04 XI 2002 - 22:12 - brevis60

There is stress in the air.

Election Day is tomorrow and as the remaining English-pretty-proficient person in the house, I 'get' to explain the ballot measures as far as I understand them after reading newspapers, doing a little research, and reading the official statements that the state and city sends to us.

There are nineteen city measures and seven state measures to be on the ballot tomorrow. This does not count the number of offices that need to be filled, most of which have to do with the administration of the state. We've introduced district elections to San Francisco and it's even districts' turn to vote this year, so we don't have to deal with that on top of everything else at least, but it still seems rather a lot...

I'll be glad to have the day off on Wednesday -- the school is having parent-teacher conferences to discuss our quarter grades. My parents and I both know what they're going to say, but they think they should go anyway, just to keep up appearances. I can't argue, really. That day is also the day my father leaves for Taiwan to visit relatives. And then after that, one of my sisters is coming home on Saturday with her singing group -- they're performing at a reception for some conference of doctors. This week is going to be one of family, I think...

Things I have lost are coming back to me, slowly. I am cleaning out my room in order that I might trade with the sunnier room of my sister. I alphabetized and ordered chronologically all of the magazines I've got -- some of those will probably need to be tossed, since what for do I need all of my back issues of the New Yorker? I'd give them to my doctor's office, but I don't think the toddlers would be too happy with the New Yorker -- it's pretty low on the pictures.

This has been a quick check-in. I will be back eventually with news of more substance...

(By the way, I'm inching up slowly on 300 entries. Whether this is something to be celebrated remains to be seen.)

I've got unfinished business! Here are some notes I've jotted down while I was supposed to be paying attention in class:

Pure thoughts are hard to think when the people you are trying hard *not* to think about are either touchy-feely or captivating at bad moments (there's a funny story about me and my being quizzed on Latin lines) or accustomed to rub themselves in the most distracting ways. God damn it, the world should help me deny that I've any sexuality at all (which would make living with a desire for the unattainable quite easier). Also, hormones need to hide themselves away for a while. The Latin story: a friend was quizzing me on first lines of Catullus poems at my request, when she stopped and looked up because I was taking too long a time to answer her questions. She followed by gaze out the window -- and promptly shook her head, saying, 'At least I'm not as bad as you.' I'll note that her eyes weren't too slack in following [iskender]'s retreating form, though. Also: being taken by surprise on the stairs is a bad thing, because it causes you to gape like an idiot or trip or both. Particularly if you're me.

A phrase that popped up in my notes on physics: Ihre Augen sind echt so blau, a phrase that sounds so much better than 'Your eyes are so very blue,' don't you think?

yo llevo en el alma un camino
destinado a nunca llegar

Actually, that one popped up when I did a Google search, inspired by yankthis's comment for me. Just as a break from this chittering...

I'm not sure what it is, this irrational pride in the wanting and watching of his smiling from me. I think perhaps it's a reaffirmation of the thought that beauty is multiform in this world, and that the beauty of the rare and the physical are no less than the beauty of a thought...

not that the two are mutually exclusive. Here I am, trying to explain myself, and all I can do is dig myself deeper into the hole of incomprehensibility I've made. When did this happen, and how did I get out? I suspect that in order to get my thoughts straight, I need to talk to someone...

basically I want to find the physical beauty I am not convinced I have. What have I got to make up for it? Not much, by God, and especially little if I don't stop babbling about how terrible I am. Excuse me. I can be quite a reasonable and decorous person when it so suits me.

How could I have thought P. a tenor? There are times when he asks questions at the top of his range but he has a tone cluster of sounds around the bottom end of the bass-clef marked staff and no, I do not pay too much attention to other people's voices. Or perhaps I do; sound is a great component of how I remember things, even if it is unreliable. There's, oddly enough, a strong component of top-space G, something that makes a ninth with the bottom of his range and should unsettle me but instead adds to the gravel that comforts me. Evidently my ear has a strange idea of euphony, or no strange one at all and chooses discord for its protection...

These days it is hard work letting myself believe that I can be loved.