JDaters Anonymous

After years of enmeshment, our lives diverged,
as if in poetic woods
and silently, we parallel parted.

I thought there’d be closure, but there was no treaty signed –
just the slow vanishing
into separate horizons.

At unexpected intervals, the unbidden returns
to haunt the empty mansion, spook my creativity
and whistle at me — half-encouragement / half-mockery.

The visitation echoes
longer than it actually lasts
and in those ripples, expectation and desire
still beckon Picasso-like
all angles, fluid borders, and jagged edges.

Those edges create shadows, where irritants
lodge as immigrants, vagrants seeking shelter.
Now there are other things there.

With repeated revisiting, I fade-float
into the vision, grasping at the asymmetry
that most resembles reality.

So I haven’t written in a while. But there’s a good reason. After more than a decade in New York, I’ve moved West, to a state as predictable as the sunshine and as volatile as the earthquakes that it experiences. Like those who sought the gold rush in them thar hills of California, I’m prospecting.

There will be more posts, but I’ve been trying to reestablish a home base, a source of stability to draw on in the life that I intentionally uprooted and relocated. Here’s hoping that these intervening weeks have proven stimulating to you, on and offline. Looking forward to seeing you back here for regular singles-related discussion over the next few months…

Stay tuned for refrigerator poetry. Seriously.

When it comes to predicting election results, you probably look to exit polls, or to any of the major TV networks, or to your favorite online method of reportage. You can also look to Twitter. But if you’re a social media-connected person, perhaps there’s somewhere else you should be looking — on Facebook.

You may have noticed people “donating their Facebook status” in support of a particular candidate or in general, on behalf of the concept of voting, and therefore, democracy. (I haven’t done an exhaustive count of my 1650 Facebook friends, but the majority seem to be supporting Obama. Not a shocking development, I know.)

“But Esther, why are you telling us this here? Isn’t this a dating-related blog?”

Yes, of course. All will be clear imminently. In the next sentence, actually.

In honor of the election, SpeedDate.com made available ten free virtual gifts related to politics, half related to Obama, the other half to McCain. SpeedDate reported this morning, that tens of thousands of gifts were sent by SpeedDate’s Facebook application’s users over the past couple days, with some interesting results:
* Obama/Dem gifts were sent 51% of the time versus only 9% for McCain/Republican gifts
* The most sent gift was the ‘Vote Obama’ button with 24% of gifts sent (it even beat our default ‘vote’ gift)
* The least sent gift was the elephant that represents the Republican party with only 1%

For more on the breakdown, check out the SpeedDate blog.

The following is refrigerator poetry from the apartment I left behind. I mean, I didn’t leave the poetry behind, just the apartment: I copied down the poem before I dismantled it, word-by-word, and threw it into a Ziploc bag with its verbal brethren. Enjoy.

The manic midtown neon
Was like a modern concert star
From the airport hotel
I hailed you like a cab

Stop, my big porno pretzel
I visit light and him.