Conservation of Vehicles

While doing laundry yesterday, I realized that my bike seems to have gone missing. The helmet was there on the floor, but no bike. Nowhere in the bike-filled basement was mine. I asked the landlord if he'd moved it (he didn't think so) and we searched high and low, but the only conclusion is that someone has made off with it. I don't know why they had to pick mine, as there are several bikes in the basement, but there you go.

At least I won't have to move it, I'm thinking. But when I get up to the new place and feel myself needing a bike, I reckon I'll be pretty peeved.

However, I did purchase a car yesterday. A zippy little black 13-year old Mazda. Signed the title, mailed in the forms, got me a car. I've never bought a car before, so this is pretty cool. Feeling just that much more like a grownup. I'll put up some pictures when I get some.

So it's conservation of vehicles. One of Newton's laws, I think. One in, one out. I have other things to worry about at the moment, like packing, finishing my Chapter Three revisions (WILL IT NEVER END?!) and slaughtering the growling monstrosity that seems to have evolved from my sinkful of dishes.

Okay...snif...I'm ready to blog again

T'other night I had a joint going away party with two of my local barista chums, VH and JO, and another friend of mine, AK.  It was at a local club; no cover, cheap drinks, lots of dancing.  There was much mack slung and much widespread drunken flirtation.  And it was a nicely odd night.  For one thing, Molly From the Coffee Shop was there, the woman I developed a low-level but constant crush on for a year or so while she frothed my foam, with the brain-melting smile, the cute nose, the batman t-shirts, etc.  She's in L.A. now, selling Harley Davidsons, and she was just here for two days.  Serendipity.  "Hey, I know you!" she said on the dance floor.  Yes, yes she does.

There was a singer/guitarist on before the DJ started, and she was really quite good.  Breathy sort of Ani Difranco-esque dyke rock.  My lesbian friends and I were trying to work out whether she was gay.  I talked to her after the set, because she didn't have anyone else to talk to, really.  She was on her way from Columbus, OH to Ventura, CA, in a beat-up station wagon, and perfroming solo (she does have a band) in various places along the way.  She's really cool.  We bonded over David Cross.  AND it turns out we have lots in common.  She's pursuing music during a break from her PhD in Cold War history, which she was doing at the University of Warwick!  She was there when I was, actually, living in Leamington Spa.  Smallish world. 

Anyway, we talked on and off for much of the night, and then she came and said goodbye-I-really-liked-talking-to-you, and looked me in the eye and planted one on me.  It kicked ass.  A nice, sweet, lingering, deliberate sort of smooch.  And then she bundled into her car and drove off into the night towards Montana.  It was so western.  Just like Shane, but without the gunfighting.  I was left smiling goofily, and slightly bewildered, but I was able to report back to the lesbians that she's pretty much not gay.

Yesterday I finally got tired of the five huge tubs of books earmarked for my office that have been blocking the path to my bathroom, so I borrowed a car (thanks, A&J) and trundled them down two flights of stairs, 75 miles upstate, and up two flights of stairs.  Exhausted and very sweaty.  But I managed to set up my office computer, put up some posters, and organize my books to a certain extent on my bookshelves.  I made some organizational mistakes, though, and many of the books there will belong at home--I'm not really going to teach Finnegan's Wake, am I?  Or Empowering Your Inner Child?  (Yeah, okay, I went through some therapy.  Not all my books are cool intellectual poseur material.  I have Finnegan's Wake AND Mars and Venus Starting Over.  Happy?)

The town and the College are starting to grow on me.  As I sat in MY office, Professor M's office, and did paperwork and listened to the bells announcing 6:00 over the neatly trimmed, tree-lined quadrangle, it struck me that things in general could be lots worse.

I dropped by my new apartment and it is indeed as funky as I remember.  The bedroom wall paint is not coming out as dark as either I or my landlord remembers.  But it's going to be cool.  I have pictures, but not as many as I thought, because my camera ran out of batteries.  I will leave you with them.  Till next time.

Here's a blurry photo of my office, formerly Spenser Tracy's dorm room.  And here's my living room as viewed from the kitchen.  You'll have to imagine cooler colors for now.

 

All uphill from here

I feel better today.  I got lots of writing done, bought groceries.  I was awakened by someone bellowing "FIVE DOLLARS!!!" and realized that it wasn't a persistent crazy person but the annual street-wide sidewalk sale.  And I found some flash new kicks at the shoestore next door that were substantially discounted (check 'em out).
 
And now that J. and I are on the same page, agreeing lovingly that getting back together is highly unlikely, and there's nothing more I can do, I'm still terribly sad, but not miserable and anxious like I have been for the past few months.  I have lots more space in my head now that I'm not stressing about it.
 
Oh, and I got my apartment sorted out.  Gave up on my originally planned one, signed a lease on the smaller one (after talking the rent down $50), and I even have some say in what color the walls are going to be painted.  So between being productive and taking care of practicalities I've had a pretty good day. 
 
My friend G. pointed out that this late Bastille day may have been the saddest I'll ever have, and that it's all uphill from here.  At the risk of brooking the wrath of Edgar from King Lear--"The worst is not so long as we can say "this is the worst' "--I think he may be right.

Boxing day in July

I'm a little hung over. Just a little. Well, okay, I got sufficiently tipsy last night to determine that all I needed for happiness was breakfast cereal, a 1984 camaro, and a shaved monkey.

I kind of needed a drink yesterday night after hearing from J. the response that after all, I mostly expected. Which was no, not now, and probably not ever. Which is sensible. She

1) Is not single
2) Lives on another continent, and
3) Would have to work hard to trust me again.

I knew all this, but I still asked. And maybe I shouldn't have. It put her in a terrible position and hurt her a lot. If I'd been able to say the things I said to her last week, back when we were together, she would've been overjoyed. But I wasn't and now it's too much, too late. Life is not a movie. At least not a Meg Ryan movie. Maybe it's Nights of Cabiria sometimes, or Naked, or something.

So I'm trying today to box up everything, my hope, my feelings, my pictures, my letters, my memories. They won't go away, and I won't stop loving her, but at least I can put them in storage and try to forget about them.

Well that's that, then.

In the final words of Tim, from the BBC's hit series The Office, "She said no, by the way."

Rental hygiene

Folks, I'm in a bind. I am very excited to rent my 1500-square-foot, 3 bdrm apartment (hereafter called "219"), but the landlord is apparently away from his phone and unmessageable. I've been trying to get in touch with him for weeks now, since I need to know if it's going to be done by August 1 and I need to sign a lease.

The only person who I know who can track him down is another landlord, and meanwhile that person has another perfectly fine and lovely apartment (hereafter called "200"). It will be ready August 1, but it is $900 more per year, and one less bedroom. It's kind of cool, though, with hardwood floors in the bedroom, central heat (not included), laundry, and a funky corner layout. The kitchen is big enough, but isn't a separate room; it's separated by an island from the living room (photo here).

And here's the bedroom (click to make it larger):


Advice on what I should do will be appreciated. But in a few more days if I haven't heard about 219 I'll have to scramble to sign up for 200.

Why isn't this obvious?

On the eve of a vote on the constitutional marriage amendment, I'm stuck wondering why the solution that presents itself so obviously to me isn't just obvious to everyone on both sides.

Amending the constitution to protect marriage is simply an unconscionable interference of the government into issues of religion. There is no constitutional amendment protecting any other sacrament; if Congress voted to mandate extreme unction for all dying Americans or drafted legal language defining Transubstantiation, we'd all go berserk, from the staunchest atheist to the most ardent zealot.

This simply should not be a government issue. Most arguments about gay marriage are missing the point. I believe very firmly in the sanctity of traditional marriage for those who engage in it. I also believe that it is a matter between couples, their God (if they have one), and the religious community (if any) that blesses and recognizes their union. It is not a matter for government interference, and no marriage or union of any denomination or variety should receive special treatment at the hands of the government, for any tax or legal purposes at all. This is a matter of church-state separation.

What we need is not a law that protects one kind of union, but a law that protects them all equally while not becoming embroiled in religious differences. I respect the right of any fundamentalist to believe that a gay couple is not really married, and even to believe that they're going to hell. Whatever. But that gay couple MUST have the same civic protections as any straight couple, even if that means reducing or removing any legally privileged status for all such unions, whether individuals and churches agree to call them marriages or not. The benefits of marriage should come from the individuals, from the community and from God, not from the state. The U.S. government is not responsible for policing the laws of Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Jewish, or Hindu orthodoxy. Why would anyone in 2004 think that it is?

The only solution to this divisive problem is to stop inviting the government to our weddings.

Or even our rehearsal dinners.

Conundrum

Speaking of my being blond now, I seem to have lost a few IQ points, because I'm being bothered by a stupid conundrum.

You know the phrase nihil sub sole novum, "there's nothing new under the sun"? It's attributed to Horace, and also to the author of Ecclesiastes, Solomon or whoever. But was Solomon really the first person to say that? Whoever it was, they must have had a logical bind, because of course at the time it was itself a new thought and a new turn of phrase. Which would make the utterance untrue.

Unless of course whoever first said it said it super sole, but of course then we have the problem of what "over the sun" could mean. Because there's no up in space, so how would you know if you were above the sun or below it? I guess if we're thinking in terms of Ptolemaic cosmology, the speaker would just have to be in a sphere farther from the earth than the sun, like say the sphere of Saturn. "Hey guys, my fellow Saturnians, have you noticed that there's nothing new under the sun? We should totally tell King Solomon about this."

You'd think if extraterrestrials talked to the ancient Israelites, there'd be some record of it, though.

Any thoughts?

Anxiolysis

I'm tired of all this stress. Finishing my intro, conclusion, and revisions, trying to locate my future landlord so I can sign a lease--WHY does his answering machine not work?!--packing, planning courses, worrying about the electability of the Democratic ticket, and conducting an exercise in highly emotional high-stakes soul-baring. All of this produces reams and boatloads and buckets of anxiety, and it all seems to land in the muscles in the back of my neck.

So yesterday I decided to kill it all. I got a haircut and just for yuks I'm sort of blond now. I got a massage. I fed ducks by the lake, then read Borges and watched the sunset. Things are a bit better now. All the anxiety-producing factors still there, but slightly manageable.

Happy Independence

It’s a rainy Sunday. For today at least I’m trying not to be ashamed of my country and its behavior, trying to be happy about being an American, thinking for the day about things like jazz and baseball and Charles Lindbergh and the idea, if not the execution, of modern democracy.

Most of what I’m doing is continuing to write. This is why I haven’t posted for a while, because (a) I’m crazy busy and (b) I have had almost no thoughts and experiences that don’t relate to my epistemologies of space in early modern London.

But today is a fairly momentous day in my personal life. I the wee hours this morning (slightly less wee in England) I sent J. The E-mail that I’ve been drafting for three months and not sending out of respect for her need for time and space. I needed to tell her how I feel, how much I love her, how ready I finally am for a long-haul. It may accomplish nothing, but at least she knows everything now and I feel as though I’ve done all I can. I don’t expect her to break up with her current boyfriend and fly to my arms, and she might well say she never wants to hear from me again and there’s no chance of us ever being together again. But no matter what happens, I have some closure, or at least I’m as close thereto as I can get, and I can get on with my life. It's not exactly a Declaration of Independence, but it's something.

Of course I’m still kinda hoping she asks me to come to California while she's out there so we can try to work things out. But the ball has never been less in my court. My court is entirely ball-free. Huzzah.