In a stroke of irony, I had a vague concept for a post, one that I was going to call Blank Slate. But then I couldn’t remember what it was. It’s gone, empty.
I don’t really feel like journaling – never have liked the cataloging of banal events. Stuff happens, good stuff, bad stuff, mostly indifferent stuff – don’t nobody care, and me, I don’t care to write whatever I might be able to dredge up. Adam and Bethany had a baby. That was cool. He was 2 oz short of 11 pounds. They delivered him lathroscopically. I swear that’s a word. There are enough people on Google that also think it’s a word to get some hits – but Google mostly assumes that I mean arthroscopically, and honestly, I might. In either case, I was kidding. It makes no sense to have a baby arthroscopically, or lathroscopically, should that technique exist. Though at one point the nurse came in while we were talking about my surgery, to be consummated in the same hospital next Wednesday. Bethany told her I was having a c-section. I was holding the baby at the time and told her we were putting him back in. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and nobody really laughed. I did inside, but even then, not that enthusiastically.
People keep telling me the surgery is going to be painful. Feet and hands, they warn. I hope it is. I haven’t had a good, dull, extended pain for a while. That’s why I’m having surgery, after all. I can do all kinds of normal things, but I can’t run like I want to run. A few miles into any race, even an easy one, you feel this sickening desperation, this revulsion, contempt of mind directed at your body. Rebellion of body against mind. Revolt of brain against soul. The rupture of millions of alveoli, the tang of blood in your throat. A numbness of the tongue, death of the outer shell of all muscles. And then you stop, but relief doesn’t come right away…it’s like your drowning, and you finally hit bottom and you’re struggling for the surface, then you burst through but you are gasping, gasping. You spend the whole time wondering why you do it. But then when you can’t, you go crazy and eventually someday someone does something stupid like take a hunk of tendon out of your foot and stick it in your calf – it doesn’t sound particularly reasonable, does it?
It’s a matter of identity. I’ve known people who have been willing to nearly kill themselves solely to maintain their identity, and, white collar though I might be, I’m no better.
I’ve decided to write in halting, jarring, ill-formed sentences from now on. I’m sorry if it bothers you. I don’t feel like making five point paragraphs. I like structure in my life, but don’t particularly feel like subjecting myself unnecessarily to grammar. Language is my tool; I am not a slave to it. I’ve been working on processes at work, with someone who constantly makes unilateral decisions but then presents it to me as though I’m allowed to disagree with them, only to swap me down when I do, which I always do. The process is her overlord – but process is a tool. It’s the age old problem of worshiping the creation. Missing the point. Words mean whatever the hell I want them to mean, and sentences bend and fold about my whimsical little finger. It’s not the other way around.
I miss it, whatever it is. I miss it apathetically, but miss it nonetheless.
Words 
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