XXX. Not a MacGuffin

Paris Review Interviews, Vol. I

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:09:04 GMT

So, I found my way to the Paris Review interviews via my long-lived bickering with Jason about the worthwhiliness of Joan Didion. The interview from the late 70s is available free online but the one from 2006 or so you had to pay for, which turned out to be for the best because I discovered the new one is in the book Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1. Or maybe I found the old collection The PARIS REVIEW Interviews: Writers at Work: First Series at that used bookstore on Belmont first, which has the old Didion in it.
In any event I was prompted to order the newer collection The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1 from the library and it might be my favorite book of all time. I now own four collections of these interviews and these books are amazing. I haven't worked my way through all of them but I've read all of the one I got from the library and, for real, anyone who ever though of him or herself as a writer or who simply enjoys literature would be well-served by reading these interviews.

It was such a profound, invigorating experience. Put me in touch with lost parts of myself, put big chunks of the world (and myself) in a clearer perspective.
blah blah blah

It's one o'clock in the morning so I don't know what I'm talking about but I just wanted to enthuse for a minute because I really did love this book. Like a blessing, it was.

love / cloud atlas / edge of heaven / winnipeg

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:53:48 GMT

Well, I guess my life of late mostly consists of sleep, work, reading, and visiting the Jew in Chicago.
The L word's been tossed back and forth a few times lately. So I guess it seems like things are going well.
It's a new kind of relationship for me.
It lacks the sort of psychological intensity of my friendships and such, which I think is a good thing in this relationship.

Reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and enjoying it quite a bit. My new goal post as to whether a novel is worth my time is that it be better than Middlesex, which was just enjoyable enough to warrant reading. This book is certainly better than that. With 60 pages to go, we'll see how it turns out. It certainly seems kind of ambitious. His linguistic dexterity is mostly impressive and the construction is, at the very least, promising. It's six pretty engaging, somewhat interconnected stories all in different voices and different styles and we'll see how well they all come together.

Went to see Fatih Akin's new film: The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite). He's certainly shaping up to be a reliable filmmaker, it seems. I gave it 4.5 out of five stars.
I'm really excited about Guy Maddin's new one though: My Winnipeg. Starts Friday at the Music Box. Looks delicious.

Has anyone seen Savage Grace?
The Fall?
What did you think?

I miss Jesse, even though he's been appallingly negligent.

We have a new assistant manager at work. He seems to be the most promising new hire since me.
Maybe even since before that ;-)
But I'm so bad at interacting with new people. I don't know what it is but it really takes me a while to get comfortable around people. He must think I'm standoffish but I'm sure it'll be fine, all in all.

assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:39:27 GMT

This movie is the strangest kind of kitsch.
Like some weird music video campiness.
At turns effective but often ridiculous or simply irritating.
Now that I've seen it I'd wholly agree with the critics who said Casey Affleck had been nominated for an Oscar for the wrong movie. The right movie having been Gone Baby Gone.

I feel like the hoopla was a bit misguided on this one.

my twilight thoughts: holding on to the hours

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:59:25 GMT

Having trouble sleeping and instead of finishing Lust, Caution or playing word games on Facebook or turning the light on and reading the Borges interview in the book of Paris Review interviews I have from the library, I thought I'd post something. It's been a while and I figured I must have something knocking around up there.

I guess something definitely shifted in me during the four days I spent in Northern Wisconsin for my nephew's funeral and such. I don't know what it even is. I guess what I know is that I thought I understood things for a while but I've come to see that I confused a strong wish for understanding with actual understanding. Maybe it's that I just turned 30 and though I haven't been framing it that way in my head, I have in fact been reassessing things. My dreamy approach to life, for example. There is something hanging over me for which I hunger intensely. I just don't know what it is.

I don't get enough sleep. I'm always tired. But I'm still haunted by the same insomnia of my adolescence, not an inability to sleep but rather a disinclination, almost desperate. Like these quiet night hours are so precious and I don't want to let them pass by. It occurs to me that what I'm dealing with here is something more general: that I need to learn to make compromises. I need to economize my various resources, such as time.

I've been spending weekends with this guy in Chicago. Sometimes I think it's only at the weekends that I've been really feeling alive. I'm in a rut, for the most part. And I should like to feel alive all the time. Sometimes I'm out walking and I'll sort of exult in the beauty of the world. But it almost feels a shadow exuberance, the way amputees have shadow limbs. Is it exuberance, or yearning, or simply a wistful sort of joy... Or maybe Milwaukee handicaps my spirit like Harrison Bergeron's whatsit handicapped his brain.

And I'm certain that this romantic situation is helping me to get to know myself better. I guess that's always the way when you're trying to let new people get to know you or when you're getting to know new people. Also when you find yourself in completely new situations.

It occurs to me that it's even more important than I thought to go back to school. It's becoming ever clearer to me that my proletarian circumstance is such that if I do not make some kind of scholarly achievement I will be working at an awful hourly job for the rest of my life. Or something. It's getting to the point that it doesn't matter what I want to do with myself as long as I can think to do anything.

I have this sort of well of yearning which has much of my life been rather inadequate. Often verging on nonexistent. But I feel this ball of yearning welling up in me.

It's all kind a whirligig, I guess. I feel what I've always felt: that I'm almost desperate for some pure light to guide me. When I was an adolescent I imagined I felt a sort of fatherly presence hanging over my life. I imagined my father had died and in the afterlife come to care about me after all and was watching over me. Sadly, he's still alive and never cared but that's a red herring so don't get hung up on that. I look to my grandmother or my aunt who've passed on. I guess religion gives you this abstract box to put your faith in and when you discard religion you might not realize that you'll be left without a wagon to keep it in. And eventually you find that you've been struggling to maneuver this unruly mass of disparate objects and, sigh, well, I guess I need a box.
It's like, when I lived in Germany, my better angels were the idea of my mother and my sisters.
But when they're so close you can't really idealize them like that. With the sadness and turmoil and all the rest.
I don't know how to say this so it makes sense. Just that there is a flame in the forest that burns a pure blue and calls to me. Or maybe it's rather what I've been calling into being throughout my life.

Sometimes I just feel so weighted down.
It occurs to me that instead of putting my twilight thoughts on the internet I should have just read The Waste Land, or perhaps the newish book of Rilke translations I bought the other day.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

musics

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:02:55 GMT

went to see gogol bordello last night. everyone thought i wouldn't like it but i actually thought it was really fun.
i mean, it was too hot and the audience was irritating to me but I enjoyed the show. also enjoyed the opening act.

just bought a ticket for the sunday of pitchfork music festival.
that should be fun.

debating whether or not i could cope with lollapalooza.
or its 200 dollar price tag...

sad stuff

Mon, 26 May 2008 07:41:10 GMT

My little sister's three month old son died unexpectedly on Thursday.
It's been a long few days.
I planned on making a long post about these days but I'm tired and we'll see if I feel chattier once I've slept.
I'm thinking of reading War & Peace but I'm intimidated.
That's part of why I'm so anxious to read it.
But I wonder if I should start first with Anna Karenina.

vamps & tramps

Tue, 20 May 2008 08:37:35 GMT

Just over 300 pages into Camille Paglia's Vamps & Tramps I've realized it makes perfect sense that I enjoy reading this book.

I've always been drawn to stories of women on the edge of sanity.

I think it goes back to the reason that Mark and I really liked Didion's Play It As Lays but Jesse and Jason did not.
It's because Mark and I are essentially the neurotic-female-as-gay-male type whereas Jesse and Jason fit more into the unbalanced-man-as-reluctant-homosexual persona.
So Mark and I got Maria because we kind of are her. Perhaps?
But unlike Camille Paglia and us, I don't know that Jason and Jesse have that same blend of the male and female brain and are therefore hopelessly mired in masculine psychology.
Poor kids.

Of course maybe that has nothing to do with Vamps & Tramps. Maybe I enjoy it rather for the same reason I was fascinated with schizophrenia and so forth as an adolescent. It's sort of a blend of phenomenology and sensationalism.
Despite that I approve of many of Paglia's arguments, such as that people need to know more about history before they go around spouting foolishness, I don't want you to be frightened. It's a fun book to read but I'm certainly aware that she's kind of a nutjob and a brat.

:-D

Camile Pagllia's Top 10 Disco Tracks

Sun, 18 May 2008 10:12:30 GMT

LIST #2: The World's Top 10 Disco Classics

1. Irene Cara, "Flashdance" (Giorgio Moroder)

2. Donna Summer, "Rumour Has It" (Giorgio Moroder)

3. Jackie Moore, "This Time, Baby"

4. Sylvester, "Stars"

5. Lime, "Angel Eyes"

6. Machine, "There But For the Grace of God"

7. Evelyn Champagne King, "Shame"

8. Pamala Stanley, "Coming Out of Hiding"

9. Gloria Estefan's cover of Vickie Sue Robinson's "Turn the Beat Around"

10. Madonna, "Deeper and Deeper

from her website

I've been reading Vamps & Tramps: New Essays from 1994. I've been kind of thinking that much of the controversial things she said in the early 90s may have just been before their time. I guess once I realized that much of the writing she does is her having fun, being funny or being provocative, I opened up a little to what she had to say. It's amazing to me that she hasn't published a book of essays since 1994. I mean, she must have published other articles than the Salon.com column or her book on poetry in the intervening 14 years. I should add the caveat that while much of what she's had to say has been before its time some of it remains kind of out there. :-)

Which reminds me that after reading Political Fictions I was curious to see what Joan Didion had to say about the Bush administration, or even the current primary or state of the nation or what have you, but all I could find was an essay on Terri Schiavo and an essay on Dick Cheney which I did not cough up money to read online. I did however read her interview from 2006 or so from the Paris Review and that was all right.

Call to Prayer: Car Talk

Fri, 16 May 2008 09:34:31 GMT

So, the summer after my "rehabilitation" (two years ago) I was walking one day--I did a lot of walking then--and I decided that my great trouble had always been an inability to focus. It was a rare moment in my life where I felt focused. I thought it was something I would be able to hold on to. When I found myself distracted by some stupid little drama or annoyance or something I ended up thinking in these car metaphors...

When my mother was teaching me how to drive I had trouble staying centered in the lane and she told me it was because I was fixated on the lane markers, that I was looking too close in front of me. Her advice was that I needed to keep my eyes on the horizon, where I wanted to go, and I'd just kind of get there, as though I were on autopilot essentially.

A few years later I was driving one day and someone remarked that my windshield was so dirty he didn't know how I could drive that way. (Yay for road salt!) My response was something else I learned from my mother, that it was simply a question of paying attention to the road or the grime on the window. Looking at the dirty window or through it.

These are hardly brilliant or greatly insightful metaphors but I remember back to stressful days where I'd hold my hand vertically against my face and push it out to point at the horizon. Onward. I had so much hope then. And I had courage and I had good deal of faith in myself as well. It's clear that I kind of lost myself that fall. I guess I didn't quite have the life skills, the "coping skills" I kept hearing about in the counseling I had to complete. Especially during the hard process where I quit smoking. I guess I was drinking too much for a while as well. I think I function best when I'm not really drinking much.

I feel like I've lost myself in all these little distractions.

I was thinking about that bit in The Orchid Thief (also Adaptation) where Susan Orlean decides the point of these little passions is that they whittle the world down to manageable size. And maybe that's it. It takes a lot of courage and a good deal of strength to face the world head on. And maybe I've drifted off into mannerism. Lost confidence, self-assurance.

I was at work today, thinking about some of the reasons I hold back from direct engagement with the world. I guess part of it is that I've always been very comfortable with the outsider status I was assigned at a very young age. Shy. Introverted. Poor. And then you have all the mystical kind of reading I did during my teens where I really lost any taste I might have had for the obscenities of capitalism. Maybe some theorists are right and my appreciation for asceticism is simply the product of millennia of poor people sanctifying their injustices. I'm not sure. I'd say it has more to do with the years in my childhood spent in a remote area of the Great North Woods. (I guess it might be redundant to say it was remote...) I've always found materialism and consumerism as distasteful as the class inequities woven into our way of life.

I don't know, always, when I've heard people talking about "getting ahead" or "making it" I've tended to either sneer or feel a little sad. I mean, I guess there is pathos there that people have been warped by their consumer culture. That they've bought the myth of the American Dream. That they really believe in the myth of Upward Mobility. But then you have to hold yourself and others accountable for their value systems. And there is where I run up against Ayn Rand, with all due respect to Brangelina and the rest of the objectivist armies. I understand that there needs to be a Golden Mean between Walden and Atlas Shrugged but there is something distasteful I've always seen in the marketplace where people auction off their own lives.
And I guess the dream is to get paid for something you're good at and enjoy doing. To be driven not by a desire for consumer products but a drive to be productive.
I guess my problem is that I look at the more than six billion people on the planet clamoring like so many ant armies and can't help but feeling that there's too much production going on already. It's a glut and though I feel no desire to piss on it, I should often like to spit on it.

But now here I am feeling like the grasshopper who suddenly realizes it's winter and I'm not prepared. That is, the economic situation is volatile. And I'm feeling vulnerable and caged.

I guess without going too much further into all of this, the moral is that I need to find a way to make peace in the world within which I am living. Because I've dreamed away the better part of two decades and, well, perhaps there is something better if I'll only step out of dreamland and fathom a fresh, more direct engagement with the swamp of human aspiration.

*"courage, confidence, creativity," one reminds oneself.*

Young @ Heart

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:13:00 GMT

I saw this movie yesterday on my 30th birthday and it was so beautiful I cried and cried and cried.

I really loved it. My brain kept saying it was all little bit cliché but it was just so lovely I couldn't help being won over by all of it. You get the sense that this is an amazing bunch of people without anyone being patronized. It was great. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

I also had a massage for the first time by this healer lady and it was better than just about any drug experience I ever had in my life.
I also had dinner at this excellent little restaurant in the far reaches of deepest Brookfield: Cafe Manna. it was a great little vegetarian joy fest.

And it's all thanks to Anastasia loves me on my berfday.

Thanks for all the love, kids.

home

Tue, 06 May 2008 04:26:31 GMT

I guess most of my childhood I was kind of handled like what I was: the illegitimate child of a previous relationship, though my mother would surely not like to hear me say that.

I guess I could go into the details of the many situations in which I have lived and which were the few I felt at home in. Most recently it was living with Jesse.

But the point of this was to be that I do not feel at home now at all.

I've been spending weekends in Chicago with Zac. I guess it once in a while feels like home.
Or the coming into being of one. I guess it's the way you're at home in a dream.

I don't know. I should have more concrete goals. I should be above, past, and beyond correcting the deficits of my youth.
But I'm not one of those goal-oriented people.
I don't want a condo. I feel like I should be worried about a retirement plan but saving for retirement strikes me as kind of naïvely optimistic. I don't need expensive clothing or jewelry or whatever else it is that people manage to spend so much money on.
I guess I'd like to be able to travel and I know I'd like to have a job that's not quite as embarrassing or, at least, novel.

What's worth selling myself for is what I want to know. I guess a piece of home. And I saw this couple on the red line the other day. The girl looked like a student, Chinese perhaps, and the boy was thin and pointy featured and dark-haired and possibly of eastern european extraction. And there was something about their grace that I found so alluring. And as soon as I figure out what that is, I guess that's what I might wish to want, as it were...

Joan Didion / ellis / Kundera

Sat, 03 May 2008 04:17:03 GMT

I recently read a few more Joan Didion books: Play It As It Lays, Political Fictions, and The Last Thing He Wanted. I quite liked the first two and thought the third one was just kind of okay. I also quite liked Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The Year of Magical Thinking.

My question is, How do you feel about Joan Didion?

It's like people love her or hate her. I don't know. I really like her work but it's not like I'm putting her on my list of all time favorite writers or anything. Of course, I have a stack of her books left to read so we'll see.

How do you feel? Why? What do you or do you not like about her or her work?
Do you find her work cold and clinical?

(Feel free to check out the score of comments that Jason has left on my myspace and on my review of Less Than Zero at goodreads.com if you need inspiration.)

I'm not asking for you to agree with me. I really want to know what you think.

Also, were you as unimpressed with Less Than Zero as I was?
Is it my fault that I'm not really connecting with The Unbearable Lightness of Being?
Am I wrong for saying that it reads like it was written by a man and by someone with a socialist background and that it was in a way that didn't appeal to me?

EDIT- I guess I should say about The Unbearable Lightness of Being that although I don't really care for much of the psychological and psychosexual content of this book, I like a lot of the political content, such as the bit about comparing the Czech communists to Oedipus.

backlash, and other, blues

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:00:30 GMT

Despite that I have the dust jacket, I can't seem to find my Susan Sontag book.
Grr.

But I'm watching Nina Simone Live at Montreux and it's fucking amazing.
I feel like I'm hopped up on drugs here.

Like Odetta said last night, if you don't get loose now you'd better forget it because you ain't got much time.

From Play It As It Lays:

One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.
Why, BZ would say.
Why not, I say.

long days and days / play it as it lays (you're holding all the aces)

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:45:53 GMT

I don't know if it's because I'm anxious to get back to Chicago to see my (sugar bear / dolphin prince) or if it's because I'm so thrilled to hang out with April-Dawn and her gay boyfriend Billy this weekend or if time has slowed down to give the democrats more space in which to eviscerate each other or if it's that I've been watching less television or getting less sleep or if it's the effects of spring (which always hangs one up the most) but this week seems to stretch on forever.

Even last night I had my volunteering and I enjoyed that but it was over and I was like, Jesus fucking Christ I can't believe it's only freaking Wednesday! So here I am very late on a Thursday night and I have two more days of work before my weekend can begin.
Before I can feel alive. Yes, if this job stretches out time this much even when it's not as painful as it is at other times, it must be time for a new job.

Also, I read Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays and I feel like I really liked it quite a bit.
Like, The Bell Jar but moreso, it's surprisingly, sneakily good.
It's so simple and spare. But it's like it gives you these puzzle pieces and you put them together and it's not all there but what's between the puzzle pieces is just about devastating. I have seen her prose referred to as sterile and such but I think it might mean more that way. And I guess I find that kind of prose highly engaging. Perhaps because it's like a mystery or a puzzle to figure it out. Or, in many cases in this particular book, it was that so much emotion and experience and assorted informations could be packed into a chapter of like ten sentences. I would read one of these chapters and it wouldn't really strike me at first because the prose is so simple and you just kind of fly past it but as I went on I realized a lot of these scenes are a little more complicated, or at least weighted, than I first appreciated. I mean, maybe I'm saying this wrong. I guess I mean I'd read something and ask myself then what was really being said and, well, I'm terrible at this.
But it makes me think of that video I was loving with Iris DeMent singing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" with two other women and someone was complaining that I was listening to this idiotic country folk whatever it was he said and I tried to explain that what made the thing beautiful might not be the twanging or the vocal technique or the sophistication or what-do-I-know. I said to him, "This song is about death, particularly the death of the speaker's mother, and yet the musicians all have this joy in their faces and in their voices a bit as well. So, ask yourself what reasons they might be smiling. What functions does this song serve and what does it represent? What is this song really about? Or at least, what is it also about?"
I guess the analogy is imperfect. I'm a terrible communicator. I guess that's something I'd like to work on maybe that's what I'm doing right now.
It's like, there are things that happen in this book and you don't really get it. But then you reread it right away and you see it's all there. These little bits and pieces that so subtly convey the desolation and the desperation of these characters. BZ is tired of doing people this kind of favor. The protagonist is terrified of the calamity that might strike at any moment. She hates herself for being weak and unable to take control of her own life. She hates the people around her for controlling her. Men for using her. I don't know. I really identified with her. I guess I know what it is that she's experiencing in much of this. I really need to start drafting and revising these things before I post them, like I used to. A million years ago. I feel like I want to keep rereading it until I know what it is in these pages that has touched me like it has. I can't stop thinking about it.

state of the richard (crossposted from myspace)

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:13:17 GMT

I guess I haven't posted one of these in a while so I'm making a little update.

First, there were some concerns about my health and it turned out to be none of the serious things that were suspected. I probably need to have my tonsils taken out. I'm probably hypoglycemic. I probably have more allergies than I am aware of including some food allergy conditions. I should see an Ear Nose Throat specialist and an allergist. I should sleep more, drink more water, exercise more. I should meditate more. I should eat better. Bicycle more.

I've made little progress as far as a career plan goes. I still work at the same awful place. I still have few ideas how I might manage to pay for college. I guess what else I know is that I need to be more industrious.

Speaking of industry, I have been, you probably know, seeing someone particularly special for a couple months or so and he was talking about building something together. And I suppose that's a little more encouraging in the motivation department than the usual reasons.

I saw Laurie Anderson at the Harris Theater. I'd love to see her again.

I've been getting fatigue about the election but there is enough going on in the world to be dazzled by other things, like the plummeting economy.
I've been increasingly enraged by the media. I've been reconnecting with On the Media. I think the press is pretty much the most culpable party in the current world situation. Because the press has abdicated its responsibility. It's vile and loathsome and disgusting. The press we have now is like a side show. A circus. But more like a cross between a circus and a dystopian novel.
Speaking of the media, how in the hell is someone as charisma challenged as David Gregory anchoring MSNBC's Race to the White House?!?

I should be free from probation in just a couple of months. My life is happening. There is a door in front of me and feel like I've barely looked at a map to the world I'll be walking into...

I guess part of me is sad and disillusioned about Hillary Clinton, after having defended the clintons for more than a decade. But I'm also prepared to take it as a metaphor.
Er. It's a symbol. I'm calling this a season of truth. I'm trying to open myself to knowledges I haven't wanted to know.

my new love / alchemy, bieder und gut

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:44:32 GMT

Iris DeMent.
I can't remember how I came across her. Just that it was while looking for something else on Youtube.
You might, as I did, recognize her from Songcatcher, an enjoyable film from the most recent golden age of independent cinema.

"Our Town"

"Will the Circle Be Unbroken"

Wasn't that video thrilling? For reals. I love the energy and the dynamic in this video. It's so beautiful here. It's really an expression of something I'd be fond of calling virtue. I love their faces and their joy, especially the blonde woman. It reminds me of what I loved about Kenji Mizoguchi's The Last Chrysanthemums. It's a potent look into what gives the relevant social structures their value and what are some of the values are that drive them.

"Sweet Is the Melody"

"He Reached Down"

I love the way the music dances. There's life in the texture of this folksy country bluegrassy liquid music. It's like sunshine or jesus shining in my heart.

A Hillary Clinton presidency?

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:06:24 GMT

It looks like Carl Bernstein and I are in complete accord.

On Versatility / Looking at Clouds from Both Sides Now / It Has Been Revealed

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:03:23 GMT

So, you'll all recall my Vlad-the-Impaler what-what-in-the-butt cherry-busting post from last fall in which I described my first encounter with being penetrated by a man's penis via my rear entry.
And I guess people have always taken it for granted that I'm a "total bottom" but what I guess I found out last night is you may as well have it both ways because yessir that's also hot.
And that way you don't have to hold your bum for a week.
Except if you trade off.

I adore the Zachary, in semi-unrelated news.

siskel / TEETH / my sunday circumstance

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:35:21 GMT

Sooooooooooooo, I meant to head down to the Gene Siskel Film Center for the 3 PM film noir, which sounded just delightful but I've been catching up sleep and I have a feeling it'll wear me out too much, based on recent experience.
And anyway, I shall probably have to be trekking up to Mark's place so we can watch the Resnais videos I got from the library.

We went to see this movie at the Music Box last night called Teeth.
Camille Paglia in a recent column described it as a feminist horror film or something.
The trailer makes it look retarded but it was actually quite enjoyable. It's about a girl with vagina dentata and I thought it would be kind of off-putting or that it would take a while to get into but it really is a fun movie and the audience was definitely into it. It's not too shlocky and it's not stupid either.
lalala, GO SEE IT IF YOU'RE ABLE. AND TAKE ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
It's a fun little movie, especially for a midnight movie.

The jew is occupied all day with work and school. Yesterday I was as a point where I was so worked up with anxiety about my health and such that I really didn't feel like I was myself. I felt cold and, hmm, maybe a little dissociated. But the walking to and from the Music Box theater last night (from Broadway and Belmont) and the talking to James and then Jason on the way back were really therapeutic. I feel not so good today. My stomach hurts and I feel physically weak and kind of dizzy. But I'm feeling better emotionally and psychologically. Yesterday I felt overstimulated and overstressed. I felt like I needed to scream and cry and carry on. And I'm not good at any of that (except sometimes maybe carrying on). I can't describe how this health situation makes me feel. I've been sick for a long time. Maybe it's the chemicals at work. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's cancer or an autoimmune disorder. Maybe it IS leukemia. I'm all but certain the blood work will come back supposedly fine, assuming someone even looks at it. And then I'll be marked a frail hypochondriac? There are so many things to be afraid of and I'm always telling myself there's no point in getting excited about any of them. "All I need is an action plan involving a better diet and a different job in a less toxic environment." But I feel I only succeed in pushing and squishing the anxiety down into this asphalt strip and that the rest of me might be spread out on top of it but it's always there and just below the surface. I am concerned and I am a little afraid and I have episodes of hopelessness.
But I'm feeling a little better today. And I'm looking forward to cuddling with the Jew, now that my desperate Monster's Ball moment is passed...

nod if you can hear me / sunsilk

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:45:56 GMT

At the urging of a handful of family members and friends, I went tonight to the Urgent Care at Froedtert Hospital, which is generally regarded as the best hospital in Wisconsin. Although it was encouraging that they didn't ask for health insurance information until after I had received care, it was not encouraging that they only seemed to care whether my problem was strep throat. After the rapid strep test came up negative they showed me the door. Drink a lot of water, get a lot of rest, and take a lot of Advil. I guess that's the cure to just about everything that might ail you.

Meanwhile I'm probably sporting a compromised immune system, being terrorized by some undiagnosed throat malady that looks kind of like strep throat but more ulcerative and I'm terrified that it might be thrush because I feel like you're only supposed to get that when your immune system is shot. And if it's not something like that how did I never transmit it to the Jew, whom I might very well be falling in love with?

So, I'm waiting for the blood work. Discouraged because I can't seem to find a healthcare provider that gives a rat's ass about me. I'd be tempted to call myself a worrywart or a hypochondriac but anyone who has observed the lovely situation in my throat or the situation in which I have chronic throat infections and reactions to drugs that aren't supposed to have reactions and extreme fatigue and so on, seems more concerned than I am. My sister has apparently been giving details of my situation to her physiology class or whatever it is as an example of the ineptitude of the American healthcare system. I don't know. Half the people I know seem to think I should just not think about it. "LALALA, my throat is, inexplicably, swollen and ulcerative and covered in white stuff and I can barely stand up for five minutes sometimes but I'm sure it's nothing to get worked up about." And the other half are worked up into a frenzy and it's like the one half is telling me I'm worked up over nothing and the other half thinks I'm not treating this with the seriousness it deserves and really i just want a doctor to settle the argument. Give me an explanation and a prognosis and I'll be back to the business of trying to write the great love story with the Jew.

Which brings me to my comic relief:

I sent this text message to a handful of people this morning: Madonna's doing Sunsilk commercials now?!?
Zarah responded: Yes! Isn't that sad. She could at least do Pantene!
Me: I don't understand it.
Zarah: It's not like she needs the money. She's going crazy!
Me: Indeed. Me too... Crazy in LOVE!
Zarah: That's a good crazy. If I see you in a Sunsilk ad expect trouble.
Me:LOL

For the record, I know it's too soon to go around saying I'm in love but I'm definitely fond of the lad.
And we had this little conversation on Thursday evening about his existential crisis and later that night I was thinking about it and I just felt so incredibly warm about him. I think he's kind of boring the way that I'm kind of boring.
But he's special and he doesn't appear to be cynical.
He seems like a real find.

It's funny, the past few times I went down there, I spent the prior 24 hours worried that I'd made the whole thing up in my head.
I was convinced I'd get to Chicago and find out that nothing was as I thought it was.
Especially given Joe's words of caution.
And now, as I give myself over to believing in this guy, I have a little worry that he's not quite the gem I see in him.
I mean, they never are.
But I'm trying to take a measured approach to everything. And if he is somehow less than I think him to be, at least I'm fairly confident he doesn't have the same character flaws I've seemed to have been drawn to in the past.
He's at least warm and available and, despite his Jewish economy, he seems rather generous.
He's sweet and he's romantic and he's nice to me. He's intelligent and principled and generally seems to enjoy life and a healthy perspective. And he's handsome and has a nice butt. (And everyone knows that as far as aspiring creative people go, it's the writers who are, well, let's be diplomatic and say that it's the writers with whom I am personally more simpatico and whom I tend to find least annoying. Well, I mean, a certain kind of writer but my creative-personality-fatigue is probably a subject best left for another day...)
Such luck!

5/13/78

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:37:22 GMT

Oh yeah. Also...
It's April now.
And that means I'll be 30 next month.

I'm actually not too concerned about it.
Maybe because I already accepted it and have been telling people I'm 30 for months now...

I feel like I'm supposed to be clinging desperately to the last several weeks of my 20s but I'm not in the mood to do so.
I am in the mood for something different and hoping the 30s work out better for me than my 20s did.

blood

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:46:27 GMT

I guess I'm feeling a little bit better now.
I mean, my throat mostly feels better and my allergic rash is on its way out.
Still feeling weak and fatigued but not quite so sick in my stomach.
I'm not entirely confident in the doctor I saw on Monday.
I should stop mentioning to doctors that I used to use drugs. I think they tend to get stuck on that.
He seemed to see me as this gay sex maniac and needle junkie.
I had to confirm about 5 times that, yes, I was just tested for HIV and no I don't have it and yes I'm pretty sure about that.
He even got me feeling nervous so I was thinking on Tuesday that since I was a couple weeks overdue for my second Hep B vaccination I might as well stop at the Brady Street clinic and get that and yet another AIDS test.
This time I opted for the blood test instead of the mouth swab and it, of course, turned up negative.

Anyway, back to the doctor on Monday. He tested me for mono. Negative. Decided my rash was an allergic rash and not measles or something. They briefly tried to talk me out of getting blood work done because it'd be expensive and I'm like: Yes, I know, I'm not an idiot and I think my mother had an idea of the cost when she demanded that I come here to have you do my blood work and said that she'd pay for it because if there's a problem she'd like to know about it before I end up in a hospital. And before mentioning that their concern was really money--it's always money--he suggested I might want to have it done in the hospital because my arms would be all scarred up from injecting drugs and I'm like: YO, no track marks here, jerkwad. Not every needle junkie is out there shooting up with a dirty needle and e. coli water, okay? It's called a needle exchange and can I tell you that your nurse was either being passive aggressive or incompetent with the phlebotomy and my arm still hurts.

But that's all inconsequential, I suppose.
The point is that I'm waiting for the blood work. It'll take until at least Friday.
He also said all those people griping about vegetarians and protein can shut it because I'm getting plenty of protein.
And that I might be hypoglycemic, which wouldn't surprise me because my mother is hypoglycemic.
She also has fibromyalgia; I wonder if I have that. I bet most of us do. Our bodies aren't built for the modern world, I don't think.

Things are well with the jew. I'm being pretty successful about not being over-analytical or anything. I don't know. I guess so far it just feels comfortable. There's something right about it. We'll see how it holds up. I'm afraid this is already my most successful relationship. We'll see.

i can haz a bad joke about dying of cancer or some shit

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:45:00 GMT

So, ever since I started feeling like something was quite wrong with me, people have been treating me like a deranged hypochondriac. Now that some medical professionals and a minor medical crisis have caught the attention of my family, I feel partially vindicated. And I'm almost looking forward to finding out I have cancer or something simply because I am desperate for an explanation for all this.

Still, there are people in my life who treat me as though I somehow came across an issue of The Readers Digest with an article about leukemia or autoimmune disorders or something and decided that would be my next whim. First of all, I do not read The Readers Digest. Secondly, I understand that this is largely the fault of my approach to communication, which consists largely of assuming that all serious things can be assumed as understood and accepted and the gravity of these issues in the world requires that we respond to them as though life were a casual exercise in theatre of the absurd.

I don't know. I guess this must be why I identify with Judy Holliday or something (the brainy ditz). I don't approve of most of the things my culture is and my disapproval takes the form, by and large, of disengagement. I know there is a better strategy but I feel like the machine is corrupt and I'm sullied enough standing at the periphery. So, I lack ambition. I lack sense. What-have-you. I guess it all sounds like depression if you spin it the wrong way but you'd be depressed too if your best case scenario included cancer of the white blood cells.

I don't know. I just know that a long-standing problem in my life has been this sort of impatience to explain my thought process to people. Like, "Bitch, I don't have the time or the inclination to bring it down to your level. I'm not writing a feature for Time magazine here, so I don't feel like I need to spell everything out to you as though we were both retarded. Just take my word for it, okay?"

I mean, I don't need to be a doctor to know when something is and has been quite wrong with me. I know what being healthy feels like. And it's not a feeling I've often had lately. I'm a mess but I'm not all about stressing about fantasy medical conditions.

Gah.

The woman from the clinic made a follow up call to me today. I could hear the tone change in her voice when I explained the events of the past few days. She, like my sister's pharmacist and my mother's pharmacist, seemed almost incredulous that I could have an anaphylactic response to all three of those antibiotics. She got an ominous tone in her voice and said what these pharmacists had said, that I need to get a full blood work up as soon as possible because there is clearly something serious afoot here.

Meanwhile my roommate is convinced I've been having hives for two weeks from the dryer sheets I bought two days ago, totally discounting the whole, "It happens right after taking the medicine and is accompanied by assorted breathing difficulties" component of the situation. The trouble with other people is they always think you're somehow less intelligent than they are. My whole life I feel like I'm having to deal with people explaining something to me that I considered and discarded about ten steps ago.

Anyway, I'm tired and cranky and there are aspects of this situation that recall to me some of the frustrations of my educational experience. I know I'm so inept in a lot of ways and I'm not cut out for life in a fast-paced, cutthroat global economy. But in my little pond of working to middle middle class Wisconsin, I am generally more intelligent than the people around me and it's frustrating to have little worker bee people try to explain things to me and I can't believe I'm venting about this like a deranged narcissist.

But for the real anyway now: I have an appointment with my mother's doctor on Monday afternoon, at which time I'm supposed to be having blood taken. I have to see the doctor in Racine because the doctor my mother wanted me to see in Milwaukee suddenly became unable to take on any new patients when it was mentioned that my mother would be paying for it all because I am uninsured and she loves me enough to fix me out of her own pocket.

Maybe it'll end up being nothing. I'll get shot full of something to knock out the strep throat and purported other infection that is purportedly further indication that I am somehow immunocompromised and life will go on and Hillary Clinton will resign from the Democratic primary and I'll go back to college and get my degree and marry the jew and live happily ever after on our little commune and the skies will open and Jesus will wrap me in laurels and palm fronds and kiss me tenderly about the temple.

Get Thee to a Blood-Workery!

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:26:45 GMT

The past few days have been not so much fun.
Anaphylaxis is not fun.
I keep being allergic to antibiotics but I don't want to die of strep throat so I wanted to keep taking the most recent drug I was prescribed, balancing it out with anti-histamines, if possible.
Well, Tuesday night I took the amount of Benadryl that was recommended to me by the doctor who gave me the prescription. Of course, he didn't, I don't think, mean for this to be but a one time crisis aversion technique but I was all, well it's only a week or so.
Of course I then discovered that Benadryl is serious business and that two tabs of that shit was enough to put me off in some kind of ultragravitational parallel universe where I was doped up and felt like I was underwater for about ten or so hours.
So. I didn't take any of the antibiotics yesterday and I thought I'd try taking them this morning (Thursday) with some of the non-drowsy antihistamines recommended by my mother's pharmacist. (I think she was trying to get me an epi-pen.) So I took the antibiotic and chased it with antihistamines when the rash began and seemed to be followed by a shortness of breath. When I still felt like someone was standing on my chest I took an Allegra for good measure. That mostly seemed to help except I felt all jacked up in the opposite end of crazyland as the day before.
Anyway, when my boss finally dragged himself into work this morning I said, "If I pass out I need you to call 911 and tell them I'm having an allergic reaction to an antibiotic." To which he responded, "Jesus Christ, you should go home." And I rolled my eyes and walked away, which was sign language for, "Some of us can't afford to go around calling in sick to work just because we may or may not be about to die, especially when we missed 10 hours last week, thanks."

So, the little elves (read: the people who really love me) have been out seeking advice and information from assorted pharmacists and medical personnel and laypersons and the consensus is that I need to get into some kind of real doctor and have some blood work done because I probably have a serious condition that is compromising my immune system.
As I was telling my mother I've been saying this for about a year now (I didn't mention the number of times I was called a hypochondriac by people who've known me long enough to know that I'm not one. Outside of psych class, anyway.) and I was actually kind of unpleasantly surprised that I didn't have HIV because at one point it seemed the only explanation and as I walked out of the office I was convinced everyone must think I was positive because I was stunned and probably looked upset, so I periodically wonder about whether the sprinkling of acquaintances in the room might have spread around town a false report that I have the HIVs.
Anyway, my sister was talking to her pharmacist--she's the head photo person up at her local walgreens--and he said it was quite unusual that I'd be allergic to all three of the antibiotics they put me on and the fact that I'm suddenly allergic to all these antibiotics combined with my poor health over the past year and a half or so is allegedly a strong indication that I have some immunocompromise going on. My sister told him about my no-AIDS and how the kids thought I had leukemia and he responded, "Yes, something like that."

And if that's the case, I'll need to cut my hours at work or something so I qualify for the General Assistance Medical Plan (GAMP) or just go off and die somewhere because as an uninsured American my life is collateral damage in the culture wars/the war against communism, so whatever.

In any event, all of this rigamarole with my declining health and assorted crisis moments looks primed to interfere with my budding romance. Despite a dozen reasons why I should be staying home and recuperating (and not spending any money) I will probably end up going to Chicago this weekend. I had decided not to but ~~the Jew~~ Zac was so tempting and then Mark was adamant about this movie about vagina dentata and he'll be able to give a ride back on Monday because he has things to do about Milwaukee on Tuesday and wants to have quality Richard and Anastasia trio-time. But seriously, what could be better for me than another weekend of squeezing the Zac?
Aside from adequate, competent medical attention, I dare say NOTHING.
:-D

Zac- whatever you like
Richard- you're always so agreeably agreeable
Zac- as long as you're in my bed when I go to sleep and wake up I am happy

Um, so I was worried about needing to take it easy here but he was talking about coming up here this weekend and he swore he wouldn't get sick of me if I went to Chicago to see him again this weekend. I feel like there is an element of rushing into a difficult situation. I mean, Chicago and Milwaukee aren't SO far away but neither of us drives at the moment and, well, it's not an ideal situation. But he's probably about as a rare a person as I am. I'd say rarer but, seriously, have you met anyone else like me? So I feel like when two rare individuals are simpatico and get virtually the same score on a dubious web-based IQ test and have a certain amount of chemistry and shared values, well, I guess that's something to run with. Of course, I don't know anything about any of this amorous behavior and am not so good at the disingenuous strategery that is normally called for so I'm just winging it in my own charmingly naïve fashion. This said fashion may periodically be described as refreshing but seldom if ever will you hear it described as generally successful. I don't know what's going on. I don't want him to feel like I'm rushing him into anything. I want to give him space. But he's not really asking for much.
Sometimes I wish Mark could be a fly on the wall for a while because he has an uncanny gift for knowing what's really going on with people and for understanding exactly what people mean by what they say, even if they don't realize it themselves. I don't know. Maybe it's just a lovely interlude that's going on here. If that's the case, I'm prepared to enjoy it. And maybe that's the best way to play it after all. N'est-ce pas?

dream a dream of me with hives

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:13:34 GMT

It's strange.
I just got a craving for the cookies and milk of my kindergarden.
I haven't thought about that in a long time. Possibly ever.
It's weird when random memories come flashing back.

I hope it isn't my life flashing before my eyes, since I seem to be allergic to this third drug in six days.
I feel myself resigning said self to die of anaphylaxis or strep throat.
Hot times in the neighborhood.
I wish I were curled up in bed with the Jew.
avec mon dauphin.

PS.
He sent me this text message on Monday evening shortly after we ended the weekend and it was in french and it said something like,

Your eyes will seduce me but your heart will show me the path.

When he holds me it feels real and when he calls me beautiful I'm tempted to give in to happiness and put trust in this experience. I feel myself opening and giving myself in a way I don't think I've been able to before. When he says he likes me as I am I think, I want you though to see how much better I can be. When he talks about doing things to make me proud of him, ... Well, I don't know. It's all very nice, I assure you. But boys are fickle and we're still getting to know each other. It feels like a dream. But I know reality is stands in the wings.

Did I mention I love it when he calls me pet names? It's like a revelation, to hear his voice call me honey or darling or ricky poo or snookems or whatever lovely kitsch it might be.

It's all brand new.
And it's getting better.