2001-04-18

spring is here and ads all over the place are urging me to lose weight, to not forget about summer, to slim down, shape up, blow out, suck in, disperse and fade or show up and off.

its all prepositional madness to me. i haven't been in a bathing suit in close to three years, and probably won't be for a very long time.

i feel very far away from my southern california upbringing, from shoeless summers spent trudging around sand-gritted sidewalks. i can barely remember the nights i spent pressing sunburned inflamed skin against the cool white stucco walls of my room. i have vague memories about falling to sleep some summer nights, smelling jasmine, my mind recreating the rise and fall of the ocean swells i had played in all day.

i don't dislike the city. but it isn't very warm, most of the time... literally and figuratively.

it's overcast here by the sea, and i am entrenched in melancholy after finishing my latest reading endeavor. i'm tired of sad endings.

i avoided mike's phone call last night, and spent a rare night alone in my bed. all day i have been fretting about my capacity to love, and whether or not i live in a delusory state of affairs, too terrified of the reality of intimacy to make much time for it in my world.

today i cleaned my apartment, and did my laundry. i read for hours, and now it is 320 pm.

mike is still at work, he and his colleagues packing away their tools, cleaning up their work areas. i suppose in five minutes or so he will take off his hardhat, and emerge from the shell of his overalls. in ten minutes or so he will grab his skateboard and leave another day of work behind.

now that i am unemployed, i have been finding the concept of the workday to be vaguely alien, a fascinating, shiny object. mike's work, the physical labor of it, seems odd and sometimes beautiful. the force of his tasks for the past month are showing in the curves and valleys of his arms... tangible evidence of the motions he makes all day.

it makes me miss him, terribly.