Did I Say That?

So receive me brother, with your faithless kiss...

Just been watching a big part of Philadelphia. It is one of those movies I can watch over and over again, without getting tired by them. The Shawshank Redemption is another, as is Dead Poets Society, Renaissance Man (also on tonight), A Few Good Men, and some others. Most times when they're on TV, I don't intent to watch them, 'cause I've seen them a gazillion times, but almost alway, I do end up watching at least a part of them.

Anyway, Philadelphia has a place in my current movie top-whatever. And the song by The Boss is great too.

Feel The Quiet River Rage

First things first: Hasn, congratulations! Join the clan, and much luck on whichever way you end up on :)

Secondly, I hate it how my mind works.

I've not been sleeping all to well lately, and tonight was one of those nights. At a quarter past five I woke up, and my mind started to work. And when it does, it's bound to come up with some crazy conspiracy theories. Consider the following facts:

1. According to Arie, Pjotr has been registered as "someone looking for a new house" (or however that's called in proper English) for some time now. He wasn't quite clear on how long, but it was really some decent amount of time.
2. A few weeks ago (as in "less then a decent amount of time"), Pjotr told me that he had his registration form filled out, and just needed the part from his employer back.

Applying basic logic, they can't both be true, so one of them is false. My brain (since it was busy anyway) cooked up the following:

1. Arie's got his facts mixed up.
2. Pjotr has registered himself, and a decent amount of time ago, and lied to me about it some weeks ago.
3. When Pjotr went to get himself registered some weeks ago, he found out that he still was registered since he moved to a non-self-supporting unit, and "forgot" to tell me. According to Arie, when you move to a non-self-supporting unit, your registration should not expire. At least, that is what he was told by the organization that made up the rules.
4. Like the previous one, but earlier.

The last two options are technically impossible. When we moved from our previous house to our present location, we were registered on the same day, and were told our registration expired the moment we signed our contracts for our new rooms. Since then, over a year has gone by, and you have to renew your registration each year. If you don't, you're taken out of the system. Basically, option four could be true, but to the best of my knowledge, it isn't.
So it's either one or two. Logically, that is.

So now it's like six o'clock a.m., I'm as awake as I'll ever be, and brooding on the above. After half an hour I give up, take a shower, and fire up the old PC. After the initial email and other stuff check, I started to type this. Since I was up and running anyway, I might as well ask Pjotr what the deal was, I thought. He said he isn't registered at all. That introduces two new possibilities:

5. I misheard and/or misunderstood what what Arie said.
6. I'm becoming to paranoid for my own good.

So it's either option number one, five or six. Take your poison. Sometimes I just wish I wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night to think up this kind of crap. A hurricane in a shot-glass.

I'm only happy when it rains... in Nulde

Blerg. That pretty much sums up my weekend, or rather, the period since my last post.

What was that about, you might ask. That was me being a mixture of fubar, bitter and not thinking completely rational. Let me explain the whole situation.

It all started a week or two ago. In a completely "by the way" situation, Arie asked me if I was willing to come along on some camping holiday some 15 kilometers away. Not having anything planned, I said why not. As it turned out, Pjotr, my roommate, was also going. And he had something like "for me it's not a holiday when you're [as in: me] there." I can see that. I see him pretty much every day. Also, he's been getting more and more annoyed by me. On some levels, I can see that too. I mean, when you're living "together", there are issues with each other that will annoy you. I have the same thing. And he said, that it [being me annoying him in some way] has gotten worse since I graduated. I can't see that. In my (colored) perception of my actions, I've not noticed any significant change in my behavior. Well, maybe except that I'm nearly completely clueless as to where to start looking for a job, but I still firmly believe that will work itself out. And rather sooner than later. And, there's another thing that struck me (in retrospect) as odd: he said something along the lines of that he wanted to experience a vacation with "the guys", and that it was a shame that Dappie wasn't going to be there. Well, excuse the fuck out of me for not getting that. When I think of "the guys", I think of Pjotr, Arie, Dappie, Hasn, Pete, maybe some others, and me. Get it? 'Cause I sure don't.
So my mental processor had been working overtime to get that all through my system, and last wednesday I was done with it, and thought I'd all rerouted it to the big whatever pile. Thought. But went I saw Arie's comment that he needed this vacation to get away from a lot of things, including me, who sometimes was starting to get on his nerves, something snapped. And apparently, that's when I write posts like the previous ones.

Next day, thursday, I woke up feeling,well, depressed. I went on doing my usual stuff, and then went downtown to do some things that needed to be done, in the hope that Pjotr and Arie would be gone by the time I got back. No such luck. So I was sitting here, behind my computer, surfing the web aimlessly, while Pjotr was moving a pile of stuff down to his car. Just as he came back from the last run, Arie rung the bell. We didn't get much beyond "hi" and "see ya". I guess he saw my last post.
So later that day, just as I was about to toss two burgers in a pan, he called me up. It was raining there. Hard. Over here, a mere 15 kilometers, the sun was shining, although just faintly. No rain in sight. When I hung up, I was feeling slightly better, since the whole conversation had a better feel that the one a few hour earlier. And because the rain, of course.
I'm not the type of guy that goes into a bar alone. I don't know why, but the thought of sitting alone at a bar, drinking beer, alone, has never appealed to me. Okay, there is a chance you meet someone you'd end up talking to, but with me being me, I just don't see that happening. I'm not the kind of person who starts a conversation with a stranger. I'm not the kind of person who initiates a MSN-session, unless I have to speak to someone for one reason or another. Maybe that's weird and I should come out of my shell more, but one way or the other, I don't see that happening. But anyway, since thursday night is our [Pjotr, Arie and me] regular night in the local pub, I had some time to kill. So I grabbed a movie, the sneak-preview, which turned out to be The Stepford Wives. It was an entertaining movie, starting out campy as hell, and very surreal. But when it became clear which way the plot was heading, the surreal feeling went quickly out of the window, and you couldn't miss some gaping holes in the plot. Not a bad movie, but it wasn't, say, Dead Poets Society.

Friday wasn't eventful.

Saturday. Also quite uneventful, except the little episode with Anne.
Who is Anne? Well, she's a 24 year old woman from Eindhoven, who I've never met. The reason I talk to her on MSN is that Arie thought I should get to know her. Or he added me to a conversation he was having with her. Something like that. He knows her for some five years now, and they seem pretty close (although they've never met, and according to both, never will). I don't know if he regrets introducing me to her, but currently I'm wishing he never had.
Some weeks after we started talking, she got the idea that she wanted to marry me. On the Internet. As far as I can understand it, it's part of a whole family thing she and Arie's got. I can't say I was too thrilled about the whole whole thing, but I went along with it. They all told me it wasn't serious, but sometimes it seemed to me I was the only one playing with tongue firmly in cheek. I might have gotten that wrong, but so what? It's some online thing, and as far as I was concerned, it should have stayed there. I was not, and won't ever be, waiting to explain the "logic" behind it all to some stranger at the bar I mentioned earlier, because some people saw the need to make some big deal out of it. But it seems like the whole marriage thing is off now. Before all what's coming next.
There's one final thing I should say about her (and her sister, who I also sometimes chat with). She has a gift to get on my nerves really fast when she starts to throw a huge load of pseudo-psychologic crap at me. I don't like to talk about myself (although some people would like to claim otherwise -- I'm not taking about me, I'm talking about things I think I have an opinion about), and I don't like it when somebody is trying to cross the boundaries I've set. She knows where that one is, cause I've told her that. Several times. I don't need her to start to get me to say things about me. That's where my psychologist is for, and I'm working on it. I'll talk about me when I want to talk about me, and not when someone else wants me to.
Besides the episode I'm going to tell you about, there's this little side issue of trust. She thinks that whenever Arie, Pjotr (who she's also talking too) and I are together, we're talking about her. Or that we tell each other everything she's told anyone of us. Sometimes, she comes up in conversation. Sometimes I'm told things about her. I can't recall a time when I've said things about her the others didn't know. I know for a fact that she tells things I told her to others. I know others tell her things about me. Somehow I got the feeling that it is OK to paint me as whatever people want me to be, and that I have to be OK with all of it. Whatever.
But anyway, this episode. Somehow we get to this point where she's telling me all kinds of things she don't want to me to repeat to anyone, so I won't. Lets keep it at this: she was complaining about some things she's encountered in the past, how she handled it, and how things will always stay the same. Personally I don't believe that our lives are ruled by something as fate, and that we're all responsible for the choices we make. When you make a choice, it's yours, and you have to deal with the results. If you don't like them, tough, but you have to move on. Let the past be the past, and try to make the most of the future. And that was what I tried to tell her.
When I'm in a conversation with someone on MSN, it's not like I'm not doing something else at the same time. Sometimes I'm surfing the web, or I'm fiddling around with my website, or something. I told her that. I told her, "it's not like I'm waiting breathlessly for your next message." And every once in awhile, she asks me why I am not replying. Because I was looking at some other window. So when she asked me that in this episode, I still had to read some things she said. And what she said was completely pointless. Like she's the only one who has had some hard times and had to make some tough decisions on her own. So I told her that I didn't even want to react to that pile of rubbish she was sending my way. I admit, it wasn't the most tactful thing to say at that moment -- and given the opportunity, I wouldn't do it again -- but I meant it. I always mean what I say. But Anne seems to have a problem with reading back. So I think she thought that I said that the whole situation I won't mention here was a pile of rubbish. I didn't say that, cause I think that she got a pretty shitty deal with that. But I still think that it is in the past, you should deal with all the demons that come with it, and move on. You can't hang your head in sorrow and keep feeling bad for yourself. Deal with it, and try to make the most of your future. But she didn't think that was possible, and that was will be, now and forever, world without end, amen. And I said that that attitude, and some remarks she threw at me in the vein that I didn't know what it is to make decisions on your own, was a load of crap I didn't feel like responding to. She told me to drop dead (and she meant that, she said), and that I never should try to talk to her again. Then she went offline.
Good. I didn't feel much like talking to her anyway, just lately. Today, she came online to tell me that, wow, I did it. I was on her blocklist. :p. And she was going to put me back on it. I didn't try to talk her. Because, harsh as it may sound, I'm completely through with her.

So today (strictly speaking, yesterday, since it's 2:00am) was sunday. Just another slow day at the office. Been watching some of the Olympics. And just as I was about to start dinner, I got a phonecall that a couple of friends were going to drop by in about fifteen minutes. Since I can't fix dinner in that time, and eat it too, I decided to put it on hold, and see how it would turn out. I must say, that they didn't come as a surprise at all, since Robert called if I'd be home today. What came as a surprise, was that it wasn't just him and Marjolein, but that Marcel, Klarissa and Naomi were coming too. We had some drinks, and then went out to get some improvised dinner at the snackbar. They left about half past nine, I did the dishes, watched some more TV, surfed the web some more, and eventually started to type this. It feels like the best day of the bunch.

I never meant to make it this long, but I guess I did have something to say. About me. About the people I would like to think of as friends, whatever they think of me. About one person who would like to think the weight of the world is on her shoulders. "And I meant, every word I said. When I said that I loved you I meant that I'd love you forever." REO fuckin Speedwagon. May sound sappy as hell, but I mean it.

I guess I will hear something about this from some people. Or not. But I'm glad I can put this down here, 'cause I know I could get this over my lips. At least this is a start. Wouldn't you think, Cor?

Can someone just shoot me?

Just shoot. I'm sitting here, feeling like a worthless peice of human waste. I can't seem to do anything right with anyboy lately, and it just plain sucks. Some people seem to need some time away from me. Let's make it easy for them. Just shoot me.

jealousy

the sun played
with a single drop of water
captured
in her hair

the tide was high
and i was
although just barely
holding on

in the distance
the music was
turned down
you had to strain your ears
to catch the beat

she left
with some guy
i guess you'd call him
lucky

me?
well, as always
i didn't get any

my mind needed some defragmenttation.