i left work today with that particular kind of exhaustion, the one that crashes all mind/body distinctions.
i laughed a dry tired half-laugh as i zoomedexcelerated on the ramp down onto 75; i remembered that this was the way i felt every day on the way home from aohell.
(i know that "aohell" is not really a clever thing to call it, but perhaps i'm uncomfortable with the idea of getting sued. does the disclosure statement i signed (that bound me for something like ten (!!) years) extend to blog posts?)
i came home to hungry cats and i fed them and microwaved some of the coffee i made this morning. i had plans to go to the park with friends.
i got back into my car, clicked the windows down button and pushed a random button to switch cds and an old wilco album brought everything back to life again.
i'd forgotten that i'd even put it in the rotation; must've been weeks ago.
----
i even sang.
----
and so, with renewed fervor i/we tumbled and climbed and ran and sped across the odd woodshaving-carpeted park, laughing and screaming and yelling and sideways swings, dizzying merrygorounds, updated nighttime tag
----
-------------------------
some people i know
have just begun to blog
i think this is a good thing.
for some reason (complex social contingencies, no?) the infinitive verb
to socialize seldom involves a certain kind of communication, the kind i'm most interested in. there is an unspoken taboo against honesty in regards to "negative" or "personal" things.
---please note the quotation marks---
when people write their honest thoughts, you can get a glimpse of them that isn't going to emerge in a crazy drinking, or work, or a classroom, or a (fill in the blank) setting. (there are rare exceptions to this of course,
post-post being a meaningful one in my life)
at any rate, i'm thrilled to read the thoughts of
grandpa's chipmunk and
moonshine muse
-----
i wonder if i'm so drawn to blogging because i worry that i come across like some kind of chick lit character in my social interactions. i remember telling my roommate jen "i'm really a
serious person"
. . . about a year later she had the opportunity to read a journal from an amazingly transformative part of my life and she indicated that she now knew what i meant.
wow, shnn. you are serious.
it was a compliment.
-----
so, onto the serious stuff i guess.
-----
i'm trying to avoid being really over-dramatic, because everything is really okay. so keep that in mind.
on tuesday my sister was hit by a car as she walked home from work. she was talking on her cell with mom.
of course mom freaked the fuck out, given that she heard tires screeching and a human surprise shock noises before the phone went dead.
but s. called her back and then an officer called to assure her that everything was okay, s. was on her way to the hospital and she was going to be fine, she would be fine, she had minimal injuries, maybe some neck strain and perhaps a broken leg but she was okay.
----
i think i have to put those ---- there right now. because i don't know how to transition to mom calling me, hysterical.
or the phone calls that ensued to various family members, all in states of panic, all incensing me to pray.
pray pray pray.
----
all of my conviction to be honest with my family evaporated.
"i'm praying," i said.
i wanted to try, to do yoga. to sit here and do that thing, my version... but i couldn't. i didn't even call the people who would....
i swept my apartment. found myself occasionally sweeping a quiet tear or two from my face with my sweaty arm, spreading the evidence of my concern across my cheek, my temple. i moved furniture and the straw scraped wood and my body cried in seepingslowsweat-tears as my mind focused on this corner or that. filling the dustpan. dumping it in the trash.
----
i spoke w/ s. soon after. she was still in the midst of tests, she had no broken bones, etc.
she put on the tone i'd likely crunched out at the rudds earlier, the convivial thing and laughed the laugh we share and said
"at least i was wearing clean underwear"
----
only my sister is the funniest person i know.
and,
and she doesn't joke cliches.
she was trying too hard.
----
lie #2:
i spread it to the whole family. to granny, who cried even as i told her s. was okay,
an attempt to penetrate the worry and anguish of my mom and my aunt
she's fine... you want to know what she told me?
my laughs hollow....
and they sucked it in hungrily. every single person i talked to said "at least she's got her sense of humor!"
....my sister was in pain. she was afraid and her concern for everyone so palpable that she joked a cliche that only i saw through.
------------------------
------------------------
and all this i say to you while things much more horrific occur.
i read
this today on theyblinked.
i'm ill. i'm sick from what i read of what the guantanamo bay "enemy combatants" somehow endure.
making all of the above really... small. it's just a story.
but all i know right now is to tell it to you, because i don't have any answers, and i can't free the innocent or the suspicious, i can't make our government treat them like we treat convicted murderers and rapists within our borders
it seems all bullshit shnn dailygoingson... and yet i have to be me to fight this. we have to share our stories, know each other, it's what keeps us here, keeps us from fleeing to canada, from escaping civic responsibility and conviction....