and other stories

It's Saturday night. I guess it's still reading week? I've decided to come up with something and post it, no matter what, and I'll just think of it as a note to my cousin Emily, who still checks this blog from time to time and asks me about it.

The other day a friend asked if I was coming out of my depression, or getting better, I forget which. I tried to think about it objectively (ha ha ha) and kept second-guessing myself, and then I got choked up and couldn't answer anyway. So maybe I'm getting better but it's going very goddamn slowly. I'm taking my pills every day, as ordered, and eating and sleeping. I've gone back to pilates and a little bit of strength is coming back to my arms and legs. The muscles in my shoulders are tight and I keep hurting myself by working them too hard. I lost too much weight over the winter. My arms look the way they did in high school, narrowing before they reach the top. So heroin chic. So cry for help. But I'm working on it.

My appetite's come back. For a while it came and went and came again, and then I'd scare it away and jesus christ, how I hate to hate the smell of food. For the last week I've eaten well at dinner, which has always been my most important meal. Tonight though, I ordered pizza. Cop-out. I know. I know already!

Last night I talked to Jacob on the phone, which is something I plan ahead of time to spend my evening doing, because somehow long-distance charges don't apply in my head if they're all clumped together. We bought tickets for the comic con in San Diego in July, and made hotel reservations and so on. It's weird. The convention is so packed that you have to plan this far ahead or you won't have anywhere to sleep. We learned that last year when we got off a train in San Diego at three in the morning and had to sneak into a hotel to find somewhere to sit until dawn. But the idea of planning something that won't happen until July feels crazy to me. I can't imagine the end of term, spring break, the summer, at all. I guess I've been going from day to day for a while now. I'm trying to think of another way to put that, that doesn't sound as dramatic, because things haven't been bad enough to feel dramatic for a couple of weeks, at least. I just mean that I focus on the immediate future, like what book to read or whether or not to go out tonight, than I do on far-flung, theoretical ideas like "summer" or "next year".

Though I've had people ask me what I'm going to do when school lets out, and I never have any idea what to tell them. Maybe I'll get to go back to Italy? Maybe not? And New York is an option. There is this San Diego thing, however, because last summer (when I was confident and happy, alack) I decided that I was glad we went, although it was fucking crazy, and that I would go again. So.

My neck and shoulders are killing me right now, frankly. I'll just be frank with you. They're frankly spasming all over the place. I only wish I knew what I did that messed me up so much. Story Of My Life! Cry for Help and/or Attention Positive or Negative Doesn't Matter! I can imagine that being the title of my autobiography, except that it would be so annoying that it would annoy even me and I'd have to scratch it out. Scratch scratch. That's me scratching it.

Hem haw. I'm not sure if should be writing fiction for children right now, instead of this. I mean of course I should, but I'm not sure if I've got a deadline on Tuesday or whatsit. Maybe I have deadlines on Tuesday and Thursday. That'd be slick. I've arbitrarily (or so it feels) decided not to drop my classes and abandon all society as of yet, but who's to say I won't just throw it all away (Oh! All of it! Let's all be criminals!) at the drop of a hat, because Words Don't Come Easily. Etc. For example. (There's no way in hell that I'm reading this over before posting it. I'd die of shame and sorrow. And boredom and confusion. ETC.

But ahm, here's a list of the books I've read lately and what I've thought about them. It being, after all, reading week. See?

Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me: Robert Crumb Letters 1958-1977: I think I only read this because I found it in an used bookstore for cheap. Robert Crumb's art has always sort of freaked me out, though I do have a couple of vintage Crumb t-shirts (given to me by a family friend) that I can never wash and so can never wear. But anyway, these are some very depressing letters, (heigh-ho), for the most part, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I followed them up by renting and watching "Crumb" for the second time, having mostly forgotten it, and found it much more depressing and much less enjoyable as a whole. If only I couldn't understand what anybody was saying, it might have been a soothing documentary about comics. As it was, mood-wise, please shoot me! Okay next!

The Night In Question and The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff: I like his writing. What can I tell you. He writes a lot of semi-autobiographical stuff set in an all-male prep school in the seventies and I like that too, but only in the sickest way possible.

Little Nemo in Slumberland Vol. 1 by Winsor McCay: This is the Big Guns, strip-wise, and I'd seen the most famous pages reproduced a lot but never got a sense of the story or characters. Like for example I always thought Flip and "jungle imp" were the same character. Silly me.

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz: This is my non-fiction for the month. I picked it up because I'm obsessed with the civil war, and Tony Horwitz conveniently wrote this book about people obsessed with the civil war In Our Times. Unfortunately most of the people currently obsessed with the civil war are racist and/or hardcore into dressing up as soldiers, so I still feel fairly alienated. Can't I just moon over Lincoln's speeches and Robert E. Lee's... face? Do I have to look at the bigger issues? Yes? Dang?

The Man who was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton: A delightfully insane little novel written in 1908 about the anarchists who are everywhere and wish to destroy our empire. It features a group of top-notch anarchists named for the days of the week. What's not to love?

The Lost Stradivarius by J. Meade Falkner: Haunted violin story circa 1867? Yes! Complete with lots of fainting spells and the seeing of startlingly pale persons assumed dead but thankfully not dear to one. So I can relate.

The Key Above the Door by Maurice Walsh: I bought this ages ago because, let's face it, it had an attractively faded Penguin cover and a Narnia chronicle-esque name. I assumed it was a 1920s murder mystery or somesuch, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a 1920s love story, set in the brack and breigh-honny or whatever of Scotland, and quite, em, the word is... sexy? And not only that! The author (dead now, but anyway) is said on the back cover to reside "beneath the foothills of the Wicklow mountains" in Ireland. Which is where Daniel Day-Lewis, who I currently have a crush on, totally lives! With me as his wife, I almost added! But that would be creepy!

Now I'm reading some semi-journalistic non-fiction about New York in the seventies. It's like Taxi Driver with all the acting cut-out, so that all you see is shots from a moving car of grimy city streets and prostitutes and Bad Men. It's hypnotic and dismal and won't let up. I'm going to go read some more of it after this.

I really like reading. I just have to remember to keep doing it, or my brain will die. I mean I seriously think that could actually happen to me. Brain death. Keeping it at bay since 1982.

With which, I leave you.

Exeunt!

*dies plentifully*