mystery of mysterys... seriously

Last week, right before school started and my nerves were fraught and frayed, and on a night when my kids had woken me up a bit (not used to that anymore), and so on, I had a weird middle of the night phone call. I think it came at 4 am. Then an odd text from the same number "Sorry, my sister f---ed up".

Ok, so whoever called me accidentally

1) has my phone number saved

OR

2) has a friend with a number very similar to mine and mis-dialed

AND

has a sister.


Sorry to have put you through my initial deductive work unnecessarily but I looked at the number and wanted to smack myself. You know, you can delete a number but that doesn't mean that person will delete yours! I guess it seems like when stuff ends badly that's a given, but apparently it's not.

So, yeah. Got another mystery call last night/this morning. It's 3 am and I am in a happy place, right? And I get a call I ignore. They leave a voicemail I am unaware of until 7 am. They call back 5 min after the first call and I pick up on autopilot (BTW me on sleepy autopilot is about as funny and stupid as it gets) and he proceeds to identify himself as the friend of the owner of the recognizable phone number. A friend I was acquainted with 10 years ago.

AND THEY TRY TO MAKE PLANS WITH ME. FOR RIGHT THEN.

"Uh, I have class in Tampa, IN THE MORNING. I think maybe you have the wrong number?"

Ok, the next person who wants to call me and disturb my R.E.M. OH BOY I am going to have words with you.

And I thought B had been kinda pushing it when he called at 11 last night...

what does one read after Infinite Jest???

Anne of the Island, of course. It's like comfort food for when life and literature has given you the howling fantods.

That's what I took with me to Pensacola and I was happy that I did.

I also started reading a Chris Moore novel, Fluke and it's really funny.


Anyways, things are chill here. I'm still eating super healthy (if you don't count the half dozen peach margaritas w/ whipped cream and maraschino cherry toppings I had in P'cola) and feeling really really good about everything; school, family stuff, and my personal life.

a personal victory, ordinary run of the mill moments of clarity, & a startling IJ revelatory moment

This morning, I jumped out of bed (ok, what really happened was that I cheerily responded "Hello!" to a text that woke me up instead of the more typical "argh. do I know you?" See why for me that constitutes jumping out of bed?)ready to face my day and head to the beach.

I put on my bathing suit and checked my midrange sideways view in the small mirror of my jewelery box... and... kinda flattish tummy area. I mean, not flat flat. Not like before kids. Not like Matt V's prescribed "rock star lean abs" but people- in the past few weeks alone I have enjoyed cake and milk, several pints of beer and a hot dog, a sushi feast, more beer, ice cream with Reese's peanut butter cups smashed in for good measure, and arepas with cheese. [I also have had countless meals made solely of vegetable matter and have stopped using cream/sugar. I've worked pretty hard, in spite of the stuff I listed above (hitting the gym, riding my bike, and so on), so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, it was just a startling moment.]

In that tiny little mirror, for about an hour, I just didn't look completely pregnant. And then I had an apple for breakfast.


Also- moment of clarity for me: I don't know how to flirt anymore. Uhhh. Ok, now what? Dang.


Thirdly, for the IJ readers out there: I read a DFW quote yesterday re: the use of endnotes vs footnotes. He and his editor needed a way to shorten the original draft of the book so they hit upon the idea of weeding out some information into notes. The editor thought it would be more reader-friendly to use footnotes instead of endnotes but DFW said that the use of endnotes "cutely mimics some of the story’s thematic concerns"...

In case you don't follow, what happens when you flip to the back and then back to your page and then back to the back and then back to your page? What are you reminded of? (Answer is a good tennis rally)

Then I was ruminating on how the whole narrative seems to be a tennis rally of sorts, bouncing balls off of different topics and they keep on coming with a sick speed. And then, like that, I knew what those orbs are in the book, marking various sections... And it was so obvious (not the moon or the sun or simply just a pretty, lightly shaded circle). They are tennis balls, flying through the book. Fwap. fwap. fwap. fwap.

#infsum

So, 419 pages in and I'm suddenly afraid Wallace won't "deliver the goods". I mean, sure, reading for its own sake should be (and is) enjoyable, but I want to know that if I'm patient, I will be rewarded. I want there to be an ending.

If 'The Entertainment' ends up being like the gleaming contents of a certain cinematic briefcase... if the climax, gasping for breath, grasping a hold of everything it can in the moments before the (o ho!) parting of clouds... if satisfaction never comes...

I don't know if you read those links

The one's I have posted to the right? Well, one of my friends wrote a post late last night that helped me somewhat today. OK granted I am terribly low today, but it helped by bringing me back from extreme otherworldly dark lowness to a more corporeal ordinary broken-life low which seems like an improvement, except this for some reason hurts more.

For the record, nothing awful is going on in my life, besides being so low- in fact I had a killer day yesterday all around; I had a nice breakfast, played tennis with my mom, went out for tea with her, hung out w/ John in the afternoon, watched a funny movie/drank wine with Helen, and enjoyed a really good homemade soup. I even have a an exciting job prospect on the horizon.


Anyways, B's post about camping/trail riding says that sure there are unexpected miserable parts (forgotten gear, inclement weather, mosquitoes), but they help to create the stories you'll tell your friends later, when you come back. And he says life is like that.


So here's to the uncomfortable, unplanned, undesirable, mosquito bite ridden, miserably low days.

I know I just posted my thoughts on Infinite Jest,,,

I couldn't decide if that should be followed by "but" or "so".

I know I just posted my thoughts on Infinite Jest, BUT I did a lot more reading and I have some thoughts and questions.

1) I felt funny about the chronology; years are labelled in a strange way (for example, The Year of the Trial Sized Dove Bar) and I wasn't sure WHEN things were happening. It was getting disorienting. I decided to trust Wallace as I had been instructed to, and when I got to endnote #24 it had worked itself out. Because Endnote #24 sort of lays out the (INSANELY LONG) chronology of James Incandenza's film-making history and uses the weird year labels.

2) Endnote #39, part a is freaking hilarious. Ha! "Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, a.k.a. Wheelchair Assassins, pretty much Quebec's most dreaded [...] terrorist cell".


3) The similarities between IJ and The Royal Tenenbaums seems to be coincidental.

I will tell you about other things, too.

1) I'm still mostly eating crazy-healthy. I have re-introduced more variety, but still being pretty restrictive for the sake of getting fit and I think (fingers crossed) I'm making some progress. For fuck's sake, I hope I'm making progress.

2) One of the two hens got out when Conner was putting fresh water inside the coop the other day (or so I hear) and Sugar chased the poor thing for hours. It hid under Harry's house for the night and hasn't laid an egg since the ordeal.

3) Sewing a LOT. A lot of diaper covers. Hey- need any diaper covers??

essentially on track with infsum

My favorite bits between the first and sixty first pages?

The opinions speech in the college admission interview, the quintessential stoner's shopping list, "happification" - what a RAD word (p 42), howling fantods, maternal and otherwise, the phrase "neuralgic with A.M. dread" which I personally know something of, and the reference to where 90% of people store their kitchen linens.

And that whole bit with the mold is just nuts, heart-wrenchingly nuts.

Here's what I'm wondering, though: does ETA (for Enfield Tennis Academy) read to you as Estimated Time of Arrival in your head when you see the letters ETA??

And do you think David Foster Wallace can be credited with promulgating the endearment 'Moms' as opposed to the conventional 'Mom'??? I do. I have no knowledge of anyone referring to their mother as 'Moms' until fairly recently (its definitely not unusual nowadays), which gives the trend sufficient time to have circulated beyond readers of IJ.