does anyone remember...?

seeing me with such a happy expression on my face? if so, send your letters to the author with details. because i don't remember! that is Julia. we met on the Internet. got together one afternoon last week to do a "Cemetery Girl" photo shoot. today we got together again just to have fun. could Julia be girl friend material? yeah, i think so. but for right now she is unavailable because she is leaving the area. moving to live in Tahoe. and i am happy for her that she is. it sounds like a very fun, exciting and important move for her. she is making a leap in faith actually. she found some people to share an apartment with and has a job all lined up where she will work in a bakery. she leaves on Saturday, taking the train from where she lives near Napa to Tahoe. what could make a more romantic escapade for an 18 year old girl moving out of home for the very first time... with only $101 in her purse to live on till she gets her first paycheck.

and yes, i used the both the words "18 year old" and "girl friend" in the same paragraph. i felt a slight romantic attraction to Julia when i met her last week but i didn't really entertain it because i knew she was leaving for Tahoe. last night though we spoke on the phone and she fearfully expressed concern about her living situation; that she wasn't entirely comfortable with the original people she was planning on moving in with, partly because they were demanding that she pay $800 for a shared bedroom. Pretty lousy deal, eh? Especially since she didn't have that kind of money.

So I interjected a spontaneous thought; "I wish I could offer for you to come live in my house."

ok, there has been a break in time since i first started writing this. i am going to continue the story but am jumping in from a slightly adjusted mindset. when Julia told me yesterday that she had gotten something new worked out for Tahoe i felt the plans that i had run through in my mind lift from my soul. plans... yes, ok... rambling now. Swamii Muktananda wrote a book called "Play of Consciousness" in which he describes in ethereal detail the concept that "the world" and all it contains, our lives, our plans, our very thoughts, are all just a "play of God's consciousness"... an imagination if you will. not the harsh realities that we believe ever so dearly in. well, while driving from my house to meet Julia yesterday i let my mind play out a "play of consciousness" and imagined what it could unfold if i were to offer Julia the opportunity of living in my house. back to the beginning of this paragraph; i decided not to tell her once i heard her excitement about the new development with her plans. i responded with blissful concord.

then we just spent the next 2-3 hours doing what we had met for; to hang out and play in a cemetery (or two) with my camera. it wasn't until later that i began to feel that it would be beneficial to tell her, in a detached tone of voice what had occurred in my mind. here is how i told her the story.

paraphrased... "Eugene O'Neill had one daughter. her name was Oona. she wanted to become a Hollywood actress and moved there. when she turned 18 she fell in love with a man that she met there and married him. when her father learned of who it was that she married he became irate and ended up disowning her. i don't think that he was upset over who she married so much as what she married. she married Charlie Chaplin, who happened to be 50 years old. i don't know if it is my infatuation with the life and times of Eugene O'Neill from my studies of him for my novel, or what, but the fact that an 18 year old 'girl' fell in love with a 50 year old man and stayed married to him for over 35 years and gave him many children thrills me a little. i have never been a person to fit into the categories of my stature. i don't do anything to socialize with people my own age. that i have any friends my own age is odd, seeing that they are all people that i have known since i was in high school. i have no friends my age that i have met anywhere else in the world.

my point here is that i don't meet people (or women) of my own age in any natural fashion. when i went to the college last year i did actually meet several women near my age and am still friends with two of them. but there was no romantic inclination with either of them. the woman i did have a romantic encounter with was 18. i thought she was older, maybe 22, but i was wrong. i have a spirit that is younger than the 49 years of my body's life. i enjoy being around younger people more than i do people my own age. i don't avoid my age group but as far as meeting a woman near my age that would accept my unusual position in life and my unusual interests and attitudes, i think the chances are slim. they just are. older women, like older men, in most cases have started to accept an idea that they are less capable of doing different and unusual things, and well, that they are going to die. i don't like that way of thinking.

being around young people helps make me feel young. they think differently and have a vigor for challenging the norm. that is my way too. i'd accept and love a woman of my own age status if there was one that came into my life and could excite me to live, but it is younger women that come into my life. see, i think there is something too about some younger women that have an attraction to older men. be it a father figure issue, or whatever, i'm not sure. i know it probably wouldn't work out for very long. a marriage to an 18 year old, but if she were my perfect soul mate it could! and i am not 50 yet so its right that i have not met the exact "her" yet."

well i think Julia was a little delighted at my diatribe, but was more so relieved that i had told her my ideas and feelings without an attachment to "her". i told her outright, "18 year old girls should NOT get married. they are too young and need to experience life before they settle down." i though, think that i will meet someone very unique that will "need me"... and it will be right. do you get it? i don't go out dating 18 year olds. i don't date anyone. when i meet someone they come into my life according to the orchestral timing of the universe. i wait. then i engage.

Julia is a very nice girl, and we have some interesting commonalities. who knows what could happen after September 2, 2008 {my 50th birthday}. In an upcoming post I will go into detail of the 18 year old women I have been in contact (friendships) with over the past several years and offer analysis. Funny, since none of those girls worked out, maybe through this process I'll find that none will ever work out. There is something alluring about a young woman on the verge of discovering her independence in the world. The just leaving the protection of home syndrome where they want to be brave and adventurous. I'm a better candidate for an 18 year old to fall in love with than a teacher would be, if she needs an older man because I don't offer the complications of a student/teacher relationship.

and i've complained about this before, the city i live in is full of business women, soccer moms and lady golfers. there are no cafes where artists or writers or musician looking people hang out. a good friend of mine said this just the other day, that i've got to get out of here if i am going to meet anyone "like" me. i don't go to church or the ashram anymore - although the ashram was the most unlikely place to find a woman interested in a relationship with a man that i've ever gone to. and i can't take classes till my enrollment status at the college is fixed. thanks (no thanks) to my old pdoc i still don't have a doctors letter to fix that situation. college is the only place where i meet people. yeah, in the eternal words of the dearly departed Warren Zevon, "my shits fucked up..."