deficit of darkness

My week’s started by waking up at 6 AM to come in to work on a slide (note erstwhile colleagues, I said ‘slide’, singular, not 60 slides). I can only marvel over the degree of ineptitude that allows three women to cluck over one slide, and get lost in a mire of version control and lost changes. Over a single slide, with three tables. Universe, give me the strength to arrange my facial features into an expression of adequate concern and interest, and to keep them sufficiently grave.
You might want to think about my tendency to belittle everything I do at work, future potential employers. I’m an asset to any team!


It’s the start of my week and thanks to my brother and to a hectic yet chilled out weekend I’m coveting all careers where I can work from home. I also want to wake up in a leisurely manner, have coffee and pad thai for breakfast and not spend 60 minutes on one slide. I want afternoon delights and one of those pedicure / massage ladies who come home (but not for the purpose of nooners). There is a deficit of darkness in this city. There are a hundred odd sky scrapers in my neighbourhood, I’m on the 15th floor. The city is constantly lit up like a slot machine, I have to draw my curtains to get some semblance of darkness, but there’s still enough light for me to see outlines of everything. There’s a lovely mezzanine floor with trees and plants and a family of cats that I feed. I’m usually there around 10 PM and there are halogen lamps, burning brightly, everywhere. I can’t remember the last time I saw darkness.


I saw all of Bored to Death over the weekend. I wish I’d spend my time reading, rather than compulsively watching TV shows and movies. I’ve bought a few more books, after getting my hands on a billion e books (kindle books?) and carting some of mine all the way over. It’s strange but I’ve already started looking at everything in my apartment from the perspective of how difficult it will be to pack it all up and take it with me, to wherever I’m going. As a person I feel defined by my purchases, and I will need to take all my new plates and cushions and plants with me, if I were to leave the country. I just got here, why am I already worrying about how I’ll pack everything up? But how will I, the weight of everything will be a couple of hundred odd kilos. I’m not going anywhere, I just got here.


I’m embarking on an experiment that makes me a little uncomfortable but also sounds very right. I get the impression I might be jumping the shark (fonz reference, cuz I’m cool like that). I can’t tell if I’m forcing developments onto my life or if I’m fixing something that ought to have been fixed a while back. I know I thought I was going to die a while back and that I think I’ve got this new calm perspective but I sincerely hope I’m not fucking around here. You open up your life to such a large input / variable only if you can’t perceive an alternative. I don’t know if I have alternatives. I recently overdid the cigarette smoking and now I feel like I can’t take inhale deeply. If you’re slowly coming unhinged and can’t take deep breaths what do you do.

It bothers me that I can’t quite express the sense of danger here. I’m a chain smoking fool whose lungs can’t take complete breaths any more, but it’s the man who I think is dangerous.