweeps me off my feet with her brilliance and insight and sexual prowess:):)LOL:):)...

I haven't met that girl, yet...and I was a little down this weekend thinking about how ready I am to meet her and yet noone I'm just blown over by, as I was with Brandi...

There's a sex columnist, here in Lawrence, who looks interesting...and couple girls from Colorado...and this really sweet but too young, I'm afraid (she's 23) smart and bright-eyed girl from Illinois:):)...

But noone who really bowls me over like Ms. Fisher did the first second time I met her (Brandi and I met a year earlier than the first time I remembered meeting Brandi, when she and her best friend, Janette, came and watched me give an quarter-final impromptu speech when Wichita State hosted the American Forensics Association national tournament that year...I forgot that we met...but I'll never forget meeting this bright-eyed charmer who put together the Rock the Vote voter registration drive for Wichita State the year after I finished competing in speech and debate)...

I want to meet someone who impresses me like that...

But those girls are just kind of rare, I'm learning...

And I'll never find love until I find another one like her...

If you have not heard the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, yet, you should...they are brilliant:):)...some great down-home gospel:):):)...I Shall Not Be Moved...it should be the national anthems for both the Democratic and Republican parties, these days:):):)...dumbasses:):):)...

Have a great day, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

Romantic fantasies of life...and me:):):)...
Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: Everyone says I love you:):):)...Woody Allen's adorable little musical romantic comedy from 1996:):):)...
Topic: sex/love
I couldn't sleep:):):)...

So I put in Woody Allen's sweet if terribly overly-romantic adorable little musical romantic comedy, Everyone says I love you:):):)...

Everyone says I love you on the Internet Movie Database...

My first thought was, "Brandi would LOVE this movie":):):)...

I was a drama snob in college:):):)...until my little friend led me to fall in love again with the American musical, again:):):) (and musicals from abroad, as well, of course:):):)...but most musicals I know are American, of course:):):)...

I thought as I watched a New York setting that I've visited only once with the same best friend and girlfriend:):):)...the thought I've thought for the last 4 years:):):)...but especially the last year or so:):):)...

I miss the romance of that relationship:):):)...I miss the backdrop of D.C. and NYC for our little romantic adventures:):):)...I miss the wine and the picnics and the musicals and the roadtrips and picking someone up from the airport with some floral arrangement every time and finding exotic flowers and the trips that Brandi would plan:):):)...and the mutual idealism...the intelligent discussions:):):)...and the joint activism:):):)...and the active listening:):):)...and the sharing of dreams:):):)...

And as I watched Goldie Hawn's rich, liberal, philanthropic character ran about making donations and giving speeches, I thought:):):)...

"That is the life that Brandi chose":):):)"...she would DEFINITELY love this movie":):):)...

And as I watched that life -- the rich, literate, liberal, philanthropic and UTTERLY NEUROTIC and FAR TOO ROMANTIC life -- unfold on the screen:):):)...

I thought:):):)...

I am SO HAPPY for the life I chose:):):)...

A life dedicated to understanding humanity as realistically as I can muster in my too short little lifetime:):):)...

And how sad a choice the one that Goldie and Brandi made:(:):):)...

Chasing a life of meaning and purpose that JUST CAN'T BE FOUND in that venue, really, at all:):):)...

And how much I've grown since my days with Brandi for those three summer months in Washington, D.C. in 1998 (one of my FAVORITE times of my life:):):)...

How much more realistic AND idealistic I am today than in those days of more blind and romantic idealism:):):)...

How a genuine realism REQUIRES idealism:):):)...

And how most folks -- radicals, liberals, conservatives, communists, socialists, libertarians, anarchists...artists, musicians, writers, teachers, and garage door warehouse workers:):):) -- how they are all MUCH MORE ROMANTIC in all of the most blind and naive ways, than I am:):):)...

And seeing a romantic fantasy like "Everyone says I love you" -- with America's favorite romantic fantasy in the flesh, Julia Roberts -- helps me see just how lost most people are:):):)...

Lost in a combination of cynicism and romantic fantasy:):):)...

Lost in so much blind faith:):):)...and blind cynicism, as well:):):)...

It's sweet and sad all at once, really:):):)...

And makes me VERY HAPPY to be me, really:):):):):):)...

It's a very sweet movie:):):)...

...Woody Allen...Julia Roberts...Goldie Hawn...Alan Alda...Natasha Leone...Edward Burns...Drew Barrymore...Lukas Haas...Tim Roth...Natalie Portman...Gaby Hoffman...Billy Crudup...David Ogden Stiers (Winchester from MASH...co-starring with Alan Alda's Hawkeye from MASH:):):)...and Patrick Cranshaw as Grandpa (with a death-inspired musical dance scene that YOU MUST see:):):)...and Izhak Perlman as himself:):):)...

Check it out when you get a chance:):):)...

As for me:):):)...

I'm so glad that I chose a life of reality (with the potential for romance:):):)...rather than the life of romantic fantasy and cynical disappointment that FAR TOO MANY (if not most) people choose:):):)...

Love,
Ben

I'll make this short:):):)...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: The Babysitter's Here:):):)...Dar Williams:):):):):)...
Topic: sex/love
Kat...and everyone really...has been saying that I write too much...and everyone thinks that I talk and think and do everything too much, really...

So...I'll make this short...because I want people to read the post before this one...

I'm listening to Godspeed and More Love and February and I Miss My Friend, right now...thinking I want to find someone that I can have some kids with and listen to these songs with her and with them...

More than anything else, really...

One day...

Ben