It is very very dark and stormy.
A dark and stormy afternoon.
I have just returned from a second visit to the chiropractor. I really like this chiropractor. She is costing me an arm and a leg but it’s worth it if it gets my arms and legs back in order. We talk about anatomy and life and how sad it is that our poor old bodies get so beat up just in the course of normal daily life.
It turns out I have a gnarled and twisted left side due partially to my left leg being shorter than my right. You really do learn something every day. Turns out all those yoga poses that are specifically only hard for my left side are hard not just because I’m “tight on that side” but because my ribs, muscles, and joints on that side are “torqued” in her words, everything bent and fused into weird lumps of scar tissue, leaving me no access to the muscles in certain places. She says a couple of my ribs have become all squashed and off-center on the left side, hence that thing in my back I thought was a tumor. News flash: not a tumor! Just mashed-up malformed twisted ribs! PHEW
Me:
She squishes me and cracks my bones and yanks on my leg and then does this crazy thing called “Graston” where she uses a heavy metal rod to break up scar tissue beneath the skin, leaving me with major bruises and sweet relief. It feels so good to be in the hands of someone who you feel like knows what they’re talking about. Like before I even told her anything, she just prodded my back for a minute and announced all this insanely insightful stuff. “Hmm I bet this side is way tighter in yoga right? And you have pains here, here, and here. And I bet this hip won’t do this…[crack!] Yep!” She says I need expensive new shoes that will correct my fucked-up way of walking, and that I can get these shoes picked out for me by going to some place in NW and doing a treadmill test. WOW. She gave me exercises to do. I have to do these weird pushups where you just extend the arms out straight and then pop the shoulders out of the joints.
Poor old body. All I want is to be able to do yoga and go on walks. I’ve let running go. I will let it go, if only I can walk again and do my yogas. She so far has promised nothing. It seems like what I’m shooting for is not getting that hip to 100% but just getting it to a place of manageable discomfort. NOW IT BEGINS, the true downhill slide into decrepitude. Oh well.
drinking extra caffeine because I’m going to a late night show tonight. Also a BLAZERS GAME.
I’ve taught two classes so far and it seems okay. I’ve got a real smart student who drops F bombs all over the place, I’ve decided not to do anything about it. It’s college, right? We’re all supposed to be smoking weed and talking about how democracy is bullshit. That’s fine. Once again this crop of students is totally wise and well-read and thoughtful, totally calling all my generalizing into question and reffing Byron and Voltaire. It’s really fun to be around such young squirrelly kids who are also so smart. Within the course of a single class they’ll go from “Yes but surely egalitarian philosophical ideals can’t be held entirely to blame for the lunacy of the Reign of Terror” to “HARRY POTTER!!!!!!!!!”
Last night we went to a wonderful storytelling event at a big fancy theater. This is a regular curated thing kind of like The Moth, where people tell amazing non-memorized tales before an appreciative and slightly drunk audience. The stories were so good! I laughed so hard, and was amazed, and was touched. It was such a good mix of privileged hipsters, weirdos, and older working-class dudes. One lady told an incredible story of throwing up 49 times on the 8 hour train ride from Seattle to Eugene, now I will have nightmares. A guy told a terrible tale of trying to organize a union at his concrete mixing plant and then getting sued for terrorist activities. There was a strange and whimsical story about ordering crickets through the mail and then a child giving himself a spanking when he accidentally allowed the crickets to escape all over the house. “Play Enjoyed By ALL”
Speaking of drunk, I will tell you one really bizarre thing about it, which was that upon entering the lobby you were confronted with a big, fancy, full bar. What a treat! Sure, I’d love to get a drink in my hand while I watch these stories! You order a martini and it comes in a lovely martini glass, with olives. You order a whiskey on the rocks and it comes in a beautiful heavy cocktail glass. Then they open the doors to the theater and every single person starts filing in with drinks in hand, only to be told by the person at the door that if you want to bring your drink into the theater you have to pour it into a plastic cup, put a plastic lid on it, and stick a straw in it. Why did they even provide real glasses? Certainly one would not have ordered a martini if one had known one was to drink it through a straw. A straw!!! Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you. So then not only was it an egregious use of plastic, which I hate, BUT THEY ALSO HAD TO GO AHEAD AND STILL WASH ALL THE REAL GLASSES PEOPLE HAD GOTTEN BEFORE REALIZING THE DEAL. It was so hilarious! Huge line of people turning from the bar with drink in hand, then immediately dumping said drink into a shitty plastic cup. Come on, surely there is a better option. Like I mean, at least just go ahead and make the drink in the plastic cup from the get-go. But also, can’t we use less plastic, people? CAN’T WE DO IT? We can’t, obviously. Plastic is amazing.
At intermission it was announced that five lucky audience members would get to tell one-minute stories if their name was drawn from a hat. We were laughing about what if one of us got called and our story was the story of the plastic cups. “SO I’M LIKE ‘WHAT???’”
I would like to tell the story of how confusing it is to go to France. The cheese cart drama, the car-parking drama, the getting-locked-out drama, the five-hours-on-google-trying-to-find-english-language-operating-manual-for-washing-machine drama, the time I just kept saying “thing…book…open” to the archivist at the BnF while she just stared blankly at me for what felt like 100 hours, the time we spent an entire day looking for the Picasso museum and when we found it there was a tiny handwritten sign taped to the door that said “we are closed for two years.”
I like telling stories and I like hearing stories. Sometimes I think I would have made a great caveman.
My chiropractor told me the shitty way you treat your body catches up to women ten years sooner than it catches up to men. Word of warning to male friends and certain husbands who think the women in their lives seem to have an awful lot of physical problems.
To say nothing of hormones. Pretty sure the night sweats are hormonal, like y’all said. I went to a really amazing hippie jewelry store slash apothecary and bought a local wildcrafted female health tonic that has all the hormone balancers–damiana, dong qai, raspberry leaf, vitex, other stuff. Also got some powdered maca, the trendy new Peruvian root that’s supposed to solve all your uterine problems and make you want to have sex all the time, always a good sign. Also got some cheetos.
My computer is all slow and old and takes forever to do things. I even deleted 10 gigs of stuff and it’s still slow and crap. Who has a new computer to give me. I KNOW ONE OF YOU PEOPLE HAS A NEW COMPUTER TO GIVE ME. I’ll give you the old one, and I’ll throw in some of this maca root.
I’ll tell you another thing. Zelda Twilight Princess is the best thing that has happened to my life since I finally read Infinite Jest. WHAT A GREAT GAME. Matthew is to thank for it, as he mailed me all the later Zeldas long ago. I’m only just now getting to them. TWILIGHT PRINCESS!!! I just passed all the dungeons and can now turn into a wolf whenever I want. I also have the master sword and have finally figured out l-targeting. Two nights ago I dreamed I was back in the lakebed temple battling that fucked up eyeball eel thing. When I woke up I was so relieved to remember I already passed that level.
The wordlessness of Link really creeps me out. I find Link extremely creepy in general. He’s like a sexless automaton. I find him way more relatable as a wolf. It doesn’t help that when I set up my game I named myself “Snoopy,” so now everyone addresses me thus. “Oh Snoopy, Great Hero Of Our Time, Will You Accept This New Quest.”
The other day I was a wolf and I was running through Hyrule Field trying to find the sacred grove so I could change back into a human, and I came across my horse, right where I’d left her forever ago. I’d totally forgotten about her. What has she been eating?? She’s just standing there, saddled, waiting for me. I ran up to her and she said “Even though you are in an unusual form, I still understand you. Hurry and change back into a human, Snoopy!” It’s really touching because when I’m a human we can’t speak to each other, I just ride her and order her around like normal. You’d think she’d prefer me in wolf form. Also, I named her before I knew her gender, so her name is “Daniel.” The other day I grabbed hold of a chicken and flew across the sea to land on a roof where there was 100 dollars waiting for me. “Only in Hyrule…!”
It’s some pretty psychedelic shit. When I talk about it I feel kind of like a less articulate Nicholson Baker–remember his amazing New Yorker article where he reviewed all the video games? I say I feel like him because, like him, I’m not much of a video game afficionado. So my reactions are extremely naive and childlike. In that article he’s all marveling at the changing colors of the sky or of how silky an animal’s fur looks. I am basically coming to this game STRAIGHT from original Zelda, which, god love it, but there is really no comparison in terms of how incredible and elaborate and good looking and complex. There are so many times when I’ve tapped back into that childlike sense of wonder. Like at one point you have a dream sequence where your eyes turn black and the people you love turn into freakily giggling demonic versions of themselves, falling upside down against gravity across a black field while a gigantic mystical being tells you the prehistory of the land you live in. Then your body explodes into a million black shiny squares, which reassemble themselves into you but now you’re a wolf with a glowing triangle on his forehead. Then it’s like, holy shit, what am I supposed to do with this information.
