ani difranco in my head

You'll say "It's really good to see you"
You'll say "I missed you horribly"
You'll say "Let me carry that - give that to me"
And you will take the heavy stuff
And you will drive the car
And I'll look out the window and make jokes
About the way things are




The song really doesn't fit my mood, which is contented and half-asleep, but it's such a beautiful song, soundwise, all saxophone and hummy, that I have it on repeat.

I spy

So tomorrow I have an appointment to get contacts again. I stopped wearing them a few years ago, because it was too dry here, but I'm hoping to have adjusted. Need new glasses, at a bare minimum, since I have to renew my driver's license this year and they don't give those to people who only have about 17/20 vision with their glasses on. I'm a fine driver, never had an accident in my life, but my depth perception is all analytical/perspective-based, and I live in fear of failing a vision test. I also dislike going to the eye doctor in general, for some reason. Maybe because it reminds me that I'm going blind, ever so slowly, ever so surely.... I'm not thinking about it right now, so I'm not bothered, but I'm sure tomorrow I will be tense as hell.

my ankle

So, as some of you know, my ankle was sprained. It has achieved 99 percent betterness. In case you were wondering.

stories of a mariboulet, chapter 1

The earliest memory I have is of the texture of my crib bars. I even feel as though I remember the taste of them. Then I remember the act of climbing out of the crib - not the whole thing, just some vague midpoint, and the effort of balancing. From about the same time, I remember pulling myself, in the crib, along the wall by holding onto a little sticky-outy wooden ledge. This was in order to see out the door, without making as much noise as getting out of the crib would.

music stuff

So, here's the thing. I don't remember my parents listening to music when I was a child, though I had my own records (_The Carrot Seed_, Sesame Street, Beatrix Potter, Disco Duck, the disco version of Wizard of Oz, _Inch by Inch_, and myriad other things I could sing but not name). However, in high school I reinvestigated my parents record collection, and interrogated them a bit: turns out some of my most instinctively favorite musicians are the ones they listened to the most before I was old enough to notice. So now, due to a steady diet of Davis, Mingus, Monk, and Brubeck as a child, jazz is comfortable for my ears in a way it doesn't seem to be for most of my friends, even those who love the stuff. I'm not particularly good at playing it (can't solo worth a fucking shit, would be the problem), but the rhythms are instinctive, and if I'm listening, the next note always seems like a natural choice. Even when it's deliberately perverse. But I couldn't claim to know the genre, other than in the sketchiest of ways. In fact, when I try to increase my conscious knowledge of what's going on, my subconscious tends to reach new levels of ingenuity in getting me to forget it. I wonder if everybody has stuff they're like that about.

senses

So you know that stock question? "Which sense would you most hate to lose?" I've spent years vacillating between sight and hearing. How could I not read? How could I not hear music? But I realized last week that the one I really couldn't bear, I had never even been able to consider:
How could I ever give up my sense of touch?
I am so utterly a tactile being that I never even thought of it as something loseable. Is it? Are, say, quadriplegics, unable to feel? I shudder even trying to imagine it. And then, I know people who would be just as happy, they claim, as disembodied abstractions. Who think of themselves as their minds. And here I am, rubbing my fingers over everything in sight, rubbing my elbow against the chair arm every so often, tongue against my teeth, drumming my heels on the floor, shifting in my clothes so that I can feel the fabric cross my knees and my shoulders ...... how could one give that up?

Guess I'll never have to vacillate about that one again.

mariboulet, 2: childhood homes

( long and rambly, as most of my 2 am reminiscences tend to be )

blinded by the light

My eyes are dilated, I just got back from the eye doctor. He knew what he was doing, SO very well. I am inordinately pleased. And in two weeks, I shall have contact lenses again.. And in about the same amount of time, I shall have glasses that actually WORK instead of ones that only gave me 25/40 for my left eye. And he depth perception tested me because he'd never seen such a successful eye-uncrossing-surgery done (the surgery happened when I was 5). So I now know I have very good depth perception. Or will once I get my new prescription. So I won't fail my driver's license renewal and be doomed to the pedestrian way of life forever. HOP HOP HOP.