I recently read a little of Virginia Woolf's diary, the "shorter edition" apparently. I'll leave out the obligatory joke (or will I?) about how I stopped reading it because it was depressing. I was quite enjoying taking little bites, getting small snippets of what life during the late 1910s was like in England. I knew, however, that I would never be able to finish the book within the week or so I had left before I had to return it. Later, I guess.
What I found myself savoring were her entries about being in the country, about taking long rambling walks and reading for days at a time. I try in vain to remember what it was like before I had internet and cable TV and a cell phone. Those days used to exist for me, not really all that long ago, but it's like they never were. I realize that I don't want to zip back in time, I like indoor plumbing and antibiotics and birth control. I want fewer choices (but only good ones, naturally).
I want someone to shadow me at all times and narrow my choices. No, you can't have that soda, see - I have your wallet. Nuh-uh. Elevator? Nope, it's stairs for you. Lunch from home doesn't "sound good?" Nothing sounds good when it's this hot. Bring what you packed from home and take a walk afterwards, just walk slowly. I want something sort of like a mobile detox. I need me some training wheels, honestly. I'm leaning so far forward to keep up momentum that my nose is grazing the ground. I forget to stop and rest, maybe see if pushing would work better than pulling just here, find someone to help, or - radical thought - unload something.
I keep pushing my body for small things. I'm not striving to be the best athlete or dancer or anything like that. I just keep myself moving, forward, backward, in circles, doesn't matter as long as I keep moving because I can't seem to come to a dead stop unless it is to sleep. I'll keep on being five minutes behind, because there's one more thing I want to check on this spreadsheet, one more page of the book, one more online puzzle, one more email, one more something that keeps me spellbound until the last possible second.
I like the idea, explained to me in a meditation "class" I took, that our minds are like wayward horses. They take off at a gallop at the least provocation. Meditation helps you gentle the horse, steer it back to an intentional path. I like the concept of meditation (oh, Phoenix Monitor, where are you to make me do it?), but I'm so twisted around it'd take me the first couple of lives just to figure out if I'm sitting on the horse facing the right direction. Think, concentrate, focus -- oh, I have a $1.25. Soda time!
Monday, July 18, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Still not dead yet...
Okay, I'm not going to pretend that I planned to leave this site twisting in the wind for almost a year. Really, I made it this far, why not go for the full year?
But I've been thinking, if you drop off of Facebook because posting a 10 word status update or clicking "Like" feels like too much pressure to perform, maybe you need to get some perspective. I suppose it could also be a really stupid form of filtering -- if you're either compulsive enough or charitable enough to keep checking on this site just in case, that maybe you're really a good friend. But that's coming from me, the person who doesn't really know how to be a friend. I'm one step up from throwing dirt on you at the playground when I really want to ask you to join me on the swings. I was not only absent on the day they passed out friendship skills, I think any that I was born with were stolen out of my junior high locker.
So why break this ominous, tantalizing silence? I'll tell you why, it's because I feel the need to rant incoherently and overdramatically about nothing really important: I hate my shirt. Today I elected to wear a shirt that quite frankly represents everything I hate in a shirt. It's make out of a stretchy artificial fabric that doesn't breathe and hangs just a little too loosely. It has a pretend cardigan built into it that only makes me look larger both from the front and the side, and it's black which guarantees that I will look like a vampire (and not the sparkly kind). But I was out of options. I didn't know what else to wear. So I wore the shirt. And some black dress pants. And my black Birkenstocks. Oh, yeah, stylin!
Because I say, fuck you shirt! If I have to wear you all day, then you have to be seen with my Birkenstocks. That's right, naked unmanicured hammer bendy hairy toes say HOLLA. No power suits for me. 80s middle-aged secretary on top, 70s earth mother on the bottom.
Once I figure out how to get Vogue to declare "frumpy clothes I bought while clearly tired/insane/distracted/possessed that don't suit me but I have to wear occasionally because I have to get my money's worth out of it" as the new hawt items for fall, I will be sitting pretty. Me and my stanky toes.
What else can I say? I might say don't even get me started, because I may not be able to stop.
But I've been thinking, if you drop off of Facebook because posting a 10 word status update or clicking "Like" feels like too much pressure to perform, maybe you need to get some perspective. I suppose it could also be a really stupid form of filtering -- if you're either compulsive enough or charitable enough to keep checking on this site just in case, that maybe you're really a good friend. But that's coming from me, the person who doesn't really know how to be a friend. I'm one step up from throwing dirt on you at the playground when I really want to ask you to join me on the swings. I was not only absent on the day they passed out friendship skills, I think any that I was born with were stolen out of my junior high locker.
So why break this ominous, tantalizing silence? I'll tell you why, it's because I feel the need to rant incoherently and overdramatically about nothing really important: I hate my shirt. Today I elected to wear a shirt that quite frankly represents everything I hate in a shirt. It's make out of a stretchy artificial fabric that doesn't breathe and hangs just a little too loosely. It has a pretend cardigan built into it that only makes me look larger both from the front and the side, and it's black which guarantees that I will look like a vampire (and not the sparkly kind). But I was out of options. I didn't know what else to wear. So I wore the shirt. And some black dress pants. And my black Birkenstocks. Oh, yeah, stylin!
Because I say, fuck you shirt! If I have to wear you all day, then you have to be seen with my Birkenstocks. That's right, naked unmanicured hammer bendy hairy toes say HOLLA. No power suits for me. 80s middle-aged secretary on top, 70s earth mother on the bottom.
Once I figure out how to get Vogue to declare "frumpy clothes I bought while clearly tired/insane/distracted/possessed that don't suit me but I have to wear occasionally because I have to get my money's worth out of it" as the new hawt items for fall, I will be sitting pretty. Me and my stanky toes.
What else can I say? I might say don't even get me started, because I may not be able to stop.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)