Last night, I walked home in the rain in slippery flip flops after sitting through the most painful theater experience I've ever suffered through. I'm passing a kidney stone. I have more projects on my plate than I really want, and can't seem to get a single one wrapped up and off the list. My laptop power cable tanked, and I've been too tightly budgeted to afford a new cable until just recently, so I've been without nonn-work-based surfing for weeks - freakin' Mercury retrograde! My nose is being rubbed in the fact that I can't do everything I want to do, and that moreover, because I have made choices, certain things will inevitably suffer. I don't have time for all the people I want to have time for. At the same time, part of me is lonely in a way that not every molecule of love held by the dear ones in my life can assuage. Lately, every time I want to enjoy my city, I am thwarted by mouth-breathing jackass tourists. I am increasingly sickened in my soul that so many people are dying uselessly in the Middle East - whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, or Lebanon; I am sometimes even more frightened of those who live through those atrocities. My neck seems to be perpetually tied in burning knots. I am restless, sad, furious, and frightened.
I have written fully ten new tunes in the past two weeks, rediscovering that prolific writer part of myself, to my joy. I am breathing poetry and lyrics out daily, and rebuilding my musical and creative work ethics. I am marinating my brain in Sufi poetry, pan-religious philosophy and comparative mythology, trashy urban fantasy and literary treasures I haven't read in yeeears. My cats and I have remembered how to play....good for laughter and smiles, not so much for the scratches on my hands and arms. My hair is long enough to put up in a pony tail again, and I'm still resisting the urge to cut it - by Yule, it should technically be "long" again! Through the beauty of eBay and thrift shopping, I have managed to procure a summer wardrobe that makes me happy - trendy gauchos and babydolls and cute crop cargos. I am kicking ass and taking names at the office, tackling new projects and accounts and feeling good about what I'm doing (or as much as I can considering what it is I do for a day job). My plants are doing tremendously - snapdragons are blooming, baby's breath is blooming, I have a bumper crop of basil and four peapods! I start bellydance classes next week; I am creating an area in my house for a dedicated movement space; my new Qi Gong DVD should arrive next week; the Bean (a bean-shaped stability ball) and I have been doing some core-building workouts. John Mayer's new album comes out in just over a month, and the single still makes me head spin; I can't wait to hear the rest of it. The political atmosphere smells of regime change, and I think Republicans may just get a rude awakening come November.
Life is shit, sure. But there's still so much to be grateful and joyful about!
Over the weekend, I caught "Hackers," which I haven't seen since it first came out, when I loved every inch of it. It was so badass! The music was awesome, the costumes were so edgy, the characters glamorized versions of people I actually sort of knew back in the day when that kind of thing was still newish and the concept of open source anything was ludicrous. I was amused by the all the handles ("Crash Override" "Zero Cool" "Cereal Killer" "Lord Nikkon" "Acid Burn") (snicker, snicker), and then started to go back over my own nommes de guerre: "zippy" with no capital Z, which I picked wholly at random and for no reason other than I liked it (I still use it on high score lists); then briefly "Buffy," long before the Slayer was more than an obscure, mildly amusing Kristi Swanson movie - more because I liked the irony of such a shi-shi name for my at-the-time way poshless self; next was "Jedeigha," a horrible AOL nick I pulled directly from my hiney and used in much lurkage because I thought it seemed exotic and slightly mysterious; after that was "haritari," a combination of my name and a perversion of Japanese suicide that can still occassionally be found attached to my personage here and there. That brings me to my current roster of handles, used for various purposes and in various places. I could disclose them here, but why waste good paranoia, what with my tendency to pick up internet stalkers?
Back to the movie, though - I also forgot how adorable Johnny Lee Miller can be. I quite like him. Loved him in "Hackers," bought him hook/line/sinker in "Mansfield Park," and even enjoyed that crapfest "Plunkett & Macleane." I almost forgot he was the bad guy in "Aeon Flux." Good stuff.
Anyway, "Hackers" put me on a computer geek kick, and I had to go back and do my yearly re-read of the BOFH. This time, though, I hit the Wikipedia, which put the BOFH in a fascinating perspective - to me, it's always been this sort of obscure piece of geek culture that you sort of had to know someone or stumble onto because you were wading through the deepest dark recesses of the internet to be familiar with....but there on the Wikipedia, it's all linked up and neat and analyzed for the world to see. Amazing.
That little voyage of rememberance led me to a refresher course on internet slang, where I giggled to myself over phrases I haven't seen, let alone typed, in years....like "roffle my woffles" and "plox" and "suxxorx" and "teh roxx!!!!1" I mean, back in teh day, sure....but I just haven't been in the recreational computage for so long, that the whole thing seems so young and silly to me. Oy. Between moments like that, recognizing that I've been out of high school ten years now, and suffering from all manner of horrid health complaints such that they're the first thing I mention when asked how I'm doing....yeah, I feel so old. Sooooooo very old.
List of Oddball Experiences (for my own reference, and your entertainment and perhaps gratitude)
1. Dude gives me whole sob story, asks me for money, gets a couple bucks from me. Asks for my number, as if I'm going to date a pandhandler. Dude walks me back to my building, gives me his number despite my telling him it will be going in the first trash can I pass.
2. Propositioned by 50-year-old beat poet in bar, who talks dirty in my ear for twenty minutes, refuses to accept a polite declination, and tries to convince me to grab his package - which he's certain will change my mind.
3. Manhandled by obviously crazy old woman trying to steal my blanket on Greyhound to Miami.
4. Midnight, walking home from the el, pass this dude on the street who spends the next ten minutes trying to talk me into sleeping with him for money. I wasn't even dressed like a prostitute!
5. Accosted by old, drunken dude who tried, in broken English, to convince me to commit a little adultery with him, because his wife was old and wouldn't put out. His best line: "I like you!"
Well, that's enough of that for the moment. I'm creeping myself out!
Recent entries...
27 December 2007: 2007: Finis.
17 December 2007: A ruse, a rant, and a poem. It's short.
11 December 2007: Music & falling....story of my life.
08 December 2007: Briefly...ish.
29 November 2007: A poem, a rant, a lesson.