At Mike's in Asheville, NC, September 2010. Yay for old timey jug music.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Is There a Ghost in My House?
I was just thinking of that Band of Horses song. But seriously, a few days ago I had a very creepy dream that I was house sitting and there was a sort of poltergeist, except that its way of haunting was to overtake people's brains and make them hallucinate that horrible things were happening. It was kinda like that movie The Craft. Things crawling on me, my limbs turning into granite, and so forth. I'm not sure what to make of that, but the dream was surprisingly willing to let go of my emotions when I woke.
In fact, my inner emotional landscape has changed dramatically since I quit smoking. All kinds of things that would normally penetrate my psyche all the way to through are only thumping against the surface. I can barely hear the noise. It's not at all like despair, although it results in waves of a sort of anguish and guilt about how truly cold to and distant from the rest of humanity I feel (or, you know, don't feel). I was just telling my dear roommate about how relatively easy it would be to watch things die right now. Let me know if you need help slaughtering a bunch of Thanksgiving turkeys; I'm your man. Got some baby bunnies that need drowning? Call me up.
...I jest. Nevertheless, it's super weird to feel like all the empathy has evaporated out of me. Also, nothing really excites me at all. It's like my average operating mood is leveling out at slightly below neutral, and the only way I can go is down a bit more. I wonder how long I can take it. Personal effectiveness at the cost of joy is not a fair trade.
The nicotine monster has such elaborate schemes for worming its way into a person's head. What a bastard. It can actually make me think that I may never be a person I would like to hang out with again.
On a completely different note, I just finished reading a lovely book by Naeem Murr called The Perfect Man. When I tried to describe it to someone recently, the best I could come up with was that it is sort of like To Kill a Mockingbird written for an adult audience by an acolyte of William Faulkner. I imagined the main character as a more grown-up version of this beautiful, charming, and wildly talented Indian child who practices at the dojang with me.
That's it for today. I'm headed off to first wedding anniversary dinner #1. Mmmm Thai noodles.
In fact, my inner emotional landscape has changed dramatically since I quit smoking. All kinds of things that would normally penetrate my psyche all the way to through are only thumping against the surface. I can barely hear the noise. It's not at all like despair, although it results in waves of a sort of anguish and guilt about how truly cold to and distant from the rest of humanity I feel (or, you know, don't feel). I was just telling my dear roommate about how relatively easy it would be to watch things die right now. Let me know if you need help slaughtering a bunch of Thanksgiving turkeys; I'm your man. Got some baby bunnies that need drowning? Call me up.
...I jest. Nevertheless, it's super weird to feel like all the empathy has evaporated out of me. Also, nothing really excites me at all. It's like my average operating mood is leveling out at slightly below neutral, and the only way I can go is down a bit more. I wonder how long I can take it. Personal effectiveness at the cost of joy is not a fair trade.
The nicotine monster has such elaborate schemes for worming its way into a person's head. What a bastard. It can actually make me think that I may never be a person I would like to hang out with again.
On a completely different note, I just finished reading a lovely book by Naeem Murr called The Perfect Man. When I tried to describe it to someone recently, the best I could come up with was that it is sort of like To Kill a Mockingbird written for an adult audience by an acolyte of William Faulkner. I imagined the main character as a more grown-up version of this beautiful, charming, and wildly talented Indian child who practices at the dojang with me.
That's it for today. I'm headed off to first wedding anniversary dinner #1. Mmmm Thai noodles.
Willow and the Accordion
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Originally uploaded by figandwasp
This is from our wedding reception. Willow and Aaron played a lot of Eastern-Europeanish folk music for us.
Maybe Jessi Gets a Pass, Too.
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Originally uploaded by figandwasp
Until she starts crying because people aren't paying attention.
...Aaaaand again.
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Originally uploaded by figandwasp
For a person who doesn't like kids much, I certainly seem to take a lot of photos of them.
Barely Legal Part 2
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Originally uploaded by figandwasp
Kids are lucky they have this going for them. Otherwise, they wouldn't live long.
Friday, November 5, 2010
The Big Quit
I am writing on the fourth full day of my quit. Yep, that's right, I've quit smoking. I think that I knew that it would happen this way; thus, I've never bothered to really try to quit before the precise moment when it happened.
Most smokers have had the occasional experience of looking down at the stinking little death-stick in our fingers and felt a sense of bizarre alienation from the act, wondering how the hell it came to be that these stupid little things run our lives and boss us around all day as they slowly kill us. It has happened to me many, many times, but I've always managed to eventually shrug and decide that now is not the time to deal with it. Just take another drag and be done with that little flight of fancy, I said to myself, because you can't quit.
And then Monday night, with no warning, I suddenly knew with objective and detached certainty that the cigarette in my hand as I drove home from work was the last one. I only enjoyed it as much as any other cigarette. I looked at it a bit. Rolled it around in my fingers, slowing down time, giving myself the opportunity to withdraw the motion. But it never passed. I waited a few more hours, and at the end I was still certain. So I calmly handed my cigarettes over to David and told him to do something with them because I am done.
I'm done. For today. And the next day. And the next day...
The AA approach--"I will always be an addict"--is actually proving to be helpful. The whole one day at a time method is also working. There are a few other tricks I'm developing to help ease the process too, such as vividly imagining the nicotine monster as this nasty little asshole that whispers horrible things in my ear, since I then have the option of ignoring it after telling it to fuck the fuck off.
Nighttime is terrible. Everything has turned upside down; I used to hate mornings and look forward to the hours after dark, and now I loathe the dark. It surrounds me with restless boredom, fills me with nervous irritation, and explodes in angry, frothing shrieks of self-loathing that almost reach my throat. I hope that I don't decide to start blogging on a particularly horrible evening, but if something really snaky and cruel appears for a day, please know that it's the little monster talking. Maybe I'll leave it up so I can remember what a little bitch it is.
More to come later.
Most smokers have had the occasional experience of looking down at the stinking little death-stick in our fingers and felt a sense of bizarre alienation from the act, wondering how the hell it came to be that these stupid little things run our lives and boss us around all day as they slowly kill us. It has happened to me many, many times, but I've always managed to eventually shrug and decide that now is not the time to deal with it. Just take another drag and be done with that little flight of fancy, I said to myself, because you can't quit.
And then Monday night, with no warning, I suddenly knew with objective and detached certainty that the cigarette in my hand as I drove home from work was the last one. I only enjoyed it as much as any other cigarette. I looked at it a bit. Rolled it around in my fingers, slowing down time, giving myself the opportunity to withdraw the motion. But it never passed. I waited a few more hours, and at the end I was still certain. So I calmly handed my cigarettes over to David and told him to do something with them because I am done.
I'm done. For today. And the next day. And the next day...
The AA approach--"I will always be an addict"--is actually proving to be helpful. The whole one day at a time method is also working. There are a few other tricks I'm developing to help ease the process too, such as vividly imagining the nicotine monster as this nasty little asshole that whispers horrible things in my ear, since I then have the option of ignoring it after telling it to fuck the fuck off.
Nighttime is terrible. Everything has turned upside down; I used to hate mornings and look forward to the hours after dark, and now I loathe the dark. It surrounds me with restless boredom, fills me with nervous irritation, and explodes in angry, frothing shrieks of self-loathing that almost reach my throat. I hope that I don't decide to start blogging on a particularly horrible evening, but if something really snaky and cruel appears for a day, please know that it's the little monster talking. Maybe I'll leave it up so I can remember what a little bitch it is.
More to come later.
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