What a strange day.
It started off with me feeling fairly lousy, quite teary, and very anxious. (And this is with the medication, friends...) I spent much of the morning, feeling like an impostor, or a visitor in someone else's life, and uncertain what, if anything, I should do next. I was seized, as often happens, by a terrible dread that I was going to be getting an ominous phone call, asking me to come to New Brunswick right away, because something terrible had happened to John. This, in spite of the fact that John was, at the time, on his way into Manhattan for a voice lesson)
And when I'm in an emotional state like this, it's as though whatever feeling of familiarity and comfort I might have is stripped away, and I seem to see everything around me in too harsh a light, and everything seems overwhelming and oppressive. I go into another tail-spin, about what a horrible mess I've made in my life, both literally and figuratively. These spells, as may be imagined, are difficult to experience, and are usually fairly debilitating.
But today, for some reason, I was able to push through, or work around, these feelings that would usually immobilize me. It's not as though I'd had more, or less, coffee than usual. I just went downstairs to work, in spite of how I felt. I made a much-needed repair to the new piece of work -- settling one of the wheels more firmly into place. After which I continued to work, and actually made much greater strides than I would have expected, even on what I call a good day. I made the difficult decision to attach the shelf to the top of the cart -- ordinarily, something I would put off until the last possible moment.
I located some tubing I hope to use, dug it out and left it where I can see and use it. Hoping to find my hack saw (should I say, one of my hack saws? I surely own more than one), I went through a plastic bin I hadn't looked at since I hastily packed it, while vacating my studio space at Aferro Gallery in Newark. The hack saw wasn't there (contrary to published reports, I often know exactly where certain things are, even in the welter of visual distraction that is my basement work space), but I found some other things I'd been looking for, and which I intend to use for this latest example of my oeuvre. And then I just went ahead and emptied this plastic bin, and then stacked it with another one, thus creating -- oh wonder! -- a small clear space where, this morning, there was wall-to-wall confusion.
I even managed to do the laundry, in between all these other activities. And did some sweeping. Not that I was feeling any better, but I was still moving and doing useful things, generally.
Then, because John and I had a date to attend a wine-tasting fund-raiser in New Brunswick, and then go to dinner with other friends, I decided it was time to shower. Whereupon, the phone -- which had been completely silent all day long -- began to ring and ring, with this offer and that. How do they know when I'm totally naked in my bathroom, and running the water until it's hot and I can shower?
(Which brings me to two questions I've been meaning to ask the world at large, for some time. Question # 1 -- given the fact that hot glue guns aren't an especially recent invention, why does it seem impossible for anyone to design a glue gun that doen'st automatically fall over, no matter how carefully I put it down? If the glue stick can fall out too, that seems to be so much the better.
Question # 2 -- given the fact that people have been accidentally cutting themselves since the invention of something with a sharp knife, as well as the related fact that, once cut and bleeding, people generally like to try to stop the bleeding, by applying a bandage to the wound, why is it that no one seems able to invent a bandaid that will stick to the human epidermis, without curling up and falling off at the mere threat of the smallest amount of moisture. This, in spite of the bare fact that, on average, we humans are at least 80% water. How complex must it be, after all, to re-purpose some extant, consistently overlooked adhesives -- such as those doggedly holding onto certain paper labels to certain jars -- so a bandaid, once applied to a small or large wounder, so that said wound will remained protected from dirty air? I'm sure anyone within typing distance, can come up with an alternate suggestion -- the glue that holds the little SKU number tags onto apples, for instance? I nicked the corner of my thumbnail this afternoon, and I've gone through at least seven bandages in under four hours. They just fall off. This doesn't seem fair)
John did get home, in perfectly fine spirits. I'd swept the dreaded back stairway. I'd put away a bunch of clothes that had been sitting around the bedroom, in plastic hampers. I was even ready on time, for the drive to New Brunswick. There were some nice crackers at the wine-tasting event. When we got to our other destination, we were wined and dined very charmingly and generously. And I drove home, trying to keep the bandage on my thumb from coming off and sticking to the steering wheel, for no good reason whatsoever.
Mission accomplished.
Now I can barely keep awake, and I've still got some dishes to wash before I go lie down in the dark, in the bedroom, and have my usual night-time despair and bewilderment about what I'm actually doing here, on this planet, in this unreliable body... And tomorrow, it starts all over again. Except that I may augment the bandages I use, to keep from ripping my thumb-nail off, with some silver duct tape. Until someone in R&D finally gets to work, on that adhesive thing...
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
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