Siding Up to Seidlin

So yesterday my friend asked me to write him a mini-obituary piece regarding my thoughts on the death of Anna Nicole. So I took a moment and wrote the following:

Anna Nicole Smith’s death made me realize that the American public has an insatiable appetite for celebrity tragedies. Like many others, I too glued myself to the television for the first few hours and watched as they reported on her mysterious and troubling death. Also like many others, I have formed my own opinions about who should get her body, who her baby’s daddy is, and whether any of her supposed paramours were in fact money-grubbing enablers. But aside from that, I watch the Anna Nicole Smith story play out because I always rooted for Anna. Yes she may have been a bit odd, but Anna truly loved that old man; and she deserved his millions. In the end it was Anna’s quirkiness that was probably her downfall – a life of love and joy that ultimately brought shady people to her life and forced those that may have really loved her out. When Anna finally rests in peace, may we remember her for being larger than life, a beautiful lady that only wanted to entertain us; not some buffoon wearing clown makeup, purportedly on a “mushroom trip.”

It's All Right, I'll Be Fine, Don't Worry 'Bout This Heart of Mine...

Why is it that humans often become so bitter, so jaded, that they can no longer be happy for anyone else? At what point does one become so disengaged with other people's feelings that they will tread on them; just so that this other person must wallow in as much heartache, misery, and sorrow as they do?

I do not believe that I have become that person entirely. Last night reminded me that there are glimpses, and they are frightening.

I am ready to move on with this life. Time continues to go on and on, but I continue to spin my wheels, stuck in the mud that is my life in Bloomington. If the bitterness is already settling in, it can only get worse the longer that I stay. So for now I work overtime, I eat less, I socialize less - but I read more, I inquire about other career options or the possibility of going back to school, I save some money, I desire mor. At this stage that should be my core essence - developing a strategy for leaving Bloomington behind and starting my life. After all, my introduction in my blog does say that these are the rantings of a gay man whose life is in transition. Well it is time for the transition/transformation to begin...

A post for Valentine's Day

Today is just a day, is just day, is just a day. I could continue to tell myself this over, and over, and over again; or I can own the fact that I know that today is an artificial construct to encourage over-consumption and perpetuate the myth that everybody needs somebody - and that even though I know this, and you know this, the fact remains that I still want a Valentine to call my own.

This morning, as I rolled back over, the university having been shut down due to inclement weather, I thought to myself how great it was that I would be going to work late, but how much greater it would be to have someone there, lying next to me, to share that moment with. Sunlight permeates the blinds as bodies embrace; snuggled under the covers, the thought of just being able to stay in bed a few hours more.

Often I dream of similar scenarios with a potential significant other. It is almost everyone's opinion that I ask too much out of people to make them a perspective partner. My retort is simple: But do not they ask too much of me? Must I not have more hair, a better smile, perfect body? Why is it that I cannot ask them to have a better personality, razor-sharp wit, extensive literary canon; a touch of high-brow mixed with a touch of low?

If this is asking too much, I will relent. To this date in my life people have only diasppointed. But I will not relent, for I do not believe that I am asking too much. My Prince is out there, ready to accept me and my judgments for who I am; nothing more, nothing less. Until that day, I will continue to publicly disavow Valentine's Day, while secretly knowing that this construct has permeated my deeply cynical mind, leaving me longing for my prince's touch and the snuggling of a late morning spent in bed.