pointlessness

[fflo]

hey.

rob breszny says something about i should break in a new sword but, you know, hack up the one(s) deserving of it, not the innocent bystanders. i don't know where to begin processing that nugget. thus it was with some relief that i reminded myself that's his advice for 1/12 of all of us, and i even know of a few other cancers who may or may not benefit from that idea but whose existence and potential relationship to the counsel are doing a nice job of watering down its credibility for me.

an arrangement for ice cream i was working on the other day didn't work out, cuz i decided it wasn't likely to work out, under the evolving circumstances. feels significant. don't know whether it is. doesn't seem important whether it is, but it's in the rotation, if not the high rotation, in my mind.

was thinking today about my mother calling my father's mother to tell the woman her son was dead. i don't think i'd ever seen someone in so much pain as she was, having to do that. which she then said was the hardest thing she ever did in her life. certainly i'd never seen her so obviously in such agony.

was also thinking about my brother, when she was dying.

it's cold in here. i thought i turned the heat up to 65. wtf. i'm gonna turn it up more this year. i don't care. and i'm going to buy that headlight, and ---what else was i thinking of buying? something. something extravagant & impractical. pointless, even, but for the wtf why not.

there should be law against telling people about studies about chimpanzee babies deprived of affection.

watched the curse of the jade scorpion again. i'd forgotten everything except liking looking at the interiors.

didn't post the pointless post i typed out last night. decided to go ahead and post this one when i realized that, just now. i guess i care enough not to want to get into some pattern of typing and then not posting.

and, hey, i don't like things too pointed. right? or pointy, lots of times. like our mother's shoulder, in the backseat of the car, vs. our grandmother's. they sure did like to tell the tale of that preference, didn't they.

then there are pointy sticks. reminds me of a poem by gnorman prentiss, which i believe went like this:

two sharpened pencils:
one for each eye

but i'm supposed to be after a sword, not a sharpened stick. how innocent a bystander could i be said to be?

i'm completely sober, i feel compelled to state. just cold, and tired, and pointless.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Pointy is a fun word.

an arrangement for ice cream i was working on the other day didn't work out

I think the best arrangements, on a cone or in a bowl have been worked out already. And the conical cones are even pointy.

was also thinking about my brother, when she was dying.

All this dying sticks with you, doesn't it. And little triggers accumulate. Not that the triggers are bad, but I've done the brother when he was dying thing. I have to die young not to see four more sibs go. Or someone uses the same LJ icon that a friend used on her last post and it sucks the air out of you for a second. Maybe living in a house with other people gets your brain out of that rut better.

Rambling, pondery posts are good. It's why I read LJ. Window into humanity and all that. Glad you clicked the "post" button.

bigfinedaddy says you are quite the songwriter. I really hope to hear some of your stuff Saturday. I'll be singing some of that goofy "Helium Composer" stuff. I expect to sing the traffic cone song with the word pointy in it.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i do like what you did with my ice cream arrangement. :)

there's a poetry reading on saturday i don't want to miss, and so i'm doubtful on the musical gathering (again) this time. would hate to cut out after a mere hour or two, esp since the singing doesn't start right off. you know?

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i like that poem :)

and the guy's name.

it's interesting to know when one has seen others "in agony" (or other states of barrenness). one wonders if that i wonder if that's the kind of knowledge one learns how to have or if all people just know. i'm inclined to believe the former, although i'm also inclined to believe that some people can never learn. some people also don't want to.

the soberness business is dull. i get tired of my own thinking too.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i was even thinking another step removed: seeing (or reading) of the stabs at the heart of another witnessing the pain of (yet) another. relating, thus, to somebody else pained at another's witnessed/imagined pain. anyway, as the prompting yesterday reminded me, the articulation of such a moment can be tremendously moving to me. no hyperbole. can move me to deer-in-the-headlights stillness, even. ironically. ("moved" to be stilled, stunned, stopped.)

maybe animals know, sort of, but us animals have to learn it, i'm pretty sure. or have to attend to the instinct, anyway. learn to have room for it, in the individual spin on how to be in the culture all around. not that that doesn't come automatically with certain experiences of "coming up," as i think they say in the South (?) of being raised, in a nice active voice sort of way that doesn't include "growing."

uh-oh. i'm starting to ramble.

my boss is about to bring me a big ol' honkin' latte, with an extra shot in it. i've never gotten one with an extra shot. i think she got that idea from another coworker who ordered one with an extra shot. i believe i can use an extra shot. look, this is my fifth sentence in a row including "extra shot," and the fourth to end with "extra shot."

i'm extra shot, today. so it fits.

how are you doing, shmeezlita?

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

shmizlita is ramblicious too! trying to be more efficient, but not succeeding much. am trying to work on one thing at one time, which is new to me.

am about to buy tickets to aimee the intelligent mann.

struggling to retain focus. looking forward to getting rid of students; the time overlap with other deadlines displeases me.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

looking forward to getting rid of students

wanna borrow my new sword, to that end? once i get one? i think i'm some distance yet from knowing what to do with it myself.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i might, in fact. some of them i can't wait to get rid of, and some are nice. i think it's also that i'm exhausted and have no patience for their hijinks, or for how 'unformed' they are. they should go be unformed with someone else. my maternal instinct fails every time.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

haha. hey, i like "hijinks." and sometimes i like (plain ol') hijinks. or i did.

maybe that's in the category of "i used to be more fun."

i did hold out on valuing fun as an end in itself long past when most of my peer group caved.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i believe you. i think i'm more fun (inclined) when i'm not tired. but i've been very tired for very long. somehow i physically can't bring myself to have more tolerance. i wish i could.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

p.s. gnorman also wrote this one:

every several minutes
the rapist's therapist
smiled mildly

---not my favorite bit o' verse, by a long shot.

there's a "shot" again.

there's a "shot tower" in baltimore. they dropped molten lead from on high therein; as it fell into water (i think it was) it formed balls that would later be fired from some form of weapon.

[bigfinedaddy.livejournal.com]

Typing and then not posting. That's my pattern, so I'm glad you're not trying to horn in on it!! With comments, too. Daily. I would say that about 5-10% of what I've typed into livejournal has ever appeared on anyone else's screen. I have this disturbing paralysis around the whole thing. Too afraid to be out of my shell, I reckon.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I admit I thought of your reporting such a thing when I was noticing myself doing it.

Not being particularly anonymous, along with having an audience of I-don't-always-know-who, can make for a sense of uncertain exposure and riskiness, but I think it's a good thing for me not to be afraid of. Good practice. Even though I have moments of thinking it was, say, rude vaguely to trash the neighbor I don't even know, in a quasi-public place, as I did last night.

Maybe we've talked about how part of the issue of fearlessness for me has to do with the consolidation of possible audiences. Being who I'm being regardless of who's looking. There's something about that that I like it when I don't feel weird about.

I think it's editing all day that makes me not feel weird about (and actually kind of like, sometimes) having (sorta publically) outed with awkward, lousily-constructed sentences like that last one. :]