$disanpoter

so sweet and so cold

i took myself to mcnally robinson again today - this time for a reading by the authors of A Book of Beginnings and Endings and The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner. I'd been more intrigued by the former, because i have always been interested in the idea of publishing a collection of endings. I bought both books; i think they will be thought provoking, though the first author's reading was annoying. she was clearly responding to the cultural expectations of poetic prose emerging out of the slam poetry movement, for she employed the same softened speech, sing-song intonations and arbitrary word stresses you find in bad slam poetry, the kind that mimics the style to compensate for a lack of substance or genuine motive. it's a shame, too, because what i read of the work beforehand was fairly good and got completely lost in the delivery. both authors had a refreshing balance of theoretical and critical knowledge of narrative without getting mired down in over-intellectualizations either in the work or the discussion.
during the question and answer, betsy called. i hopped out and agreed to come meet up with her and the D of infamy up at chat n chew. that made for some interesting interactions, not least of which was an evolving friend:not friend motif. more on that can possibly be found here, either in the presence of words or by way of their absence. after we went to decibel to digest the situation and dispense of any lingering misgivings by way of innebreation and a bit of willful absurdism: we played drunken haiku. it was, as it should be, amusing and a poor literary showing (on my part at least...betsy's were better). hers are at the link above; mine to follow (bold words are the ones we had to incorporate):

you, cup, lie

i have taken myself to McNally Robinson's because they have stone tiles on their floor and elongated window panes and a book on Egyptian Math I resolved on saturday to come get for myself. Because their cafe has imported courtesies foreign to this city. when i got here, there was a large mug on the table with the remains of a long abandoned green tea within. it was that shade of white meant to evoke a rustic backwoods feel and found on hearty objects, like tubs, crockware, over-sized mugs in urban cafes. it had printed simply on its side in a mock-eroded typeface the word coffee, and i thought to myself well, see - that's the trouble with words, when you let them stick around long enough they start to lie to you.
this morning i became fascinated with a baby on the train. she had such precise expressions and such a pointed sigh. i began to wonder how one would think as a baby and how it's quite impossible really to either represent the thoughts of a baby or think them with words. how would one go about narrating an experience occurring prior to the end of the mirror phase in cognitive development...would you dispense with I entirely? or would you distribute it evenly across all reality? would you dissociate to individual objects or use only verbs? the baby girl on the train at one point looked backward and up towards her father (he was definitely her father; they had the same nose and mouth) and mirrored his gesture to bring their hands together in a horizontal high five. what would accompany this in the mind of a 6 mo old? i see me. smiles and hand up. touches. not really adequate, is it?

sometimes, it occurs to me that the more i record my thoughts here, the more i lay bare the volatility of my own perspective were someone to actually read through a mass of entries chronologically, but that presumes, i think, i finer skill that i possess for articulating my own thoughts. lucky that.

i spoke to bistra today, too, which was really nice. she said i sounded good, so much more relaxed that i've been in the past, and it was gratifying to know that it was true - and likewise - despite the crazy intensity of her schoolwork, she sounds good. there's more to that reflection, commonalities to the way we interpret our experiences that are more relevant to my day and that it was also comforting to touch upon, however briefly, with a friend whose understanding i don't have to question, but it doesn't belong here.   

the dangers of sure why not *

certain trends remain constant when i attend parties: for starters, when they're over i feel like i've barely spent anytime with any of my friends. also, i'll let conversations fall off mid-sentence to go dance or to follow the tug of a hand that's leading my own (though i'm selective with which hands can do this), and most significantly, i go into that willfully distributed consciousness mode i've mentioned before where i delay analysis and absorb experience. the drawback is that in this mode, i'm more likely to let someone have my number who in a more alert state i would recognize immediately as someone i'm not going to be interested in.
i think perhaps, also, i'm more attractive in this state than i am as my normal self, because people will latch on to me, change their plans and come back to where i am, hang around all evening, etc - and this doesn't really happen when i don't let go. this is a side consideration and one i'm not terribly thrilled about.
so anyway, i gave my number to a guy at a party on friday. he called multiple times on saturday without leaving a message. so i called him back in the evening to say - hey got the phone calls, but can't talk. let's talk sometime later. actually i don't remember if that was saturday or sunday. but today he calls and leaves a message at 7:30. it's a busy night for me and i'm not so happy (see previous post). i don't really feel like talking to a potential date. 11:27 rolls around; there's a text message: "hey - are you asleep?"
now, i can understand that this may just be impatience. but from a guy who got out of the cab friday night at my stop instead of continuing on, who could have watched me head down the block and up the stairs to my building, this is kinda creepy. hell, it's downright creepy either way.
so to recap, things not to do if you'd like to maintain someone's interest. don't -

• get their number on your way out, then decide come back and spend the remainder of the party at their side
• call and not leave a message
• call multiple times without leaving a message
• call multiple times until they pick up
• call and then text them asking why they haven't called (this one didn't happen)
• call and then text them within a half hour of midnight to ask if they're still up

unless, you didn't get their number and instead you hooked up, then calling multiple times without a message or calling right before midnight and asking if they're still up would fall under booty-call behavior and could conceivably be amenable depending on how the initial hook-up went.

creepy boys.

* or, 'when boys consider any gesture of interest tantamount to desperation'

4 things that made this past hour bearable

minor borges moment ; minor someone thought my thoughts better than me moment ; this chat exchange [edited for typos] about that minor borges moment:

me: did you see the pointers one?
friend: oh yeah ive read em all at least twice

gonna make a montage poster

for my room

 

me: dork

not that i don't approve

 

friend: you're just jealous you didnt think of it first

 

me: i can only reference that object that might potentially admit to such a condition

 

friend: last i heard you were a deep copy of that object

 

me: i can't one up that. it's not possible

 

friend: could go last resort options < your mom jokes >

 

me: last i heard you were a deep copy of a bastard child of a your_mom_joke object?

 

friend: oh snap... its on now

at least my implementation doesnt leak memory

im not sure what the hell that's implying but yeah take that

 

me: your implementation's so jank it leaks your mom's memory

 

friend: i leaked memory into your mom and corrupted her process

me: i had a comeback involving mother, bored, short and jump

but then [in fact, i got distracted by work]

 

friend: hahhahahahaha

and the fact that when it this was over i was no longer suffering from low-blood sugar and had miraculously managed to get work done at the same time.

blood banks and bottled turkey

friends can have a funny way of precipitating relationships, which is not to say i'm any more involved than i was prior to the weekend, but saturday in some ways was a place i've been before. we went to the birthday party of a person i'd known but not terribly well from random house and who i've since spoken more with thanks to a mutual fondness for karaoke. he's not unattractive and he's newly unattached and it's not unfathomable that there could be some interest there, but i barely know him and so that's as far as it goes.

being with friends who know your history and your internal struggles with the direction(s) of your life, who want you to have happiness or if not that at least distraction, has a way of subtly transforming the above scenario - it introduces the meta-layer of Potentials. the same thing happened in january, i felt like i was being shepherded towards something i wasn't sure i wanted. instead of just getting to know new people and enjoying the company of those i already knew, there was this added expectation that i could/should make a choice or a move. this time, at least, i realized i just didn't want to, not that night at least. it's an experience i think i should hold onto.

apart from internally philosophical moments, the evening was fairly nice. not quite as enjoyable as friday, but i did meet an interesting law student from france who i'll be inviting to some things.

and sunday i indulged in the absorption of seriously crappy movies on tnt. they had some vampire theme going on and i was intending to get more cleaning done than i actually succeeded in doing. i clipped my cat's nails instead and sorted through old magazines. it appears that recasting vampirism as a viral infection is all the rage - or was a few years ago. all the ones they showed spun down to opportunities to capitalize on genetics to either eliminate or fortify the vampires. not so brilliant actually. additionally, they all featured stores of blood, either in body farms or the standard blood bags.  i'm almost getting tired of the biological warfare trend in action films. plus the fighting scenes were woefully unoriginal and not even all that well-executed.

in other news, some company's bottling tryptophan (i can't be bothered this morning to look up the spelling for that turkey compound) as a natural sleep aid. i think i'll stick with my hallucination inducing ambien, thanks.

am not

i would just like to say for the record that i am the spitting image of normalcy - all you people out there who think i'm odd or strange or even dare we say a little crazy don't know what you're talking about. my cat, on the other hand, is clearly not. she currently appears to be having quite the contest with her foot. it keeps escaping, but she's not about to give up the chase. can we say lead paint?

um. anyway. i saw an awesome band tonight. in fact two that i definitely plan on keeping tabs on, then went on to hang out at a hookah bar (i do like hookah. i should never have started with the hookah...sadly if i want to stay true to my claim i can have no more till july. sniff) and it was all around pleasant and peachy. and i will have more to say about all that in the morning.

i think my day can be fairly well summed up by the fact the following:

at precisely 5:04pm Monday afternoon, our protagonist was startled out of her stuppor by the hearty laughter of her collegue on the other side of the cubicle partition. immediately after this, the neurons of her brain having delivered the most recent past effectively to her memory, she connected this laughter to the sounds of her own voice gleefully singing "I'm creating key fields, key fields, key fields - da di da di da."

fortunately, her own laughter at that point completely supressed the ability to feel embarrassed.

who wants to be a recommender!?

Numerous opportunities are currently available to participate in the thrilling and rewarding experience of providing me with a stellar recommendation (and let's be honest, who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to dream up glowing commendations of yours truly. stress on dream). The ideal candidate will possess excellent communication skills, imagination, and extensive experience in making sense out of disanpoter burblings. Potential benefits include:

• my eternal gratitude
• feeling useful
• polishing up that poly-syllabic vocabulary of yours
• resurrection of fond memories rife with the ridiculous of modern experience and the challenge of repackaging them as purposeful anecdotes illustrating my unique appropriateness for the given position/program.
• did i mention, my eternal gratitude?

Requirements for these opportunities are brief yet stringent upheld:

• deep understanding and knowledge of candidate (that would be me), gained either through intense exposure over a limited period of time or sustained exposure over many years.
• ability to compose grammatical, informative sentences and accumulate them in traditional letter form.
• experience ranking soft-skills
• knowledge of at least one of the following information delivery methods: postal mail or fax

Interested parties should contact me for further details and project availability. Failure to respond to this posting does not preclude qualified candidates from being contacted.

Thank you for your interest.

prisoner to one's proclivities

i've been tuned into my own lack of a relationship recently. there is a guy who hasn't returned my return phone call and has thus left me somewhat disappointed, but then i'd held a bit a disbelief at his interest to begin with, so i'm trying not to be surprised by this. beyond that, though, i'm not so unhappy about the minute amount of Play in my life. This is a good place to be, since i've also had occassion today to advise two people that the ability to abstain from sex is not necessarily a bad thing. In one conversation, this was in the form of affirming the person's own reflection that they might benefit from thinking about sex less; in the other, it concluded in my saying "one doesn't want to become a prisoner to one's own proclivities." Anyway. it's not.

now writing about proclivities is an entirely different story, and in fact, i've been inspired to begin another story: Michael's Bed. No relation to any real life michaels i know or don't know. hopefully i'll get to start on that later this afternoon. hopefully it'll prove more entertaining than this here post.

and that's all for today.

if this is the start lets hope it's a one-day year

what follows is an account of how i lost my atm card, found my atm card, handed off a large wad of cash, missed a train, caught a bus, had a prodigious amount of wine, revealed to my mother that i am somewhat bi, discovered i'd left all my clothing behind, and generally followed one error with three others...all in under 24 hours. i should be a demon; then this would qualify as a skill.

yesterday, i was going to take $12 train at 2pm out to visit my mother. Then i tried to do a favor for derek, which required my BofA atm card - only i couldn't find my atm card. this led to a frantic half hour search because neither i nor derek properly checked all the pockets of my coat. this was my fault. i'm familiar with my coat pocket habits. i should have checked the right pocket.

in nearly enough time, the card was found and we set out for the atm. i with my bike, helmet, and overnight bag; derek with my laptop and electronics bag. only, i'd forgotten the environmentally friendly laundry detergent sample with which i planned to wash my clothes once i got to my mothers
- so i sent derek in to get it (as he was the last to put it somewhere) and said to meet at the bank, which was around the corner.

i went to the bank. deposited cheques and withdrew cash. derek did not appear. i walked the half block back to my apartment. derek was not there. this was at just passed 1. i had an hour to get to the train station (a twenty minute trip on bike) and catch the train to my mothers. i rang the bell and then rang it obnoxiously. it was impossible that i had missed him en route to the bank; it was too close.

there had been previous discussion that should the card not be found we would go to the branch bank a few blocks a way, so quick as i could i went there and checked. then came back with my eyes peeled for derek en route to this other bank. no joy. at home, derek was still not there. i had 40 minutes to get there.

locked out of my apartment, my cell phone and all other communication devices on derek's person, with no neighbors in the building/ responding to their buzzers, i set about asking strangers to use their cell phones. finally one agreed. i called chancey and chancey called derek and at 2pm derek walked up the steps. he had not encountered the bank and so had kept walking. to this i non-comment.

i called my mother to tell her i missed the train. i tried to explain that it was not my fault in the traditional sense. that i had been trying to be a nice person. and had in fact left plenty of time initially to catch the train. she became insistent and irate and told me to catch the 4pm. i tried to explain that that was too tight; i would have to leave that very moment and if i missed it i'd be stuck waiting for the next for two hours. she would have none of it. so i left.

i left with unspoken words between derek and i. i left feeling uncomfortable about how things were left. i called my mother and told her i didn't need her to make me feel worse about something that had already put a major kink in my day. trekking all the way into the city, being in transit and not getting work done for an extra 2 hours, not fun.