sizzle sizzle, like a mouse
Saturday 24 May 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
Marseilles merchant P. Labat writes of how women of the West Indies received a 1704 shipment of textiles—which sold instantly, as soon as the bundles were opened: “As for payment the island women…brought sugar cane, indigo and cocoa by moonlight, products the women had their faithful slaves pilfer from storehouses after dark, which they sold to pay for their purchases without the knowledge of their husbands and fathers.”
(from Quilts of Provence by Kathryn Berenson)
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The Internet broken for me lately (obviousment). Some as-yet-unlanguaged existential/electronic terror of “oversharing”—though that word has, also obviously, never meant much to me heretofore.
Abruptly loathe all mediated forms, and am too mentally fatigued to brandish my usual litany of excuses: crazy, moving, school, busy, sewing, blah-blah-blah. Honestly? I seem to have remembered quite vividly that I’m some kind of weird hermit and have pretty much always been (”proud holder of the world’s worst correspondent title since 1991!”—the same year I stopped answering the phone). Remembering that blogging started at least partly as an optimistic idea of how to deal with the chronic 100+ email backlog: “I can just have a newsletter and never answer email again!”
Quixotic of me. Did not work out as planned.
In his study I hear him whom I call the Brujo typing ferociously. I venture: We should cancel our at-home DSL and save money and possibly more. He disagrees at present, though willing to entertain discussion. Perhaps via Facebook. Hahaha!
Recently fuel added to the burn-out fire from various sources—cherished bloggers cautiously engaged in what the Monk used to call, “finding the position.” Heather Armstrong was on the Today Show, where the redoubtable Kathie Lee had a moronic hit-and-run go at her (instancing my most dreaded combination of women in positions of power who are an intolerable combination of a) dumb and b) mean). Mara Collins, brilliant and precise as ever, confides that she asks her sons’ permission before using their names; and professional oversharer and Gawker blogger Emily Gould reevaluates, basically, her entire career, in a post that for some reason I can’t fully explain scares the everlovin’ beejaysus outta me. (Thanks to the fledgling almost right word for, uh, helping out with that.)
Mandarin long, long ago switched to password protection. My innovative solution has been, apparently, to fall almost completely silent.
Post-quetiapine and pre-what-fresh-hell-is-this, I cannot complete even a mental entry without firing up the Librarian’s automaton, that surly golem of introjected criticism which informs me hourly in no uncertain terms exactly what a dim view it takes of all this blogging nonsense when poems go unwritten or anyway unpublished. Friends now send follow-up-emails to their original follow-up emails, wondering if I’m mad at them or if they’ve done something wrong, that I never answer messages or return calls.
For my part, I wander helpfully around the house in my bathrobe and look like crap; but as I told Mandarin a few days ago (in an isolated telephone event—the first in, maybe, over a month? to which fact neither of us referred during the call, out of our great delicacy), if a girl can’t wander the house in her bathrobe looking like crap during the summer, then what is summer for?
Maybe it’s that for four years I spent summers as a Zen student. Maybe that’s the origin of some vague insurgent instinct to flee from socializing, other than what my order used to call “necessary communication” of the “please mop the floor” variety. Herself used to chide us for wasting so much accumulated energy in unnecessary interaction—seeking eye contact, a smile, reassurance, approval, confirmation of our existence. Pointing out how when someone entered the temple we’d all turn our heads to see who it was. To this day when someone enters a classroom or other public space, I deliberately try not to turn and stare. Misguided effort; misunderstood training precept.
I somehow want to live the electronic equivalent of this woman’s sartorial life. What astounds me most of all is how few people actually noticed she wore the same little brown dress every day for a year.
How do you people live this life business? It is so monstrously overwhelming. My whiteboard covered with crucial undone errands and the names of ignored beloveds, like some kind of monument to the neglected.
Confusingly coexisting with all the unaccomplished details wells the desire to share cute headlines (”Bacteria Thrive in Inner Elbow; No Harm Done“).
I persist in writing a half-dozen posts in my head daily, usually while pressing the mountain of fabric which has lain wadded up in laundry baskets all semester (an activity one can conduct quite comfortably in one’s bathrobe, as it turns out).
And I’m about ready to throw in my suddenly, inexplicably, extremely burned-out towel.
2 cookies in the jar
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you know, i too can’t figure out why gould’s article scared the ‘everlovin beejaysus’ outta me. i actually thought it would be an inspiration…motivation.
don’t throw in your suddenly, inexplicably, extremely burned-out towel. or…if you must, do it for a brief moment…and then pick it up again.
because i am always here, checking to see if you’ve published one of those half-dozen posts that you write in your head everyday.
Dearest Unnarrator: I don’t have opinions about [your?] oversharing or burnout or future blogging. I do notice that when your blog title appears in bold on Google Reader I get a little hit of pleasure which I patiently defer until I’ve run through the less interesting items. (I self-categorize: I’m the sort of person who saves the tastiest treat for last.)
You can probably track the last two years of my wanderings from your logs; nevertheless, I thought I’d make my appreciation explicit.