Afternoon

2 p.m.

What I am doing: just finished practicing on my flute for about 15-20 minutes, mostly the same reel over and over. Still tasting my Lean Cuisine lunch in my mouth despite its being an hour since I ate it and smoking two cigarettes between now and then. Debating taking a shower and getting dressed, but getting dressed at this point seems premature as I'll just have to change again for my radio show tonight. I feel like dressing specially for it for the first time in a long while. What I'll wear, I don't know. Debating trying to e-mail H. of the Scones to tell her to contact me if she wants to talk or vent. Debating curling up on the couch with my copy of Watchmen, but that seems a bit challenging, especially as reading it has been giving me odd dreams. Like last night I dreamed I was dating Rorschach--he looked like Daniel Craig under the mask--and we were in my father's old church planning a fishing trip. Weird.


What I've been thinking about: going to Harmony House and Mr. Tony's sub shop with Stef during exam time, the only time that our school gave underclassmen any freedom to get off campus during the day. Walking in the rain with N. and singing the entire score to Jesus Christ, Superstar one August evening in New York as we searched in vain for a place to get a latte. We couldn't find one until we hit the East Village and we walked all the way from 81st Street. Santa Barbara: I hated it there except for the dancing and the food. The food was awesome. I remember the Palace Cafe with its fancy New Orleans menu and wonder if it's still there. I remember Aldo's Italian restaurant: Calimari Picatta and Fettucini Alfredo, yum! Trying to find good Indian food was a washout though, especially when you were used to the myriad of places on East 6th Street in NYC. There was one place but it was very expensive and we didn't go there often.

Food, food, food. I think a lot about food. I think about the days when I was such a fantastic cook and wonder whether they will ever come again. Being on WW, it seems unlikely. I've tried a number of their recipes and I've never found one that was bad, but I miss the freedom of just picking something out of a cookbook and trying it out. I miss the huge Indian feasts I used to prepare before I got so depressed.

I miss dancing. I wish there were a beginning jazz class or a modern class I could take: something not too strenuous so I could get back into shape with it. Something, most importantly, taught by someone else. I am tired of having to create everything I want in my life.

I do not like to get my hands dirty. I want to start over with a clean slate, tabula rasa, and I know this is impossible. I want someone to come into my life and fix the things I don't want to deal with: clean my house, fix my garden and yard. I wonder how I will cope with the latter when spring comes. I look at the calendar and realise that spring is really not that far off: just 2 months until St. Patrick's Day. There have been St. Patrick's Days in the past when I was running about in t-shirts and shorts. I wonder if this year will bring one of them.

I do not like to get my hands dirty. I feel that I am like a baby crying for someone to change her dirty diaper, when I know that I have to do the hard work of healing for myself. I don't want to do it. Still, I have made progress. I have practiced on my flute. I wrote a song. These things have made me happy. Happiness is still an alien sensation. I wonder how long it will be before I begin to freak and back off of it. I hope this time I won't but I don't know.

Yes, I think I may take that shower. It seems the thing to do next. It seems time. Maybe it's late in the afternoon, but better late than never, as the saying goes.

It's time.