wear a seatbelt, part two
August 15, 2002 10:03 AM

I'm a fan of seatbelts and side mirrors. I drive a little fast, but safely. I don't like parking decks and dark corners.

The open road is my friend, but the closed car is my enemy. I travel poorly without open windows and room to walk. Vain I may be, but I prefer mussed hair over air that doesn't know the wind.

I've been living in a closed car.

It's exhausting. Even attempting to read makes your head hurt. And I've been reading all the wrong books. Books about how bad things are, with solutions condensed into that one chapter in the back. If they're solutions at all. If they're not just conclusions.

Living in a closed car. [You're realising by now, I hope, that the car in question is metaphorical. That I do, in fact, get out of my car and go into my house. And go into the office. And go elsewhere.] It's a little like depression. But not. It's a little like a rut, except that rutting is something peasants do in Victorian novels, and it's not anything like that. I've been this way since that week a month ago.

Also. I threw everything up in the air and never settled. I feel like fish food. I feel like I imagine fish food feels as it drifts uneaten to the bottom blue gravel. [Everyone's gravel is blue. It must be the ocean. Do we really think the ocean is blue? It does look blue, I suppose.] Of course fish food is a mostly manufactured substance without much in the way of sentience, but there are probably microscopic bug organisms on it that have some feeling. There are microscopic bug organisms on everything. Like eyebrow crickets. I feel like them.

don't look up
don't look back
forget your past
and wear a seatbelt

Except I don't really feel like that anymore. I'm no eyebrow cricket. I'm full of magical stories. [Like the cat we renamed because, after a year, he turned out to be female. And it's not that you couldn't just call a cat by one name forever, but a cat who changes gender should have that process marked. There should be recognition.] And I matter. I this thing with mattering. We should examine that further. If we continue these sessions (a phrase that, by the way, turns up no google results).

I've been feeling angry or apathetic, and I'm not accustomed to that level of duality. I'm going to party like it's 1999. Only not. I don't recall partying particularly well that year. Instead, I'll avoid reduction. Instead, I'll really do the things I'm doing. All of them.

I think I'm ready to go back to design.

I need a scanner. But I need bookshelves. But I need a sofa. And so on. It would be nice to have all the money and time ever. It would be nice not to have to prioritize.

But that doesn't matter! I'm going to really do everything. And what I don't have time for, I won't do.

[This entry is not in fact "part two" of anything. I just realized after typing it that I'd already titled another entry with those lyrics. I'd link it, but the truth is - it's no good.]