keeping it all together

the world is actually organized around the notion of catering to busy people. i've ordered organic vegetables to be delivered once a week so that i don't have to use my time standing in the grocery store, choosing veggies. i have a babysitter who picks up my child when i can't make it home in time. on wednesdays, i pick her up myself and we go to gymnastics together. we get good, quality time together with dinner, the nightly bath, a round of pbs kids (the child is frighteningly brilliant at that website), reading stories and talking before bed. and it all hangs together. frighteningly easily, actually. life is good. and i'm ordering someone to clean this week. what could be better? the fact that i can drop off my dry cleaning at work on mondays and pick it up on thursdays. that's pretty good. and the ubiquity of mobile phones. i like that too. it's really not so hard, this having it all...

oracle night

i just finished paul auster's oracle night, a slim novel that i devoured in a matter of just a few hours. it swept me in and held me fast, making me question reality and time and the future, just as his character, Sid, did. i hadn't been so taken in by a novel in ages...not since the corrections, i guess. it' s one of those books where you feel wistful that it's over and that you read it so greedily and didn't savor it in order to prolong the experience. but, i just couldn't stop reading, nor could i slow down.

it had a very interesting premise...does writing contain some element of prophecy? can the things we write come true? do we tap into something when writing? some line to the future? even when we speak of the past? it's a fascinating question.

also fascinating were the stories within the story. when the main character is a novelist it gives a freedom exploring various stories that he is exploring. very, very interesting.

the novelist in the novel buys a special notebook, a portugese notebook, and it lures him in, making him able to write like he hadn't written in ages. since i always feel that the notebook in which i write has special significance and i choose them carefully and by holding them and feeling them in my hand, that aspect spoke to me, tho' in the novel there is a sinister element to it as well.

i may have to go reread it already. it's one of those books.

no time for sleep

it's so strange, looking back over my agonized posts, as i waited to hear whether i got the job. once it happened, it happened so quickly. the fourth interview, the offer, the signing of the contract, the celebratory dinner, the first day, the first week....and now i'm well into the second week. elated. loving every minute of all of the new things i'm learning and people i'm meeting. the agony of the wait somehow worth it in the end, for what was awaiting me. challenges. growing, stretching myself and finding myself worthy of having been chosen. finding it hard to sleep for an entirely new reason...because my mind is racing with new things, thinking them through, processing them. and in that, there's no time for sleep. and it doesn't feel so bad.

force of nature

for the past ten days, the weather has been wild and changeable. one minute the sun is shining, brightly illuminating the red autumn leaves, the next the wind is whipping stinging lashes of rain that are falling from a dark, black cloud that appeared swiftly out of nowhere. they say it's what's left of hurricaine francis when she reached this side of the atlantic, but i think it's me. the weather has completely accurately reflected my own feelings and moods over the past ten days. i am sunny and optimistic one moment, the next spiraling down into the depths of black despair. someone even asked me one day last week, "what is this weather you've brought?" so i'm not alone in thinking that i'm the one causing it.

who is to say that it isn't true? haven't we all felt human emotions powerful enough to cause atmospheric rifts?

this morning, it is calm and clear--no wind as of yet. there are a few clouds around the fringes of the sky. and that's exactly how i feel...

to rat or not to rat

i'm pondering setting up another blog to devote to my exposé of the middle layer of fat that is strangling microsoft. everything i have to say about it is true, as i myself have been the victim of some particularly nasty bits of that fat. however, would it really do me any good to dredge it all up again. if the guilty were exposed for the rats that they are (and curiously, the name of the biggest fat rat in my case rhymes with fat and rat...). yes. it might be rather cathartic to let the world know what happened. in hopes of keeping it from happening again to someone less strong than i.

i heard today that the rats who were complicit in the whole sordid affair are rather afraid that i will go to the press. i have thought of that, but haven't done so. yet. knowing that they fear it just might make me do it. oh, to rat or not to rat...that is the question....

a minor yoga addiction

i've been doing yoga videos to try to calm my nerves for about a week now. i'm utterly uncertain that it's calming my nerves, but i am getting a good workout, so it can't be all bad. the other method i've tried--to calm my nerves, not get in shape--is drinking copious amounts of red wine and the occasional martini. that's rather effective at the time, but rather not so much afterwards when my head is aching and clouded over worse than ever. this waiting to hear whether a potential employer wants me, well..sucks. it would be ok if my time weren't, so to speak, running out. i will be paid one more time at the end of this month by my former employer. so, it would be IDEAL if i were starting something new Oct. 1, so that there aren't any missed paychecks, so to speak. why can't they answer, already? i nailed the interviews--all of them--i shined, i was dazzling. they must want me, so why is taking so long? guess i'd better go do that yoga video again....

me & my daughter Sabin in Istanbul