56: Pinball Thoughts

I'm so caffeine'd up right now, I am shocked I don't burst in cancer pustules on the spot. Have you ever had so much [Diet Coke] that your eyeballs feel as if they are swimming in your head? I'm reminding myself of those dinosaur books, the one with the wiggle eyes. I've decided it's entirely appropriate to have an Office marathon and snort and giggle into another bottle.

Indeed, the first draft of my painful M.Ed thesis has been written.


Storms are rolling around in the sky; we've had thunder and lightning in the morning. I am used to this as an evening affair, a shocking wake up call at four am, a stumbling about, slamming windows shut, our pajamas backwards, our dogs wiggling at this mid-night surprise.


I feel a need to thank Shari, who recommended Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust to me. It begins:

"Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that adds up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak."


Drawing my attention, in the news:
- Kay Ryan has been named U.S. Poet Laureate. I am woefully unfamiliar, but this will change soon.
- My own copy of the controversial New Yorker arrived this morning. I'm still woefully behind.

It's all about woe these days, isn't it? Or rather, how woefully I exist in a literary world.