Meredith’s newly acquired copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary has been sitting on the coffee table for a couple weeks. I usually scoff at books by female authors that have the words “confession” or “diary” in the title, so, at first, I scoffed. But then I found out Cam’s mom gave the book to Meredith for Christmas and said she though every female should own a copy. I respect Cam’s mom (and she’s a librarian… she knows her books!), so I got curious.

I flipped through it, read the stats portions at the beginnings of each of the entries, and decided it was a sad book because she never loses weight… apparently I’m not that open-minded.

But, in honor of the book, still on the coffee table in the living room… or maybe, in honor of Cam’s mom, here’s a quick update on my life, in list format:

Reading: What Is the What (Eggers); The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand); South of the Border, West of the Sun (Murakami); An Anthropologist on Mars (Sacks); Blow-Up and Other Stories (Cortazar).

Just finished reading: Apex Hides the Hurt (Whitehead); And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (Kerouac & Burroughs); Muses, Madmen, and Phrophets (Smith); New Kings of Non-Fiction (editor: Glass).

Listening: Ella Fitzgerland, Atom & His Package, Radiohead, and absolutely nothing new except the Redbeards album Eric gave me and some tracks Matthew made.

Eating: Tuna, tomatoes, spinach, and cucumbers (to fix increasingly urgent iron and protein deficiencies… dude, I bruised my thigh weeks ago, and it’s still blue).

Running: 5.2 mph for 30 minutes a day. (Totally respectable for someone with short legs.)

Debating: Keeping bangs or growing them out.

Snow: Has been above my knees twice so far this season. (But I layer and I keep warm, Mom, so worry less.)

Today: Read Murakami, worked on CogSci paper, called sister, organized shelves, cleaned bedroom so it smelled like lemons, worked on CogSci paper, made tomato sandwich, read CHILDES transcripts, rearranged art on bedroom walls, coded BabyCam, read Eggers, Dan came over, went out to buy a new door and doorknob, came home, Dan left, practiced tightrope while listening to news podcast, worked on CogSci paper, ate second half of sandwich, talked to Steve, worked on CogSci paper, played with guitar, guitar super out of tune, tuned guitar, wrote for fun, got headache, took Aleve, made PJ’s coffee, drank PJ’s coffee in the dark while listening to audiobook Ayn Rand, worked on CogSci paper, emailed Katherine, wrote this.

Now: Bed.

I like to work in lobbies of places I don’t belong. There are people bustling around, but I’m unlikely to know them. I blend in. There’s the right amount of noise. And sometimes older folks stop to talk to me, which creates nice, natural breaks in my work blocks.

My favorite lobby has a player piano in it. A man just stopped to ask me if I was familiar with this tune, and did I know it was from Madame Butterfly? “What a tear jerker! That poor girl! You know it? That Puccini!”

That Puccini! There’s a coffee stand nearby. It smells like coffee and chocolate and cinnamon… and that’s all. Now back to work.

Someone left a copy of Borges’ Labyrinths in my mailbox. I vaguely remember this book coming up in conversation recently with someone, but I can’t remember who. So if you left me this book, if you’d kindly remind me it was you, I’ll return it to the proper mailbox when I’m done with it.

Also, in case this book wasn’t supposed to be in my mailbox: if you hear of anyone who lost a copy, I totally have it. If it’s not for me, it’s an amazing coincidence, and the universe obviously wants me to read it anyway, so I’m bringing it with me to CogSci.

For some reason, I am getting a lot done, and I look up, and I did it… really quickly. It’s like my seconds are longer today. I might retract this later, but it might be because I slept a normal amount. That doesn’t mean I’ll make it a habit, but it’s worth noting. I enjoy not getting much sleep. Being a little sleepy is a pleasant feeling I think.
A listening comprehension study I had been fighting Psyscope to set-up is now running… in Java. Psyscope can’t reliably provide feedback using “beeps,” in case you need to do that. My friend Dan is amazing and wrote a Java program to do what I need in one night. I’ll post it on my academic site in a few weeks with a link to his start-up’s website. The Psyscope program was so close! But no go. I got a lot of help debugging from Susan, Luca, and Mo… I really love the people in my department.
Speaking of, I’m meeting with Nathan at McDonald’s later to talk about Murakami. How cool? Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, specifically. I think that one was up there as one of my favorites. When I’ve finished them all, I’ll make a list ranking them.

I am behind on blogging and picture posting. I’ll catch up on that… at some point maybe. Not in the next couple weeks… but SOON!

Steve got me a really beautiful acoustic Blueridge guitar with a narrow neck, and I decided I should start lessons. My first one, with Ben Proctor, was today. As expected, I suck. But Ben says I’m supposed to. So, good. On track so far.

I realized a couple weeks ago (on April Fool’s Day, actually… I redid my New Year’s resolutions… nevermind…) that my pursuit of All had kind of stalled. Well, not stalled, but sort of—slowed—and it needed some kick. So I’m kicking it a little.

In no particular order, recently instated daily efforts: running (body hurts, self feels present), salads (are good for me and for you), raspberries (should be abundant and shared), Can anthology (makes me feel lucky to have ears), Spike Lee ‘levees’ series (makes me deal with things), Murakami books (help me remember how few things in life really matter), coffee (helps me forget the details), phone calls home (because I miss my family and friends, especially Megan and Matthew).

Editing pictures for an infant study, drinking a lot of coffee, tapping my feet, and bobbing my head on the cheesiest of cheesy days. Sometimes everything seems really perverse and strange. I should be popping pink bubble gum bubbles. Wearing pigtails. Hula hooping. And maybe none of this makes sense.

I have had very bad luck with the mail system this week. A few things I mailed for Valentine’s didn’t yet arrive, and I just found out a shirt I made and mailed to my brother almost a month ago never got there. Also, a package I mailed myself from New Orleans lost its label and has been officially listed as missing. It had Christmas presents and things from when I was a kid in it. Luckily, I don’t really remember specifics, or I might be sad. I’m thinking it’s still not reliable to mail things to and from New Orleans.

Oh, pretty baby. This feeling I just can’t hide. You got me mysti-fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiii-iiiiiiiied!

Update: I’ve moved on to the best band in the history of five years ago, the Murder City Devils. So romantic! (That sentence didn’t make sense.) Yes it did.

Please e-mail me your phone numbers! Thank you.

My camera is broken so I’m short on pictures. I’ll post some random ones maybe in a bit. I’m going to New Orleans for Christmas tomorrow! Hopefully! It’s snowing like gangbusters right now! So maybe a little later than expected! Finishing my language core take home final! Attending the department curling event organized by my advisor in a bit! It’s a happy, white, sugar-fluff-coated day.

I think I may enjoy blizzards! I loved hurricanes as a kid. I think I may be an adrenaline junky though. I loved the anticipation of hurricanes. Sitting by the window, power out, flashlights ready, and this weird rushing windy rain outside… I’m looking forward to a whole new form of that excitement.

Speaking of adrenaline junkies, I found myself thinking about people with car crash fetishes this morning. I wonder if they actually exist, as is suggested by the 1996 feature film Crash. Intuitively, it makes sense, but it’s also the sort of thing I can see being straight rumor.

I saw a lot of people crash slowly and strangely in the snow this morning. (Okay… so two maybe doesn’t qualify as ‘a lot,’ but it’s two more slow-speed crashes than I’ve seen in the rest of my life, so I’m going to go ahead and stick with my original quantifier.) If car crash fetish people exist, I wonder if slow-speed car accidents do it for them, or if their excitement is correlated with speed.

I’m going to get a lot of traffic to this post for inclusion of the term ‘car crash fetish’, so if you’re someone with this fetish, I’d appreciate a quick e-mail to let me know your thoughts on this matter. Thank you.

Coffee, tea, water okay. No alcohol, no food, no beverages that aren’t mostly water.

My camera was dead by Halloween, but TiFlo took this snappy picture of us with his cellphone. (Thank you, TiFlo!) Laurel’s Barbie. I’m a little white lie. Or maybe a collection of little white lies. It doesn’t exactly make sense, yeah? It does if you don’t think too hard. Like high-concept art.

So it’s been two weeks and a day with no caffeine (okay, okay, I messed up and had some diet Coke, forgetting it had caffeine in it momentarily), and here’s what’s different:

• My memory is notably better.
• My attention span is longer.
• I retain more of what I read and hear.
• I talk a little less.
• I smile less.
• My eyes don’t sting all the time.
• I get tired sometimes.
• I feel hungry sometimes.

So, with regards to the sleep, I’m sleeping a little more, but actually, I’m still waking up after four or five hours—which is good. I had remembered that not being related to caffeine, but it’s been a while, and I wasn’t sure. Feeling tired definitely happens though. In my caffeinated state, I never really felt tired. I’d just pass out if I stayed still for too long. I always felt wide awake, even when my body clearly needed a rest.

With regards to the increased attention span and memory, while I tend to think about one thing for longer, I also haven’t had as many new ideas. That is, while caffeinated, my brain cycled through all of these things all of the time—things to try, things to write, future projects, project tweaks—which, I think, is the reason I had a hard time listening and a hard time remembering anything for longer than a minute. On the upside, I had more ideas than I could write down. And that’s gone now. On the downside, I couldn’t listen well or remember things for long, and that was terribly problematic. I compensated by writing everything down, which made it easier to process and retain. I don’t seem to need to do that now. So perhaps there’s a way to balance.

With regards to the smiling, I’m smiling a lot less. People keep asking me if I’m okay when I am just fine. But I’m not less happy. I’m not sure what to make of this one right now. With regards to the feeling hungry, caffeine is an appetite suppressant. I was aware of this.

Finally, some quick closing thoughts. Caffeine is good for mood elevation, generating new ideas, and, when used infrequently, focus. I plan on resuming its use for these functions. But I’m definitely going to be cutting back from 200 mg every four hours, the dose I’ve been at steadily for the past couple years. That was a lot, and I don’t need that much at this point.

Starting now. It’s an experiment. If I feel like it’s negatively impacting anything, I’ll stop. I pride myself on being open-minded but I haven’t been without caffeine for long in a few years now. I should probably take some time out to remind myself what it does. While so much else in my life is in flux anyway.

It’s an emo day. Not for me, but everyone around me seems a bit glum. And what better way to cheer up a glum person than to give them news of someone glummer? Here is a list of some sad things I’ve seen:

1. My once supervisor at a certain art gallery on Melrose got business cards in the mail. She opened them up, took one out, and almost teared up. Looking at it, she said, “I’m a person now.”

2. Mentioned on this blog before, I once saw a woman at Food 4 Less spend more on food for her cat (Fancy Feast) than on food for herself (a case of frozen corndogs and a couple liters of generic diet soda).

3. I saw a sign taped onto an electric box in Hollywood that said, “It’s hard to be human here” once. Wow. Who put that sign there and what was going on with them?

4. There’s a Twilight Zone episode about a guy who wants to read but people keep bugging him. He eventually was transported to a world without people and time and full of books, and then he broke his glasses. Sure, he’s not a real guy, and sure, it wasn’t a real event, but it’s still so sad.

5. I had the kids at Catholic Worker draw pictures of things they liked and then write stories to go with them one day. One girl drew a picture of a house. Under it she wrote, “I like houses because I want one.”

I hung a picture that same little girl drew for me in my room. The drawing is of me as a house. She really liked houses.

Sometimes I feel guilty for being so lucky. But then I remember, I only need to feel guilty if I waste it. So that’s what was up with the fasting I think.

Good school, awesome roommate, smart colleagues, regular paycheck, rockin’ siblings, ability to see and hear and touch freely, freedom to sleep (or not) when I want (or don’t). And I better do good things with these opportunities, or I’m an asshole.

Can’t be emo with all of this in mind!

From Laurel’s away message: “A woman happy in love, she burns the soufflé. A woman unhappy in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.”

Soufflé… would be good. I need to replace my hand mixer. I got cookie dough in the motor somehow and it’s totally irreversibly busted. Laurel, if you come over Saturday and bring a hand mixer, I’ll totally make us chocolate soufflés. If you have cream, I’ll make sauce too. Nothing says privilege like whipped egg whites.

for like 5 years, I’ll be golden. I am tired now though. And my head hurts. And also… I crave Cambozola. And maybe some red wine. And a pillow. And a bath. And… chocolate-covered coffee beans. Or coffee-covered cocoa beans. Coffee-flavored-chocolate-covered cocoa beans and coffee beans! Served with espresso and soy milk. And red wine. And Cambozola. In the bath. With a pillow.

Really happy today about how much I got done in the past couple days. I have really cool people all around me and I feel acutely aware of all of the opportunities available. I’m excited about forthcoming projects, excited about the unknowns in the future, excited about getting to know new people, excited about BU next week. The days are bleeding together, and I don’t quite remember what was yesterday and what was today, and I like that. This is all kind of empty, yeah? I should take a nap soon. One more meeting today, then nap/food/reading time for a bit! Go Wednesday.

In other news, I have reinstated the to-do-post-it-notes-on-my-computer-monitor system. It’s working.

I feel recentered and reupbeat and rehere-and-nowified. I love being alone in the early early morning with work. It’s 12 before 5 am. I have to be at class for 9. But until then, freedom. If only there were some coffee here…

I’m going to NELS next week with Peter Graff and cohort, and I need to find a place to stay. Petie doesn’t like the idea of me sleeping in his car. So, know of free floor/couch/chair/bed space in Ottawa Oct. 26-28?

Update: I have a lot of work, no money, and the corpus group meeting was scheduled for Friday. I’ve decided the universe does not want me to go to Ottawa. So home I stay. But BU next week, so I’ll see Peter then.

The fasting was a really good idea. I woke up this morning in a sort of euphoric state with a vague pain in my abdomen that reminded me how lucky I am to be able to take things like fullness for granted most every day.

It’s been about 41 hours. I decided last night that 72 hours would be better than 24. I wasn’t feeling anything at 24. I was shaky when I woke up, so I cheated a little and had a slosh of soy milk and a chunk of banana to balance out all the coffee and tea in my system. The point is to feel hungry, not to pass out, so I decided my cheat doesn’t defeat my ultimate purpose.

It’s amazing how strong a human body can be. It’s super cool to be seeing that in my own body. Although I guess it always feels that way until it breaks.

I’m fasting for 24 hours as of 7pm tonight. Tea is okay. I’m not 100 percent on why, but it felt like the thing to do all of a sudden.

My life is improbably, flukishly fantastic, really, and a surplus of privilege can cause a person to take the good things for granted. People sometimes focus on what’s missing or wrong, and I don’t want to let myself get sucked into that line of thought.

So I think that’s what’s up with the fasting. Even if that’s not it and there’s no good reason for this particular impulse, rolling with it hurts no one, so rock, awesome, here I go.

I noticed this week that a series of radio ads in Rochester pitch products as being ideal for my “lifestyle.” Which made me wonder, what kind of lifestyle is mine exactly? On-the-go? Modern? Active? Eco-friendly? Sure, and, of course, those are the ones from the ads. But those aren’t the ones I would have come up with unsupervised. If forced, the best I could do with a single word: experimental.

Florian took a picture of me for passport photos after a marathon game of Civilization. I think they look decent, which is rockin, given my track record of awful ID photos.

I’m feeling anti-social today. Giving myself some time to process things I think. I’m eager for everyday things to feel familiar, which is a silly sort of thing to be eager for since there is, by definition, no real way to rush it.

This month’s theme at church is regrets. We were asked to come up with two this morning. Members of the congregation discussed neglected children, resented spouses, words spoken in anger, and failed marriages. I sat silently in the back because I blanked. Everything happened the way it had to happen, is what I tell myself, and I did what I could when it was possible. But fatalism sounds a bit arrogant when put that way, yeah?

Discussion was wrapped up with a poem about Robert Frost, from which I’m posting an excerpt:

Thanks, Robert Frost by David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought…
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear…

Robert Frost was also a very smart man.

It’s like method acting, but writing. I write angry scenes when I’m angry and happy scenes when I’m happy and, right now, drunken scenes after a glass of wine on an empty stomach. Good idea, yeah? I think so. But then again I just had a glass of wine.

A high school friend sent me some of his “extraordinarily short short stories” a couple weeks ago and I just got around to sending him feedback. I even wrote some extraordinarily short stories inspired by his and sent them back with my feedback. But I have been thinking for a while that I should get back to working on the longer piece I started more than a year ago now. (Mike Lawson was the original inspiration. He does national novel writing month every year. It’s in November. Oh my this blog entry is a bit scattered.)

So I want to finish my fiction manuscript before Jan. 1. If I stop responding to Facebook messages, stop following YouTube links, stop reading junky blogs, I think I could do that without disrupting my studies. So that’s the new goal. Life editing. I tell you, it’s great.

I’m looking for people to swap work with, share stories. Let me know if you’re interested. I’m planning on starting a small e-mail list for this purpose. More details upon request.

Ah, yeah. Looking forward to this project, to a lot of other projects. Excited about Halloween and Christmas and Valentine’s Day projects I thought of already now too. (I know, holidays are arbitrarily chosen, but I like them and I don’t care. Don’t over-intellectualize these things, okay? I’d eat brightly colored cookies any old day if everyone else would join me, but that’s not how other people work.)

So today, tonight, it’s sort of in-between right now… so right now, I’m enjoying the rain. I’m doing well, thank you for asking, and it’s just that sometimes I slip backwards and forwards instead of being in the now.

But the now is wonderful: it smells like roasting portobello mushroom and vinagarette and pine nuts, tastes like strawberry-sweet Riesling, looks like dim pink light in a nice little cafe in a comfy chair. And my nose is a little cold, but life is generally nice in the now. Even though I’m in the now a little lonelier than I usually am. Lonely can be good sometimes. It’s good for writing, and I do enjoy writing.