Julia's Bloglet - Thursday 23 August 2007

For several months anyone who's heard I would be spending time in New York said roughly the same thing, "Oh, you're so lucky! That'll be so much fun!" And I've smiled nervously and tried to keep mum about my own anxiety. You see, there's a particular sort of stress I associate with New York. It may be irrational, but I get very antsy and agitated when dropped into the center of a teeming mass of humans. I start to feel as though I am always a) in the way, b) surrounded and pressed from all sides, and c) being watched. I don't have this problem to quite the same extent in other cities, but I suspect that the population density is greater here.

Of course, having said that, I'm well aware that there are indeed many great things about New York (in other places you go to sushi, in New York, sushi goes to you!), and that I am lucky to spend some time here with no worries over how I will support myself and where I will live. Several of the great things even go hand in hand with the population density. Surely other cities don't have quite so many delicious restaurants everywhere for the simple reason that their populations can't sustain them, for instance. Also, I always feel like I'm in American Europe when I am here because of all the small markets and cafes and so forth, which again seems related to the population and the lay of the land. You have to build upwards if you want to expand, and you have to make do with small spaces for retail and food services the majority of the time. In Europe that's more due to the age of cities, though, so I don't usually feel quite as pressed. Here... I don't know. The sense of not being able to escape gets to me. I'll give an example.

Last night we went out in search of food and ended up going into a gourmet grocery. For about one minute I felt okay in the shop, but then I started to feel a bit fluttery and flushed and uncomfortable. Moss apparently had no idea, but I continued to get more agitated as I realized that all the aisles had only room for one person to pas through at a time, and I kept running into dead ends and being forced to move constantly to let people pass me. I said quietly that I would like to go, but either Moss didn't hear, or he mistook my meaning, because he later said he'd thought I was asking him if we needed more things and inviting him to continue shopping. After a few more moments of sharply escalating anxiety (with me asking if we could go in between dodging strollers and chic 30 somethings in engineered jeans), Moss realized I was upset, but feeling that it had come out of the blue, reacted by being upset back (admittedly by that point I was snappish, so I can see how he must've felt blindsided).

After we left, I started to calm down, but it took a long while. I was quite uneasy walking home through streets crowded as always with people. In the blessed sanctuary of our studio I drank water very fast and Moss explained that in retrospect he could see that I'd been wanting to leave the store, but at the time it hadn't struck him that way. I tried to explain that horrible feeling of being closed in upon as if I might be a frantic mouse in a maze that constricts as time passes. I don't know why I feel this way, but I do. Aside from New York, I tend to feel this way in Whole Foods stores (perhaps I am allergic to gourmet grocery shopping?). It's a bit embarrassing to admit. People don't always understand, even people like Moss who are also largely introverts. I think we both felt better later when we went out for a second time to a quieter supermarket with more space and had a much more reassuring and typical shopping experience, but the whole event exhausted me so I slept for more than 12 hours. Anxiety is tiring. _
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03:05:10 PM, Thursday 23 August 2007

Added a further 595 words to the 400 words in the one project so it's now got a total of 1,085 words and is ready for more work tomorrow (I started with 90 words already written). It's incoherent and contradictory, but it's got good points. The 600 word one is unfit to ever show anyone, but it's done now, and it had to be written to get my mind off it. So total for today: 1,595. That seems better. _
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06:22:59 PM, Wednesday 22 August 2007

1,000 words. split up as 400 in one project and 600 in another. Acceptable. Barely. _
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05:22:26 PM, Wednesday 22 August 2007

It's harder to write things down than it is to think about writing them down. It's always easy to wish one could write while in a car on a winding mountain road, or in the course of fulfilling a dull social obligation. When one has the time, everything seems to vanish, or the inhibitions pop up out of the holes they'd previously been hiding in. "You can't possibly want to write that," they say. But somehow you've got to shut them up and keep on, else what good is anything? I'll give a wordcount later. _
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02:00:00 PM, Wednesday 22 August 2007

Worm?

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02:10:23 PM, Wednesday 15 August 2007

Dinahbell Drizzlypants and Caprina Lynnlypants

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05:25:07 PM, Tuesday 14 August 2007

Hey D.C. people: are any of you free during the day next week? If so, would you like to hang out? If you're free in the evening, you may be able to hang out with me and Moss at the same time. Please respond in comments or via email. _
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11:47:41 PM, Thursday 9 August 2007

If anyone is interested in making a paypal donation to my brother's mother, you may send it to shelawest at msn.com. Thanks to those who have expressed interest. It's always nice to see that people really do try to help each other when they can. _
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12:54:48 PM, Thursday 9 August 2007

In the past month I've been so busy travelling that I forgot to mention something important. Last month my borther's mother's (he is my father's son, but we have different mothers) house burnt down. She is a very nice lady and has always been part of my family, there at Thanksgiving and so forth. She was just getting ready to retire when she lost everything she owned save her car. I'm serious. She actually ran out of the house in the nude to save the car, and later had to borrow clothes from a neighbor. The fire started because her housemate left a candle burning unattended int he middle of the night, and the two of them we lucky to get out of the house alive. It was a mobile home, which means that it burned up very fast. Mobile homes are generally constructed of thin wood with flammable finish.

A couple of days after the fire, I ate breakfast with Shela, and she was clearly in shock because as you can see her home was destroyed. She was trying to adjust to the fact that retirement was not really an option anymore, and asked me then if I would tell everyone I knew about her situation and solicit donations so that maybe she could at least begin to rebuild her life. I said yes, but then I left to drive across the country and forgot all about it. Today I checked my e-mail and found a note from her asking if I had been able to do anything for her. Naturally I feel awful, but I suppose telling everyone I know now is better than never. If you have any spare money that you'd like to give, please send to the the Shela West fund at the Santa Barabara Bank and Trust. You can send a check to them at P.O. Box 60839, Santa Barbara, CA 93160-0839. If you would rather send it via paypal, I believe she has an account, but I don't know the address for it. I'll try to find that out as soon as I can. She said in her e-mail that should would be very grateful for donations even as small as a dollar. _
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03:02:04 PM, Tuesday 7 August 2007

Giant slinky!

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09:36:43 AM, Saturday 28 July 2007