“So, yeah, I figured you were insanely busy since you are writing about 10% of what you used to write.”

Last night I stayed in. I cleaned up, washed the dishes, made myself some chicken-plus-basil for dinner, took a bath, and read a light, easy book all evening, feeling guilty because I was breaking a sacred promise, but also feeling so exhausted and worn out that I knew the decision was for the best. I felt warm and calm and unflurried.

Ever take one of those chakra tests? I take them every so often, now that my friend w2 introduced them to me. And all my chakras tend to be aligned with the two exceptions: consistent hyperextension in “throat,” and consistent lack in “root.” In fact, my root chakra tends to descend into the negative zone. This makes sense to me, since I spend most of my life feeling dreadfully unrooted… to the extent that my last thesis was titled “adrift.” To battle this, I recognize that I sometimes need to take those evenings to sit and feel a part of a still space and a still mentality.

My thesis advisor wrote an email yesterday in which she said that she thought I might be fighting a new opening in my writing, albeit she doesn’t know what that opening is. Maybe one of the things I’m fighting is the realization that if I’m going to find that opening, a great deal of time is going to be needed, and I’m not sure where I can find that time.

In letterpress, we are working on a project in which we need to come up with two words. The two words have to belong together somehow, but whether it’s as oppositions or parts of each other or twists on each other… is up to us. One of these words we set in a Serif font, all capitals, in the center of a page. The other of these words we set in a Sans Serif, caps and lowercase, asymmetrically, with an ornament and two colors. The presentation (paper) needs to reflect the relationship of the words, as does the alignment of the second word. I have spent two weeks on this project – at least 10 out-of-class hours, and have not even adequately set the words up in the press.

Some of my word choices were:

OBSTRUCT//abstract
BALLETS//ballast
EMERGENCY//emergence
GATHER//mob
ASSEMBLE//dissemble

And so forth. I finally decided on a different word pair that I will share when I’ve finished the project. I’m diggin’ my word choices, but am amazed by how much thought goes into setting up a mere two words on one page each. Maybe this is what is slowing me down right now, the commitment it takes to decide on two words, the overthinking that can go into a single choice.

I have been to three exhibits, three galleries, and a play within the last two weeks, and just thinking about them all makes my head spin. I have read seven chapters on five surrealist exhibitions and just imagining them overwhelms me. I have read four novel-in-progress chapters, reworked one of my own, and written six responses to various readings. I’ve thrown one party, gone to several, including an opening that involved both a punk band that told us all to “go fuck ourselves,” and an experimental jazz band with a red-head who played the saxophone with his eyes completely closed the whole time.

I’ve read the news every day, watched a conspiracy documentary that left me with confusion, and everything is tense right now, what with 50 people killed yesterday in Iraq, and thousands buried in mud, and some in riots about cartoons (I changed my stance on that one; I don’t think it was about freedom of speech, at least not all of it. I think it was about flexing muscles when the neck was already in the headlock), and sea levels rising. Not to mention Bush making every decision I hate, and people cheering Cheney to express their solidarity (having grown up around guns – yes, I was a sharpshooter – I must express my distain for the casual stupidity it takes to shoot a friend who is within eyesight. Kudos for breaking the “look first” rule). The news alone is enough to cause paralysis, watching what comes… at least a man was able to marry his neighbor’s goat, for heaven’s sake.

But I’ve also eaten a raspberry-sundae slowly.

And I think she is lovely. I don’t understand, I can’t see through, I don’t make the same connections, I move differently, I know much less in some ways, I’m scared and notscared, but most importantly, I don’t have a clue anymore how to act around someone I want to let in. The realization that I have been inside my brain/body for so long that it’s only the people who already know my brain/body who can access me, including me. Not that I’m complex or closed off, but that I’m private. And so is she. But we dance together.

In other words, I’m going to have to buck up soon and start to focus, and put all the pieces together somehow, and let them sink inside and root me to something firm and solid and risky and opening and all of that. Oh my. let's find the balleyhoo, j!