I am very tired. I do not know how much I have slept lately: not much. I have been having bad dreams. I haven’t slept because I prefer this half-awake state to fractured sleep. But I am having trouble standing up. I am making very little sense when the tiredness catches up with me, though sometimes it is fine and I can be coherent.
My bad dreams have shortcuts, too: a hug is code for betrayal.
Because who needs sleep? Does this count as insomnia? I am electing not to sleep because I am sleeping poorly. Does it matter if it counts as insomnia?
Last night in one of my dreams (not a bad one, just a weird one), I was going to Norway. (Why? I’ve never been to Norway.) I went to the airport (I have a dream-airport which appears regularly, along with a dream-European-city, dream-river, etc: the layout is always much the same, etc, though it stands for different places). Anyhow. I went to the airport at about 9.30 and was told there were no more flights to Norway that night, so I had to come back for an 8.30 flight the next day, and to be there at 5.30.
I can’t remember if I was late or not, though I recall being worried about it. I was heading to the gate — my dream-airport has no security to go through! — and the elevator was down, but I was only walking down (from floor 19 to floor 2), so I just walked. But then I had lost my boarding pass, so I had to go back. I found a secret elevator, only it didn’t work right, so I had to lie down, sort of, on the back of the car, which was padded in red with white. It tilted as it went up — quickly! — so I was lying on the floor.
I woke up before the elevator reached the 19th floor, and I do not know what would have happened next. Would I have made it to Norway? Would it have looked exactly like Paris, London and Zurich? Would the airplane have been mauve?
My little sister starts high school (already! almost a teenager!) today. She is, I think, excited, and also scared, and so hiding all of it under a veneer of “you know I don’t care about school”. I guess we will see. This is about as much of back-to-schoolness there is — my new year will start in part with the new job, in part in a month, when it will in fact be a new year.
I am trying to think now about things like resolutions. What would I like to do, over this next year? And there are the obvious things, of course, which won’t happen, I will never suddenly be neat or organised, and I can’t resolve to buy a place any more than I already have. So I am stuck. Take a photo a day? Spend 3 hours a week on art? These sound good. But — but.
I have until October 3. What should my resolutions be for this year?
| You Are Likely an Only Child |
 At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated. At work and school, you do best when you’re organizing. When you love someone, you tend to worry about them. In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic. |
This is just . . . sad.
This has been a travelly sort of summer, alternately speeding through the moments and barely moving (like during my 4 week notice period!). I have, I think, been away more weekends than not. Every weekend in August, anyhow. This weekend, though a long weekend, I do not have plans to go anywhere. More accurately: I have plans to go absolutely nowhere this weekend. I am already looking forward to it. (And it’s only Monday!)
Last night, my family went for ice cream. I had a delicious ice cream, which made up for a disappointingly bad dinner. (First, we had reservations somewhere for 7; at 10 to 8, they were just about to seat us, but rudely (what, we should expect an apology for being an hour behind? imagine!); we walked out. I would have walked out by 7.30. The owner burns through a lot of customers by being an ass, but somehow he always has more. Then I had a sandwich, which was so bad I didn’t even eat it. I did eat bits of other people’s food, and then coffee! Delicious coffee!)
Eventually we went down to York Beach for ice cream at Brown’s. The ice cream was great, the service not so stellar, but only in my line. I’d say it was the guy’s first night working, anywhere, ever.
And then we went to sit down and realised, everyone likes Brown’s ice cream.
Most people then refused to sit at the tables, what with being afraid of the spray, but we figured (correctly) that it was used to people and unlikely to spray unless we did something stupid. I had never realised how ferret-like skunks looked, long and skinny. I always thought they were more beaver-shaped. But they’re not, except a bit around the tail.
Then another skunk came out. They did a nose sniff, not the butt sniff (imagine), then tussled a bit. They have almost high-pitched squeaks. They’re very weird little things.
Apparently they come for dinner near-nightly.
(Proper photo resizing tonight or tomorrow.)
Today I finished Jasper Fforde’s new book, ‘The Big Over Easy’. It’s less laugh out loud funny, but in a way I am preferring it to the Thursday Next books because it’s about mysteries and nursery rhymes, and I catch many more of the references. I am incredibly curious about why Fforde is so fond of Richard III, though.
Apparently there are people who know me who think I’m stable (insane, but stable). Well! I cannot tell if I am delighted or horrified. It’s nice, of course, but it feels very odd. I mean, I often figure how well I’m doing by how long it’s been since my last sustained non-PMS suicidal period. (Like, actively considering, not just idle imagining.) Is this a hallmark of stability? So it seems!
But I am incredibly unlikely to commit suicide (now, finally), so maybe it’s fair. (Of course, I had to explain before why I’m not really stable, and it really is remarkable how horrified people are when you talk about being or having been suicidal. Not horrified in the “I will never talk to you again” way, perhaps in the “I cannot believe I did not know” way. Yes, I did realise I should leave grad school by the frequency with which I was having suicidal ideation. People don’t know because I don’t tell them, and work very hard at not having them know.)
The question — and a fair one — do I want people to think I’m stable (no, look, here are all the reasons I am nuts! Now you should hate me. I am sorry I told you; I am sorry you did not sleep after; I am fine; I am not worth that kind of worry. But all that aside, I am stable, for some meanings thereof)? I guess it depends what that means. When it means unlikely to stop functioning entirely, unlikely to have a meltdown: this is true. And mostly I want people to think I am fine and normal, not worried about what to say in front of me — but also, I want to think people like me because of or despite of who I am and have been, not to be (too much of?) a liar, especially to my friends. I’m just, um, careful about what I do or don’t say, heavy on the don’t. Which poses problems, with the wondering if people actually like me or some careful construction of me. I also wonder about this blog: how does what I write compare with me as a person? I know I play up some things, to imagine who I could be or avoid who I don’t want to be, play down others for the same reasons. Calling this fiction isn’t exactly wrong, but also, not exactly right.
Is it fair to be a character in your own story? What do I want to be seen or imagined as? Who do I want to be? Despite being sad now, I’m also not.
Questions from Brina!
1. What do you think will be the best and worst parts of your new job?
Well, it’s hard to be sure. I will cheat and say: working from home, for both answers.
2. Where would you like to travel next?
My plan is still Prague/Vienna/environs, in the spring. There are many beachy-tropical places I would also love to see, but those seem less likely.
3. If you could introduce someone to only one poet’s work, who would you choose and why?
It depends who I am introducing to a poet. Denise Levertov? W.S. Merwin? Do I want to make them laugh or cry? How much do I want them to know about me? I cannot say.
4. If you didn’t already have cats, is there another animal you’d want to keep as a pet?
A ferret! Well, multiple ferrets. They sleep on *hammocks*. How can you not want an animal that sleeps in a hammock? But it’s either-or, and my allegiance to purry things is higher than any other animal. I would like to live with reptiles, but they are hard to take care of and I would be too panicky about killing them by accident, so I just figure maybe one day I will meet someone who loves lizards and cats. I also like mice and small rodents, but (a) cats (or ferrets, if I were without cat) and (b) short life spans.
5. Would you get a tattoo or non-ear piercing? Why/why not/what design/where?
No. Mostly because it hurts, and — surprising as it might seem — I am super wimpy with pain. Partially because, with the exception of some eyebrow pierces, I think piercings are ugly (sorry, pierced people). Also because tattoos are so permanent, and there is nothing I would want so much forever, I think. I’ve thought about tattoos, but there’s never anything I wish to tattoo.
I used to write. I mean, more than blog posts, things I throw together and don’t edit (quite deliberately: that would be writing), more than an occasional comment at other blogs. (Also, though, stuff with fewer readers. How these things go.) I wrote a lot, some good, most of it not very. I kept journals, very regularly.
I stopped, about 8 years ago. All of it, down even to the journals. Oh, I wrote some; I used to keep something at Opendiary (about 6 years ago) and for quite a while, I was a regular poster on a few usenet groups. But those were more like blogging than writing, though not exactly. (I still have copies of all of these things, though I never read them. It was — well, if you think I sound depressed *now*.) But it is most accurate to say that I stopped writing 8 years ago.
(This has come up in two conversations recently, with different people, though not unrelated conversations. To some extent they both know why, though I am not sure what extent, really.)
I used to think I’d be a writer, in some way. Blogging is more publishing than I would likely ever have had (I mean, I was not that good: lots of people write), but it’s not writing, and sometimes I feel regret for having thrown away something I wanted so badly. Once.
And yet — do I still want it? I don’t know. Enough, I guess, to keep me blogging. Enough to feel twinges of regret when my buried ambition occasionally resurfaces. Not enough to do it.
But I am lying now. Lying because I do not, will not, say why I stopped, not here. I was not that wonderful a writer, and though I suppose there’s always time, and though in a way blogging is great practice, I suspect I will continue to not write. Ideas are scarce. They weren’t, before, but they are now. I look at a blank page and have nothing to say to it: it feels me with horror, despair. I do not try this anymore.
The reasons why are complicated, and not really sensible, though of course they wouldn’t be.
So I blog, and try very hard to write daily, even if it’s something small and silly, and this is writing, I say, this counts. And it does in a way; I enjoy it; it’s incredibly satisfying. But also it doesn’t.