Noet All

Why I've Been Caught & Who Thinks I Am Hot...

Hello everyone!

I have some news for all of you who have been reading about my prehensile perseverance of love, despite all the disastrous dates, the specious suitors and the desultory dopes upon whom I have pinned my hopes:

I've been caught!

I know I said, in my post from June 10, 2006, that I wasn't going to write about my real love life here. Well, I lied... I'm going to revise that statement to say that I'm not going to write public posts about problems I'm having in my love life. In my post called "Why I'm Not a Catch..." from May 07, 2006, I said, "getting caught isn't what I'm looking for." Well, I guess there's at least some truth to the theory that you sometimes find something faster when you stop looking for it.

I've just spent the last few weeks getting to know a guy I've started to call my "boyfriend" (that term is going to feel weird for a while.) As we were in the midst of enjoying each other's company, including more than a week camping alone, I thought about the phrase, "getting caught." In the context of romantic relationships, which also includes phrases like, "there are plenty of fish in the sea," and "(s)he's such a catch," the expression presumably refers to the capture of one person by another. This suggests a predatory relationship, whereby one person relies on skill, opportunity and chance to reel in the "catch," who is in turn presumed to be of great value and thereby worth the effort. While I do value him greatly and consider him a "catch," the fishing metaphor doesn't adequately describe the situation.

Finding myself in a relationship with Chris (the name he goes by other than boyfriend =-) has felt much more like getting caught in a summer drizzle...you know, the ones that start in the middle of a sultry sun-drenched day. One minute, the sky is clear. The next, a foreboding cumulonimbus has moved in, shrouding the glaring light. Looking up, it seems as though someone has dipped a paintbrush swollen with dark paint into the mix, as billows of grey and black swirl in the sky, that only moments before had appeared whitewashed by the sun. Then, as the raindrops begin to fall on the hot pavement, they turn to steam at your feet. While the sudden and ominous darkness can be disconcerting, the benefits of the phenomenon quickly flood your senses. The clouds provide the relief of shade, the surrounding mass of hot, stifling air has begun to rise and the Earth begins to cool. Simultaneously, bolts of lightning flicker in the distance, promising the excitement of electricity. Somehow, this more aptly describes the surprising and wondrous nature of falling for someone...at least better than fishing could hope to.

Like the sudden storm on a summer's day, I had little warning as to what was coming when I met Chris. Yes, I have been going on a series of first dates, hoping to end my romantic drought, but I had long since abandoned the practice of carrying an umbrella with me. Furthermore, while my initial conversations with a new guy can sometimes inspire hope, as did those with him, I have learned to cloak my expectations with skepticism. After all, promise is broken often, once two people move from the cyber-fantastic world of virtual infatuation, into the harsh reality of real-world chemistry. In this instance however, the dark clouds of my own doubt have evolved into productive agents of much needed change. No longer filled with trepidation, they saturate and soothe.

Well, that's all very lovely and poetic, but realistically, this relationship has just begun and has yet to face any real challenges. Undoubtedly we will face difficulties and disagreements going forward. Neither of us can predict at such an early stage whether or not things will continue to work out. That being said, falling in love with him has been, and continues to be, glorious fun. Both of us are in our late 30s and, as such, have had to learn how to move on from failed relationships in the past. Should we have to do the same again, if things don't work out, I'm sure we both will. Nonetheless, whether this relationship lasts for forty more days or forty years, this is turning out to be one of the best times of my life and I'm enjoying it...we both are.

In the meantime, Chris has thus far proven to be all that I had hoped to find, as described in my previous post. He is an unusually strong spirit who is nourished by my attentions and in turn feeds my soul with his, no matter what emotional or physical obstacles we have encountered. Just as I had hoped was possible, he seems to see me so clearly and compassionately that he believes me to be a beautiful, passionate, successful, intelligent, strong, confident, independent, articulate, creative, joyful, affectionate, and worthy woman, even though I have already revealed to him that I am also occasionally insecure, fraught with self-doubt, anxious, uncomfortable, ignorant, speechless, vulnerable, neglectful, withdrawn, unhappy and self-absorbed.

Like me, he seems to have been longing for someone with whom he can share his lot...someone with whom he can celebrate victories, weather loses and undertake challenges. On the other hand, he has yet to fault me for being a lot. He doesn't seem to mind that I think a lot, talk and write a lot, do a lot, know a lot and feel a lot; moreover, while we are kindred spirits in this way, he seems prepared to handle a lot. As I lavish my attentions on him, I know that he both appreciates and reciprocates. When I look at him, I know how lucky I am to be with him, and I know he feels the same way. Fortunately, for us both, another thing we each think when we look at each other is:

"Wow, you're hot."

Quotes for the Week

Hello all.

Happy Independence Day Weekend!

I've gathered some quotes to share with you. Some are funny, some are odd and others are inspirational. All are interesting...at least to me. I hope they are to you as well. Enjoy!

“Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.”
—Harry S. Truman

“It is a shame we can't go in and devastate Germany and cut off a few of the Dutch kids' hands and feet and scalp a few of their old men but I guess it will be better to make them work for France and Belgium for fifty years.”
—Harry S. Truman (Written at age 34, on November 11, 1918, in a letter to his then fiancée, Bess Wallace. He wrote it from the trenches, near the Verdun front, in reference to the Armistice that ended World War I.)

“The 'C' students run the world.”
—Harry S. Truman

“When even one American, who has done nothing wrong, is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”
—Harry S. Truman

“Our conference in 1945 did much more than draft an international agreement among 50 nations. [We] set down on paper the only principles which will enable civilized human life to continue to survive on this globe.”
—Harry S. Truman

“I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!”
—Harry S. Truman

“Leadership is a word and a concept that has been more argued than almost any other I know. I am not one of the desk-pounding types that likes to stick out his jaw and look like he is bossing the show. I would far rather get behind and, recognizing the frailties and the requirements of human nature, would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.”
—Dwight David Eisenhower

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.”
—Dwight David Eisenhower

“We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”
—Dwight David Eisenhower

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
—Dwight David Eisenhower

“A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.”
—Winston Churchill

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
—Hermann Goering

“There was never a good war or a bad peace.”
—Benjamin Franklin

“Don't talk to me about atrocities in war; all war is an atrocity”
—Lord Kitchener

“To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason”
—Henry Louis Mencken

“I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so”
—Romain Rolland

“I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.”
—Abbie Hoffman

“Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace”
—Theodore Roosevelt

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

“A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”
—George Washington

“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”
—George Washington

“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.”
—George Washington

“A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.”
—George Washington

“If I were two faced, would I be wearing this one?”
—Abraham Lincoln

“The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force”
—Voltaire

“The Declaration of Independence was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others”
—Robert Green Ingersoll

“Men say they love independence in a woman, but they don't waste a second demolishing it brick by brick.”
—Candice Bergen

“Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”
—George Bernard Shaw

“In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.”
—Howard Zinn

“The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.”
—John Adams

“Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.”
—Louis D. Brandeis

“Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.”
—Nathan Hale

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
—Edward Abbey

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
—Mark Twain

“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers”
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.”
—Victor Hugo

“All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.”
—Hermann Hesse

Enjoy your weekend!

Best, Noetical.