Emily, Lived By:

My mood has gotten progressively fouler as this week has gone on.  Glad I had two days off this week! I’ve been wondering what’s wrong with me.  But finally—an explanation:  Jess is working on a documentary about the Atkins Diet—according to her research, a very bad mood is a well-documented side effect of a low-carb diet.  This is corroborated by anecdotal evidence from my peers.  I’d be relieved to hear this, if I was capable of feeling any relief!  But I do feel a vindicated sense of bitterness, which is a close low-carb substitute.  Also, this weekend my evil mood prompted the first poem I’ve written since January.  So there’s a silver lining to every etc.

After six hours of sleep (& a very curious nightmare, more on this later) I stayed in bed sulking for 1. Two more.  Dragged my heels around the house (as Bella & Chance napped in the sunshine).

We're much cuter in person

Then, shortly after noon, I proceeded to the bank, where I drafted some money to my US account so I could sort out my credit card woes & pay my Idaho speeding ticket.  If my check doesn’t arrive by Wednesday, my driver’s license will be suspended!  (I, of course, only got this information after 6:00 on Friday).  The man beside me asked for $100 in fives & $100 dollars in quarters, while the teller spent most of his time looking down my shirt.

Too cold (L), Too hot (R)

Home again, home again.  I discovered I have now mastered the exciting art of cooking oatmeal.  I didn’t realize I was doing it wrong before.  But the trick is in the stirring.  I felt like Goldilocks.  I also felt like I was married to Fernando.  This project is a lot like being married, if you think about it, but to 52 people consecutively.

I 2. Added blueberries towards the end then 3. Sweetened with honey.  Added a lump of butter for good measure.  This was the first time my oatmeal managed to approximate goodness.  I 4. Put on Cría Cuervos (my mother purchased it & three other required DVDs for me this weekend, much to my vindicatedsenseofbitterness) & savored my only carbohydrates of the day.

The movie was ok.  It’s a seventies Spanish film with an unhappy, recently orphaned 8-year-old girl as its protagonist.  It’s one of those movies that makes a big point about the innocence & happiness of childhood being a myth.  There’s not a lot of conversation and it’s all uncomfortably intimate but slightly unreal—not surreal, despite the frequent appearance of the ghosts of her parents. Whenever there is dialogue, it’s generally people being nasty to/not understanding each other.  Lots of long shots of children’s blank faces.  Lots of political points using the family as an allegory.  So forth. It’s the sort of movie that’s successful in the sense that it seems to accomplish absolutely everything it set out to do—& nothing more.   So for me, it fell flat.

Once the movie was over, I 5. Read the informational booklet that came with the DVD.  It was exactly like the movie.  It told me a lot of things that I had deduced for myself, including some interesting facts that I didn’t know.  But it didn’t teach me anything.  There’s information & then there’s knowledge.  Knowledge is a harder gift to give, a little more nebulous.  This movie had an (telling) artful touch but not a (teaching) magic one.  Does that make sense?  The film’s worth watching but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.  Except perhaps to someone with related academic interest in the film’s central themes.

Then I got up for my 9. Walk.  To the post office.  I was supposed to 10. Write (just letting in happen) in a public space.  I’m very creative.  I wrote my address & the address of the Idaho court.  Then I 11. Posted what I just wrote.  HA!  I also wrote a text message or two.

Stopped to pick up a lunch of grilled chicken breast & hot sauce.  Blah.

Unjust, not right

12. Ate it.  Took my time.  Enjoyed it as much as possible.

Then I 13. Read a poem by Octavio Paz & headed back to bed for a long while.

My friend, Jess (P) arrived at my house around 8:00.  She’s in town & she’s staying with me tonight.  We went out for 14. Dinner & a glass of 15. Wine. Jess (E) & her sister joined us.  I had carpaccio, but forgot to take a picture until it was mostly devoured.  Jess (P) got the bread that came with it.  Sadly.

Unsightly scraps of raw beef = (recently) living proof

After that, we all went for a long 15. Walk with Bella by the sea wall.  It’s a nice time of year.  The weather’s very back-to-school.  I took Bella off leash for a while & she ran around in the ocean.  Then we returned here & I 16. Am writing for an hour, while Jess (P) reads Eat, Pray, Love (much to her own chagrin) in the living room, eating the delicious blueberries I’m not allowed.

I still have fifteen more minutes of writing, so I’m going to tell you my dream.  Altered dreams are, by the way, an interesting side effect of this project.  I dream every night, for example, that each of you post several detailed comments (inevitably, very interesting ones) on the blog.  & often my puppetmasters appear in my dreams.  During Ptolemy’s week, we had all sorts of adventures every night.  Sometimes, I dream that I’ve received a schedule that makes all sorts of interesting demands.  I’m always a little disappointed by reality when I wake.

Last night, I dreamed I was on a boat tour in a jungle with an anonymous female friend & her family.  So far, it was a good dream.  Though everyone mocked me because I didn’t know how to “telescope shadows” with a camera.  “Why does everyone always make fun of me?” I complained, burying my head in my lifejacket.  My companions laughed.

When I arrived home to my apartment, I sat down to write.  Then I realized that the feeble mutant creature  (looking something like a child, something like an old man, & something like ET if each of those things were pale & blue-tinged, two feet tall, shaped out of putty, with a tiny head & very long arms) which would sometimes cause mischief around my apartment, was back, fiddling with the electrical sockets.  I was very angry.  I had locked him out previously.  “No!” I said, & he ignored me, fixedly yanking my computer cord out of the wall until it finally broke.  I grabbed him by his arm, probably a little harder than I needed to, & began to drag him to the door.  He resisted me, but he was feeble as always.  Though his arm was curiously stretching in my grip.

As I dragged him through my apartment, I noticed that the edges of doors & windows, cupboards, etc. were gnawed, bent & a little bloody.  He had somehow snuck in through all these tiny spaces, very deliberately.  I didn’t know he was this smart.  When we got to the door he suddenly became much stronger.  His arm started coiling tightly around my wrist with a firm, snake-like pressure.   He looked up into my face with his black eyes & I realized he was actually very smart—or perhaps not smart, but possessing a predatory, shark-like intelligence— & very dangerous.  I shoved him out the door & locked it.

He turned into a slug & started creeping through above one of the hinges.  I locked him out several times & he managed to get in every time, shifting into increasingly sinister, vague shapes.  I realized, with horror, there was no getting rid of him.  He began to grow & grow.

I then realized that he was the external physical embodiment of my own malevolence.  Malevolence is a strange sort of word to choose, & it sounds perhaps inaccurate, but I didn’t choose this word– in my dream it was, very precisely, malevolence.  Anyway, I’d believed I was a wholly good person, free of evil etc. & I was!  In my dream, at least.  But by eliminating  this evil from my own self I had not eliminated it entirely, but displaced it—I had unconsciously created this creature, much worse than ordinary human evil as it was wholly autonomous & quite out of my control.  So my horror was now tinged with a very unheimlich sense of recognition.  If this creature were not destroyed, it would rapidly gain strength & destroy the entire world.

I knew the only way to destroy this creature was for someone to eat him.  “Should I eat him?” my anonymous friend asked.  No.  She couldn’t.  If anyone but me ate him, he would continue to grow & destroy her & everyone else.  I guessed that I had to do it.

I squeezed him into a ball & felt, with horror, that while he had previously been boneless there were now sharp, calcified pieces of something inside him.  I grimly broke him into two pieces.  I needed some bread to swallow him, as I wouldn’t be able to chew with these pieces inside him.

I rolled him into two pieces of bread as my friend watched me anxiously.  I ate him.

“What does he taste like?” she asked.

“What do you think?” I said.  “A tooth, & a shard of bone.”

Upon which I woke up, quite unsettled.

Now all I have left to do is 17. Go to bed at 2:20am & 18. Stay in bed for 8 hours. I also 19. Can’t use electronic devices after 1:20.

A few nights ago I tried so hard to stay up until after two that I woke up at 4:00am on the floor of my closet.  I don’t know if that counts as a failure or not.  But I must have been awfully tired if I decided to “rest my eyes” there for a moment.

Also, I’ve been sleepwalking again.  & I’ve hid my keys so well that no one will ever find them.  Fortunately, my mom had a spare.