fractiles

a truly random collection of thoughts. i suppose some bloggers have only worthwhile things to say. not the case with me. it has occured to me that quite a bit lately i am taking a "ha ha ha, c'est la vie!" attitude. for example, when i sprained my ankle, almost immediately after i was smiling wryly down at my injured limbs, reveling in the newness of their bloodied and bruised appearance, taking a shrug-your-shoulders-and-let-it-go type of attitude. but this is a big pattern lately. is the only alternative to complain and imagine 'if only...' scenarios? i'm sort of getting sick of this ha-ha bit. it seems sort of callous in a strange way. like i've been disappointed too much? ahh, Big Fish musings. it ocured to me while i was watching snippets of big fish this weekend while babysitting that the scenes where he visits that strange town where no one wears shoes sort of reminds me of my little spiritual revolutions. the second time ewan passes through the city it is deserted and dead, and the narraration says something like, places look different at different times in a man's life. that's kind of what happened to the framework of christianity in my life a bit, if, as i do like to do, i pin my situation on a story. i might explain that more later if i get desperate urgings. and the grand finale to this short blip: a quote from my friend that i do not want to forget because it is so darn funny: a book entitled "too lazy to work, too nervous to steal" (think about that); and, a recent 100% original quote from my brother "I will be so much happier when i am unemployed." this was said very early in the morning too. my clever brother. second thought, i would also like to mention my annoyance with the excessively original photos on myspace. yes, put on a bathing suit and point at your belly button and grin like a three year old. better yet, artistically stand on a ladder and wave. look sullen and wear a black shirt. for goddness sakes people: mugshots only please.

twists of fate, ankles, necks

while riding my bike home from work yesterday my handlebar got a bit too close to a very inconspicuous bright orange plastic fence and with a skid and a boom, next thing i know both my palms are on the ground, bracing my face inches from the cement. fierce pain in my ankle and the fear that my leg was broken took over as i half sat up and saw my leg pinned at a funny angle beneath the bike. moving it just a little bit told me it wasn't and on the second attempt was able to lift my bike up and slide my injured leg out. the major damage was i twisted my ankle and developed an egg of inflammation beneath my outer ankle bone. i bruised my knee up and tweaked it but it isn't taking center stage away from the ankle. the other minor actors are one scuffed up palm and one deeply bruised palm. there are some other scrapes and bruises, but the director is a tough one to impress and so they are not making the bill. the inflammatory egg is the one to pay attention to because eventually he will die, and you will applaud when he does because he's a nasty beast. the cards are stacked against him from the beginning because the director emphasizes the roles of ice and elevation and their character development is played out strongly. while i was still on the ground, i immediately thought about the backpacking trip on schedule for next week. will i still go? should i call my friend right away and tell her we may have to postpone or should i wait and see how bad it is? come to find out, she is suffering from twisting her neck as of this morning. we both get twisted joints within 12 hours of each other. and we are both losing a day's wage. my meager livelihood (sp?) depends on me being able to get up and down from sitting on the floor easily and often carrying twenty pounds or so. and realistically this happens like twenty times an hour. i can't even swing my own body weight easily right now, much less a child too. hopefully it will heal fast. i am using my dad's highly suspect wonder remedy - DMSO, a major anti-inflammatory used on horses. give a shout if you want some Grace...

yeee-ouch!

this afternoon i had a little appointment with the dentist. This amounted to $315 dollars and three white fillings, and, dare i say, a slightly profound realization? I am a rather squirmy patient. When he injects the anathesia (you know what i mean) with that long needle and i feel and visualize that the needle is in so far it is going to poke my eyeball, i tend to bang my sharply contracted ankles rhythmically on the foot rest. when a sharp poker suddenly slides off my tooth and lodges into my gum line, my entire back politely rears up in sympathy. i'll tell you who else gets my sympathy: the woman who polished my teeth. she wears some nifty protective shades, but i think her entire forehead and hairline was sprinkled with my saliva, and who knows who elses. what a job. I think i'd wear a welding mask. the doc sure shot me up good with that anasthesia though. my eye and nose went numb along with my upper lip, not top mention feeling no pain when he drilled away like a third of my tooth. i never got that much before. that indian didn't mess around. so, the profoundness: when i was squirming and continually tensed up for the next pain, i observed my mind being totally absorbed in my body's tension and anticipation of pain. Then I decided, why don't i try to be a little more effective and use my mind to help calm my body? Don't let the pain invade my mind and terrify my thoughts, but instead try to funnel my thoughts toward identifying and relaxing the tension my muscles, slowing the breath; not get my mind wound up with fearing pain, don't let my mind drift away. oh, wise zen master amy has delivered another obvious and sappy sermon from the mount, you say. listen here you little "old soul" you, we don't want your yoga hocus-pocusy hype, you say. que profundis, welcome to how everyone operates all the time, you say, you have cracked your tooth on the hard shell of "duh." idiot. profound as an empty peanut shell. again. Oh. other monkey-mind dentally-inspired thoughts: when i saw him test the syringe by pushing a perfect silvery drop of anathesia out through that long skinny needle, i immediately thought about a fat epideral needle, and all the pain associated with giving birth to a child, and how this comparatively teeny pinching is so negligable considering the pain of pregnancy and delivery. part of me wants to think it is a beautiful woman experience, and if i'm calm and breath and prepare mentally i won't be overwhelmed by it. but part of me fears it very deeply, knowing i do not handle pain or drugs well, or thoughts of what could go wrong (episiotomy.). better continue guarding the eggs from sperm for the time being. absolutely no admitance to the ovaries for carriers of highly suspicious "just visiting" passes. good plan.

perfect blog material

so i was out last night with a fellow by the name of cheeky and a group of friends. To debunk the myth i made, he showers, brushes his teeth, has taken exactly one yoga classs, and eats the dead flesh of our animal friends. he also has a strong columbian accent and is apparently quite the dancer, as he is not shy to admit. so let me paint the dramatic scene of my undoing in which i virtually nudified myself to a batch of mostly stranger: a group of five of us are sitting in a brazilian bar/cafe and the conversation is very lively because cheeky and i keep saying these random things and trying to convince everyone of the veracity of our lies. oh this is so funnny - like i said to him "people usually think that i am rude and unpleasant the first time they meet me too" (meaningful emphasis on "too"), and then backed it up with a bunch of lies about my first-time-meeting behavior. at this point he had already shared some rather personal details about his late entrance into the world of puberty. anyhow, in what i think is a moment of truth after a spiel relating to his body image problem growing up, Cheeky makes the startling confession that at the ripe age of 29, he is a virgin, and point-blank asks me if i am too. i hedge a bit and the other two at the table (a couple) volunter that they are too. these are friends of friends, so i think, perhaps they are part of a fundamentalist group of some sort, so then i say yes. amazement over all our virginity status is the topic of the table, and then something i say triggers one of them to say, "wait, you really are a virgin?" and i say yes (truth sinks in at this point), and then the table falls a bit silent. right-o. needless to say at this point, i was of course the only one telling the truth on that one. my friend that i drove with had to be up early so we cut the evening short. we left pretty quick. i think the most painful part was that they were embarassed for me and felt like jerks, and there was a strange strain after all this hilarifying (hilarious/horrifying) honesty. i didn't really care. i mean, if people ask, i spill the beans about pretty much anything, i choke on the beans because i'm trying to get them out so fast. i would have prefered that bean to stay down a little longer, but it makes for some ideal blog material in my opinion - bittersweetly true, heartbreakingly funny, annoyingly revealing, dashingly brave, and perhaps just a few sips of a margarita involved to take the sting off. yes, i was glad there was a drink in front of me that had so much lime in it it made my teeth hurt and my throat burn. i took courtesy sips and gave the rest to that cheeky liar. no solice in a drink for me. don't mess with texas, that is the lesson here. **I have to add that "horius" (horrifying/hilarious) has a bit of a ring to it too, which perhaps will find us if i continue in this intimately-honest-on-first-dates vein. i do not mean at all to imply a silent and scandelous "w" on that one either. hmm. perhaps three words need to be combined to get the correct effect and not mislead. virhorious. hillarifyinggin. in the absence of good punctuation and grammar the english major must take refuge in fictitious language. okay, okay, i'm really done. this is nuticulous, but really pretty funtaining. i'm rather engused by my new-up crart... okay - i'm almost done. i just have to quickly admit (here come more beans), all this wordage really does have a scary sliver of truth. the other day i totally was making up words at work and then repeating them back to myself silently and really thinking, is that a word? and having no idea.

gameliness and gimics

This is how I would describe date #3 which finally took place last night. All outward appearances, he is ambitious, hard-working, forward-looking, educated, and yes, attractive... but somehow my bells were not rung. For all his schooling and impressive job status, he still seems to be the mental equivilent of a 19 year old. I think about my careful deliberations over clothes and appearance and whether or not to make plans for later in the evening as an escape pod, and now understand the deep irritation of the single woman, the continual feeling of anticipation disapppointed. The feeling of rolling my eyes at all my hopeful pre-date planning. What a bunch of silly crap, I'm sorry. I'm debating whether to sucumb (sp?) to the whispers of maybe it's me and lead a life of seclusion or keep at this actively-throwing-myself-in-the-game plan. Is this a decision best made from sidelines or from the heat of the game? One of my friends is very excited to set me up with one of her yoga students, a fellow by the name of "Cheeky." She practiced saying this to me "'Amy and Cheeky,' isn't that cute?" Cheeky. Cheeky. I'm picturing the phone call that I am thinking of inevitably delaying: CHEEKY (this part shall be played by a skinny vegan with intensely tight hamstrings. His yoga practice will be characterized by an seriousness and jerky transitions, and he will breath very loudly, exhaling the decay his organic mint toothpaste is not up to task of combating. of course eshews showering as it "strips away my body's natural oils and scents") AMY (this part shall beplayed by a confused looking brunette who shoots dirty looks at loud mouth breathers during spinal twists, and occasionally mutters evil-sounding epitaphs like "a pox on you and all your family." she is characterized by her ability to convolute any spoken sentence with the humble filler of "i don't know" and the ever-present "you know?") Cheeky: "Hi, is this amy?" Amy: "Yes. I mean, uh, I don't know, who is this? (italic denote a suspicious tone) C: "Uh, this is Cheeky. Amber gave me your number. She said she told you I would be calling." A: "Oh, hello...right. Cheeky." C: "Amber said you are a silly single girl contemplating a monastic way of life while changing the lives of young children who likes to go on the occasional date and enjoys shopping the organic isles. So, what would you like to do?" A: "I don't know. Maybe we could, I don't know, go get coffee. I don't know. what do you think?" C: Well, I was thinking that we could go to Whole Foods and get some whey-free garden seasoned ground tofu and eat it with the sprouts i started growing last month. I also have some pesticide, hormone and non-GMO strawberries that we could mix with some soy protein powder, providing you do not mind if i mix in the stems. I like to use the whole fruit. I have a very interesting documentary on the state of poutry farms...wait, your not a meat-eater are you?" A: Oh, um, I'm not sure about that right now, you know? Sort of, I guess. I mean, lately I've been sort of, you kow, sticking to a policy of eating what's in front of me if I'm at, you know, a person's house or if the food's pre-ordered or whatever and i don't you know have a choice or anything, but i don't really, you know, like order meat in restauants or cook it for myself, you know? C: (silence) a: Uh, hello? c: (stuttering, possibly disguising tears?) The-the-the lukewarm I will spit out of my mouth! a: uh, excuse me? oh, uh, i'm sorry, uh, Cheeky, i mean, Christ? uh, uh, ummmm-hold on please, i have another call- okay, okay, I'm probably the only one laughing at this point. Let me just slightly defend my little pretend conversation gimic by saying that i am slightly under the influence of dave eggers having just read epic "heartbreaking work of staggering genious" i mena genius of course. [This was retracted due to the fact that i actually went out with this dude not once but twice more!! It is back by popular request - it was touted as 'funny' by a dear friend!! anyhow, i think possibly some of the unconstructive criticism in the first paragraph could be construed as mean spirited, and i am willing to say that no, i am not perfect either, and may one day find myself the subject of a less than nice blog. i almost want to! I love to criticize myself,and how much more fun would it be to read criticism of me that i am not supposed to se? true, honest, unsparing criticism. how long has it been since i have gotten that? long time. please, tell me i am ugly, that my eyebrows are funny shapes, my laugh unseemingly, my vocabulary pitiful, my breath rank, my printing sloppy, my mind an utter mess, my sense of timing flawed, my facial expressions rude, my conversation dull, my eyes murky, my toes too long, my posture wretched, my table manners horrifying. i'll take it. i will.] Added 8/2/05ish.

in the event of untimely death

last night as i attempted to go to bed slightly early and could not sleep [see #1], a small list of complaints against the world began to form, beginning with: 1. neighbors who let their dogs bark all night. i don't know what is worse - the consistent barking or the intermittent. why can't they learn a song? 2. the recent arm wrestling contest i had with my sister, which she won. unfair on all accounts, as i am the one who can do the pushups and i am the one lifting kids all day. (of the potential, highly logical reasons i have concocted, the most likely one seems to be her long monkey arms. this is a matter of unfair leverage.) bottom line, i am stronger then her! she does ninny pushups with horrible form and flexes her apparently newly-formed miniscule triceps with pride while she pokes it with her finger. is this fair that in the presence of my brother i am humiliated by my larger though less strong sister?!?! another general annoyance: i am a good three inches shorter than anyone in my immediate family!?! i am stronger then her!!! 3. cremation, and coffins too. this suddenly this seems horrific. i am not going to sugar coat this. there is no way that i want to rot inside a box, or be pushed into a fire by someone who doesn't even know me. i would not want anyone who survives me to be burdened with that imagery. i'd prefer to be buried coffin-less and for the armies of decay to feast on my delicious flesh, eating away my dying atoms and then somehow i will merge with the universe, relax into a million bits of unconscious life. or i think that i should like to don only a sheet and be dropped into the ocean. imagine the stories that can spring from this... perhaps i was swallowed by a whale, deposited on some distant unearthly shore on the other side of life (which actually, thanks to biblical revisionist history and modern mammalography we know is not actually possible; a whale's oral anatomy being far to narrow to support such behavior; however i do not think that this is widely accepted in my right-winged family, this could happen...). Or, we don't know all there is to know about our deep oceans. perhaps there is a special mammal out there, employed for just this reason, and it is a magnificent golden charrioter deal. (i can't tell you how fascinted i was as a kid by marianna's trench and the loch ness monster) or, perhaps i am resting in the eternal watery womb of the ocean, the source of nurturing, having the watery gently swaying mind of the ocean. sharing my flesh with all in need, much like the hokey little "Rainbow Fish" story. [although hey, they shared with me too when i had need of food] these scenarios would definitely take place after all usable organs were tugged out of their alotted regions, a reward for faithful service. we're about teamwork here, but if the liver's still good, it's got a new assignment. not break time yet. i don't know how i feel about research, donating my body to science. i wouldn't want to be soaked in stinky stuff and prodded, honestly. and even worse, i wouldn't want the loved ones to wonder about that, or about crude med school humor, or about the seasoned interns who might somehow spill their tomato on me or cookie crumbs or something.

gross? ah, dark have been my thoughts of late... anyhow, i was thinking about it, so i'm documenting my wishes. bottom line is that i want to be an active participant in the circle of life (and it moves us all, lalalala) and i want there to be pleasant imagery for my kin, a beginners manual having been provided above. perhaps the blog is not the appropriate forum for this, but here it is public now, not subject to the murkey contents of a possibly never-read journal (oh lord i hope never read!). and who else would i tell about this? i mean, if i make it to old age i am sure i will formalize this and frame it or whatever, but what if i die young?

haha - how far i have fallen from my inital blog wish to re-savor the best part of each day.