Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Eye Smasher

I hate being busy almost as much as I hate not being so. I am still here in New Orleans, and one way or another I'm still alive. All this really guarantees is that I'm still here being opinionated and irascible. For one reason or another, my apartment I live in has been home to one person or another nearly nonstop for the last 3ish weeks or so. This coincides with a great deal of activity for me, searching out a job lead or meeting people or just in general doing things. It's been stressful, at the least. It's not been the fault of the guests themselves, but rather the situation as a whole. Compound that with an intense 50 hour work week for April and an intense series of events for myself (12 hour days at conventions, volunteering, babysitting) and you have something of a difficult period of time. I don't know how to properly express it. It's just been exasperating and exhausting.

Our first houseguest was a friend of a friend who is currently in flux at this point of her life. She's a single mom (well, she's in a relationship, but they're not married and he's not the father, so I'm not sure what that falls under) who got evicted with her boyfriend after he lost his job. She's a pretty nice person, and we agreed to have her for a while before she moved on to another friend of hers.

Next we had (for one night) a co-worker of April's who lives out in Metarie and was going to volunteer at the superdome but didn't want to take the eight buses (well, four) necessary to get there in the morning. She's pretty cool. We took her to a party. Then we totally served some nachos for like 8 hours.

Then we got Ina who is pretty bad-azz and not a problem guest at all. We've been doing this and that with her all while she's been here. She's super cool. Along with her, we got an artist who she is a big fan of and another artist who is tagging along? Driving? Zoe Boekbinder and Rita Burkholder, actually. They're both reasonable, though Zoe seems pretty distant. Rita is a darling who reminds me of my cousin and has been fantastic on their entire stay. Totally look up Helen Kellers Ukulele and buy like a zillion albums. It's ukulele music and very cool. Zoe goes by Zoe, so look up Zoe Boekbinder too; she's got a great voice.

So again, really it's nothing to do with the actual people we have over, it's just that we have people over combined with the fact that I've been all over the place, running from interviews to conventions to covering voodoo to April covering voodoo to deciding to dress like a woman on Halloween to changing my mind, to changing it back again but finding out that I would be literally too busy to do so, to volunteering at Prime-Time to volunteering with Charles and United for Peace to running to a Ceasefire meeting and so on and so forth. I really haven]'t had any time to vegetate. It's a good thing and a bad thing, really. I am happy that I'm not vegetating that much because it used to be pretty much all I did, but on the other hand, I really need to vegetate every so often, or I pretty quickly go insane. It all still pretty much falls under the category of competitive flailing, and damn am I flailing to my best.

Point point point. Everybody's got to have a point. My point is that I can't find the time to write, much less keep in touch or whatever. I haven't stopped, so I can't appreciate anything. Nothing has sunk in just yet. Here I am attempting to squeeze out a bit of writing, mostly by stealing time from myself. It's 2 in the morning, later than I want or can afford for it to be, but here I am writing. I hope this really isn't keeping April up, but I feel like I have to do this to retain any legitimacy as a writer. What is my point? What can I talk about?

Why don't I talk about drugs? So far everything I've drank or smoked has had more or less the same effect on me. They all make me very tired and unable to focus. Which might be interesting from a writing point of view (let's see what I write drunk! Whoo!) but I am rarely near a writing receptacle when this happens. I don't really converse better with people or anything, I don't suddenly magically lose all of my insecurities; I just become too tired to care. In some ways that's similar to when I do write, simply because I am also too tired and too detached from my readers to care what they think. So maybe that's what the goal is?

Judging by TV ads and what I hear from people all the time, getting intoxicated should be some gateway into a magical experience of social lubrication and joy. Introverts suddenly open up, Awkwardness is replaced by hilarity, and all are equal under the watchful eyes of inebriety. It's quite an expectation, and rather disappointing that it's not even remotely as cool as I'd been lead to believe. It is in fact so underwhelming that I wonder if I'm doing it wrong and I feel like I'm just around the corner from the "right" amount/combination of alcohol or the "perfect" toke. I don't really care that much though, and I feel bad for not caring. How do you turn down a beer or a hit by saying "yeah, this shit doesn't really do anything for me?" I'd almost rather be a teetotaler than a big jerk who just doesn't like the feeling all that much. It's a strange experience, to be sure.

So what is my point? Drugs are stupid? Don't do 'em fool? Not really. I think drugs just fall under yet another one of those categories of things that simply work out better for some people more than others. It's like a hobby. Some people are interested in it and derive legitimate value from it, but others are not interested or do not derive value from it. That label is probably only strange in light of the way that society tends to treat all of these things as being universally effective (and often universally harmful). It's just another culturally driven mindset. A stereotype, probably.

I guess I'll stop here because I really am eye-smashingly tired. I hope I can get some more writing done soon. Thanks for reading.