"There went the electric bill"

I love the intoxication of new-found passion, but I don't think my body can handle that and tech week.
Thank goodness tech week ends on Saturday.

I love individuals. I love the way they look different, act different, think different. I love the way they all are their own persons. As long as I have individuals to meet, to explore, I think I'll never tire of getting up in the morning.
My body, however, seems to disagree with me. It may be a subtle hint that month after month of setting up, teching and then striking shows is begining to take it toll, and that maybe, just maybe, I should actually put forth an effort to not death myself. I'm sure I'll listen eventually.

I'd write, think through words on this screen, philosophize and analyze, but I have places to be and people to see and still I lack pants. I should remedy this.

"It's less intimidating with someone else, yeah?"

18 entered not with a bang, but with whispers over steaming chai. With the outlines of my fingers on her hand. With the feel of a plastic edge in my palm.

The tattoo was amazing. Blunt pressure, sharp pricks, loud hums. Strangely reassuring.
Then he started on the part over bone.
Thank god I took up meditation. Instead of the blunt pressure boring into my skull, the feel of sheets under my hands. Instead of a thousand burning jabs leaving a thousand shivers down my spine, a thousand soft kisses down those same bones. Instead of the constant drone of the machine, quantum physics.
Instead of my fingers indented in her hand, a simple exercise in sending myself away.
I think she was more happy that it worked than I was.

I spent today with some of the most amazing people in my life. I just can't get past how amazing it all was.
I can't get past eighteen.

Tree pulp and cuttlefish

They say the fastest way to a person's heart is through the ribcage.
I'm incliened to agree, although I find myself thinking that one of the other ways to my heart is through letters.
I don't mean letters like the ones that're popping up on my screen as I write this, although I love them a great deal too. I mean pen and paper, lick the adhesive, three days in the mail letters. I know I'm not alone in this opinion, either.
I fear it may be a dying art, though. So many people just won't take the time to write things anymore and I'll admit that I was one of them once. Then my 'Bear got to me and I remembered the symphonies in the scratch of a pen on paper, the relaxation of putting down thoughts in my own hand, the joy of tearing open an envelope to see some one else's mind and that half second of all the contained smells (ink, paper, Carolina, tea) spilling into the room.
There's always time. I have an hour bus ride to work, my boss rarely has enough in-depth work for me and there's the hours I spend lying awake in bed trying to quiet my everything. They shush faster when I write (or sew, but that's another story).
It's so simple and so relaxing, and when you're writing to someone you're close to it's theraputic too. I wish more people would start.
I'm always game.

The art of analogies.

"Loving you would be like dragging a fish to the surface. The light would be the most beautiful thing I'd ever see, right before my lungs collapsed."

Needs refining.

She uses tangerines.

What is manipulation?
Is it as simple as knowing "If I do X, they will respond with Y, and C will happen"? Or is it more a concious effort on the part of one person to get a second person (or even a group of people) to do what the first person wants in order to reach an end that the first person wants?
Is the title "manipulation" only applicable to situations where people would be negatively impacted by the outcome, and for that matter what degree of negativity can justify the term? Is "manipulation" a broader term, one that can be used when psychology majors interact with people? And if so, is it cancelled out if the other people know the person they're talking to has taken psychology and can thus accurately predict outcomes of their actions?

It's the questions like these that kept me away from people for years, and still trips me up when I let my mind wander.

Through unconciously performing social experiments on the people around me, and conciously observing interactions, I can pretty accurately predict my X + Y = C formulae.
"If I get his attention over the headset just to say hello and ask how he is (X) he will feel special because I care about him (Y) and this exchange will result in him feeling that our friendship has become closer than it was when today started (C)."
I'll be damned if he didn't walk up to me on the next break instead of the people he'd been talking to all night.

Some times I have to remind myself that I've taken a certain action, or said a certain sequence of words, because I wanted to and not because I knew it would get me a favorable outcome. Secretly, I revel in my social faux-pas because they tell me that I was simply being me instead of trying to get to someone.
Of course, this is not to say that I don't use my powers of XYC. Job interviews are fair game as long as I don't take it too far, and some times I do it to new people just to see if I've still got it. But I draw the line at people I care about, people I respect, and it's not hard at all to get into that group. I've had people say five words and win a piece of my heart.
Which is not to say that five words can earn someone my complete trust. Most people take years to get me to open up completely, but I think that's a subject for another day.

After so many of my interactions, though, I find myself asking "was that really me, or was that manipulation? And is my asking that, and hoping it was just me, enough to negate any manipulation that may have occured?"


Is manipulation a term to be applied to only malicious intent, or am I really the manipulative wench I try so hard not to be?