Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Glory, glory. My blog is now syndicated on Livejournal.
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03:04:52 AM,Tuesday 18 January 2005
I'm seriously out of whack. I haven't had this much disharmony in my being since... Towson, I think. My life is stable and pleasant, but I'm inert. I fret. I laze about. I lock myself into an empty routine. I use the computer to neutralize the rabbitings of my brain. I feed all my time to it. Look at the things I could be doing:
* Walk around the neighborhood
* Clean the bathroom
* Wrap presents
* Talk to or visit friends
* Exercise
* Write letters or poems or stories or essays
* Read poetry or philosophy
* Study
* Look up things to do in the city
* Go to a concert or a play or a movie or a library
* Practice trumpet or recorder
Instead, I've done the following things in mindless succession, every time I go home, until it's time to go to work:
* Bathe
* Eat
* Sleep
* Read novels
* Play video games
and, overwhelmingly,
* Sit at the computer until the hours disappear
I go to work and do the last three some more and then start over. The only time it lets up is when I'm with K., but I can barely let myself exult in the ease of her company because I'm too strung out about my own sorry failings. Last weekend was wonderful. She was wonderful. But the whole time I felt like my heart was in shackles. I can't be with her until I fix this. What's wrong with me? I can't look at myself when I live like a vegetable. I'm not progressing toward anything. I shirk the things that could strengthen me and give me purpose. I spend all my energy fighting desperately to keep from doing anything. It's ridiculous. I keep thinking it'll come to a crisis and I'll holler and thrash about and shake it off and go on to be mindful, diligent, creative, productive. But I don't. I follow the same monotonous habits day after day after day after day. My mind withers with my body. I'm locked into myself. It's the pettiest, dullest, most tedious sort of egoism. I'm useless like this. Wasn't self-indulgence supposed to feel good? It doesn't. I'm not like this. I won't be like this.
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(15)
08:41:11 PM,Monday 17 January 2005
Snow! A solid inch of splendid snow! Yeehaw!
Oh, and a crucial detail I neglected to relate about this weekend: Saturday night, K. and I went out to dinner, and I had THE BEST SUSHI OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. Jawlockingly delicious, but so limpidly beautiful, on top of it all, mmph! Wasabi-marinated lobster nigiri. Baby yellowtail that disappeared like flash paper. Crunchy Scottish Salmon roll, several pieces of which my counterpart donated selflessly to me -- thereby assuring that, were she to set fire to my bed tomorrow, I'd be forced to fold my hands and smile sweetly. Caviar that scattered light. Miso soup that could cure any mortal distemper with a single cube of its tofu alone. Holy sweet Mary Mumbledypeg, that was good sushi.
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(7)
08:10:13 AM,Monday 17 January 2005
Sign that I need to go to bed: so it's 7:30, when I usually go into my employer's room, start her breathing treatment, put the heating pads on her face, and, if she's awake, turn on the radio and raise the blinds. She was, but before I could get on with the routine, she spells out "A-R-M". "You want me to rub it?" I ask. Yes, she signs. Her muscles ache, which seems like the ultimate bum deal, considering that they've atrophied. So I do, for a decent long while, and she starts indicating that she wants something. I get the letter board, and she spells out "R-A-D-I..." "Radius?" I say. "You want me to rub your radius?" And I'm all digging way in the back of my brain for the mnemonic that tells you which is which, and I knew it had something to do with the U in "thumb", but since both "radius" and "ulna" had Us in them it wasn't serving me too well, and I figured I would just kinda rub the general forearm area and switch sides if I'd gotten it wrong and meanwhile she's making these "Hey, you! Hey! Dimwit!" noises, and I look up and catch her eye and finally I smack my forehead and go turn on Morning Edition. Me = Big Ol' Dork.
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07:51:44 AM,Monday 17 January 2005
I now own the most beautiful scarf in Christendom, Bodum, and Random, inclusive! It's a thick soft unitchy double-layered acrylic footie scarf, with mirror image even-numbered stripes of black, gunmetal, and dove gray. And tassles! It's my Christmas present from Who-Else, and... gahh, this thing, I can't even describe. I chose the colors, and she did the work -- I was there for much of the knitting of it (while I played video games and we both listened to the unabridged audiobook of Moby Dick; a cozier domestic scene there is not.), and I couldn't keep from grabbing for it and tugging it away to fondle at half-minute intervals. But now it's finished, and it's mine for good and all, and it's around my neck, and it's keeping me in blazing spirits while I keep vigil in this godforsakenly frigid kitchen and... oh! scarf! Scarf!
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03:34:40 AM,Monday 17 January 2005
My ear-wiggling muscles get more exercise than the rest of 'em put together. And it shows, too. {tremendous ladder-back alternating slant wiggle}
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04:36:16 PM,Friday 14 January 2005
This morning they told me that I don't have to work tonight -- so I've got off 'til Sunday at 11:00pm! Untrammeled paradisicality!
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02:59:06 PM,Friday 14 January 2005
My job affords me these huge blocks of free time, and all I ever do with them is daydream, read novels, play video games, and screw around on the internet. It wouldn't be so bad if I had time in the rest of my life to do what needs to be done, but I don't. I still haven't sent out the Christmas presents I bought December 3rd. My mom's best friend gave me $100 to buy new clothes with last month, and I still haven't tried on so much as a wifebeater. If I'm not sleeping, I'm hanging out with K., just mooning and reading and being fine and mellow, and I hate that she's become the single object of real pleasure in my thoughts these days. I mean, partly I yearn for her 'cause lord knows she's worth yearning for, but partly it's 'cause she's all I've got, and it's insulting to both of us. I've never been that sort -- I've always been driven out of my mind by that sort! I make my own fun, damnit. But these long nights aren't ever quite fun no matter how soundly my employer sleeps or how much I indulge myself in idleness. They're not unpleasant, usually -- just numbing. By morning, I've got nothing to show for them but a paycheck. Not that I'm discounting it, but grrr. I'm lucky enough to have the greater part of 55 paid hours a week to myself; why can't I put them to use? And it all bleeds back into the most important thing in my whole goddamn life: making things solid between me and K. All the time I'm not with her, I'm either working or I feel like I should be. So my mind has started to think of her as my only respite, the only thing I've got to look forward to without dreading it -- and that's not right. It's not fair. It can't last without distorting our sympatico and sapping the good stuff we've built up between us. But what's the solution? Studying and writing and reading philosophy and doing pushups while I'm here so that at least I feel virtuous while my time is my own, I guess. Or, short of that, finding some way to get enough free time so that I can see her as often as I like and be able to work in the practical stuff plus long walks and library trips and movies and friends and music and random spontaneous adventures too. But how am I gonna wangle that?! Argh. Argh argh. I just dunno.
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(7)
07:27:19 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
That's either hail or a mouse in the coal scuttle. And since I don't think swanky modern apartment buildings like this one have coal scuttles... {sticks hand out window} Well, whaddaya know.
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06:22:48 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
Today's grammatical death wish goes to: "have went". Ugh!
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(5)
05:56:24 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
Linky: my new best friend. Or at least my new best Firefox Extension. I knew there had to be such a thing, and tonight I finally went a-googling and found it. It's invaluable if you've got blog-reading habits like mine -- just load blog tracker, select the links you want opened (or, if you've previously prepared the field by marking all but the newest links "followed", select all links and then exclude already visited links), sit back for about ten seconds while your browser blurfs and purgles, and then -- yeehaw! You got all your reading laid out for you in handy little tabs, and you've barely lifted a finger.
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(2)
05:54:22 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
That's over, but is it solved?
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05:29:12 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
Not by default.
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(1)
03:44:47 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
Choking on complexity.
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03:17:04 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
Cowardice done in with a killing bite. Remember that.
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02:56:17 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
In the elevator this morning I saw a man of at least seventy wearing ultra lowrider gangsta pants. He was kinda rocking 'em, too.
My scale is fuznukkited. When I got up, it said I weighed 122 pounds. Then I had two English muffins with jam and peanut butter, a cheese dog sans bun, some queso blanco, a cup of croutons, and a glass each of milk and lemonade. When I weighed myself again, it said 126. No way that was four pounds of food. Bizarre.
I've had "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" stuck in my head for the better part of this week. Which is kinda odd, since I've been reading (breaking my self-imposed ban on novels 'til I clock in 3 hours of GRE studying, shame shame) a pretty schmaltzy book I snagged from the free table at Shakespeare & Co. called The White Rose, which of course ties itself in with the revolutionary group while riffing off Der Rosenkavalier, but I didn't know the connection between them and the song. Hadn't heard of them at all, in fact. More shame shame. But I got an mp3 of it from Katherine Nehring way back, and it keeps coming up in instant shuffle, and then I found Leonard Cohen's version on that awesome Rare Live Songs link Moira posted a couple days ago. It's a good tune and text to meditate on, I think.
Been sleeping well this week, which is good, 'cause it means I don't slip into a stupor at night, which means I'm genuinely tired by morning and can sleep right away, which means I actually get a couple hours in the evening to do fun stuff without shortchanging my brain.
Learn Lapine!
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(11)
02:08:26 AM,Friday 14 January 2005
Fog! The park is otherworldly.
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07:36:59 AM,Thursday 13 January 2005
Not only are they a nauseatingly sweet preteen sister-act folk music duo, they're Aryan, to boot! Or should I say, to jackboot? Hyuck hyuck hyuck... um, seriously. Erk. This is a scary little world.
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(26)
03:44:40 AM,Thursday 13 January 2005
My dream job (Classical Music Data Editor) is open again. They didn't post on Craigslist this time; I just noticed it when I checked their site tonight. Sent off a cover letter and resume. Percuss any handy xyloid objects for me, will ya?
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(1)
02:53:12 AM,Thursday 13 January 2005
In conclusion, Tony sez: get over your blintzbuggering self.
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07:44:11 AM,Wednesday 12 January 2005
