Comparing Notes Someone once told me that she knew exactly what she stood for, although she was never standing at all. What she said and what she did never quite mixed properly, and there was always something I could never understand trickling out. Accusations and assumptions and aggression that flared from embers. Beliefs that wavered as they concerned her and an unwillingness to see what she didn't want to see. It was all so selectively volatile, as though she needed a chord vibrating constantly in disharmony to remind her what music sounded like. By the end I had to realize the truth from what she was never going to say. And I still remember the music that moved us; me to dance and her to walk away.  ¶ 7:56 PM

  Bending, Shaping Long before I fell for her, I had myself figured out. I stood by my values firmly, defending them even as they caused relationships friction. After that, I reconsidered what I believed and the degree to which I valued it.

One cold winter, we traveled somewhere hot together. It was in this place far from home that I found inner conflict. Months earlier, I refused to go to the zoo with a woman I was seeing. She found this intolerable, just as she found my choice not to eat meat intolerable. In these ways, the woman I had fallen for now was similar. And it was with her, far from home, that I went to the zoo with; and it was with her that I ordered and ate a meal with chicken. My desperate hope was to not fall into the problems I had previously fallen into. To show her that I wasn't weak-willed.

The effort was wasted. Our relationship went nowhere, and I regretted both things immensely and immediately. That was how I came to the obvious conclusion that because I was weak in her eyes was the reason I my will was strong. That I had given up my conviction to be with someone with far less. And in the end, all I had left was a deep distaste for my moral malleability.  ¶ 11:11 AM

  Damsel In Distress The phone was already ringing when I walked through the door. I'd just come home late after working on a Friday evening. Roommate was out, which was unfortunate because it was his girlfriend calling. She said that she was the last girl awkwardly stranded at a party and wanted to come over. So I dropped off my things and went back down to my car, off to save my friend's damsel in distress.

The house was in the University area, which meant I'd drive down Whyte Ave to get there. Friday nights on Whyte are a mess of people, but among them, I spotted him easily and honked him over.

I told him that I was just coming to pick him up. He was drunk and too dazzled by the coincidence to notice that I was driving further from home.

Damsel was waiting outside, right on the sidewalk where we pulled up. Quite the surprise for everyone, I'd say. Well, except for me.  ¶ 10:36 AM