life at home

Scene: my mom is picking me up from the restaurant.  I get in her car and say hello and ask her about her day.  Silence....the car is struggling to get through the inches of snow accumulated in the plaza.  We drive down towards our street and make inane chatter until she brings up whatever is bothering her today: "Do you have my People magazine?".  I thought I had put it back upstairs like I usually do - but I may have forgotten, I tell her this.  (it was the Inauguration issue)  She bristles and lets me know that she checked my room but didn't find it because my room is a mess.  (this....again!)  Funnily enough as soon as I went down to my room I saw it peeking out from under a textbook.  Back to the scene at hand.  I try to make light of it by letting her know that I usually replace it before she gets home.  She says "I don't care what you do with it after I've read it but I buy it so I can read it when I get home".  My reaction is to tell her again, that I'm sorry and it must have slipped my mind this one time.  She then starts talking about how I should put things back in the places in which they belong.  I tell her that I did - just not this one time - with the magazine, and I mention that we had this conversation already so I don't understand why she keeps re-iterating.  She's pissed about the state of my room.  She probably thinks that I do this on purpose.  I come upstairs and give her the magazine (we're home by now) and tell her: "You assume that I don't  care and that I just leave my room this way because I'm a slob, but what you don't know is that I had work last night until 10pm and didn't get home until 11 (long commute), I had maybe 80 pages of reading to do for my tutorial this morning and that took precedent over cleaning my room, so I stayed up late and finished it, went to bed and got as much sleep as I could, and went to school, it's not like I do this on purpose to piss you off."  To which she replied "just go to your room, I don't want to do this, just so you can be the smart one and we're all stupid."  

Never in my life have I been more out of place and more misunderstood than in my supposed home.  I'm not trying to be the smartest - I'm trying to explain the internal logic that accounts for my actions.

hot springs

It's snowing outside and I have to travel to class.  I was in the shower (my sanctuary) thinking about how I want to spend the rest of my life in warm/hot water until you can't recognize me from the pruning.  I wondered how I could make this possible - and then I thought, HEY! Iceland! Hot springs!  Then I imagined a scenario where I left at the next possible opportunity and realized that possibly because their government is in turmoil or non existent - their airlines might go out of business and I'd be stuck there have have to change my last name to Istvansdottir or something like that.  Crazy patriarchal societies.  Which reminds me of the government in the states and how I feel so hopeful for them, and darn it, why is Rahm Emanuel so attractive?

I was also imagining having Star Trek transporters in each of our houses.  Get dressed and say "energize".  That would be heavenly.....

penguins

Some penguins mate for life - you think you have security and then the floor rushes out from underneath your feet and what are you left with?  

Fuck penguins.

the docket

Several things have been on my mind lately, they need to be puzzled out.  Mostly pertaining to the cataloging of books, the inanity of family, and the cleanliness of rooms.  

Having moved back in with my parents the topics all flow into each other.  Long story short an argument happened and escalated, it was about the state of the room which I occupy.  For some reason the three inhabitants of my dwelling deem it necessary to pass judgement on the state of my room, regardless of the fact that they never have to look into it.  I am loathe to clean it only because there is always something that seems more pertinent to be doing - mostly reading, for school or for myself, books, the internet, etc.  The fact that my surrounding is a mess is extremely peripheral to me, it takes a back seat to what I deem important.  

However it has been pointed out - albeit in the most barbaric way - that perhaps I should attend to the needs of my spastic mother and clean my room.  This is where the inanity and the cataloging kicks in.  

Part of me relishes the antagonizing of the family I feel I do not fit in with.  Sometimes it's as if I were a transplant from some different culture.  The only way I know I'm related to them is the ridiculously close resemblance of me and my half brother.  Our attitudes, perspectives and goals are paradoxical.  The way they behave - the constant loudness - it gets old really fast.

Nevertheless it brings me to the objective - cleaning my room.  Maybe the reason I haven't gotten to it is because I'm not sure what I want to do with my room.  As of yet it is basically a bed, a couch and a random assortment of books, a chair a plant, and a TV on a stand.  Ideally I just need shelves....there are some in the garage and I will bring one in tonight, but that brings me to my dilemma. 

How do I arrange the books?

Do I do it by author? Hardcover then softcover?  By ISBN?  By publisher?  How about by edition?  By genre?  I have a tendency to make things overly complicated.

cruelty is the wrath of my instrument

I've been waxing poetic on an email that has just been sent to M.  Our perspectives are so incredibly different and we seem to be polarized in this deadlock.  I have lost sleep.  Oh hell - I am not actually sleeping at all lately - not at night anyway.  

On my docket today - 

Latin American History class - give Stuart Christmas present

Robarts - pick up the course books for the Post Napoleonic Europe class that I ordered from the Internet (they're going to take a while to come)

Registrar - fill out financial grant documents - no OSAP = tough luck with expensive texts

Find a room and do the Leviathan reading for Philosophy of Human Nature

Hm - as I study that list I realize I'm having fun at school.  I wonder if I can fit climbing with P somewhere in there.  I should also probably pick up some CD cases for the TMV stuff I'm making for Prof.  And maybe I could check what book I'm supposed to be reading for American Lit.  Suddenly my week looks too busy to worry about M.

Oh and I wanted to post this partial list of the words of phrases I've been collecting, I like these because of the way they sound.  I was telling JH the other day about how whenever I find a word I have a great affinity for - I know it's the right one because of the image I experience in my limbic brain.  It's a half hollow frosted glass sphere rocking from side to side in the black ether.

Said list - 

glossolalia

de facto

momentum

fallacy

viscera

construct for comfort

pneumonic

latent

recondite

sonorous

temporal

alveolar lavage

end transmission.