I had a list of things I wanted to get done this weekend and
didn’t do any of them. But I just put a peach cobbler in the oven. And we took
a Zip Car to Ikea today and bought bookcases which C is putting together right
now so we’ll finally have a place for all those stacks of books that have
accumulated on every surface in the apartment.
C was snoring loud last night, so I dragged a pillow and blanket to the living room floor in the middle of the night and slept fitfully there. In the morning we argued.
I’ve been cranky and a little depressed lately, and I blame
it mostly on the weather, which I don't even want to think about because it’s much
better today, and they tell me it’s going to be more like summer
this coming week than the gates of Hell. But it’s not just the heat. The heat doesn't cause, but only exacerbates the petty frustrations of a life.
I blog less than I did, less than I want to, because there’s
so much I can’t write about, either because I try to be strict about not
telling someone else's story as I try to write my own, and
about not hurting anyone’s feelings. The other thing that inhibits my blogging
is that much of what is happening in my life lately has to be with the business
and legal aspect of my work where every relationship is fragile, every
revelation is carefully timed, every deal depends on discretion. It’s a holy
pain in the ass if you ask me, but that’s the water I swim in these days. Sorry
to be so cryptic, but it’s either cryptic or nada.
Okay, so I want to post more often, so I’m not waiting till I
feel able to synthesize my thoughts and present them coherently. Hence, a list:
1. I have so desperately wanted more time to write. Or I
should say that I have so desperately wanted to be writing more, and I complain
and complain about it, and C says that if I wanted to be writing more I would
just write more. So I have committed myself to spend more time in the evenings
writing, despite the fact that I get home from work feeling exhausted, and
writing is the last thing I want to do. Tough. Just go in there and fucking do
it.
2. I come home from work too often feeling irritable and it’s
not fair or loving to dump all that ugliness onto my husband. I remember
vividly years ago J telling me how awful it made him feel when I would come home from
work and he would ask me how I was and I would just say, “Tired.” That was like
15 years ago.
3. This is a feeling that I associate with New York. I saw
Fran Leibowitz on a TV show a while back and she said something like, “To be a
New Yorker is to walk around in a constant rage,” and it was like a slap in the
face, it rang so true and made me terribly sad. I felt like I finally let go of
that feeling, being away from the city for 12 years, living on the road, the
West, the desert, discovering Buddhism, forgiving myself, but now that I am
back here for a few years the rage creeps back. I find myself walking down the
sidewalk muttering to myself, “Stupid fucking bitch get out of the way, Jesus
Christ!” or feeling like I am a millimeter away from pushing someone down the
stairs or, you know, stuff like that, and I am right back there as if I learned
nothing.
4. No one but my intimate partners, those few men with whom
I have been sexually and domestically involved (total 5, including C … and it’s
interesting to me that M, the guy who tore my heart to pieces before I left
Austin 3 years ago, is not one of these 5, especially considering that I was probably
more anxious and depressed then than ever before or since, but somehow not stressed about it, and that might be
simply because we were together in Austin because see #3), not even my family, has seen this side of
me that gets so sad, so angry, so dark and moody. Why is it that I reserve such
ugliness for the people I love most?
Well, no answers, just a download of what’s on my mind. The
buzzer just rang for that peach cobbler. It’s 9 on a Sunday and I haven’t made
dinner yet. Better do that. My husband just assembled 6 Ikea bookcases and he’s
hungry.
