13

how i feel tonight about the coming week:

how i'll feel next friday night about that coming week:


how i'm hoping i'm feeling the following friday about the rest of weeks to come:

12

so much in my head with so little coherence to speak of. it took me until i stared at a label on a water bottle in whole foods today for ten minutes before i realized that i'm stressed. and immediately after naming the problem, it . . . well, it didn't disappear, but it got a little better. because fighting something known isn't fun, but it's conceivable at least. you can patch together remedies and coping mechanisms. but when all you know is that your inner voice sounds like a very high-pitched "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafdklajdsfa" noise, it's hard to figure out the next step. but now i know: i'm stressed. super-stressed. the next three weeks are not going to be fun, to say the least. first the bar exam, then that other matter. and i've of course gotten a cold so that my head feels like it's being held in a sumo wrestler's vise and i couldn't sleep last night because of it until 7 am, when the exhaustion finally took over for a few hours, and tomorrow i have to drive seven hours total and charm and dazzle and lord knows that's the last thing i feel up to. but tagging this as stress allows me to take one thing at a time: dig up humidifier, pester the gum-smacking clerk at rite-aid to recommend the best cold remedy for someone who can't take antihistimines or anything in pill form, because they leave her drowsy. yes, even the non-drowsy ones do it. yes, i'm sure. yes, i've tried non-drowsy sudafed. yes, even the new kind, the one without the meth chemical. i've ended up with alka seltzer cold tablets which don't hit me as hard as the other ones seem to. plus, the plop plop makes me feel like it's the 1940s and i'm on a radio commercial. giving all of this jumble a name allows me to go into survival mode, which isn't a sure thing but the surest thing i've got. head down, into the wind, don't stop moving.

speaking of never stopping moving, due to the no sleep until staten island, my brow was especially furrowed today. i've become a bit obsessed with foreheads, because now that i've finally figured out what botoxed faces look like, i see them everywhere. on tv, yes, but off too--there was a lady at panera today whose face. stayed. still. while i'm sitting there in the corner spilling water all over myself, with my hair mussed and papers strewn everywhere. probably no one around me spends so much time people watching, but the contrast was jarring. well, at least for me--i'm not sure she could've moved, could've been moved if she tried.

11

i've composed and deleted about elevenbajillion paragraphs, trying to cleverly write about:

the panic of the next three weeks and the need for diversion and ensuing guilt when it's found, and how the easiest way to feel better seems to be self-bribery, and that's how i ended up buying an old quilt top online today. and it's perfect for the future guest bedroom i hope to have, but i don't even have an official job yet and so this all feels premature. but when i saw that quilt top, i could feel it, could trace the pattern underneath my thumb, and so the returned security deposit from my tenancy for years (not that i have any idea what that really means) dwindles even more.
but worth it, no? yes.;

the trip home this past weekend (so lovely and full of mountains and the bay and skies without a cloud in sight. as i drove into san francisco sunday morning to meet up with amy for brunch, i actually got mad at myself for not wanting to move back there. because there's so much i love about the area and the familiarity and politics and weather and proximity to family and i have no idea why that's not enough, why that can't fit the bill. only that it can't);

that moment when the plane touches down on the runway and we are still hurtling through space, although it's not really space but it feels, for just a split second, like we will never slow down. and how, during night flights, you sometimes find yourself holding your breath and then you notice that the man next to you has caught his breath, too, and then you see that he is holding a copy of the atlantic and his thumb has creased the pages and you feel for a second like there isn't really any difference between you and this man, or the old woman in front of you, or the flight attendant with the tired eyes--that you are all small dots in a bigger image. and then the plane does start to slow, and you contract and retreat and reconfigure;

how all the books i've found myself reading recently have something to do with surgery. at least, that's the only tie i can find between atul gawande and john irving--that both focus on procedures, interventions. and how both are oddly reassuring, even though they aren't exactly full of best-case scenarios. how this must be preparation of some sort, for some part;

how i keep listening to neko case, over and over, even though it makes the room feel hotter and sadder and makes me crave a porch, a cigarette, a vodka tonic in a mason jar (even though i don't even like two out of the three!).

but cleverness doesn't come easy these days. or if it does, it feels artificial and reenacted. so i should go to bed, and get up and work, and lather rinse repeat until the hair squeaks and the stuff is learned. because cleverness doesn't answer multiple choice questions or explain payment systems or even do the grocery shopping, and right now i need its dull cousin consistency by my side.