i am reading the neutron star of books, dense, unfailingly digressive, and painfully dry. most of the book is actually notes detailing the thousands of exceptions to circuitously described rules in a font even more diminutive than the main text, with footnotes in a still tinier type, a fabulous morale-killer. i am not liking it. but i am ( Read more... )

i feel like i am in a tactical retreat, calculatedly sawing off phantom limbs. i have been involuntarily keeping an account of my intolerances, because lately i have become wildly and ineptly vocal about them. so, yes, i have been behaving badly. which i regret, more than you know, but it does, i suppose, map out my limitations, which are ( Read more... )

it's true, i am seldom compelled to write here unless i have some grim thing to relay ( Read more... )

the latest strategy is nothing less than an intervention. i am wanted there, and from the time i was told, i have been harboring this sourness in my gut. i want to opt out, i want to be passive. i may be the only one whose view of the benefits of long-term sequestered care is occluded by sympathy to a disabling degree. i keep thinking of all ( Read more... )

I used to special order obscure books for weirdos. The service wasn't actually formally restricted to weirdos, but this seemed to be the bulk of my clientele, in spite of the stolid location (downtown DC) and the characterless megastore in which I worked. Closet keeblers masquerading as ponytailed programmers, fans of Suzanne Somers' poetry, ( Read more... )

Nina Simone died.

over the weekend my mother had another drunken head injury. she was taken to the ER, her scalp was stapled closed, and then she was transferred to an off-site psychiatric facility. today her social worker tells me they will finally begin the grueling process of having a conservator appointed, to keep her safe and sober. she will, in time, be ( Read more... )

my mother has been killing off bits of her brain with liquor for a while now. though the standard inebriate's blackouts have been par for the course, it is beginning to infiltrate her sober life more obviously. it manifests itself in delicate ways. tiny gaps pepper her news. i have noticed that she repeats things to me more often. i had ( Read more... )

i dreamt that i was writing in my journal, but was doing so by stitching rune-like glyphs into the underside of a worn couch cushion. sinking into the joint between seat bottom and back, i was swallowed up by the sofa and went unnoticed by my passing housemate despite my efforts. i found myself unable to make a sound: i had thought of a joke ( Read more... )

Warren's intros just kick my ass. I kept attempting to commit them to memory but each ensuing song would just blow them right out of my mind. next time I see them I'm bringing a tape recorder for the interstitial expostulations.
and you realize
that you are
exectly where you ought to beZak Sally, dirty fourth, mobile and expressive in a way I' ( Read more... )