This will not be an extensive catalogue; actually, this won't be a catalogue at all. If it were a catalogue it would be littered with variations on "Buy yummy swiss chocolates," but this is not a catalogue.
This is a transition. I am on my way. I've been travelling for twenty-four hours already, and I have fifteen more ahead of me. This is my way of saying, "Bring it on."
More than I am saying "bring it on," I am saying I need sleep. It always seems the first thing to go when travelling; be it the functional minimum I procured before leaving Tulsa or the few winks from Oklahoma City to Chicago or the two hours I pieced together from Boston to Zurich. I am a weary man, but I'm almost there.
The reading list for the day so far: Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. True, Didion's thoughts on mortality and bereavement are weighty–perhaps too weighty for morning flights from Oklahoma to Chicago then on to Boston. Despite their context, her words struck me in an enabling way. Her ability to weave together psychologies of grief, medicinal terminologies, personal reflections and vulnerability–eye-popping sincerity–makes me feel like I too can write.
Needless to say, I recommend it.
13.5.07
on leaving one state for another and being closer, closer to it
Okay, okay. I'm guessing the differences in quality aren't socially constructed–that Diet Pepsi cola has more cola taste in realistic difference than Diet Coca Cola. That is a safe guess, and it mirrors what I have been told by the television.
When you get your teeth surgically removed–the doctor, being overly curt, introduces himself while administering an anesthetic as "Dr. Sleepy-time" and then you disappear into a dreamless world of Novocaine and anesthesia (but there are clouds, big ones like pillows, and you bound from pillow to pillow and turn the clouds into horses and turtles so little kids will look up at your handiwork and go, "A turtle!")–when they knock you out and pull what was yours out of your own mouth, you tend to watch a lot of television. A lot of ESPN, in my case, a lot of Law and Order, some subtitled Kurosawa films (the subtitles are a mistake, you can't read in this state, at least you can't sustain it).
I've been watching for long enough, and I doubt that Diet Pepsi is different from Diet Coke, take your national taste test and find someone more interested.
So, I am leaving. Going to the East Coast, to find the Atlantic–you see it needs me. It can't lap against the rocks jutting out from the sharp corner of Route 1-A, just north of Rye Beach, without me listening. It can't reflect the moon on a cloudless night without me, and it certainly can't separate me from Africa if I'm in Ohio.
So I will go and find the Atlantic. I'll leave a post-it note on the door and ride until the whole thing spreads out in front of me, blue in its own reflection of the sky.
When you get your teeth surgically removed–the doctor, being overly curt, introduces himself while administering an anesthetic as "Dr. Sleepy-time" and then you disappear into a dreamless world of Novocaine and anesthesia (but there are clouds, big ones like pillows, and you bound from pillow to pillow and turn the clouds into horses and turtles so little kids will look up at your handiwork and go, "A turtle!")–when they knock you out and pull what was yours out of your own mouth, you tend to watch a lot of television. A lot of ESPN, in my case, a lot of Law and Order, some subtitled Kurosawa films (the subtitles are a mistake, you can't read in this state, at least you can't sustain it).
I've been watching for long enough, and I doubt that Diet Pepsi is different from Diet Coke, take your national taste test and find someone more interested.
So, I am leaving. Going to the East Coast, to find the Atlantic–you see it needs me. It can't lap against the rocks jutting out from the sharp corner of Route 1-A, just north of Rye Beach, without me listening. It can't reflect the moon on a cloudless night without me, and it certainly can't separate me from Africa if I'm in Ohio.
So I will go and find the Atlantic. I'll leave a post-it note on the door and ride until the whole thing spreads out in front of me, blue in its own reflection of the sky.
8.5.07
on the mixture of novocaine, an anesthetic drip and oxycodone
If what I'm looking for is to stop feeling, I've found a dental procedure to handle it. Getting my wisdom teeth out is like signing up for catharsis. I've been seated on the couch watching Kurosawa movies–well, kind of watching them. I've been sinking in and out of sleep during Kurosawa movies, and the whole subtitles thing doesn't translate well through oxycodone and whatever-the-hell-else is in my bloodstream.
Honestly, though, the removal of wisdom teeth is such a strange ritual anyway. It is like a rite-of-passage, nearly every college student or young adult has a story to tell when the incident of wisdom teeth is mentioned. Whether someone chimes in with a "I had dry-socket" or a "I cursed out my nurses," we all seem to have a story, and creating an amalgamation out of all those stories when anticipating your own extraction–well–that's just absurdly fun.
So, I found some stimulus to write in becoming completely numb; there's some social commentary in there, but it's not worth fleshing out.
Honestly, though, the removal of wisdom teeth is such a strange ritual anyway. It is like a rite-of-passage, nearly every college student or young adult has a story to tell when the incident of wisdom teeth is mentioned. Whether someone chimes in with a "I had dry-socket" or a "I cursed out my nurses," we all seem to have a story, and creating an amalgamation out of all those stories when anticipating your own extraction–well–that's just absurdly fun.
So, I found some stimulus to write in becoming completely numb; there's some social commentary in there, but it's not worth fleshing out.
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