Practical Entomology

Today started out as the suckiest day imaginable, but it's gotten better. I was pretty much guilt-tripped into coming into work this morning (today was to be my day off with Thom) because the new district manager wanted to come in and "certify" our cafe, and whoever made the schedule screwed up and scheduled too few people. So, I got up at 6:30, went in at 7:15, and left at 11:15. I had gotten four hours of sleep, was PMSing, hadn't had sex in a week, and was not very happy at all about being there. The plan was that the district manager was going to come at eight, certify the cafe, and be done by 9 or 9:30. Instead, she got there at 8:30, and didn't come down to the cafe until 11:15. Thankfully, my manager and good friend Jon saw that I was about to come unglued, so he let me go.

When I got home, I took a short nap, and woke up feeling like shit. I still do. I've got a toothache, slight fever, headache, body ache, etc. Most of which was simply brought on by psychological stress. I was talking to Thom about that today. I seem to be the only person I know who can get so physically sick over stress. It doesn't happen all the time, and it usually happens when I'm least expecting it, except for today. It's not like I make it up or anything, it's just that my body can only handle so much bullshit stress. There are certain types of stress that I never cave under, like school, for instance, but I think the cafe affects me at a deeper and much more harmful psychological level than school ever will.

At any rate, Thom has been really sweet. We went to lunch, came back here, rested for a bit. After that, I ordered a couple of books off of ABE, the Peterson guide to insects and a book called The Practical Entomologist. Later, went to his friend Rick's house, looked at laptops at Circut City, went to Whole Foods, and went home. There have been some cool insects around, and Thom has taken some great pictures of them. (I would, but I can't work our digital camera for shit.)



I like this washed-out ladybug. If there were ever a bug on the front of a My Bloody Valentine record, this would be it.

Just got this one tonight. I identified it on the first try as a lacewing (perhaps the lacy wings gave it away??) although that's the first one I've ever seen.

This little guy seems to be some sort of unidentified plant hopper. He was peering at Thom from the side of our computer desk.

And on an excited and giddy note...

Go to whatsthatbug.com and scroll down the main page until you see a mating pair of Millipedes. You know who that Emily is? That's MEEEE!!! And that's the side of my cottage!!!

Shopping Trip

On Mondays Thom has to work 4-midnight. At around 3:30 today, he left, and I went out right after him. It was raining pretty hard outside, and so I thought that it would be the best time to find street parking for our outdoor mall. I was right. The outdoor mall in our town has a high quotient of used bookstores (5 in the space of about 5 blocks) and I went searching for a used insect field guide. It was funny watching how people reacted differently to the rain. Many people (even ones with umbrellas) huddled inside doorways, others walked slowly and casually with no umbrella or hood, while others ran through the rain, giggling and having fun. I just walked like I usually do, except holding an umbrella. I don't understand those people who were afraid of the rain even when they had umbrellas. I mean, I got a little wet, but it wasn't bad at all. I've found that there's a dearth of insect guides, apparently. But I did find a used (but you wouldn't know it) Audubona field guide to the weather and a cheap copy of the feminist writings of JS Mill and Harriet Taylor. Score.

After getting lunch, I left downtown and went to the health food grocery, where, after a few...minutes...of deliberation, I picked up a couple of reusable menstrual pads. I've never used anything like that before, but when I think of all the non-biodegradable waste that comes from using over-packaged maxi-pads, it makes me shudder. If I try these things and they work, I'll be saving myself money in the long run and making another advance in my Try Not to Fuck Shit Up mission. Also, there is something that is very "Ewww...it's icky! Throw it away!" about modern sanitary products. I used to get lecture after lecture from my mom and sister about pads in the trash can. Apparently, it's not enough to wrap your pad in the wrapper. What if the wrapper comes unstuck? What if your mother and your sister (and no one else) accidentally catch a glimpse of your menstrual blood? Oh my god! The horror! The only thing to do is wrap them in wads and wads of toilet paper so that way the fact that you menstruate can be concealed from two women, one of whom gave birth to you out of her very vagina!

OK, you get the point. Thom, on the other hand, is far less squeamish about periods than my mom or sister. To him, it only makes sense that something that 52% of the world's population goes through every month isn't weird or repulsive. To him, it's just a matter of, "Oh, Emily forgot to flush her tampon down the toilet. I've always wondered what one looked like, and hey! she saved water." I'd mentioned getting the reusable pads to Thom earlier today and he was totally down with the idea. Anything that saves us money or helps the environment or both is fine by him.

After that, I went and got a haircut...and an earcut, too. The razor the stylist used to finish off my hair actually nicked my ear. Oh well. It only hurt a little bit, and stopped bleeding after a couple of minutes. Anything to keep me from that ever-encroaching mullet that was beginning to develop.

After the hair cut, I went to the dreaded Best Buy to look at laptops. Yeesh. Working in a place would drive me crazy, and this is coming from someone who works in a place where there is a beeping oven, a microwave that just has one long beeeeep that won't stop, a timer that goes off every 15 minutes to remind us to clean tables, a timer to tell us when to take stuff off the grill, and a timer on each and every coffee pot to remind us to throw it out after two hours. There were about a hundred televisions all playing the same baseball game, it seemed. I hate going into places like that, but it's really inadvisable to buy a laptop without knowing what one actually feels like in your hands. We'll probably get one pretty soon. We could buy one online to get a better deal, or just pick it up at Best Buy and take it right home, but I have to get one soon so that I'm fully conversant with it and all the kinks are worked out of it by the time school starts. Thom told me today that he pulled some money out of investments for me to get one. We had too many shares of Bank of America, anyways. After feeling what the laptops felt like, I concluded that I should not get one that weighs over six pounds. I'm really reluctant to buy a Gateway, because of terrible past experiences with them, or a Dell, because they're losers, or a Sony, because they fuck you over on warranties, so that pretty much leaves me with HP, Toshiba, and Acer. I guess we'll see.

That's all for now. I've got an American Buddhist Manifesto in the works, but it may be a few days before it appears.

Wow.

Pretty much every white American needs to read this article.

Ahh...Dinner

Well, after being a huge bitch (at least to my mind) over the past few days, it's nice for Thom and I to spend a little quality time together. We just finished eating a concoction he whipped up: bok choy, red onion, garlic, roasted red pepper flakes, and even liquid smoke, all cooked in peanut oil, with a dish of cold soba noodles on the side, with various condiments (brown rice vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, Japanese salad dressing.)

As for my bitchitude, last night I got angry for the first time in months. I'm not a saint, I just inherited my mom's long fuse. At any rate, closing the cafe down totally sucked last night, since my only assistant was a guy, close to my age, who is a sweetheart, although imcompetent and somewhat lazy. It was a Friday night, it rained (freaking poured, actually, flash flood warnings and all) and it got busy. Not only that, but I'm staffed with Mister Well-There-Are-No-Customers-So-I-Guess-That-Means-I-Can-Stand-Around-and-Do-Nothing. The store closed at 11, and by 11:30, I only had half of what I should have had done. The book side finished early, and some people came over and helped me without even thinking about it, while others whined about how they wanted to go home. If it were midnight (and, by the way, every closer is scheduled to end their shift at midnight, but we often finish earlier) and I were still working, I could see. But there's no excuse for bitching like that at 11:30! And besides, we got out of there at 11:50 or so.

So, I got home and went to bed soon after. At around 2:45 or 3, I woke up, and couldn't get back to sleep until 6, and then I had to wake up at eight, go to work at 9, and work till 5. I'm amazed at how long it's taking my body to get used to working so much. It used to be that I could do 40 hours per week like nothing. Now I'm feeling pain at 30.

At any rate, on a much lighter note, I thought I'd put up a couple of pictures. The other night there was this really cool moth in our house. Usually, we just get the little ones, that look like triangles when at rest, but this one was quite glorious, being big, having fuzzy antennae, and being polite enough to hold still for several pictures.

The Day Lady Died

So, today my first "pet" since I've been living here, died. We can't have real pets, since the cottage is so small, but when about 5 common house spiders took up residence in between the window and storm window beside my bed, I watched them with great interest. Few bugs got in there, so I was convinced that they would starve to death. We didn't take any great notice until one day I found on the the spiders sucking on the corpse of a much larger spider, probably of a slightly different species. We didn't see the struggle, since it happened in the middle of the night, but I noticed a few days afterwards that she only had seven legs. She produced two egg sacs within a couple of weeks of each other, and somehow lost another leg. Everything stayed the same for a few weeks and she ate very little.

This morning, at around five o clock, I noticed that the two egg sacs were missing. She had dropped them from the web and moved over to another part of the window. There were 4 other spiders with her, two who were probably male, because after a while they developed different coloration. Going by color alone, then it seems that there were three females, the six-legged one, a healthy eight-legged one, and one that was whole, but never ate a single thing during its adult life, as far as I saw. The little starved one had also moved, down to the old corpse that had been dispatched months ago. It trussed it up in a web and was sucking out of it, I guess trying to get anything it could. Today when I came home, I looked in the window, and noticed two crumpled spider corpses, one of them very tiny, the other with six legs. The other "female" seems to be alive and well, just like the males. I really did consider the six-legged one to be my pet. I'll miss having her around, but her babies will be around next year.

Funny Things

Man, talk about feeling grumpy. My earlier post was much more chipper, that is, before I went back to bed and slept for two more hours, waking to feel groggy as hell. Thom, though, is in an incredibly loving mood. Even when I'm at my grouchiest, I still find it possible to keep from taking it out on Thom, who, true, wants nothing but to cuddle with me.

At any rate, I'm posting because I want to add even my two cents to an internet debate that has been raging lately (actually, it's pretty much died down, and nobody came to a good conclusion.) Nubian posted this at Blac(k)ademic a few days ago. Basically, a white colleague of Nubian's came up to her, greeted her, and after some smalltalk about the weather, proceeded to ask Nubian if black people get hotter in the sun because their skin is darker (making the comparison between a black person and black clothing.) The debate about this post was actually strung over several blogs, and there were three factions, it seems: black people who thought that it was a no-brainer as to why Nubian was angry, white people who more or less blamed Nubian for being over-touchy about an innocent (if rude and ignorant) question, and white people who felt that, while the asker of the question wasn't consciously being racist, her attempt to show Nubian that she's really comfortable with the fact that Nubian is black just uncovers her own, most likely, implicit and unknown racism.

I'm sure that this is a mistake that many white people, who are well-intentioned, make, and since I have been living in that category for all of my life, I've been thinking about it a lot since I read the post. This morning I came up with something that I felt I could really grasp onto, so I decided I'd post it. I'm comparing a situation in my own life with Nubian's experience, and my situation is pretty trivial. I'm not trying to trivialize Nubian's situation, but rather, show that even the most trivial experiences like this one are aggravating and damaging.

So, I work in the Barnes and Noble cafe, which, if you've ever been in one, you know serves Starbucks coffee. Many people see the Starbucks logo and ignore the Barnes and Noble cafe logo, which is two or three times bigger, and assume that the cafe is just a normal Starbucks, but it's actually a lot different. Aside from differences in food and drink, there is also the fact that Barnes and Noble, being...you know...an entirely different corporation with a different accounting system, cannot take Starbucks giftcards. May seem like small peanuts, sure, but if you're an "entitled", upper-middle class white person, like most of our customers, when you order your food and find that you can't use that Starbucks giftcard your grandma got you for Christmas, you're pissed.

So, who has to take the flak? Me. Even though I've just been as sweet as pie to these people, more often than not going out of my way to be the best server I can, as soon as they find something that's objectionable, all of a sudden, I'm just some dumb kid behind the counter, and my individual personality flees before their eyes, as I become the flesh interface for two corporations that I have very little to do with.

After getting chewed out for the umpteenth time, every time someone presented a Starbucks gift card, it didn't take long for a grating anger and fear that spilled back in on my self to come welling up. I'm not making this up. I can only tell you my own experience, but the Starbucks giftcard thing really has been a detriment to my psyche.

The problem here is representation. Even though I'm an individual, as soon as something happens that the customer doesn't like, I'm simply a drone, and they find it quite easy to chew me out. Even though Nubian's colleague knows her as an individual, from the colleague's comments, it's very obvious that to her, Nubian's individuality can be revoked in a second, so that she represents all people of color. You know what that is when you ask someone to represent a group that they are only superficially involved with and make your judgments based on that? Stereotyping. If Nubian has to answer for every black person's skin, she'll also have to answer for every gang riot, drug ring and controversial rap song.

Obviously, I wasn't there, but I have a feeling, in fact, I'm almost certain, that Nubian's colleague considers herself non-racist, but is still uncomfortable around black people. The best way to mask her discomfort is to address its source directly. If she really weren't uncomfortable, she wouldn't have to prove it, and if she weren't racist on an unconscious level, she wouldn't be uncomfortable. Of course, the big difference between being a cafe drone and being a person of color is that, when I get off work, I get to take that dopey green apron off and become once again an individual. At the end of the day, Nubian can't take her skin off.

Although it seems like a huge stretch to compare my situation to Nubian's, I'm doing it because, through that situation, I feel some of what Nubian, and other black people, must feel. It has gotten to the point where, even if someone isn't mad at me for not being able to take the Starbucks card, I get really annoyed, no matter how politely comment about their dissatisfaction. People might call me touchy, probably the same people who called Nubian touchy.

Of course, the people who called her touchy were totally missing the huge gap in comments: as far as I can tell, all the black people automatically knew what Nubian was feeling. They had no qualms about it. They responded as if they would have felt the same exact way, and many of them commented on how angry they felt just reading the post. However, the white people were still going on and on about how it's wrong to call someone down for asking an innocent question. Did they read no one else's comments? The problem with the people who were criticizing Nubian is that they were totally oblivious to the fact that DIFFERENT PEOPLE SEE THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY. Even though the evidence that black people and white people have completely different experiences and viewpoints was glaring in their faces, they chose to ignore it, still assuming that their experience is the universal one, and anyone else who says different is simply a fussbudget. If EVERYONE saw the world like a middle-class white American, then do you think that the conflict between fundamental Muslims and westerners would exist? Or how about the few instances of genocide over the past century? NO! If everyone saw the world the way that middle-class white Americans did, then perhaps wars would be waged over sports, or whether the Beatles or the Rolling Stones were better, or atheism vs. Christianity, but there would be no conflicts like the ones now.

The problem is that a lot of conservative, as well as liberal white people, think that racial equality, aside from the "legal protection" black people are supposed to have now, means walking on eggshells around people who are different. They don't know how to act around black people, so that makes them assume that there can never be a world where white and black people can be comfortable around each other. If this is so, then they realize that it would be impossible to please EVERYONE, so apparently, the best course of action is to please no one at all. Of course, these people don't realize that racial equality = not only giving everyone equal protection under the law, but also not treating them as different from human or subhuman. If you don't think of someone as "different," then you won't be uncomfortable around them and they won't be uncomfortable around you. In that context, a question like the one Nubian's colleague asked would be a truly innocent question (but by that time, the difference between the bodies of black and white people will probably be taught to kids in school, anyway.) Another thing these people are forgetting (and pardon my own use of generalizations here) is that, although the human mind thrives on stereotypes (i. e. any person with dark skin automatically conforms to the preconceived notion of "black person," just as any piece of furniture with four legs and a flat top conforms to "table") the world actually operates on a case-by-case basis.

Field Guide

Well, my attempt to make a layout has failed, again. For whatever reason, I'm having a harder time with Blogger than I ever did with Movable Type. Modifying layouts, that is. I have a feeling that it's due to being out of practice. I know that everybody has this layout, but I'll come up with something later, or just modify it to look better. Hey, at least my links don't say "Google News Edit Me Edit Me."

Not much has been going on. I've been getting back into the swing of working, and remembering a bunch of crap I forgot. Probably the most interesting thing that's happened is Thom's black eye, which he acquired on Saturday night. As is often the case, I went to bed before he did. By the time he came to bed, I had wondered over to his side of the bed in my sleep. Instead of moving me or waking me up (you really just can roll me over without waking me, though) he got into bed on my side. At around four or so, there was a *whump* loud enough to wake me up. It seems that Thom was sleeping with his head on the edge of the bed, right next to our low bookshelf. Either a bug really did land on his face (we suspect a flying roach) or he dreamed it, and he sat bolt upright, hitting his eye really really hard on the bookshelf. It's still a really dark purple now.

Speaking of bugs, over the last few days I've found that I actually have great interest in them. After months of observing our "pet" spiders, which live between the window and storm window in our bedroom, and observing all the kinds of bugs that get in the house with great interest, I was inspired by Twisty's Urban Varmint Research to finally realize that, duh! I'm interested in bugs! So I got a couple of small, general field guides to start. My goal is to be able to competently use something like The Peterson Field Guide by the end of the summer. Of course, I can't forget my other two goals: to become a more competent Buddhist, and to not forget my Latin, and read some real Latin, before school starts. Why is it that now that I have less time on my hands I want to do more stuff? Oh well.

Daily Devotions

I'm guessing that many of you are familiar with the Christian phenomenon of the “devotional.” The word devotional, is kind of puzzling, since, although it's clearly a noun, it seems to originate from some fuzzy space between adverb and adjective. Oh, well. A devotional usually has some title targeting its intended audience, like God's Daily Promises for Teens! (I'm sure that there is a devotional called this. I'm not singling anyone out, I just pulled it out of my head.) An entry might go like this:

June 15^th

or

Thursday June 15^th, 2006

or

Day 57 (that is, 57 days after you bought the devotional):

God would never give anyone the desire to do something without giving them the capabilities to achieve it.

“Some Bible verse that only marginally touches upon something close to this topic” Book 5.39

And then some story or anecdote or a flat out explanation of what today's promise entitles you to. I came across the one above years ago, when I was 14 and a brainwashed Jesus freak, either in my own teen devotional or in one of my Jesus freak aunt's Bible study workbooks. I held on to this little gem without even thinking to check the Bible to see if that's what God really meant, because when I was 14 I wanted to learn to play the guitar and become a rock star, and this fit just fine with my world view. Well, either I just didn't “want it” enough, or this is total crap, as is evidenced by the surrounding world, in which I am not a rock star. (If you disagree, you can take a look at your friendly local ghetto, chock-full of shit-poor people who REALLY wanted to be things like “Rap Stars” or “Above The Poverty Line”.) This “promise,” as far as I can tell, started out as capitalist ideology before becoming assimilated into wishy-washy Christian culture. The promise is nice, but if the promisee fails, the blame can easily (and willingly) be foisted off on him or her, not God or Capitalism.

Here is an amusing comparison. (Which I just made up.)

The Buddha's Daily Promise for Teens!

June 15^th

You can't believe something just because I, or any other being seeming to be farther along the path, told you it was true.

The truth indeed has never been preached by the Buddha, seeing that one has to realize it within oneself. — Lamkara Sutra

June 16^th

Ain't nobody going to save your ass. You have to do it yourself. Sorry.

You should do the work yourself, for buddhas only teach the way. — Dhammapada

What is that quote? “In an era of bullshit, telling someone something they don't want to hear is an act of courage.” OK, I modified it a little bit.

By the way, I've made the decision to not be a lame human being. And thanks to The Pocket Buddha Reader (Shambhala) for the Buddha quotes.

Litany, Vonnegut Style

Tomorrow will be the one month anniversary of my last exam. It will also be the day when I start work again. I didn't plan a month break, although perhaps I needed it. Perhaps I didn't. Over the last month I have hung mostly around the house, this 400 sq ft cottage, cleaning, cooking, and going out to shop and buy things to improve our lives: photo albums, a camera, an address book, a grater, etc. My latest acquisition was a hanging basket for food in the kitchen. A lot of spending for someone who has no income.

Not to mention food. I have cooked most nights, and am convinced that cooking is almost as expensive as eating out. I go to the grocery store every day to buy some bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, tofu or potatoes. I've become a much better cook, though.

This break, also, has not been good for me. A month's collective guilt (over spending money) and boredom. I've read 5 novels, most of a book of literary criticism, and many poems. I read a Latin grammar as if it were a novel. I've resisted the urge to become one of those crazy scrapbooking ladies. It's been tempting. I have written very little. Only a handful of journal entries and one poem.

I guess this boredom and guilt complex came to a head within the past few days. The day before yesterday I began to feel very bad, but didn't know why. I had read an entire novel and went on a long walk with Thom, his friend, and his friend's two big dogs. I also watched to short films by the independent filmmaker Kenneth Anger, so that way I have a name to drop when talking to people who like independent film. I don't drop a lot of names, though, unless I know I'm in the company of people who won't be impressed by them, either because they've never heard the name, or because they are too familiar with the name to be impressed. On a normal scale, this would be a pretty good, productive day. But it wasn't good enough, apparently. I didn't tell Thom.

Yesterday Thom was in a good mood, but you know, it just comes out that you're unhappy when you're around someone who loves you. The day before, my manager had also left a message on our machine, asking if I could work. Perhaps this is what crushed me, or maybe it was that I couldn't figure out why I was so crushed by being asked to work. I realized then that a month of being exposed to no one else but Thom and my own thoughts and the landlord's cat and clerks at places like Harris Teeter and Bed Bath and Beyond had pretty much crippled my ability to deal with reality. I cried before Thom left, and he gave me what I wanted, which was essentially permission to ignore the message, even though he had deleted it from the machine the night before. After he left I went back to reading my novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and finished it in a couple of hours. Two novels in two days.

I felt kind of OK when Thom was at work, but I was not very motivated and I barely did any cooking and no cleaning. I had to walk up to main street, a walk of a mile, I'd say, to pick up Thom's Jeep, which was in the shop. I then drove to the library to see Cassius (by the way, the two dogs we walked with are named Cassius and Brutus), who I have not seen in over a month. One of my biggest problems with Cassius, man not dog, was that he would take up so much of my time. We became friends in January, and by April he was inviting himself over to my house once or twice a week and spending time with me in 6 or 8 hour chunks. Then Cassius and I got in an argument, and I wrote him a long email, telling him what he had done and why he made me so mad, and we didn't speak much after that, agreeing that I would contact him when I felt ready. I guess I felt as ready as I was ever going to, so we met. We just sat around and talked, about poetry and movies and stuff, and our visit was a record 2 hours, record because of its shortness. I had planned to go to the store after I left Cassius, and buy some food and cook dinner, but I just didn't feel like it. I listened to my new CD that Thom bought me two days before, by the band Camera Obscura. I listened to a little David Bowie, too. I love David Bowie on a couple of different levels. His music is good, yes, but that's not why I mainly love him. I love him because he set himself up as an icon, and when the going gets rough, you can just look at pictures of David Bowie all dressed up. You don't feel bad, as if he were a model and you feel that you should look like that. No, he's just pretty and weird and had a bunch of photos taken of himself. You can just look at him without feeling shallow or depressed, or that you're wasting your time. This is a gift that few people have been able to give.

Back to Camera Obscura. The new CD only came out 4 days ago. The chorus of the first song goes like this:

Hey, Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken

Because I can't see farther than own nose at this moment.

This song helped a little. It's a good song with a good tune and I began to think about my own nose, which is the cottage and the Kurt Vonnegut novels and the grocery store and the habit of feeling grateful for everything that I have so that I don't have to feel bad for having things that other people don't. So I might as well go back to work, to serve coffee and help people find books and be servile, so that way I can see other people's noses, too.

When Thom got home, I'd barely done anything, though. I'd put the laundry away. I guess I told him about my day, and at some point I began to cry. It wasn't that I needed an audience to cry. I think Martial has a poem about that. No, at any point during the day, I could have sat down on the bed with a box of tissues and bawled my eyes out. But it was my thoughts that made me cry. Alone, you can push your thoughts away. With Thom there, it was hard, because he was what I was crying about. I wasn't crying about sad things. I cried because Thom loved me so much. I also cried over a bird.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel about the fire-bombing of Dresden, during World War II, which killed many, many people, most of whom were civilians, refugees, or prisoners of war. Dresden was not a city that housed any military bases or munitions factories or anything like that. No one has been able to determine if bombing Dresden was a war crime, but the US government tried to cover it up until the 60's or so, so it probably was, since the government admitted that it was shameful, at the very least. Billy Pilgrim, the hero, was in Dresden when it was bombed, survived, and was made to burn corpses and clear rubble. At the end of the novel, the war is over, and there is a bird in a tree and it asks Billy Pilgrim “Poo-tee-weet?” I had seen a beautiful bird in the gardens earlier that day with Cassius. It was gray and black, very slim, very graceful, with dove eyes. But it didn't ask me anything.

When I cried with Thom, first I cried on his shirt, and then he took me to the bed and laid with me while I cried on the pillow. I thought about how much Thom loved me, and how a bird, after World War II, was able to sit in a tree and ask, “Poo-tee-weet?” and how anyone was supposed to answer that. I hope Kurt Vonnegut cried when he wrote it, or did the equivalent. Some people can't cry.

After I stopped crying, I lifted myself from the pillow and looked at it. There were four wet spots, for each of my eyes, my nose and my mouth, where they all had leaked. Looking at the tear, snot, and saliva face on the pillow, I noticed that it was smiling. I thought it was funny, but didn't laugh, and blew my nose, trying to get out as much snot as possible. Perhaps now that my nose has less snot, I'll be able to see past it.

Beatles Deconstruction

Well, now that Thom's days off are over, it's back to the same old: hanging around the house all day, cleaning, cooking, and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I can tell you right now that I'm not cut out to be a housewife, and that's a good thing to figure out this early in life. As much as I hate the thought of going back to work in the cafe, I know at least there will be distraction in the cafe, and I'll be needed and appreciated, by my co-workers at least. You can't excpect too much from the customers.

So what's been going on? Well, Thom and I spent all of yesterday hanging out. We took a long walk, cooked, and watched The Ruling Class on our landlord's TV. Talk about a dark comedy. Sometimes, though, dark comedy is the best. It was a really good movie. After the movie was over, I couldn't do much, except fold laundry. I only had 50 pages left of The Tin Drum, but The Tin Drum is every bit as dark as The Ruling Class, and two of them occupying the same brain at the same time would have easily spelled disaster.

Thom left for work at 9:15 this morning, so I straightened up the house, watched some Homestar Runner, went to the landlord's, and cleaned up there (did I mention that our landlord and landlady go to the Virgin Islands for two weeks ever summer, and we are charged with watching the house and their precious cat, Pippen? Well, we don't mind, really. We like the cat, get to have a change of scenery, get to watch TV and movies, and, best of all, get to do laundry for free!) While cleaning up their kitchen, I was listening to my Beatle's "Past Masters" CD, which is a collection of "rare" Beatles tracks from the first half of their career.

Let me talk about the Beatles. I caught the BB (Beatles Bug) when I was 15, and although I'm over my hysterical fandom, they're still a band I love. My walls used to be covered with posters and old beat-up LPs, with the crowning glory: a 3'X5' poster of them at the Sgt. Pepper's album release party. Talk about a poster with great colors. At any rate, unlike many people, I have an appreciation for both halves of the Beatles' career. I love the early stuff. Yes, some of it is a bit boring, but most of it is just great pop tunes, which I'm a sucker for. In fact, it was "She Loves You" that instantly converted me to Beatlemania. I know that a lot of people don't like the later stuff because they would just like to hang on to the mop-heads with great pop tunes. I love the second half of the career, too, though. It got incredibly interesting, lyrically and sonicaally. The White Album is my favorite Beatles album by far. My parents bought it for me for Christmas when I was 16 or 17 and I listened to nothing else for about two months. Nothing. And this is coming from a teenager who listened to her headphones for several hours every day. Not that I'm into making huge, flourishing statements, but I must say that if I had to pick out the greatest group of pop performers, ever since the beginning of the modern western music industry, I'd have to pick the Beatles. That's right, screw Elvis, screw the Stones. As for Jazz (progressive stuff, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc), I leave that in another category. Not that I've listened to much, but I've listened to enough so that when Thom says that they pretty much "ended western music," I'm inclined to believe him.

At any rate, so, back to the kitchen. We love our landlord and landlady to death. They are great people, nevertheless, great people with questionable taste. Not that the cottage is any paragon of decoration, not that it's been decorated at all. I haven't done any decorating since I've moved in. My mom laments this, because she feels that I haven't "made my mark," that it's not my cottage, too. Well, I've "made my mark" with things like books and furniture. My mom seems to forget that this place was little more than a music studio with kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom attached before I moved in. Now we've got things like...oh...a couch, a table, more bookshelves, a nicer desk and dresser, rugs and dishes. Thom had one plate, one fork, a couple of spoons, etc. We have more than enough dishes now, you can actually cook in the oven, and there's a lot more food around the house.

At ANY rate, back to the (landlord's) kitchen. Like I said, we love the LL's, but they have questionable taste and questionable ways of cleaning things. Not that you would be struck by "Oh, this house is terribly decorated" or "Oh, this house is dirty" when first walking in. You actually have to pay some attention before you realize the house is badly decorated and dirty. Everything in their kitchen is covered in grease, even, it seems, clean dishes sitting in the cupboard, they have way too much food in the fridge, which all rots, and it seems like they only do very easy and routine things like, for instance, wiping off the kitchen counter, about once a month or two. As for the way the house is decorated, I won't go into it. They do have many genuinely nice pieces of furniture, but it's the wall-hangings and the knick-knacks I'm worried about. Also, let it be known that they have bad taste, as opposed to no taste, and I'll take the former over the latter any day.

So, there I was, in the kitchen, listening to the Beatles and cleaning, and having an imaginary conversation with Aurelius. I guess it all started because I was thinking that Aurelius probably wouldn't like the early Beatles stuff, because there wasn't "enough there" for him. See, Aurelius is truly the modern academic: everything must be deconstructed, psychoanalyzed, Marxitized, feminist and queer-theoried. A couple of weeks ago I typed up this big rant about why literary theory (the institution, not the theories themselves) is total crap. But I lost it. Oh, well. "Why can't you simply like something for what it is?" I asked him in my head, "These are great pop tunes, can't you just take a pop tune and its simple-minded lyrics at face value?" And then I realized two things: 1) Aurelius probably wouldn't like early Beatles, but it's not like it's ever going to come up between us and 2) I need to get a life if I'm having an imaginary argument with my TA about a pop band. So it goes.

At any rate, tonight I'm making my first homemade pizza, and it's not that Chef Boyardee crap. Oh, no, it's going to be good. At least I have something to look forward to.

Aquarium

It's four-thirty, but if I don't do something, I won't get back to sleep.

Thom and I got drunk together for the first time in a long time tonight. We are house-sitting for our landlord and landlady, and earlier, Thom made himself two rum and diet cokes out of their liquor cabinet. I guess I should preface by saying that Thom has not been drunk, and he's had very little to drink, over the past eight months. He's a smaller guy, but usually, if he's used to it, he can party people twice his size and half his age under the table. After the rum, which, a year ago would not have affected him very much, he was a little drunk. Later, we went down to the tea house, our favorite resturant in town, where pretty much everyone knows our names, where they don't really serve anything liquid-wise but tea and alcohol. We got there at 9:30 and everyone was already drinking. Usually, if Thom is tempted by a beer or something, I act as his will power. However, he was already drunk and this was a safe place with some of his best friends, so we simply had an unspoken agreement that it would be OK for him to get smashed.

Neither of us got smashed, but we did have a beer a piece (which is enough to get me pretty drunk) and he had two shots of whiskey. We stayed until 11:15 when, again by unspoken agreement, we knew it was time to go home. I drove, Dear god, did I ever think I would be driving drunk?, and we made it home OK, it being only a few blocks. I think I was less drunk than I thought, since I handled the car perfectly. I'd never had an entire beer before, and I think I just felt bad, as opposed to being drunk.

We got in, got to bed, and I slept until about an hour ago. Right before I fell asleep, however, I began to think about the possiblity of Thom dying. I guess this was triggered by our visit to one of his good friends in the hospital earlier in the day. His friend Alan, only 50 years old, is in the hospital because of advanced heart failure. Our hearts are supposed to be working at 50% or 60% and his is working at 20%, probably brought on by years and years of drinking the cheapest beer around, smoking the cheapest ciggarettes, and eating nothing but pizza and other junk. The only options left for him now are a bypass or a transplant. The doctors don't know yet if there's even enough good tissue left in his heart to warrant fixing it (bypass) instead of replacing it. If his condition doesn't get treated, he will probably be dead within a year. He'll just wake up dead.

That's how it was with Thom's dad, too. He wasn't as rough on his body, but he ate a crappy diet, and when he was in his 70's, the doctor told him that he should probably have heart surgery, but he declined to have it done, and about 6 months later, Thom's mom found him dead in bed.

Thom, however, is in excellent health. He's always taken great care of his body, and probably has the body of a person 10 or 15 years younger than he is, even outwardly. I met him when he was 48, and I thought he was 35 or so. At any rate, I began to think about what it would be like if I woke up with him next to me, dead. Alcohol doesn't give you greater access to thought, but it does give you greater access to emotion than you would normally have.

So what if Thom vomited a little in his sleep when I was asleep and drowned in it? I began to feel what it would feel like for me, knowing that, if Thom died so suddenly, whenever the reality hit me, whether it was before I even called 911, or six months later, it would cause me to faint. Now, I've never fainted in my life, especially not over anything not purely physical, but I do know that the reality would be too much, and I would have no choice but to pass out.

While I was certainly feeling pain thinking about this, I realized that my pain was only speculative, but that I still had a good view of the pain that could only be brought into being by reality. It was like I was a visitor at an aquarium. Looking in, I felt sharky, eely, wet and 68 degrees, but realized that, if the glass broke, it would be a completely different thing. It would be like the time I got pounded by a wave onto the beach, and I felt some part of my body scraping against the sand, but because of how chaotic things were, I could not tell what part until later, out of the water, I noticed a scratch on my face. I would be pounded against the wall, the floor, and feel something flat, even, alive knock into me: a shark.

I fell asleep, woke back up 4 hours later, to Thom, snoring, curled up, and pretty much passed out. The snoring is annoying, but, at least by paranoid middle-of-the-night standards, I'm assured that he's alive. When he stops I put my ear against his back and hear his lungs and his heart at once.