Relationships – Page 4 – Sidewalk Face

Matrimonial Quantum Entanglement

November 9, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl9 Comments

Marriage is the agreement where you and another person decide to physically merge in such a way that you will be guaranteed to show up at the same spot at the same time for maximum inconvenience.

A few examples:

You are about to work out in front of the TV. You’ve been setting this up for a few minutes, turning on the tv, adjusting the sound. It’s super obvious what is happening but nevertheless, just as the workout is starting, your spouse positions themself directly in the front of the tv. They claim they left their coffee there.

You need to leave the house ASAP and your spouse is obstructing the exit by hanging laundry in the back room. The washing machine takes up so much space there is only a very narrow strip, maybe 16 inches wide, between it and the wall. You can’t both be in it at the same time and yet you are.

You need to go from the front of the house to the back. Your spouse receives the quantum notification and proceeds to move from the bedroom to the balcony such that you will jostle each other in the hallway’s bottleneck. This passageway was originally designed to accommodate two traversers, but your spouse has lined a good portion of it with a small table and a folding screen. You have further eroded the pedestrian capacity with a huge metal filing cabinet from the 1930s and an Ikea cupboard that could probably qualify as a small third bedroom. So maybe you like it when this happens?

Though frequently at opposite ends of the apartment due to offices in different rooms, you show up in the kitchen at the same time, rummaging in the same area, but not for the same things. Your spouse wants beer nuts, you grab around them for Pringles. Too hungry people working in near total solitude confused by congestion.

Let’s not even discuss the bathroom except to say why is it like this? How does one sync one’s biological plumbing to go off at the exact same time? This one is probably the hardest to handle.

Maybe it’s a small cramped apartment. Maybe its perfectly correlated wave functions. Maybe you are no longer two things but one inseparable whole. You know that’s not true but it’s the romantic spin you place on these daily collisions. Satellites of Love as Lou Reed might say.

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Relationships, Striving to Be Better

Our Internal Pronouns Are We/Us

November 5, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl17 Comments

My public pronouns are she/her. My kid’s pronouns are they/them. I like that we now have gender neutral pronouns. As I’ve gotten used to using them, I find I’ve started to use them as the default choice. For example, I might inquire about a new pet I am meeting for the first time, What’s their name? Or if a friend tells me about someone new in their life I might say, Cool, what’s their deal? What are they like?

Because I have been involved in a lot of pronoun talk over the last few years, I just noticed a few days ago that I often refer to myself as we. My friend and I were driving to Runyon Canyon for a hike. Excited to get back into shape now that the weather is cooling down, we were conversing on the state of our at home work outs. She hadn’t done any yoga that week. I said: We haven’t either. One of us really wanted to this morning but another one didn’t. Guess who won?

I do this a lot but only became conscious of it in that moment. Unlike the larger pronoun conversation the world is having, this is not about my identity and I don’t wish for other people to refer to me this way. But it does make me reflect on why I do this.

Don’t we all contain contradictions? Thinking of myself as a we is a way of unifying a bunch of unruly and disparate impulses, desires, and actions. Some of us want to eat Pringles. Others of us want less belly fat. Some of us want to read books all day, others of us want to get stuff done. I don’t know if they are the same people. They don’t feel like the same people. They make too much noise for one person. Some of them I like more than others, but we are a gang and it’s definitely an all for one and one for all internal situation.

Does anyone out there also use an inner we when talking to themselves?

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Mottos, Relationships

Better Safe Than Sorry vs. a Good Guy

October 18, 2021October 18, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl13 Comments

I ride my bike to the bank to deposit a check and realize the box store is next door. I need a few mailing supplies for all the prints I sold on my first limited edition print offering!

There isn’t a bike rack out front, so I ride to the alleyway entrance, dismount next to the metal fence and start to secure my bike when a young person wearing a mask makes some noises in my direction. I can’t understand them and do not assume they are talking to me but despite my disregard they persist, and I look up.

What?

I’ll watch your bike.

Blank stare.

I can watch your bike while you’re inside, nobody will take it.

Oh! Thank you so much. That’s nice.

I take off my helmet, leave it in the front basket and walk inside feeling both uneasy and something else.

I’ve lived in major metropolitan areas my entire adult life. I don’t leave things unlocked. One of my main mottos is Better Safe Than Sorry. I like locking my bike. I like reducing risk. I like certainty. This act of generosity is making me think about it rather than just knowing it’s handled. But it’s also interesting.

The young person is wearing a t-shirt with the store logo. They are in the act of sweeping. That adds up to a legit employee. Or at least 90% of one. What are the chances the small box store would let some rando wear one of their shirts and loiter productively outside the shop if they didn’t know them? So, with that calculus, I am still in the acceptable range of Better Safe Than Sorry.

At the cash register I try to see my bike but it’s either not there or out of site. I spend the full minute I am in the store thinking about my bike and wondering if I will have to walk home. That’s my brain!

The bike is there. I shout out, Thank you so much!

You are welcome!

How lovely! They are probably doing it to be a good employee, but it feels genuinely nice. It’s like Ted Lasso nice. It makes me really happy.

And with this I add a new category called Mottos. I have several I live by and I would like to explore them.

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