set on fire

I would like to know what you have been thinking about.  But I do not mean the recycled musings about  your lost youth, fantasies in which you appear as a tragic hero, drunk and heartbroken, tough and unknowable.  I mean the things we have tried not to talk about that make us human, like my obsession with floor tiles, your obsession with the ladder.  The boring things that cannot be made into a feature film, but might make a nice book if you would allow me to read it.

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I am reading Half-Blood Blues, which is exactly the sort of book I would never have chosen to read on my own - but I have joined a book club, which is the kind of middle-aged suburban soccer mom kind of thing I do these days.  And the book is interesting.  I abandoned Worst. Person. Ever. without finishing it, which is the kind of thing I almost never do to books.  (People maybe.)


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Ophelia has a herniated disc, which was mistakening diagnosed as a fibrocartilaginous embolism.  She had a CT scan and an ultrasound to make sure.  It means that I have been treating it wrongly when it flares up, encouraging her to walk around and shake it off, when in fact she should have been resting.  She will probably need surgery, which I hate the thought of, but not as much as her being in pain.  It is mostly good news in that the condition is treatable and non-life-threatening.


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1998

LukeYou were such a part of our lives and our music. You gave us your classroom everyday at lunch to perform to real audiences. How are you so cool?

7:21pm

Luke

You were one of us. We all wanted to ask you to the dance, but then realized that dances are for squares, and that we didn't know how to ask out girls.

Now I've been crying lately

My uncle has written me letters.  My Dad's brother.  Twice in the last two weeks, which is more than he has ever communicated with me in my life, really, and it is astonishing how my heart abruptly begins to ache for a family that I have never really known.  I write: J has enjoyed her first two weeks of university.  I have trouble believing how quickly she has grown up.  

I want to write, I think you would have liked me if you had known me.  I think we would have been friends.  I want to ask him if it's too late for that.  It feels too late.  I wonder why.  He writes that he is learning the guitar tabs to Peace Train.  Says he used to play a lot of Cat Stevens in the 70s but was too drunk and stoned in those days to retain any of it.  For some reason I tear up when I read that.

I am writing stiffly, everything safe and distant, and I do not know how to cross the bridge to where he is coming from.  I feel certain he will stop writing because this kind of stilted communication cannot possibly be satisfying; I cannot possibly fulfill whatever need he has recently developed that has made him want to reach out.  And how badly I want his attention to continue is ridiculous.  I am already mourning the day it will end.


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My family (apart from the animals) has abandoned me for the weekend.  I love my family very much, but that does not mean I am not going to celebrate my solitude in a number of ways.  Just imagine.

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she wants me to be guilty

I am not good with technology.  Sometimes I forget to check who I am texting first and send messages to the wrong person.  

Like when I accidentally accused a former student of stealing money off my bedside table.  (This was intended for Shawn.)

Or when I asked another former student if he made an appointment for my dog to go to the vet's office. (Also meant for Shawn.)

And when I (almost) sent a text to my mother-in-law to tell her I was naked in the sauna.  (Intended for a former student.  Just kidding.)

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I am reading a book called Worst. Person. Ever. (by Douglas Coupland).    And I. Hate. It.

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