Diplomacy

for.mi.ca'tion, n. a sensation of the body resembling that made by the creeping of ants on the skin.


The past two days have been surreal to say the least. Time is not working properly. I show up to classes which don't seem to exist; I finish half-hour commutes in 20 minutes of heavy traffic and no speeding. Every clock I look at is wrong. Someone e-mailed to ask if tomorrow was the 20th. I called my guitar teacher this morning to make sure I still had class; when I arrived I just tuned my guitar the whole lesson while he talked on the phone.

Him: Sorry about that. Legal stuff.
Me: It's cool.
Him: You have an amazing touch, have I told you that?
Me: Probably.
Him: No, I mean, it's hard for me to correct you sometimes because whatever you play sounds beautiful, even if it's dischordant.
Me: So should I not come anymore?
Him: No; just keep doing whatever you're doing.
Me: Not practicing?
Him: Do you mind if I talk to you about this legal stuff and see if you can make sense out of it?
Me: Whatever.

People I've never seen come up to me on campus and say "You seem to have a grip on all this. Can I call you some time for tutoring?" What class? "Does it matter?" No, not really. The people who don't talk stare. Just stare and stare and stare and stare, like they're waiting for me to do something important.

E-mails are flooding my inbox from Dale, a 50-something unemployed software engineer with a 14-year-old daughter and no tact who doesn't understand why I'm not madly in love with him after getting sushi one time.

Him: But we have so much in common!
Me: We both went to high school. Whilst there, we both took Physics. That does not constitute "so much in common".
Him: Say what you will, but we had a great time!
Me: You had a great time, because I am a pleasant companion.

He keeps trying to prove to me that we're Meant To Be by sending long letters in French, bemoaning the nature of infatuation and critiquing my lohan form (that last part I do actually find helpful, which is the only reason I haven't just blocked his address).

Meanwhile, I've looked down twice to find spiders crawling on my arms. Since I constantly feel as though there are spiders crawling on my arms, this makes me jumpy and reactionary. Hallucinations are all very well so long as you know they're not real; when they sometimes are, things get complicated.

Even Delta Airlines are messing with my head.

Oh! Oh! And the best part, which I forgot, is that I got the same e-mail today that I did yesterday, and when I opened all the news websites, they were from two days ago. Even my friends page on livejournal.

I think I need to leave town this weekend.

Drivel (or: I'm Sorry If My Excess Intimacy Makes You Uncomfortable and You're Too Polite to Say So)

God, God, God. I promised myself I'd get offline an hour and a half ago and that was after granting myself a dozen extensions, because really I was supposed to be off four hours ago. Well, not quite that long, but a while. And now here I am writing another journal entry, fumbling and incohate and only stumblingly poetic in an accident of rhythm.

Shirley Jackson writes like Valancy. Or the other way around, age before beauty.

I've been telling a lot of people that I love them. That's not particularly unusual -- I've always said the words more easily than most. They slip naturally from my mouth, filling any silences, ending phone conversations, replacing "good night." In high school, this worried me, because I was afraid the repitition would make it pedestrian. Meaningless. But I always mean them, always. And when I hug someone, I really do want stay in that place forever, holding on with arms around a waist and a head on a collarbone.

Americans are wrong. It is more intimate than kissing. Much more.

I don't understand what I'm feeling now. I'm happy as far as I can tell, but I'm crying. Shaking, blinking too much, staring out the window. It's like in those made-for-TV moments where the guy drops to one knee in front of a fountain with a ring, and the girl starts sobbing. Or maybe it's a movie instead, and she's in her car and the guy is over the telephone telling her she just missed her kid's first word. Or it's cable, HBO, Lifetime, a cross between the two, and the divorce papers just came through. The husband was beating her.


Recently, I've felt desperately embarrassed about the whole thing. "I love you." A shuddering sense of guilt, because I'm too earnest. I mean it entirely too much, and I'm putting people on the spot, strangers, aquaintances, and I can see it. I can see it even if I can't see them. It's too much self-disclosure, letting them see how greatful I am that they exist. Social boundaries exist for a reason; if they didn't make people more comfortable, we wouldn't have them. Like houses.

But really, it doesn't matter whether I say it or not, it matters that I feel it -- that ingratiating, simpering gratitude. I feel like some fawning sycophant. I have the same lump in my throat as when I have to explain to professors that I'm not well, have to say "I'm depressed and I can't finish this paper now," and they always believe me. Always. Don't need to ask, don't need a psychologist's opinion, because it's obvious just by how ashamed I am to ask them for help. It's the same lump that was there years ago, in the library, apologizing to my best friend for falling in love with him and knowing that this ended things, ended them no matter what either of us did because he had a girlfriend he couldn't leave, and we don't talk anymore. I didn't realize until later that it was April Fool's.


I don't know how other people can deal with my emotions when I clearly can't. And I'm happy now, happy but sobbing.


This is drivel, all of it.


It's the same sense of shame that stops people from accepting money. (I get that, I do, although I've always been able to give and receive money like it doesn't mean anything. Some economist.) They don't want to exploit friends, or owe aquaintances. A loan of money puts you in relationship the way sex does, or a child. I know people who won't even loan books.


And I feel so greatful, so greatful to people just for being good, just for getting it. For noticing I exist, or for not noticing and still being incredible, for. . . for falling asleep everywhere and wearing dangle earrings and calling quarters D2s and knowing what all the months mean and raising kids and cutting their hair short and buying ugly green necklaces and debating biology over dinner and pouting over road trips and pasting bees on the covers of CDs. . .

Val, I will always get cookies for you. Even in the middle of the night, you can wake me up, and I will go to the grocery store to get cookies without peanuts in them.

And Johnny, Johnny -- the CD finally arrived, the mythic, wonderful CD and I love it and the first song makes me feel like I'm in a lemonade commercial, and I love the liner notes and the envelope it came in and all of it, and what are you doing in British Columbia when you ought to be next door?


And it's so hard to be in love with everybody, because how can you be in love with anybody? How would you know the difference -- how can you? How is it special to fall in love when all it takes is a smile and a cup of tea and the right time of day? What am I supposed to do when I'm so puppy-dog-in-love with all of my friends and I haven't even talked to some of them?

Because yeah, love everybody, love the world, that's beautiful, man. . . But the world doesn't love you and if it did you'd stop loving it, Your Reserv'ed Majesty. The world doesn't want to hear it any more than you want French poetry from Dale who doesn't get it, who doesn't write llama on manila envelopes and drink from Mucha cups and smoke clove cigarettes, and lust for tomato-basil soup and quote The Who and Charleston in the hallway and plot the history of a world that never existed.


It doesn't love you back. Get a clue.

(no subject)

gratitude is the most nauseating emotion there is. worse than needing people, it's thanking them for your need.