Daisy

“Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”

Posted by: Zosia | 06-21-2005 | 08:06 PM
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Thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes

I’m having one of those days where if a certified doctor came up to me on the street and took my blood, examined it and then said, “I’m afraid you have a disease. A bad one. You won’t recover and, in fact, you’re going to die in 3-6 hours,” I wouldn’t be surprised at all and would probably collapse on the street — not in horror, but in a kind of blousy relief. I would reply, “Oh, so, that’s what I’ve been expecting!”

Then I would go to Ireland and write six hundred novels and learn to swim and drive on a highway and love my friends and adopt a dog and bike around the lakes and all the little things I can’t or won’t do now. Not because I have so little time left to live and want to enjoy life; but because the unnamed doom for which I’ve been mentally preparing will have happened and the weight will be gone.

It could get much worse than me dying; other people could die or my limbs could get cut off or I could lose my senses or burn slowly in a house fire, but it wouldn’t matter then. The unnamed despair will have been named and the mental stockpiling will cease. No more waking up with the vague brain itch, the small whispering in the back of my head that tells me anything could happen today, horrible things — the pain under my ribcage is tumors; my car will flip on the way to work and I’ll be crushed for hours before I die; a client at my job will lose his mind and shoot us all; my parents will die; Chris will die; I’ll come home and my cat will be asphyxiated, her little cat face stuck in a Target bag; I’ll strangle in my sleep on the venetion blind cords; the window air conditioner will leak and the freon will burn holes in the floor and the bed will fall through and I’ll shatter all my bones and the bones of anyone in my way.

These thoughts stop briefly, but never on their own. Madness used to be romantic; at 17, we all wanted to be mad like Sylvia Plath, but not mad like Charles Manson. It was a specific type of madness we wanted, something that evolved beautifully and ended with a bang, a great story for the movies. Now madness comes in ugly, confusing spurts and worsens the more we realize there’s no cause of the “human condition” — there’s no God or gods or parents to take these philosophical burdens. We carry them ourselves now. So if any name can be applied — cancer, illness, disorder — I’ll take it.

Of course, I don’t really mean that.

Posted by: Zosia | 06-18-2005 | 12:06 AM
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The laptop’s first trip to the coffee shop

9 PM on a Tuesday. My friends sit around, bored, drinking Chimay Ale and talking power chords with a guy that used to engineer for the Beatles. No one really wants to be here, but no one really wants to be anywhere. There’s no one exactly smiling, but there’s no misery either. It’s the type of uneasy complacency only seen in those in the mid20s – they don’t know enough yet to not worry about their jobs. Their auto-pilot is on dim and they’re still thinking those red-balloon college years will happen again – are convinced of it.

I like to pretend I’m an expert on the 20something psyche, even though I actually know nothing about it, beyond my own particular thoughts, which I’m convinced either no one or everyone has. I made a mistake a while back of thinking everyone had some sort of incredible secret and so, in moments of liquor, I badgered people with questions — what keeps you up at night? No, really, what makes you so crazy you lose whole weekends to obsessing over it? And the answers are usually — uh, nothing.

And, so, not everyone has an incredible secret. I don’t even have incredible secrets, but I do manage to keep things from everyone I meet. Different things for different people, but no one knows everything. I don’t think this is especially interesting or unique, but I have a mental tally of what I’m keeping from whom, and that strikes me as compulsive. Or — colorful. The adjective for mental health reassurance.

There’s a man who auditioned for the Blue Man Group sitting in front of me. He has a circular scar on his bald head, indicating either a head injury or a branding. I tend to think head injury because of my job – everyone has brain damage now; I see signs in each person I meet. Someone stutters, forgets a detail – all damaged. A man in the kitchen chops tomatos with a knife. He’s too butch to be chopping vegetables. He looks like John C. Reilly, but I bet he doesn’t have the lisp. I bet he wishes the tomato was someone’s face. He’s putting his entire body into the knife, the cutting board nearly leaping from the counter.

A drunk man couldn’t open the door, so I had to open it for him. He told me several times how drunk he was, but I wasn’t paying attention. He came back five minutes later to repeat his status, and I nodded. Distracted. I’m trying to think of what new secret I could have. Nothing’s interesting out in the open. The drunk man — now if he had said nothing and we weren’t in a bar and he wasn’t clutching a neck of a beer bottle — I might have thought he had an undiagnosed brain disorder. That would’ve been a secret. Maybe that will be my secret. Maybe I’m too old for secrets.

Posted by: Zosia | 06-15-2005 | 03:06 PM
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I’ll crash your party

It’s 7:30 on a Sunday, and it’s still light out. I always forget the days are longer in Spring, and I’m always disappointed somehow. I just got back from Dairy Queen and now Chris and the cat are sleeping on the couch. I have two black eyes from last night’s mascara, but no hangover. Last night was parties full of doped-up insurance salesman and men who thought us girls were silly, just silly and probably didn’t know that any of us could’ve throat-kicked them on a dark street. The evening ended at a sparsely-populated teeny rave, minus the glowsticks and the candy and the people, and, really, the rave. There was talking of renting out the club as an opium den, but: work on Monday, no time.

I wrote a letter to my ex-boyfriend today. It sounded like a Christmas letter. I even attached a picture of my cat. I might as well have sent a picture of me and Chris in matching sweatsuits. I like lazy Sundays, waking up late, cleaning things, eating snacks and no real meals, making tea and forgetting to drink it, staring out the window for a half hour and then napping. But I don’t like lazy rest-of-the-days. Things need to happen, and not just regular things. I want fights and affairs and sex, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be all mine. I just want to watch it in the flesh. I wonder if this means I’ll be bored for the rest of my life.

Posted by: Zosia | 06-12-2005 | 06:06 PM
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Fried olives

I ate a lot of fried food last night, after a week of being vigilant about the organics and the fruits and the vegetables. I woke up feeling better than I’ve felt in weeks. Unfortunately, my laptop makes me feel like I’m head-diving into a violent weather-thing, which is to say the LCD apparently messes with my equilibrium and I can only be on it for a half-hour at a time. This will change, because I will it so.

I’ve been more observant of people lately, but it doesn’t seem to matter because I don’t do anything about it. I’ve figured out complete strangers, but I can’t figure out the people I do know. I don’t think it really matters.

This laptop makes me feel like Doogie Howser.

Posted by: Zosia | 06-11-2005 | 10:06 AM
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Fire and ice

Well. My new laptop says hello. I’ve wanted a laptop since they were invented to the modern world, and, so, here I am. I forgot how laptops burn the bare legs. It’s a price I’m willing to pay. I suppose this means there will be more of everything. For now, you should know it was 90 degrees yesterday and my apartment settled around that temperature, as well. The cat and I took a long nap on the bathroom floor as it was the only decently cool room in the place. Later that night, before Dairy Queen and after Chris stripping down to his underwear, we installed a window air conditioner or, rather, Chris installed it while I sat in the other room, yelling, “Please don’t drop that out the window! Please!” He didn’t, and so, now, one room in the apartment is cool sometimes, but at the price of our eardrums being burst and the cat continually attacking the vents and then crying about it.

Life is okay, but there’s allergy headaches and constant ambulances outside the window. There’s also homemade lasagna and creatures willing to cuddle, so it evens out.

Posted by: Zosia | 06-08-2005 | 04:06 PM
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A couple of jiggers of moonlight

So, it’s June. Like jenandtonic mentioned, I’ve been documenting events so often with Flickr that I come here and don’t know what to write. I often wonder if this site is losing steam — I’ve had it for almost 10 years now and I feel like I’m keeping it alive for longevity’s sake. My focus used to be writing writing writing and no day-to-day things, but most of my writing is done privately now, so maybe I need a focus shift.

If that didn’t bore the face off you, I thought I’d let you know I’m all moved into my new apartment and the old house is no more. I never allow myself to become nostalgic or sentimental with these things — there comes a point about a month before I move where I shut off all feely-emotional sensors and pack and plan without thinking about what I’m leaving behind. This is the first time in my entire life I’ve only lived with one other person, with the exception of my first semester at UMD, but that was a dorm, which is like living with thirty other people and their germs. So far, it’s very quiet. Chris and I spend a lot of time staring at each other. Right now, he is asleep on the couch in front of me and the cat is nestled in his crotch, which is not a reference to beastiality* of any sort. I’m going to miss always having a million people to talk to, but I like the calmness and sweetness of just living with one other person. Plus: the nakedness!

So far, summer consists of many tentative plans (road trip to San Franciso with Mary et al; flight to Virginia), millions of various graduation parties, a summer class which began yesterday (biology!) and, you know, work. I also might buy a bike at some point and ride it. I also might learn to swim, which has been my summer goal for 24 years. I’m wondering how life just keeps going like this, all flashy and swift-like. Five and a half years ago, I came to Minnesota with the intention to stay for one year. So it goes.

*I’m on Chris’s computer and I typed that word into Google because I couldn’t think of how to spell it. I hope he checks his history and wonders what the hell I was doing while he was sleeping.

Posted by: Zosia | 06-01-2005 | 10:06 PM
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