THE STAGE THEY'VE CREATED

Emmylou's tail fur is just about grown back in. She had another quick bout with fleas and, as she is allergic to them, lost a lot of fur in a short period of time. She's whipping it around these days. She is more companionable to me these days than Cooder, at least during the day. Cooder usually sleeps on my pillows (or head) at night, but Emmy moves from room to room (and thank the goddess I have that luxury right now) as I change my workspace.

The dementors were a-knocking last night and this morning. I took some extra sleeping med (non-narcotic or anything) so I would not go into any bummerspin as I slept. I did oversleep and started the day in a dozy panic. Somehow though — maybe it was a little bit of "meditation" I did with my warm honey drink? — I found myself being greatly productive. I moved forward on several networking ideas, talked on the telephone, scheduled some things … and have good ideas for tomorrow. 

It rained all day, so I didn't get in any outside exercise, although I had two long telephone calls through which I walked around the house most of the time. I am also finding it hard to behave around food, which I attribute, a bit, this time around to being a bit lonely. I am happy to be here, but it is somewhat isolated. So it goes. I'll just have to figure out better things to binge on (food-wise). 

And!! I got a very lovely and fabulous Christmas present in the mail from Manuel. It's a book called My Ideal Bookshelf. Completely yummy and lovely for browsing. Hmm … maybe I should read a page or two next time I want to eat pretzels off schedule. I liked, for example, what Jennifer Egan (Visit from the Goon Squad [overrated in my opinion]) said:

"My goal as a writer is to do as much as possible at one time. Life itself is so cacophonous and complex. It's not that I want to create a cacophony, but I want to do justice to the complexity around us. I don't want to oversimplify it. I want to take one thing and build from that, and then keep building, until I begin to approximate the complexity of the world and our perceptions of it."

Interesting. 

And Tom Delvan, an interior designer, said about the movie The Ice Storm,

"Everyone was embracing that slightly dysfunctional modern aesthetic. There's a part that still makes me laugh. Sigourney Weaver's character is walking out of her house in heels, and she slips. The reality of their lives doesn't match the stage they've created for themselves."

Now that is close to one of my biggest internal … struggles? … that sounds more negative than I would prefer to characterize it. But I am attempting to reconcile who I think I am or who I thought I was, and/or who I want(ed) to be with what is actually going on. Throwing off my "rose-colored" glasses (now, don't any of you who think I generally wear the dark glasses of negativity laugh here) of romanticism and denial and escapism is a constant activity for me. Trying to live with what I have and what I am. And then the bigger thing of getting a real handle on what "that" is.

Tomorrow's forecast is for clouds, but I should be able to get out. But first, I have to do the sleep thing.