Rest Stop Between A and B

When I sat down to write, I had no idea what to say. I’ve erased and rewritten the beginnings of this numerous times. If computer screens were like paper, this portion would be worn thin and ready to sew together into some kind of garment. Do you remember making binder paper into “cloth” in grade school? If you crumple it up and rub it together long enough, the fibers turn soft and drape like fabric.

::Shrug::

Through the contorted lens of a three-day migraine, I’ve decided to take a break from my journey from Point A to Point B. I generally live my life with Productivity in mind, whether real or imagined. Point B constantly moves around, making it harder to pick a route to get there, and sometimes it gets lost in the fog and I just continue blindly, hoping I am still pushing forward in a straight line when in reality I am probably circling back on myself.

::Shrug::

I’ve recently had the piss taken out of me on two occasions for books that I was delving into during my lunch hour at work. One on studies of diet and its effects on diseases of affluence. The second on investing. Apparently, according to the rest of the world, my leisure reading is mind-numbingly boring. What can I say? I generally prefer non-fiction to fiction, filing away the articles I’ve read on canning and building your own computer and gardening and caring for a dog and buying a house and programming languages and outdoor survival in the Time Spent Being Productive category, when the truth is that most of what I’ve learned I’ve already forgotten by now. And of that which I haven’t forgotten, only a small percentage will ever actually be put to use.

::Shrug::

The ironic beauty of the migraine plight is that when it goes on for long enough, it exhausts me up against a wall upon which I can no longer worry about the build-up of little things. The errands I didn’t run, the phone calls I didn’t return, the budget I didn’t fill out, the reservations I didn’t make, the emails piling up in my inbox, the homework for sound class, the blog post for the website, finding that new plugin to stop all the damn spam comments, starting the other site…

::Shrug::

So, for this microscopic moment I have given up on all of that.

I just went to see Charlie Kaufman’s new film. I adore him, but his new film paints one of the most unrelentingly downcast moods I’ve seen on film in a long time. It is not desperately sad, but rather quite comfortable in its depressed mood. That being said, the story is in true Kaufman style, folding back on itself infinite times and meta-referencing its own constructs like a hall of mirrors.

For this microscopic moment, I have picked up Cat’s Cradle which has been sitting on a shelf waiting to be read for quite some time. I also adore Vonnegut. And the truths it is trying to convey are whispering to me by way of echoing the Kaufman film. A common line is drawing itself between the two, and implying a desire to be drawn everywhere else as well.

::Shrug::

Reading Cat’s Cradle naturally reminds me that Slaughterhouse Five is probably my favorite book. It is probably my favorite book for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is that, with three simple words, Vonnegut managed to set forth a life philosophy that I strive to embody (but mostly fall flat in reaching). So it goes. And in saying this he writes off everything he can’t control, lets go, and moves on. So it goes.

For someone (myself) who has spent so much of her life in the arts and who wholeheartedly believes in its importance, it is funny how often I forget that sometimes the best way to get to B is on the sideways, seemingly meandering artsy path. And funnier still that sometimes it takes a horrible headache to exhaust the left side of my brain enough to remember.

::Shrug:: So it goes.