Flashback

Penny seems distressed somehow, like a phone call we had last night challenged her in a way she didn't wanna be challenged. She's pretty easy to read when she's being withdrawn or upset.

Basically, I want to challenge her to come out into the bigger world, out into the culture, and try lots of things that won't necessarily have come to her small town in Pennsylvania and sought her out. Strange music, different people, the outdoors, the idea that grit and dirt and grease can be a good and worthwhile thing to experience, that gritty, dirty, inelegant people are sometimes a lot more interesting people to be around than the nice white people you find at craft stores.

There's a certain comfort about her house, but there's also a sterility I sometimes really don't like. She has a small, newish house that's decorated with lots of stuffed bears and the sort of stuff you'd find at the craft fairs I love to avoid. Foofy shit made of dried flowers and grapevine and slats of aged barn timbers that probably should have stayed as a barn.

I want to show her other parts of the world. Problem is, I can feel the evangelistic part of me come out, the part of me that sometimes feels pity, not encouragement, for people I think have led sheltered lives. It's not that Penny hasn't had hard times, but they're of the sort you only find in rural areas. She seems to live among people who think there's nothing interesting out there in the world, and certainly no reason to go seek out challenges. Anything challenging is to be avoided. Listen to Rush: he'll make you feel good about being in a backwater, not challenge you to row your way out. Bush does the same thing. So did his father.

"You're a moron? Well, good for you! God love you."

Penny is not a moron. She just needs to get out more. A major obstacle to this, of course, is our tendency to fuck each other's brains out. Thus, neither of us gets out much.

Still, I think this is a potential threat to anything long-term for us. I start losing patience if I sense people want to hide in their caves and not come out to see what's around. I may not want to shake the world, but I'm still exploring it.

I forget where I was the other day, but I saw a woman looking at something in a store, and I could suddenly FEEL this sort of tactile rush. I knew what she felt like... knew what her hair smelled like, knew what it would feel like to pin her up against the counter, flip her skirt back, and have her right there next to the impulse items. This hasn't happened in a long time, this sort of tactile flashback, and it was pretty wild. I was yards away from her, she never even looked at me, but there was this rush of sensation. I kept on going .