the big one

I've been thinking a lot lately about my past experiences with drugs. For some reason, I feel prompted to step out of the closet, so to speak, and mull over my thoughts on my personal experiences in text. I've had a fair amount of those; my usage was definitely nowhere near as prolific as some I've known. I've had friends who dropped acid on a weekly basis and went to clubs while on shrooms or ecstasy. Those people are both brave and extraordinarily stupid.

Especially when it comes to psychedelics. I've both eaten shrooms and dropped acid in the past; those of you who have always wondered may now consider your suspicions confirmed. The difference between me and most of the people I've known who ingested either drug on a regular basis, though, lies primarily in our perceptions of their personal benefits. Mostly, they seem to think it's a great idea to pop a few and head out in order to enjoy the visuals. On the other hand, I've tended to use these sessions as opportunities for introspection.

The one trip that sticks out most in my mind was one that I embarked on in the summer of 2004. I was living on campus, going to a couple of classes, and utterly failing to find anything to do with my time that didn't involve pot or alcohol. An opportunity came my way in the form of my dealer, who had serendipitously come into a certain quantity of magic mushrooms, and offered me an eighth of an ounce. "Grind this shit up in a blender and add it to orange juice," he cautioned. "They taste terrible."

I followed his advice one evening at a couple friends' apartment on campus. I remember recoiling from the smell that wafted up from the blender and wondering if the psychedelic spores were even now melting into my boogers. What was left of the skinny, twiggy mushrooms now looked like dust and...ground-up twigs. Frankly unappetizing, but I took a pint of orange juice, sprinkled the whole mess in, poured the mixture into a large cup, and went outside. Both of my friends followed, morbidly curious as to what would happen. They weren't disappointed; I gagged repeatedly while downing the shroom juice and finally just held my nose shut and poured it all directly down my throat. The aftertaste made me spit up a little; the black stains on the pavement were still there when I graduated nearly a year later. The taste was a mixture of dirt, poo, and orange juice. Fabulous.

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in my friends' living room when I suddenly noticed that I was happy, almost manically euphoric. I felt fantastic. There was a bright blue rope light arranged in an organic pattern on the opposite wall; the light emanating from it looked almost crystalline, as though there were a slight sparkly aura clinging to the plastic. The fluorescent kitchen lights took on extraordinary depth, suggesting rainbows hidden in the humming white glow, which were visible only when I moved my eyes quickly.

Close to ecstatic, I entered my friend's bedroom, where she was sitting at her computer and complaining on IM to an out-of-town friend about how bored she was, stuck in Rochester in the summer. I looked at the other friend, who had followed me in, and she immediately took on the aura of a painting I had studied in an art history course the previous semester, and I grew excited and asked the friend at the computer if I could Google something. I found the painting in question and showed it to both of them, and the friend who had been on the computer kneeled on the floor, her expression skeptical, looking at me. She grinned uneasily and leaned over to the other girl and said, "Dude, I think he's tripping." She leaned back in my direction and looked directly into my eyes, and said, "Holy shit, his pupils are dilated."

I was observing all this, but at the same time was feeling a pleasurable tingling spread over my skin, somehow underneath it and on top of it at the same time, and the air began to shift and manifest rainbow-colored geometric patterns that were nearly transparent, overlaid on everything I was looking at, and, thrilled, I looked at my kneeling friend. She looked at me, compact on her knees and haunches, and suddenly I could see patterns underneath her skin, as though they had been tattooed on in a very slightly darker shade, in line with the planes and angles of her face and constantly pulsating. She looked like a jaguar god in Mayan stone (I was studying pre-Columbian art at the time), and the rainbow patterns in the air took on the commensurate aspect.

By this time, the sun had set, and I noticed that the pulsating phantom geometry had mostly subsided, as had the euphoria. I felt more normal now, and slightly disappointed. Was this all there was? Both friends decided they'd go outside and smoke a cigarette, and we agreed there was probably no harm to be done in allowing me to join them, out in public.

I nearly went crazy with paranoia. Everything was moving, and I constantly thought car headlights were sweeping across my field of vision. Light wasn't fixed; the streetlights and the moon brightened and dimmed unceasingly, and the far trees appeared to be moving with sentient intent, and the shadows boiled with movement. Once I understood that the seeming headlights were actually artifacts of the drug, I calmed down and suddenly felt another wave of euphoria. Everything was alive. There was a secret, hidden life to things, and I was finally able to perceive it.

I felt like dancing--and did. Both of my friends looked at me, alarmed, and checked around them for any possible witnesses. I laughed and told them it was okay, but their concern penetrated, and the rest of the trip from that point on was characterized by a watchfulness; not of my friends nor of anyone else, but of myself. I saw that neither of them had the faintest clue about what was going on in my head--not helped by their total lack of experience with psychedelics--and would not be able to fully understand the motivations behind my actions or statements, so I pulled everything inside myself. They would only see me being quiet and somewhat uncommunicative, nothing of serious concern; I would, however, continue to enjoy my private experience. Since then, I have more than once regretted that I didn't pursue this undertaking with a guide, an experienced tripper who knew what I was experiencing and could channel my energy and perceptions in a healthy way. Not that things went bad, not at all. It just would have been better with someone who had been there, done that, and fully understood.

Especially in those waves of panic that hit occasionally. Sometimes it was overwhelming, things were moving too fast, it felt too permanent, I was going to be stuck like this forever, I'd done something irrevocable to my brain, I'd never be a normal person again, I'd never see the world the same way. That's how intense it can get; you feel as though it'll never, ever end because it's become so much a part of yourself. The only thing that kept me from freaking out altogether was the constant reminder: "You are on drugs. Your judgment is impaired. This is temporary. This will pass. This is just like what you've read about. You've experienced this before." After about five minutes, I would calm down and go back to enjoying the scenery and riding the wave of euphoria again.

Much of what has stayed in my memory about the whole experience was the novelty. I had experimented with smaller dosages of mushrooms and LSD before, to spooky effect--one person who was present at the very first time I tripped on shrooms still talks about it--but this was the first strong dose I'd ever taken. It quite literally changed me. My perspective on life in general underwent a cataclysmic shift that night; part of it was the sense of connection I felt to everything and everyone I saw, part of it was the rest of the trip after the dancing episode. Because I felt it was necessary to suppress any outward manifestation of my internal altered state, that seems to have set up the rest of the trip to reinforce that sense of separation, of isolation. I remember a particular point when I was outside, alone, an hour or two later, and suddenly saw a long white line that came through me from behind and then zoomed off to the left up ahead in a sharp curve amid the darkness, and understood that to be my path, to be undertaken Alone. Capital "a" and everything. It was the only journey there, and I was the only one on it, and I was moving along it at breakneck speed.

Although I have since acquired a more pragmatic viewpoint regarding that particular vision, the essential truth that underlay it hasn't left me. It's my life, my path, and I'm the only one who can take it. All questions of self-containment aside, though, the big "A" doesn't seem quite so mandatory anymore; it either happens or it doesn't. I'm fine with it either way, which is also a part of what this particular trip gave me. Life happens, with or without you. This represented a fundamental shift in my thinking about myself and others which has held true ever since; it's a side effect that, unlike most others, sticks around for a while. Those and flashbacks.

After that trip, I lost any sense of admiration or respect for people who used psychedelics as social drugs, a fun way to pop up your club experience. It's a waste of an unparalleled opportunity to get to know the inside of your head and the outside world and their interactions a little better. I've tried it in social contexts since then, and it's never been quite as personally fulfilling; you're too self-conscious and the other people there impinge on your vibe too much. I know some people scoff at the use of stuff like peyote for Native American rituals or whatever, thinking it's just an excuse to get high legally. That's bullshit; it's one of those things you really do have to go through in order to gain any sort of true conception of what it can be, to understand its real potential. It's fantastically intense, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and utterly, utterly unreal. And yet the sense of a vastly greater truth underneath everything becomes so real that it clings to you when you come back down to Earth and you feel as though it's completely natural.

Truthfully, if someone offered me some shrooms, no strings attached, to be taken when I felt ready, I wouldn't turn them down. No sir. The only brake on the venture would be, of course, the wait for the right time and place, which is difficult to achieve. That stuff is amazing, but not something I'd want to do more than once every few years. Too intense. If I felt that my inner self needed rebooting, let's say. Just shrooms, though, not acid. LSD doesn't do much for me; pretty lights, swirly walls, that's about it. No problem turning that down.

Don't ask me what prompted all this. I think it's a mixture of nostalgia, introspection, and an article I found in the New Yorker today about pot dispensaries in California and the author's description of the old-hippie growers there. I totally understand where those aging dipsticks are coming from, which is mind-boggling.

first post

My book collection was ransacked.

Here, therefore, are my preferred first lines and why I like them:

"From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person."
--H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
It's just a weird story in general (young guy resurrects ancestor; ancestor kills descendant and takes his place; cultural/temporal shock lands him in asylum), but the sentence structure in particular is what stuck. First is the intriguing arrangement of "there" and "disappeared", then, of course, the fact that in an insane asylum, this individual was "exceedingly singular." Hm.

"They are the totally rich."
--John Brunner's The Totally Rich
Sounds kind of like surfer-speak at first, except this story was written in 1963. This lends a different perspective on the word "totally," which gives rise to much thought on the nature of wealth--and how much complete obscurity really costs when money ceases to have any meaning.

"I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable."
--Roger Zelazny's A Rose for Ecclesiastes
One of my favorite short stories of all time, it opens with a) the word "madrigal," which is nearly archaic, b) said Madrigals are "macabre," c) the notion of its translation into Martian, and d) that the author has been found acceptable by some unidentified body for some unidentified purpose. Just can't help yourself after that point, you know?

"This is not for you."
--Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
I hope to Christ it isn't. This line appears in Courier, completely isolated on the page. It's a reverse dedication, but it also serves equally well as the opening line of the story--if you want to call it that. Easily one of the most disturbingly creepy books I've ever read. Anyway, it's a warning: Don't go through that door. It's not yours.

"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself."
--Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan
As opposed to the time the book was written? Apparently so, according to the rest of the first few paragraphs, which manages to lampoon people's obliviousness and "gimcrack religions." Both polemic and serene, this line opens one of my favorite books.

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."
--Joseph Heller's Catch-22
It's a pretty good way to open a book like Catch-22. I'm not wild about the redundant clunkiness, but it works as a means of mockery of established literary norms and well-worn clichés. You get set up with the trite first sentence, then knocked down with the absurdity of the second.

"Standing over all creation a doubt-ridden priest took a piss."
--Tony Daniel's Metaplanetary
I dig it. Not only is the imagery rather interesting, but the characterization of Andre Sud is effectively accurate. It helps that the entire line can, in light of the rest of the novel, be taken quite literally.

"Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians."
--Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Simple, sweet, and somewhat misleading. When one hears the word "magician" these days, one thinks of cheap birthday-party entertainment. It's not until one reads through the novel that the true, original sense of the word comes through. The formal tone also sets the key for the rest of the book; this isn't dime-store magic shit. It's serious. It's hardly a fantasy romp with telepathic dragons or one-liners from the wisecracking sidekick. This is what I would call truly speculative fiction.

Hm. Surprisingly, I find myself urged to re-read all these. I'm going to have to get Anne McCaffrey out of the way first, the pushy broad.

Moleskine

I bought a Moleskine notebook in...oh, must have been Januaryish of 2007.

I resolved to fill its cream-colored pages by the end of the year. It'd come everywhere with me, a little companion in my pocket. It'd be the repository of my dreams and thoughts and other similarly useful tidbits. How fascinating! How bohemian!

I filled it about halfway through with snatches of quotation, brief journal entries, a failed diet log, and my favorite recipe for guacamole, margined by various off-the-cuff financial equations, the complexity of which precludes any understanding of their meaning outside the person who jotted them down at the moment. There were sketches and doodles and many, many attempts to sharpen what little artistic talent I had. All done, of course, from right to left, starting from the back of the book. I am left- and large-handed, and it seemed more convenient, although I never quite resorted to da-Vinci-like mirror handwriting.

Looking back, and having discovered skineart.com, I realize what a colossal bungle I've made of this resource. Granted, I couldn't hope to approach the quality of the work available on that site, but there are so many uses for something so...useful. Naturally.

There's also a modicum of buyer's remorse; the smart leather cover, the little lined sheets, the pocket in the back cover that promised untold realms of functionality (and which has remained empty since its purchase), even the elastic band that closed the book against the elements--all promised me a new era of creativity. Even the smell, which has since perished in the onslaught of my back jeans pocket (along with the binding), filled me with delirious dreams of historical perspective.

It's interesting how connected many people feel to their personal journals, notebooks, ledgers, planners, address books, and other sundry items of record. Even now, not having used the book since March's antiquarian book fair (to record the item numbers of a pair of Islamic astronomical charts, which have since been abandoned--perhaps a culprit in my unconscious disillusionment?), it lurks in the back of my mind, stashed in a plastic bin atop a comforter in my closet. "Pick me up," it whispers. "Drink, and live forever..."

No, that's Death Becomes Her.

Lately, I've been finding myself making mental notes for potential blog/dream/book review topics, which inexplicably disappear a little while later when I'm sitting at my computer and staring at the text box. An expectant maw, it seems like, sometimes, waiting for a virgin who missed her bus. Other times, the topic is firmly in my mind, but the approach I wanted to use has vanished. Goddammit. Dammit dammit dammit. Self-recrimination, finger-pointing among the various wide lands in my head, shrinkage in the face of the looming horror of writer's block.

Looking through what I have in there already, I find myself captivated.

There's a section encompassing several pages in which I describe a system by which 90 stars sharing 100 planets could be used for intergalactic travel by various means. It's a complicated yet fascinating idea, using timed occlusions to simulate a single-sun planet during the day, and a night sky that, instead of pinpricks of light, would be dominated by glowing rings and spirals as a result of the multiple solar eclipses that would need to take place in order to simulate night and the effect of local gravitational disturbances on the light of those eclipsed stars. Planets and stars would share each other, weaving in and out, following complex orbital paths that would resemble the work of a crazed spirograph rather than orderly ellipses. The gravitational interactions alone might be enough to collapse local time in order to reach the nearest galaxy within a thousand years subjectively, even as millions of years pass in the rest of the universe. This of course would be affected by outward galactic motion if the universe continues to expand, but that's a relatively minor consideration.

There are also several pages detailing the private goings-on of the deaf people I associated with almost exclusively for nearly a year, with an eye towards writing a book. The Cacophony of Silence, perhaps. Enough happened to warrant that, as well as certain observations on the nature of deafness and its tendency to engender personality disorders of various types. There's sufficient detail to bring it all back with a resounding whack.

Then there's just the cool factor of being seen in public jotting stuff down in a little black book. I mean, c'mon. Who can resist that?

of subcutaneous ink

I love the buzzing hum, the thin line of flame that cuts your skin, the pregnant scar.

My sister has God imprinted on her left wrist: "I AM". She has accomplished this without an ounce of solipsism, which I find admirable and more than a little suspicious.

My own aren't worth mentioning, really; I'm the only one who knows and can find the deeper meaning contained in each one of them. I'm the only one who even sees two of them on a regular basis--even that simple fact carries its own import, for I am a private person about much more than what most people frequently expect.

The one that gets seen most often is the clock on the back of my left wrist, underneath my watch face, which was unintended--I was much heavier when I got it and never expected the watch band to actually become loose. I find it interesting that people seem to consider its placement as an ironic commentary of sorts; it really isn't.

It's shadow time. It reminds me that every moment is a new one, a constant rebirth, always 8:31 p.m. on April 12, 1985. I asked that it be crude, less than perfect, to remind myself of my own flaws. It doesn't always work; I am frequently convinced of my own infallibility. As such, the clock also reminds me of my youth, even when I feel the age of the clay.

So. I looked at Literary Tattoos. Many of the tattoos consist of quotes from Vonnegut, Palahniuk, several common poems, lyrics from band like Korn and Green Day, and facets of Disney or Harry Potter. It's thought-provoking, to say the least.

I wonder how those people feel when they look at this site and see that several other people have chosen the same idea. Is it a sense of commonality, a bond? Or is it shame that their own work is not original enough to qualify as true personalization?

But then what qualifies as "personalization"? Is it an avowal of the singular? Or the expression of a meaningful idea shared by someone else? Many great writers are thought so because of their ability to create something that an audience can recognize inside themselves, the intricate wiring of a connection, eternal in its abstraction, ephemeral in its intangibility.

Perhaps the term should be taken literally; the recognition of one's personhood, an actualization through visible proof of one's ability to unearth an interior truth by exterior means.

Regardless of the direction in which one's consideration may lie, the site got me thinking about what literary device I might like to have as a tattoo.

For some reason, I keep thinking about Ecclesiastes. Chapter 3, to be specific, verses 1-8 to be more so.

1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

There's appeal in this. It counsels patience, a willingness to understand that everything occurs in the fullness of time. Given the tone of the rest of the book, this can be taken to mean that it is therefore pointless to concern oneself with mortal matters, but being an agnostic, I choose to interpret it as an exhortation to recognize the cyclical nature of time. For no little reason is it prefaced with the word "season."

The book as a whole is depressing. There's a laden sense of ennui, of futility in the face of the Almighty Truth: Death. Why work so hard for something you can't take with you when you proceed to the ever-after? All that labor for the greater glory of those who follow seems pointless; it therefore behooves the reader to focus on far more intangible things, of things that mean more to one's personal long-term future than to others'.

I admit, though, that my interest in the book was germinated by Zelazny's stupendous short story, "A Rose for Ecclesiastes." The full text can be found here. It's a beautiful, lyrical piece. If anything, I might eschew the religious verse altogether and get the following passage inked:

"There has never been a flower on Mars," she said, "but we will learn to grow them."

It being what it is

It is a consequence of my nature that I should sacrifice a certain amount of thought and time on very small altars.

It is, therefore, probably not too surprising that a good deal of both turned into smoke tonight. I was feckless enough to visit the bookstore once again, and have since rued and praised the decision. On the one hand, I find myself ensnared by my own interest, trapped by my curiosity; on the other, I feel I have discovered something that only serves to further cement my surety.

So far.

That, of course, serves as the basis of my bemused self-examination. "So far." Very rarely does it go any further than that, and therein lies the root of my own personal holy plague of indecision. I never feel as though I've quite finished gathering all the information in.

My political leanings haven't been much of a secret so far this election season. In spite of the Republican on my voter registration card and the Libertarian deep in my heart, I'm awash in azure.

Consequently, I came to the decision sometime this afternoon at work (somewhere in between wasting time and killing it) that perhaps it was time to seek a deeper affirmation, and a good starting point would be in Dreams from My Father.

I have therefore read two introductions (one written just after the 2004 re-release following that DNC speech and the other written in the primary-election re-re-release) and two chapters.

This is, indeed, a tiny little altar. So far, though, the Oracle's gobbling has been cautiously and overwhelmingly positive.

He displays a singular skill at inviting us inside his house. His Hawaiian childhood, followed up with his time in Indonesia, evokes a a highly transitional period in American history, experienced in the nation's lone outrider and in a foreign country where he sees many strange things that are only explained by clear-eyed hindsight and sufficient historical context. A bloody culling had just been completed at the time of his arrival in Indonesia, and the man his mother married a recently-released military conscript who holds back little of the savage and holds forth much of the man.

He likes blood. Once, he describes a group of Filipino men who smoke long, thin, black cigars and "spit betel-nut juice like blood." A particularly impactful passage described the decapitation of dinner, a free-range chicken. Obama almost seems to relish his description of the crimson fountain that results and the eventual expiration of the severed corpus. It was in that particular vignette of gore that, it seemed, his heart was revealed: a creature who looks, unflinching, at the ugliness of life and the humor of human nature and describes it dryly, with a slight dash of appreciation that carries the story's true import; a man who looks at the bigger picture and doesn't judge until he's gathered all the information in.

Even when he doesn't quite have all the facts, he weaves together a lovely story. His slightly-puzzled mien sweetens as he describes his white grandfather, a man who takes on near-hubris in his love for his grandson, born of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, living in the Pacific, a descendant seemingly impossible for an animal of the dusty midland wastes. A harbinger, as Obama seems to be describing himself, of a different future. An interestingly kindred spirit with a near-messianic sense of his proper place.

I find it all very pleasing. Particularly considering the repeated mention of cigarettes. Tobacco infuses the narrative. Blood and tobacco. There's also, yes, a sense of immature innocence, a naivete, an idea of a young man looking clear-eyed at the world and laying open its comic secrets without the prejudices of piled time.

This is leavened somewhat by his newer introduction, in which he explains that though he certainly feels the book as a whole would benefit from a reduction by around fifty pages' worth of text, he still speaks with its voice.

More later as I continue to "refine" my judgment. And yes, that's a direct quote.

Pedlars and acrylic

So an interesting blog post was sent to me today...

Blame The Lady of the Babbling Bosom. I gather that she knows someone who lives in Ohio or something who went through the same master's program we did and also, apparently, knows how to sign. Neat enough on its face, but this lady had an encounter with this peddler who hands out those cards. Most deaf people know those cards. They're available in large stacks at the local deaf service center. Sometimes you get them at deaf get-togethers aimed at letting us know, ironically enough, that deaf people can, indeed, appear to be normal. Sometimes they make their way to us via skeevy old men shilling for loosies. Life is a many-splendored thing.

When you get handed one as a child, you think, "Gee, how useful. I can use this to communicate with that nice lady who always gives me those lovely sharp lollies at the park and invites me to see her basement sometimes!" or, "Gosh, the police/fire rescue/EMTs will now be able to know that I am deaf when I am dead of a heart attack at 25!"

Okay, maybe that last one only happened with me--I was a puffy child.

Truthfully, though, the real import of those cards and those summer camps for deaf kids that were always well-stocked with "role models" (usually a lower-tier accountant, asphalt-spreader, or cabinet-putter-together-er) didn't actually hit me until I was midway through college and had a curious encounter with a very strange man on St. Patrick's Day.

I was with Toronto Kim at, I think, Greece Ridge. Both descendants of Irishmen, we sought to escape the horror of the day by window-shopping, but this convoluted plan was derailed when I noticed there was an Irish-trinket shop at the far side of the mall. Of course, we were magnetically drawn to it, our very blood oscillating with the cries of our ancestors for Nordic gristle and plastic shamrocks. Suddenly, in our way stood an older man, who shoved a card at us. I took it and read the boilerplate plea for help and coolly scrutinized the alphabet on the obverse.

I flashed it at Kim, and a secret lightning-fast look passed between us that involved ghostly snickers and a promise to fuck this guy up. So I signed, "You're deaf?"

His eyes lit up. "Yes," he signed back. "You too?" And then it was the introductory dance of name/where-from/what-school/doing-now. I shifted my weight and glanced at Kim, and sping: Dude, I think this guy's genuine, what do we do now? She shrugged imperceptibly: Let's just get moving before he sucks us dry. So I started moving away: "Well, very nice to meet you, here's your card back, good luck, and have a nice life."

So of course he launches into this weird, rambling speech that made the hair on my back stand at attention--stuff about how Kim's blonde hair and blue eyes told him she was from the North (she's Canadian) and had Viking blood and how it was St. Patrick's Day and it was a time to honor our ancestors and blah blah blah. It was all very articulate and poetic and reminded me of those stories where you meet strange old men and they turn out to be gods in disguise.

I spooked. Not proud of it, but there it is. So did Kim. We plastered on a facade of friendliness and started trotting away at speed. Later, we laughed about it and joked that he was a leprechaun, mostly because that encounter touched off a relatively impressive series of fortunate events for the both of us over the three or four days afterward.

So what's the point of this little story? Not much. I just like to tell stories.

I will say that my attitude changed towards the people who use deafness to panhandle after that incident, though. Sometimes they're for real and sometimes they're faking it, like those bastards who wear Ray-Bans and cardboard signs saying "BLIND" but invariably criticize my shoes. This has happened to me; it's why I now buy them at Target. God forbid the impoverished should peg me as a cheapskate Wal-Martite who steals from the shelves that feed their children/dogs/penchant for alcohol.

But the underlying problem is more or less the same: economic inequity. I find it sad that some people feel the need to fake a major disability to survive at all, notwithstanding the daily struggles I experience just to get along at work or the tradeoffs I've had to make in my life outside the job as a result of the very real, genuine disadvantage I was born into.

And it is one. A big one. Most militantly deaf people would insist otherwise. Fine. Whatever works for you--and I say that sincerely. But seeing it as a disadvantage is the only way I can get over it. I've never been able to figure out how to make the balance work in my favor until I've totted up all my debits.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

I am also growing very frustrated with acrylics. Why do I get myself into those weird little obsessions? I dreamed about it last night. I found a bunch of books on the medium at the bookstore today. I have a canvas on my dining room table with a terrible early effort. I think I'm going to use the rest of that sheet to practice painting until something looks adequate or I get used to it, whichever happens first.

I forgot how hard it was to pin a spirit to the canvas.