In case you were thinking; oh wow, T--- did not write for a year, why the sudden post yesterday?
you are misled by my absence here; I wrote letters and even tried to write something for here, but was never satisfied somehow. here is one attempt (from my favorite place - my e-mail draft box):
11/16-17-2017 I woke up early this morning from restless sleep, for the third day in a row and I’m not sure why. I’ve been better about letting things go before bed and falling asleep, sleep through the night. I tell myself “Worrying about tomorrow is not going to help me now or tomorrow. Let it go. Sleep” and this works on some nights. But the last few nights I’m not sure what I’m hanging onto into my slumber which reaches up at four am to say “get up, now is the time. No, you are not rested. Your body wants to stay in bed, your mind wants to return to sleep, but wake up. Wake up” and I do. I spend the next two hours restlessly in bed, dipping my toes into the well of sleep but not being dropped down into the depths to fill up with energy like a bucket fills with water. Yanked up to the surface almost empty to thirsty lips.
after eating some of my pickled tomatoes I remembered: I do not like pickled tomatoes. As a child, I did not like mushrooms, but I told my parents (probably around age six) that I thought I would like them one day. I knew I had the capacity for change, and that is something I am trying to remind myself of now. I made pickled tomatoes, I still do not like them, but other things may change.
I wonder if it startles my mother when I respond to emails she sent me years ago. 48 emails in my inbox not yet responded to, mostly from her and her brother, with only five exceptions. At the crux of it it is because they send me information to review: long stories to read in Russian that I haven't gotten around to, authors to look into but I haven't checked out any books from the library by them, or even glanced at the Wikipedia link - sometimes, that is all the e-mail consists of. A heading and a link to Wikipedia. Sometimes I do get to them - the oldest ones are from 2014. Matt's inbox is the antithesis of this: only two e-mails that are ongoing, everything else archived in as far as I can tell, invisible.
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I don't have a photo from when I wrote that, so here is some mint that I got to grow from the grocery store
Matt likes order. I try to oblige, sometimes - we now try to go grocery shopping on Thursday. Last trip was therefore almost a week ago.
We were checking out and the self scan broke. I just wanted the limes! But the belt couldn't sense them. After we had a highschooler try and help us a couple of times to no avail, I told the guy behind me "at this point you should probably switch. You know that cognitive trick that prevents people from switching because they've invested time in a line? That's the only reason to keep standing here." After a couple more minutes, he nodded at me, acknowledging that it was time to break away, and switched to another lane. The girl behind him i convinced to switch as well. The next guy came, two florescent bottles of fanta in hand. "And they aren't helping you?" he asked, skeptical of my statement that it would probably be a good idea to find another lane "well, they are, but it's not something they can resolve with just swiping the card" (one of those employee override cards) - he broke into a smile understanding that this will not be resolved quickly.
These are banal moments on paper. I suppose they add up and make up the majority of a life, though not the parts that are typically documented in ones memoir. The other day I was sending something for the doctor I work for. His sister had come to visit and purchased a couple pieces of furniture she wanted sent to her home in France. One of these things I have arranged a special company to send it - that can insure something as expensive as this antique, and be gentle with it. To send the folding chair I went to UPS, and while waiting for the Doctor to ok the price of shipping asked the two guys who were working: what's the weirdest thing you've shipped?
Right off the bat: a duck corpse. Frozen, being sent to a taxidermist. He said he had called the infection control people and they said it was fine.
Also: live fish. "I told the girl they would probably die and then when they arrived dead, she called and accused me of murdering her fish. You have to have thick skin"
Almost got to send a plaque of cultural significance, but UPS only insures up to 40 dollars, not the million they needed.
And while I feel that perhaps I have lingered to long in this post-undergraduate limbo, I have to say: I have gotten much better at talking to strangers; those standing in line behind me, those who work jobs similar to mine. And I appreciate that, drink it in.
cheers to the everyday and trying to negotiate order in a disordered world
