Archive for January, 2007

• 01.24.07 Post:

  Shortly before I moved across town at the beginning of December, I sent a letter to my new address, as a welcome home. But I didn’t include my apartment number (it had slipped my mind). I sent it a couple days too early, there was no one by that name at that address. So it was sent back. But by that time, I had changed my address at the post office: so it was forwarded on. But it had already been sent back from the new address once. So it was sent back again, and went into postal limbo, from whence it emerged only last week; but I had forgotten about it by then. So it was a little time capsule.

  
  Tags: change, travel, writing, dialogue, thinking, simile, future, letters, unfinished, rhythm, pace, time.
• 01.23.07 Piling up:

  I’m not being productive unless I’m feeling overwhelmed. Usually I don’t do much. Then I’ll have a burst of activity. Then the energy will run out, and I’ll find myself overcommitted. & then I retract from my commitments, rest, then feel ashamed of how little I do, and start the cycle over.

  
  Tags: self, blog, personality, work, setback, writing, project, composition, thinking, water, drained, simile, failure, rhythm.
• 01.19.07 Low:

  I haven’t been blogging, because I haven’t been writing posts, partly because I’ve been feeling low, and strung out. That shouldn’t keep up for too long.

  By wieght, blogs are 75% and upwards apology, like zines and communications with thesis advisors and editors.

  
  Tags: self, blog, shame, change, writing, draft, composition, thinking, drained, failure, unfinished, mood.
• 01.07.07 Xomuzum:

  The three-week period I’m allowed to keep an interlibrary loan book out is usually just long that I can get interested again in whatever it was that induced me to order the book in the first place, three weeks before the book arrived; and then it’s time to check it back in, almost entirely unread.

  
  Tags: travel, siberia, turkey, research, library, central asia, music, mongolia, tuva, throat-singing, turkic, instruments, overtones.
• 01.06.07 Dialogue beginning, draft:

  Another project I’ve had sitting around is a philosophical dialogue. It bogged down because I couldn’t see what my point was. But I like as far as it got. Maybe it’ll go further. (Here’s to hoping.) You’ll see I wrote myself into a corner.

  
  Tags: writing, project, dialogue, heidegger, boredom, philosophy, draft, unfinished.
• 01.04.07 Admonitory premonitory:

  There’s a guy I see around town from time to time, and I never like seeing him. Oh, he’s harmless, pretty nice guy, we’ve talked a few times. He always says hello when he sees me. But there’s always a sense I get, whenever we meet, that there’s something shameful between us, and we both know it.

  
  Tags: reading, psychology, work, shame, writing, dialogue, boredom, thinking, fear, research, temp, library, george gissing, failure, future, ghost.
• 01.04.07 Similes:

  Composition: you suddenly, after looking out idly over a dark water, see a plastic milk jug bobbing on the surface, not far away. You row up to it, you tug on it, try to pull it into the boat. You notice motion out of the corner of your eye: another jug, floating nearby.

  
  Tags: shame, writing, philosophy, draft, art, composition, thinking, water, drained, sink, simile.
• 01.03.07 Voluntary:

  Something I actually enjoy: well, not sure I enjoy it. I do it voluntarily. In fact, I’m technically a volunteer. (And my company gets tax credits for every hour of it I log. More than a little humiliating. But then I don’t remember to log my hours very often.) But there’s something energizing in it.

  
  Tags: self, shame, volunteer, russian, ukraine, refugee, esl, teaching, jesus, english.
• 01.02.07 Off on the right foot:

  Today I feel like my life is a series of setbacks and I pass the time in between them struggling to make up for lost ground. I took off from work today to fight a cold I felt approaching. Result: I feel worse, I spent an hour and a half walking outside in the rain, and I feel like if I see my office again I might have to scream. (I whimpered a couple times today thinking about it, but that was purely optional.)

  Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but I don’t feel like drawing the full-detail picture that would indicate its place in the larger pattern I seem to see. Partially because I’m sure I would be ashamed of the inadequate result. In any case, I would never finish it. The cruelest hit I took today was logging into google documents, I saw that I had nothing showing in my active documents: I haven’t touched a single one of my projects for a whole month. Hoping to shame myself into getting back to work, I had the idiotic idea of talking about one of them in a public place.

  
  Tags: self, blog, personality, work, shame, change, setback, travel, writing, project, siberia, turkey.