Up the Down Road

Spent a pleasant day not working on The  Problem. The Problem, though, is too huge to completely avoid. I need to think about all the complicated maneuvers needed. (Did my horoscope mention quick decisions?) How I hate the barbaric visa system. Saw some beautiful rocks.

1:57 am: okay, some decisions have been made. Now let's hope I can think about something less stupid.

 

• I am so tired.
• the day at work is completely weird. things went from paranoia to warm & fussy and back, and forth. for the most part I was also starved.
  
• permafrost of the water pitcher.
  
• and the light bulb: I can't reach it even with a step ladder. maybe there is a big ladder in the basement?
  
• I hate the visa system. it was designed by a sadist.
  
• I'm not good at making decisions that involve sequencing and dates. it got worse when they also involve other people's dates.
  
• airline tickets are ridiculously expensive considering the distance. I would take the train if it is not so ridiculously unreliable.
  
• basically nothing has been accomplished. all I have done is to have discovered how impossible this is. the mobility of the twenty-first century does not apply to someone like me. 
  
• I'm going to bed.     

p.s. two minutes after writing the above I figured out how to change the light bulb (without bringing up the ladder that may or may not exist). so the room at least has a brighter outlook. I'm also going to water my plants, I've decided, as a gesture of protest.  

I'm still flustered by the crazy turn of events (it is good crazy, I must say, but the kind of good that involves a lot of work, arrangements, running around, etc. the truth is I don't turn on a dime. but this reminds me of last night, at about 3 in the morning when I was about to doze off I heard an explosion. not a loud loud explosion but loud enough to wake me up. it sounded like a balloon being busted, or someone stepping on a firecracker. my immediate thought was that one of my ten thousand

electronic gadgets on chargers had exploded. my cell phone for example. I knew the battery was slowly giving out, but maybe in this process it had become explosive. that seemed entirely possible. I turned on the light to look around. but right then my hand in the dark touched something under my pillow. it was a quarter, a Kentucky quarter to be exact. I didn't know I had this quarter under my pillow in my bed on my person or anywhere near me. was this the proverbial dime-turned-quarter? as if to say, sure, you can't turn on a dime, but maybe you can turn on a quarter? the end of the story, in case you want to know, was that I found nothing out of order.) the point is I should be focusing on Real Work as opposed to being flustered. I'm going to put on my tranquility sweater (that's because I'm a little cold) and concentrate. 

boy have I worked. but the thing is not yet done. and I have other things to attend to. but at least it is going at a satisfying pace. 

p.s. didn't have time to come back to Real Work but maybe I'll think about it in my sleep. this week is tough. but it'll all get better after this. so I tell myself. 

The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation

I don't know, but I think RB would be pissed by this comparison, having worked all his life to be the anti-García Marquez of his generation. It's like calling Mt. Fuji the Japanese Alps. Worse, because Mt. Fuji probably hasn't given any thought about the Alps whatsoever.  

I need to do Real Work. I don't have a lot of time. I am scared. Okay, now that I've said it.

clipped from www.somatosphere.net In "The Berlin Wall on the Therapist's Couch" and "Constructions of the Berlin Wall: How Material Culture Is Used in Psychological Theory," sociologist of science Christine Leuenberger has written about the psychological sciences in Germany have used the Wall as a means of understanding the basis of individual distress and as a metaphor for social malaise. The three case studies exemplify how the psychological sciences use material objects, such as the Berlin Wall, as interpretive resources to reflect on psychological issues, make sense of societal transformations, and create and solve social problems," (Leuenberger 2006). He investigated what Berliners had already started to talk about—whether the newly built wall was causing a novel psychological disease: “the wall disorder,” “The wall’s fall was the emotional climax of the unloading, the cathartic breaking-through . . . of the unconscious. “die Mauer in den Köpfen” (the wall in the heads) the barrier constructed by Israel