|
2001-08-19 / 11:24 p.m. ~I use the cramps as my excuse, today~ In my dreams I'm confused. I don't know where I live, I have to move, I'm moving to a place I've lived before, I'm going back, I'm living in old apartments, and it's strangely comforting. This morning it was the duplex apartment, and it seemed I still lived there, as if I'd forgotten. I still had many things there and decided if I just took a litter box the cats and I might go spend the day and night there. This raised all sorts of issues. Where should I stay? Where do I really live? Why am I dreaming this? Do I subconsciously feel displaced? Am I searching for a place to go that is only in my past? Is the future frightening or uncertain? Or is there simply comfort in what's gone before? I don't have any answers to my own questions, can't even analyze my own dreams, but I've dreamed these dreams before, these dreams of going back, moving into one old apartment or another, usually the first apartment or the duplex. Those are the two where I lived the longest, next to where I am now. Again, hesitation to even write today, hesitation to come in here, to turn this computer on, hesitation to move my fingers along the keyboard, and hestitation to bore myself and potentially others with the details of this day, of this entire weekend. For this was one of those melt into the sofa kind of weekends. The kind where I don't leave, don't open the front door, don't get the mail on Saturday, don't change clothes, sleep in the same tshirt I put on Friday after work, wear it all day Saturday and don't even change until some time Sunday, some time when I realize I'm not going to take that shower and wash my hair, it will wait until Monday morning, when I am forced to be alive again. The dishes? The bathroom? Shopping, cleaning, cooking, reading, writing? No, nothing. And today I blame it on the cramps. Today I saw the horoscope on my Yahoo start page, the one which told me I would have energy and stamina, and that led me to believe I could accomplish something. I actually cleaned the bathtub, something not on my list of things to do. Then, of course, I had to take a breather, knowing my momentum would be lost. I had to watch five hours worth of "Guiding Light"s. On tape, that takes much less time, and the story lines are good right now, lots of disasters going on, earthquakes, flash floods, people trapped, people gaining and losing love, tragedy galore. Nothing to eat, raiding the cupboard, an entire can of black olives, and couscous, and a donut. And then the cramps hit, somewhere along the way I realize this is the heavy day, this is the day I will be in pain off an on, intense stabbing pain in my uterus, so lying down, taking it easy, blowing off anything I could have done, seems okay. Last night was much of the same, me, the sofa, the remote, lots of channels. "Women Docs" on Lifetime, part of "Leila", an Iranian film, on Sundance. But I realize I can't get past the fact that these women must be covered head to toe constantly. Leila always has her head covered in a black scarf, and her character is upset because she cannot conceive a child and her mother in law convinces her to let her husband take another wife, one who can conceive. Even though the husband says he does not want a child. I couldn't stand the meekness of Leila's character, and the imposed subjugation of these women, couldn't stand the watching them dressed that way. I know it's their culture, but it just seemed so wrong. I switched to Gregory Peck in "I Walk the Line", partly just to hear that great Johnny Cash song, partly because I love old Gregory Peckory. He plays a sheriff in love with the moonshiner's daughter, Tuesday Weld. But his love is consuming, and is it even love at all? His wife loves him, would do anything for him, but Tuesday is young and beautiful and free and a bit mysterious, and he imagines a way out of his humdrum life, with her. She won't leave her moonshining papa, nor her two brothers. And in the end it is Gregory, violent in his possession of lust and love, who loses what he most wants to hold on to. Today it's a gay couple, one white, one black, restoring a beautiful old home on "Restoration America", and Gordon Elliott tasting the foods of Australia in Sydney, and I want to be there, in Sydney, and it's Martha Stewart making the vegetable salad her vegetarian daughter made for her on a recent visit, and on "Iron Chef" they're cooking stingrays and I can't watch, can't watch when it's the more exotic seafoods, can't watch when I think it's something I'd never eat. Tired, cramps subsiding, reaching for water around piles of dishes, thinking there will be a time when I will do all I didn't do today, and yesterday, and days before that, and I try to remember when I had energy, when I cared more, when I didn't feel so much like I was sinking into a warm bed of complacency. We didn't win the lottery, so tomorrow we all go back to work, we just keep going, and when it's not so hot I will get into my car without having to. When the weather changes so will I. I can use that as an excuse to feel good, as I can use cramps as my excuse today to feel not so good, to do nothing, clean the tub, then nothing at all. Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
Recent Entries: It Was 40 Years Ago Today - 9:44 a.m. , Friday, Oct. 12, 2012 Dead Black Cat - 9:07 a.m. , Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012 As Seen From Outer Space - 1:07 a.m. , Saturday, Dec. 05, 2009 I Survived to Tell the Tale - 7:29 a.m. , Friday, Sept. 18, 2009 Reading My Life - 12:55 p.m. , Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009 
  |