hiatus

"have you seen my wife, mr. jones? do you know what it's like on the outside? don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide."
-the bee gees

I'm a coal miner stepping out of a hole in the ground, dusty, wheezing, and completely unsure of whether there is life on the surface anymore.

So for anyone still reading, thanks. It's been a while, i know. And my only explanation for this is that i need too much sleep. Something around 8 hrs minimum to function. It doesn't seem an unreasonable amount, but for all the things i want to get done every day, blogging invariably falls to the bottom of the priority list.

I was telling my friend nicole after a particularly trying week--nothing horrible, but just exhausting and frustrating (more about it in the next blog entry... you can expect that sometime in summer of 2010)--that i just feel life is in constant disrepair and we are each seamstresses (or seamsters for guys?) and our only responsibility is to try and stitch all these rips over and over, knowing it'll always fall apart again.

A hole in a sock for example. This always makes me a bit sad because a hole will only get worse. A hole represents nothingness and you can't make something out of nothing. Once a sock has a hole in it, it will never be the same. You can sew it. You can patch it. It'll never be as strong as it was before the hole and we can pretend the sock will be fine, but it's fucked unless we take the time every day to monitor and maintain it.

"Just throw the sock out, armin. Buy a new one." I get it. It's just an analogy because you can't just throw out your life. It's melodramatic. I'm replacing sisyphus' boulder with thread and needle. But every day we have these little, dull tasks we need to do and I don't even mind doing them. I just hate that they take away from the things I feel I'm really meant to do.

Flossing. That was part of the new armin's daily tasks. The new armin would floss every day and he's been pretty consistent with that. But you can't just do it once. You have to floss every day, this constant upkeep of your teeth. Or stetching. If you want to make sure you don't get old and hobbly too soon, you need to stretch. not just once, though. That does no good. You need to stretch every damn day or else it's all to shit. Exercise is the same and laundry and fixing my bike. There's all these repetitive tasks that can't just be done once a year. You have to do them over and over again, and that doesn't even mean it makes you exceptional. That's just to keep things from falling apart. If you stretch every day, that doesn't mean you'll be this amazing contortionist. It just means you might prevent yourself from severe pain when you try to pick up a spoon you dropped on the kitchen floor.

And so if I want to accomplish bigger things, say writing more, reading more, learning to play the ukulele and mandolin, get better at the guitar, improve my origami repertoire, resume my karate training, apply to grad schools, work enough hours to save money for grad school, along with having enough time to be with friends here and call friends far away... I get exhausted thinking about it because there's this mundane "to do list" that involves flossing, stretching, laundry, bike repair, cleaning the bathroom, etc.

The people in this world I envy most are those people who just don't need as much sleep, so they can go out with friends and write books and earn degrees and teach themselves special relativity along with a thousand other accomplishments all during the time that i'm in bed snoring.

I look at my hands a lot while typing at work or riding my bike. They look old now. Little scars and dark spots. I think of my two year old nephew's hands, each tiny finger pink and segmented like a caterpillar. Mine have the look of old bark instead. Maybe they look old because i felt I'd have more to show for myself at this age than a basket of folded laundry. I told nicole I would celebrate every accomplishment, no matter how small, but it's hard to rationalize cracking open a bottle of champagne every time you vacuum your room.

No matter. Summer has come to portland at last and some days the sun is just right and makes you remember the first time you ate a soft batch chocolate chip cookie.