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.

Sidewalk Face 128

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?

Sidewalk Face 1023

Art Journal, Creative Process

Enchantment Enhancement

November 2, 2021November 2, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl12 Comments

One of the things I like to do in my little blank books is write down funny nonsense phrases. Things like:

Mendoza Gyoza

French Toast Frenzy

Compliment Conundrum

The Parmesan Pals

Runaway Complacency

Enchantment Enhancement

Pachydermatologist

Polly Darton

What’s the point of this you might ask?

Amusement. We like to try and make ourselves laugh.

Sometimes we say something funny and I just write it down. Sometimes we actively try to create funny phrases. It’s actually pretty challenging. You say a lot of super stupid stuff. That in itself starts to be funny. Sooner or later a noteworthy phrase blurps out and you laugh.

Sometimes I have whole columns of these phrases, sometimes just a single one. Almost always they re-surprise me. They take me back. They fill me with a mixture of happiness and melancholy. They are a portal to all the past good times.

A book you have filled up yourself over the course of several months is a potent time capsule. Writing down funny things (or anything you write down) is a powerful way to recall the past. Rather than reminding me of my outer reality, it calls up my inner world, how I was thinking and perceiving. Photos are great and I enjoy remembering the events they capture, but if I am in them, my vanity is triggered, and I start thinking about whether I look good and how my looks have changed. So boring! I don’t want that. When I see silly things I have written down, it just makes me want to write down some new silly things. Nothing negative is triggered and I feel connected to myself past and present.