I am entirely unable to focus on anything for more than five minutes. I can't study, I can't write, I can't talk on the phone, I can't clean except I managed to get laundry into the washer with time to spare. I can't even read, and I have Passage, Connie Willis' newest book, from the MSU library. It's entirely self-defeating to sit and write about how I can't focus on anything, you needn't tell me. I'm just killing another five. I need to get in what I can.This past weekend was full and busy and more social than I've been in weeks, and that may have something to do with my scattered thoughts.
I had this beautiful epiphany about friendship last night as I walked home from work. I'd tell you about it, but my five minutes are up and I really just can't.
posted by Shelly Houghton 9:10 PM
"Can any pleasure be sweeter than that of living at peace with oneself, passing one's days in serenity, sleeping untroubled, waking without remorse? What you call happiness is nothing but a tumult in the mind, a tempest of passion, frightful to behold even for the spectator on the shore. Come, how could I face such storms? How dare to embark upon a sea strewn with so many thousand wrecks? And with whom?"
posted by Shelly Houghton 11:54 PM
I just walked to the library in billion degree (Fahrenheit) weather. People smile at you a lot when you're walking barefoot with your ankle-length skirt tucked up around your knees. When I was nearly here I came to the conclusion that even if I was the Wicked Witch of the West, I wouldn't mind a bucket of water over the head. Bring it on, Dorothy.Inside the library it's blessedly cool, so my melting date has been postponed.
In other news, I completed my very first short story today. It still needs editing, but I got from start to finish and there's stuff in between, and I've never done this before. I am satisfied.
"Oh, what a world, what a world."
posted by Shelly Houghton 8:16 PM
"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."I am sleeping more, probably because I'm doing more. Nice, busy weekend.
Just now, a woman tried to talk me into coming to her church. This isn't the first time this has happened this year. It's the fifth or sixth time, if you count Mormons asking me if I want to talk to them about God. I checked, and I don't have 'I need religion' written on my chin. This woman was earnest, intelligent, and entirely random; she read meaning into my father having cancer because her father survived cancer as well. I am almost, almost tempted to go to her church just to see her smile.
I won't, though, for the same reason that I wouldn't pray over my father's bed with the local pastor when Daddy had cancer. I know that I won't go to church and have some religious experience like this woman expects, because I am in no way receptive to it. Religion is too important to me, I respect it too much to play at it just to mollify someone. She urges me to just come to one service, and I know why, and I know that her hope is an empty one. If I ever get religion, it certainly won't be now.
On another note, it's thundering and there's lightning and I get off work in exactly 20 minutes and will have to walk home in it.
posted by Shelly Houghton 11:46 PM
"The middle of the night has its own song and it's not one I like to hear. In that deep silence, all your ghosts gather in a Greek chorus and each voice is brutally clear. Why haven't you? solos one. Why did you? People think you're a fool. You're getting old. You haven't done it. You never will."
-- Jonathan Carroll, Kissing the BeehiveI haven't been able to sleep lately.
For most of my friends, this is a familiar song. I sing it four or five times each year when for a period of a week or sometimes up to a month, I can't sleep at night. It's not that I don't try; I go to bed when I think I should go to bed and just can't sleep until nearly dawn. I sometimes wonder if it's genetic, because my childhood memories of nighttime are filled with sounds of my father getting out of bed to have a cigarette or get a glass of milk. Of course, that means that I was awake to hear him.
If you spend too much time lying awake in the dark, you start seeing dark everywhere.
Screaming from the parking lot below my window woke me up at 7:00 AM this past Sunday. Was it Sunday? A woman was wailing, crying, her voice raw, but her words were all out of proportion to her apparent anguish. "My car, my car," she said, and "A thousand dollars!" I had only been asleep for two hours, so I crawled out of bed, closed my window, and went back to sleep. I still feel as if I ought to knock on my neighbors' doors and ask if they heard it, too.
posted by Shelly Houghton 10:03 PM
"The world was still a lonely place. So Old Man Coyote molded from the earth an image he liked and blew a small breath into it. The first man moved. Old Man Coyote was not satisfied. He tried again and made an image he liked even more. The first woman moved."
-- The Crow origin myth from This Land Was TheirsI can't get away with posting only a quote after days and days of nothing.
I am taking two classes this semester. One is on the Enlightenment, and the other is on Native American culture. The Enlightenment class is thrilling, the other one not so much. I'd like it more if it wasn't taught by an archaeologist. There's much concern with artifacts and subsistence patterns, and not so much with modern social issues. I almost like the book. I should adore it, since it's a dinky paperback that cost $32.
Clarion has come to live on my hall. They are loud, but I don't mind. I plan to keep my door cracked open at night to catch stray tidbits of writerly wisdom, which I will put to evil uses when I become a rich publishing executive.
I bought two more books: A choose your own adventure sort of thing set in Brust's Dragaera universe, and a book containing three of Connie Willis' short novels. I had two already, but I didn't have the third. I hereby vow to buy only the books required for class until August 15th. I work in a library, for heaven's sake. This means I can't get the new Steven Brust, or the new Tad Williams, or even the new Connie Willis. They will still be in print after August, even after December. I can wait.
My room is slowly becoming more and more Shellied as I purchase artsy postcards and stick them on the walls and my stacks of books grow. I find myself wishing for a kitchen relatively often. The cafeteria food is atrocious, the grill food worse, and now there isn't even the make-your-own-stir-fry every other night. The salad bar is kept clean and stocked and fresh, but I can only eat so much salad. I don't have the temperment to be any sort of bunny. I am going to look into the kitchen in the basement, see whether they have pots and pans and other necessary cooking supplies, and perhaps cook now and then. It's summer, so I can't imagine it'll be in use every night. I can't afford to eat out. I have to move at the end of the year, and take at least one trip to DC between now and then to be sure I've picked the right city.
Send me love so I'll have something to read while I pine for books I don't need.
posted by Shelly Houghton 10:48 PM
From History of my Life, Giacomo Casanova, 1966 (1797):"I have always liked highly seasoned dishes: macaroni prepared by a good Neapolitan cook, olla podrida, good sticky salt cod from Newfoundland, high game on the very edge, and cheese whose perfection is reached when the little creatures which inhabit them become visible. As for women, I have always found that the one I was in love with smelled good, and the more copious her sweat, the sweeter I found it.
What a depraved taste! How disgraceful to admit and not blush for it! This sort of criticism makes me laugh. It is precisely by virtue of my coarse tastes, I have the temerity to believe, that I am happier than other men, since I am convinced that my tastes make me capable of more pleasure."
Little cheese creatures! Aie! I do so love this class.
posted by Shelly Houghton 10:25 PM