HomeSeptember 9, 1997
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wet paintI went into the front hall to get the mail and found the front door wide open. I cursed the mailman under my breath and quickly maneuvered to prevent Wilbur from dashing outside while I shut the door. I grabbed the door. I felt something sticky. My hand came away wet. Then I noticed a man painting the door across the walkway from mine. Light dawns. Door open due to wet paint. Despite the return to humidity, the painter is fully dressed. Quite a contrast to the half naked roofers who've been verbally abusing each other for a week and a half. Actually, they were more than half naked. They wore cutoff shorts, tool belts, and heavy boots. That was it. The roofers seem to be gone, or at least have moved on to other units where I can't hear them every morning. The painter doesn't seem like as much threat to my privacy. Standing on the front porch painting the door, he can't see into my bedroom window. Whereas the roofers seemed to be practically in my bedroom. I can still smell the wet paint. sleeping my life awayslept late againI slept until 11:44 this morning. I don't know what time I fell asleep last night. Must've been late because I'd had an iced mocha at the Algiers and a cappuccino at Caffe Paradiso. I know the radio came on at 7:30 but I totally slept through Morning Edition. At least I don't feel as sleep deprived as I did yesterday or over the weekend. instead of sleepreading my life awayFriday night/Saturday morning I stayed up late reading Paul Watkins' memoir of his school days in England. Juxtaposed with the BBC radio coverage of Princess Diana's funeral, it gave me an odd feeling of being in an alien place with inexplicable customs and impenetrable mysteries. I just don't get it. That could be said of a lot of things, I guess, but I meant British culture. I guess as a descendent of pond scum I can't possibly be expected to fathom the monarchy, the class system, the stiff upper lip, or the playing fields of Eton.Yet, I couldn't put down Stand Before Your God. Never mind I think uprooting a kid from Rhode Island and putting him in an English boarding school is child abuse - Watkins actually seems quite normal - I was fascinated with his insight into the inner lives of schoolboys. The boy thing is as alien to me as the girl thing. Which makes me wonder exactly what I am but that's a subject for another journal entry. speaking of boys' stories
This afternoon I've been listening to Ed White talking about his new novel, Farewell Symphony on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He talked about how he had developed a protective amnesia - forgetting the emotions - still has memory of events but not the feelings - around his lover's death from AIDS. He spoke of a numbness and an inaccessibility of feeling that was difficult for a novelist- made it hard to write. I suddenly realized that part of my problem is that same numbness. I've been complaining in therapy and outside of therapy about a lack of feeling or a lack of access to my feelings that I attributed at least partly to my final year at Cosmodemonic Telecomm. But no, I think it goes deeper than that. I've been trying to write a novel about "family values", in which I explore what family really means as opposed to what the expletive deleted people who hijacked religion and family think it means. The actual events of the past two years are still too much with me to write about them with the emotional honesty you need in fiction. Gee, at last I know what's wrong. I was gonna write a whole lot more about this but am running out of steam. Hold that thought. other thoughts that were in the outline for today so I have to write about themOh, I searched on EO Wilson - found no god receptors. If anybody can point me at the god receptors, I'd appreciate the reference. More house sparrows - 50 or so on the fence - they are very bold. They don't move when the kids are playing football or when I am lugging in groceries. I went to Stop & Shop for supplies for the North Conway trip and a few odds and ends. I remembered to get more bandaids, but I forgot the pickles for Rita's trademark grilled cheese and dill pickle sandwiches (way better than it sounds). Steven always made pickles. I never had to buy 'em until last year. Nobody ever gets the pickle story. |
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