January 26, 2009

8:54 a.m.

High-Maintenance Afternoon

It feels so unusual to be going to rehearsal today. Talking to C&C at the dinner party Saturday I asked them what they'd been up to, as we've talked only sporadically. Carol said she'd been playing the piano a little, but sometimes didn't know what to do with herself. Her Feldenkrais clientele is falling off a wee bit, probably because of the economic climate. Chris has been devising ways to save them money, by fixing things himself and so forth -- a legitimate way of making money, really.

On the other hand, Chris is calling this his Renaissance. They're learning French, taking dance lessons. Hurling themselves around a ping pong table, inventing competitions. Carol is always at a yoga class or workshop. Rose and I talked about maybe taking a poetry class together this summer. She took one a few years ago at a community college and just loved the instructor. If there is a class, and I get into MacDowell, I'd have to come down once a week for it. It might be possible depending on when the class is. Rose is a good poet. She hasn't written in a long time. She needs a noodge, and I wouldn't mind one myself.

Of course it depends on whether I'm willing to have my sabbatical interrupted every week. But I don't know when else I'd be able to take such a class, and I've been wanting to ever since she had such a good experience there.

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Yesterday was weird. I'm hoping it's something to do with the homeopathic remedy I took, but who the hell knows. I've reported ad nauseum on the state of my fingers, so there's no need to reiterate that -- but my emotions went berserk sometime in the afternoon. I was innocently shopping for some bright yellow acrylic yarn at JoAnn Fabrics, and by the time I got back into the car I was feeling a little cranky. I thought I must be hungry. But then I burst into tears and wanted to die. Everything was wrooooong, I was a loooooser, a burden to my family and society, why wasn't I born equipped for being in the world? Why had I been so naively trusting of horrible people most of my life? What's with all the constant grieving? When was my body going to heal? And if, according to one school of thought, I'm actually doing this to myself for some reason, what's the damn reason?? Wahhhhhhhhh. Etc. It was horrible. I had to give up and go to bed for a while. I kept crying. In the back of my mind I was thinking, "Oh good, this is obviously something that needs to come out. Maybe the purge will make things better." After a morose lie-down I knitted for a while (knit, cry, knit, cry). I did remember to time the knitting session so I know how long this hat is taking me. "Waaaaaaaahh, snork sniffle, oh good here's my stopwatch, what time is it now? Good, press go and start. What a great yarn this is. Waaaaaaaah."

It continued into the evening. I managed some soup for dinner. Gradually I normalized, and by the time I talked to Dar later on, we were laughing about it. I can utterly imagine a different kind of person, with my life, just handling it and moving forward and having some reasonable successes (or some big ones). But put me in that role, and what? Suddenly everything is such a problem! Isn't it nice that life doesn't have to assign me a difficulty level? I bring my own, like a good guest at a party. BYOD. Dar assured me I was not a burden, either to him or anyone else, and that, eventually, all my artistic efforts would bear fruit. "You are the most wonderful, amazing mouse there ever was," he assured me. "And once you get your head out of your ass, you're going to be unsqueakable!"

Laugh therapy is good.

Okay. Shower, post office, bank, rehearsal.