What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

So I hit upon the bright idea of splitting myself into two personalities, one the patient, one the nurse. The nurse, now, cooks my meals, and sees to it that they are not only nutritious, but also appetizing and attractive. And she prepares my medicines with no repugnance... As for the patient, she obediently, and also absent-mindedly, swallows and swallows...

Don't worry about me at all, either of you. To pretend that it is not agony would be silly. But I can cope.

� Edna St. Vincent Millay in a letter to her sisters, quoted in Nancy Milford's "Savage Beauty"

I don't know where to start today. And I am feeling a little disjointed. So, so, so �

First thing this morning, I had a call from a temp agency, the one through which I was at CTG two weeks ago, offering me a gig helping a woman who is allegedly setting up a non-profit foundation. Deal is that she would want me to come in either tomorrow or Tuesday and hook up her computer, install software and show her enough of the basics so that she could do the very first things one needs to do when setting up a non-profit foundation. Then after she got that done, she would want me to come in as her needs demand for a few hours or a day at a time, indefinitely, to set up databases, build web pages, or perform Excel hocus-pocus. No chance of it going permanent ever. Non-profit foundation potentially intriguing, indentured servitude not so much, right? And I said this, but politely and diplomatically, to the temp pimp, telling her that I would hesitate to make a full-time commitment to a position that didn't even guarantee part-time hours, though, thank you for your time, she was kind to have thought of me for it. She did not like this and replied, less politely and diplomatically, that there were plenty of people who, unlike me, recognized that in a depression � now I see that she uses that word partly as a cudgel � one must put aside selfishness and grasp whatever opportunity presents itself. She implied that my pickiness may prevent her from continuing to call me as job orders come in. Then she called again this afternoon around four offering me all next week at a downtown reception desk contingent upon my being able to complete a day of training on Friday, and I said, truthfully, that I had an appointment Friday afternoon that I cannot change. She said, in a bright hard voice, "Well, I tried! Don�t say I didn�t try with you!" And I feel like I don't even care: is this defeatism, nascent confidence, or an auspicious sign that I really have shifted my full-time commitment to different priorities? I think I can�t even think about the tempage for a little while, though I will sort it all out eventually. (That�s not cowardly of me, is it? I mean, really, as a short-term temp you are not allowed the luxury of time off when you want it, and the agencies are very up front about that.)

There's something so democratizing about a coffee shop. When you go to one in the middle of the day, no assumptions accrue, I think � you could be a student, a freelancer, a bartender, whatever, and it's all the same to the other people who are there, doing their own things at their own tables. A while back Vanessa told me that I should definitely get myself out of the house for a few hours a day and recommended just reading in a coffee shop. She's right, it's good. What makes it even better, for me, is that I've started going to one that I never went to before, and somehow the lack of association, the combination of familiarity (it's just coffee) and of being able to be a stranger, works a mundane magic on me, and when I walk into the new coffee shop I am almost instantly more comfortable in my skin. Long ago I wrote in the Monitor about how Suzanne, after breakups and during crises, always found herself listening to oldies stations, and it seems to me that the phenomena are related. Lack of association, lack of judgment, lack of emotional self-endangerment. Just sort of... being there.

My sister called today to tell me about the mix cd she is making me. She was very excited and was rattling off the songs she's going to put on it, some of which I know and some of which I don't. I kept saying Uh huh, uh huh, sounds great, etc. and finally I guess she figured out that I wasn't getting her point and she asked, "Don't you see? It's music for when you get dumped but you need to be reminded that you can still be happy." And I have exactly one word to say about that, and here it is: hm.

I somewhat regret the deep thrill that came over me when I read Mrs. R.'s entry in my guestbook last night. I saw the "dark, mysterious quality" and I was inwardly jumping up and down for myself before I even got to "drives men crazy" � that's important � but then I reconsidered, and I benched my inward self on a penalty for excessive celebration, because hasn't my interest in being considered dark-and-mysterious, and therefore my acting in ways that would seem congruent with such a persona, gotten me into nothing but trouble? And, yeah, as I type this I'm thinking about last summer's Monitor entries during which I was grappling with this stuff so naturally I am also thinking about Todd who came in on the tail end of that, but again he is not the issue, not the whole of it, and in making that clear I have discharged my responsibility to the record and now I will go on with what I was saying.

Mrs. R., you should read the above as my overanalyzing and worst-criticizing, as I believe you know is my habit. I like what you wrote and I sure do like you.

Nobody's arrived at my home page via a link in a Yahoo e-mail since I raised the flag on that. I do not know what conclusion to draw from this.

I am ambivalent about the stats counter. On the one hand, I want to think that what's going on here, what I'm doing, happens outside quantification. From the beginning the only quantification, and that in a binary sense, was my belief that there was some sentient being out there who was reading me as I would want to be read. I never needed proof, I thought: I just did it. On the other hand, now I know that I got what I wanted, that I have it and it is mine; and as little experience as I have with faith, I have even less with faith that's gratified, so at the same time I am beset by what-now helplessness and an unsettling feeling of responsibility that I might not always be able to meet (see also item 2 in yesterday�s entry). I have to figure out how to balance using the diary to help me make sense to myself against the knowledge that the more people who are reading it, the more objective and diluted and lowest-common-denominator, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way, becomes the "sense" with which it is read. Do I sound like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth? Then please slap me, because all the little things that have taken place over the past few weeks or so with respect to my diary have been such a revelation that I've only let myself believe in their cumulative impact a little at a time. I'm being vague on purpose so as to emphasize not the things but the impact. Impact in both directions, impact as the opposite of invisibility, as if it might be possible (see item 4 above) to tune into Ingrid Bergman and Doris Day at the same time without the signals getting crossed. People are enormously generous, if you allow for the possibility that they might be. I am enormously lucky.

I met the first of the maybe-therapists this morning before I hit the coffee joint. She had a comfortable office with the heat turned up (I approve) and good magazines in the waiting room. At one point I said something about how part of the reason for my sitting there in front of her within easy reach of the box of Kleenex had to do with being embarrassed about what a drain I've been on my friends, finally being shamed into kicking my own ass on that count. My sister calls me every day from Pennsylvania just to check up on me, I said, and that's disgusting. She said: But wouldn't you do the same for her? Wouldn't you do everything within your power, if someone you cared about was in crisis? And, oh man, did I need the Kleenex then. Why? Now that is a very interesting question.

I used to do that Edna St. Vincent Millay thing in college, where every night I would pack my lunchbox for the next long day on campus. It was a pain in the ass but necessary because I wasn't going to eat otherwise, so while I was assembling my lunch I always reminded myself that I was taking care of someone, and cutting up the carrots and wrapping the oatmeal muffin became a small but meaningful state of grace. Then when I opened the lunchbox the next day and saw the carrots and the muffin and the yogurt and the apple nestled against each other in their proper places, there was visible proof that someone had taken the time to take care of me. Oh, and don't think I'm missing the irony of getting set up with a therapist in the first place essentially because I'm self-stymied, stuck in place and unable to act, and the first thing I have to do is make the big decision of picking one. Ha ha. Number Two is tomorrow morning, Number Three is Friday afternoon.

Rebecca and I were talking about this: if there were a new Wonder Woman movie, who would get the part? She likes Kate Winslet, I like Linda Fiorentino. She and Julian and Terry and some of Terry's friends are going to the Crocodile tonight to see Brent play, but I'm headed there on Friday (ladies' night, Neko Case, you and Todd's date can't even imagine how amazing I'm going to look) and I'd rather not risk it twice in one week, plus I'm trying to keep the boozing slightly in check. Maybe instead I will listen to some Bill Evans and take a nice hot bath. Mm.