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the living is not as easy as i'd like
So, it's almost August and I still haven't taken the goddamn GRE. Hmm, this reminds me a lot of last summer. Pretty soon I am going to start having panic attacks and put off applying to grad school for another year while I "get my shit together." Except last summer I spent a lot more time in the sun, in parks, reading novels and going to free shows, and a lot less time working and mourning the death of one of my closest friends. So, this year I have better excuses, but I feel worse. Thanks a lot, karma.
Tuesday sucked ass, so yesterday I stayed home from work in order to take apart my computer and clean it (for the first time ever -- it was disgustingly dusty) and then rearrange my furniture in order to make room for my lovely, new computer desk. I love my new desk. I also love my new sandals, which cost almost exactly the same amount as my desk (a lot). So now I've got at least two things going for me.
Rearranging furniture is always therapeutic. Somehow working on the problem of where to move my table to can laterally translate into working on the problem of how to deal with... well, all my problems. It's like the organization of my apartment is a smaller version of the organization of my universe and by rearranging my furniture I can see things I couldn't see before and discover ways that things can work and fit together. My spacial intelligence is pretty lacking, so it's extra good for me to exercise that part of my brain. It's also a nice way to make things that were getting stagnant and stale feel new again. If I can do it with my furniture, I can do it with my life! (Theoretically.)
Today, I had a hilarious IM conversation with Megan, and Phil told me Joey might be able to go to PEI at the beginning of September which is AWESOME because I was worried it wasn't going to happen and I need that trip. I listened to some good episodes of This American Life (the one about the best answering machine message ever is gold). Then I met up with Jason and we went to this Vietnamese restaurant that serves General Tao's tofu, which I had never had before and discovered is delicious. J said he will send me a postcard, which just pretty much made my day.
So, overall, things are kind of up and down.
Paul Ford goes camping: "I'd forgotten my tent back in the city. Jake had a nifty one-person Swiss mountaineer's tent that went up in about 30 seconds, and I had an old red sleeping bag. I stretched the sleeping bag out on the ground, raising small clouds of dust in the process.
Then the frogs arrived. Dozens of them. Tiny ones, leaping directly onto my head, my lips, my shoulders. I leapt up swearing, and Jake emerged from his hermetically sealed environment to see me clawing at my skin, then he laughed and went back into his tent.
There was a picnic table nearby, so I stretched out on that to avoid the frogs, and slept an uncomfortable three hours. I woke up to murmurs, and turned to see three men with mullets staring at me.
"You don't look too comfortable," one said.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Weird," said another."
I think I suffer from lackadasia.
Another excerpt from Girlfriend in a Coma*
Richard, looking at all of their lives from a distance, sees the recurring pattern here, the one mentioned on a rainy poker night months ago -- a pattern in which the five of his friends seemed destined always to return to their quiet little neighborhood. Karen notices this, too. What she doesn't tell Richard, though, is that in a strange way her old friends aren't really adults -- they look like adults but inside they're not really. They're stunted; lacking something. And they all seem to be working too hard. The whole world seems to be working too hard. Karen seems to remember leisure and free time as being important aspects of life, but these qualities seem utterly absent from the world she now sees in both real life and on TV. Work work work work work work work.
Look at this! Look at this! People are always showing Karen new electronic doodads. They talk about their machines as though they possess a charmed religious quality -- as if these machines are supposed to compensate for their owner's inner failings. Granted, these new things are wonders -- e-mail, faxes, and cordless phones -- but then still ... big deal.
"Hamilton, but what about you -- are you new and improved and faster and better too? I mean, as a result of your fax machine?"
"It's swim or drown, Kare. You'll get used to them."
"Oh, will I?"
"It's not up for debate. We lost. Machines won."
*I don't actually recommend this book, but it did have a few passages I liked.
Zach Braff, from the Dallas airport: "On the plane. The guy next to me raced to his seat and quickly grabbed the Skymall magazine frantically searching for something as though the pages were programmed to disintegrate upon take-off. He's now settled on the page that's selling what appears to be a stroller for cats. You put your cat in this cage like contraption on wheels and it enables you to take your cat on strolls and I suppose the occasional errand. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't think his cat is going to like this thing too much. Certainly the cat won't show as much enthusiasm for it as he is, as he is currently jotting down the cat-stroller's info as though it were a code that could enable nuclear fusion or a recipe for Gatorade that would actually quench your thirst instead of making you more thirsty."
Party to celebrate opening of Target in Brooklyn: "I use the terms "this is surreal" and "I hate hipsters" and "there's no way this could be happening" every day but then last night at Target it became clear that all the other times I said it and didn't mean it it was just practice for this singularly bizarre event. Three news outlets interviewed me because I was accidentally wearing my 'defend brooklyn' shirt which is about police brutality but aparently it was read as an anti-gentrification statement despite the fact that I was buying discount catfood at an invite-only target night and so many levels of irony were torn through that I think I just came out a happy consumer."
Dispatches from a Public Librarian: "Last week, I received such a call from an elderly woman wanting me to settle a bet between her and her son. She wanted to know what countries in Europe the Great Wall of China went through and what was the year Reagan tore it down. When I explained that the Great Wall of China was still mostly intact and that she probably meant the Berlin Wall, she replied coolly, "No, hon, you see, the Berlin Wall is just the part of the wall that goes through Berlin." I put on my best geography-teacher hat to try and explain the Great Wall of China was, in fact, exclusively in Asia. She replied, "I'm pretty sure you're wrong. What would be so great about tearing down a wall in Germany? It's not even that big of a country.""
I just want to say happy birthday to Phil, who turns 24 today. We discussed how 24 is not really a milestone year and Phil said that he is going to "get a jump on 25," by which he means treat this birthday as if it really matters and means he should start really living his life before he gets old and has nothing to show for it. If there was one thing to be learned from Heather, it's that. She had everything to show for the short time she had.
Phil drives me crazy most of the time with his peanut butter and mustard sandwiches and his wearing shorts in the winter and his need to know how everything physically works and his ability to live in a bubble that is freaking hermetically sealed off from all knowledge of current events and popular culture; but I know that we will be friends forever because I can say anything to him and do things he disapproves of, and he still always gives me unconditional love and support and bad advice. And two out of three sure ain't bad.
Happy birthday, dude.
"I am not a textbook player," and other things GWB has said he isn't.
Excerpt from Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
There was no way we could run to the entrance; the five of us hit the ground and rolled into the stony ditches on either side, willing ourselves to shrink. Within seconds, a Pacific Great Western train exploded above in an H-bomb roar - 108 freight cars loaded with plywood supernova'ed up above us inside the granite walls. The train radiated intermittent light from which I was able to see directly in front of my nose, pressed to the ground, an empty wine bottle, a six-year-old yellowed newspaper, a sock, and a balled-up Huggies diaper. These objects flashed briefly and vanished like fleeting shivers of shame that are soon forgotten, never again to see the light of day. It felt strange to see these castaway things deep inside the Earth, never to return to the surface.
The train passed above us for five minutes. What if we were to die right there? What had our lives been? What had our ambitions been? What had we been seeking? Money? No - none of us seemed financially motivated. Happiness? We were so young that we didn't even know what unhappiness could be. Freedom? Perhaps. An overriding principle of our lives then was that infinite freedom creates a society of unique, fascinating individuals. Failure at this would mean failure of our societal duty. We were young; obviously we wanted meaning from life. I felt a craving for duty, but to what?
Meanwhile, the creosote on the railway ties stank and burned my nose, and my elbow rested in dirt. Small tornadoes of litter scraped my face and I closed my eyes. I tried to curl up and close my body to protect myself from the train's roar - the noise of the center of the Earth.
Dreams have no negative. This is to say that if, during the day, you think about how much you don't want to visit Mexico, your dreams at night will promptly take you to Mexico City. Your body will ignore the "no" and only pay attention to the main subject. I think we thought daily of avoiding tribulations - and avoiding loss.
things that are good:
djb's recaps of america's next top model
the letters of gary benchley, rock star
thunderstorms
jon stewart's wolf blitzer interview
the daily show, in general
homicide: life on the street, season 3 (on dvd)
ani difranco at the jazz festival
deaf skater punks signing to each other on the bus
strawberry picking and subsequent eating
jumping into a cold lake on a hot day
7-year-old girls
driving on back country roads
reconnecting with old friends
not getting sick of my family after 4 days
Dear Heather,
I think about you all the time.
The collage you made for me is on my bathroom mirror, which I inevitably see several times a day. I think about the Great Wall of China and how you will never see it, but maybe I will.
The picture of us by the fountain in Sion, on the card that you gave me, is on the shelf in my kitchen near the door to my apartment. On the back of it you had written about how "one day, long from now, you will bring these words (& other things here) out, when we or I have become just a photograph in your mind, and, for a second at least, I will be set free & memories put back into motion, freed from the freeze of time. At least for a moment."
You gave that card to me when we graduated from high school-- seven years ago, almost exactly-- along with a copy of your valedictorian address, which I had asked you for. The address was all about memories, too. You were always interested in memories.
On that same shelf, further at the back, is a framed picture of our group of four, taken by your mom at your cottage. You painted the frame blue and wrote on it in silver: Simple Smiles of Summer ~2002~. It's the bad one of the two your mom took; you are kind of grimacing in it. You gave the two copies of the good one to Phil and Joey, and promised me you would make two more copies for us, but you hadn't had time yet. Every time you visited me you would see that picture and say, "Oh! I still haven't given you the good copy! I really have to do that! I look so bad in this one!"
On my way to and from work every day I pass the churchyard where we sat and ate lunch the last time I saw you; the Lebanese restaurant where we bought our respective shish taouk and falafel and joked about how you had supposedly eaten your last shish taouk the day before but were now proving that nothing is ever definitively over. I took a picture of you eating The Shish Taouk of the Future That Proves That Life Goes On, as we called it. Ironically, the last picture of you I will ever take. You are kind of grimacing in it.
After we ate you walked me to the corner across from my office and we hugged goodbye in front of La Belle Province (how very Quebecois of us) and the last thing you said was, "Next time we live in the same city we have to spend more time together." Then I went back to work, and you went off to live the last five days of your life.
I see reminders of you hundreds more places throughout the day. Every other song I hear makes me think of you. Anytime anything remotely interesting happens I remember that I can't email you to tell you about it, as I would have. Because I knew you would be interested. You were interested in everything. You made everything more interesting.
The last email I sent you was of my mailing address, so that you could send me the promised postcards from every town you drove through on your big cross-Canada road trip. I wrote, simply, "I am listening to Light Enough to Travel and thinking of you." You never replied, but I assume that you got it. That would make it the last contact we ever had. When I found out you had been killed, I was fixated on this postcard I would never receive. No one I told really understood the significance, but underneath what I was really thinking was, "How can I live vicariously through you if you are not alive?" How can I live if you are not alive?
I still don't know. I still can't imagine, let alone accept it.
Sometimes when I go to the bathroom, I don't turn on the light, so that I don't have to see the collage. I avert my eyes from the pictures and walk quickly past the places full of your memory. I fast forward to the next song. Because I can't bare to think about you. This way. In the past tense. So melodramatically, with the "last times" for this, that and everything. Every memory suddenly one million times more precious now that there will never be more. I don't call people back, because I don't want to have to talk to them about you this way, or hear them talk about you this way.
I know how much you loved the idea of memories, but I hope you would understand how I feel, just a little. You would probably disapprove of the way I am avoiding remembering you, but I wanted to explain that I am not ready yet.
I don't want you to be just a memory.
I will love you so so much always,
Laura
Oh, crap.
This week has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult I have ever experienced, or ever will experience. It is impossible to imagine what it feels like to have one of the people you love most in the world suddenly no longer exist. Until it happens. But when it happens, it doesn't feel like anything you can describe, because it just feels impossible.
Denial is one powerful mindfuck. I spent one whole afternoon completely convinced that I had made this whole story up; and yet at the same time terrified to talk to anyone who might tell me I had not. I thought, if only I never had to talk to anyone who knew her again, everything would be fine and I could just go on as if nothing had ever happened. Then my mother called me from New York and poked a hole through the wall I had been building up around myself. When I hung up the phone I was shaking and my stomach felt like I was on a roller coaster.
Calling people and leaving them a message to call you back is one of the most awful things ever, in the world. While you are waiting you go through 50 different emotions in the course of one minute. You are waiting to tell someone that nothing will ever be the way it was before. Yesterday at work I called to check my messages 6 times to see if anyone had called me back or if there was any news and every time I did I felt more and more anxious until finally I felt as though I might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
At first it doesn't seem real, and you want it to, because how can you cope until it does? But when the reality starts setting in, when cracks start appearing the veneer of denial, it suddenly feels like your whole world is falling apart and you would give anything to patch them up again.
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