|
|
Saturday morning -- bed before midnight, nine solid hours of sleep and several more of dreamless dozing. Astonishing how that can sweeten one's disposition. And yet, sleep starvation brings a certain abject clarity, or at least the appearance thereof. Difficult to say which is the truer outlook, but at least I know which I prefer.
posted on Sunday, August 29, 2004
|
|
|
When I got home, the sky looked fixed upon making the remainder of the evening a dreary monochrome, but the rain stopped while I was dozing. Now the sunlight is a faintly iridescent pink on the wet street, spent raindrops are sparkling all over my window screen and the sky overhead is clear pale blue, getting towards twilight, and ever so spacious. I enjoy rain, but on cloudy days it's like being inside all the time; no matter where you go there's a ceiling overhead, as if you're living in a cheap apartment and the plumbing issues of someone upstairs are working their way through their floor.
I think I am going slowly mad, so slowly that I will be completely better before I have the chance to become substantially mad. I doubt that, given the current state of things, I would have the self-control to do what is required to stop this brief tendency toward madness -- although concrete incentives aren't lacking.
posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2004
|
|
|
This afternoon I picked up a large, spiraling shell that has resided on the bathroom counter for years. The shell spirals into itself and out of sight; almost all of the surface is hidden inside. I wondered how small the spiral might become, and whether anything might be permanently lodged there. I poured water into the opening and turned the shell, so that the water gurgled inside. I had no way of telling how deep inside the shell the water penetrated. But when I turned the shell sideways, all the water poured out the bottom. Corkscrewing down the middle was a space around which the spiral centered. No matter how deep the spiral goes, the shaft always leads down and out -- which seems to me to somewhat defeat the purpose of a shell, not that this particular shell has ever served any purpose for me except looking pretty on my bathroom counter.
On Sunday, at a red light on Tryon and Cary Parkway, the passenger door of a VW Bug next to us opened and a man got out. After walking about ten feet up Tryon through the damp fragments of some hurricane or other, he stopped and walked back. The passenger window rolled down expectantly. He fumbled without success for something inside the car and jumped back as a small silvery object -- a pack of cigarettes or a cell phone, maybe -- flew through the window and landed on the road. He picked it up and, as he began to walk back away, glanced over his shoulder and gave arc to a large globule of spit that splattered on the Bug's windshield and instantly dissolved in the rain.
I am resolved to continue to end my affections on civil terms.
posted on Monday, August 16, 2004
|
|
|
I'm clueless as to why it took so long for me to identify this state as apathy. Perhaps I'm only really noticing it now that school has ambushed me from the bushes alongside time's road.
However, I must admit that any major mental discomfort today was due to putting off lunch for too long. If only the brain could assert itself as the stomach does.
posted on Monday, August 09, 2004
|
|
|
I only spent fifteen minutes of my three days at the Outer Banks in the ocean. However, hang gliding kicks more than enough ass to make up for the cold, rainy and/or windy days. The family also went to see The Lost Colony, which was surprisingly good, and rather better than I expected.
posted on Saturday, August 07, 2004
|
|
|
People put so much effort into identity, trying to fit in or be different. I've tried some of both, of course. I've tried to get along with people I don't even like, and I've tried to avoid fitting one cliche or another even though there's nothing new under the sun. Both are obviously artificial and I'd prefer to just be myself. And I suppose it's an important step toward being myself that I admit I don't yet know who I am.
posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004
|
|
|
|
|
