I'll Take Sanity -- and Make It a Double.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed the hiatus as much as I have. I will no doubt get around to what I consider Grave Issues soon enough, but for today I have only the following lament, regarding the presidential primaries thus far:

It is, as is frequently the case, that people are idiots. Women vote for Clinton, African-Americans vote for Obama, people who like Chuck Norris support Huckabee, fundamentalists are scared of Romney because he's not their type of fundamentalist, and people under sixty are scared of McCain due to his age.

All of it boggles my admittedly weak mind: it has never occurred to me that the paramount considerations in my deliberations about candidates' suitability for the job should center around selecting the person who looked most like me, wore the same sort of undergarments as me, observed the same rites, or had a similar background. I for one don't care in the slightest if the winner is someone with whom I fancy I would enjoy riveting conversation over a glass of wine (or, in the case of Huckabee and Romney, over root-beer floats at the ice-cream parlor). (And, of course, in the case of John Edwards, pin-shaped bottles of domestic beer at the bowling alley on Rock-n-Bowl Nite.)

After all, this isn't an election for Student Body President. It is, or at least should be, a quite serious decision. We have seen the sorts of things that can go wrong. And yet, for the position of Commander-in-Chief of the sole (for now) remaining superpower, Baptists are voting for the Baptist, Mormons are voting for the Mormon, and people with wombs are voting for the Mom in the group. The job is so much larger than Roe v. Wade, creationism, or immigration; it has an enormous international, and diplomatic (well, ideally) component, as well, for but one example, and yet it seems the bulk of the populace is treating it with approximately the same level of deliberation, soberness, maturity and dispassion as would be required in deciding which of the Village People is their favorite, or whether Angelina Jolie or Gwen Stefani is hotter.

I realize the field will be narrowed later, but if it is narrowed by these sorts of emotional, juvenile, fatuous decisions, we will deserve whatever we get -- and that four years could be even longer than the last eight.

I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.

Shakespeare, Henry VI, Pt. 3, IV, 1

I was going to get my nails done today, but problematically I took a nap that lasted until 22:30. That also precluded following through on any evening plans. Not that I'm saying I had any. Also not to mention sabotaging any hope of a regular bedtime or waking. Not that I'm divulging what those normally are, or even that I am so rigid as to adhere to a pattern.

I was going to steam the rugs, too. Not that I wish to indicate that I have access to water.

Although I feel a tremendous sense of liberation as to what I can or cannot say now, and while I still hope the point of writing a Personal Weblog in the first place is not having to worry about whether or not one sounds snarky, the fact remains that there will always now be a chill in the air as I imagine someone scrutinizing every post for Signs.

Which of course there aren't. And I sometimes start things and finish them later, and only then try to decide whether they should be dated as 'then' or 'now.' Although I admit that the Blackwater entry was something I encountered that same day I posted it.

No, this won't do. I really don't want this to become a blog concerned solely with the antics of the neighbor's cat and Internet snippets I find amusing or tragic. Or an extended apologia for my belief that there truly is something in between, that I do believe in a middle -- in fact a big, hearty one like the Average American Middle, and that, further, it is in that middle that I imagine most things to reside.

It's just that the middle isn't that entertaining.

For example, today I did not get stuck in any particularly egregious traffic. I missed it, in other words, both coming and going. I was moderately pleased by McCain's moderate success and what it might or might not portend, and likewise mildly bemused by Clinton's lack of the foregone-conclusion landslide. I had the intent to steam some clothes, but was slightly saddened that I had left the water in the steamer too long and came to the mildly disheartening realization that, while agitation with white vinegar inside the chamber helped a bit, a proper cleaning would require the purchase and application of a baby-bottle-sort-of brush, the undertaking of which I with the vaguest sense of resignation felt better left to another day.

I likewise awoke from my tranquil yet perhaps excessive nap with a middling discomfort surrounding the realization that tomorrow I will possibly have a marginally puffy face. This minor regret as regards the conjectured effects of my temporary intemperance in matters of adhering to strict diurnality was offset by the realization that I could simply hold bags of frozen spinach up to one eye with my arm-thigh while using the other eye to assist the fingers of one hand in painting those of the other. If the need to atone for my indolence should arise (understanding that the odds of such an arising are nearly nil), I could strap, if I wished, the bag of spinach over alternating eyes with an aromatherapeuticized silk scarf while steaming the carpets, thus rendering any discussion or internal dialogue as to the effects of my negligible profligacy on either the productivity or cosmetic arenas nil.

In addition, I was suffused by low-grade joy when the neighbor's cat came to call, as well as by his choosing to lay on my stomach. He has not, as of this writing, yet done anything to cause either consternation or ecstatic exuberance, nor has he engaged in any overtly comical 'antics.' He was a bit miffed about the weather, but did not tremble, jump on things, or make unsettling sounds, so pathos, too, is out.

I ate a mostly nutritious dinner but did not go overboard. That is to say, it was at the same time high-fat as well as accompanied by yogurt and the vegetable-seaweed condiment/nutritional powder. It was tasty, but not excessively so. And I ate a shellfish-shaped Belgian chocolate after. I did feel the merest tinge of regret that I neither had on hand a bottle of the sort of wine one would not regret popping open for just one and leaving largely undrunk, nor had sufficient motivation to go to a store and procure just such a mediocre and moderately-priced selection. I then effaced that tinge when I realized that even one glass would likely enhance rather than diminish the sleep-disturbing effects of the long nap, which realization conduced to a subtle relief commingled with a vague joy. When, later, the appropriate dose for my weight of melatonin succeeded in creating the appropriate measure of somnolence at a reasonable hour, I was pleased, but not to an extent that would have adversely affected my newfound sleepiness.

In addition, somewhere in there I bathed, and styled my hair. I did not take an extravagant Bubble Bath, or fill the tub with milk or rose petals, but I did change the blade on my razor, resulting in a closer shave than my last. As I did not use a lot of Products in the styling of the hair, it felt and looked silkier than at other times, but not, it not being four feet long, frighteningly glossy, just moderately, somewhat attractively so. And I chose a black sweater set for the day's sweater set, not out of melancholia, mind you, but because it is a bit thicker, softer, and cozier than some of the others.

See? That won't do. Who cares? I certainly don't; I can't imagine you do, either. But that is the reality of most people's days; most are fairly good, which means fairly prosaic, which means fairly unwritable. I you want something to write about daily life, you must either realistically portray, or exaggerate, or invent some kind of Challenge or Crisis for the hero to encounter and struggle against and sometimes surmount. And Proust, were he here, would no doubt be able elegantly to make my lily-of-the-valley soap evocative of much, much more than cleanliness and nice packaging, and tie it in handily and subtlely with the tiny cheap lily-of-the-valley perfume sets I used to insist, as a child, that I be given when we encountered them in 'gift shops' on family 'road trips' -- but I'm no Proust, and it genuinely felt and smelled simply like a bar of soap to me. There was very little Evocation going on in the bath, very little recherche, very little thought of any sort, frankly, other than 'which leg shall I start with this time?' A question, by the way, which I answered the same way I always do, with 'the same one I always do.'

Hardly worth the paper it's written on.

(Update 06.12.08: Still not, dear.)

My Heel Broke in a Traffic Jam en Route to the DMV -- so I Killed Myself.

Sorry, children, about the long pause. I tried a couple times, but it was difficult to think of utterly content-free things to write. (I do realize I come close, very close, at times, but it is a talent that cannot be fully harnessed; it comes when it wills.) And that wouldn't have been the solution, anyway: people who wish to can read volumes from the selection of a semicolon over a period. It doesn't mean they are correct in doing so; nor, however, does this latter truth dissuade them from undertaking the exercise for their own reasons. Despite my silence in this venue, however, I remain very much alive, not to mention sentient and ambulatory. And having rather a good time of it over the holidays, circumscribed culinary choices notwithstanding.

'Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.' Much Ado, II, 1

That has nothing to do with it, though, actually. This does:

A former boyfriend succeeded in making me partially insane and fully uncomfortable by noting, taking to heart, and doing some long-range, possibly trigonometric, extrapolating from, aspects of this blog that in an ideal world would escape every reader's attention. I then wrote the Reader's Guide in hopes of making my intentions for this encyclopedic rant clear as an unmuddied lake.

But allow me to backtrack.

Since the demise of this relationship, I have had little (very little) contact with this person. He writes the occasional ingratiating, or condescending, or cloyingly/disturbingly reminiscent email, and I respond politely yet tersely. I answer his questions (that's the polite bit), but I answer them in as brief a manner as possible (so as not to engage him further). I strive to be ladylike, in other words, whilst neither providing details, meeting his nostalgia with some of my (depleted, frankly) own in return, nor asking him any questions. The letters end with 'Hope you are well,' which I should think would be read as something quite distinct from 'Tell me all about your work,' or 'Who are you dating?' or 'What's new with you?'

But the State of Things being what it is.

Politeness, it seems, can, in its rarity, be mistaken for Friendliness or, perhaps, as it seems in this case, a Desperate Plea for Help. A cri du coeur the nature of which I am still at a loss to discern. Had I wished for reengagement with this party I assuredly would have supplemented his proffered reminiscences with a few breathless sighs of 'Ah, yes, those were indeed the salad days' of my own and some rose-hued specifics to make my argument. But I would not likely have answered his (misty, watercolored) Memories with silence.

But One Cannot Wear Kid Gloves in the Ring.

And although my amateur pugilist days are well behind me, a friend convinced me that however little I was saying I was clearly saying it wrong, even if 'saying it wrong' meant I was merely saying it politely. And that this drain on my psyche was draining my blog, and that that was wrong.

And while I agree, I thought I had sounded rather more austere than previously in my last return email. On the other hand, I still couldn't think of things to write, other than merely reprinting the Gettysburg Address or the Creation Story a few times -- things of my own, that is, into which nothing at all could be read that wasn't solely of a cheery and uplifting nature. Nothing, in other words, to indicate that we live in a world in which we sometimes stub our toes, eat mediocre food, get stuck in traffic, wake up too late, wake up too early -- or kill our cousins, or kill our brothers, now that I come to reconsider my arbitrary choices above.

Moreover, I couldn't even figure out when I was supposed to 'publish' these cheery entries, as a recent missive from this individual indicated that he was paying close heed to the (again, arbitrary, but no matter) timestamp and reckoning from it the course of my days. (And not in the most flattering of lights, I assure you, but more of the sort of thing about which scores of country singers have had much to say through the decades. Except for the latenight online Scrabble dig, which, to my knowledge, has yet to feature in the lyrics even of Dwight Yoakum, literate, postmodern, and good with words though he may be.)

'Certainly a woman's thought runs before her actions.' As You Like It, IV, 1

So I thought about it a bit but remained stuck. I would like this blog to be a way to keep in touch with people, to entertain them a bit, and to be a place where I can, if I wish, vent my spleen. I like puppydogs and minigoats. Tremendously, in fact, and puffy clouds, and saltwater taffy, and veiled chameleons, and broderie anglaise, and maribou slippers, and birdsong in the summer in a field under the sun amongst frolicking animals and wildflowers by a waterfall, too. I like painting my nails, and going to the ballet, and eating Drumsticks, and making perfumes. But I also get stuck in traffic, I also get lost in parking garages, I abhor going to the DMV, I put off the Post Office and UPS for as many months as I can, and I sometimes sit around reading and writing by myself and letting my nail polish dry. And why any of it, or the writing of it, or the patent exaggeration of my angst surrounding it should cause someone to pity me eludes me.

So I thought about it a bit more, but just a bit, because short on the heels of the above conversation came the New Year's Wishes missive. And I couldn't take it. Relative to the others it was, frankly, innocuous, save for a rhetorical device I can't be bothered to go into here. But it was enough, if due only to the cumulative effect of the whole series and of my frustrated, impuissant, polite and indirect efforts to discourage further contact.

Thus was I impolite in my response. And thus one hopes was he disabused of the misguided impression that we are, owing to the persistence of the aforementioned watercolored memories, Friends. It's a shame, though, that it had to come to that; except maybe for Kant, reading is only as hard as you make it.