In the opening conversation of flame
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1. Daylight savings time was brutal last weekend. My Sunday was quick and crazy and very, very full. I was VERY grumpy mid-afternoon getting ready when I realized I'd lost an hour. However, the sun is pretty.
2. I've been watching a lot of CSI lately. I've never watched CSI before, unless you count the times I accidentally watch the beginning with the brutal murder that makes me want to gag and I change the channel as fast as I can. I AM amused that, thanks to you guys, I am familiar with all the characters and their general story arcs. Yay pop culture h0rs. We're well-informed even if we don't do the research ourselves!
3. I think I've fallen in love with poetry (again). I did in high school, not that I read that many established poets, but I read poetry with friends and knew what I liked. I got away from it in university for a number of reasons (such as finding that established poets wrote poetry I hated). But I've been writing more of it lately and going to a local writing group (and I started a sub-group for poetry and we just met for the first time this week!), and I think something's just *clicked*. Everything is seeming poetic to me right now. Even the volunteer work I'm doing right now, hee. I just finished reading a poetry journal last night (Wicked Alice) and am starting a poetry chapbook, both Christmas gifts from a friend. The same friend I'll be visiting in NYC this summer (oh yes! I haven't announced that here yet!). I think I'll buy out all the poetry books/journals/chapbooks while I'm there, though that'd probably be a very impressive feat in New York City.
4. Yes, so, I'm going to NYC and Boston this summer! And some NY stateside places yet to be determined. If any of you are local and want to meet up (I LOVE meeting my internet friends in person! it's my thing) please let me know! Also, if you have any tips on what to see, etc, please share. I'll post a more detailed itinerary closer to the summer (I've been so busy!) but general ideas are good. I know there's a history of sexuality museum in NYC I want to go to, and a TV museum which will unfortunately be under renovation while I'm there, and I think there must be some kind of DC comics thing to do (the offices, if not an official museum). I haven't done much searching yet though.
5. Winter is endless this year. It really is ridiculous. I was proud to (mostly) survive January with my mental health in tact, but if winter lasts another two months, I think I might cry. But I do have distractions, thankfully. :)
6. I haven't regularly watched TV since December. That knowledge is both liberating and depressing. Depressing because there's not really much on even if I wanted to throw myself back into the routine of box gazing, but liberating because I feel so much more in control of my own time. I'm working full time and still finding time to do my own stuff during the week. Cool.
7. I think meditation fucks you up on some level. I've felt fucked up since I first did a vocal meditation at a conference last fall. It was wonderful, blissful. Then I felt fucked up the whole day. I couldn't concentrate at the next session, as the presenter just wasn't going down to the level I was now at. I went to the drug store looking for deep hair conditioner and for the life of me could not differentiate between all the multicoloured shampoos and conditioners and random hair crap on the shelves. I politely asked a sales woman to help me, explaining clearly that my brain was just not processing all the packages at the moment, but instead of accepting that she kept arguing with me. Saying she didn't know what she could do to help, and I'm like "Um, you can read the bottles on the shelves and point out some versions of the product I'm looking for? That's sort of your job?"
In the months since I feel like I've sloughed off that part of myself - that lower-level brain processing part that is concerned with the bottles that say "shampoo" and "conditioner" versus "deep conditioner". At some level I no longer have the patience for the pettiness and demanding neediness of consumer culture. And I think this is good. I will give up being able to read shampoo bottles for an increased sense of inner peace, the slowing down of my brain waves and an increasing awareness and appreciation of life. I'll give up loud packaging for authenticity, the appearance of normalcy for a more intense lived experience. Meditation throws you out of sync with the rest of the world, and makes you feel more okay in your own little revolving cosmos. That feels fucked up at times, but in a way that makes you feel proud and strong. And you just laugh when people look at you oddly, wondering what on earth you're smoking, and you think, if you only knew...
8. I had four hours of sleep last night. Can you tell? I think I will write some poetry when I get home.