A word of explanation shouted into the void

I get up at 5:45 a.m. weekdays. For half an hour I sip coffee while the cat twines himself around my ankles. Then days like this, I put in three days work in nine hours.

Twelve hours after the alarm goes off, I’m home. I’ve made it through ceaseless interruptions at work, a parade of other people’s problems and questions, computer freezes, software malfunctions and several hours of sheer, deadening mental factory work. I’ve smiled. Over and over. I’ve survived the number twenty bus, once again – but I confess, by the end of the trip when the seat next to me opened up, I stood up, preferring to be flung gracelessly back and forth with each break and acceleration of the bus than to have one more person sit next to me. Touching me.

Closing the apartment door, I slam the radio off, kick my shoes off, pour a glass of red wine and sit down to listen to the cat sing throat songs celebrating my arrival. It’s all the activity and noise I can tolerate.

I think about not writing. To anyone. But the need to speak is so strong and what needs to be spoken has become too large and formless to get out. It has become a vortex in my throat and chest, sucking words away.

I think I’m waiting to be heard in a way the human ear and heart is not equipped to handle. I think I’m waiting for whatever universal awareness might be out there to hear me. Or maybe it does. Thing is about the Universe, it doesn’t communicate in exactly the way I’d like it to…

An email would be nice. A phone call. Or a sign – spelled, let’s say, in flaming letters against the sky.

I’m voiceless, I mention to the Universe. And, totally in character, the universe says nothing and the girl with the cell phone who is seated immediately behind me begins a loud conversation about nothing. That’s it? I ask.

I can’t feel anything much – except annoyance, sadness, I add, I’m wondering if that’s going to change sometime soon? I imagine the Universe shrugging. Do galaxies die when the Universe does that?

Soon, for no logical reason, I’ll crawl out of the funk. I might not write when that happens, but for a while, I’ll project a benevolent face on the Universe. Things will make sense. I will stop disintegrating, or at least stop fighting disintegration and imagine I see the wisdom of the whole thing. For a while.

Maybe, if the Universe is feeling generous, I’ll regain my sense of humor.

Meanwhile, to those of you I haven’t written – insert platitude here.

I would write you. If I could.

In the spirit of the writer's strike

An LOE rerun. I was reading back recently and decided that this was one of the entries I personally liked. I'd been uninspired for weeks and Mark finally wrote to say, "Just fucking write something."

So I did.

http://lifeonearthand.blogspot.com/2006/10/just-f-ing-write-something.html

Maybe my friends should swear at me more often.

We are not amused

Day eight. See how much better this is looking? You don't. Well, admittedly, me either - but I haven't wept uncontrollably for two days and this, I assure you, is progress. Weeping and depression are two of the side-effects they don't mention in articles.

Today the Doctor actually issued me a corticosteroid ointment. To tell you the truth, I'm not confident anything will help, but I'm desperate enough to try and desperate enough to beg for anything that might. It's that or spend the next three or four weeks wearing high necklines and scarves wound around my neck. It's August, for the love of god. August.

Today was the new boyfriend's birthday. I'd rallied a little and planned to cover up suitably (I am not contagious) and take him out to dinner. However, it seems he is a little Howard Hughesish about rashes and wasn't about to take the doctor's word that he wasn't in danger. I believe that was sufficient reason to push him into the ex-new boyfriend category in my mind. Instead, I took Weedy and her husband out because, frankly, by this afternoon, if I had to stare at the walls of my apartment or go without human company a minute longer I'd have gone stark raving mad.

On the up-side, I can start the medication for the bladder infection just as soon as I finish the anti-virals! Party!

And P.S. I have decided that my immune system is not the only thing past its best-before date. The dating pool is, at best, a stagnant pond full of bottom dwellers and slugs. The good part is that I no longer care.

Thank you for allowing me to rant. Stay tuned for the huge spiritual realization that will follow all of this. I'm grinning. Really.

Country and Western songs

The phone rings at 8:57 a.m. - but only once. It rings again at 10:00 a.m. and this time he doesn't hang up. By then, I assume, he's taken the requisite number of deep breaths and stiffened his resolve so that, after a long and almost entirely happy relationship of two and a half years, he can announce that we have not been very happy and now it's over.

He phoned it in. That's all I can think about. Two and a half years and he phoned it in.

It is, I think, the second time I have ever let him see me angry. Or more accurately, hear me angry. I don't argue or point out that we have one of these every six months and the rest of the time we are overjoyed to see each other.

"I hoped we could be friends, " he says, "but you don't sound friendly, and I guess that's understandable right now...."

Friends. Does a friend dump you on the phone? Doesn't feel very friendly to me. Feels downright sleazy, in fact.

And now, onward and hopefully upward - pushing off on my three unbalanced wheels, I'll just be continuing with the diagram and directions from hell.

Fogbound. Outside, the sky is a dirty white. Now and then rain erodes the snow that fell last night. Fogbound inside the cranial unit, too. Moving in slow motion...a kind of fugue state. Disassociated. Not sad, not happy, not anything identifiable...just...
Passing weather. Excuse the silence. I send you these flowers from my living room as an apology for the long gap. Please stay tuned while we adjust our psychic state...