8:47am
Monday
27 March 2006

Do you know how, sometimes, during a commercial break in your favorite televsion shows, your best friend calls and wants to talk about one of her boyfriends, and when you try to hang up, she starts crying and you try to cheer her up and end up missing half the episode? That's the good thing about a book. You can mark your place in a book. But this isn't really a book. It's a television show.

—Kelly Link, "Magic for Beginners"

Things I've contemplated writing about in the two-week hiatus that I'm attempting to put to an end herein: a boy; flowers and springtime and drinks in the afternoon; upcoming weekend plans that include waterskiing and a trip to Savannah and perhaps a crazy pretty wedding and IhopeIhope a train ride to the big easy; nervous contemplations on where within the island of Manhattan and its environs I might end up living next year; an art class I'm beginning tonight; a long Friday night with people who scintillate me, playing Trivial Pursuit, having a sip of good whiskey, talking until 6 in morning about religions and philosophies and a boy; the gorgeously balanced coexistence of cutting-edge technology and the solid timeless appeal of the cold-cathode tube; the two times that I've run out of gas in my life, one of which in the idyllic suburban paradise of my teenagerhood, as I slowly pulled into the driveway of my best friend's house, the other at 3 in the morning, leading this pseudo-paragon of self-reliance to walk a mile through the gritty city in my pretty pink coat, to get a call from the gay boys ("girl! you look good in that coat!"), to chat with a reefer appreciator who got off the MARTA as I passed by about my policy of generally not going to get high in guys' apartments after meeting them on the street, no matter how good of a mood I'm in, no matter how much his offer makes me giggle;

a boy who makes me giggle and smile; whose existence honestly makes me a bit giddy.

• × • × • × •

marilyn@orcus:~$ cat .bash_history | grep dict
    dict histrionic
    dict hysterical
    dict arduous
    dict prescient
    dict partly
    dict partially
    dict harangue
    dict sessile
    dict abjure
    dict hawkish
    dict hawk
    dict esthetics
    dict occasional
    dict irrepressible
    dict indomitable
    dict scintillate
    

• × • × • × •

I think I might be having a bit of a social interaction hang-up as of late. I don't know if anyone will ever read this that had the same sort of addiction that I did to The Sims, but the trickiest part of the successful life for me was maintaining the large social network necessary for the high-paying prestigious careers. Up until a few months ago, I was playing that game at peak: orchestrating social interaction in every spare moment and juggling a constantly varying cloud of people, all of whose personhoods meet the highest strict standards of approval: they make me very happy to be around, in one way or another. When Matt Jaehn visited me for a weekend, and with his self, brought along chemical imbalance and its accompanying neuroses, I was much more hesitant than is my wont to answer the phone, I was a little bit freaked about my social calendar, and Matt said if he attempted the amount of interaction I maintained with people, it would cripple him.

It's not yet crippled me, but I do have very regular dilemmas of conscience trying to determine my social priorities and feel like I have to constantly justify myself and I'm not sure why. I just like my friends lots and lots and I always want to let them know that they stand highly with me. I've never been easy to pin down, but now there's a person with whom I constantly have to fight the craving to just lie in his arms and ignore all other desires.

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