Graceful Reprieve

The standardized unit of measurement for nakedness is the nude (abbreviated as ñ.) The scale is measured as follows:

0ñ:   a winter jacket, snow pants, and an unattractive scarf
0.25ñ:   taking your shoes off in someone else's house
2ñ:   taking a shirt off in public and your belly kinda flops out for a second
5ñ:   wearing a bathing suit
10ñ:   plumber's crack
30ñ:   wearing one of those paper smocks while sitting in a doctor's office
45ñ:   being pantsed in front of a boy/girl you previously thought you had a shot with
100ñ:   sharking
3000ñ:   naked open casket funeral

Hopefully this has given you a greater understanding how to measure your nudity and that of others.

That Terrible Strength

There used to be this website, Dammit.com. It was some guy's dream journal, mostly. Not just the usual chronicle of non sequitirs and places that are someplace but also someplace else, it gave an outline of the writer's life until that point. A cycle of regrets and fears and people who he'd never meet again but still existed as shades on the shores of his subconscious. Am I projecting?

6 jul... Long, sad dream about pam. Laying in bed together, talking. Catching up. "do you still smoke? Do you run? Oh you get cramps and have to poop? Hahahahaha. Do you still drink? Oh I stopped two months ago." Just knowing that I love her, and that nothing feels any different than it did years ago. She gets out of bed and goes in another room. My sister comes in and climbs into bed with me, and asks me if I am upset. "what do you think?"

Going back through his archived website, I found out this guy's name. Which is awful. It spoils the spell cast by his words. Once he has a name, he's just another person I'll never know. Some things need to remain ineffable.

4 Jun... A girl is reading a newspaper, seated with long legs crossed. The headline is something like, "2ND CHANCE STILL TO COME!" 

In 2000 or so, when I was reading this for the first time, I was rushing into the bigger part of teenagehood. It felt like my third eye was opening wider every day, like there was this world beneath the world that I was sinking into. I'd watch episodes of Saved by the Bell and cry because of the weird 80's-ness I'd missed out on. The cliché is that it's like you're experiencing all these new, strange feelings, right? They're still new and strange to me. I still don't understand them.

30 May... A long coversation with pam. She has left her boyfriend and says she regrets leaving me. She loves me, she says. I am tortured by her. As we kiss she asks me, "did you really think I was pretty?" and I tell her that in my eyes she was truly beautiful. I am happy to be in bed with her, but I am ambivalent as well. I don't want to be hurt by her again. And even as we are going at it, I remember that sex was never the biggest thing in our relationship. In fact, this whole thing is kind of grossing me out. I pull back from her embrace, and she gets up and begins compulsively cleaning. She is on some new anti-depressant and it is making her manic. 

I tried keeping a dream journal once, but it didn't take. The only thing I remember is: Bruce Willis and I are in bed, and I love him deeply. We're playing a biographical version of Street Fighter based on my life, and something in it hurts his feelings. I try to explain it away, but he turns into a priest. See? Dreams are terrible. I'd like to tie this all together by weaving some message about the universality of the unwaking realm, but that's just sweet-smelling shit. I like sad stories, and something about Dammit.com just makes me feel so sad.

A Speck in a Sphere

Some kind of illness is creeping up on me. A generic coldfluspiratoryinfection, probably; nothing heavy-duty enough to merit a doctor's visit, but just enough of a nuisance to slow a week down to a crawl. It's not a good time for a leukocytic showdown. I picked up another job doing short-term government work. It pays well, but it's grinding me down pretty awful. It coexists in my schedule along with my sadly extant retail job and a single college class. By the numbers, it's really not that much of a commitment, so I don't understand why it's kicking my ass so unequivocally.

Whenever I get a new job, there's always a period of panicked scrambling to get into some sort of equilibrium. I'm flailing wildly to catch my balance at the moment, and it's stressing me out mentally and physically. Thus, the illness. I wonder sometimes if I'm made of the proper stuff to do the 40-hours-a-week life, if I can hack the basic requirements of anything beyond a marginal existence. What confidence I had that self-reliance was within my abilities is eroding. Things would be easier if I had some overriding goal that propelled me or some gift that I could rely on, but if it's there, I haven't identified it. I don't write out of passion, but because I need to.

I suppose it troubles me that this blog has become a bit of a Livejournal, but I suppose it's a bit more acceptable considering that no one really reads it anyway. In high school, I'd check the Diaryland and Livejournal accounts of my classmates more often than necessary, searching for mentions of myself. Some proof that I was central to somebody else's life. I think maybe only one person ever mentioned me. (Thanks, Magda!) It's good, though, to have a secret public journal. I try to discuss what I'm feeling with my friends, but I never really feel like I'm getting through. There's a catharsis to this sort of confession, I think. It's a prayer addressed to the void; whether it gets answered is immaterial.