Archive for April, 2008

• 04.17.08 Jitters:

  I haven’t been control of myself for a few days. I’m nervous, jumpy, and clingy.

  There’s a woman at our office who works in the mailroom; she’s deaf, and a funny thing, she always walks very softly, with an exaggerated, silent-movie tiptoe. I almost expect her to be putting a finger to her lips, wearing white gloves. Her face is made up thickly, like tv makeup, except seen in person; which alters it. And she’s deaf, so I wonder why she takes such care not to make any noise, on the thick concrete floor with silencing rugs, wearing sneakers. Nobody, wearing no matter what, makes noise on them. Of course she wouldn’t have any way of knowing that.

  
  Tags: feeling.
• 04.16.08 Closed doors:

  They could hear the crowd noise change. The musician did a test strum, approached the microphone. The auditorium had been about half full when they had left; better than expected. They evaded the dressing rooms, they found the empty room with the snack table.

  There was a couch, and they fell on it together, one hand grabbing at her waist. She pushed it away, I have nothing to clean the, do you want to get all bloody? Her soft smile condescended. She put her cold hand against his belly.

  
  Tags: making.
• 04.15.08 The dream in Ulysses:

  A friend of mine and I have been reading Ulysses together over the past year and I had mentioned my impression, I’m sure I read it somewhere, I don’t think I would have come up with it on my own, that Bloom and Stephen and Molly had all had versions of the same dream the night before the day of the action of the book. In our meetings, I was able to recall my impression, but I couldn’t find the evidence. I’ve finally put together the quotes I was thinking of (references are to Gabler):

  
  Tags: thinking.
• 04.14.08 Angry marks:

  I lost my temper Friday night, and I slapped a telephone pole. I really went after it too; I slapped it more than once, right palm and then left, and then right again. There was lots of gummy-looking stuff on its surface, but that stuff turns out to be pretty stiff. There are nails, staples, and splinters as well; all kinds of hazards.

  I have five cuts on my hands today that still sting, and somehow I managed to get a piece of the gummy stuff from the outside of the pole underneath my skin. The skin grows together over the wound. That’s a bizarre thought for me, I have pole surface-stuff in my body now, I’m busy chewing on it and taking it apart and seeing what I can take from it; or at least I’m trying, for some values of I.

  
  Tags: feeling.
• 04.13.08 Studies in the spring:

  Three students were sitting at a wide table, well apart. Their books were open, and they had notebooks too. They had been laughing about something, it was spring outdoors and they had the wide windows open. There was a stream of fellow feeling flowing in the room.

  The one with the knit sweater went to make more tea. The other two caught themselves smiling at each other. There was another stream, running under the stream that had borne the laughter in, only the other flowed slower, deeper, and in a different direction.

  
  Tags: making.
• 04.12.08 Language learning:

  Learning a language is a neat trick. I’m not sure I understand how it’s done. I’ve done it before, but I don’t think I quite caught myself in the act, I don’t know the trick of the trick. I can speak French with some confidence and read without a dictionary, although when I took French in high school, I did poorly at it, understanding very little.

  However when I got to college I found I could read it and understand it, and even do it for pleasure. However, then I didn’t know how to speak it, and I had little confidence I would ever learn. But after a week or so of exposure, I found I could use it for any of my needs, I could communicate about myself and who I was, and I could understand what was communicated to me.

  
  Tags: thinking.
• 04.11.08 Misallocation of force:

  I haven’t been sleeping well, I think it’s because I’m excited. It doesn’t feel like excitement: It just feels like ordinary, miserable insomnia.

  I can’t really control my feelings, but can make them into something else. I twist them and try to make them serve other purposes, or to put them on hold. This is after-the-fact reasoning, by necessity: the control that I am trying to exercise over them somehow is going on behind my back and has already actually gone on behind my back, my feelings hit the stage in the wrong costumes.

  
  Tags: self, future, mood, fatigue, anxiety.
• 04.10.08 Two roommates:

  Two roommates were avoiding each other. One would come, the other would leave. It was month four in a six month lease. One night noise outside brought them both to a window.

  They watched, straining their eyes. The noise ceased. One turned the corner to get a glass of water. The sink was full.

  Can’t you wash your dishes?

  
  Tags: psychology, change, water, sink, fiction, home, window.
• 04.09.08 Discomforts:

  There’s an oppressive feeling in the air today. I feel like I’m struggling to breathe. It’s a huge effort. I know I’m not struggling, I am breathing normally, regularly, and easily. But everything seems like an effort, even what I’m doing easily. I have to tell myself it’s easy.

  The weather is blinding bright overcast, the walls are lined with a horrific purple-grey static wallpaper and there are sickening patterns in the carpet, made of multi-colored thread that manages to look grey in combination. I can’t look anywhere. There’s either clutter or complete disorder.

  
  Tags: feeling.
• 04.08.08 I just don’t get it; see below:

  Reading about Nagorno-Karabakh. Sometimes it’s reported as if, or maybe it’s me, it’s just another example of third-world ethnic conflict, something civilized nations don’t understand, something to do with ancient hatreds. But of couse the conflict is between two states, not two ethnicities, and what is more, it is not irrational. You can figure it out: there is a clear territorial dispute at its heart. It was Soviet ethnic Azeris who were expelled, beaten, burned, raped and killed in Armenia; ethnic Azeris from Iran, who currently conduct most of Iranian trade with Armenia, are not harassed, expelled, or abused and are on the contrary welcomed. The story is not new and is not confined to one part of the world: a co-ethnic minority in a neighboring country requires our help, so we annex their territory. Sudetenland, Texas, etc. Nationalism only happens in ethnics when it is a defining term for nation, not otherwise. When loyalties go that way.

  
  Tags: thinking.