I did make some website progress last night, thanks to a how-to book and the fine company of Babay. No thanks to any of the lectures and/or labs from class. Which left me thinking, goldurnit, why the hell do I go there every Monday morning? In any case, it sure is satisfying when things do what you tell them to through HTML and CSS. But it is bloody time consuming. And the thought of not only getting that site to work but to design it as well is overwhelming. I have about as much an eye for design as an earthworm.
I am very pleased that I am not working today, and I will do a lot of work to justify it. Yesterday was so irritating. All the boxes were heavy, I couldn't get them to stack properly in The Cage (that isn't just a nickname, McGill Archives actually has a cage where we keep stuff waiting to be shred...a rusty, narrow, clanging cage), my co-worker sliced his hand...all in all, sub-par.
I am glad that I have a lot of schoolwork to do, though, because it keeps my mind off the Russian, as much as possible. I sent him an email on Sunday requesting that we not talk to each other for a week while I think about what I want. J has pointed out that this will only fuel his resolve, because I am making him wait. The question is, wait for what? If I tell him I want to be friends, it is obvious that said friendship will have an end date for whenever one of us gets a significant other. My sister is right when she says that men and women friends don't sleep over at each other's houses. But if we enter into a relationship (that makes it sound like a contractual agreement...4 bolts of linen for 1 goat? I must object!), there is the risk that whatever he is feeling will fade, he will grow to resent me and seek company elsewhere. He likes my honesty, but he likes it most when I telling him that the way he treats people is disgusting sometimes, that his feeling of not having any responsibility towards others is abhorrent. The thing is, it is easy to recognize those things when they are happening to someone else. But it is much foggier to recognize when those same things are happening to me. The other half of this is: the only way I learn about this is to be with someone who challenges me to challenge them to take care. I am having this feeling that English is my second language...
You want things that are certain, consistent, comforting. The 3 c's. But there is an inherent paradox in that desire. Ahndraya Parlato, in her artist statement, says:
I am compelled by how people idealize concepts such as wholeness and perfection when the possibility of their attainment is merely conjecture. I find the ways in which we impose order on an inherently disordered world to be simultaneously absurd, melancholic, and hopeful; absurd, because no matter what we do, the world will never be ordered, and thus our attempts end in failure; melancholic, in that despite this continued failure, we keep trying; and hopeful in this very gesture of endurance.
We are different according to circumstance, to company, to mood or desire. But we remain the same person. This is strange to me, alienating almost. But I suppose it relates to why it is also strange to me that we should seek out certainty and comfort when it is inevitable that it will never be whole and perfect.
And what of those things that do feel whole and perfect? My sister and I, that feels whole and perfect. Babay and I, J and I.
But how did I get here from the Russian? He said he doesn't pick me apart the way he does with everyone else, and I have told him I don't want to be with someone who has greener pasture syndrome, but...
Risks all around. How do you decide what you are willing to risk?
Babay used this Parlato photo too, but it was a bit of serendipity that brought us to it at the near the same time...it feels a little risky, a little hopeful:
3 comments:
Hi Ness
Thanks for the shout out to Ottawa. I'm trying this blog thing out. Love reading yours and keeping up with your life. take care. Marnie
let it happen, bass player.
ps-this is your sister.
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