It is firmly spring-like here. Our fourth floor apartment, resplendent in its lack of air conditioning, is a comfortable (NOT) 90ish degrees, the guitar calluses that dot my left hand are progressing nicely, and all in all, everything is much too placid to inspire blogging. I can’t even get a proper “bored” going since I discovered watching-movies-in-green-library as a charmingly chilled pastime. Of course, my hair is still rebelling, but come on, how many of you are actually interested in my hair? (Yes, I know, I have a probably unhealthy obsession with my hair. Claire understands. A good or bad hair day can make or break my week, man! My haircut cravings are really jeopardizing my zen status here. Also, balancing the heat-induced need to shower about every five minutes (cause DAMN wet hair is nice when it’s hot and you’re sitting a foot from a fan) with my hair’s deep deep desire not to be washed so much (it tends to express this desire by going all crunchy and frizzed) is extremely touchy.) (Also, HAH, you thought you were going to escape the hair conversation? NEVER.)
So what does that leave us with? The following nonsensical wanderings:
Have you ever met someone who intensely reminds you of someone else? This happens to me all the time. For example, there’s a guy in my PWR class who not only reminds me STRONGLY of a friend from high school, but also shares this friend’s name. Seriously, kids, these boys were separated at birth. They have the same voice, the same way of pincering the air with their hands when they talk, the same affably outdoorsy sense of un-style. They both flap good-naturedly through life as if they were only half paying attention, distracted by something deliciously artistic running through their heads. The resemblance is so strong that I find myself reacting to this version 2.0 as if he were version 1.0, tempted to make the same in-jokes, to hum the same stupid theme songs, to ask him if he’s seen so-and-so, and if so, how she’s doing with that whole making of the movies thing, to ask him if he still has that CD, and if so, could I borrow it, cause DUDE I need me some new tunes. Then I wonder if I’m constructing these parallels for myself, starting with the name and imposing a personality, or if they both just embody their names and isn’t the universe funny like that? Does this happen to you?
That [i]exact[/i] thing doesn’t quite happen to me; but there’s plenty like it that does.
1. While driving, I still think “Hey, wow, that car’s from Washington! What’s it doing in Arizona?” (note: yesterday there was a car with AZ plates and I didn’t realize it meant it was the one from out of state.)
2. I’ll see someone who bears a striking resemblence to someone else I know and have an urge to go up and ask when they came to town, how they’ve been, or just finish a conversation we’d had over the internetz.
3. I’ll start a conversation with “Ha ha, remember that time in Estey’s class” and then suddenly remember that no, no they don’t.
Part of it, I think, is just because we’re somewhere we didn’t grow up and because we spent so much more time around other people, in other places, we tend to slip into thinking that we’re still there with them. It’s something familar on which to hold. And because of that distance, it’s easy to think of life as having two threads that occasionally intertwine, one here and the other there, at least it is for me. I certainly don’t mean that I want those threads seperate or even to have seperate threads, it’s just the simplest way of explaining it. I do miss people more when I think that I won’t actually *see* them all the time, even though I know I can just open my laptop and get in contact with them some other way.
And I still go into the wrong cupboard when I’m getting a glass at my Grandmother’s even though she switched them around last year.
It’s been hot here too. I turned the downstairs into a cave and huddled down there all day yesterday. But it seems to have taken a turn…