Sighbrary

2005-08-09T14:23:00.000-04:00

It's the middle of the (timeworn phrase alert....) dog days of summer here in CT. Muggy days; sweaty nights, for sure. I try my best to persevere, but boy does it turn me into a morose and cranky asshole, given to even more sighing than usual. Sigh.
I'm home for the next year as of two months ago. Fed up with working a real job, I've taken on the even more difficult task of raising my two kids. Sometimes it's rewarding and fun and relaxing; others it's fraught with tension, anxiety, dread, boredom. It teaches you a bit about the full gamut of human experience. I was reading the other day that children introduce accident into a mortally predictable world of seemingly infinite/utterly finite choice. I would agree, with all concomitant rewards and punishments.
I'm supposed to see TS & LT soon, but as usual T is unresponsive to the invite. She's a pain in the ass and I'm perilously close to ditching her sorry world forever and always. I have to guard against over-reacting to each small irritant--a regrettable personality trait of mine--and try to be understanding, but it's such a one-way street (all my having to be understanding, and rarely her whatsoever), and she's so goddamn blind to her own culpability in, well, life, that it grates and grates at times. For months I've essentially just ignored her, but I feel some resolution will be required soon. She's so very selfish and vain, but it's the blindness that gets to me most. She cannot understand for the life of her why she's considered cold and uncaring. This while she spends an enormous amount of psychic energy (e.g. "it tears me apart" and so on...) maintaining this cool, icy, "pleasant" mask. Argh, it's all I can do to carry this on.
Why do I? I feel some sort of peculiar obligation since I spurted on her so much at the beginning. Isn't it cruel to back off now? Perhaps when we move I can release from this for good. Or do I want to? Is this part of "love"? I still dunno, but I'm edging closer to termination out of self-interest. Certainly, it would be fair to say that I need her less than she needs me. From a clinical standpoint, there's little to keep me here. Maybe I'm just being stubborn because I sense she's trying to drive me away but is too much of a coward to come out and say it, and I won't let her "get away with it." But, indeed, that is most likely paranoia, as I think she does care and wants me to stick around. Around and around and around we go...

I went out with MN, the poetess, for drinks last week, and she let me know that my poetry is good verging on great and "as good and as powerful" as anything out there. She encouraged me as strongly as possible to get out there and get it published. What a strange, new world I've entered into. It all seems so hazy, quavering.
Then, she got so drunk that I had to assist her homewards, making me doubt that she was in her right mind when she told me all this. Oh well, for ego's sake, I choose belief over skepticism.

2004-12-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Back. Back from the dead.

I just broke a button off my beautiful tweed coat.

This is a day of broken buttons, for sure. I was supposed to catch a flight to Tally to join M and the kidz at M's ancestral homestead. Last night I got tipsy with Jimmy and woke up in a blear, stumbling out the house at ~5:00 AM for a 7:00 flight. I arrived at the airport to find the flight cancelled due to last night's big shitstorm and no flights out of the crowded airspace until tomorrow. Boy was I ever bummed, as was Ms. M who wept by phone. Disaster. So, Xmas Eve by myself. Sigh.

To tell the truth, however, I've been enjoying the solitude. It makes me feel even more Clark Kentish than usual, in the Fortress of Solitude, icyicynicey. It teaches me that I can enjoy the pleasures of my own company, if need be.

I'm broken up over not being able to see the kidz on Xmas Eve. That's about the truest joy of Xmas, kids waiting for Santa.

I sally forth tomorrow morn once again, to arrive in the evening of Christ's b-day. Christ.

2004-08-28T10:19:00.000-04:00

This whole deal with T (whatever the fuck it is...) is a confusing mess at the moment, fraught with ambiguity. There's been a big change in our communication of late, with it reverting back to the model of a few months ago: a few days between contacts and longer emails, no IM, no phone, no contants at all. And it seems like the communication has a new tone: a little standoffish, less sexual, colder. And she's newly "into" her husband. It seems like she's beating a retreat, yet she keeps sending out messages that she's still interested. I ahve this horrible feeling that the whole relationship is being lived out in my head, exposed to all of my paranoias and fears. I need some real-world footing to the whole thing.
I don't know what to feel. On one hand, I feel jealous and hapless and used, like I merely filled a void for her and she's backing off now that the mister is treating her right. On the other hand I feel like a SELFISH CUNT for thinking those thoughts, caught on the seesaw by a bigger kid. I'm supposed to be her friend and to be supportive. I've known all along that a large part of what we were doing was void-filling, so why am I upset now? Well, because I thought it was "love" and now it seems like it might be baser. But then again, love takes time and respect, right? Aaarrrgh I'm confused.
Part of it is that she denied the unequal relationship I proposed (i.e. me sub; her domme) after crowing about how much she wanted it for months. I told M about the whole thing, she approved on the basis that it was something she couldn't/wouldn't give me and because this was, and is, a "void" in my life, this desire to worship, and then I got rebuffed our of T's fear of the whole thing and of being "found out" or exposed. Now, she's not holding up her end of our "equal" relationship--it's a little scary how much attention and care she craves while giving little comfort in return. Maybe I have to get used to that inequality, but for now I feel unsettled, uneasy, anxious, queasy. I would back out entirely, but I'm not sure I want to, strangely enough, or if that would be the right thing to do for her.
T holds her emotions so close to her chest, probably out of fear that I'll hurt her, I guess. I'm sure she feels quite strongly for me, but it's hard to tell just how or how much or in what sense. I crave reassurance, like a stupid little boy, but there's so little forthcoming. Is this all an exercise in her power and control, or is it just two very different personal styles--the priest and the confessor? I lean towards the latter interpretation, but I'm not quite sure. Perhaps there's nothing to be "sure" about...

I guess I have to tell myself that all life is ambiguous, ephemeral, shifting and permeated with quease, and that there's probably nothing wrong but the inevitable shifts in a relationship over time. So I should bob like a tanker on rough seas. I just hate the waves and seismic shifts of any sort.

When we lived in the PNW, we had a big ol' earthquake, the Nisqually Quake of 2/28/01. It was a biggie, though deep--not much damage but loads of rolling. I vividly remember the feeling that the sidewalk was shifting under my feet and that there were waves in the street's asphalt. I equally vividly remember the sound of car alarms all over the city after the rolling subsided and the sounds of hundreds of sighs and screams from the downtown buildings. That's what I feel like right now: rolling, on the verge of a sigh (or a scream), tossed about by solid earth.

2004-08-16T18:50:00.000-04:00

This weekend I told O. (M's and my friend since sophomore year of college--15 years now) about my affair with T. (such as it is...can an affair consist of knowing glances, light touches, and a will to believe that it is so? An "affair of ideas"? I think so, but it seems the fornication is the litmus test for most folks.) He was a little shocked. I don't seem like the type to be having an affair. He was even more weirded out that The Wife is ok with the whole thing. I think it's hard for the relatively newlywed to imagine what surprises marriages hold after eleven years. For someone who has been married for one, it is hard to imagine that you could have strong feelings for two people and that your wife could actually be understanding of it and seems to think it holds some good for me and for us. It's hard for him to imagine that this won't destroy our marriage, because it would his.
Overall his advice was pretty sound, I think. T. needs to tell L., her husband. (by far the biggest stumbling block to the whole thing...) Take it as it comes and don't expect much. Don't impose your desires on what could be a good friendship. All very solid.
Still, I think he was missing the boat to some extent. He kept comparing T. to his old love J. Both are/have been quite "bad livers." Both strike one as somewhat crazy. But the two couldn't be any more different, with J. faring far the worse in comparison. (sez this "unbiased" observer with a snicker...) It's hard for O. to see this, having only a 1/2 hour or so of description of T. to go on.
Also, it occurred to me that I might have made a mistake in telling O. I officiated at his wedding, and if his wife, E., finds out that her preacher is having an affair after pontificating on the eternal verities of marriage at her wedding a year before, she'll be way pissed, understandably. Too late now. I can't tell O. not to share this with his wife, as I'm aware that couples share a lot that you might not want them to share.

The weekend was quite remarkable in that I got to see O. reasonably sober. He's trying to stop drinking for the first time since I've known him. It sounds horrible, but I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it's fantastic that he's sobering up, as his pancreas is giving out (always a bummer). On the other, I've never know him sober. Will there be some estrangement between us? Will I still feel close to him, or is alcohol the basis of our friendship, as pathetic as that seems? I guess time will tell, but it has got me a little anxious.

On Sunday, we (me, The Mrs., O., the kids) went to Brooklyn for M. & D's 10th anniversary celebration/party for the birth of their son. M. has been wrestling with his smack devils for the past few months and seems to be making some headway, even if his body is in full quiver because of it: a small price to pay. It seems like everyone's getting sober as I get drunker and drunker on something or other, teetering on the high wire. I'm the trapeze bum, drunk on T's hootch. And I love the reek of booze as I fall to the big top floor.

2003-12-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

11/25/03 kids' desk 6-9

Excuse me. Someone left this in the bathroom. [hands over clear, plastic rosary]
I assume these are by author?
Do you have the Alice books?
Baseball books for her nine year old son
She wants Gossip Girl books.
She: Thief of always & The Face on the Milk Carton
Do you know where the American Girl doll books are?
Books on Walt Disney
Do you close at 8:30 or 9? Nine o'clock.

2003-12-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

10/21/03 kids' desk 1200-1400

Book: Damselflies of North America? You don't have it?!? Any books on damselflies then.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Is Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein? Yes.
My son has an attention problem, but he does well in school. Is Redwall by Tolkien?
I'm here to use the Internet.
Are the 292s over there? I thought so, but I wasn't sure.
Looking for Lemony Snicket. She's already read #4--you reserved it for her.
How about Catwings for my daughter?
Do you have cookbooks for kids?
No you don't need a ticket for today's program. (x8)

2003-11-29T08:53:00.000-05:00

November 18, 2003/Kids' desk 1300-1400

Judy Blume's Then Again, Maybe I Won't on cassette
Where's your Junie B. Jones series?
Books on Picabo Street, please
Chess pieces
And again

2003-11-24T10:58:00.000-05:00

11/17 1-2 pm
I'd like books on fitness for kids. Your books are old.
Can I use the Internet?
Parks & Rec schedule for Winter 03-04
Can I sign up for kids' programs even though I'm not a resident?
He doesn't want the pumpkin.
The computer is frozen (scowl).
Cute girl asks for books on Notre Dame and St. Patrick's (NY) cathedrals.
Of Mice and Men
Should I shut the computer down when I'm done? No.
Books on Indians of the Southwest. All types.
Is there a summary for this? He holds up a copy of Haddix's
Among the Hidden.

2003-11-20T20:48:00.000-05:00

Kids' desk 10-11 AM

Looking for Return of the King
Myths, fairy tales, etc. published after 1998
Where are your classics?
Is there a slot available in the reading group?
Where are your books on war?
Pics and history of Gillette Castle.

2003-11-18T07:39:00.000-05:00

She asks on the phone: "Is my son stil in the storytime program?" Yes.
Info on Burundi and science fair projects
CD-ROMs teaching typing technique
The computer is frozen
Where are the kids' magazines?
I can't find Gift of the Magi.
Do you have Artemis Fowl? The third one.

2003-11-17T10:59:00.000-05:00

What time is it?
Can I use a game computer?
He wants a diagram of a microscope. Any old microscope.
How come my sister's e-mail changes to italics midway through message. Long explanation follows.
Have you seen a boy come in here? We're in the children's room.
Do you got any Pokemon books? Stories, not books about playing it.
Ellen Conford's I Love You, I Hate You, Get Lost.

2003-11-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

"I was wondering if you could tell me what the computers offer people?"
Nothing but sorrow, m'boy, nothing but sorrow.

2003-11-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

Can you tell my boy to stop running? He'll listen to you. Tell him. Now. Uhgh.
She'd like My Antonia by Willa Cather.
ibidem.
The computer froze.
Computer A froze.
computer freezes this afternoon: 4
Little boy is playing with stuffed animals in preschool nook: "You're shit! And you're shit!"

2003-11-14T15:28:00.000-05:00

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. I want it to end, some of the time.