Work,

and work-related stuff: that's what I've been doing lately. Things will shift a little when I get used to my new job. For now, though, I'm reading a soon-to-be-released book about alternative approaches to cancer prevention, and you wouldn't believe how many fruits and vegetables I've been eating as a result. That, and I'm drinking an awful lot of green tea. And walking approximately four miles a day.

Other than working and doing all that stuff I have to do in order to keep myself alive, I've spent a little time with Matty, who dragged me to the beach last weekend. Thank God! I hadn't been to the beach in about a year and had nearly forgotten what a beach was supposed to look like. I know I shouldn't be this way, but I have a tough time making myself go out and do things if I know I'm going to be doing them alone.

Tomorrow, with any luck, UPS will finally deliver the roller skates I ordered. Even when I'm alone, I think I'll enjoy skating through Golden Gate Park, though I'm sure I'll do some of this with Matty.

Which, I've been having a tough time figuring out the things I can do solo, if I need to be solo. I DO NOT like going to restaurants and bars by myself. There's something so disconcerting about taking sips and bites in public. I guess it's because the public aspect of eating out is supposed to distract me from the private tragedy of ingestion (I find eating, unless if it's done at a party/feast, generally sad and utilitarian), but when I'm alone what's really distracting is the idea that there isn't much distraction from the act of eating: all the chewing, the swallowing, the furtive little fits of choking. In other words, I get distracted by the idea that nobody's providing a distraction, and I see myself all the more glaringly, as if projected on a large screen at the front of the bar or restaurant, as I commit the sad act of inserting morsels of food between my lips. Don't most of us feel slightly self-conscious about eating or drinking in public? So much so, that we're most comfortable when there's this small element of us-as-spectacle while we're eating out? Meaning, we kind of feel better in front of a benign audience, usually meaning a friend or acquiantance or relative? But the thing is, when I'm alone and eating/drinking in public, I'm largely ignored by the public in a way that feels worse than simply being alone in a room with the curtains shut and the door bolted.



When you're all alone, what kinds of things motivate you to get out of your living space? What have you done all by yourself that has resulted in joy? You tell me yours, and I'll tell you mine.

Sometimes Alone Sounds Pretty Good

My ex-boyfriend was an electrician, and sometimes I was his helper.

In the beginning I wasn't any good, and he was a very bad teacher. During our first job he jabbered on about "runs," pointing up the walls and all across the ceiling, then he spent the rest of the day drilling holes through studs, obsessing about the precise size of those holes, and swearing. At the end of the day, when he finally looked up from those worrisome holes, he saw the evidence that I hadn't understood him, not even close, because I had romex running outside of the studs, in places where there was supposed to be sheetrock.

Years later, when I'd become a great helper, he reminded me of that first job when I had no skills, when I wrote "pee" on the ends of the P wires, when the guys who finished the job bitched about my handiwork and seemed to think my being young and female had something to do with it. My ex-boyfriend told me he'd known all along it'd been his own fault. I was the best helper he'd ever had, he said. He was the coolest guy I'd ever met.

I miss learning something new, the challenge of it. By which I mean, I guess I'm ready to be alone for a while. In fact, I'm downright excited. But I'm also deeply scared.

* * *

Oh, and I'm reading this new title by David Lynch, the filmmaker I admire most. It's called Catching The Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, And Creativity, and it's about where ideas come from. His tone is what I would call blandly fascinating. Lynch isn't a great prose stylist, but these little prose fragments do guide the reader to a place that invites us to dream, and to dream deeply, and this invitation is hard to turn down. I've started meditating, and so far I find the practice a big relief.



Here's a factoid: Lynch is adamant about disliking director's commentary tracks on DVDs because he says that the thing is the film: "You should try to see the whole film through, and try to see it in a quiet place, on as big a screen as you can with as good a sound system as you can. Then you can go into that world and have that experience."

I think I love him. But I don't plan on dating anyone for a while, so his loss.