Shaggy Dog; No Keys

I was singing a little tune today on the way to work and my voice cracked. This is what happens when you spend the night before in a musty old bar drinking pints with your coworker and smoking some two hundred cigarettes in quick succession, talking shit about everything and especially about yourselves. It was astonishing how quickly the conversation came around to religion (and 'Spirituality', of course); what usually takes a solid four hours of throwing 'em back was accomplished in a matter of 45 minutes, and then I stumbled home. I can't quite piece together what happened after that, but I remember having an incredibly intense discussion with Dan about him and me and the nature of Us and what he does and not love about me. And by intense discussion I mean I quizzed him on the depths and breadths of his love for me and asked questions that have no good answers. (I remember only that the personal feature I most need to work on is my feet.) Then we had a play fight about something or another, which ended when I stormed into the bedroom, hauled out our largest suitcase, threw my toothbrush in, put on sunglasses and stomped into the night. Barefoot and in pyjamas, it goes without saying. Then I realized I had no follow up plan. So I stood around flapping my arms because I realized that I didn't have my keys. A few moments later, Dan kindly went to the trouble of opening the door, coming outside, telling me I'm an idiot and insisting that I come back inside. Obviously this was all great fun to me. Jury's still out on whether I get to sleep in bed tonight.

Anyway, my voice cracked this morning and then I thought, perhaps I need to be just be still for a minute. With my humming and buzzing and jittering and snuffling and coughing and talking and talking and talking I sometimes feel like I'm trying to disguise myself as a whole city, in order not to hear myself think too clearly. Sometimes I think I use my voice so often and for the wrong things that I can't even remember what I'm trying to say. This mostly happens at work. Work at our office constitutes a "challenge" the way that slamming your face into a wall is an "uphill battle." Sometimes I feel like my real self is being subsumed into this creature I become at work, this feathered reptile that has evolved to fit into an absurd world, adapted to these improbable conditions . What kind of person do you become if you spend fifty hours a week in a place where people sitting ten feet apart write each other electronic letters? And where people answer the phone with that particular sing-song tone fall, the one that signifies fuck all except that you are on the phone, a fact that any jackass on the other end could have told you anyway. It exhausts me to go to work in the morning, but it also exhausts me to leave again. Mostly because, on my way out, I realize that THAT is where I just spent one whole precious day that I have to live on God's green earth.

But the POINT is that my voice cracked this morning and since I couldn't sing I wandered down the street and hummed, instead.

It's Amazing I'm Not Dead Yet

I fidget.

I can't sit still for two minutes unless I'm drunk or terribly ill. And even then I twitch my feet under the blankets and look around every five seconds like a driver checking his mirrors.

I'm a klutz, with all the natural grace of a newborn rhino. I can't pass a sobriety test sober. True story? I'm such a spazz that a highschool teacher once sent me to the nurse to have my inner ears tested. Like, to see if my problem was actually medical, like it could be explained or even treated. To be fair, she did the right thing. People in class were talking about me. That's because, a week before, on a class trip to Venice, I had accidentally rolled backwards off a bed. I was sitting when I fell. The next morning, I had done a sort of tumble into traffic while walking down a wet stone sidewalk. And the day after that, I tripped flamboyantly over a chain barrier in the middle of a cathedral and landed, loudly, on the floor. (In my defense, I was gaping at the ceiling and turning around slowly in circles. Anyone would have fallen over.) On the last day, the whole class went and took pictures on the Rialto Bridge, only I wasn't allowed to sit on the ledge. Fact.

Still, my walk home today was something special.

It was already dark out and I was rushing home with great purpose, barreling across Stephansplatz and thinking about nothing and narrowly missing strangers' shoulders. Then I tripped.

"Gaargh!". It was right by the side of the church, where the Fiaker line up their horses and carriages. You see, I have these boots with floppy straps that had come undone, and somehow my right foot had gotten stuck on a loop of leather on my left foot and I basically heaved myself onto my face, except at the very last moment I threw both my feet forward and sort of caught myself in this awkward two-footed stomp. I landed with a yelp and somehow managed to spook one of the horses, this little piebald mare, who totally freaked me out 'cos she freaking whinnied at me and reared a little, and she was wearing a harness and everything, so then that all clattered together, and then the second horse neighed and started hopping up and down. The driver just looked at me and shook his head.

But not for long because the horses had started to skitter into traffic and then cars were honking and people were staring. I laughed and tried to do this casual, falling-on-your-face-and-causing-a-traffic-jam-with-horses-is-totally-the-new-cleavage walk but that was pretty much an epic fail because about four seconds later one of my purse straps got caught on this fire hydrant and I did one of those things where your feet walk off without you (I hate those) and had to go back and untangle my bits.

Oh, and then I nearly got hit by a tram because my hat is too big and when it slips down I can´t see or hear properly and I sort of stepped off onto the tracks and the tram driver dinged at me and stared. Dude, even his walrus mustache was judging me.

Long story short? My accessories are totally trying to kill me.

When did summer get so damn short?

I haven't written anything in, like, two weeks which just goes to show how much discipline I have. I was out of town for work but mostly just kind of lost in space, too.

Does that ever happen to you? It just turned cold and windy here, and dark too, and I think some of that fog seeps into everyone, and then you get the vapors. That's what they used to call depression -- having the vapors. I think it rings more true than "depression," although it must mean something that both those words have something to do with bad weather.

According to the Free Dictionary, the archaic meaning of "vapors" is "something insubstantial, worthless, or fleeting," or "a fantastic or foolish idea" --and I think that that's fucking beautiful and exactly how I feel about summer when it's disappearing. The whole rush of sap to the leaves and the whole glutting your sorrow on the "rainbow of the salt sand-wave" thing feels like it had just started again, and now its over. It's especially noticeable in this town, where as soon as its October everyone stops grinning and slows way down and hunches into themselves and lets their summer dreaming evaporate.

The other day I was leaving work and as I crossed onto the central square next to the cathedral there were these two mimes standing on wine crates up ahead. A tiny man and a tiny woman. It was a faded out day, gray and pale. He was dressed as a silver sailor and she was a silver 19th century whore, and they had painted their hair and hats and faces silver too. And facing them, there were these two old Tibetan monks in wheelchairs, their golden robes fluttering at the edges in the wind. The monks sat slumped in their silver framed chairs, smiling beatifically into the middle distance just past mimes' faces. I made sure I left before anyone moved.

I was in Lebanon last week. I'd never been.

From above, the city of Beirut looks like a hot stone bowl that has melted into the sea on one side. The traffic is chaos, and fast. The honking comes in triplets on the small streets, one car after another, and on the highways it's constant. Not rude, but a matter of courtesy: I am coming quickly from behind, and we all just want to get where we're going, so make way.

At one point I was in a taxi, tearing down a one lane curved canyon road, no barriers, going 130 km per hour. We flew past a speed limit sign that read 30. I looked at the cab driver with a raised eyebrow and he actually took his hands off the wheel to shrug -- that crazy motherfucker -- and tell me that in Lebanon, the street signs and the painted lanes are "just a picture."

He told me I could never drive in Lebanon, because I would die. "If you follow the rules -- blink left, turn, blink right, turn, slow down for red lights, pass on the right [sic] then you will be die in five minutes. No shit," he said. "I am only safe if I am the fastest."

Now we were on the main road that runs from the northern suburbs into the city, weaving like a missile between old Mercedes and naked-looking old minivans, racing fast BMWs and at one point, briefly, a bright yellow Ferrari. Marwan rarely took his hand off the horn.

"You are still late?" he asked, as we came level with the sea. "What is the time?" He pointed across the bay. "Voom! I drive this way." He swerved hard towards the water, into the lane on our right, and then jerked the wheel back. Hahaha! A chorus of honks erupted all around. Hahaha.

But I wasn't afraid and I hoped we wouldn't get there soon.

Anyway, so this year I've decided to fuck assuming the winter position and growing slowly slow and sad and instead I'm just going to stay happy for ever and ever until I blow up in a supernova of joy next spring. Which pretty much makes me an A1 goober, but one the other hand, you're a total asshole for pointing that out.

P.S. The picture of the balloon man is from here.
P.P.S. The Go Speed picture is from here, although not originally, I don't think.