cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On and on, through pain, through drama class I want to expand on the bit I wrote in the last entry a few minutes ago about being defined by one's pain. One can easily vent and mention the pain periodically ("Oh holy fuck that hurts - please give me a moment here to recover"). This is useful because if others have forgotten that one is in horrible pain, then one looks like an ass for failing to hold the door for someone (at times this is not possible for me) or volunteering to do some routine task. If others around me do not know that I am suddenly in blinding pain then my behavior may be interperted as bizarre and rude. However, mentioning the condition and apologizing for not being able to complete some task that a gentleman should be expected to complete (carry a heavy box, chop wood, etc.) means that even as one is excused from one transgression, one becomes guilty of being a whiny little bitch. One is cartoonish in either event. I really cannot win either way. Pain thus comes to define me socially as well as internally. Today at work I have not only forgotten my neoprene elbow brace but also my bottle of naproxen. When I woke up this morning, the room was freezing cold because the air conditioner was set too high and the outside temperature dropped lower than expected over night. I was very warm under the blankets and the situation was ideal. One is always more comfortably warm when some part of the face feels very cold. The air was so sharp that in my groggy state I thought of gym class in the morning in my freshman year of high school. We would jog from the gymnasium to the track in the cold early autumn air. The sun was at that tell-tale reddish slant of early October and the crickets sang frantically in the freshly mown grass along the sun-warmed brick wall of the gym. Simon began huffing and grumbling that he had to go 'out,' eventually tearing me from my state of perfection. I rose reluctantly and opened the front door for him and Alice. They began to bark and chase an invisible rabbit down the long gravel driveway. I closed the door and wandered down the hall to the bathroom. I decided not to shower since I'd had one late in the day yesterday. I washed my face and shaved and wet my hair and brushed it. And as I did so the frozen moment of jogging alongside the school in the sharp morning air began to melt away until I was almost wholly in my own bathroom at the age of 30, looking into the mirror as I flossed my teeth. It is better to be 30 than to be 14, all things considered. I like this fine. I drove my car to work like a perfectly ordinary person. I shut off NPR and pulled over for a moment to put on 'Thunder Perfect Mind' and skipped ahead to 'Suzanne.' I drove the twisty country roads in a sort of hypnotic haze or reverie. I found the perfect parking spot immediately downtown. I walked to my office and poured a cup of coffee. I never did any homework in my freshman year of high school. Not for any classes at all, unless you count memorizing lines for plays in theater 101. I didn't believe that it would ever really matter to my future whether I did a single homework assignment in the whole of 9th grade. As it turned out, I was absolutely correct about that. 11:39 a.m. - 2009-07-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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