1:05 AM, Wednesday morning...
In a book, an android was trying to understand why some hard-scrabble humans would name a space ship The Laughing Life. I bet I could tell him (and how melodramatic is that?) There is a lot you can laugh at in life -- problem is, hardly any of it is really funny.
Or maybe it all is.
While riding home in a car earlier tonight, "Scar Tissue" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers was playing on the radio. I thought: how pointlessly appropriate.
Hah.
--- JWR, 6/30/99
7:08 PM, Yesterday, I sat outside in the slow dusk, reading a novel set one thousand years into the future. A cold mouthful of Corona swirled in my throat during chapter breaks -- or when I just felt like setting the book aside and Rorshaching the almost abstract view of leafy treetops silhouetted against the luminous, short light sky. If I tipped my head back, I could view the moon, set in blue clarity. I have always enjoyed the lunar glow -- but it is never more striking and eldritch than when it is visible in daylight hours.
I finished the book and sat back, watching the atmospheric colors settle to the horizon and deepen to a rich purple-black. Across the way, a firefly gave me a bioluminescent wink and I took a deep breath of the cooling air.
I felt stressed-out, used up, and sad.
But the book had been good. And the night was crisply sweet.
Today I’m just tired; eyes a bit grainy. I need to brush my teeth and I’m doing laundry. Though it is evening, the sky outside is still bright. The air is much warmer today, filled with a humid heat that you can almost run your fingers through, like the heavy mane of some elemental beast.
It is Thursday; the weekend is almost here.
And the daisies are blooming, next to the water garden.
--- JWR, 6/24/99
6:52 PM, on a Thursday evening, and the air outside feels like a million tons of heated caramel...
I’m not exactly sure how personal loopiness is officially defined but I think I might have qualified today. While boiling two veggie hot-dogs for dinner, I performed a stunningly progressive, almost jazzy, version of The Flintstones theme song. Several times.
Fortunately I had no audience.
It also occurred to me, early this morning, that Lucky The Leprechaun (who graces every box of Lucky Charms -- a cereal that I was munching on) is a bit too avidly gleeful to look at when you are in the: "I have risen but am not due to shine for quite some time yet" stage. Of course, after a couple of cups of tea and the sugar from the Lucky Charms kick in...
Anyway, now I’m chewing some gum, thinking about the weekend, and slowly drinking a tall glass of cold water. What can I say? I live on the cutting-edge...
Things I remember about my Grandfather: cigars, his big chair...and the bright yellow packets of Juicy Fruit gum he kept in his desk and used to give to me and my brother.
Things I remember about kindergarten: the taste of milk sipped through the paper straws we used to use, the smell of finger-paints, and the blonde girl with bright blue eyes who gave me my first kiss in the back of the school bus one afternoon.
And today? Green tea, Lucky Charms, "They’re a modern stone-age family," and heat that folds down like a thick liquid blanket...
--- JWR, 6/10/99
1:57 PM, And what day is this? Ah, oh yes, it is Tuesday -- the long bright holiday weekend has blurred things a bit. The timing seems a bit off, like a film skipping a few frames. I have to make time to exercise today. I’ve been smoothly putting it off for quite a while -- gotta get back into that sweat-groove again.
I feel better that way.
The "shush" of the wind in the trees counterpoints the day’s hazy light. It’s a beneath-the-surface sort of Tuesday, a sleepy slow motion dream of hours. Can’t seem to get a damn thing done.
There’s the promise of rain in the air...a sort of heaviness, lazily waiting.
And I’m like a TV tuned to static.
--- JWR, 6/1/99