zzz

i marvel at their different shapes and sizes. the convergences and divergences of this experience surprise me. it's the trees again. i love pressing my face against their knotty bark, ignoring the greater forest of symptomology.
she had hers, early, tiny. the combined weight of the two is less than my monstrous one.
finances somewhat solved, i'm breathing easy, but remain cautious. my trust is such a delicate creature.
he's coming by tonight to share the details of his latest cyber exploit. i only hope i can keep my eyelids from drooping. if they fall, it's not meant to insult. it's just that i'm so tired, tired.
here sparked an interesting conversation (too tired to detail), made me tumble all over again. lately, he's revealed things that bother him that directly mimic that which bothers me. silly as it seems, the overlap has me giddy.
i need a cot. a tiny nap. for twelve hours or so.

humbly mumbling

him into the phone, dating older women, thinking about africa, so much unborn brilliance in his head. i wish i had the magic password, that i could help him release it for the world. he knows the potency of his power. he knows he is multivariably attractive and part of him knows his shit would sell, part of him knows he could snag, bag and lag along with any woman who walked his way. he is not nearly as alone as he suggested. part of him seems fearful still: as much as he scoffed at the ladies' baggage, he's toting a heavy suitcase of his own.
my festering secret slithered out from under its rock today. and largely pissed him off. he approached me as though i were more pervasively irresponsible. as though i were instead blowing the money on superfluous designer wear when my underwear is going threadbare it's so desperately in need of replacement. as though it weren't truly a matter of not having the cash. on hand. or anywhere else. he later explained that that wasn't his intent. but i am keenly aware of our fiscal divide. i wonder what it would have been like to have been a child who was not sorely attuned to her parents' lack of finances, a child for whom money was not a constant peripheral (or central) nag. different. and i'm sure i would approach monetary matters less frantically if i felt that somewhere, anywhere there were a safety net. if i felt that as soon as the ball's started its downhill roll it's possibly headed anywhere other than for the worst and fast.
LMP: i need to get my shit in gear. if anything could make a difference, it could be that. how many repetitious entries can i write without so much as glancing at the actual file? i am too tired to write continuously. why did i not donate my ova before this undertaking. i could use the cushion.
my stark lack of cushion and the cowering it incites is a flaw, wide and gaping, and i needed to duck and cover. i couldn't stop my tears and i was suddenly bashful before him, partly because i didn't want to be equated with her and partly because it is such a source of searing personal shame.
words i read trickle together in my head. my mind is bleary without leary's aid. my one true inclination is towards hibernation. i covet her energy as much as she detests the lack in me.

as bad as i am, i'm proud of the fact that i'm worse than i seem

more tired than i've been in an incredibly long time. i need to schedule my life more sanely. but i needed last night. i needed our enjoyment of each other's company, me in untied robe curled next to him on my bed, he reminiscently abloom. and i needed the arousing aftermath. we both have a lot on our minds.
he called last night and i took a bath and read and fell asleep with face in book and bonded and didn't bother returning his call. we are so ill-connected. i wonder what makes him think of me. what inspires him to call. i have a good soul, he told me. to him, i was good people. his world is so marred with bad, maybe he craves whatever good he saw in me at odd points in his day. maybe he just gets lonely. and, thinking of the days when he would rest his large, beautiful, carefully clad, moderately insecure body on my couch and our minds and souls would magnetize each other until ungodly hours, he calls. i don't know what foggy image fills his head when he remembers our interaction. my image is crisp. but distant.
my images are always crisp. he didn't notice their presence on my table and laughed at himself, commented on the ease with which i would manage an affair. he didn't remember the color of her eyes. everyone i've ever so much as kissed i can paint in detail in my mind. i am such an S and he is such an N, which explains the occasional chasms in our memories. perhaps i should warn him that i am the prosecutor's perfect eye witness. i remember everything. the mindful monk in cskszentmihalyi's story, that's me. oh, that i were buddhist. it might mean something.
it bulged in our comparison of ourselves as social scientists. his style is perfectly anthropological, perfectly interested in cross-culture/cross-subculture comparisons. my style is groping, knowing, feeling the trees, completely disinterested in the forest.
which is why i need to read her book to get myself back on track with mine. he offered to help. lovely him.
we discussed his article last night. the research and its findings, the repetitious studies, have been rehashed for me so often that any report is entirely lackluster for me. to him, it was more interesting. he enjoyed the paradox. perhaps it's the result of too much familiarity with the work, but it lacks profundity for me. i want the extensions. i want more specifics, fewer global findings.
the story i finished over lunch inspires me to write, not because i cared particularly about the content of the piece, but because i know i could write something better, more compelling. because i suspect mine might matter in a way hers really didn't. mine might affect more, because i know exactly what hers needed.
i don't know why i crave images of them in my mind. i don't know why i want to know them when i'm convinced that i probably wouldn't care much for or about either of them were it not for him. something about grasping them suggests a better understanding of him. i can be such an incredible stalker.
she bathes in anxiety and part of me identifies with her. he has no idea how deeply it lurks.

sorta secretary

he said he looks at them and thinks of me. the two are incongruous, i think, but it's not worth fighting over. i need to work out my own space before i try to synchronize it with his.
he said to send it to him and he'll do the dirty work, what i'm avoiding. and he asked whether receiving an advance and/or signing a contract would affect my graduate ambitions. i didn't even have to consider, which frightens me. the path i need is untread and somewhat inaccessible. i need more money and resources, less responsibility and debt. genuine pursuit of happiness is a luxury in this nation, not a right. as long as i keep that straight.
nothing here is my own. not even what i create. nothing in this space belongs to me. which was never more salient than during today's reception of our child language publication. she gave me ownership. she respected me.
now. well.
i need wing-spreading space. who doesn't? but i crave it more than most, i think. desks are not meant for me. i watched him walk across the coffee bar today and wanted to drift syrupily inside him. i wonder what it's like to dance all day, to live, breathe, eat art. to collect a paycheck for it. his gray hair, thin body, utter eccentricity were suddenly sexy. i have this savage desire to hook myself to a bungee cord and fly gracefully across the stage. i have this savage desire to penetrate him.
his perfect snapshot of gluteally creamed coffee stares at me daily as i grouse. i don't even know where he is. i don't even know him. i wonder how that could have been, what would have been. different. new. he wondered last time if i were pregnant and i didn't bother to respond. because i had him. and he told me to be careful, to enjoy the moment, to not bend to the inklings of my character and complicate my life a little more. such a soap opera, he always laughs, but i entertain him.
which is the point. all my children is over the top, but it definitely boasts a cult following. people are drawn in, addicted, because it frees them from the stagnancy of their own lives. not so secretly, the occasional peering into my cloudy fishbowl thrills him.
which might be what bothers her about our interaction. which might be the source of her jealous defense. because my intrigue (however defined) makes hers cower.
at least she's cute.
my belly is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. i need the reminder. it is miraculous. it is life.

propulsion

too much flitting time. i know not where it goes. trickling. leaking. gushing.
witnessing his shrouded movements within me was powerful. and oddly wrenching. i was less aware of and for her. as i will probably always be. he doesn't know we spy on him. 80mm crown to rump and with the semblance of puny manhood. again, my intuition's on target. i only wish it could answer the questions of the summer. and tell me how to get more money. it will work out. because it has to. because it always has. whomever, whatever propels me does so knowing i am strong but not diana price. that sometimes i need perfect astral alignment. sometimes i need luck.
i hate comparing myself to her. but i kind of can't help it. if he were to spit on my face, i would be finished. he's not hitting her, she said, but he's inches away and she hasn't realized. she receives more support, if unidirectional, and they have different ideals. but, god, it's no more shameful to go on welfare than it is to stay with him....and a little government cheese won't hurt her babies as much as watching their parents' constant chaos. she needs to get out. i wish i felt i knew her intimately enough to call her with phone numbers and directions.
she called to detail the program and i am increasingly ecstatic about the prospect. there couldn't be a more perfect fit. and there are sheep. nothing like animals to get my little crab giddy. few steps left and, hopefully, the transition will be made. hopefully, it will happen like two years ago when everything slid bumpily and thickly over itself to finally grind still: all in its ideal place, all the way it should have been because i needed it to be. blessed me, loving my propeller.
i need a new 9-5 space. part of my problem is that i need to never have a boss. i cannot be contained. walking down fieldhouse today, glancing at magill walk, thinking about walking in the spring, last spring, i wanted to be there again, immersed in classes, adhering to no one's schedule but my own. drifting, accomplishing, living, enjoying. i wasn't stale. not like now. the chunks of my day were in my palm. i wish there were a functional way to make her understand that the best way for me to motivate and operate is for me to do things on my own clock, my own timeline. she's too overbearing to let me be, to trust me. that's the worst difference between this work and the work before it. project in mind that perhaps i can own. if i can own it, i can nurture it and love it and drench myself in it the way she wants to see me drowning in this waterless job.
chanksy in the paper today talking about phobias: i don't know that i have a phobia....money, maybe maybe. hurting her, definitely. dependence, yes. no tangible object. not rodents, insects, arachnids, reptiles, serpents, canines, blood. ticks, maybe. but it's more of a skeevishness than a phobia. phobias are more pervasive. her phobia is losing me. it's all she ever nightmares about. and alien dogs and e.t., i guess, but less frequently. fast-track fix headlines the piece. so few things ever respond to fast-tracking. but i guess so far it's worked.
he has pent up aggression. i need to locate its root and sever it. finishing the book last night didn't put me more at ease. i worry for her. incredibly. his behavior is erratic, somewhat angry. hungry, maybe, for power.

i hate her without even knowing her.
such unrestrained filth within me.

a(bnormals) a(nonymous)

good plan, i think, to figure out why i can't trust.
him, especially.
everyone, generally.
there are reasons with him that are not entirely me and that are not entirely transparent. he is crafty. he is not an open book and, i think, truly doesn't want to be.
it is hard for me to wholly love someone so reserved, so guarded, so tentative and calculated.
how can he love flagrant, flailing me?
bertrand russell: gradually i learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; i came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledges, individuals for whom i felt affection.
csikszentmihalyi dubs this the best brief description of how to build an autotelic personality.
i covet one.
the root of all my problems, i'm increasingly intent on convincing myself, is the general lack of flow in my universe. short of sex, nothing cuts it. if i had that discipline, that autotelic personality, i could encourage myself to write seriously for non-blog publication and i could fall into the flow of the words. alas, as i said, i covet.
he claims it is attainable through training and discipline. frankly, i've never been much good at either. perhaps a good first step is to discipline myself to empty the dryer promptly. or mop the floor occasionally.
she is leaving. she's announcing it whenever she receives her review. i itch to be unbound, like her, free to fly wherever the fickle wind takes me. i, too, crave a different job, a richer life. i used to write him sticky slabs of gooey chocolate cake and used some variation of that line in a poem. now i write brittle bricks of dry and tasteless toast. and not to him. things no one really wants to read.
the graduate dilemma has me trapped in neurosis. i can't tear myself away from tuition figures, mileage figures, how the hell i'm going to live and where. and her care. all good reasons i dropped the doctor dream. maybe good reasons to force myself to aim a little lower.
she said she thought it would be a shame if i left academia. she said, after listening to me speak yesterday, that she thought that i was the smartest woman she'd ever met and that i could analyze theories with amazing aplomb. i think she might just be a little slow. although i think she was pretty on point with her curiosity comment.
i have urges to fortress myself. teetering, i am so on edge, so vulnerable. i hate his surreptitious swiftness before the screen because i detest my inner reaction. ditto his avoidance. he changed his approach, which is what i thought i wanted, and all i could do was question it. how did he know? too much coincidence for it to have come from the heart. oh, bertrand, that you were here to counsel me.
he can't begin to fathom what he does to her. for that, i need to learn to be more constant and controlled. less volatile than i was this morning.
i haven't talked to her in days and i'm dreading our interaction. i need to make contact today because tomorrow can't be the first time we've laid eyes on each other after our protected, protracted volley.
this would be so much better for her. i wish the galaxy weren't so centered on my vacant pocketbook.
by this time in the afternoon, i am consistenly exhausted and nauseated. a behindthedesk cot and a portable iv would solve things, but i suspect she might again question my professionalism.
somewhere, i'm sure, there's an organization for people like me.

t and f i'm so perplexed

i am so clumsy, completely fumbling. more T and less F i need. i told him last night that my heart needs to stop taking over. it causes such trouble, leads me down roads better avoided. worst, though, is that i never notice. not until much, much too late.
so much sex since he returned and incredibly intriguing affection. it's time for us to have a talk. my alleged liability is already on the table. that point, now, is moot. and i need to make some serious decisions. T stuff i've been avoiding because F is so much smoother, my easy, natural default.
arguing with her is driving me crazy. hiding behind my screen, i'm so much more aggressive. if it causes a rift, at least i'll have addressed it.
i can't bear to listen to them, clucking away like hyperactive hens. i need a different space.
or a fresh perspective. it's a new year, after all.
resolutions i made are not to be needy, which isn't working out so well...i melted into him in the shower yesterday, absorbed entirely in the heavy pressure of his strong, tightly wrapped arms; i am needing him in spite of myself. resolutions i made are to clean out last year's closet. slowly but surely. whenever he's ready, she's ready, the world's ready. i am. no resentful dust mites lurking under this year's events.
i couldn't guess where i'm headed. 2003 held so many odd surprises.
things i am sure 04 has in store:
more job-hating, job-hunting, money-grubbing, child-rearing
more exhaustion of every sort
more wrestling
application after application after application
life-changing decisions
labor and delivery, baby
movement
things i want 04 to have in store:
satisfaction
completion
success
acceptance after acceptance after acceptance
a niche for her
health
a defined space for us
synchrony
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. i reclaimed the word only to start to hate it. he wants to fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. only. what does that mean?
conversation with him and her this afternoon have me convinced:
i need to get to the bottom of things, two or three of them. it's time we made some progress.