For the past 3-4 months, I've been using the central time zone setting so that I can make it on the day of, not the day after, when I post late at night.
I think Vermont aged me 10 years prematurely.
Today:
8:30am - I slept in. I immediately turn on my computer and the internal hard drive shows up, but the external still doesn't register. I check on dad's pc and it shows up so I do another backup on the new passport HD, though I fear I won't be able to access it b/c of compatibility issues. This is the least of my problems, b/c at
9am - iBook crashes. It's still not okay. Why bother transferring data if this machine is not going to work?? Diatribe below**
12:20pm - Meet Ching-In outside of NYU and lunch at Souen (I had a burdock & lotus root sandwich w/miso soup). I feel my VT bitterness rising up again. But we still have some good laughs. She esp liked the huge peace symbol on the wall in evergreen branches.
2:30pm - Swing by
Gavin's to visit the bindery and say hello. It felt like home to see him pasting more leather onlays on clamshell boxes. I told him how I insisted on trying to fix a limp vellum (a book I use as my current journal) on the train from Narita to Tokyo station w/the tip of a ball point pen cap b/c the too-long endbands were haunting me in my sleep. Even he said that I was being too much of a perfectionist. I definitely have work if I want it in NY. What a relief.
3:20pm - Pick Cindy up from work to hit Sports Authority for swimsuits (my next residency has a deal w/a local school where we can use their pool). No deal. Good thing, b/c I found out later tonight from Gili that I don't belong in a lap pool. No one at Oberlin ever explained to me why I am every swimmer's worst nightmare.
4:50pm - Get through the huge MOMA line to see the
Live/Work show. Eh. Good to see Lee Bontecou's work again, and some David Hammons, and a really poignant small drawing by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Realize that framing is the key to making anything look good.
5:30pm - Go next door to see the
Martin Ramirez show again at the American Folk Art Museum, meeting Cindy & Ivan & Gili. It was like a sauna in there, and the drawings made everyone kinda sad.
7:40pm - Dinner @ Lemongrass Grill. I start to lose all energy. I accidentally knock Gi's chopsticks so she intentionally knocks my spoon. We should have switched seats b/c I'm a righty and she's a lefty.
9:10pm - Way too tired to catch the movie, so we wander into Filene's and try on bad hats and sunglasses. I somehow make it back to Grand Central, feeling about a million years old.
Re: my transitional, itinerant lifestyle. I am tired of constantly moving around, yet terrified to break that inertia to settle anywhere, even though I know any settling right now would only be temporary (meaning a few years). Any time I ever move someplace new, I immediately visualize moving again, even if I know that I'm staying for a while. And then I feel tired.
But tonight, having my bad ankle flare up again, I realized that maybe I'm just trying to travel enough to get rid of all of my shoes. I want to get rid of all my shoes b/c most of them don't fit right and make my feet hurt. I want shoes that I can walk in for a while and not feel like I'm crippled. I keep walking, hoping that I'll wear them out or find new ones on the way. My problem is that what I really want are custom-made shoes. All I need is a pair of sneakers, which I haven't had since last summer. I'm trying to prune all the useless parts of my life and self so that I can start over. But self-pruning is a bitch.
It's funny how everyone tells me how great my life is and how jealous they are, or how they live vicariously through me. When all I want is everyone else's stability. Or just my own place. Ching-In and I talked about that today. Not having your own space definitely drives you crazy.
**(long-winded speech where I anthropomorphize computers): My iBook is like a boy I once dated. I didn't want it and resisted it for a long time, gave in reluctantly, and was pretty quickly converted. It became part of everyday life. It made my life easier and I felt like I was part of a new club, that people considered me differently. I learned new programs, lingo, and customization. I couldn't imagine life w/o it; we were inseparable.
Then, there was an accident.
It started to unravel. I took it to experts and we tried to fix it. It continued to act out. I was horrified at first, but then just accepted it as flawed, blamed myself, and got used to it being unstable. I was constantly on edge, ready for its possible demise at any moment. People told me I should look into new models, that I needed to upgrade. Weighing the options, I held on, hoping I could get another year out of it. I kept putting off taking it in again for repairs, and instead adjusted my life to fit its inability to operate. Finally, after realizing that I might lose years of my life, I took it back to experts. I thought it was fixed. But secretly I didn't have enough faith in it, and maybe I never did. I feared it would let me down again, even as I hugged it tight and hoped it would last forever. Alas, it started to unravel again. And crash.
What now? I'll take it to more experts in Chicago (actually, Evanston), where I'll drop it off and then shop for shoes at my favorite store next to my old therapist's office. I'm starting to imagine life w/o it, and figuring out temporary storage for my data. I'm wondering if I'm ready to commit to a new one, or if I'll try to slide by with a portable hard drive and the kindness of people who own functional machines. I know I'll have to move on eventually, and that this relationship can't last forever, or even for much longer. But I still have a lot of mixed feelings for this one, and memories of the good life before all the malfunctioning. I've mishandled it, taken it for granted, and some damage is visible. The rest is hidden inside, and I'll never know exactly how I hurt it. As flawed and fallible it was from the start, I wasn't perfect, either. We both did our best, and had some high highs. It's a normal life cycle, this whole slow ending. I don't know what I'll do with it once I've moved on, but for now am just trying to enjoy its company and not expect anything more than I know is possible from a 3.5 yo G3 iBook.