raybear | I can find a small apartment where a struggling artist died.

If Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston can't make it in this crazy world, what chance do we mere mortals have at making a marriage happen?

I was supposed to go back to Evanston this morning. But I realized it was Saturday which means no express trains and it was 10:15 am and I couldn't guarantee I would make it to the library doors by noon (after that, they require an ID card I don't have), and the idea of going all the way up to Evanston only to have to turn back made me feel all prickly in anticipation. So here I am, making tea and listening to John Coltrane. I've been listening a lot lately to Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, and Lush Life -- all three albums just put on random and I hit play and move about the apartment in search of something.

I have new glasses. They are not good-looking, they are "cool-looking", according to the optician. I am fond of them -- the frames aren't radically different but the lenses are. My prescription changed and now the world is clear and my head hurts while my eyes absorb the light at new and sharper angles. I can take the glasses off and alleviate the pain, but that would just prolong the period of adjustment. My digital camera is on a UPS truck in the city and will hopefully be in my house on Monday, and then I can post every picture I've ever wanted. Including the new glasses. And maybe Sophie playing in the snow if it hasn't melted by then. And the bedroom with all the shelves I hung or built. There might be a lot of pictures.

I have been thinking lately about disappearing for a few months, somewhere remote. Not necessarily woods or remote from civilization, I guess, just remote from current life and a certain sense of physical isolation. A retreat, of the spiritual and artistic kind. But maybe it's just an excuse to not shave for three months and grow a beard. Or more likely, an excuse to avoid figuring out how to make it work here, in my own living room. Which I am doing, in small steps. Small steps are hard. Big leaps seem much easier.

Here's a writing exercise from elsewhere that I don't want to disappear yet:

Medical transcriptionist, a career chosen based on the sound of words and syllables and job description, and filling out the forms on the coffee table in lieu of a real desk to find an activity in lieu of a real career except that word is even more ridiculous and meaningless. Mundane repetitive work tasks have more meaning if there are actual visible and tangible results. A carbeurator installed in an engine. A new pair of shoes on a person's feet. Not electronic tables of days that are never even computed into something of mild significance. The phrase "slinging coffee" is active. It's sexy and dirty. It's better than software engineers. Consultants drive nice cars but none of them can tell you what they don in a conversation at a party, and what good is that? Medical and teaching professions are honorable. Artistic ones are mysterious. Legal is practical but feels dangerous to any sense of greater societal compassion, no matter what side of the law one works. Construction is foreign, sales is unnerving. If we are supposed to choose work that defines us, of course in turn we define ourselves by our work. No need for nationalist identification if we are all in the same room. Heritage, age, often irrelevent in most gatherings where its more similar than different. People who say they have all types of friends usually don't. My new year's resolution is to stop saying incorrectly the word "Iranian". And to transcribe more. The medical aspects of my life especially, the biology, the blood, the life, the concrete details of cells that add up to tissues that add up to organs that add up to a person. And coffee tables.
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As I've been working to establish a more daily practice, I've also been running up against my resistance to commitment and struggle with what words do I claim as my identity, i.e. am I Buddhist, what does it mean if I can or can't say it, and what does it mean when I do. I read an interview with Maxine Hong Kinston and decided to adopt something she said: "I am a Buddhist, etc." So, I was contemplating and reading this morning and my related thought for the day is from Sakyong Mipham: "Saying that impermanence is a Buddhist belief is like saying that Buddhists believe water is wet."

P.S. I miss