XLIX.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, absolutely sure that someone was in my room, walking off with my most precious belongings. I felt immediately stupid and vulnerable; in my dream, I’d brought this person home with me although I did not know him well, and had forgotten about him and fallen asleep, allowing him to stay. I sat straight up in bed, looked around wildly and said out loud, “Are you still here?!” The room was empty except for me and Valentine, who was curled up under my desk where she often naps.

My heart didn’t stop pounding for an hour, and it took me two or three hours to go back to sleep. My arm suddenly itched and I felt certain I had bedbugs. The dream quickly revealed its meaning, a fear of letting others know my most intimate self.

XLVIII.

You know what I want?

A web visualizer that would combine the best parts of del.icio.us with the best parts of the Visual Thesaurus.  I want to bookmark and tag things I find on the internet and be able to see them form and re-form clusters based on the tags that I give them.  I want to see the three dimensional patterns present within my interests, and the relationships between things I’m thinking about.  I mean, that’s what we really mean by web, isn’t it?  Or it was, once upon a time? I would also like the tool to have a social element, so I could belong to groups or have friends, and see how our collective thinking created connections between ideas (and, obviously, I’d like to be able to see how all users affected the web).  And it should be edit-able, so that for my own web, I’d be able to move things closer together or farther apart, or create new connections between them.  And I want the movement and spatial arrangement parts of the Visual Thesaurus, which is still one of my favorite brainstorming tools on the web.

Does this exist?  Want to make it for me?  Want to teach me how to make it? (That seems hard, actually, but potentially fun).

XLVII.

Teaching, I’d come home with aching feet.  Filling a basin with warm water and just soaking my tired toes for a few minutes suddenly seemed like a good idea, rather than something old people do.  I was usually too busy to actually do it.

One thing I didn’t anticipate about the move to a writing career is that it is, in its own way, physically exhausting.  Sitting all day, even with an alarm set to remind me to stretch my arms, leaves me tired and stiff.  At least in teaching, I knew I’d been up, moving around, doing my body some good even as I wore myself out.  On the days when I write for hours, I feel like I need to uncurl myself, my body longs to move.

XLVI.

One of my students called me last weekend. I was sitting on my couch, fiddling around with something on my computer, when my phone rang with an unfamiliar number on the screen. I answered, but no one was there. Two minutes later, the phone rang again, same number showing up. “Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. V., it’s N.”

The kids don’t call me too often in the middle of summer.

“Hi, N., how’s your summer going? What have you been doing this summer?”

“I just called to say good luck, since you’re not coming back, and goodbye.”

I was suddenly absolutely certain I should ditch all this change and go back.

“Oh, thank you, honey… but I’m not going to never see you again, I’ll come to school sometimes… but thank you for calling to tell me that.”

I wonder if I will go back. The climate isn’t all that welcoming. But I miss my kids right now and when I think about not going back, I miss them with all the weight of the future.

We chat a little longer, and she tells me she’s on the way to North Carolina, just to visit, not to live. I think she’s probably in the car, a little bored, and doesn’t know exactly what she wants to say to me. I thank her again and say goodbye, have a great vacation. When I hang up, I wish I’d asked her how her family is or told her to tell them hello for me.

I should say “former” when I say that my student called me. When I talk about my school, I should stop saying “my.” “They” will have to replace “we.”

XLV.

I’m waiting in line for the bus across the George Washington Bridge to Fort Lee. There are five, maybe six, people ahead of me, and the line is moving very slowly because each person has to pay the bus driver. Another man gets in line behind me, standing just a bit too close. I can feel his breath on my back. As we stand in the heat and the diesel fumes, he starts muttering, “F*cking animals.” Did I really hear it? But he says it again, “F*cking animals.” I turn and glare at him briefly, and he keeps on muttering, “These people are so stupid, these people and their change. F*cking animals.” As I board the bus, praying I won’t need change, he’s right behind me, shoving his dollar forward as I confirm with the bus driver that I’m on the right bus. I hurry to a seat in the back; he takes a seat close to the front. After we cross the bridge and reach the first stop in New Jersey, he is in front of me to get off the bus. “F*cking asshole,” he says to no one in particular as he walks down the steps of the bus.

XLIV.

Morning television, which I’ve never watched before, is now a part of my routine when I’m at the gym.  Sometimes I listen to music on my iPod, but when the battery’s dead or I leave it at home or I just want a change, I flip to the first thing that looks tolerable and like it won’t go to commercial for at least a couple of laps around the virtual track, and I tend to stick with that for the next thirty minutes or so.  Today it was the M&J show, a morning show on Fox.  I’ve heard about Fox, but thanks to my tv-less ways (this is the week of -less, but not purposely), I actually have little personal experience with the network.  Anyway, M&J seemed promising this morning – they were doing a piece on domestic violence in the military and how a half-dozen women have been murdered by their husbands or partners in the last couple of months.  I was interested.  This felt important, and like I might learn something.  They spoke to the sister of a woman who had been missing all weekend but was recently found, alive but injured, after having been stabbed and kidnapped by her husband.  M or J – not sure which is which – tried to get the sister to relate the attack on her sister to military policies that make it harder for women to leave abusive partners, but the sister didn’t go there for them.  The piece felt disorganized and tantalizingly close to – but never actually revealing – uncomfortable truths that might make us demand change.  They mentioned something called the “abandonment clause” making it harder for women to leave abusive husbands, but never fully explained what it is.  (I googled around a bit but didn’t turn up anything).

This was followed by a much longer “investigative” piece on home gym equipment.  Experts were brought in, equipment tested, pros and cons discussed (although J – or M? – kept cutting off the doctor as he tried to explain the health risks of some of the equipment), statements from the companies read and displayed on the screen.  Investigation, indeed.

XLIII.

I am thinking of going microwave-less. I am already AC-less, and while my commitment to that has been sorely tested this week as I’ve felt something bite my leg and reached down to swat it only to discover it was sweat trickling against my skin, the thing about being too hot is that you do, eventually, begin to acclimate. Given that at all but the hottest times I’ve been working outside on the terrace at my new office, and that the rest of the time I’ve either been outside or trying to sleep or work at home, I figure I must, incrementally, be getting used to it. Perhaps already I feel more comfortable when I’m out in it than the people who have been blowing cold air across themselves all night long. I had an AC in my old apartment, but it was so big and heavy, and the filters were all clogged, that it seemed pointless to drag it all the way down here so it could wheeze through a few more summer days and then be replaced. AC is expensive. It’s a huge electricity suck. I think I can make it without.

Microwaves are also big and heavy. I thought about leaving mine behind when I moved, but the decision was impulsive and I wasn’t sure I was committed. Since the microwave I have works perfectly well, the potential waste of throwing it out and then regretting it and buying a new one seemed worse. So here it is, resting on a countertop in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for the great roommate-transition to occur, when it will replace my roommate’s microwave in a different, more-functional corner of the kitchen. I have used the microwave a handful of times since I moved in here on June 1st, for heating up leftovers and softening cold butter. Nothing that couldn’t be accomplished on the stovetop or by planning ahead. Space is my main concern – why devote so much of it to something I use so infrequently and could scarcely be said to need?

Of course, living with roommates you can end up with cable tv and the AC roaring at all hours if you don’t share the same values. Not everyone, not even most pretty awesome people, are questioning the things we consider basic.  Or at least, not these things.  So it’s slightly out of my hands as I look for the new person.

XLII.

I’m sitting on my couch drinking coffee. People may come by later to see my apartment, so I’m stuck here for the afternoon. The cat has been savaging a toy fish stuffed with catnip; now she is sprawled out on the floor, possibly in the exact coolest spot in the room. I think she has a sprawling algorithm in her brain. I guess you could test this with thermometers. What I’d really like is a laser that I could scan across the floor and it would map the temperatures in the whole room: then I could prove that she homes in on the coolest spot. Or not. Sometimes I think she just lists a little too far to one side and keels right over, as good a place as any, she thinks.

Because I have the whole day, I went on a little internet walk. Kloe told me to read this, which I did:

We adjust ourselves to the society around us and do our best to conceal our differences from the herd. (At least most of us, for most of the time). Not so with cats. So, I have complete introverts and extroverts, highly intelligent investigators and somewhat dull philosophers, agressors and defenders. Those that compromise and others that would sooner die than give an inch. Thieves and gentlemen. Floosies and prudes… Like I have this one cranky old woman who will position herself out on the front stoop crying in this god awful, plaintive voice to all the passers by. Those that aren’t in the know will say things like “Oh, this poor animal, I always see her here. Why is no one taking care of her?”. So, how embarrassing is that? Little do they know that she has just come out of a house where bowls are filled to overflowing with the best cat food that money could possibly buy? And that she has thoroughly stuffed her face before she stepped out there? Now why does she do that? Why this act of desolate, impoverished, unloved cat, desperately in need of attention towards the outside world?

This is a Second Life blog, though the cats are real, but I am more interested in people in real life. She’s an artist and a researcher and designer. This is beautiful: the quotations, especially at the beginning, and the drawings. The sound is too much, though.

Words were originally magic, and the word retains much of its magical power even to-day. With words one man can make another blessed, or drive him to despair; by words the teacher transfers his knowledge to the pupil; by words the speaker sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth effects and are the universal means of influencing human beings. Therefore let us not underestimate the use of words… – Sigmund Freud

Now the cat is curled up next to me, worn out, the tip of her tail touching her nose.

XLI.

Took a long walk down Greenwich Ave. today after work, to the new Whole Foods in Tribeca. There are closer grocery stores, but I’d heard this one has bulk bins. Ten years ago, when I lived in California, Whole Foods was a small regional chain and all stores had bulk bins, tall towers of cereals, grains, snacks, pasta. I was excited when Whole Foods opened its first store in New York, and then disappointed: what had once been a place where I could buy organic and avoid packaging as much as possible (though there were some union and farmworker issues) had transformed into a carnival of pricey, exotic, and/or triple-wrapped gourmet items. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as drawn to a lot of that stuff as the next person. Easy, fancy, tasty, it’s all pretty appealing. But the stores were crowded and over-stimulating and seemed to have strayed from the values that drew me in the first place. What had happened to the bulk bins? Were they gone in all stores, or just in New York? Are we uniquely foodie yet out of touch with environmental issues, or just less willing to carry around empty containers? I confess to having a hard time remembering to pack my recycled-plastic grocery bag when I leave my house in the morning. And we do use public transportation to get around in a way that many other US cities don’t even approach. But bulk bins are something I want.

Imagine my happiness when a friend mentioned that the new Whole Foods in Tribeca was going to have just that. It’s a start, though nothing like the vast bulk section that my California store used to have. This one focuses on granolas, grains, rice, and weird but colorful salt. Because specialty salt is the new coffee. Or chocolate. It’s beautiful: there’s lavender salt, like purple quartz, and rust-colored, sand-textured salts, and black salt that seems volcanic. Still: salt. In ten varieties. I’m not a very good environmentalist, really, I know I’m not, and I’m not a minimalist or a self-denier, hell, no. But there’s a part of me that rebels against ostrich eggs and exotic salts and organic berry tarts individually wrapped and boxed in pairs, and “kashmiri cinnamon” flavored gourmet ice cream at $10 per pint. And there’s a part of me that wants to taste each of those salts and roll the exotic names of fruits and spices around on my tongue and swallow spoonfuls of cool cilantro-lime gelato and to hell with where it came from or what it costs.

And then again, I feel absurdly lucky to be in the tiny fraction of people who have such problems to worry about.

XL.

Some days you eat vegetables, some days you eat brownies.