what will you do with your money there, honey?

Tomorrow morning I'm taking an Amtrak to DC. I'm psyched. I love trains, but I rarely take them for long distances in this country. Consistently when I am in another country I choose the train over bus even if the travel time is longer (and if you want a cheap train, you better believe that train is creeping).

But here lies the real conundrum: going by train rather than car to DC, my luggage is limited.

Dare I leave my Sambas at home?!

Yes, dear readers, I am wondering if it is that time in my life. I don't think I've been apart from my trusty black-and-white sneakers for about (this is so embarrassing) six years. This does not count the years spent actually legitimately playing indoor soccer (I swear, it's true, though I wasn't very stellar at it. I was a much better runner. I was the go-to person to run for the first-aid kit.)

I won't actually need street sneakers while there. Work shoes will most likely be sufficient for non-working hours, which will most likely be spent reading linguistics books and my new guilty pleasure, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. I'm bringing running sneakers in hopes of realizing my dream of running in the hotel gym. There just isn't room.

But do I leave behind any hopes of actually living a life of resistance or just an absurd loyalty to a shoe style? I will look like everyone else in attendance, what with my heeled shoes and sharp lines. I had always prided myself before on never quite conforming to the dress code, but now I submit without struggle.

Maybe I should focus on packing my laptop instead of wasting precious sleep time typing by candlelight (and listening to the bandolin!)

now.

I want to see it untame itself and break its owner.

dissection with a laser beam

I saw a delightful band tonight and knew I had to buy their CD as soon as the first song was over. I haven't been seeing nearly as much music as I would like to lately, and despite being hungover and exhausted, I trudged over and I am ever glad that I did. (Linguistics HW be damned!...er, postponed.)

But this slice of freshness puts me in this spot that I come back to time and again. After I saw the Slackers for the first time back in the day, I huddled the entire night penning ska songs into the early morning hours. (Complete with horrific intersessions of toasting.) God knows the mountains of slam poetry written after the entrancement of Unspoken Heard and the fury of angry acoustic ditties after the first night Ani Difranco and I spent together speak to this habit. The closest I've ever come to actually following through with learning how to play music (besides my unsuccessful foray into the violin as an eight-year-old) was a stint scouring the internet for how-to information and taping chord diagrams to my walls, borrowed guitar in hand.

So now I'm stuck trying to figure out if I'll ever be able to learn anything new. It's all excuses of course, ones that I've wound and rewound until the circulation stops in my toes, but I declare that if and when I go teach english abroad (I'm thinking 2008 or 2009) I will make it a priority to learn piano or guitar, or really any musical instrument. Because, hell, just because I sing off-key doesn't mean that I can't make that sound good somehow. And even more importantly, I have a heck of a lot to say.

five-letter word for movie still

I have this thing where everything happens in twos. Yes, I know, it's supposed to be threes, but I don't have time to sit and around and wait for that third thing, because once that second thing happens, I get all excited and start thinking about coincidences.

I read the Book section of the NYTimes fairly regularly, and there are sometimes pieces on author geography: either this week or last week there was a piece on visiting Flannery O'Connor's Georgia. I have never read any Flannery O'Connor; although, admittedly, I have twice checked out her works only to have to pay late fees for the unread. Many people I know love her and so I was ecstatic to see an article: maybe I could get a taste of her! and then go actually read her! fabulous! brilliant!

Three paragraphs in I realized something would be ruined if I read this article before reading the short story in question. I turned away from the article in semi-self-disgust and went back to what I should have been doing--checking design proofs, a task which sucks out my soul and dries up my eyes to boot.

Today at work, during the Q & A game, someone asked me what was one thing I regretted in my life so far.

Tonight at home, I finally read Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find".

The universe might implode.

I ducked around the question, because I like to save my darkness for my solitary moments, only to read the line, "'She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.'"

This is that stupid scenario, if you had one day to live what would you do?, sped up about 100 times and changed into, if you had five minutes to live what would you say?.

I guess the situations aren't exactly congruent, since you'd probably plead for your life, but what I'm interested in, I suppose, is the idea of regret versus its opposite. I cannot think of the antonym of regret for the life of me (coincidentally?) and hate to look it up.

Apparently, "contentment" works, after cheating and looking it up.

I think it's a harder question to ask of someone: what's one thing in your life so far with which you are content?

Isn't it a worse curse to satisfy easily?

acquainted with the night

Ever read about those experiments where scientists in cloth masks and steel eyes try to press human beings to the very last shred of their sanity?

I'm currently living in one.

My torture mechanism?

Cold, sleepless nights.

I'm trying to get warm. I'm trying to sleep for more than four or five hours. I'm trying to persevere, but I lack the strength against the brutality of a bedroom that was 48 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. One just cannot properly exist in such an environment. I live in a converted attic in a drafty house that just will never warm up. There are no vents in my bedroom, poor if any insulation in the walls at all, and my $60 space heater is powerless against the terror that is 9 degrees Celsius. I used to love my room, and now I can't stand it. My quotations and pictures fall off the walls because the duct tape that before so perfectly adhered now freezes and loses functionality. I'm sick of long underwear, dry skin, dry eyes, the layer of perma-frost that permanently resides on the top layer of my skin---nay, just under the top layer of skin, so that I can't even reach it to melt it, to destroy it, to do away with it.

In the attempt to escape this tortuous cell---this sparkly ice-cavern that used to house incensed, candle-lit typewriter sessions in more relenting times---I have lost the glory of sleep.

If you ask me one word that has described the majority of my life, I might be inclined to say tired at this moment. Everything I do is just to get through the day in hopes of laying down and closing my eyes. This should not be. I should be raging against the dying light, angered that I must wait through the darkness for the opportunity the sun brings. Instead, it is all I can do to abide the daily routine of work, eat, socialize. My heart hurts with the strain of staying alert and caffeinated long enough to rack up the eight hours necessary for validation. My eyes have just about given up. They are permanently squinted and framed by the sickly violet bruise of those horrific bags that crouch underneath. I haven't eaten a nutritious meal in weeks---it's all diet soda, chocolate, and processed energy. The tiredness has made me bitter, hard, calloused, and quick to crank.

I'm going to go sleep on the couch in my living room on my lunch break in a last pitiful attempt to placate this demon.