Sometimes concentrated pressure makes me really productive. sciatica fired off on the plane somehow (I think from the continual bending to Moomin's direction - I should have switched seats with him halfway and then woudl have been turning and bending the other way.
but I typed up some stuff for McCoot. And the stuff was pretty interesting - all about early game-playing A1s and epist3mology and Lapl@ce. So I earned money on the plane. While Moomin sweetly played and drew and I'd stop my speed-typing for a few minutes and listen to him and we'd play with the toddler in the seat in front of us. "I am good at playing with babies! She is funny!" and I had him convinced that it was hilarious to hand things to the baby and then she'd throw them on the floor and we'd all clap and laugh. Moomin is cool.
And then weirdly: trying to escape from thoughts of my parents (how my mom yelled at me this morning and practically cried because I would not go to the mall with her and how she always has to go shopping alone and how she hates it and has no one to go with her and have fun with; how she is incredibly lonely but doesn't even seem to know it and doesn't know what having friends would be like; how she nearly cried again and was in the depths of despair because she says her r1ding teacher hates her and her other r1ding teacher hated her too because she's a bitch; how utterly awful it is that I don't visit them more often; how bitter she is over using her 2 weeks vacation nursing her mom, etc, guilt guilt etc. all the awfulness i had been dreading was sort of compressed into this morning. Weirdly, I don't think Rook witnessed any of it. It all would happen suddenly when he was out of the room. Suddenly there'd be a quick, bitter, voice-cracking-with-intensity diatribe on fatness, or ebonics, but he'd miss it. at least she has stopped talking about moomin's skin color, eye slantiness, etc. which i don't think she did in front of rook either, but that used to drive me crazy. she knew not to do it in front of him, so why did she think it okay to do in front of me? and I am tempted to post a photo, maybe a headless one, of her in the outfit she said "showed horribly how huge and fat she was and how disgusting" -- i remind you she wears a size 0, 2, or 4 depending on brand of clothing.)
Um yeah -- the pressure of NOT thinking about those things and the nasty hurty feeling in my back and leg and foot (like having a nail in the shoe and not being able to take it out) made me oddly keen to write some poetry and do some work. Rook switched seats with me just then so I had total mental privacy in the seat behind them.
So i read more of apollonius of rhodes' voyage of the argo, then worked more on the long poem about prince and apollonia and the argo and prince's motorcycle and apollonia's deathless lipgloss and stuff, that i started writing the other night... I had such fun... it's just really fun. i felt convinced that it would be fun to perform aloud. and that almost no one would get it, but that wouldn't matter because it would still be fun to hear and to read.
Someday I will succeed in writing my long passionate poem to or involving or exploring in depth the wonderfulness that is chow yun fat in "the killer".
And then I worked on the Z.M. translations. O wow they are fun. Her poetry is really compatible with my style or sideways-thinky leaping. And she sent me the french translation of it. And not only did that help me in my eng. translation, but I also felt all nifty because i caught the french translator making mistakes. and i don't even really know french. but I still spotted some things that nearly caught me or that I had puzzled over a long time.
my back hurts but it's going to be okay tomorrow, i'm convinced. I might stay home and unpack and clean and stuff, and get groceries, and lay in bed a little, rather than go work for McCoot and then come home and do all those things afterwards while I've also got Moomin. eh? that seems reasonable. I also just feel like i need the psychological recovery breathing space.
Rook gets really sick on the plane. My own level of plane misery used to be so intense and so bad because of back pain, that I was not even aware that he was especially miserable - he'd take some advil and look hunched up like a wet cat, but until maybe a year ago or maybe 2 years I didn't get it that he was Way Extra Super Intolerably Miserable ffrom maybe a combination of ... sinuses, low-grade motionsickness, psychological hating of flying, being a large guy cramped up in a tiny space, and I'm sure there is more. And this makes me understand better how miserable he is the day after a trip. he basically needs to sleep for a whole extra day after a plane flight. and I'm trying to grok what he said just now about how even fro a flight from Ch1cago to NY he'd on purpose stay up all night the ngiht before, so that he could for sure fall asleep on the plane. Wow. At first I just thought that sounded nuts but I get it that it was worth it to be unconscious instead of awake for the miserableness.
I like a plane as long as I'm not in pain and can fidget a little and get up a lot. I like to look out the window. I freak out when the plane takes off and lands and I look out the window very hard hoping that if i'm about to die in flames that at least i will be appreciating something beautiful like the landscape or lovely clouds instead of the plastic seat back in front of me. But i also like to see the mountains and fields and roads laid out like a neat topo map. (After the hours spent at work at the Geo L1brary poring over those topo maps!) There was a fabulous sunset for over an hour on this flight as we hit the coast maybe somewhere just north of LA and then swung north. A sunset like fire over the ocean - not the part with the actual sun in it, but a very prolonged giant rainbow stripe - a sunset with GREEN in it very clearly.
I'm so happy to be home. Rook is watching Buffy. I resolve to get up early and drive Moomin to school on time and am hoping rook will sleep a little bit late...
As though there were only two riding instructors in the Wadlands!
I am continually astounded at your productive work habits. I can barely imagine getting significant work done on a plane at all, much less while handling a kid and in pain.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | August 10, 2004 at 04:41 AM
Welcome home my dear! Yay! You survived!
Posted by: Jo | August 10, 2004 at 07:31 AM