Thursday, December 31, 2009

Crushes

The one from the 16.5-year-old boy who is living in an almost-man's body abated when I pulled the mother card … his next text said he was only joking, that he was over it, and then he asked what I knew of the Bible.

There were a few more texts about a church and things; but since then, I have not had the repeated "hi" notes, which I had previously left unanswered for the duration of the holiday +. Last month, I incurred $30 of extra texting charges.

The one who I suspect of flirting is still elusive and confusing. She uses sweet terms like "dear" and she and her former boyfriend seemed to send certain vibes. Or, it's just my ridiculous projections stemming from a hormone-dazed brain.

The third is new in person and familiar spiritually. However, I recall ruining relationships with S.P., A.H. and N.S., so, nothing.

Etc.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

I love















There will be time

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * *

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Quel dommage

Needs a pork chop — STAT!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Carpathia

I can hear my Internet connection. I thought that modem sound was "so '80s." When I scroll the mouse (or sometimes while typing, ie: providing new information), it stops. Would screen mechanisms (ie: hardware) make noises?

No, I'm not crazy. You know by now, don't you, that I don't like weird motorized and constant noises. It's one of the things I dislike about driving on the highway or flying in a plane. Trains are less monotonous-sounding. They are slow. Shouldn't our passenger train trips be faster than our automobile ones? No one is offering any incentive for train travel. I suppose it's relatively affordable, better than a bus, and reading and sleeping are possible (and there's a decent restroom).

I am wearing emerald forest green sweater sleeves on my calves.

They are from a sweater I bought that, being a man's, made me look too manly I thought. Those square shoulder seams are not flattering on me. Also, one of the joint seems (it is thin merino-ish wool and was not knitted in the round, I suppose; actually, for all I know all sweaters are made in flat pieces sewed or knitted together after the fact) split up from the cuff line for a few inches … and so years ago, I chopped it up and now I'm treating them as leg warmers. I wore a summer-length skirt today, so …

The thermostat asked for new batteries today. For some reason, I presumed they ran on an electric line. Surely, there are wires attached to it. I took it off the wall unnecessarily, and so I did see some wires in this hole in the plaster. I hate where the people installed the thing. It's in the living room, facing the front door. There is a corner three feet from it, in a kitchen foyer space, facing the basement door. People are quite stupid.

Today, in fact, I almost ripped the sink out of the wall. Have I ever described the four sinks in the house?

Let me summarize: the pedestal sink of the first floor bathroom (which is right off the dining room … that's some intelligent design, is it not?) is small and appropriate for the space, but it has a cracked basin. In the front, a crack of about 8 inches starts with an even deeper, multi-faceted chip.

The kitchen sink is fine … it is troublesome to keep clean (tomatoes stain, and white porcelain scratches easily as well as poses a danger to dishes and glasses) and was installed incorrectly somehow, so that it has smell issues from time to time (as does the dishwasher that has never been used. I am not sure it was used before we moved in, even.

On the second floor, we have another pedestal sink. It is wide at the top and consequently jammed into the corner space on one side and hovering very close to the toilet on the other. The top is slanted backward by the angle of the one of two brackets on the back that are supposed to anchor it. The wainscoting they put up is not really flush with the plaster wall beneath, and the left anchor apparently never reached anything sound. Hence, the sink collects water (hard to keep clean of muck) and also moves if you touch it. Better yet, the previous owner-installers had thin wedges of pine jammed along its back and sides, so as to keep it from touching the wall? Apparently not well enough, because, best of all, they slopped brown paint all over the undersides and back when they chose to coat every surface (doors, hinges, knobs) with the paint equivalent of chocolate sauce. Yes, it's a bit shiny. That helps to highlight the way the trim paint is only half-scraped along the old woodwork. But I digress. The sink also produces water that smells like an old dishcloth … so you have to let it run for a while if you intend to touch or drink it. Ditto for the kitchen, I had forgotten.

Up on the third floor, I think the sink might also be cracked. If not, there is plenty to love about the clawfoot tub, stained with ashy dirt and streaked with some chemical. It does not wash off, and no one bathes there. It is difficult to clean because the monstrosity was installed without it's two end feet, and the two-by-fours propped under it angle the water away from the drain. They left a fancier faucet set for us (and the other two feet out in the shed where they seem to have forgotten them, the dumbasses), but they installed the pipes, soldered them (nice copper) and did not install any shut off valves. How one is supposed to screw on feet without magically appearing through the floorboards below is beyond me. The whole third floor bathroom is overly large and stupid. I want to remove the tub and move the sink to its pipes, about 5 feet away, then put up a wall where the sink was to create a new and necessary closet. We took down their stupid white pasteboard shelves and poles in the center room there; really, who wants their clothes out in the open and by the air conditioner (also removed; it was huge, unanchored and damaging the window frame)? Awesomely, they must have had the floors redone after this installation, and so in two squares against the wall (about 6 square feet) are rough, glue-ridged areas that are hard to clean. This project seems the most feasible to do, but we had lost the sander for months …

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit crazy. Women are crazy, you know.

I was all hysterical (quietly, but in that state of tear-bursting freakiness — when any speech is poignant) last night while driving to school to drop off my term paper. You may recall that a week ago I was about to skip the last class and call it quits anyway. The paper is not good, and I spent considerable hours on it. I needed many more, but I was not interested in turning my attention in its direction all that often. I like that I did learn a number of things, one of which is that I am too steeped in journalism to know what phrases and patterns constitute academic writing anymore. If I stick around, I'm sure I'll remember, but I have not forgotten that I hate it. I much prefer the sort of thing that used to be in Harper's, for example, or shows up in Slate or Salon, to the sort of articles one can only access while enrolled at a school (academic journals).

I worked from noon Sunday to 4:30 Monday morning before sleeping fitfully for 4 hours. I spent from 10 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m., all of which caused me to forget how much time I spent on Saturday. I have no memory of Saturday, just that I wanted to be at either the version of the Nutcracker that was at Union Station or at a friend's wedding. Sunday, I missed a glorious costume party and a brunch-funny Christmas photo shoot.

Last night I might have been the most dangerous thing on Troost, except I took Gillham instead. It was bitterly cold, and the car was not even warmed up by the time I arrived. My eyes were in perma-wide mode, and I had to keep telling myself to actually look at the traffic lights and decide what they meant before I came up to them. I sliced my over-dry hand on a staple and took a triangle of skin out of a knuckle somehow.

It was cold and I didn't get a university parking ticket.

Today, I got overwhelmed by the necessary order of mundane domestic events that I crouched down and screamed (contralto, I think) for about 4 seconds. It helped.

Somehow, Milo is escaping my wrath. He threw up six feet from my head, in a window sill, probably around 8 a.m. after I had gotten up at 7:30 to feed him … and I didn't hear it. I'm really sick of his eating disorders.

There is a nice labrador up for grabs. Polite, companionable, knows tricks. It's tempting, but I remember what the one psychic I ever saw (I was 12; she was fake) told me, "Don't get the dog." I only remember one other part of that reading. It's funny. More long term commitments are not welcome. I can't keep up with anything as it is, as you know.

Christmas is next week, and that freaks me out. I haven't done anything. I never intend to, and then I panic.

I wanted to accomplish some things today, but I really didn't recover from the sleep disruption; it felt just like when I was at the IRS. That freaky night-shift feeling has changed from the sweet, youthful euphoria of college-time youth to a bleary, wan dehydration. Staying up all night holds no joy now.

It's funny, though, that I start to wake up at 4:30 a.m., even though the hours from 1 on are grueling. The trade-off to "having energy" is that my brain literally ceases to work.

Hallucinations and loss of motor skill. Don't worry, I played it safe; I didn't text while driving. I can't hear the "modem" anymore, just the hard drive. Sweet.

Monday, December 14, 2009

SeroQuelXR

Can maybe fix the depression part of your "bipolar disorder," but like all these brain-things, it also makes old people suddenly die and youngish people (before and after teens) want to suddenly kill themselves.

Hmm. I'm in the clear! I never blend into the couch or grocery isle.

I love the part in the friendly-images commercial voiceover that says, "If you feel confused, call your doctor." Hmm. How does that happen.

What about, "If I already feel all that, the muscle spasms ('which may be permanent'!!! with this drug) and the random overwhelmsions that make certain oblivions seem like a good idea?"

I LOVE how xyz drug company says, "Please contact us if you can't afford our drug." We WANT you to take it. Ugh.

AMERICA, do that with all your meds! See what happens. Call it in.

We have a few weeks to go before that Senate has that healthcare reform deadline …

Friday, December 11, 2009

Minor votes

Not representative of the ____: they say: don't … get … vaccine … despite … short … lines … and … peak-to-come / opening of vaccine to "all" candidates, not just the baby / pregnant / and/or compromised …

All I want for Christmas is not to be compromised.

Ever.

(Again(?))

— PS, found a white ("gre/ay") hair 12 inches long … how was that one missed … the other two are on constant watch and pulled at 1- to 3 inches … though, I suppose that like with GitMo detainees, anything is possible. That's what we get for letting our hair hang down.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Everyone lies

… not because they plan on it, but merely b/c brains are flawed.

Updating sickness boast: oh, yes, many sinus infections … which never got to tragic levels b/c of over-cautious, "I don't work for the government / a corporation / etc."

Unlike last year.

Heart-palpitations and other issues notwithstanding.

We're working on BIG things, remember?

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

She

~ hasn't cried in weeks … maybe months …
~ hasn't been sick in months, many months …
~ has a few panic attacks from time to time …
~ has moderate and traceable issues with insomnia …
~ has uncontrollable "can't leave house" days that are sometimes consecutive …

Does this mean she's found a personal "health?"
Personal equilibrium? That it's necessary to guard ridiculously against what the 18th centuryites classed as "exposure?"

Consider that she's not living up to certain expectations before answering.
And hear again that there is a distinct absence of non-chronic* physical illness.
So, should she get an H1N1 vaccine, now that they are available to the non-chronics?

*We reserve the wisdom to acknowledge that the body may be brewing all sorts of death-causing syndromes, tumors, blockages, and/or breakdowns.

Pre-Snow-Day

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Procrastination Street

It is the location of this sidewalk.

I am just quite the girl (woman; can't use inexperience as an excuse) who can't say no.
Went to a party last night. Not a debilitating one, but it was 4 hours of non-studying / non-reading. Went to lunch today as a premise for going to pick up bird seed and then see the Interdisciplinary Art Department students' semester show.

Now, tired, playing with the dinner hour … it feels 5 hours later in the day than it is.

Maybe if St. Nicolas had come this morning and brought me some chocolates and vintage toys from eBay …

How far can she push this? She doesn't care much for the outcome, since it's her party and she'll cry if she wants to, once deciding that's all that's left to do. Empowerment is the name of the academic game. When you "know" something and know that you could explain and expand on it, enlighten others (ha ha) and generally contribute to the academic dialogue … you — I, at least — tend to be done with it right there. It is the difference between the good and bad student. (The excellent student runs head-on through a thing such as a research paper, genuinely excited about the discovery, the proof, the rhetoric.)

She is having trouble reading white-on-black text. It creates a dyslexic learning disability … jumpy yellowing text is hard to absorb; our reading channels are set where they are / those of us who can skim at a mere glance don't have time to be sympathetic and learn how the other side feels. Want the data.

Can someone come and read it to me while I sleep?

Meanwhile, bring some exercises for my latissimus dorsi, as they are suffering terribly. Whole spinal column is expressing angers.

There is a movement in the state of T. by the ageists; their slogan is: "I'm tired of being an intellectual; I think I shall become a physical." The election is on January 10th, so we'll keep you posted on what happens.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

I'm busy

But accept the following distraction from Ms. Huff.:

"The future of journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers."

"… And we think the value of editors will only increase as the constant stream of information coming at us continues to swell — making trusted guides and curators more and more essential to keeping us from being swept away."

You know, so I don't go jumping off cliffs and whatnot.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Does not

: give opinions on art (visual, performance, musical, etc.) after 11 p.m., local time

: understand why some people insist in typing lists of things in all caps … un-alphabetized — it's like some tortuous typing test from the past; remember thinking, "I'll never use this! Why do I have to learn this?" Ah-ha, to those of you in marketing, writing or other form of journalism (eg: taking someone else's facts and rendering them stylistically consistent and rhetorically relevant and possibly enjoyable for a market-specific median audience). Do you not love retyping basic information? It is difficult to confront people with requests for specific forms of information … but I think some of the fellow recipients would welcome the change, too

: know how to reconcile so many adventure-choosing scheduling conflicts, made up of interlocking, inter-consequential elements as they are

: understand how some people can't remember to do anything without a direct (passive is not enough) reminder, which is issued after a deadline and concerning whole or parts of information /actions necessary and previously requested for similar and recurring events

: choose to employ a filter at this time.

Oh no


Can't sleep.
Was about to fall … 5 hours ago …
Worked 7.5 hours … starting at 3 p.m.

My schedule is not standard.
When was it?

If so, struggle against.
When not, spin out even further.

Today was World AIDS Day … things have changed a lot in 20 years:
Hardly anyone mentioned it.

To compensate, we're sending off 300 soldiers to die (isn't that the percentage? What is the percentage? Include casualties and mental illness, and I guess we're committing to ruin 15,000 people's lives … families … changing many more).

No, I forgot to watch the speech. Will read tomorrow.
Heard from three men of different political bents that it was believable and trustworthy.