hey now.  wow.  excellent dancing adventure.  plus substantial solid frustration. 

dancing took place for several hours (goa gil went from 9pm or so saturday until sunday 10pm.  eek).  and my usual grab things move them over twisty dance was strangely supplanted by the running all over the place in betweener sneak around dance.  with the occasional turning almost fall over but not quite.  plus the arm shake sending things off into the distance dance.  and the shake things off who cares dance.  floatily scurrying between the rows of stomping people.  i don't think i've ever taken such advantage of all the little spaces between.  i felt like i was supported and sliding along the soft connecting stuff between people, tracing peoples invisible self shells, getting sucked into the mass of people and then shot back out to the edges again, my body subtly responding to something not quite physical but quite palpably present. aha.  yes.  psytrance.  forest.  and it's common chemicals.  i do like the combination. 

unfortunately, i developed this intense absurd crush on a boy whose dance was most admirable (actually rather like my grabbing things lifting arm wafty dance) and simply pleasingly attired, smiling, charming, pretty face, tousled hair (hair you want to touch). all sorts of funny dancefloor interactions which i can't quite describe.  simultaneously fell intensely absurdly silent and self-conscious.  i think i weirded out all sorts of people with my eye contact avoidance and silent shrinking stance paired with mad running all over the place dancing.  my behaviors a bit too out of sync.  but words were not coming out very well (mental weirdness being related to the chemicals no doubt as well as the presence of folk i knew who were there but totally not part of the psytrance scene...so i kept imagining (more than usual if this is possible) myself and the context from outsider point of view and it was irking me madly).  when i stumbled upon said charmer boy sitting on a hill, he said "what language do you speak?" and i replied "well apparently not any of them very well."  oh dear.  name exchange.  he notes he didn't know what to say, i was being so weird, perhaps shyness is expressed as weirdness in some people maybe you he noted.   girl(questionable space or no space)friend appeared (also very cute and charming) who made me nervous as observers do.  another fellow i was acquainted with came along and suddenly showered me with compliments (referring to my mad dancing, often we dance about in the same spot at these funny parties, and somehow in the course of things while he was intensely stomping i came and floated by and changed his experience entirely, and he said my presence is always very positive...despite our not so conversational interactions...and he just wanted to tell me this...and i responded rather positively but with vague discomfort and my apologies for not putting together my sentences very well)(charmer boy notes, well, apparently you can...).  meanwhile, my discomfort managed to be literalized in the form of ants in my pants.  ants were all over me...really gross...and i scuttled away to fix my ant situation which i imagine made me seem even more awkward and mysterious.  and so.  how frustrating. 

i did speak to a few as time went on.  mainly old bostonian pals whose familiarity and amusement remain pleasant and comforting.  but often i crept to a rock or a tree in the forest to be by myself and unnoticed amongst pretty things.

and a few random people who i never really talked to but who i always see decided to approach my impenetrable mental space and tell me how pleased they were to have my strange dancing energy about them.  i respond so poorly to compliments though.  i think my appreciation of them is often squelched by my surprise and then people think i am a weird snotball.  arg.

so.  dammit.  hate my impressionable crushability.  and the silly things that inspire them.  and how i will hope to collide with this fellow again to make up for my unspeakability.  and the inevitable (i should stop ever ever saying things like this really i know, don't be so negative ra ra ra) disappointment(s). 

dancing is so curious.  the only portion of thingsin which i seem to be able to lose my self-consciousness for a while.  all this socializing hoo ha ought to be more like dancing.  fearless giggling afloat. 

people are awfully maddening.  when i am among too many of them i become quite exceedingly lonely and even moreso unable to resolve such loneliness.  tricky tricky tricky...

 it is a pleasure to pretend i am unemployed.  aaaah.  the district has a four day weekend.  ho ho ho.

successive days have proven better.  though i do not like being in a different classroom everyday...so far i have been substituting for absent aides.  the charm of working with kids is getting to know them...since the routine and the work is not so intellectually stimulating to me, you see.  not directly anyway.  and it's tricky to get to know them when you see them one morning and then they expect you to come along with their class the next day and then i am shuttled elsewhere. the tiny communication handicapped kids were quite adorable and fun and the teachers were quite on the ball.   the autistic kids were fairly charming, but the classroom seemed so disorganized and not very oriented towards...anything (though the teacher was absent and it was just three aides yesterday).  but maybe i am expecting too much out of little kid classrooms.  mostly i was babysittting really.  and being the floater random aide they don't really trust me to do much of anything else.  so.  the days drag a bit.  and i find myself disapproving of some things (really really loud reprimand yelling, sticking a boy in the bathroom after he wouldn't stop climbing on tables (which i imagine he does not jsut for attention but because he's got some weird body sensations that would benefit from joint compressions and crabwalking and all that...but i don't know if those kids get much sensory business or ot...so...)) but being too transitory to know what is regular and to be able to change anything without confusing the situation.  so.  frustration.  familiar. rumble rumble.  perhaps next week a more regular assignment.

the grave decision: tell them by june 6th whether i will be returning for next school year.  (will they beat me up if i say yes and then quit over the summer if i land another job?  probably...not?) thinking about committing to part time in the morning if they would let me which would open up afternoon for private tutor jobs (to find in the flexible summer and coninue into the school year) and classes.

upcoming adventure? goa gil party near angel's camp.  the music will be more pounding and scary than my preference.  but all the funny psy people come out of the woodwork (except the ones who have moved beyond such childish things).  and dancing in the forest always manages to clear my head for better things ahead. personal thrill:  three people have offered me rides.  this does not happen.  people i know and everything.  instead of the soliciting strangers to fit me in their car...i...dareisay...have people i might be on the verge of calling friends.  neato.  but the funniest is that these folk i know through my roommate m are quite out of characteristically going (i worry they might not be so keen on it actually as they are moreso scenester rock show goers, roam amongst the crooked haired girls with the trendy eighties pointy high heels and big belts, and as is customary among hipsters do not dance but lightly bounce and chat...i think they will enjoy viewing a new spectacle perhaps) so some strange intersection of social spheres will take place and it will make me giggle.  and i wil mention this intersection and be laughed at for seeing my world in such globulous terms. 

but anyway, undoubtedly, harvard guilt and mom guilt and money guilt all comfortably reside together...though not quite equivalent they share the same friends and have dinner parties. 

it is a curious thing...compartmentalization.  my russian pal of boston times, he long ago decided that he would dissociate work from the rest of him, so he does some sort of computer programming related to the social sciences in the math department at harvard and hardly speaks of it...puts his creative energies into funny artistic endeavors for parties and burning man.  my mother is her job as an opthalmologist, is otherwise--especially after a day of conversation with 40 or 50 patients--content to be by herself and doesn't really have a social life at all...though her conscious career decision was moreso based on money (so she claims) (she works obscenely hard and rests at home with novels and cooking).  my sister is now a lawyer working part time--she made her choice for money's sake i think...i imagine she does her job well, but will probably not be engulfed by lawyerly identity and is inclined to not let work take over her life (she rests with her dog, tv, boyfriend, and pot).  roommate b has worked as general manager for a company that makes readers for cal for eight years, with flexible hours and able to work from home, she likes organization and seems to enjoy it...i think she rather stumbled upon the job without thinking she would stay with it so long.  roommate m works in a very organized autism classroom and is often thinking talking and planning things for the kids while off work.  though also quite good at drinking juicing and yogaing for rest.  thinking about applying for a masters program at sfsu that specializes in autism.  i did not intend to spurt out a catalog of peoples relationships to work, but there it is.  it's a puzzler.  one ought not to think so much.  what constitution composes so and so that makes it best for so and so to invest energies in this and not in that.  to be defined like so and instead of like so.  decisions made consciously and unconsciously.  at different stages in the life living process.  and everyone presuming (well mainly mum) that their own particular path in the puzzle was put together in the very best possible way and counseling underlings as such.  straightening one's priorites.  sitting up straight.  these things all involve much more trickery than people like to admit.  we should all congratulate ourselves for doing such a good job being alive so far.

it is pleasant among the little ones where things are focused on who should not be touching whom or this thing or that.  and ask or tell and use your words if you want or don't want something because that is the best way to do it.  sit down on your bottom so you don't fall.  pay attention.  remember your friends' names.  be a good boy.  say hello to the people that you know.  it's all very charming. 

anyway.  i meant to forego my restless wordiness of late.  but.

another long yelling talk on the phone with mum, expressing my general life thrill at all this neato human body health stuff, only to be told that she did not think i would ever go to school and she had resigned herself to the fact that i would do nothing with my life.  which prompted an angry explanation of how parents ought not ever to resign themselves to their children's choices but accept them.  and explaining how her stories about herself were totally imapplicable to my choices (i.e. her telling me over and over that i don't need to worry about recommendation letters and all the other components of applications because she got into college without applying and got admitted to medical school before she even took the mcat and had a phd when she was my age) since i am not her, this is a different context in every imaginable way, i don't have the same unrelenting calm strength or intelligence or ultra money making motivation (at least partly rooted in having parents that didn't give a shit and wanting to remove oneself from them) that she did, i have a totally different way about thinking about my life choices and what will make me happy (i.e. my tendency towards guilt, self-criticism, and all the rest negate mum's assertion that who cares, "once i die, you will be rich.  you will be fine anyway" bunch of bullshit since i am quite sure that given a dead mother, lots of unearned money, and idleness, i would be crushed/mash myself into the mess of guilt worthlessness stagnation dirt which is easy enough to come by even when i am fairly productive).  ug.  i am getting stuck in whatever i was trying to say.  i will stop and bid you to imagine a grumbling sort of frustrated roaring release rrrrr.  the same old age old parent child inability to understand each other thing.  how celestine prophecy.  how psychological.  how how how connected i am to the cycling of generations.  i want to sink and be swallowed up. up. up.

meanwhile.  shortly after i ran into my favorite nearby dancer friend trying on his new too small shoes on the streets of the lower haight.  and i love to cling to these apparitions of connection as if unseen forces are reminding me that the mechanisms of the universe are not totally chaotic and perhaps sinking into things can be a comfortable floating instead of this crushing gasping struggle for air.  but i say cling.  as if i don't believe a thing.  but regardless.  it pleased me to intersect.  he is a person who seems very comfortable to sink in to things and has this goofy giddiness that i generally can't keep up with but do enjoy bouncing off of for bits of time.  and it was given a special air of somewhat lower probability since he lives an hour north of here, not in the city.  so. 

further satisfying coincidence: the way i was clinging to coincidence and my reflexive human post pubertal self conscious thinking of my clinging and how does this and this language reflect my rumbling clinging sinking struggle and perhaps because i use the word cling and these silly metaphors of things i am turning everything into imaginary made up mood moulded nonsense...and then reading in the unbearable lightness of being (my new and pleasant read, soft humorous melancholy kundera) discussions of coincidence and love and choices and attention and how noticing those little connections provide access to bits of beauty.  and that was nice.  and lives structured as novels.  some kind of link and bobolink.  ho ho ho.  coincidentally reading of coincidence as i cling to coincidence to preserve sense of beauty of things...especially after renewed misery following a miserable day of work. 

yes, ladies and gentleman, though perhaps mainly my audience me, i am a working woman.  and it was miserable.  i have been working working mentally struggling to continue convicing myself that this job will be good.  will be better than the last job which literally broke me.  there will be some organization present in the classroom.  yes? some semblance of things under control.  i will, even if not quite fitting myself onto a track towards a goal, have a sense of progress.  a sense that this job is indeed a better situation than before.  i have been exhausting myself turning these self-delusional gears.  and of course.  self-fulfilling (although viciously denied) prophecy.  after a cutesy morning among little tiny deaf children (adorable three and four year olds) which didn;t really make sense since i am not so apt with asl.  they stick me elsewhere in the afternoon:  the classroom with all the kids that none of the other classrooms want. total chaos.  totally disorganized.  an overwhelmed teacher who ends up screaming at this kid who won't cooperate with me since he doesn't know me.  everyone out of control.  understaffed.  after i manage to povoke child and teacher to freak out i work with another boy who has no iep goals and who continually tries to bolt so you have put his chair between your legs and keep pushing his legs and feet back onto the floor while hand over handing a little buttoning practice thing. all too familiar.  plus having once again to take this fucking bus that takes forever.  finding out that the hours of school's end are different than previously though so all the plans to borrow roommate's car for the day are foiled.  it took me an hour and a half to get home from oakland.  fucking fucking fucking sucks.  i cannot believe i am so idiotic as to have taken this job which is so eerily similar to the previous job, except that instead of general chaos acceptance, the classroom i was placed in is the only one that is like this!  egads! 

ok.  so perhaps and most likely tomorrow will be a better day.  but it drives me mad to put so much energy into trying to remain positive somehow or other.  only to find nothing is how i was told it would be or how i expected it to be.  and now i am clinging to my coincidences and to upcoming forest adventure to not sink gaspingly again (and i was this afternoon, my eyes welling up on fourth street a bit after some high schoolers tried to ask  me if i believed in world peace and i couldn't stand to answer them. ha!)

so.  i drank some shitty coffee.  affixed a pig to a clay bowl for my russian boston funny friend.  talked for a long time to my good ol summer camp brooklyn resident pal.  had a smoothie with canteloupe in it (a new ingredient in my smoothie repetoire).  so.  i will.  please.  please.  have a better day tomorrow.  please?

curious state of mind has taken up residence here.  feeling a bit distant and dissociated.  more than usual.  can't seem to properly express myself.  feeling a bit overwhelmed by all sorts of internalities...simultaneously self-critical for being so oddly petty when my life problems are really nothing worth welling up about.  but so.  oh.  well up i do.  a strange combination of feeling too intensely and feeling nothing.  doing nothing.  just being wrenched and twisted in the chest and the back of the throat.  strange pressure sensations in the joints (worrying about my mother's new arthritis problems).  small moments of hoping i might find some sort of solace-ish feelings amongst the mates.  but i am tripping over my tales and the effort is too much.  i get the words out and expect some sort of...acknowledgement?  response?  a reminder that we are humans interacting? but conversation trickles along and somehow i keep feeling dismissed (i doubt this is intentional...but my weird misalignment misinterpreting casual comfort...or maybe the appropriate response to my overcompensatedly struggling to keep up appearances that things i say are not wrenching me internally). 

i don't know if  reading we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families and similarly wrenching my interior, but with a focus less diffuse (or maybe more?), is good for this state of mind or not....but i recommend this book very highly, very well done lucid writing about the genocide in rwanda and how the international community managed to ignore and misinterpret and oversimplify just about everything in the conflict and its aftermath and act (well...or more so not act) mainly out of concern for not appearing as ineffectual as they actually were...while meanwhile there is this country physically and psychologically torn apart populated by people struggling to live alongside people that killed their entire families.  very intense very moving book.

better things:  i went to an excellent little conference at ucsf on integrative medicine.  and found out about all sorts of interesting things that appeal as life pathish appropriate.  interesting organizations that are trying to bring holistic health into main stream medicine, that have the sense to connect human health with the environment, that are trying to make hospitals more ecologically friendly (e.g. it is idiotic for hospitals that are meant to _heal_  people to incinerate all the plastic things that have touched any patient at all and release all sorts of neurotoxins and endocrine disrupters into the environment and cause bunches of insidious long term health problems), a georgetown med school professor who is establishing programs for med school students to experience meditation and relaxation techniques and shaking and dancing and who used shaking and dancing and other cost effective natural therapies to help ptsd victims in war torn places...and also trying to educate people about how important nutrition and diet are to health (something that medical schools have ignored for decades).  i got to learn about naturopathic medicine and see a little lady do acupuncture.  and i learned about ayurveda and digestion.  and it was great to be in an academic setting for the day.  where people have some sense of the need for science.  to get to be amidst some of the woo woo stuff without the gooey fluff stuff and the overly flowy garb common to new aged out californians everywhere.  and it was nice to directly observe that there is a community of intelligent people working with all these systems of healing in a respectful and scientific way.  and even in medical schools there is a tittering of change afoot.  litle thrills at thoughts of a naturopathic doctor program (all sorts of anatomy and physiology and nutrition, treating people who were mysteriously undiagnosable and fed up with the business like functioning of the medical system) or the terrible struggle of trying to push things in a better direction with an MD (but could there ever be time to learn about all the holistic stuff when being pounded eternally with memorization struggle and overloaded with work?) or doing the mind body research stuff in the context of health psychology and psychoneuroimmunology (which maybe possibly would allow time for all that learning about the human body stuff on the side?).  so.  that was nice.  (though i talked to nearly no one not at all not a networker)

after not speaking a word nearly the whole day through.  soaking things in like so.   in the evening post conference i wandered down to the haight, nodded to the drum circle, up hippie hill, through some trees, climbed one, then the journey to the divisadero bus.  and then some fairly clean hippie-ish fellow exclaims to me on the corner near buena vista park sort of to himself as i make a brief phone call "i've seen you alone three times today..."  what?  "i've seen you three times today and you've been alone every time."  oh. um ok.  as i finish my phone call.  i appreciate the half greeting half proclamation that did not reek of pick up or compliment, but more curious observation.  and so this guy walks me to the bus.  and we chatter.  and he asks me all these questions.  and my affability is moreso than usual because of my all day silence.  i ask him if he is a hippie.  and he says "um my mother calls me a hippie".  and he gives me his number after i show my reluctance to give mine.  you see, this is a trend, my long time spent not talking makes me thrill at sudden conversational approach.  and in the midst of thrill i give numbers,  then somehow at a later date i find myself trapped with some boring guy for an hour or two some afternoon or evening where conversation proves to be flat and fuzzy.  i get so caught up in momentary mood.  eek.  so: will i ever call this boy?  um.  ha.  another thing: i also have been known to magnetize idiot boys who are able to provide interesting conversation...to a point. 

i really should bust out of here.  but.  one other thing: yesterday all day in the bay i sailed on a pirate ship and sipped a handle of captain morgan's when occsaionally it was passed to me, my eyes were dry and red from the sun, i chewed ginger in case of seasickness, and had some conversations with people i had already met and one conversation with a chubby german fellow and felt kind of funny since i was invited by friend of my roommate who i guess is my friend but such second degree friend transitions have never been very easy for me.  my lack of place felt awkward but ok.  strange sensation in the shower at home in the evening, of closing my eyes and feeling the rocking of a ship. 

 i suspect others are not necessarily so keen on the strange tales of the female body.  but this morning on my way to the bart oh how i was struck by menstrual crampings whilst walking down valencia street.  the once a year extreme where i am compelled to clutch the lower tummy area and walk slightly bent and a cold sweat breaks out all over me.  so i stumbled into some corner store, leaning on the counter, to buy some advil.  debating whether to change my "benefits specialist" appt for the new job.  but too overwhelmed to want to deal with number dialing and forming sentences.  so i end up in the fetal position in the back of the train across two seats occasionally quietly involuntarily moaning.  happily, our fine modern age equipped with ibuprofen saved me.  it's twenty minute absorption time a godsend, i feel just about normal though sweat dampened as i arrive at my stop.  but i was left rather shaken and out of it.  plus gasping and happy with relief.  this bodily madness creeps me out.  though hopefully another year will pass before such a thing happens again.  it has only happened conveniently in bed or somewhere at home where i can crawl and curl up into a ball.  but i wonder about the correlates.  too much caffeine?  my unhealthy food repetoire for the past chunk of time?  my general irritated worry about the future?  erk.  tremendous pain is never a good way to start the day.  it takes a lot out of you. 

inspired by the featured post, i took one of those abridged probably not terribly accurate free internet myers briggs tests (here) and was told i am an intj.  though the various descriptions do sound accurate.  except for the confidence part.  ahem.  but it is rather satisfying to read the career things.  because at this point it sounds rather nice to be some combination of doctor (maybe not an md, but a person who does something for the health of folk), health psychology (psychoneuroimmunology stress mind body hoo ha) researcher, scientific crusader for alternative/holistic/woo woo stuff medicine.  which are conceivably combinable.  perhaps.  but ha ha.  it lists professor, scientist, psychologist, doctor on one of these little sites i looked at.  so surely i will be a damned happy little beast once i figure out how to behave like a human among other humans and can convince aforementioned humans that i can do things that are good. 

i was miserable this afternoon, however.  i think i am showing my life dismay and made overly negative in passing half serious overly generalized comments in passing to roommate miss b.  and i feel intrusive and unpleasant.  i do not like the edges of myself and my misery to too much bleed outside of me.  but then again.  i get this way and regret and rumble.  then say oh, sorry if i was such and such.  and then people don't know to what i am referring.  which promotes a new round of rumble questioning my perceptions of all things. 

getting avocado ice cream at mitchell's (oddly reminiscent of cake batter) and climbing bernal hill and two trees depleted misery quite easily.  at the clay studio i also made a bowl and a not exactly bowl and fixed up my little crushed grooved crumple slab pieces to look a little tidier and make sure they did not fall apart. 

anything else? 
the weird old man who interpreted my tired grimace as bus confusion and kept telling me where the passing buses go.  i know i know.
reading about rwanda in a tree next to lake merritt.
annoying people who carry boomboxes on the j church. 
jesus christ i said i would start work on tuesday. 

egads. 

for health record purposes, i duly note, this on edge feeling, anxious, lower threshold of response to general things, rumble sizzle etc.  i think i am meant for female things in the coming days.  the curious wonder of hormonal fluctuations making my mind place all abuzz.  though i did meditate for 25 minutes or so and it helped.  which is comforting. aha.  

<=from postsecret (a blog where this guy posts secrets sent in on anonymous handmade postcards).  it was amusing to read this.  also depressing.  so i went to harvard too.  was miserable for the first two years (decreasing as sophomore year went on).  happier for the latter two when i moved into the one co-op on campus.  but most of the people i grew to be friends with did profess their misery and falling into a depression freshman year.  and we would occasionally discuss the mysterious causes (the layout of my shitty dorm, as far as you could be from various things, the tiny tiny room, the vast overwhelming dining hall for all the freshman where you could never ever find the people that you knew, the shock of the new and large surroundings, the disappearance of all schoolish status (well everyone was valedictorian of course), essential social/emotional weakness, etc).  

i remember freshman year writing two 15 page papers over three days after being fraught with some coughing mucousy illness for a month or so.  running to turn in paper number two just before running back to my dorm to get my bag and run to the t to get to the airport to visit home for winter break.  a fever breaking a few hours after getting off the plane in cleveland.   shitty.  ick.  and discovering how worthless i was in the course of all that.  (though i will note that i had some pretty nice paper-writing experiences for expository writing that year too).  i definitely had my miserable moments in middle school--feeling ugly, weird friend group transition, plus the elaboration of self-consciousness as little pubescent brain starts churning in ways anew--but college depression had a new sort of plummeting sluggish failure feeling.  like i will never live up.  perhaps a function of ultra contrast after being in the same all girls private school since kindergarten.  perhaps misery was to be expected.  genetic predisposition after all (greatgrandfather suicide, grandmother suicide (way before i was born, shortly after finding out they were going to bring her into the sanitorium for more electroshock therapy, two aunts and an uncle on antidepressants, mum is quite happy these days though she does have her regular stream of beers in the evening). 

ultimately i learned great gobs of stuff.  i found a pocket or two of people whose company i enjoyed (hard to find anywhere, possibly a little bit harder at harvard).  found some lovely literature and interesting psychological bits.  a good education after all. though perhaps they trained me more for graduate school than anything else (my fault, my choices, silly psychology major).  and the guilt for not taking full advantage of all there was to offer (silly fuck who only wanted to research what she was interested in and make time for reading joyce and woolf and proust (one of the best classes i tell you), that's me).  plus, noted by my good pal last time we spoke, a funny sort of feeling...like we best live up to our schooling.  do all this with that harvard degree.  woo woo.  my mother tells me this in our more unpleasant moments.  chides me for how i am wasting my harvard degree, wasted the money to send me there, since i am not getting a professional degree at this very moment.  this harvard guilt.  so fucking stupid really.  it would be so nice to find a path.  a nice career path where people could be helped good or beautiful things added to the world and me feeling like my work is part of my identity.  some sort of spiritually satisfying endeavor...that provides a little bit more than enough money to live on.   eh?  yeah.  charming idea.  it's a bit mysterious in what proportions the harvard guilt or my stumbling generation ("twixters" said time magazine.  those damned children that seem unable to manifest their adulthood and support themselves and make decisions like big mature grownups) or my own little fumbling temperament that dreams of being passionate about my livelihood (though with a little time for side things, more than a little time for people family and all that) make all these decisions about the future so tricky and dareisay scary.

gasp!

well i am ok.  i am quite alive.  not falling into any sort of pit (muck, despair, crumpled volitionless puddle, etc).  good, eh?

i was quite nutritionally packed this day.  emergen-cee fizzy vitapaket.  smoothie with green powder and flax seed oil and chlorella too. 

well shit.  i scheduled this interview with people who expect me to have a car and commit for one year (afternoon autism time in...san francisco!).  things that are not quite fully crystalline and clear.

i had this really boring time today getting coffee with mister big faced man.  previously fairly interesting, something fell flat.  sometimes one does not want to hear lengthy spiels about the nuanced differences between different styles of martial arts.  suffocated by conversation. 

but i did escape.  i think the escape desire was rather mutual.  my face doesn't always hide things very well.  but there i was in the lower haight.  thus requiring a stop into buena vista park.  a treat.  fair forest patch in the city.  i climbed a tree.  sat on a log.  was greeted by various dogs.  reflected on i wonder oh i wonder why i feel so suffocated by people.  mostly figuratively.  but a little bit literal.  too much expectation.  i expect too much out of myself.  inevitably fall short.  my swallowed words, bitten tongue, the effort to be composed and interested (smother that bored look directly into that spot right in the middle of me) crumples into my chest tightly constricted place of infinite density (dark matter buzz buzz buzz).  but ah yes.  those trees.  and the little sunshine spots filtering through.  ooh.  excellent inhalation.  arm muscles contract just as they should when attempting to lift myself just enough to get my foot on that branch.  bravo functioning body.  unfurl that dark little mass in the middle (oh yes a transverse section would reveal such interesting phenomena).  all sorts of fun.  ee hee.  oh.

a smallish older guy or fairly respectable appearance (tweed sportscoat with a pin against spyware and a plain buttondown) took a shine to me in the goodwill shop.  winding long talk about hats.  this fine specimen he found.  i tried it on so he could see.  says he takes photographs.  quite nice though.  excellent taste.  he likes the styles that can be seen and provide interesting views from all angles.  it was a black old sax fifth avenue hat.  cylindrical with stlyized wrinkles with two strips of fabric perhaps five inches wide which could be wrapped about the neck.  fine indeed.  i think i may have to fashion my very own based on this design.  but it was a pleasure to see a little man so excited about his find.  yes indeed. 

i read a chapter of a textbook on anatomy and physiology.  i even learned things.  i do enjoy to occasionally pretend i am in school.  reading textbooks.  taking notes.  for instance ah i see axillary refers to the armpit region. of course. 

i fashioned an ox and a pig out of clay to affix to some yet to be made bowls, for mum (year of the ox) and mister L my old russian pal who has a strange obsession with pigs. 

i am nearly finished with mr.palomar (italo calvino) which has been a pleasure to read.  all sorts of little threads of thinking that i relate to rather uncomfortably.  plus random little associative coincidences which i much appreciate and surely resonate with those themes of language signs all layer upon layer that mister calvino seems to be always every playing with in whatever he writes.  methinks nobody nowhere is next (donna williams' autism memoir).  then perhaps a bit of the ol nonfiction team (this book about rwanda if i am feeling grim...or perhaps this bit about sex and evolution (the red queen). 

but now it is closer and closer to 1:30.  and i mustn't stay up too much later.  eek. 

this feller told me that i dance like a fairy.  with purpose.

hhhrrrrrmmmmm. pitter pattering away in a cafe up the hill from my humble abode.  i think i have regained proper functioning level (except a little scritch scratch on the interior of my various tubes, perhaps a cold or an allergy).  a lovely weekend wherein i went up north a bit with three strangers (a mortician in training slash hippie slash marijuana activitst slash mother, her tiny daughter, computer guy slash south african slash happy leisurely man) in a rental car (found on tribe) to attend a rumbling gathering in the woods of weed, california.  having practically forgotten the explosive crunchy rumble of ingestibles plus crinchy psytrance music like interesting crumbly objects being dropped from various heights plus buglike noises plus twist turny dance amongst people and trees, it was good to be reminded of the comforting pleasure of all that.  and i had fun.  though my talk was meager and aspect shy.  i regret not being able to mentally remove the lump in my throat chest area that alllows me to speak freely like humans ought and do.  not helped by overly frequent acceptance of smokables.  it rained the entire time which ironically extra fueled the dancefloor craziness because to regain the feeling in your fingers one had to keep dancing and making new body heat to replenish and share with others.  the music was quite fabulous.  i met various members of this california cast of characters.  got very wet.  tended a fire in a fireplace to my delight (i only felt competent to do so after watching m on that camping trip of a few weeks ago. bravo) and to the delight of this much too young hippie's numbed feet. 

maybe at some point more.  but i ought to search for jobs at the moment.

well well what a curious morning.  i've been stumbling upon scraps of my volition stuck between the pages of old books, in the pockets of pants not worn for a week.  but anyway.  ok.  i've renewed contact with various east coaster pals somehow.  some on my part, some coincidentally calling shortly after i started to think of them.  and it is good to be reminded that there are love-er-ly people who i think of and they think of me and we can have long rambling conversations without the struggle of everything else.  ahhhhh.  and to bemoan unemployment with others who are unemployed.  ahhhh.

but anyway.  the strangeness of the morning mainly composed poor planning.  visiting a chaotic classroom i don't think i would deal with, but would be quite easy transport-wise (neighbor of roomie m's classroom).  too reminiscent of olden days.  though the kids spoke a bit and were a bit younger.  then this ill conceived busride to other location.  (i should have borrowed roomies car but somehow this makes me irrationally nervous and worried).  so instead i got to the other oakland unified shebang with fifteen minutes to observe the quiet classroom with little cutie kids.  but got no idea of how it really was in there.  except the teacher struck me a bit bitchy...not such a good feeling. 

well crikey.  no time left.

missing a bus. running a mile to fingerprinting.  may the law permit me employment.  think it is time to climb a tree and eat eat eat.