Back from Dunkin Donuts where I went for a box of munchkins (mistakenly called “nibblers” in a previous post – I watch too much Futurama) for my office mates and an extra chocolate frosted donut for myself, which was excellent. Thank god this afternoon’s dessert alert didn’t progress past a code orange!
By the way, I spent this weekend depressed and freaked out, la-la.
…. of stale, stale cake. All set to chow down on a hunk of carrot cake, bite one tells the sad tale: grainy, stiff, flavorless. A second bite is no better; it’s not just the outside edge, it’s pretty much the whole thing, I try just eating the creamcheese frosting and taste the flavors of stale refrigerator air. So into the garbage it goes and with it a small bit of illusury luxury.
Now how will I punctuate my afternoon?
A strange day at work where three problems that have been dominating my conciousness for weeks suddenly resolved themselves all in the same hour and in ways that are close to the best possible outcome. Which can only make me ask “what is going on?” and “when does the bad news arrive?”
…. with being too sick to get out of bed all day Sunday, and then being well enough to come back into work on Monday. What kind of sap am I? If I had any kind of chops as a goldbricker I would have just called in sick and taken care of all the household stuff I missed yesterday beacuse of the fever/coughing crappiness, plus the headaches (I couldn’t tell if they were due to illness or caffeine withdrawal).
So house remains a shambles, calls didn’t get returned and worst, I missed out on poker with http://www.livejournal.com/users/thornyc/ .
Latest crush: The garbage man at the Times Square Q stop. Usually around 10 am he’s working emptying the front bins: mid thirties I’d say, around six feet full, and sort of scruffy chesnut beard, glasses, nice and pudgy. He dresses in such funky MTA work gear that I’ve wondered if he wasn’t a scavenger who just latched on to the uniform, but he’s got a broom and dustpan so I guess he’s legit.
…therapy, and before tonight’s “Slidefest” an event which I had to curate this week because I had kept putting it off. Thank goodness I know some very patient artists who consented to come and present work tonight. Otherwise things would be looking pretty pathetic. In the 45 minutes of downtime, I’ve knocked out a drawing of a sinister stuffed rabbit for a benefit action that someone approached me about yesterday. They’re supposed to come pick it up any minute. I truly have to stop saying yes to everything because I can feel myself becoming more and more stressed out. The back twinges, acid reflux, and little bouts of binge spending like the one I just went on at the Strand and where I purchased:
A Taschen Book on Velasquez
Another Taschen book (icons series) on Indian Street Graphics
Waiting for Food #3, an R.Crumb placemat drawing collection
Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth
The Acme Novelty Date Book, a collection of Chris Ware’s notebook sketches
America’s First Dynasty – The Adamses 1735-1918
Then I went by Barnes and Noble on Union Square, because I had a real hankering for The Education of Henry Adams, and also my friend Carl Frano might be working there. He was, and on the way out I saw that Amphigorey Also had been marked down to $10 so of course I had to pick that up too.
Meanwhile I sit at home and come to tears over the boxes of books in my apartment and how I can’t get way from them.
Well I have a long history of self medicating through shopping, and the ostensible justification for this particular binge was that I had just deposited a wholly unexpected check from my NY gallery. All of these images feed the work in some way, or would if I gave myself the time to do it. Sitting with the pencils in hand to make this benefit drawing felt very, very good. and it’s always reassuring to see that “I’ve still got it” hand/eye wise. But sometimes it’s thin broth.
Much of therapy was spent talking about the trip to SF and I found myself trying to articulate what I’m feeling about LJ right now, its odd mixes of intimacy and self presentation, especially when the mix includes real world contact.
Work work work. A week of best laid plans collapsing, unraveling, going belly-up and kaput. This is the part of the job I like least – the management part. However I have to ask if this chaos is my way of making myself pay for being cosseted, stuffed plump and made happy last week. I seem to suffer from a previously unknown malady: episcopal guilt.
Past the burnout of the past couple of days. Overslept this morning, but that left me in a much better mood than previously. Obviously I needed it. There are still many things to take care of on the rapidly-approaching horizon, but at least my conciousness doesn’t seem as sporadic as yesterday. One thing I forgot to mention about the trip to the Tang was the presence of one quite beautiful man who was a friend of one of the Tang education coordinators and who stuck around after the whole thing. We were introduced and I made some fumbling joke. He was around my height and seemed to be a pacific islander, with long salt and pepper hair and a pointed goatee. He teaches at the university in Schenectady. I’m remembering an open smile and the dry warmth of his handshake, but off course his name flew out of my head the moment it was told me. My particular curse – I can remember the jingles from every commecial I heard at age 4 but never anyone’s name.
All of this is to say I was a bit smitten. Rare indeed.
This is another of those “I’m at work and I don’t wanna be” LJ posts. There’s lots of other things I need to finish, pieces that need making, rooms that need cleaning, people that need contacting. But the fact is I almost get more of that stuff done here. And now once again I’m frightened by the messages on my phone, so much so that I won’t pick them up. An absurtity, which has gotten me into bad situations with those around me and hurt people I haven’t wanted to hurt. Time after time I’ve tried to talk through these scenarios with my therapist, yet I lapse into the same behavior. Last week for the first time he suggested medication, which left me both shocked (usually not his route at all) and a little thrilled (is my dowdy, garden variety neurosis blooming into a glamourous anxiety disorder?).
I am reading W.G.Seybold’s book “The Rings of Saturn”. It is stunning: the overall structure is a solitary walking tour through the east of England, but each chapter mimicks the sensation of walking; spare insiscive descriptions of the landscape give way to chains of association that become historical and autobigraphical essays. The erudition is never forced, and exists in conjuction with sensitive observations of people and places. This is the kind of book I wish I could write, and indeed it’s given me some ideas for my endlessly projected, endlessly delayed Jack Smith/Ray Johnson/Cockettes/et al book. When I type those words I feel that everything I’m doing right now is wrong, and that there’s a much more important task calling me