A Big Scare!

So I was in yoga tonight. At first, I wasn't really feeling it. I was kind of annoyed with a friend of mine who unfairly takes advantage of another friend of mine. I was distracted and, thus, irritable.

My mat was towards the back of the room, near a wall. About 6 inches from the end of my mat was a big stack of cushions.

Early in the class--in the first downward dog, maybe--I noticed what looked like a bit of fluff sticking to one of the cushions. It looked kind of like the tip of a dustball. I was surprised that there would be dustballs in there--it's a carpeted room, after all--but whatever.

Class proceeded. We began the sun salutations.

And then, in maybe the third downward dog, I looked at the fluff. And: It had moved. It was protruding further from between the mats. It no longer looked like fluff. It looked like it had long, bunchy legs, all sticking out. It looked like: A Really Big Bug.

Okay, I thougt. It could be a spider. Spiders are all right. Or it could be (and this made me shudder--not outwardly; the room was at 95 degrees--but still) one of those awful huge leggy centipede things that live around here.

I hate those huge leggy centipede things.

They freak me out.

Once, there was one in my room, and I wanted to get rid of it but couldn't stand killing it. So I put a cup over it and left it for two days. When I picked up the cup, there was nothing there but a little pile of dust.

Aaaaagh.

My eyes were riveted on this thing. In every downward dog, it was my sole focus, my drishti. The sweat on my ankles felt like creepy little giant centipede legs. Even in poses where I wasn't supposed to look in that direction, like reverse triangle, I somehow found a reason to glance back there.

What would happen, I wondered, when we got to shavasana? When I had to lie there, all passive and vulnerable, just inches away from the disgusting centipede thing? What if it got into someone's shoe?

Oh, it was terrible.

And then we did something that brought us to the ends of our mats. I looked down at my wee nemesis. And...um...okay, it was a little tuft of stitching sticking out of the side of a cushion.

Annnyway. On the upside, I was so relieved that I actually turned my attention back to class. And I'd completely forgotten about my aggravating friend.

Some Big Changes 'Round These Parts

Ahh, March. The temperature has gone up more than 30 degrees since yesterday, and, in the spirit of the new season (right? right??? winter's not coming back, is it?????), I've decided to make some Changes.

First off: No more cable. I had it disconnected last night. It was about time, really; I've been stealing wireless from somewhere (presumably the boys downstairs) since October, and my TV service gave me no extra channels--meaning that I was effectively paying $50 for network TV. $50 a month for a handful of Will and Grace reruns is an expense that I can no longer justify. Particularly as the end of the year--and my last foreseeable paycheck--draws near.

I do have an antenna, and I'll probably give that a try later on. But would a life sans television be so bad? Although it would be terrible to miss out on the rest of America's Next Top Model, a deeply problematic show to which I am nonetheless addicted.

Second: I sorted through the stacks and scraps of papers adorning my desk area. That's not especially exciting, I know, but it was satisfying all the same.

Third: I went back to yoga. After a week and a half of no real exercise, my body was feeling thick and sluggish. I normally attend at least two--often three--classes a week, and missing it for so long reminded me of how much I love it. I might write about yoga some more later. It's corny, I know, but yoga really is such a tremendously important and beneficial part of my life. Today's class felt great. My usual teacher wasn't there, but the sub was a guy I've had before and whom I like a lot. He's a small, kind man whose goatee and bright little eyes give him a benignly simian aspect. Although I tried to go easy today, moving my body felt so good that I, well, didn't. But to no ill effect, so I think that I made the right choice.

And finally: I will go to the bank, on Monday, to finally close my stupid savings account with the 0.000001% interest rate and transfer the money to my vastly superior savings account (4.5% interest rate). And to get some of those coin sleeve thingies. I need to roll some coins.

With these resolutions under my belt, perhaps I can get back to work. Perhaps, some day soon, I'll finish one of the books I started in more optimistic times.

The Body Stronger, but the Mind a Fog

Okay, I'm basically healthy now. Still have the unpleasant residual cold effects (the peeling nose is the worst), but I'm okay. And I've been taking cold medicine before bed, which means that I've been having FABULOUS dreams;* at some point I suppose I'll have to give that up.

But I can't get anything done. It's not a matter of the will. Well, maybe it is. I don't know. I'm reading a hugely entertaining novel these days, and I have two more episodes of Father Ted to watch, but I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated with myself.

In the last couple of weeks, I've started a rather large number of books. If you were to read all my posts carefully,** you might think that I'm a prodigious reader of extracurricular medieval lit, but in fact I'm just not finishing anything. I have bookmarks bristling all over the place. It's annoying. I want to finish these things, damn it, so I can stick them back onto my shelves or into the big stack on my subwoofer or wherever.

But, instead, I pick something up, I read three paragraphs, I think of something I desperately need to check online, I go to my computer, I forget what I was going to check....

Oh well. It happens, right? Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I start to seriously get myself together. Tomorrow is the day I drink extra coffee, if need be. Yep. Right-o.

*One thing I notice with the cold medicine is that when I wake up in the middle of the night--which I do, often--I can just sort of lie there and it's as if I'm still sleeping. I'm not, and I know it, but I'm still having these wild and vivid dreams. And then sometimes I think I'm just lying there awake but in fact I am asleep, as I discover when I look at the clock and two hours have gone by. It's a disturbingly pleasant state to linger in, this in-betweenness.

**A practice that I do not recommend.

I have taken to my bed

That was pretty much implied in my last post, I guess. But I wanted to write it anyway.

After six hours, I'm kind of staving off boredom. I finished the back issues of Bust magazine my friend gave me, and just purchased an album by El Perro del Mar with an itunes gift certificate. (The album is fabulous and strange--the ethereal vocals and sock-hop melodies remind me a little bit of the soundtracks to various David Lynch movies.) I'm listening to it off my laptop with my big-ass nerd headphones while I read the Letters of Direction section of Abelard & Heloise. (Maybe that's accountable for some of the boredom?) I've also rented a Jane Austen movie and the first season of Father Ted. Father Ted is heralded, on the back of the box, as "the best program about three Catholic priests stuck on a very small island." Good times ahead.

Luckily I have enough food to get me through lunch tomorrow. The wind is screaming and shaking my house and DAMN but it's cold out there. There's something pleasant about being holed up--for the first day, anyway.... Actually, it's probably a good thing that it's so cold; otherwise I might be tempted to go out and spread my germs.

Sick Sicky Sick Sick

Yes, I'm SICK. A strange stomach-ache has morphed into a head cold. I've never heard of that happening, but there you go.

It's quite awfully cold out, and windy as a bitch, but soon I'll need leave the house for tissues and videos. Other than that, though, I think I'll spend the better part of the day in bed. In fact, I'm writing this from bed. Vive la laptop!

In other news, I had an interview yesterday and I think it went pretty well. (The cold was just in the stomach-ache phase at that point, thank goodness.) They asked me harder questions about my dissertation than my committee ever has, but I was able to answer them to my satisfaction, at least. The job is non-tenure-track, but renewable, and somewhat prestigious if low-paying. It also has the advantage of being a commutable distance away--meaning that I could keep my apartment and not buy a car. So I'd be pretty excited if it panned out. I won't hear for another month, though.

Hm...am I ready to brave the cold and the wind? I'm not sure that I am. But I can't stand to go on blowing my nose with my scratchy old recycled-content toilet paper. It's brutal, it is. Maybe I'll go in 15 minutes. Yeah, 15 minutes seems about right.

And then what will I do? I don't know! There are worky-type things I could tinker around with, but I'm not sure that I want to. (Uh, okay. What I mean is, I'm sure that I don't want to.) I've been re-reading the novel that I wrote in the darkest days of my job search anxiety, and am actually enjoying it, which is pleasant. Maybe I'll do some more of that. Or maybe I'll, I dunno, look through some of my old papers and books and things. Relics of bygone selves. For some good old self-indulgent fun.

If it weren't for the kleenex situation--which will soon be remedied, I swear--being sick isn't half bad, sometimes.

An Unexpected Convergence

Regarding my last post: I just read, unrelatedly, a paper on reading practices in classical antiquity. Specifically, on active reading practices whereby readers wrote critical commentary and questions in the margins of their texts--along (almost) exactly the lines of my erstwhile Abelard critic. Hmm.

I'm actaully really interested in questions of readers' interactions with texts, specifically as they relate to authorial attempts at controlling interpretation in the Middle Ages. I can think of transparent instances of such attempts in some theological literature, but I'm starting to bat around ideas about how it might manifest in secular lit, too. Nothing much to say about it, at this point, except that when my pleasure reading combines with my required reading to highlight exactly the issue I've been half-thinking about, it seems like it's time to stop half-thinking and start weighing the issue in earnest....

Marginalia

For kicks (and because I figure it's time I get around to it), I've been reading the letters of Abelard and Heloise this week. I have a cheap used translation ($0.99 from the campus book store), and the previous owner evidently took issue with Abelard's, um, ego.

"He doesn't address the problems in order!" s/he writes fervently in the margin of page 145. A few pages later: "He thinks he's so perfect now. 'Was' guilty," and, "he cares for her out of duty from previousness [sic] not love. he says he suffered for them both to be forgiven, as if she has gotten a free ride."

Now the commentary is flying thick and fast. Page 150 finds criticism of his style ("He goes on too much about one point"), his self-representation and hypocrisy ("he overdoes stuff! (exaggerated his humility, after condemning that)"), and attitude towards family ("doesn't he love his son, shouldn't having a kid change his view").

By page 154, our intrepid reader has had enough. Time to address Abelard directly:

"Yes, dummy," s/he fumes, "but she still suffers from desire! It's easy to say cuz you can't feel it anymore."

There ought to be some kind of clever joke to be made about monastic reading practices and/or Biblical exegesis, but it's beyond me at the moment. All I can say is, I'm enjoying the vicarious experience of one reader's impassioned lectio--and yes, Abelard is a bit full of himself, sure. But isn't that just a part of his charm?