fridays

Fridays are invariably weird days for me. The primary reason for this is that I do not work on Fridays. Ever. Which isolates me from the majority of society that does work on Friday. A typical Friday for me transpires thusly: rise anywhere from 7:30-9:30 AM; make coffee and breakfast then eat and drink leisurely in front of the gigantic windows in the living room; sometimes then I’ll shower so that I feel like I am more formally starting the day; after that I often start some laundry and then dick around on the internets for awhile; for the past couple of months I’ve been doing some pro bono indexing for an organization whose board I’m on so I usually work on that for a few hours in the afternoon; at some point I begin to get incredibly stir crazy and so I force myself out of the house, usually on the pretense of checking my PO box down the street; if I’m lucky there’s something in there other than junk mail for the previous renters (today there was a zine from Kurt; thanks, Kurt, even though you have no idea that this blog even exists); if I’m feeling really brave I then ride my bike over to Whole Foods and get groceries (this happens very rarely); or I might go to Whole Foods to get quarters for laundry (I like to use them as my bank since the closest branch of my bank is farther than I feel like riding just to go to the bank); back at home, I might do some more indexing, finish laundry, or if the weather is really nice like it was today, go running; between five and six is when my sweetheart usually gets home and so then we attempt to plan our evening. By this point in the day, I am usually feeling and often acting somewhat insane, but bless her heart, she takes it all in stride.

The main thing about Fridays that usually makes me so crazy is that I hardly talk to anyone. Today was unusual in that I went to the bike shop and talked for almost 10 minutes to a guy I know who works there. Beyond that my interactions with people today have been limited to my request for quarters from the Whole Foods Customer Service person. You would think that I could somehow fix this problem, but most people work on Fridays so I’m kind of screwed. That’s why most of my interpersonal contact on Fridays comes from some sort of retail exchange.

This happens over and over and over again like clockwork every Friday. I’m hoping that the warm weather will help things because then I will just go ride a metric century on my bike every Friday, come home, eat like a horse, then go to sleep at 7 PM, which is when the typical witching hour begins.

Okay, before I go try to figure out what to do with myself this evening I just wanted to mention one other thing. I used to have a blog on Xanga, and I must say I liked Xanga better than I like Blogger. Sure, the place is overrun with preteens, but at least they sometimes randomly comment on your blog and you can have some fun back-and-forth with them. No one on Blogger seems to randomly comment on blogs. I think part of the reason for this is that it’s almost like it’s set up to keep you isolated from other bloggers. You can’t search the damn site; all you can do is hit that stupid “Next Blog” button, which inevitably pulls up some Cyrillic gibberish or maybe some Eastern European mom’s photo page for her kid. And you can’t subscribe to other people’s pages like you can on Xanga, so how are you supposed to easily get back to other pages? I’m certainly not going to bookmark every freaking Blogger page I might like. I guess I could do the RSS feed thing but that’s not as good as having subscriptions built into the site. I originally thought that moving to Blogger would be a good thing; I somehow had this perception that it was a more grown-up type of blog site, but now I just think it’s kind of lame. I think I just miss the interactive quality of Xanga. Anyway, I just had to get that off my chest.

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by sean on March 14, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in blogger vs xanga, fridays, temporary insanity

Posted by sean on March 14, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/03/14/fridays/

>winter

>I’m tired of winter. I’m not sure what ever possessed me to move back to an area of the country where winter actually exists in its traditional form: cold temperatures, unpleasant precipitation, bleak dark days. All of these characteristics work against me. I need sunlight and I need time outside to do physical activity. I do not enjoy doing this activity in the cold and dark, so I frequently skip it. Then I feel sluggish and depressed. I get cranky and think dark thoughts. My house is drafty and cold, which makes it uncomfortable to be in. This is not what I want my house to be like.

What else is going on? Not much. Daylight savings. Bleah. It messes me up, although I like having some daylight at the end of the day in which to exercise outdoors. Soon it will be my birthday. I feel old numerically, but not necessarily physically. I guess that’s good, but it’s still a little scary. I’m reading this book, and there was a quote that appealed to me…to paraphrase: we get old and our bodies begin to fail just when we’ve learned how to use our powers. It’s nature’s cruel joke, I suppose. Bodies are such weird things. People are so obsessed with them, and yet they are really just useless husks covering what really matters inside. And I don’t mean our organs; I mean our intangible insides. But it’s ridiculous how wise and experienced older people are, and how our Western society casts them aside. What right do we young idiots have to turn our backs on our elders? This is not so in other cultures. In other cultures, elders receive the utmost respect that they deserve. In America, old people are seen as a burden; they are not perceived as having much to contribute and so they are ignored. How much better we would be as a country if we listened to those who have lived through many decades and seen what mistakes have been made throughout history. Perhaps they could guide us back to more sustainable, less wasteful days.

Well, I guess I went off on a tangent there. I better stop now.

1 Comment

by sean on March 11, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in bleah, older folks, winter

Posted by sean on March 11, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/03/11/winter/

a long ramble

Last night I did a reading with China Martens (The Future Generation), Al Burian (Burn Collector), and a couple of other people whose names escape me (sorry!). I hadn’t done a reading since last summer. This one went much better than the last, I think. It occurred to me that maybe I should do readings more often. It also occurred to me that maybe I should promote my zine more than I do. I have always been bad at self-promotion. It goes against my nature.

After the show, as I rode my bike toward home through the narrow city streets bathed in orange street lamp glow, I thought about how insular my life has become lately. It used to be that this was a common occurrence: attending some event, often paired with frenetic social interaction, and then riding the streets late at night in the silence, breathing in the air around me and feeling the pedals move me forward. This doesn’t happen so much anymore. Because there is always the push-pull within me: to hibernate or throw myself out in the social fray. It has always been there, and I expect it always will be there. Sometimes I think I forget how much control I have over my own life and my own experiences within that life. Sometimes I definitely forget what’s good for me and what is not so good for me. I am forever scrambling to balance what needs to be balanced. Dropping little experiences here and there on either end of the scale, trying to keep one side or the other from crashing to the ground.

But do I miss the constant repetition of those nights? The more than occasional sense of futility at their end? What was my motivation? To stave off loneliness? To kill boredom? To seek a mate? Certainly these were factors. Of course now I have found a mate, and no longer feel the cold breath of loneliness wafting over my neck. So that’s two motivating factors that are now crossed off the list. I would not say either that I am often bored anymore. However, I think I can say that I am under-stimulated. It is after nights like last night that I realize this. When I am bound tight and deep in the monotony of the day-t0-day is when I am not even aware of this chronic under-stimulation. But brief flashes alert me to the fact that I am not creating enough; I am not exercising those channels of release that I need to keep free and clear. They are clogging with the effluvia of complacency, and that is something I do not want to happen. I think that people easily use the excuse of aging as a way to remove themselves from the uncertainty and spontaneity of the more erratic lives so many of us have lived in years past. It is an alluringly simple excuse to give when we don’t want to face the facts that we have become complacent; that we no longer seek out the necessary stimuli to keep us questioning, to keep us creating, and to keep us living lives of exploration.

Well, I don’t want to stop exploring.

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by sean on March 7, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in complacency, hibernation, life, vitality

Posted by sean on March 7, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/03/07/a-long-ramble/

>postal pleasure

>For a long time (read: 10+ years of zine publishing) I have had a love/hate relationship with the United States Post Office. I have had some really nice experiences at the PO, and some really horrible ones. I’ve been kind of ambivalent about the new post office I’ve been frequenting lately. None of the employees have been very nice; at best they’ve been cordial on occasion, but often bordering on surly. Today, however, the woman who waited on me was shockingly pleasant and upbeat. She has waited on me before, and at the time didn’t bowl me over with her good nature. I don’t know if she was just having a really awesome day today (it was Friday, after all) or if the PO has instituted some new radical customer service indoctrination program (somehow I doubt this). Anyway, this experience made me feel really good and helped put a nice spin on my day. And it also reminded me of this essay I read on the NPR site the other day, which I will now share with you:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18463814

If you scroll down to where it says “Kevin Kelly’s 2007 Christmas Card,” you can read the full essay, which is well worth it.

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by sean on February 8, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in good nature, kindness, parts of the whole

Posted by sean on February 8, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/02/08/postal-pleasure-2/

>light through a crack

>this morning the sky hung apocalyptic above me. i rode through the streets, the air mild around me, and felt good. it has been awhile. i’m not sure what exactly is wrong. maybe i just hate the winter. maybe i keep sabotaging myself. maybe the constant tension is necessary. actually i know it is. the rubber band stretched across my heart dials me in to where I need to be. but the synaptic gaps cannot widen too far or all will be lost.

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by sean on January 30, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in breathing rights, tension

Posted by sean on January 30, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/01/30/light-through-a-crack/

coughing up words

>There is no glory in cynicism, only smug satisfaction. In these times, though, there is always tension. Tension in mind, tension in life. Tension like taut twine tying together these moments. Moments of uncertainty. Moments of elation and moments of despair. Pure moments of love. And pure moments of complete and utter bafflement at what life is about and what to make of it.

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by sean on January 23, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in cynicism, tension

Posted by sean on January 23, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/01/23/coughing-up-words/

>new growth

>I feel some delicate new shoots begin to grow. I must be careful to shelter them from the storms around me. I only hope that I am not too thin a layer of soil for strong roots to take hold.

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by sean on January 23, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in growth

Posted by sean on January 23, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/01/23/new-growth/

>the weakness in passive voice

>A familiar staleness tasted on the lips, spreads outward to mix with the hopelessness of the city. Every week another young person, bright and filled with fighting promise, erased in a snuff of abstruse violence. There is always so much to learn about the things in life, not easily understood until it is too late, when I am weary from throwing myself into constant merciless flight. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong there. Everywhere I go, within moments short or long, I feel far removed and out of place. Others around me seem to know what they are doing and why. But I am always lost and confused, bathed in unease. Two steps behind, perhaps I walk too slow. I seem to always have, in the past.

1 Comment

by sean on January 17, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in confusion, life, unease

Posted by sean on January 17, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/01/17/the-weakness-in-passive-voice/

juggling this mortal coil

>All this death and illness lately has made me sort of nervous. For the most part, I am comfortable with my own mortality. But recent events have shook me. Scratchy’s death was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to face in a long time. The fact that it was so out of the blue scared me. My grip on reality shattered instantly as fear, despair, and helplessness ripped through me when I found him lying there, cold and motionless. I suppose it is common to write about the finality of death, but its irrevocable nature is uniquely difficult to process. It makes me think about all the people (and animals) that I love. They could all equally be harboring some unknown condition inside them that might lead to their death. The same can be said for me. What has now been drifting around in my head is what to do with this information. Maybe Scratchy’s death was an elaborate reminder to me of the fleeting nature of life, and also a wake-up call to plan better for an unknown future. And maybe it too is a simple reminder that I need to more gracefully accept the constant changes hurtling around and through my life.

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by sean on January 9, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in death, mortality, vitality

Posted by sean on January 9, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/01/09/juggling-this-mortal-coil/

R.I.P. Scratchy, July 1996 – December 31, 2007

It is with the deepest sorrow that I write on here today to report the sudden death of my dear feline companion Scratchy. He passed away yesterday afternoon from a heart attack. Unbeknownst to me, Scratchy had developed a heart condition called feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which is a heart muscle disease where the walls of the heart thicken over time, thus limiting the amount of blood that can be processed by the heart. Often, this condition develops with no visible symptoms, as it did in Scratchy’s case. He appeared lively and healthy up until the point of his death. Complicating the heart condition was another condition, of which I was also unaware. Scratchy was born with one kidney that worked at only a small fraction of the level of his other healthy kidney. With only one kidney filtering his blood, he endured an additional strain on his heart, which likely accelerated the effects of the HCM, leading to his sudden death before any symptoms ever appeared.

HCM is a serious condition for cats, often younger or middle-aged ones, with some evidence suggesting that male middle-aged cats are most frequently struck by it. Although there are medications to help treat the illness if it is caught early enough, the prognosis is rarely good, and most cats don’t live past a year or two after diagnosis. There is no known cure, and eventually the cat will suffer heart failure.

I am so thankful that Scratchy did not suffer. He knew very little pain during his full life, and he likely died almost instantaneously. I found him in the tub, where he had most certainly been engaging in one of his very favorite activities: drinking from the faucet.

As those of you who met him know, Scratchy was a very special cat and he touched a lot of people’s lives. He never failed to win over everyone who met him, even the most hardened of non-cat lovers. All he ever wanted was love, and he had plenty to give in return. He was such a sweet boy, so full of life, and he offered his love unconditionally. He will always remain in my heart in a very special place.

If any of you who read this have a memory or anecdote about Scratchy that you would like to share, I would love to hear it. Please either post it here or email it to me.

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by sean on January 1, 2008 • Permalink

Posted in cats, death, illness, parts of the whole, scratchy

Posted by sean on January 1, 2008

https://sd-stewart.com/2008/01/01/r-i-p-scratchy-july-1996-december-31-2007/