Apiary: 10 Days of Shirkhood

No, the blog is not an obligation of any kind. I'm never writing about anything named. Maybe some of you have guesses; maybe some of you are victims — but last week I did quite well with the call-returning, the friend-supporting (concierge, counselor, co-celebrator). I overcame "odds" and walked miles in order to get between point-Home and point-Job.

A week is nothing. It takes six (common parlance / check Snopes) weeks to stop or start something called a habit. I don't know: it seems awfully much like I need to be convinced daily about dental care, for example. If it ceased to matter, I would cease to practice. (chances of encountering test situation low / find better metaphor)

The part of me that habitually records elsewhere both minute downfalls as well as continued swing-and-miss behavior (or, habits) wants to draw you into that kind of confessional swamp. I have enough sense not to. As it does not take much to mop up my available wisdom, I predict I shall soon stumble into some other sort of self-confessional bloggery-goo regardless. It is quite possible, too, that I shall not have the sense or time to burn up my diaries before I die. I could end up like Edith Wharton, whose wishes for letter-destruction were not carried out with uniform faithfulness by her friends or servants. My mother told me long ago that she destroyed some journal of hers at some age, perhaps 18. As a girl, I was heartbroken to miss that connection with her; I understand fully why she did it, and it is probable I shall never have any daughters who need to be connected to me via my ridiculous younger quarter-baked written-down selves.

"You are what you do
in order to prevent becoming
what you're busy not doing,
and if you do do it truly and arrive at it duly,
then in the end you are absolved,
and the problem of Heaven is solved."

Editors love unattributed quotes. Editors love writing. Editors can't believe that someone so reliable has fallen into a four-month pit of despair. Editors know no one is reliable. (F, F, F, T; in case you miss the badly rendered irony)

Most anything is unsustainable. The complexities involved with mere digestion — trucks, migrant workers, engineered poisons, all-point refrigeration and, afterwards, plumbing — even make simple nourishment into a huge waste of energy. (energies derived from carbons, incl. wood, which we burn to collective over-use … leading to something lovely, as we have learned)

So if mere eating is tangled up in behavior I do not support in principle, you can see why subtracting other bad items is only theoretically useful. It does all add up, but when the scale is already this far tipped (no amount of local-eating practice will end the fact I have to drive all over the place to collect digestables or have to use urban-utile sanitation systems), I seem to be of the opinion that it's o.k. to ride the plate all the way to the ground.

You know that I am having issues with la casa, its very essence as a place. A noun of trouble. I am adjunct (to) an artist's lifestyle, but there are lyfestiles that act as larger nets; boundaries exist that preclude things like Chinese wedding, Montana ranching, Colorado walking, Salem sailing.

There is no question about where time goes. Zero. The why is evident, but the why not is locked inside the Freudian attic. The attic could use a new roof.

I spent 90 minutes accompanying … car rental 15 miles from house … chosen by slightly higher power (which is footing bill eventually, though there is no contract to that effect) … had to fuel own vehicle upon return to city, and naturally, there was a vacationer-esque rotund man blocking all entrance-points and parked near diesel-only stand in wait for whichever of the two other stands would be first to open. This is an unstaffed station that always has broken card-readers and pumps that are excruciatingly slow. Those sorts of frustrations are so easy to think away. You want to scream, but you smile instead because screaming would clearly damage all sorts of things.

When screaming is used, it's always destructive! When is another thing stored under the eaves.

So, the Dakotas are not all that bad of a compromise, and there was never any question that I would not accompany that far. I'm supposed to be doing all sorts of things (obviously; this diatribe is transparently a procrastinatory landfill). I can't say this with a straight face: he's with another woman. I am glad he does not have to drive 9 hours alone. Everyone else was unable to come/go at the last minute, one due to car failure in Colorado, one due to planner-stupidity, and one who may or may not have existed in the first place. The girl was not going as of 8 this morning but heard from poor-planner that there might be cash involved, "now," and so that was that.

It's funny to know that there are some people who are always going to be friends, friends for years, past roommates, past pains of the highest degree (financial, emotional, etc. — she is a female, after all) — without any sexual interference, people who accept faults and neither condemn nor abandon. It is a repeated situation throughout my little life, but I have learned to judge the difference between actual and merely supposed permanent non-attraction. In other words, there are probably husbands or brothers or others out there who require me to play literal pro-line-walking advertisements in my head the entire time we're proximate.

And considering my audience, I should pre-empt with "it's more fun to be over-confident than paranoid; I am not jealous by nature, nor generous, and I'm not offering any invitations." I have done an excellent job of deflecting certain definite advances — the advertisements work; I have done less well at cultivating an air of non-availability. It used to exist. It was an interesting inner strength. I would say it was breached sometime in 2007 … maybe; who knows. There were a number of milestones, as early as 2001 (the year that fast-forwarded a lot of relationships toward their demise).

I'm not available; I don't want to be available. Regardless, I am wilting under deadlines that I have made promises to myself about … remembering how I thought it would be good and easy to run out to __ later with __ but now finding the situation to be sitting there as if at the end of a 60-mile road-blocked hill. At least I did not commit to that. Commitments and I are like bees and me. Fascinating and necessary for life, these sweet-makers dance, swarm and, of course, sting. I don't need to add to them. I don't have a lot of free ad-space left, no room in the hive. Now you know why I'm always making jokes about colony collapse disorder.

There is no photograph because besides art, the only recent images I have are of the stupid cat and this gougy cut on the top of my foot.