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Friday, 9 May 2003 |
It's time for a non-drinking update, mainly on account of I can't think of anything else to write about.
This week, being the fourth, has been different in that the habit of not drinking is mostly established; I haven't spent the whole of each evening wondering why I don't just open a bottle. I forget about it now for hours at a time. That's some relief, as I was beginning to wonder exactly how much willpower was required to go the six-week minimum I've set as a target.
Physically, I'm finally starting to feel some benefit too. Well, I would be if not for this sickness. Yeah, I'm basically cleaner and healthier. I'd guess I look a couple of years younger, although there's a sad corollary to that: in 2 years I'll be right back where I was a month ago.
But the best bit is that I've suddenly started to lose weight. Nearly 2 years' back, I managed to drop quite a bit of weight -- from 78kg to under 70kg -- in a short time. It stayed away for a year, but has slowly crept back in the last few months. I am slightly mystified by the gain, however I remain unconvinced by a friend's assertion that my predilection for Katsu Don has anything to do with it; I can only surmise it's more likely to be due to something in the water. Anyway, even though I'd not grown quite to my old size, I was still larger than I wished to be. Well now, if I tense hard enough, I can actually suck in the old tummy to something approximating flat. My, who is that slim fellow in the mirror? Golly gosh, could it be? Groovy!
Against all that, I have to say I'm still alarmingly placid and woolly of mind, as evidenced by the rather haphazard construction of this prose. Also, the killer headache persists. I'm beginning to understand that I may be in for a long process of relearning how to do things like think, create, relax and actually deal with my demons.
Finally, there's something else that's changed. I want to explore that some. I tried to write it all in one go and, 3 days' later, have gotten nowhere, so here is the first bit -- others to follow.
I suppose many people who drink more than we should, myself included, tend to wear it quietly, but openly, as some kind of badge, tattoo perhaps, that sets us apart from everyone else; a badge that says we don't live entirely in your oh-so safe, square, clean, nicey-nicey little world. We dance with the devil, we abuse our bodies every night, we live on drink instead of food and sleep, we go places the rest of you don't, we can shock the pants off you just by casually mentioning how we live, so don't go thinking we're the same passive conformists that the rest of you are. We're not. We're different. Rules? Hah: they're for everyone else, not us.
Which, essentially, is a complete crock of steaming bullshit.
Or, then again, perhaps not at all when you understand its motivation. If anyone cares, I'll carry on to explain over the next few days.
10:30:14 PM 
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Tuesday, 29 April 2003 |
Well, the headache from hell is sort of back in its cage, but it's rattling the bars and looking for a way, any way, out. The right side of my face is sore to the touch and I can feel the tension hovering there, waiting to strike
I won't take any more drugs though. The Mersyndol did some interesting things to me: about half an hour after taking them, I became quite tired and woozy, typing 2 letters forward, 1 back. I gave up and went to bed. But all I could do was doze for the next hour. I couldn't fall into a proper sleep and every little noise woke me. Then, of course, I couldn't wake up so well this morning until my excellent wife bounded out of bed and brought me my morning mug of filter coffee. OK, it was probably her turn but it was a nice thing to do.
Where it got weird was when I hit the city at about 8:30. I was standing at the lights, waiting to cross, when I turned and looked at the lady next to me. And nearly fell over backwards. Her face was in my face, if you get me. Like huge and crystal clear and almost as though through a wide-angle lens. Everything I turned my gaze on would slowly come into crystal-clear focus and appear to grow in size slightly, and it would be the only thing really in focus. The effect was very much like the Dock on Apple Macs, where the icons grow as you mouse over them. It was odd, but the effect was pretty mild, so not too worrying and actually rather entertaining.
10:15:02 PM
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Monday, 28 April 2003 |
I vaguely remember a bit from Thoreau's Walden where he enthusiastically writes of having dug a sizeable cellar, in which to store his food, in a single day. I even-more-vaguely remember -- and it'll stay vague because I can't be shagged walking to the study and actually finding the passage in question -- that he offers this as part of evidence for the proposition that farmers could manage quite well without the use of animal labour.
Much as I agree with the principles of that proposition, I can only wonder if Thoreau would have been quite so enthusiastic had he been faced with the kind of clay soil that I must deal with. It's soul-destroying stuff: the pick literally bounces off it when it's dry in summer -- I swear I've seen sparks -- and in winter it becomes heavy, sticky and almost impossible to dig. I should mention too the novel experience of growing taller with each footstep until one looks down and sees that one's boots have turned into a pair of snowshoe-sized platform soles a foot thick. Frankly, I reckon Thoreau wouldn't have been able to dig so much as a grave for a dead cat in one day.
10:53:37 PM
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I got hot, wet and naked on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Oh yes. It was delicious.
You see -- and apologies to anyone arriving here by way of a Google search on "hot wet naked" -- I spent about 3 hours in a light rain slowly digging a new garden bed of about 4 metres each way, breaking the rock-hard clay with a pick, digging and raking through the bags of chook poo. It wasn't too cold and I worked in t-shirt and jeans. I'm way out of condition so the pattern was a few minutes of frenetic work until my arms started to wobble and the pick wander out of control, then a lot of minutes stood still pondering and stuff as the rain fell on me and I slowly became wetter and wetter. I should explain to any women reading that doing this kind of thing makes men quite happy and is to be tolerated; do not attempt to rescue your man or persuade him of the hopelessness of the situation.
Anyway, job finally done, I came inside wet, cold and muddy, my arms and back and torso aching. And then I had a shower -- a long, steamy, hot, soaking, decadent shower. I have to say that a hot shower on a rainy afternoon, body filthy and tired and sore, is among the most sensual things I have experienced.
I topped it off with a yummo double-strength coffee made on my espresso machine (Solis SL70), which I love. I read a feature in the newspaper last week on home espresso machines and it said that of course you'll never be able to make a coffee as good as the ones you buy. Crap! I can make a decent flat white or cafe latte or macchiatto better than all but the best of the cafes around work. And I'm talking proper coffee here, not that luke-warm, mocha-tasting, insipid muck proffered by the major coffee chains. Ugh!
10:26:29 PM
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Saturday, 26 April 2003 |
Following on from that last post, I had the uncomfortable thought that maybe my writing is an all-too-accurate reflection of the real me, that it's actually revealing the real me to myself. Perhaps my inner thoughts are as discontinuous and halting as the words that fall onto the page? Perhaps I really have no great rage or passion? Perhaps my perceptions and values are so disappointingly white, middle class, conformist after all?
So why don't I feel that way?
10:30:16 PM
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We're driving in heavy traffic yesterday, a bus in the lane next to us. The bus is close because the lanes are narrow. The bus driver honks, nothing too agressive though; I took it as sign that I'd drifted a little close and corrected slightly. No problem.
Then Nat turns around and gasps in horror. Emma, all 2-1/2 years of her, has unclipped her harness and is kneeling up in her child seat, happily leaning half out the window. Aha: that would be why the bus driver honked.
Emma manages something like that every few days to amaze us and scare us witless at the same time. I'm not sure whether I'm more astonished at the things that she does, or at the fact that she's managed to avoid doing herself any major damage.
12:09:36 AM
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Friday, 25 April 2003 |
I've been on holidays of sorts for most of this week. Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays, so a 4-day weekend. Back to work Tuesday for the all-important get-timesheets-and-invoice-approved-and-submitted-so-I-can-have-money exercise. Then Wednesday and Thursday off, and Friday is another public holiday: ANZAC day.
I rarely take proper holidays; rather just a few days here and there, and a whole week once a year or so. Actually, that's all people get in the US isn't it: 2 weeks' leave a year? But don't get the idea I'm one of those sad, wedded-to-my-job types. Oh no! I work relatively few hours and spend as much time as I can with immediate family and close friends. This is obviously why I never have enough money but, perhaps one day, I'll be able to look back and know I got the balance roughly right.
This break though, has been long enough to seem like a proper holiday. I've been off for 8 days now and have 2 to go. The day at work hardly counted as there were very few people in and I only worked a short day. The holiday feeling is strengthened by the most-amazing autumn weather, the kind of thing that would pass for a hazy, balmy summer in much of the world. The temperature has been 20 - 22C (70F) day after day. Mornings are foggy and cool, but not frosty. We've yet to bother with the central heating.
Anyway, the point of all that is to explain to my audience of 2 why I've been quiet.
It's this: when I'm on holiday, away from the office, I totally de-intellectualise (© Andrew 2003). My thoughts become less and less explicit. Er, bad choice of words, cos in some ways they get more explicit. Try again. Perhaps I meant less conscious? I feel more than I think. I do spend the day lost in thought, become very reflective, but less and less do I put my thoughts in words. And what am I thinking of, besides the aforementioned less-and-more-explicit stuff? Life stuff. Elemental stuff. Gardening, landscaping, building, cooking, walking, soaking in the sun. Trees and rocks and grass and water and sky and sun and bread and wine and paintings and myriad other things that are all about a sensual life, about the business of actually living, and not about things like relational-database design.
And I find myself spending hours reading digital camera reviews. As ever, I want to express my emotions and visual means seem more apt than words for my current state of mind. Unhappily, though, I cannot make a decent photograph despite some years of enthusiastic efforts, and now leave that side of things to my rather-more-talented wife. I hafta remind myself -- frequently -- that the mere acquisition of a digital camera will not suddenly release the genius photographer within me; I took crap, boring images with a succession of 35mm compact and SLR cameras and so I would with any other kind of camera.
Naturally I shall still go ahead and buy a digital camera, play with a bit, become upset with my efforts and then give it to my wife.
11:27:53 PM
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Monday, 7 April 2003 |
Graffiti seen on a stationary goods wagon in a railyard, on my way home:
dis train am bound for glory dis train
Remembering that this is suburban Australia, not the deep south of America and, bearing in mind the intellect exhibited by most practitioners, this one is happily incongruous and novel.
5:02:12 PM
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Sunday, 6 April 2003 |
I've been quiet for a few days, mostly because I've been tired.
I don't write for a living, so blogging is a slow, deliberate activity, and one that has to happen after the kids are done with of a night. That's never before 9:30 and, since I get up around 6:20 of a morning, by that time of night I'm getting tired enough to be fit for little more than reading the short and funny blog entries for the day, perhaps posting the odd (very odd) comment. Writing, for me, don't come easy.
Last week, too, I was preoccupied with things personal. Us introverts tend to withdraw at such times.
BUT, he said happily, this morning I struggled to consciousness after a miserable, broken night's sleep -- autumn is the worst time for allergies and I can't sleep when I can't breathe. And behold, my pickled brain was buzzing, albeit sluggishly, with things to say.
Except that, being Sunday, I filled my day with kid stuff and cooking and a short sleep and sitting in the garden and thinking, and now it's late again, and I'm tired again.
10:31:19 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Andrew Barnett.
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