Not a prolific poster.

For the past month, my little electronic voice has been silent. Honestly, there were so many thoughts I would have loved to record here, and I'm sure stories will be posted as memories are stirred up by daily life, but there just wasn't time. If I wasn't eating, sleeping, or at school, I was out in Paris trying to assimilate into la culture francaise.

Also, in thinking about my cyber-silence, I realize that it's a reflection of my life during the last month. There are times in your life when it is much more about what you take in than what you put out. Karma repaid me this past month, feeding me with creativity, understanding, knowledge, new friends, challenges... I grew in my silence, and all the things I learned will find their way here - I'm sure.

Love to you all, happy to be back :)

AA

"Weee, Paaay-reee!"

So, loves of my life, I am packing up the luggage, folding my life up, and getting ready to FLY! Once again, I am typing when I should be doing anything but scrawling my little bits of life across the internet. I will blog as much as possible while I am gone, but I will be devoting a lot of my time to "la vie parisienne" - I bought the web cam yesterday, so I am now skype-able. Life is rolling up nicely, seems like I am destined to be a part-time Parisian - perhaps more?? I must run off to get the ball rolling on some other things! Love to you all!!!

AA

late-night lamentations = lame!

I can't think. I really just want to cuddle up in someone's arms right now and sleep until I feel fresh when I wake up. I have that stupid knee-jerk reaction though - PhotoOp is in my head because I let him in my pants. - I do the thing that all people like me do, and I turn to the last person that made me feel special, wanted, safe, or... just was available and I reach out to them hoping that they'll respond with... something. I don't even know if I pine for him, or this ideal that he represents... and the fact that he is so aloof and seems to forget about writing back to me all the time is a little more than difficult for me.

I need to breathe, but I feel suffocated by my clingy, honest, sappy-romantic nature.

I do not have any feelings of self-loathing, just a feeling of exasperation for the lack of options in my personal life and the excess of options in my professional life. I feel like there is a dry expansive emptiness in my future - or to be graphic - I can buy into the bullshit and be a cum-rag for some guy for as long as he wants me to be around. Obviously, I am over both of those options - and yet, I also could settle - I could settle for some guy that, in one way or another, does not meet my needs and makes me feel just as empty and fake as the guy who wants me only for sex.

Frustration is passing, I know, and I have a great life with great people as my friends and I would never trade that for anything. - I seem to be unable to play the game that is necessary to make anything stick with any guy that I find physically attractive, and though I may be intellectually stimulated by someone, if they aren't physically attractive to me... then what am I supposed to do, fake it til I make it - think again friend.

Truly, I'm okay, I just - need more time to flesh out these ideas, I need to be more comfortable with the current ambiguity of my life - realizing that resolution will come when things fall into place, and I need to focus on today - i.e. the paper that I should have already written that is sitting incomplete in Microsoft word less than 10% done.

Closing thoughts for the early morning exorcism: Do not let your demons, literal or figurative, drive you to drink, drung or general distraction. Life is here and now, so live while you can. Take a deep breath, assess where you are and what you are doing at face value; if the current plan of attack isn't causing you to feel any better about what is happening in your life change your "strategery."

Sorry for the early morning crazy - I wish sometimes that I was translatable to other people, thought I feel like I try to be as transparent and honest as possible, I seem to meet more people who prefer dishonesty or general unavailabity to my relationship style. Even though I am a man, I do not often communicate like one. I'm shooting at the wrong targets. I know one day that there will be someone that I can have a reciorocal relationship with - and though I can be fairly comfortable with ambiguity, in this case, I really wish I knew when.

I love you all, and I hope that life isn't presenting you with such leach-like questions in your life. It seems, like I say all the time, that this year is a year of change. I am carbon being forced into a diamond - let's be real, sometimes it really sucks - but I'm making it, inch by inch, day by day. I've made the effort, and come miles this year, inching along and being proud of myself for the progress I've made. I hope that life is easy for each of you, and that you learn lessons the first time. Realize that you have someone to stand with you in the tough times, and someone to smile with when the season changes.

Love, love, LOVE to you all,
AA

A mans mantra,

I am not encircled by your imagination, or subject to your will.
I do not fit neatly in boxes you expect me to flawlessly fill.
I am perfect in my irregularities, my conscience and kind of my self and my domain.
What I do is exist beyond your horizons, beyond the bounds of your feeble brain.
I can give more than you could ever ask for, and make you forget the word take.
I am charming, expansive and strong and can excite more than one man's snake.
I exist beyond your borders outside your natural realm,
I make you wish for me, and want me at the helm.
I confound your senses and make you feel a certain tug in your pants,
you'll find beauty, grace, power, and taste in the rhythm of my dance.
I am a transient temptation that, for you, fades in the slightest breeze
but for someone someday I will fit each and every need.
It truly is your loss, dear, that you think too small
- but then again, perhaps my win, that I am free to call -
to call on men that see me for what I am; a lover alive with passion, patience and poise.
Here and there and everywhere to satisfy, and be satisfied not by Mr. Here and Now but the pick of the litter, the man who is kind, caring, masculine, beautiful and best of all employed.

-----

Just a little something I wrote for myself just now. I know it's goofy and suggestive, but lately I've felt invisible to some people that I find or found attractive - and today, I am going to say, it's not me. If you exist beyond the focus of someone's finite world, that doesn't make you any less beautiful, relevant and worthwhile. I am beautiful and I will be suitable for someone, someday. I rush myself so often into trying to figure things out, when it's okay to exist alone - to realize that you are the way you should be, here, now, today - a being in transition, yes; seeking to be better daily - but also, just beautifully human. I exist outside of the scope of what many men can see, perhaps I always will, but someday there will be someone who sees me for what I am, and expects me to be nothing more or less - and who finds me beautiful in the here and now. I can wait.

I hope you realize you are beautiful too, that you are my beautiful friends and I see you for who and what you are and I love and appreciate you for it. Don't fall for people who don't see what I see.

Love to you all,
AA.

mixed messages

It would seem that the world is full of mixed messages. Lately, I have been giving and receiving them - contributing to the white noise of the relationship world and become deaf because of the transmissions of others.

Since PhotoOp came home with me, I have reentered the needy - want to be with someone - don't want to be alone part of my relationship cycle. In reality, I know nothing about him other than he is beautiful and I find him attractive more so than I do most other people I've met in my life. Not to minimize that fact, but relationships built upon admiration of external beauty are doomed to fail because facades change, the weather and gray and crack in the sun, PhotoOp represents something I want. He is the emblem of an idea - the idea of a long term relationship, stability, and the ideal that we all seek in some way - someone to share our lives with.

I've been told by Momma that he's not much of a relationship guy, which is fine, but it makes him not really suitable for what I want - the messages between us have sort of decreased in frequency as of late, proving her point. The last one that I wrote him about 24hours ago will probably be the hardest to swallow; I think he'll probably take it to mean that I want him to be my boyfriend - which... hell, I wouldn't mind, but it was more just a putting of things out there:

It sounds like an excellent place to be. Stable and allowing you to have an artistic outlet.

As for John, he is not just a designer, but also a television host - though that seems like it would be a lot of fun I don't aspire to be nationally visible in that regard. If the opportunity arose, I wouldn't pass it up, but I realize that working in any business where - to at least some extent - you must cater to an audience, that you have to go 'where the money is.' That's one reason why opera is a little unattractive. I mean, I guess I could live out of a suitcase with relatively small attachment to any one place, but it isn't my ideal.

I want to have a home, a husband, and hopefully a kid - It's hard to be a jetset musician and have any sort of relationship or family with any sort of cohesion. I have discovered recently, more than ever, that I am built to be somebody's someone - also, I see so many of my teachers living alone in their old age because they put career before family, and I don't want to be alone when I'm 65 with nothing but cats to come home to. Anyway, I just want to have a "home base" where I spend most of my time, where my friends and my life are. I love to travel but I don't want to have to be gone 80% of the year to be able to pay rent or the mortgage on a property I never see and to never have the chance to build a relationship that will last. I would love to get a contract with an opera house, but those are hard to land and don't often last for more than a few years - or for multiple operas of a season.

I'd like to do something with design/Language/Vocal pedagogy (something...?) during the day as a means to have a dependable means of earning money and stabilizing myself geographically and then find means of expressing myself artistically in community settings - If opera doesn't work out...

Aaaaaanyway, It's a feature of my life I have been thinking about quite a bit and thus have plenty of possible material to write about it. I just want a long-term someone someday. I know I'll arrive at that stage in life when I am meant to, but I have this weird feeling that I might just as easily end up alone.

I hope that you can comfortable and successfully transition into more art sales of your own and not management of a gallery. Leslie said that your art had developed into something with a political voice, and if you are able to use your work to focus eyes on what you believe needs to be fixed, more power to you. Opera, well, from where I stand anyway, doesn't have the same flexibility. If I was a director or a designer, then yes, but as a vocalist I am not in charge of the direction of the art, I simply bring the life to it.

Sorry, this all seems very Debbie Downer. I've been feeling funky lately and have tried to blog away the blues but I can't seem to shake them. Guess it's just where I am supposed to be right now.

Wishing you the best sir; hope you are smiling.
- - - (AA)

I don't really care what he thinks, at this point, I just needed to put those words out there and say what I felt. I feel like that's a good step toward being able to unapologetically and unashamedly say what it is that I need and want for myself and my life. (I've always been an "apologizer")

Right now, the reality is that I am in transition, with no secure idea of where I'll end up or what I'll be doing a year from now. I have a lot of options to consider, and though I know I shouldn't wait to be "perfect" before I let someone in - I think that I need to not be so gung-ho about jumping into relationships with people who show a glimmer of possibility. I am a romantic man, I am made to love someone and I guess somewhere in me a clock ticks counting down the minutes of my life. I have simultaneously a feeling of urgency with a splash of no options (in partners) and this feeling that the world is different now and I don't need to be in such a hurry -i.e. the American way.

I must learn that boyfriends, like sexuality, are not like the cereal aisle at Walmart. I can't just go out and pick the one I want based on some published list of facts. ha, a high fiber low sugar boyfriend.... anyway, I realize now more than ever that I am young and the world is open to me. I don't have to do everything the way the rest of the world does and there is no one whose expectations and desires for my life that I need to value more than my own.

Growing daily and trying to make each day better for myself and the rest of the world - love to you all,
AA

Connected or Confused?

So, my dear ones, I have been the busiest of bees lately. My life wouldn't be any good if it was slow though, so I'm not complainin'.

Went to the TALC gala with the crew and some new people, some of whom you will hear of later... maybe multiple times, this I say with fingers crossed and knocking on wood. I spent the better part of the beginning of this month partying, I'm pretty sure my brain and my liver are a little the worse for ware. I told a boy via text I wanted to kiss him = fail; and he didn't respond and hasn't since = epic fail. However, this has been the only real stumble in the department of gentlemen.

The TALC gala and the people entailed outlining my most recent "successes." I have spent a lot of time with Momma recently, which has been nice - I don't get to see her all that much during the year, and I have been added to the gay circle of Momma's friend M'Lin. Eesh is in the summer class I am taking, and I got to go out with Twin the other day - so all my ladies are around. Hoping to visit Peach and Aid before the end of next month, depending on available funds! But anyway, you asked for juice, and for once, I have something juicy to tell... mostly anyway.

So, I meet two of Momma's other friends, people who have moved out of the Tallahassee phase of their lives and gone on to professions etc: Chem: a very tall, smart, cute and fantastic man; Phur: Very nice, cute, considerate and wonderful man; and PhotoOp: he. is. gorgeous. when I saw him, I thought WOW, how can all that pretty be in one man? but that is just the tip of the iceberg - he is smart, sweet, and .... I wish he didn't live so far away.

So, I got to spend time with these lovely people,( Momma, Mix, MacGee, M'Lin, and the Men) over the week leading to the gala, all great lovely people who have know each other for years and then... me. I fit in pretty well when we had dinner together though, I get extra-friendly feedback from PhotoOp, which made me feel nice, but I didn't suspect anything.

We went out later that week after they had a rehearsal for the gala and I for Chicago; Chem, Momma and I where the only ones who ended up going; we had a great time - a boy tried to tell them how much he was in love with me while I was at the bar... awkward.... but the new look went over well. People asked if I was working out or had lost weight.... no, friends, haircut and a beard. But anyway, we escaped loverboy and made it home where we talked until 4 am or so. Chem had been flirting with me a little during the night, but subtly, and so I took it to mean nothing. I slept at Momma's because it isn't super close to my house and I didn't want to drive home. Shortly after we'd gone to bed, Chem sent me a facebook message asking me to join him: since I have a bobo phone, I didn't get it until the next day... but wooo, win!!! I felt good about myself that I had caught the eye of someone so cute and smart.

Anyway, Momma tells me the next day PhotoOp was upset he missed out on the clubbing experience, because he wanted to spend time with ME!! DOUBLE WIN in the saaaame day. So we go to the gala and I make it a point to talk to PhotoOp, Chem is otherwise occupied and is not Chilean with beautiful hazel eyes. He stays pretty aloof which is fine and we go through the night fairly platonically. I run into an ex, Prince... and exes of his... awesome. Finally the video-watching and performances end and it's PARTY TIME!!!!

We headed to Mix and MacGee's and have a great time with the cast of characters and then PhotoOp asks me to take him home, so his ride can turn in early.... DUH, I said yes. blah blah blah, fast forward, take him home after about an hour of just the two of us talking and he gets ready to get out of the car, then mumbles something like, "I just have to...." leans in and kisses me. I was surprised but quickly more interested in the reality, this beautiful man kissing me. This persisted for some time.... then he said he should go inside, somehow it came up that I had a place in town too where he could stay, he waffled but eventually came home with me. And the rest... is available on a need to know basis ;)

He's gone now and we have had a few messages pass between us, but I am pretty sure that will all dissolve in a week or so. I really want to know more about him though.... and by know more, I mean, I almost itch to see him..... but simultaneously, my head says you barely know him. I'm trying to strike a reasonable balance between the two: my head and heart - I'll keep you posted. But for now, I am trying to keep it light and easy, and talk to him for as long as he'll talk to me. I have no desire to be taxing or to be taxed; this summer diversion might be just that, or may develop into friendship or... something else. I will be happy with whichever of the options occur.

--------

Turning the page:

I LEAVE FOR PARIS SOOOOO SOON! I am exceptionally excited. That's all I can really say about it. I am going to start reviewing grammar etc for the tests we take when we get there, but more than that, I am just basking in the glow of excitement and expectation.

I also have had a great deal of God smiling on me lately, providing for me in inconceivable ways and letting me know He is there. Comforting to know that I'm being watched over and provided for.

Additionally, thank God for each of you. Bless you and may God keep and protect you in times of prosperity and famine. I feel so lucky to have each of you in my life. Love to you all,
-AA

P.s. soon, there will be a post about who's who in my blog and why they are named as they are.

Muffled Mental Mumblings

So, life is upon us - and as always - my ability to turn the simple into complex and vice versa, is crippling my curmudgeonly brain.

I settled on the Voodoo, Race and Revolution in Haiti class, it includes a LOT of reading, but so far it is interesting.

I am struggling with the decision of where to live next year: through many pros and cons, I really love my place despite its faults. (i.e. lack of Dishwasher, Washer and Dryer, insulation...). My thought is, I love my place, and I could stay here and continue to pay higher rent prices, or I could move and have to drive to school next year and either pay for a place to park, or brave the lots daily. Really this decision hinges on a few others that are giving me mental heartburn: (1) ho many hours should I take in the fall (2) should I get a "real" job (3) should I be saving money for grad school/moving, etc. - - (In a side note, I am down to paying off one, ONE credit card!!!! I will be able to pay it off over the next two months and then, I shall be debt free. Praise Jesus. I was very proud of that fact.)

Chicago is going alright, it will be good, I think. I don't know if I really want my family to come... supposedly we are supposed to be kind of naked a lot of the production. Score. Anorexia, here I come.

On yet another Debbie Downer Note, I wrote this... whatever it is in response to two people:

I am a crushed and crinkled bit of paper in the trashcan of your mind, in the dusty edges of awareness, where stained shirts hang on the line. I am here, a fragment, of what you once had; an idea in the darkness, a persistent pest carefully jarred. I want you to remember me and call me sometime. It seems that in all your races to do the best for everyone else, that you are distracting, diverting, detracting from yourself. Perhaps you lack the words, or better yet the balls, to return a call, type a word - - you fear the guilt it could cause. You've wrapped yourself in white feather pillows and tied them on with rope, in the hope that I'm forgettable, that the flame will extinguish quietly without a trace of smoke. Or perhaps it's that your horrible indifference is responsible for m wounds, I suppose there will be a "sorry" somewhere for that one, too... I am not transparent, nor invisible to the eye, so then the question I ask you is: why? Why do you not answer; why do I not make you blink; why am I forgettable, ignorable, regrettable, or whatever the hell you think!? Your tight lipped ways infuriate me, they singe every part of me, I am the scorched earth of Georgia after Sherman's March to the Sea. Truly it's self-inflicted, there's something in this pain, something that I return to here that makes some sense; insane. I need for you to talk to me, and not pretend it's all alright. It isn't and it hasn't been since you plastered that laissez faire grin on your stupid beautiful face. My broken rhymes rhythmicize what I feel is true, and the conclusion I have for both of us, is that there is talking to do.

----

So, that was to Gem and another ex who seem to think if they ignore me, I don't exist. There are few times when I get angry, but when I feel marginalized and ignored is one of my 'buttons,' so that being said, I have decided to talk to them. On a broader scale, I find two kernels of wisdom that can be gleaned here too: (1) Entitlement of Self : I should communicate when I feel a certain way, and be unapologetic for my feelings; This is an issue I struggle with, and I am working through it. (2)Entitlement of Others : Recently, I have played the same card of, ignore them and they'll go away. Unfortunately, people, unlike the T-Rex do not go away if you stand still long enough. I may have injured people with by ignoring them. Granted, the alternatives are uncomfortable, but truth to others and ones self is much more preferable than any substitute. So, time to hike up the newly acquired big boy breeches and get down and dirty.

End Sad things; On to the happy.

My mom called me this week, she got the results back from the test and she has nothing to worry about. (Thank You, God! You had me scared there for a second). I really love my mom and couldn't live without her. Human frailty sucks, I'm over it! Thank you to everyone that sent out prayers and energies. It helped, if not the outcome of the test, my peace of mind knowing that people in the world care.

I am in an amorphous place, which seems to happen to me a lot. I am kind of lonely, but I don't ache for company - which is a good thing. I feel that I am still maturing and readying myself for the person that I will share my life with, but at the moment I've been a bit dreamy for a someone of my own. I'm still getting a lot of online attention from guys, which is nice, but mostly in the "let's f*%k" side of things. No crazy long term options, but I am not 95 yet , so I have some time. I had a nice lunch date the other day with a perfectly sweet guy, and I think it would be nice to see him again. I think he'll turn into a friend though, his intelligence is very nice, we see the world from similar perspectives but I don't find him that attractive. Recently I have been noticing feminine beauty, more so than normal. Maybe it's the beard? (ba-doom *chick*) But seriously, I kind of fancy myself as a free lover. Not tied to dudes or chicks and having never had a meaningful relationship with a girl I wonder what it would be like. Ruminate on that and I'll get back to you. This post has already gotten to be three times as long as I wanted. Suffice it to say, I am happy and healthy and okay where I am. Growing successfully and just... alive; all good things.

Love to you all :)
AA