Time Management requires some acknowledgement of Time

"We cannot say that time 'is' except in virtue of its continual tendency not to be" --Augustine, Confessions


I believe I've mentioned this before, but Time and I have some issues. Well,  I have issues with time and it, being a non-cognizant inevitability, takes no recognition of me. Which is how it should be, I suppose. If Time started taking special exception to me it would probably in fact be more than a little unnerving. Anyway.

I am currently living in a state of transition disguised as stasis. I feel like I'm standing still, that my grand movement has been put on hold. So it is always violently disconcerting when I realize, as I occasionally do, that this is not the case. Time is in fact moving (surprise!). All of those moments and hours and afternoons, all of the in-between times, are all sneaking by me constantly. Faster than ever, it seems. All of a sudden it is time to go to work again. Time to hide again. Time to go to sleep again. And repeat. But wait--there should be so much more wedged in there! Life! Activity and exploration! I work just under 40 hours a week. I'm no longer in school. Where the hell do I get off saying I don't have enough time?

It all gets whiled away, unnoticed. Staring at cracks in windowsills. Taking thirty minutes to iron one shirt. Wandering back into the same room three times, trying to remember what I was doing, if anything. The day is spread out before me, and then before I can realize my brain's denial of time, the rushrush to work hide sleep is upon me.

I've taken up keeping a productivity journal today, both to assure myself that time is indeed passing and to try to prod myself into doing something with it. Divide it up into neat packets, my days able to be quantified and assessed. That day I ran. That day I washed and folded clothes. Today I publish a blog post. It's almost humiliating, the banality of these little lists. But even the tiniest ,most tedious of day-lists is better than the days when I can find absolutely nothing to put down. That is what I'm trying to change, to inch away from. Today hasn't been the greatest of efforts in that direction, but even a small step a little late is progress.

Reoccurring Character of the Post-Nasal Drip

So last night I was working on this post about boundaries. How godforsaken important they are and how tangled up I am with their features/non-features and relativity and all of these other anxiety-inducing traits. It's either a lead in to or a lead out from my other anxiousness about space and spatial issues and relations &c.

Anyway when I was I "was working" on this I mean I was sitting in a bar scribbling in my notebook (with ensuing violent underlining and arrow-drawing) while other drinkinghumans glanced askance at me. And I also mean "am still working" because these boundary things/concepts are excruciatingly important to me right now and I would desperately like to string some coherent thoughts together about them. BUT! Two things keeping me from finishing & posting that and instead hedging with this:

 1) I really feel like I should finish Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet because the things she has to say about boundaries and self and others and the intimidation of all that is damn fantastic and deadly relevant. Would hate to go off too half-cocked. (Can one be too half of something? Probably)
2) I woke up this morning with some great post-nasal drip a sure sign I am about to develop some vague and debilitating seasonal sickness. Since it's my day off, I went ahead and let my body acknowledge that I was going to be sick. As soon as I did so, it shut down all non-essential functions, including motivation towards productivity, conducting myself in polite society, and developing theories of interpersonal relation.

So soup, juice and Netflix binge it is tonight. Much needed, anyway. Oh, and tea. Have tea as well.

realized / more sharply in more furious selves

Have been tunneling through the depths of a rather intense personal experience--or is is a series of personal experiences? what's the difference?--lately, as well as making a pretty solid aquaintence with some severe post-graduation blues. Not un-worth it, but still can be rough to negotiate at times. 

Still, despite being mired in my own head (but really, who isn't) for the majority of the last few weeks, it hasn't been all lack of progress. I have been writing, albeit in fits and starts, and even mustered u some material to submit to Belle Journal, this forthcoming lit journal I'm pretty excited about, centering around the modern Southern Belle &c. Really very interested to see what direction(s) they take the concept in. I'm already booked to return to the good ol' delta Highland Readings on the 18th, and another local reading series, River Writers extended an invitation to me to read as well. Unfortunately, because I work 6 days a week arcane rituals involving the sacrifice of money to even consider getting a shift picked up, I couldn't make it to read with River Writers, nor will I be able to support my friends at the first Highland Reading tonight.

BUT come hell, high water, or oppression by the System, I will be participating in the most exciting of literary opportunities: the Poetry Brothel. Link goes to the site of the original Poetry Brothel in New York, but there is a branch being established in New Orleans right this very now, and I have tossed my garter in the ring and been accepted as a founding poetry whore. I will be casting on a persona, of course, whose birthing pangs are still being felt. Progress expected on Saturday at first meeting. Seriously, I cannot properly communicate my excitement to be a part of the NOLA Poetry Brothel--at least not without using ALL CAPS A LOT, which I am rather loathe to do. Looks like I'm going corset shopping! Updates on the Brothel to follow, of course.

Aside from all these doors to word venues opening up, I'm just trying to take it one step at a time. This is a period of more than a little transition in my life and I'm still not sure which way everything is going to cut. Great amounts of trepidation and excitement and also giddiness swirling around in my head, in all of me, right now. It really gets rather exhausting at times, but better this than numbness. Everything is always beginning. Hang on tight.

Fallout

Actions have consequences.
Drastic actions can have dramatic consequences.
Drastic actions undertaken brashly can consequently perpetuate drama beyond the reaction.
Denial is not a way out.
A way out is not always a safe exit.
There cannot always be shelter for the fallout.

The best intentions can cause the most pain if you hide them under your tongue for too long.
Chew them up and swallow.

Scavenges

I am currently in an if-i-don't-think-about-it-i-don't-have-to-deal-with-it standoff with the post-Issac contents of my fridge. And so my lunch is yet again "Screw it, I'll make pasta." At least it's actual pasta I'm making this time, as opposed to the four days of Chef Boyardee from which I was previously getting my sustenance.

Anyway, to distract myself from my failure to consume a balanced diet, I will provide here a list of the assorted (and variously grody) contents of my coffee table drawer. I very much like lists. They provide a charming illusion of order and control.

• guitar tuner
• 3 dead lighters
• ticket stub to Avatar in 3D
• LED flashlight (damn that would have come in handy a couple of days ago)
• distressingly old Marlboro, broken at the filter
• my old swipe card from The Chimes
• Blockbuster Rewards pamphlet
• snowman PEZ dispenser
• 1/2 box of my wallet-sized high school senior portrait
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre playing cards
• ticket stub to Toy Story 3 in 3D
• expired copy of my driver's license
• tiny glow-in-the-dark stegosaurus, formerly a jey chain, souvenir from my sister's trip to Europe
• House of Blue wristband from Bright Eyes concert
• 5 coasters declaring "HOME IS WHERE THE BEER IS"
• detached bicycle reflector
• scratched sunglasses

And much more--in just this drawer. There are at least 3 others of a similar nature around the house. These are the kinds of items I cannot bring myself to throw away. Do I hope that if I keep them, I will remember everything, that by attaching scraps of physical matter to my anecdotal flotsam and jetsam, I will never lose a moment? Probably something along those lines. But what good does the detritus of my life do me holed up in drawers, fraying at the edges with grime until the distinctive features are unidentifiable anyway? What claim can be laid on me?

I will end on this note with part of Bukowski's poem "This Moment":


you must begin all over again.
throw all that out.
all of them out

you are alone with  now.

look at your fingernails.
touch your nose.

begin.

the day flings itself upon
you.

Prepare for the Worst, Hope for the Best.

Hurricane Issac has been teasing us all day with some fantastic blustery weather; only now is it even starting to seriously cloud over and gust. The giddy anticipation with which South Louisiana (and especially my peers) peers at an incoming Big Storm never ceases to amaze/amuse me. Hurricane supplies consist mainly of copious amounts of beer and liquor, with some food and batteries as an afterthought. The word "hurrication" has been tossed around quite a bit. It's not that people actually want a destructive force battering around their and their loved ones' property, it's just that it's a killer excuse to shut down work and party hardy in some great kite weather.

[ETA: Just realized I used the word"peers" in two completely different contexts twice in a row without realizing it. Going to let it ride.]

Gustav was the last big one to hit BR and my first real "grown up" hurricane experience. Despite massive inconveniences and property damage, I tend to remember the post-Gustav experience fondly. The nervous-making start to my college career was postponed for a week of blackout (literally) carousing, barbeques, curfew dodging, bongo playing, and face painting. (And then when the lack of A/C was just too much, I fled on a road trip to Hendrix to visit a friend. Win.)

This time around, I'm feeling a bit more Dickensonian.

I'm just not feeling up to the kind of manic decadence that hurricanes provide a perfect storm (sorry!) of circumstance for. Which is kind of a weird thing to say. But I feel like I'm going to cut the other way, into an isolation-by-force-of-nature mode. I'm just at a point where I feel very lonely right now--not in a sad, pathetic I-don't-have-any-friends sort of way (because I do, they are awesome people, and I always know they are a few steps away available for party and support. Forever grateful for that), but the kind of lonely that I get when I am out of sync with my space and my self. If I can't line that crap up, very little else is going to be fun. This isn't a sad depression thing, just the introverted part of my mood cycle; some rounds are rougher than others.

So instead of partypartyparty, I'm going to try to use the storm to pitch the yaw of my madness, to howl into the wind and the wain, to amplify my isolation enough to counteract it. I've got candles, and I've got some things to say to myself and notebooks enough in which to say them. And so by god, I'm going to get some words out. At least until my hand seizes up and my mind hazes apart enough to let me stop.


Hm. More thoughts clawing about in my head, but I'm going to put this out there before the grid goes down. I've got my pen, my red wine, my vodka, and spaghettios. Let's do this.

Chronostep

Oh no Hello another year. Chronologically I am tracking linearly like everyone else and don't I know it. But sometimes it feels like trudging and sometimes it feel like a race and sometimes I can't sort out which is which. Time that funny thing time.


And of course some Bright Eyes lyrics, because that's how I do:


And the world’s got me dizzy again
You think after 22 years I’d be used to the spin
And it only feels worse when I stay in one place
So I’m always pacing around or walking away
I keep drinking the ink from my pen
And I’m balancing history books up on my head
But it all boils down to one quotable phrase
If you love something, give it away