Abstract Acacias

I don't know what it is about bad things happening. You (or at least I) never quite believe that it's real, whether you're there or not. The panic that you might feel later, or that you might equally feel in the abstract face of the possibility of disaster, is, initially, just a sense that there's this really terrible grief that you should be feeling. What it really is? Just confusion, the sensation that you've just fallen off the cliff-edge of utter unreality. So it was like that tonight when Michele got off the phone and said that Stephanie had been robbed, and sounded like she was about to laugh, and then later Mont asked how she could be so casual about the whole thing. But I don't think she was, I just didn't say so. Because it was like that two years ago (is it that long ago now?) when Abbie put her hand through the glass in the door, and we heard the shatter, heard the shouting continue straight on without pause -- no screaming, though, no crying -- and then later we saw the blood spattered on the pavement, saw the jagged black hole where the glass should be, and I couldn't walk by there without thinking about it for weeks, even though I passed there every day to get to Rachel's place. Unless I walked on the other side of the street, when I didn't have to see the little dark drops that eventually turned black and one day disappeared, so that a couple of months later I suddenly remembered, and looked down, and they weren't there. (It was easier once the door wasn't boarded up any more, when there were no obvious reminders unless I happened to be looking at my feet, or absently thought oh, that's Abbie's room I'm passing.) And it was like when Holly died. But it wasn't like that when Anne got cancer, because I kept seeing her, saw the confusion in her eyes, was there for the endless queries as to what was causing the seizures, and I was there almost every day while she was in the hospital. That made it real. But I still don't know why my first instinct, when disaster strikes, is to smile.

Yay, my mother discovered some proper Cadbury's creme eggs! Happy now.

The Good

Had a very cool conversation with Linda yesterday about Tarot cards and things generally inexplicable. She made me feel better about my desire to believe in things that are blatantly unbelievable, like psychic abilities and whatnot; she's had too many experiences of other people being able to do or know things they couldn't possibly. Which is not to say that I now do believe in psychic whatnot, but I at least feel better about really wanting to do so. Oh, and, girlwithjournal, she said Babel like you do too (in talking about the Tower card), but I looked it up in the OED, and it agrees with me. On the other hand, when we used to sing "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" in high school, there was a little note scrawled at the bottom of the photocopies that said 'baa,' and we followed that.

I want to do something with tarot cards. Draw pictures for some or write a story involving some or something. They've always intrigued me.


The Bad

Why oh why oh why, when I drink too much, do I invariably wake up very early in the morning?? I mean, my body really really really needs sleep, but does nice soporific alcohol allow this to happen successfully? No. Bad, very bad. And I seem to be having trouble typing double letters; like my fingers refuse to hit any particular key more than once in a row. Ah well. Maybe I'll try for an hour more sleep now, having had some nice caffeinated diet coke, which by the apparent logic of my bodily functions should probably mean that I will go back to sleep.


Lastly, no ugly, just for fun

I found out that one of my friends is bi, which amuses me to no end because it means that maybe my female gaydar doesn't suck quite quite so much as I thought. Was very funny: we randomly started singing 'it's raining men,' at which point AJ said 'I'd actually prefer the other gender' (which made sense, of course, given AJ's a guy), and we both said 'Yeah, well, me too,' and then just sort of looked at each other and wondered if we hadn't heard wrong.