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January 30, 2006
Valentines Day
It’s a quiet morning in Boston. 40 degrees out maybe, overcast. I’m supposed to be working but the iTunes player on my computer is conspiring against me. I set the playlist to ‘random’ and iTunes responded by churning out every vaguely romantic song that I own. I have friends that see the iTunes random playlist as a sort of personal horoscope but I don’t take it this way. Instead, I’m sure that somewhere in the silicon, embedded in the million miniature semiconductor bilayers, a set of gap potentials have conspired to send me straightforward messages about my relationship with the universe. Today, for example, it’ clear that the universe wants to annoy me.
Valentine’s day is coming up. I’ve been asked what I plan to do. “Hiding” comes to mind, though I’ve considered the situation and I’m also willing to accept “being somewhere else.” I suppose that I could find a date but Valentine’s day is a difficult day for a first date. This means that I’ll need to have several pre-Valentine’s dates which can be tough for someone who instinctively responds to the chance formation of close personal connections by establishing communication habits that involve semaphore.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy semaphore. It’s one of my personal dreams to start a semaphore haiku team in order to relay the poems of Basho to air travelers around the world. I’ll do this after I get my restaurant window theater plans off the ground [restaurant window theater is a form of sidewalk theater that takes place in front of a restaurant window. Plays need to be five minutes in length and all dialogue must be written on placards which are held up for the benefit of the diners. Food themes are not acceptable]. Dating just happens to elicit a thin, uncontrollable slice of headache-inducing paranoia very similar in feel to the paranoia that I developed while spending all of those months in complete isolation in the hills of Virginia. I’m not sure how this happened but it probably developed in the last three years. I assume that it has something to do with the send-away course that I completed at grumpy old man finishing school. Eventually, I’ll need to do something about this, but at present I’ve been very addicted to the prospect of “just one more day” of peace and quiet.
At any rate, I’m working from home and the Comcast repairman is here but my housemate is handling the Comcast repairs, leaving me alone in my office to locate new medical nutrition products for clients while clutching for dear life at a pack of antacids. It has been a morning for discovery. I’ve discovered, for example, that even though I may have run out of regular coffee, filling a french press 1/3 of the way full of espresso powder, adding hot water and drinking the resulting litre of viscous sludge is still not a great idea. I spent 30 min in the office this morning before admitting that I’d effectively poisioned myself and heading back home. There is a 200 gig external drive boxed by Amazon and waiting for me in the office but great scott, the .7 miles between my house and my desk seem interminable.
Pointless Pontificatin | By jb | 02:36 PM
Comments
This made me laugh and reminded me of the Monty Python boys skit involving semaphore and Wuthering Heights... great fun. Also, I agree. Hiding.
Posted by: Natalie at February 1, 2006 08:19 AM