The Allure of the New

New experiences replenish joy. Relationships form and improve by sharing the anxious trial of newness, the sense of wonder. I would like to go to church because I haven't been in a long time. I believe in no God, but I'd like to go with someone to experience the sublime together, stained glass on a sunny day and a sermon preaching love, and when it's time to shake hands with other churchgoers to say, "Love be with you."

A bun-topped woman will whisper, "You're supposed to say 'Peace be with you' -- love can mean too many things," and it's not her fault that she gets it and it makes her uncomfortable. By "love" she also means, "yes, blessed passion's excess." I'm not going to judge her, but love be with her. Am I offering? Well, I didn't put anything in the plate.

More realistically, I would like to go with a new person to the same old bar and grill where the staff either like or tolerate me. I'd reflect his or her new wonder, feel wonder myself, and laugh. I do just like to laugh and laugh, insides aching, sick in every clinical sense. I would spend my life laughing, but sometimes I need to catch my breath.

Contagion

My cousin brought her kids over, and I'm pretty sure the younger boy had the mania. While sitting on my lap explaining in a roundabout fashion how to count to twenty, the lousy kid sneezed on me. I mean fucking cover your mouth.

"It's good manners to cover your mouth," I told him. That's what I was told.

"You put the one and the nine next to each other to make nineteen," he said. "The one and the nine love each other."

"Hmmm. Well, yeah, makes sense as much as anything does."

The kid squirmed off my lap to run around the room, grabbing at things that I couldn't see.

Now, two days later, I'm hypersensitive to art, beauty, and music, and I can barely eat because it feels like there's a hot filament burning inside. I can feel its light shining unhealthy from my eyes. I must achieve, compete, solve problems.

Damn kid. Ah, it's not the kid's fault. I too have been sneezing into the air just so I can watch the diffused and diseased saliva particles sparkle down to the floor. The mania is great.

Voice

Thousands, probably tens of thousands, have the same basic voice as me, taking into account language and upbringing. I embrace the similarities. We with the same (spoken, written) voices share something important, and we can understand each other more quickly, more deeply in less time. I speak like I write, but with more, uh, vocalized pauses and shit.

That's not the point though.

The other day at the restaurant, a waitress brought us a cheese pizza. I have never heard a voice like hers. She must struggle with being defined by it, as only a couple hundred people in the world sound like her. Her bearing was standard professional, but her voice was really beyond description, maybe a morphine-filled needle in the ear? Terrifying, then (pop!) excruciating, then warm, then numb euphoria? No, not quite, not quite at all.

Sexy? Sexy like the universe. I am attracted to things that are beyond description because I can be arrogant and cold with words, and the indescribable pushes me beyond that and forces humility. In the right light, moon or sun, nearly anything can be beyond words, although it's usually an unusual woman.
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