one of the trainers at the gym kissed my hand out of nowhere. i could not figure out how that happened, but i wanted to write it down, lest i forget.
the other part of today that i really liked was the part where i was doused in a heavy rainstorm without an umbrella or a raincoat. it was just what i needed.
i wonder if i have either stifled my dreams, hopes and aspirations or if i am just sleep-deprived and lethargic. or if stifling dreams, hopes and aspirations leads to sleep deprivation?
it did not seem all that long ago when all my energies and hopes were aimed at new york, or at least the east coast. it was so exciting to finally find where i was meant to be and to feel wanted there. but i could not find a way to make that work (meaning, i could not find work). and then i had to accept that maybe new york did not really want me there. yet i know that is completely absurd. there are always a myriad of factors and so many beyond the realm of understanding.
So i had to settle. and maybe it is this sense of settling that makes me lethargic. i make gestures to pull myself out of lethargy. writing words, finding images, making sounds, seeing people i like to be around every once in a while. but so much of this is scattered energy. as if i can’t harness these disparate energies into a solid core from which i build things. gather steam and momentum. unsettle.
if anyone reading this can offer any suggestions for how to grow a core, i would appreciate hearing from you.
tonight i was driving on broadway on my way to the gym, desperately searching for a rare parking spot that rarely appears on broadway. out of nowhere, a spot opened up on the right and at the very moment i was steering into it, a bicyclist was passing by that very spot, and i think my car grazed his handlebars. I was not aware of this until i heard someone yelling at me, and saw his face and his machete eyes aimed at me.
i don’t mean to make it sound like i was the victim. i was just caught in a very unaware moment, which is not something i am proud of, nor would i want to document it in writing in a blog that can be read by anyone (as you can see, i like to pretend that i am not the only one who is reading this).
once i realized what happened, i began to get out of the car to see if he was ok, but he quickly got back on his bike and bolted off. of course, i was immensely relieved that he seemed unharmed, but still it was disconcerting. i never imagined i would be the perpetrator of a bicycle accident, especially after being the perpetratee on so many occasions.
i guess in either position, one must be indignant and one must also be forgiving.
i only have 1 minute to write something because i vow to be in bed by 10:30, and I started typing this sentence at 10:29 and i just noticed that i’ve missed my deadline and i am not allowed to write anything more than this.
i’ve been dragging most of the day. i’m not sure why it was so hard to fall asleep last night. to stay asleep. and i really really need to sleep more than anything else after being sick all week. but it just wasn’t there. it’s so elusive. for me. there’s this tiny window of opportunity to fall asleep. and i have to be hyper-vigilant. the timing has to be absolutely perfect, or i am awake for the next fortnight.
still, i found some nice moments scattered here and there. went with D and her son to the park. i was trying to introduce him to badminton, which he thought was enormously funny. i thought it was funny when he asked why a man and a woman were boxing on top of a nearby hill.
i’ve been trying to make a sample/loop of this incredible Ethiopian pop song from the 1970s for the past 6 hours. and not getting anywhere. the thing is, i can’t tell if i am behind the beat or ahead of the beat. i can’t seem to get in between the beat, and maybe that’s what I need.
the beat is eluding me, yet i am completely mesmerized, transfixed even. but this time thing is so beyond me. i get so close to it, but then am suddenly way way off.
that’s the problem when you do everything by feel, with no sense of mathematics.
i do have a sense that the original undigitized musicians were not really thinking mathematically. nor were they stuck on a grid. as i often am when i am trying to find patterns. rhythmic patterns. melodic patterns. color patterns. geometrical patterns. behavioral patterns. psychological patterns. my grid doesn’t know how to adapt to any possibility. it is still learning.
all i feel like writing about tonight is my job, but i am trying not to tell you much more about it, so i won’t.
the one positive thing i can say is that working in this environment is bringing out my most rebellious streaks. I feel a burgeoning sense of defiance that has been lacking in the 21st century. maybe this defiance is what i need to set things in motion to take me into the vast elsewhere.
but the real hope is that once i find my way to that elsewhere, that will be it as far as elsewheres are concerned. i just want a place where i can live in the here. as so we all.
i’ve been sneezing so often today, i think i may have pulled a muscle in my face, if that is possible. too congested to eek out anything coherent tonight. or that is my excuse.
there is always an excuse for something, but i am weary of making excuses, even with volcanic sneezes. i know i was put here, on this earth, for the sole purpose of not making excuses. that is my role here. i had explicit instructions. and i have no excuse for not following them.
sneezing cannot be an excuse for not creating or communicating or enunciating. sneezing does not excuse me from being late for work, leaving early. it doesn’t excuse my driving. it doesn’t excuse my taking 5 days to respond to your call. it doesn’t excuse me from forgetting to say thank you, or for not saying it above a whisper. it doesn’t excuse me from facing any kind of situation, for being less of a human being.
but it is kind of annoying.
i have to apologize. i look back at the writing i’ve done over the past week or so, and i think, gosh, that sounds so negative. i don’t mean to sound like such a downer. i don’t feel like a downer. even when my words sound hopeless, i am generally pretty hopeful about things.
i have my share of frustrations
of disappointments
of grieving, of loss
of disconnectedness
i have my neuroses, my anxieties
and for whatever reason, i gravitate towards writing about those rather than writing about positive things that are more abstract and much harder to express in words. or there are fewer words to say about them. but they are there. i could tell you how great it felt last night to lay on the carpet and listen to the Keith Jarrett Quartet play “Oasis.” i could tell you about how happy i was yesterday when I heard from my friends Lisa or Wendy or Steve. i could tell you how happy i feel at dusk, especially in spring and summer. i could tell you how much i enjoy people watching, how much I love walking around New York, or in Chicago on Ravenswood Avenue. And I guess I just did.
bur i like to think that maybe even writing about the most difficult things can be a good thing because maybe someone out there will empathize and maybe they will feel less alone. maybe that is why i make art. i write about disconnectedness as a means of connecting with someone, maybe someone like you.
but i will try to sound not like negative person because i can assure i am not.
the last door on my possible exit from this city closed on me today, and i have to tell myself that this is just the way it is, for now. i might as well make the best of it, for now. my closest friends who were here are no longer here. i am a stranger in a strangely familiar place and i must figure out a way to re-purpose myself out of purposelessness.
at the gym today, 2 siliconed women were practicing salacious bikini poses wearing spiked high heel shoes while i worked on my tricep curls. i was told that they were in training for a figure competition.
everyday i come here, to this blog, it is my solemn intent to never talk about my job, but i have no choice other than to be honest with you, and admit that this job is really getting to me and clouds over everything i do. this is not a good sign.
everyone tells me to give it 6 months, or a year, 2 years, a decade, until i am extinct. just give it a chance. but each day, i become increasingly withdrawn, alienated and powerless to push through being withdrawn and alienated. each day, i am shrinking. i imagine how my co-workers may see me as shy, reclusive, eccentric and it is almost as if I am making a concerted effort to present myself in just that way. a performer, getting swallowed up in a performance. withdrawing deeper and deeper into a shell with no inking of how to exit it. almost entirely detached. it’s scary.
this would all be very manageable, contained within the workday, but it is spilling into the non-work parts of my life, which is really inconvenient… my friendships …. my acquaintanceships, my art… there’s this sad lethargy. it’s hard for me to remember that i used to be a very driven person. what happened?
last night, playing music with my friends… suddenly i had no music sensibility. i could not find the melodies or the rhythms, i could not sing, i could not keep rhythm (which was once my forté). everything felt a bit off. my friends were playing simple rock, pop and folk songs, but i could not make sense of them. they may as well have been playing Stockhausen. Maybe they were playing Stockhausen.
maybe it was a good thing that i could not find patterns of rhythm and song. maybe i have acquired new ears. and can hear things in new ways. but i fear that deep within this shell, i have lost my voice.
there are moments when a person might wonder what is the purpose of having a blog? why even bother? the things that are going on inside my head are not anything i would want anyone to see outside my head.
i start to write what occurs to me and then i automatically hit the backspace key, as if it can annihilate the thoughts, feelings, sensations stirring within.
at the same time, i can’t help but notice that it is that very same backspace key that is holding me in place, keeping me at bay, diminishing my presence, rendering me ineffectual. the backspace key is squashing my potential as a human person upon this earth.
maybe it’s time for me to accidentally spill a glass of water on my keyboard…. return to that state of purity, those pre-fetal days before the backspace key entered the picture.
i just returned home from the queasy experience of visiting my mother in the hospital, a mere few hours after her back surgery. but it was not entirely the experience of seeing her that made me queasy. i feel awful that she had to go through this, but she’s taking it as well as a human possibly can in her situation, let alone a human who is 83.
but there was another more visceral layer of queasiness, that’s rather impossible for me to describe. it brought back memories i did not even know i had of 5 years ago, when i was in the intensive care unit for 3 weeks. the sheer terror i felt all of those nights when visiting hours were over and i was left alone with the nurses, some who were good, some who were not so good, and some who were evil incarnate.
when visiting hours were over, i would cry out, with every fiber of my being, i would cry out to my visitors, “noooo!!!! noooo!!!! please don’t leave me! don’t leave! please!! don’t leave me here all alone!” night after night i would cry out. it would be embarrassing to write about were it not for the fact that no one could hear me. i was alone with my terror, which some of my friends and family mistook for courage. i was an utter basket-case. and now seeing my mother completely calm and accepting of her situation… there’s an inner strength, a dignity there that somehow eluded me.
at the hospital tonight, my sister, brother-in-law and i briefly left for the cafeteria to eat take-out Chinese food, but i just felt awful about it. i remember those moments, even during visiting hours, when my visitors would leave for coffee or a quick lunch or whatever. and it felt like an eternity before they returned… and then they would leave again.
i was either in the throes of abandonment or fighting off the anticipatory dread of abandonment. but just being in the hospital tonight, and experiencing what it was like to be on the other side, to be the visitor who can come and go as one likes, dredged up these incompletely buried visions of the quivering mass of jello i once was. i was infantilism incarnate
but now i remember why i started this conversation. it’s because you must promise me, you must absolutely, with total conviction, promise me that if something should ever happen to me that requires medical attention you will not take me to, nor anywhere near, a hospital. you can take me to Siberia, to the Sahara, to the eye of a hurricane, to a vacant lot, to the furthest reaches of the earth. but you must never ever ever take me to a hospital. no matter what. you will promise me that, won’t you? i’m counting on you.
i’m in one of my ignoring/avoiding phases these days. ignoring calls, texts, emails. avoiding talking to people at work, avoiding anything that may demand a response of some sort. i’m just not in the mood.
as you read these words, i am doing my best to resist avoiding writing because it’s pretty dangerous. like while i’m typing, i have to look up from my laptop and feel the near and distant threats to my avoidance. it’s so much easier to write about avoidance than it is to write about what i am avoiding.
but the truth is that when you ignore so much for so long, it’s so easy to lose track. like you can only sweep so much under the carpet before you eventually stumble while walking upon it. and then your vacuum cleaner is of no use whatsoever. except that the noise of the vacuum cleaner drowns out all of the noise you prefer not to listen to at this moment. at least not right now. because you’re just not in the mood.
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