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Sunday, 31 August 2008 (signal in the sky) 11:22pm My roots are reblondified thanks to Rhiannon, and Bad Movie Night rocked thanks to a bunch of people. Though I'm willing to take credit for putting it on the schedule in the first place. | ||
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Saturday, 30 August 2008 (non mortuos sed implacatos) sometime after midnight Never underestimate the restorative powers of the disco nap. | ||
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Friday, 29 August 2008 (point end) 4:39pm After the requisite second hour at the gym yesterday afternoon, I met up with KrOB at the Westfield Century Theater to see Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. It was the second 3-D movie I've seen this week, which just goes to show what'll attract me into theaters these days. (I still haven't done my cultural duty and gone to see The Dark Knight, and probably won't until late October when The Castro shows it in double feature with Iron Man.) If I'm going to deal with going to a movies these days, by gods, it had better be something different. From there I went to The Dark Room and hung out with Jim for a while. Among other things, I officially reneged on being the Assistant Director of the big play this December, an officially sanctioned version of Star Wars. (He actually got the rights from Lucasfilm, who evidently did the math and realized that even if it was the biggest hit in the history of The Dark Room, there's no way it could pose any financial threat to the franchise.) I'd originally said yes before the office moved and I started going to the gym and in general before I developed my current momentum, and I like my current momentum. I intend to ride it out for as long as it lasts or as long as it takes, whichever comes first, but at the very least until the end of the year. (between two aprils, magic and loss) Working on the play—which would be a behind-the-scenes, administrative position with no real creative input—would derail that momentum something fierce, since I'd have to be at rehearsal three to four days a week for all of October and November, not to mention the actual show nights in December. I'll probably be at the actual performances anyway, behind the bar with Rhiannon and Jim or at the front desk with Erin, but I simply cannot take on the obligation of having to be at all the rehearsals and all the work the position will entail. I get anxious and unhappy thinking about it, knowing that I'll be restless and resentful in the thick of things, and I try to respect what both my body and my emotions tell me. Besides, I figure, if there's any time in my life to be selfish—and I'm not claiming to have lived a selfless life, not in the slightest—it's right now. Among the many ironies present is the fact that I haven't made much progress on the book lately. Part of it is because I'm busier with my actual work-work lately, but when I sit down to write or edit, the energy just isn't there. I'm sure it'll change as I get into better shape, but right now when I'm in the molting process, my brain frequently isn't up for the task. For example, tonight I'll probably go home (after a quick stop at See Jane Run, which Raphaela suggested I check out to buy new shoes, seeing as how my current pair are ten years old (somewhere there's a picture of Mina as kitten sitting next to one of them, taken in Maddy's trailer in October '99)), make a salad, watch a movie, and crash early. It's not laziness so much as my body asking for respite from what I've been putting it through. In any event, at this moment in time my focus is on my body, since I can't save my soul. So, I backed out. Jim took it well, which came as no surprise since he's one of the most gracious people I know. I was home by midnight, up again at six and in my car at half past seven, by which point I discovered that I didn't have my sunglasses. In my car, in my apartment, anywhere. They'd up and disappeared. I drove straight to the movie theater, which was predictably empty at a quuarter to eight in the morning. (It was accessible because the mall itself was open, but it was dark and deserted.) Well, frack. At noon I called the theater and asked if a pair of black Ray-Bans had been found. The answer was no, of course. I'm sure whoever found the glasses kept them, in spite of the fact that they're prescription and thus no good to anyone but me. The genial fellow on the phone promised to call me if they showed up, but I have no expectations. If anything, I was shocked that I called a googolplex and didn't get a record. I've since called the Site for Sore Eyes from whence the glasses originally came and ordered another pair. Same make, model, and prescription. Should take a week, and only half of the retail cost because when I bought the original pair—which was mostly covered by my insurance—I paid twenty-five bucks extra for their service plan. Saved me a couple hundred bucks, as I knew it would eventually, since I lose stuff. It's what I do. (I still mourn for all the comfy, good-looking black cardigans I've lost over the years.) The new pair should be ready in a week or so, and in the meantime I'm not blind, having both my regular glasses and the other prescription sunglasses I got from Kaiser a couple years back. They work, but I don't like how they look on me. Aesthetics is a tricky thing, and I'll pay extra for it if need be. Which it usually is. Did an hour with Raphaela today, mostly focusing on Pilates. It's evil, but that just means it's working. | ||
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 (over the billboards and factories and smoke) 9:43am looks like we're on the same page about sitting back here. So said the girl who sat on my favorite bike in spin class last night as I sat on the one next to it. She beat me to mine by a few seconds. I replied: yep, i like sitting back here because I can see the instructor both straight ahead and in the mirrors. I didn't add: you're on the bike i've been using for the past three wednesday nights in this exact class, and i haven't seen you in here before. so, yeah, "same page," evidently. I could already feel the resentment and dislike starting to build up in me, the unfounded territoriality. She's in my space, damnit, and then has the temerity to...to...talk to me about it? The nerve! I chose to ignore her as best as I could, to disregard the fact that I could both see her in my peripheral vision and in the mirrored wall on the far side of the room, and especially pay no mind to the fact that I was so big and large and she was so small and tiny. I didn't like the way I was feeling over such a non-issue, the bile rising in my soul, but I knew there was nothing I could do but let it run its course. I'm nowhere near emotionally advanced enough to not have such petty reactions in the first place, and all I can do is let the poison do its thing then disappear. Ironically, the signup sheet which I had to jump through so many hoops that morning to get onto wasn't even there, due to the fact that someone else was instructing the class, subbing for Tyrol. To continue with the metaphor, (a metaphor which I wouldn't have used five years ago nor am I likely to use in five years so it's all the more important to use it now, because if I don't how will I ever know who I was in the late summer of 2008?), she had a Seelix quality. Hers was a different style than Tyrol, but I liked it. She moved around the class more than any of the other instructors (actually, she's the only one I've had who's done so), asking everyone how they were doing. I liked that. I like, and rather need, that extra bit of attention. It all feels like love. Not romantic or sexual, but a very basic kind, a simple kindness. Never mind that it's paid for, part of a transaction. That's just a means to an end. Seelix told me she was going to suggest that I raised my handlebars, then realized that I already had them up quite high. Of course, because as has been established once or twice in the past, I'm very very tall. Walked back to my office afterward, enjoying the beautiful, warm night. The weather's been deceptively gorgeous lately. San Francisco is a minefield of microclimates, and I suspect our new neighborhood is in one which tends to be warmer and/or drier than others—kinda like the last northern vestige of the Mission District—but it won't last. The rains will come, and more than that, it'll get darker and darker earlier and earlier, and pretty soon walking to and from the gym will be a bit sketchier. As it is, there's no way to get there without going through at least one indigent enclave, since the freeway passes overhead. I suspect as some point I may start driving the few blocks. Just in case. Home, salad, bed by eleven, up again at five, out of the house sixish, back on the hamster wheel by somewhere beteween half past six and a quarter to seven (finishing up A Wolf at the Table and moving on to Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir, which I picked up at the library because of the M-word in the title, not knowing it was about Susan Sontag's losing battle with cancer until her name came up on the second page), at work again by eight. I think I'm going to have to block out a lot more time for this. | ||
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Wednesday, 27 August 2008 (fortified against trivial mortification) 4:11pm There was a beautiful waning cresent moon not too far above the eastern horizon as I left the house this morning, complete with a prominent Da Vinci Glow. I love those so much. Did half an hour on the crosstrainer, half an hour on the treadmill, and then a certain stretch that Raphaela wants me to do every day on a foam body roller, one of those styrofoam-looking cylindrical things. As I was leaving, I asked to sign up for Tyrol's spin class tonight. For some reason, I had to repeat i'd like to sign up for the 7pm spin class five or six times before the person behind the counter realized that I was asking to sign up for the spin class that happens tonight at 7pm. I was making a point of speaking slowly and enunciating clearly, but I just wasn't making any sense. I can only conclude that I was lapsing back into my native alien language and didn't even realize it. | ||
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Tuesday, 26 August 2008 (cleaning the slate) 11:20am Yep. Another hour at the gym, then back to the office to do a semi-impromptu photo shoot with Sister Edith for the SF Weekly. It didn't go very well, primarily because my camera's batteries died but also because my look wasn't quite right, but we'll nail it tonight. Didn't see Raphaela yesterday because of a scheduling conflict, so I'll be seeing her this afternoon. Took the opportunity to sleep in this morning, all the way until six. I'm seeing my doctor next week, and I'm not looking forward to it all. I don't like him, and the thought of having to be in the same room with him makes me unhappy and anxious. I keep thinking of how last time, he asked me if I'd been on hormones before I started seeing him. Never mind that I brought in my medical history going back to 1998. Christ. Two months after ruminating about it, I finally had the presence of mind to call my old endoc, the one in San Jose who treated me nice. Except that she's fallen off the face of the planet. I dug up two sets of contact information for her online, and neither of them work. I've asked on the TGSF Yahoo! Group if anybody knows what's become of her, but I'm not holding my breath. Indeed, I'm expecting to get crickets in response, or maybe one or two messages praising my current doctor (whom I didn't mention in the message). Lots of people think he's terrific and are big fans. Me, I'm not. And I don't know where to go from here. 5:42pm Oh, for heaven's sake. I did get a response to my query: a few years ago, my old endoc moved out of the country and changed her name. She's still practicing medicine, which is good, but, wow. Of course, she moved out of the country. Every decent doctor I've had has become inaccessible: the woman at the Waddell Clinic has since moved away, and the guy at Kaiser also dropped out of sight. It must be me. Did an hour with Raphaela this afternoon. I think I'm getting better at it. I have no idea how many we have left. She'll let me know. I'm also discovering a new sound, which makes me happy. I like new sounds. I exhale on exertion, and to guide me (since I do often lose track of when I should be exhaling, so many details to keep track of) Raphaela usually makes a short, loud exhaling sound. I've been doing the same thing, and I realized today that it's developing into a whistle. Mostly it just sounds like air coming out of my mouth, but every so often there's a sharp, crisp note, a whistle. I like that. It gives me something to work toward in the moment. | ||
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Monday, 25 August 2008 (a condition of unknowable outcome) 9:51am An hour this morning, probably an hour tonight. This is the only way it works, and it takes a long time. After working out on Saturday morning (only an hour, not two) I ran some errands, then went to the Red Vic to see 1953's It Came From Outer Space, shown in its original 3-D with glasses provided. It's one of those opportunities which makes me feel so fortunate to live in San Francisco. (Though I wouldn't sneeze at getting to see the 70mm Cinerama presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey next month at the ArcLight, but I'm not convinced that it would make living in L.A. worth it.) From there it was to The Dark Room hang out with Jim and Rhiannon during a comedy show, after which Rhiannon and I went to her favorite bar, the Inner Mission Beer Parlor. My batteries ran down around midnight, which is still later than I've been up these days. At the gym that morning, I heard someone say to their trainer: since we've been working together, i've been going to bed a lot earlier these days and sleeping more. It was reassuring to know I'm not the only one. After a few hours of cleaning and redecorating the Black Light District (I'm a grownup, and grownups put their movie and music posters in frames, right?), I hooked up with Rhiannon and went to the Rock Make Street Festival. As is so often the case with street festivals, I was underwhelmed. But, you know, I'm glad they exist, and I liked what I heard of Tartufi. Bad Movie Night was not one of our better ones. Though it was fun, we never quite clicked, the audience was too quiet, and occasionally it felt like the feature (Last Action Hero) wanted to beat us into submission. We recorded it for possible submission to Rifftrax's iRiffs—they promote and distribute homebrewed commentary tracks—but, yeah, not this one. We'll get it right soon. 2:17pm Much like last time, the SF Weekly is going to preview Working for the Weakened in their calendar section. Yay! Legitimacy! It also means I need to come up with a print-quality, concept-appropriate promo picture by this Wednesday, but I think I can manage. | ||
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Saturday, 23 August 2008 (make it go away) 8:44pm At The Dark Room, and not on a Sunday. It's been a while. | ||
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Friday, 22 August 2008 (last of the cabal) 3:07pm So yesterday afternoon I cancelled plans to get together with Jim at The Dark Room to start on the second season of Jericho (which was my suggestion in the first place) and left the office at four. It was a beautiful day, and the drive home was lovely, with the Pacifica Ocean unusually active under a clear blue sky. Of course, as soon as I got inside I did everything I could to make it impossible to tell whether it was bright or dark outside. I've been sleeping with the blacklights on a lot lately, which helps to compensate the bits of sunlight which manage to sneak past the layers of blackout curtains. I unsuccessfully attempted to nap, finally getting up again at six in evening. Made a big salad, watched Pixar's Cars and futzed around some on the computer before going back to bed at nine, by which point it felt positively late. As per usual lately—as per usual my entire life—I only slept a couple of hours at a stretch, usually having to re-orient myself and figure out if it was actually time to get up or not. My goal was to give myself a full night's sleep, since that's what my body was craving, and I'm trying to listen to it more. Besides, having a noon appointment with Raphaela, I didn't need to get up early to go to the gym. I learned that one the hard way last Friday. So, I got up for real at six this morning. When you go to bed at nine, qualifies as a full night's sleep. Got to the office only to discover that construction has begun on a deck in our parking lot. It's not exactly an ample parking lot, and we have to double up on parking to begin with, and there's about a ninety-nine percent chance that the local indigent population will find a way over the fence at night to sleep on it. But the powers that be want a deck in our parking lot, and so it shall happen. As I hoped, I was in much better shape (as it were) to for the sesson with Raphaela. I brought her a DVD of Sheryl Crow's "My Favorite Mistake", and though she was happy that I had a definite picture of how I wanted my body to look, she lightly admonished me for referring to it as "my unrealistic goal," saying: it's only unrealistic if you choose to look at it as unrealistic, and then you'll be right, it'll never happen. but if you picture it as your goal, and work towards it, then it can happen. I'm willing to accept that. Biology is not destiny. And I also think she's willing to make it happen. She said she's been doing more research into Pilates, beyond what she already knows as a certified trainer and into the more hardcore (or at least arcane) stuff for about lengthening and strengthening muscles without bulking them up as such. Which tells me she's been paying attention to what I've been saying. Which makes me happy. Not that you'd have been able to tell during the fourth or fifth time that I was doing the plank thing, my whole body quivering and shaking, and the mat getting increasingly wet from the copious sweat draining from my body. When I referred to it as shvitzing, she laughed and said: shvitzing? i had no idea you were a nice jewish girl! I replied: i'm not. i just dated one for a couple of years. Tyrol's spin class was happening nearby. I knew this both because I saw it on the schedule, and because I heard "Idioteque" from Radiohead's Kid A, and nobody else would play that. I was quite well blasted by the end of the session, which means it's working (this is the only way it works), and I suspect tonight will be another salad/movie/early-to-bed evening. It's a Friday night, but that's okay. Days of the week have been blending together together for me these last few weeks, since most days I end up at both the gym and my office. I'm planning on being back at both for a while tomorrow—especially since I got Augusten Burroughs' A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father from the library and I'm looking forward to digging into it—though Raphaela's made me promise to take Sunday off, to not work out. relax and drink bloody marys. Tempting, to be sure. It'll help that Rhiannon and I are going to check out the Rock Make Street Festival that day. For some time now I've been considering spending a druggy Sunday at The EndUp, kinda like I did with Ali a million years ago, which itself resulted in one of the better pictures of me from those days, including a look at the T.U.K. Combat Trooper boots I'd bought to replace my dying Fluevogs. They didn't last very long. Anyway, even though I have Ecstasy left over from the Pattern Party at Edie's, I'm not about to do E when I don't have someone I can nuzzle with, especially in a public place. Might as well pour fire ants over myself. As for boots, my current Fluevogs are two years old and starting to show the wear indicative of two years of daily use, but, wouldn't you know it, they don't make them anymore. And it's not like how the Lucky Angel boots I wore for so many years were discontinued and replaced by the Lucky Studs I'm wearing now, either. I called the store and was told Fluevog doesn't make any knee-high (ha! not on my legs they ain't), lace-up boots at all anymore. Possibly new ones might be introduced in December, but at the moment, nope. Everything goes away. | ||
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Thursday, 21 August 2008 (the perfect ending) 4:04am You'd think that being up at four would be mean not having to listen to them crashing around upstairs. You'd be wrong. 5:28am On the hamster wheel at half past five. This is more like it. 11:41am Tyrol played Radiohead again during the final stretching of the spin class last night, but I didn't sing along this time, because I didn't recognize the song. It wasn't from OK Computer or Kid A, and it wasn't "Creep" or "The Bends," so I didn't know it. For as much as I've tried to appreciate their last few albums, and I've listened to them several times apiece, it all sounds the same to me. Having run out of library books, I spent an inordinate amount of time last night going through the bookcase behind my bed, trying to decide what to put in my gym bag for reading material. I solicited Perdita's opinion, but she remained mum on the subject. When I went with John Waters' Shock Value, which I read every few years (and is also big enough to work well with the magazine rack), she seemed fine with it. I was up again at four this morning. Just like the old days, sorta. An hour on one, an hour on the other. This is the only way it works. The meaningless number is dropping, working its way down to two hundred. Not that I looked, nor that it matters. 3:44pm ...and then the sleep dep kicks in, hard. I also suspect I'm not eating enough to make up for the calories I'm expending, so my energy levels are all outta whack. Beauty is pain. | ||
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