zen = amnesia = book = notes = type = profile = nhwc = px
43things = soma = three dog party = fotolog = host

malfunctioning container

various horoscopes tell me that autumn will put an end to the monotony of the gemini's summer. what this will mean i do not know, but i have been having this sense of waiting for something to begin or something to end.

more and more i notice how sunsets and sunrises are often identically apocalyptic in appearance--red horizon glowing up through clouds and darkness. and this makes me think about how beginnings and endings of relationships are also comparably extreme, though not 'apocalyptic'. how you can't separate the two completely.

saturday night i got violently ill from tequila (first time in my life i vomited from alcohol) and ever since then i have felt intense gratitude for being healthy. it reminded me of my body's limits, of the largely unfamiliar territory of physical suffering that i could eventually be unlucky enough to know intimately. there were moments when i thought i was going to die, and i thought about people who have to get chemotherapy and how horrible it must be to be sick like this all the time as a side-effect of trying to kill the cancer. i thought of my mom's mom who died of breast cancer before i was born and how she must have retched like this. which is such a morbid thing to think about i know....

i pretty much feel like i never want to drink again, which is a good thing because i don't think it has any real benefits aside from escapism. i guess i do enjoy a little red wine-induced drowsiness at nhwc, though, which feels like a fuzzy blanket over my mind. but even that may be too hard on my stomach at this point. i haven't been writing anything for group lately, either, but that is, as my former tai chi instructor paul used to say, neither here nor there.

vomiting for hours and falling asleep with one's head on the cold slick rim of the toilet is such a cliché and one that i'm well-versed in from having binge-drinking friends in college. but for me to experience that personally, and also to pee in my pants (!) while hunched over the bowl retching, was entirely different from conceptualizing it.

i am lucky that this incident occurred at my apartment, with a clean toilet (thank god), and with a good friend to take care of me. the situation was really dumb in its origin; lafe and i were watching red dwarf episodes on dvd and out of boredom and ennui decided to get drunk, and the only available alcohol was tequila. and i didn't realize how much it would upset my stomach. oh god such a foolish error. i might as well have chugged ipecac syrup.

it felt in some way cathartic to get so sick, and it has at least inspired me to get the apartment's chaos all sorted out finally. but trying to impose domestic order in the midst of the worst heat and humidity all summer has been a major undertaking and there were/are so many layers to the onion of grossness (cat-hair-filth, dust, crumbs, cobwebs, fly carcasses, etc....) that it is an epic task. but thanks to new ultra-cheap shelving units("gorm") from ikea, as well as significant sweeping, (cat hair from the apartment when collected into a pile was equivalent in size to a kickball) mopping and scouring, things are improving steadily.

i really wish i had more of an organization instinct (both cosmically and microcosmically). there are 10 basic steps i always take when trying to organize my stuff:

1. i wander the home oraganization aisles of target or ikea, staring with confusion at the myriad shapes and sizes and materials of contaners for sale. i try hard but am unable to visualize how to use them. i imagine they have magical organizational powers (verbs instead of objects), that all i need to do is take them home and my chaos problem will be solved.

2. i randomly pick and choose which containers to buy--focusing on both cheapness and variety of shape. i usually err on the side of plastic unless cardboard is significantly cheaper.

3. once home, i place the storage units next to the offending piles of junk. i sit and stare at the equation: 'a'=pile of junk 'b'=storage units. i try to figure out how to get a+b=order.

4. i give up on the equation. i create some seemingly logical rule about what will go into which container based on a theme. i come to realize that taking the size and shape of the objects and containers into consideration above all else is the correct step. i then waver on it, ensuring that i will have no idea what is in any box.

5. i can't figure out how to organize the containers themselves (now that i have completed filling them with random stuff).

6. i realize there are not enough containers for the junk at hand--i have underestimated.

7. thus i end up with piles of junk interspersed with piles of boxes.

8. i return to the store to purchase larger boxes to remedy issue #7.

9. the room is now full of big boxes full of less-big boxes filled with junk and boxes and more junk and little tiny boxes...

10. ...into infinity.

and one could argue that in this sense my entire apartment is just one large container of junk, with quickly proliferating inner containers of inner containers of inner containers.... and i am just a container too, filled too often with junk (woe creamsicles and waffles and chocolate and tast-i-delite).

before = after