Mirror Man

---01.14.2000---

I heard a great song lyric the other day on a Jamaican CD called “300% Dynamite!”. I highly recommend singing it to yourself as a mood-enhancer. The line is: “Gimme’ lick a’ bass, make me wind up me waist. Up-town-top-rank-in’”. Swing your hips around while you sing--it works!

------

I just had a really good conversation with Phillip. I had been tuning him out over the last couple of weeks on the grounds that—hang on—I’m just noticing that there are bits of rusted tractor flakes in my hair. Oh well... Anyway, as I was saying, on the grounds that he’d been over-cerebral, not very engaging, or pleasant to hang out with. He told me that he thought I was also pretty unemotional and that I brought out in him a sense of competitiveness that he didn’t like.

My mouth hung open and out floated my disbelief. Beth had said virtually the same thing to me less than six months before. How do we do it? How do we project these traits, induce these feelings in others without even the slightest sense of awareness? How can you change something you can’t see?

I have a thin sense of it, of wanting to be liked and included, a competitiveness for social standing. I can see a crack of it. To change though, so much... no it’s already a start. It’d be nice to be free of these mental burdens. I’ll try and cast them off as they come.

—01.13.2023—

Present-day me again. I’d offer that you aren’t responsible for someone else’s reaction to you. Then again, I think it’s well to hear how people feel in our presence, if they’re willing to share. Again, it feels like a balance.

Do you have any thoughts, dear reader?