Recently, someone mentioned how she feels "loserish" when staying home on a Saturday night doing nothing. I responded:

See, I feel that bit of shame and loserishness on Sunday night (now Tuesday morning) when it's the very end of the weekend and I realize that I haven't done anything. Of course, while I'm actually staying home doing nothing, I usually feel great. Hooray for quiet!

I wrote that at work, before my weekend began. Now it's Tuesday morning, and those words have hit me like a deadly boomerang of angst.

I spent this weekend reading. And reading and reading. When I got home on Sunday morning, I opened the windows and the door and took off my shoes and lay on my couch and felt good. When my mother called to update me on things and ask me about things, I told her that I was reading with my shoes off. I went to bed late and woke up and read. I stayed up late reading, and then I slept in and woke up and read some more. I did go out and get some exercise, but then I came back home and read some more more, although I shook things up a bit by reading things on the Internet, not bound in books. And now it's late on Tuesday and I'm suddenly realizing that the reason I feel a bit odd is because all of the diverse voices I've surrounded myself with over the past forty-eight hours have been in my own head.

And the quiet is not currently hurray-worthy.

There was something I did besides read, this morning. I ran through my cd collection looking for tracks to sing along to. I sang loud and proud in my carriage house at four o'clock in the morning. And it filled me with the same intoxicating joy as the reading.

What's going on inside me is complex, and I can't seem to express what it is without using words like roiling. I can't bring myself to use those words, right now, so we'll move on. The point is that my mouth feels rusted, and the pressure of its disuse over this weekend is worrying.

And I should go to bed now, so I can get up and watch the new episode of MI-5 (Apparently it has Dr. Bashir in it), but something me going. And the main reason I'm writing this entry is because, if I don't I'll probably go back to reading, and then there'll be no end to it.

And strange things are happening. There's drama on LJ, there's still watermelon in my fridge, and I'm going to get an electronic monkey on my shoulder because I can solve cryptics.

It's been a strange weekend.

It will continue to be one until I go to bed.

It will continue to be one as I prolong this entry.

I swallow my Prozac (actually fluoxetine) and think about where I was three years ago. I don't get very far, because everything from then is pretty scrambled, but thinking about it reminds how odd it is that I enjoy my life. Even when I wake up and think my life is boring or tired or sad, I really like it. Before, even when I liked my life I hated it; now, even when I hate my life, I love it.

It's now the time of day when every extra minute I keep my eyes open will be felt by me at work later on. The clocks around me tick upwards passive-aggressively (well, only the analogue alarm clock ticks, the other silently change) and I try to ignore them while I add parentheticals to my writing.

I'm trying to work it out of me. I'm trying to work out everything I took in, but there's not enough time, and it's not working because through it all my mouth stays closed and my voice stays mute and I don't have an ending to this weekend. I need an ending to this weekend, something other than my time for today's crossword puzzle, which is apparently all I have. I need someone to sing me to sleep tonight, and someone to sing to sleep before I tiptoe out the door to read and proofread safe, soulless things.

TueNYTX: 7.

On Monday, I saw my friend Veek online. She's in town helping to take care of family and, although she's busy, I wanted to connect with her before the summer went ahead to far. So I asked if I we could go for a meal together. "What a coincidence," she said. "My friend Jon is in town visiting, and I'd love for you to meet him." ( So, a plan was set to go out Monday night. )

WedNYTX: 7:30. I have absolutely no idea what 34A is supposed to mean. WedLATX: 7.

I'm feeling alone, not lonely. Asocial, not antisocial. Teetering on the edge of feeling depressed. I don't feel like dealing with people today.

Earlier, I woke up and dragged a chair into my yard to read. The sun was setting and a cool breeze was ablowin' down Sepulveda and through the trees that shade my carriage house. I need to do this more often; only my aversion to wearing pants in the mornings prevents me. The light faded too quickly, though.

Today I feel like basking in the sun with my solitude. When I was younger, I used to tell my parents I was going for a walk, or a bike ride, and be gone. Sometimes I'd bring a book or a notebook, but usually, I'd just go out until I was tired. In the west valley, the hills are filled with orange rock and housing developments and quiet and the yellow orange light of the sun on the edge of America falling behind those same hills to dive in the ocean, foam and gloam. Getting out was a great way of getting out anything inside me that was just too much. After a few hours of wandering through the concrete steppes, I'd be little more than tired, and glad to set my body down in a comfortable chair indoors while the light moved from outside to in. The next day would be new, and I would deal with what it brought.

But today, tonight, the light is already in, and there's nothing outside but darkness all around, which pushes things inside instead of drawing them out.

I don't feel like talking. I don't feel like walking. I don't feel like dealing with you. I don't feel like reading or bleeding or heeding advice, I don't care if it's true. So hold off your questions and feel-good suggestions. There's nothing that, now, seems appealing. It's not that I'm callous. I don't wish you malice. It's just that I don't feel like feeling.

"Where were you when you heard . . . ?" questions are arise with many major events.

For two of the most recent events, the attack on the World Trade Center and now the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia, my answer would be the same: ifMUD. I expect I'll be there for many more.

This is, mostly, the tour I gave at my housewarming party, for all of you who were unfortunate enough to be unable to attend.

( Come on back )

Coming soon, in Part Two: my bed, my computer and the now very famous working toilet in a thrilling action sequence!

I'm taking a break from putting things into boxes. Not only because I'm a bit tired and need a breather, but also because a little while ago, I took a few things out of boxes.

I have a box that I'm keeping for a friend. It's a box of evidence of a relationship. I've had it for years now, and I've never really looked at it, but today, while I was evaluating what, from my life, to keep and what to discard, I was drawn to the small cardboard box of mementos. I flipped through. All in all there wasn't much, but there was a large stack of communiques of various types, neatly stacked.

I didn't read the emails. I didn't want to or need to. I was already struck with how meticulously clean they were. They didn't seem to be folded or crumpled or to show any other marks of mishandling. They were pristine except for occasional stray notes, doodles, and periodic underlining of the text. It surprised me that my friends had been able to organize these aspects of his life so delicately, ultimately making it possible, then, to put it all into a single box to be given to someone else for an indefinite period of time.

I simply don't function like that. It's hard enough for me to keep my financial information in the same place where I could be expected to find it within five minutes. But I couldn't decide to be jealous of my friend's ability or glad that I lacked it. On the one hand, having that information organized, one can always refer back to something. On the other hand, always having the information at hand means, in a physical, or perhaps geographical, way, being unable to forget. There's always something there to remind you.

I have mementos from past relationships. A few are on display, like the only picture I have of a girl from Montana, but most are hidden behind, around, below, within the maze of information that is around me at all times. And it's times like this, when I'm moving or cleaning or otherwise sifting all of my possessions, that these physical memories, stored outside of my brain, come back through my fingertips and speak.

Somewhere in that room, or possibly in boxes somewhere that I packed months ago, there is a picture of an old ex-girlfriend, exer than Ex. She's in high school, getting ready for, I think, Homecoming, wearing a green dress and looking lovely despite an obvious weariness in her eyes with the process of having her parents photograph her before the dance. Attached to it is a photograph taken of the two of us in Georgetown on some night out with a group of friends. I'm wearing a winter coat and my insulated arms hold her close; her black leather (faux-leather?) jacket wraps around my arms as well, and the dark clothing with the night flash makes her clear face luminous beneath mine. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll hold it in my hand and remember when I held her in my arms, when I fell in love, when we studied together and I couldn't stop staring at her pale shoulder, off of which her shirt had slipped, when we first kissed, sitting on a bench on the Washington Mall, when I cried, when she embarrassed herself and my friend in front of me while drunk, when she lied to me. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll ask myself whether I should simply let it fall away from me, into a dustbin and out of my life. And when I find it, as I always do, I will place it carefully into whichever pile I've designated for things that I'm not sure what to do with, where it will be covered by stray notes, or postcards, or newspaper clippings until I find it again.

Just now I said that I didn't have anything interesting to write about my memories September 11, 2001. That's true so far is it goes. See, almost every personal account of September 11 centers around the same thing, the television. Sometimes it's the radio, or the internet, but usually it's the TV. The nation plopped itself down whever they were and all watched the same news feeds coming from all over the world. So, I don't really have much to say about it that you probably don't already know, or that can't be easily seen on any televised retrospective.

But westernactor just revealed his log of ifmud for that day. I spent most of the day in front of the computer screen as much as the television screen (I had both in the same room), so the log captures a lot of what I was thinking and wondering throughout the day. I think that, when I get the chance, I'll pick out some quotes and actually put together a composite of highlights of thoughts for that day.

In other news, I stopped by the carriage house on my way home and talked with my uncle about the finishing touches. My place is going to rock hard. The people working on the house, including my uncle, are also in charge of constructing the new million-dollar home of Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow. The place looks fantastic, and there's still more to be done. Everyone's invited to the housewarming/showing off party when it happens.

Recently, I've been thinking about the Northridge Earthquake. It's not because there was a very minor tremor just a few hours ago, it's because of another LiveJournaler, whom I am reluctant to name directly.

This person has a major crisis going on in her life, leading to much angst, quite a lot of it centering around whether or not she's doing the best thing or acting in the appropriate way. I don't know her very well (for values of "very well" equal to "at all other than what I've read, really"), so I'm reluctant to say anything directly, but I'm still thinking about it.

I can relate to a lot of what she writes about, not so much the specifics, as the instincts and reactions to crisis. Whenever a major crisis happens, my instinct is usually to get out of the way. Whenever an argument arose in the house, I just walked out and into my room, letting the others sort it out. The first time I consciously noticed was when my mother had a cancer scare, and I spent days and days in my room reconstructing every jigsaw puzzle I had.

But it's one thing to say, "Everyone reacts differently to a crisis," and quite another to see it in action.

( January 17, 1994 )

The fact is that people don't always bind together in a crisis. They do if they need to, of course. Sometimes immediate survival depends on it, but most of the time, people bind together because that's what they feel they need to do, instinctively. They try to connect with everyone, and quite a number of people also say, "no thanks, I'm fine, thank you for asking," and just move them along. Major crises don't bring people together, they just make everyone crazy at the same time instead of spread out randomly.

When a crisis is only happening to yourself, and all of your friends are in a non-crisis mode, it's easy to feel like an aberration. And when someone else is responding to an entirely different crisis, it sometimes seems even more alienating. But when everyone is acting like a temporary lunatic and everyone knows the reason why, it's simpler to see that your own personal insanity is, if not normal, expected.

On the day of the quake, I saw a couple try to bribe the man at the 7-11 to get extra bottled water. Everyone was lined up outside the store and the manager stood at the door taking the orders and keeping the money while to helpers searched the aisles and back rooms to find supplies. Certain things were limited, though, water, ice, batteries and food to a certain extent. (I assume the magazines had no limit.) But really, no one in line was upset at this couple. That's just how these people react.

So whenever something really awful happens, I try to just let it happen. Trying to change the way I react just leads to inaction. And locking myself in a room and mastering Tetris eventually helps more than trying to be out and about while also being absolutely miserable in addition to everything else.

Addendum: While trying to find photographs of the damage to Topanga Plaza, I found "Twenty-One, Counting Up" by Harry Turtledove. Three months between me and the protagonist made this an eerie read.

A friend from college just moved back into L.A. after a soul-sucking time in Fresno (shudder). Tonight I'm welcoming her back to civilization with a movie and dinner at Canter's. Yay!

Tea is wonderful. It has magical healing properties that we do not fully understand. It's warm and refreshing. It's an odd idea really, to strain hot water through leaves to create a mystical beverage, but I'm glad someone did.

Not that I condone slavery, mind you, but that's another story.

A third story is that I left a message for T. yesterday, but she hasn't called me yet. This is good, I believe. It may have lifted my spirits, but I wouldn't have been in a good frame of mind to have a logical conversation. (I talked with D last night, and I definitely didn't have a coherent talk with him.)

Refreshed, rested and satiated, the true test will be how well I sleep today.