Jan 29, 2009

1/29/2009 - The Cheesiest

For lunch today I had a quesadilla. Cheez-its were my midday snack. And for dinner? Thick n' creamy macaroni and cheese. I whole-heartedly fear that there may be something seriously defective with my inner wirings. 

And it's in my head, too, these serious defects. In a fit of laziness I stayed laying on the couch after The Office and 30Rock (re-runs; suck it, NBC) and watched Private Practice. I will hand it to you that these night-time soaps are engaging - if not down-right addictive - but you will never catch me saying that they are written with any great degree of skill or integrity. That said, I get particularly harried when I find myself really feelin' a monologue; like, if I weren't being a lazy couch-bum I would be nodding my head vigorously, if not standing up and pumping my fist. 

It makes me question my very being. Here I am groovin' on how much holier I am than this lousy nighttime drama stuff, and then I find myself really going along with it. I don't know how I'm supposed to maintain my lofty and emotionally shut-off position when hit prime-time television shows keep speaking to my soul.

I struggle with this. In the aftermath of a middle and high school career marked most prominently by moody journaling, I live with a complex about my emotions. I question what I really have the right to be feeling and what I'm trumping up to the cataclysmic levels of Grey's Anatomy (where everybody cries about everything, all the time, no matter what); I wonder whether what I feel is good and true emotion or just me searching for attention. 

Sometimes I comfort myself by thinking about The Cosby Show. The one where the wife (what's her name?) finally goes off about how a woman has emotions and she can express those emotions however she wants and whenever she wants because no matter what, they're inside her somewhere and she's feeling them, which means they're legitimate. This comes at the climax of the show, once she's had her fill of all the male characters ragging on her about how she's moody because of her lady-times. 

I want that confidence; it seems like it would do me well. Even if I was moody and weepy and the sort, at least I wouldn't feel bad about it. At least the feeling of emotion at all wouldn't wear me down. But then, I figure (if for no other reason than to wrap this up neatly), that's what I've got the cheese for: to cushion the wiring. 

Jan 8, 2009

1/8/2009 - My Hawaiian Ass

On a rock in a tide pool at a picnic area on the beach in Hawaii I slipped and landed - hard - on my sorry tuckus. Jostled into a momentary stupor, I watched my sun glasses fly from their perch atop my forehead and land in the shallow pool in front of me. My breath was momentarily knocked from my chest and my skull wobbled clumsily atop my neck. 

Even as extreme pain shot through my lower regions,  I was thinking to myself that I had just pulled a truly tourist-class stunt. Admittedly, I was a tourist; but a tourist, nonetheless, who had grown up around oceans and tide pools and really ought to know better by now than to wear rubber-soled shoes while walking on wet ocean rocks. 

I stole a glance at my family happily picnicking on a grassy knoll above the tide pools, thankfully oblivious to my wipeout. I bit my tongue, gingerly transferred myself to a more purposeful-looking seated position atop a dry rock nearby, and began the task of pretending that my coxis didn't feel like it had hordes of munchkins pressing on it from all sides.

Earlier that same day we had visited a place, the significance of which I do not know; all that I can tell you is that it involved a view of a staggeringly high cliff, the ocean below. The scene from the road along was breathtaking in the  looking-at-this-I-feel-tiny-and-insignificant way, not the I-just-bit-it-on-a-wet-rock-and-now-I-might-never-walk-straight-again way. Perhaps more than the view, however, I enjoyed spending a few choice moment patting this fine fellow - a true Hawaiian Ass:



Today (a good week later) climbing stairs no longer induces quite the same degree of burning pain, but there is a definite sensation of having pulled my left gluteus maximus. This makes ascending stairs, bending over and standing on one leg all very uncomfortable. I never noticed it before, but as luck would have it it is my habit to simultaneously bend over and stand on one leg every day to put on my skivvies, socks, pants, etc. Never before have I so desired to remain naked in bed. 

For all that it is humid and warm and green and beautiful, what I liked best about Hawaii was the fauna. Tiny green geckos with red spots and blue gecko eye shadow, hefty wild turkey-looking things, herons grazing with the cattle, sea turtles, wild cats, giant snails, mongooses, striped fish, dolphins, crabs and any number of exotic creatures captured my fancy more than anything else. I feel funny about this, since being hung up on the creatures of Hawaii seems like I'm neglecting to see the forest for the mammalian trees. 

I think there's a little light somewhere in the back of my brian that snaps on when I get around animals, though, and animals were around virtually every Hawaiian corner. Risking sounding like the crazy cat lady I am destined to be, I feel more calm around animals; I think it's the simple act of being in the presence of something that does not speak and that does not expect me to speak to it. 




I like to be quiet; to be in the presence of quiet beings.