It's the last day of January. My mom always thinks of January as being a particularly long month, seeming to last longer than its 31 days -- seeming like the longest month of the year, in fact. She's been saying this for so long that I'm not sure if my mild agreement comes from my own perceptions or is totally born of influence. Either way, I find the month of January to be maybe just a little bit longer than most months. I used to think it was a lot longer, but ever since my perception of passing time got screwed up via my traumatic brain injury, I'm not so sure I can say with authority 'January seems longer.'
Since my injury, longer periods of time seem shorter, and shorter periods of time seem longer. For instance, it seems like less than a year and a half ago when I graduated from college, but it seems like more than a week ago when I last went biking. I'm not sure when the balance-point is, at which things seem to be about as long ago as they actually were.
However, as I write this, I realize that this phenomenon is not as profound as it once was. Years ago, I had worked out a series of locked-in-stone, analytical explanations and descriptions of my revised cognition, which were a lot of effort to put together. So, I'm hesitant to abandon them even when flux dictates.
I don't have any fucking idea what the passage of time is like for me, nor do I have a perception of January being particularly longer than any other month. I don't generally keep track of months, I realize; I just kind of sit around and wait, and sometimes when I look at the calendar on my watch, it says that it's one month as opposed to another. I totally recant any agreement with my mom that January is 'the longest month.' phooey.
That's the problem with a brain injury: the prognosis changes a lot over time, and at the same time brain injuries often confound a cognitive process called 'fluid reasoning,' which is the brain's ability to process and react to changing circumstances. So, a brain injury reduces the sufferer's ability to comprehend the ramifications of brain injury. C'est la vie, non?
I got a letter back from vocational rehab, inviting me to an orientation on February 10th. Wendy's, here I come!
I feel like it's dangerous to be updating my blog while the sdf user webpages aren't being served, but I guess that is dumb. Files write to the hard disk just fine, but for some reason the http mechanism isn't working. So, I will blog. I doused the carpet, specifically in katy's former bathroom (under the dining room table), with a solution of vinegar and water, which I read in my household maintenance web-surfing is good for pet stains and pet odors. If this doesn't work, my next step is to get some hardcore pet enzyme/bacteria neutralizer at petsmart and apply it liberally, like there's no tomorrow. Then, what I'm supposed to do is apparently stop the alkaline reaction after four hours with more water and vinegar, and re-apply enzyme desolver, and then I guess repeat ad infinitum. But if I don't start smelling some improvement then I'll...get upset and realize defeat. ::sniff sniff:: I can smell the old stale pee odor creeping through the pungent acid of vinegar, which provided a temporary respite from the malodorous cloud of urine. Hmm...just as I suspected: my sdf machine is frozen, and so I continue this entry in a local text editor. Certainly this isn't the kind of service and quality of goods I'm used to, being a seasoned consumer, but then I have to remember that I paid a grand total of $36 for lifetime access to this unix system, and that the fact that it doesn't always work right lends me a smug, nonprofit, socialist superiority, in keeping with the flavor (flavour?) of BSD. Some sarcasm there, but not entirely doused in it.
Anyway, little-known secret about me: I have a girlishly sensitive sense of smell. I'm extremely picky about my artificially perfumed products, and in fact prefer unscented varieties, when I can get them. I always uncap, for instance, deodorants, sniffing several pensively before choosing one. And this tendency predates the corporate media invention of metrosexuality, just in case you were thinking your ugly, little, trendy thoughts, human. HATE. Anyway, yes...I've had a sensitive sense of smell for as long as I can remember. God I hate people; I want to fucking kill them all.
The problem is that the voices in my head piss me off. Before you contact social services, allow me to explain that they're not literally voices, as in auditory hallucinations, but rather very strong, intrusive 'mental sounds.' imagine a family member telling you they love you -- you can imagine the specific sound (there's no language counterpart to 'visualize,' 'envision' or 'picture,' that one might use to describe setting up a sound -- as opposed to a picture -- in one's mind). Except instead of telling me that they love me, the voices emerge to criticize me. For instance, when I was writing about my good sense of smell and my test-sniffing of deodorants, a mental voice came out and accused me of being a trendy metrosexual, so I had to tell him to 'fuck off.' I call these 'voices' my 'inner people' -- I used to be much more bothered by them than I am now. Recently, I came to the realization that these voices are manifestations of thought processes within my own mind (intellectually obvious, but when they take the form of specific people, it's easy to forget on a deeper level that they're all in my head, so to speak). So, having realized in a non-superficial way that these voices are part of me, I can start to listen to them and even follow their advice, which is frankly often good.
The vinegar-dousing didn't work -- the carpet stinks now worse than it did before.
Oh hey -- there's another voice, representing how I predict someone might react to this blog (these voices are useful in preparing a debate or argument). It (this one was without a specific personality) said 'but what if those voices tell you to kill someone?' idiot, they only tell me if my thinking is flawed or illogical. They never tell me to *do* anything; haha, that'd be crazy.
I was feeling guilty about what I wrote about katy last night, and found myself apologizing to her over and over. Not so much for specifically the blog entry, but for creating, through my own inaction, a situation in which the house was made unlivable and she was seen as the culprit. That's really the central issue: the source of the problem was not, in fact, katy -- any resentment shouldn't have been directed towards her, but rather towards me and my mother.
Actually, in a sense I think it might have been an ideal situation if katy had lived. Since conditions in the house were becoming intolerable, this would have provided some impetus to find my own place to live, which is abstractly a good thing.
Toilet training katy was likely impossible; the carpets were already inundated with urine and dog diarrhea from brandy's final year or so of life, but no-one could afford new carpets. Maybe the conclusion that can be drawn is that this household just isn't qualified to be a dog-owning one, because it can't provide them with proper care.
I like this new schedule I've invented, that consists of sleeping from 1am to 7am or so, and then from noon to 5 or 6pm. Life is made more livable if it is broken up into two shorter mini-days.
I realize that my failure as a human being wasn't dependant upon my majoring in art. There are several people I know who majored in similarly useless things, and who are doing fine. My failure is simply a matter of not caring, of not having enough energy to pursue anything, and of deep-rooted laziness. This isn't a disorder -- this is simply who I am, how my cognitive and emotional structures were engineered by my genetic and environmental raw material.
The efficiency with which I hand-code this blog amazes me. I think the best part might be that I can use whatever editor I want (vim) to type my entries, and then use ispell to check the spelling. But anyway, yes. Blog blog blog. I've really been squeezing entries in under the wire lately -- I think yesterday I published at about 11:55pm.
My mom has been telecommuting for the past three days; it makes me realize how much I enjoy having the house (and the computer) to myself. Every day since my mom's been home, I take a long nap during the day. Actually, I think I do it for three reasons: 1) to get some privacy and time to myself. 2) depression over katy's death. 3) there's nothing else to do (no computer).
It's very nice that the house is so clean, but it almost makes it seem more weirdly empty, post-katy. Also, I feel guilty about enjoying the clean house, the reason it's clean being that katy's gone. Here's what I want, in an ideal world: a house-trained, non-sick katy. I hate that my relationship with katy was marred by the fact that she basically made the house unlivable. Of course, this wasn't her fault; no-one toilet trained her. But the net result was that I came to resent her to a degree.
This was all compounded by the fact that I told my mom very adamantly, after brandy died, that I didn't want another dog, because I didn't want it to poop in the house, and I didn't want to be the one to train it or clean up after it. Katy was acquired, and she was never toilet trained. This is very difficult for me to write.
So anyway, my feelings about katy are extremely complicated: I miss her, but I'm glad that the house is cleaner now. I feel guilty about this, and I secretly wonder if she didn't die to make me happy. I don't know how else to say it. I feel bad now, having built that website dedicated to her, and wonder if I deserve to indulge in my own grief. I cried for three days in a row after she died; certainly those emotions were real, and I really did miss my dog. But I don't think I want her back now -- I'd almost rather have a clean house. Well, maybe not. But it's confusing, and there are conflicting emotions here.
But I miss katy...i do, I do. I miss her squishy paws, sweet puppy-smell and funny little hot-dog body. But I didn't like having to live with the constant smell of feces, blood, urine and vomit, stepping in puddles, and the feeling that I was approaching a kind of medieval-level of filth where sanitation is more of a heath-issue than an aesthetic one. Am I allowed to miss and love and remember katy, but at the same time be grateful that she's not here shitting on everything?
Sure I am. It's my blog, asshole. Fuck off and die. I HATE PEOPLE AND I WANT TO HURT THEM.
I wish I were more in control of my emotions. Well, in truth, what I'd really like is to be mr. Spock, and *have* no emotions. Actually, vulcans have very strong emotions that they suppress. So maybe it's not such a good analogy, or maybe it's an even better analogy, since spock-hood isn't so far beyond my reach. But I wish I could permanently excise all of these emotions that so profoundly affect my life, and make it impossible to deal with. All I ever feel is rage and sadness anyway; it's not like I'd be 'giving up joy' or anything over-poetic like that. Emotions are one of those things that one would never miss, sort of like testicles. After castration, I imagine the castratee develops a whole new, revolutionary outlook on castration. I feel that a similar situation would apply with the excision of ugly, ugly, ugly human emotions.
I miss my katy-dog.
I'm still presenting an open invitation to anyone who wants to come over for a knife-fight. You'll have to supply both knives, though, since I lost mine.
I've been sleeping way too much lately. During the past two days, my mom has been telecommuting due to the wintry weather, and I've been booted off the computer. For some reason, I always find myself meandering upstairs at around midday and sleeping until the early evening.
The house is clean, but the smell of the carpet on the middle level is bothering me. New carpets are thousands of dollars, though.
For some reason, I've kind of run out of steam on the blogging lately. Maybe it has something to do with all of my emotional output during katy's illness and death. Whatever the reason, I feel like it's almost a struggle to get something on the server. But the show must go on, as they say. Even though I say 'this blog is for me,' I still feel a lot of pressure to update every day. My server logs aren't a big help in that respect.
I wrote an email to chris korda, of www.churchofeuthanasia.org, with whom I share a lot of personal philosophy. It remains to be seen where he fits into the spectrum of internet celebrities in terms of responsiveness; I've shot off more than my share of unsolicited emails, with varying return rates. Also, I've taken to watching e! Television lately. I'm not sure what's wrong with me. Anyway, chris korda's site did exactly what it was intended to do: it made me aware of environmental issues by presenting them with shock tactics. Of all the things that could possible amount to 'a power greater than myself,' our planet comes the closest. Maybe environmentalism will confound and usurp my dada-zen-nihilism. I guess the problem I always had with environmentalism is its association with liberal politics and trendy urbanite gen-x-ers. But there can be a spiritual component to loving the earth that is independent of the political component.
As long as humans don't spread to other planets before the earth is swallowed by the sun, whatever we do to the planet before our extinction is pretty inconsequential, and will be chalked up as a mistake in cosmic evolution that will take care of itself.
I keep missing ana on IM. Hopefully, she signs on tonight after class. Even though she claims to hate school, she really just lights up when she's enrolled, in contrast to when she spends all day with her mom, taking trips to wal-mart and watching 'charmed.' I think ana gets a lot out of school; she's like a little sponge. I can see the difference in her, having known her before, during, after, and now again during school. She talks about things she's learned in class, and just seems more intellectually engaged, and more importantly, happier. She's an amazingly bright girl, and school is probably the best thing she could be doing. I love you, honey.
The house is cleaner than it's been in years. As a way to help me cope with katy's death, I did a top-to-bottom scouring of my house, which included renting a carpet cleaning device from giant (a grocery store with a weird name). Katy had been excreting in the same spot, on the carpet under the dining room table, for over a year. Not only is the carpet permeated with dog excretions beyond that which might be shampooed and vacuumed out, but the wooden floor underneath is likely soaked with urine, blood, shit and vomit. At this point, the only hope is to rip up the carpet, scrub and deodorize the underlying wood, and put new carpets down. As it is, repeated passes of the carpet-shampooing machine and a liberal sprinkling of carpet deodorizer have ensured that the smell now only wafts up occasionally, and not very strongly. At the end of katy's life, she was not only peeing under there but shitting blood, and the smell that comes through most strongly is that of dog blood, as if we had held a sacrifice under our dining room table. But really, it's not that bad. I'd even have guests over to dine, especially if something fragrant was being cooked.
I like to talk about conceptual boundaries, or ways of dividing up our perceptions so that reality appears to make sense. For instance, where, exactly, does one draw the boundary between fruit and tree? Somewhere on the stem? If so, where on the stem? One can always examine a line of demarcation more closely, and question its placement. The arbitrary nature of distinction applies to any two things: day and night, good and evil, self and other, etc. One might always wonder something like 'where do I draw the line between day and night? Is it during twilight? If so, when specifically during twilight?' demarcating a thing into two things always requires some arbitrary decision-making -- the boundaries that we draw are artificial.
If this boundary-drawing is analyzed, it becomes clear that demarcation and division do not exist in any external, a priori way, since they are arbitrarily placed by and within our own minds. If the boundaries don't exist, then everything is one 'object.' but we westerners have cognitive analytical structures in place with which we perceive reality, and analytical structures don't deal very well with a great mass of one-ness. So, we have had to invent ways of distinguishing between this and that, even though 'this' and 'that' didn't really exist in the first place. This, by the way, is why a rational understanding of reality is impossible -- why you can't think your way to enlightenment. Thinking amounts to algorithmic and analytical categorization, which stands in the face of the one nature of reality.
The idea that there are no boundaries, that everything is one, amounts to a working definition of god. God can be seen as the an ultimate category, inside which everything fits; god is the sum of all reality.
And god is everywhere; it's impossible for something to *not* be god, to not be a part of the whole. When we distinguish between things, between this and that, between what our minds tell us are different facets of reality with their own properties, we are being reductionist, and we are moving away from god. Reductionism, as it is used in the previous sentence, apparently refers to the creation of more categories, not fewer, so the usage seems illogical. However, the one ultimate category that is god can be seen as a single category, or as infinitely many categories; a difference cannot be perceived. The reduction of these infinitely many categories into numerable categories by analytical human minds trying to rationally understand reality is the same thing as the creation of numerable categories from one category. Dualism, or the existence of two fundamental categories, is as close as some are able to come to experiencing reality. The division of being into good and evil, heaven and hell, god and satan, etc, is ultimately a form of reductionism and is a hindrance to enlightenment. Everything is one.
The word 'god' is problematic in this cultural context, of course, because it brings with it images of and associations with judaism and christianity. So, a better way to describe 'the sum of all reality' might simply be 'the sum of all reality.' I've heard this thing described as 'being' or 'enlightenment,' but that word brings association with buddhist and new-age spiritual traditions. So, you should come up with your own word. Mine is 'kabum' -- don't steal it.