(from weekend in Nashville)
I am going to sleep good when I get home. I slept the second night on an air mattress which was fine but not the soft could of slumbrous ecstasy I’m used to being parked on. I’m sure my cat will be all over me when I get home too – escpaillly because I’ll have the scent of two other cats on me when I walk through the door.
Visiting family always gives me a good reset.
The book contract should officially come through next week and my final manuscript is due on October 3rd so I need to clear out my week for the next two weeks to devote to polishing up the book. I haven’t been able to secure a big name to write a foreword which sort of sucks but that is partially from my lack o fnetworking and my editor changing in mid-flight. I’ll be happy to get the book put to bed so I can start working on all the preparation and promotion. I want to have an entire suite of products for readers to choose from and use when they come to my site. I want to do this all the right way.
I’ve fallen behind – way behind – in the Book Yourself Solid program. I feel like I get up and start cleaning out my inbox and then people start calling and beofre I know it, it is 3 o’lock – I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’ve been at the computer for five hours and haven’t done any billable work.
The guy next to the woman next to me (not me) is snoring lightly. He better keep that crap quiet. How annoying. I am really sensitive (picky, mean, asshole-ish) to space invasion. Maybe it is from working at home – though I used to hate a crowd in my cubicle at my old office job. I just hated all these people turned towards me and I’m walled in like veal. I still think double-wide strollers are a scourge of humanity – the SUVs of teh sidewalks and don’t see why double-deep strollers can’t be more ubiquitous. Worse is when the kids are obviously old enough to walk but are in a stroller or a double-wide stroller where there is a kid in one seat and a bunch of shopping bags in the other. Sometimes Americans fulfill their own stereotypes.
Being in Nashville reminds me of the warnings of James Kunstler that peak oil and the coming (present?) energy crisis is a symptom – that the decentralized, car-worshipping culture and city planning of modern America is going to really put a chokehold on the lifestyles of many people as oil goes up and up. It is the death of sidewalks.
I started reading one of my sister’s self-help books, Self-Nurture – very ‘womyn’-ly and it talked about how women (and men as well) used to have the support of entire generations of close-knit, nearby family as well as many women and men to interact with. So instead of today’s romantic ‘you’re my everything’ and all the expectations and baggage that entails it was a lot more decentralized. So as the communities became decentralized and the communities and families did – so have our relationships. This is the kind of crap I think about all the time. Like in New Orleans with teh combined efforts of big business to create an environment where the poor can never take a foothold – where they’ve exported their poverty to the rest of the country so they don’t have to deal with it.
And I wonder with gentrification – who says you get to live in the same place for your whole life? I know that is a callous statement but if people can’t economically survive in a city then why don’t they move? If your country is full of famine, then maybe humans shouldn’t be living there, right? It was an argument in the book Ishmael that by assisting the hungry we are stopping the inevitable – that they can’t subsist where they are at. But that gets back to the themes I loathe: that by helping the poor we are short-changing their values development that will make them into better (and of course) richer people.
Or with all this coaching stuff I’m involved with sometimes. What if we aren’ta ll supposed to be successful? What if life is ultimately suffering and how to rise above it? What if just changing my outlook doesn’t change the fact that the planet earth’s immune system seems to be trying to get rid of the human race? (I believe Vonnegut said this on The Daily SHow – he maybe be old and verbally a little rusty but you can tell that man is as smart as a whip – may I live old enough to be such a curmudgeon)
Idiot is still snoring. I hate snoring because it is usually with someone I love – whether family vacations or with Ron (who evidently was allergic to my old apartment because he rarely snores now). Snoring is awful because you hate the snoring but love the snorer but still want to get some damned sleep.
I swear Larry David is in front of me. I never could get into Curb Your Enthusiasm. I rented it and it seemed really unfunny and mean. Maybe it has to grow on you.
I look forward to getting back to the city. I think I’m allergic to sunshine and fresh air. Give me urine soaked alleys and that faint sewage scent rising up from Broadway anyday. I’d rather wrinkl;e my nose in bourgeois disgust than have it running.
Ah the plane just slowed down. That usually means something. Maybe we are descending though we have another half hour left. Ron gets back from Singapore and Hong Kong on Tuesday. I’m sure he’ll have lots of stories. I promised him I’d get my passport so I can travel with him sometime.
My eyebrows are out of control. I need to get them waxed or trimmed at least. I need to get my teeth whitened as well before I go to that conference in San Jose.
There’s too much turbulence so we don’t get our peanuts and soda. Ah well.
Mom and dad are probably half way home by now – they left from Nashville about and hour and a half ago. Weather is a constant worry in my family. I think because it is such an reliable source of worry. You can always worry about the weather – whether the weather is hot or whether the weather is cold. It is a foundation anxiety to build a day of worrying around. I do much better about the weather – I realize I can’t control it and that’s about the end of it. Oh, I’ll complain – make no mistake – but I won’t worry about approaching storms. Don’t think I’m that evolved to not worry about everything I can’t control – that’s a hurdle we haven’t jumped just yet.
A few bloggers have written in saying they really like my more personal, journal-y posts and I guess that makes sense. I’m thinking of re-configuring the front page to have two columns – one with the latest ‘journal-y’ entry and then another with the headlines and excerpts of the political stuff. Though I really think the call is to write more personal stuff – not necessarily feature it more.
We slowed down a little more and I can feel us descending.
I think it is so wild that the folks that landed in that plane with the landing gear turned perpendicular where able to watch the plane land on the news on the LCD panels in their seats while they were still on the plane. Does it make it less real if you can see your calamity on television? I was absolutely amazed that the landing gear didn’t break – the upper housing but it looks like it really just gradually wore away (Ron said the tires were all rubber). We had been out eating while it happened and came home to watch it.
1:23pm. We haven’t seen the ground for the whole flight. We must be descending through the bad weather because there is turbulence.
Now is about when I wonder if I’ll take the train into the city and then take a taxi, take a taxi the whole way or take a train the whole way.
I think I need a microwave. I think that would really help my eating – I’d be able to bake on Sundays and then heat up throughout the week.
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