2001-11-28
wednesday, november 28 - I forget from day to day that it's the little things in my life that i'm supposed to be paying attention to here. i might join a writer's group if i had the confidence in my writing to bring it to anyone.

this morning, and for the last couple of nights I was here before Thanksgiving, i almost felt like i was in love with my bed. Waking up with that warm, well-rested comfort; nested in the soft, form-fitting futon on the floor between a couple of computer speakers plugged into the old radio my mom got me for christmas years ago.

I still think of it as "the radio mom got me years ago for christmas" because that year Angela also got one just like it. I never liked the differentiation my mom made between us, because I often felt like Angela got the leftovers of our mom's attention. When we both got the same thing one year, portable Sony radios, with dual tape decks and CD players!! i was so happy that i had a piece of equipment as cool as my sister's and that I could be proud of my first CD player without hurting her feelings. The older sister always had a convincing opinion of what the cool things were; twelve or fifteen years ago - whenever it was we got those things - of course she knew those things better than I did. She was older.

When I moved into this one-bedroom, as every other new place I've ever moved into - the house and the studio in Portland, the dorms in Quebec, Denver - I couldn't sleep without having some familiar voices to talk me into dreamland. In the dorms up here earlier this year, I couldn't fall asleep unless the TV was on. Playing off a tuner in my computer, I'd program it to shut off at 2 or 3 in the morning, then wake me up again whenever my guilty conscience told me I ought to. That anxiety stayed with me for the whole summer, right up to a couple of weeks ago.

I listen to Adam and Drew mouth off to dumb teenagers, wondering if I was ever that stupid. (I don't think I was; at least, I thought I knew everything, so I never bothered to ask. I just went ahead and did whatever I felt like doing.) By the time I got to this place, the world had changed completely. Or maybe my perception of reality had... ripened. I moved in her 8 or 9 days after 9/11. Tom was talking about anthrax. When I understood that it wasn't contagious I slept a little better. When Drew started talking about Islamists (is that even a word, or just a racial slur?) infecting themselves with Small Pox and walking through malls, I would have nightmares of Muhamud Atta staring at me. Paralyzed under the covers, I couldn't get the image of his mug shot from the papers out of my head. Maybe it was knowing - not fearing, knowing that guys like him could kill me if they wanted to. And there's nothing fucking Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Ashcroft can do about it, even if they did care that someone actually wanted to kill me.

Lately, though, I've been sleeping better. And I've been waking up heavier. Not that drowsy, under-rested kind of wake up. But that Love My Warm Bed kind; the kind you wish could go on forever, unconscious of time, just drifting away and back in a warm comfortable bed.

The first thing was letting myself turn on the base-board heater at night. On a low setting, I could close the windows and the bedroom door and by morning the room would be warm and cozy. It's gotta be one of the most painful things in the world to have to get out of bed and walk naked through a frozen apartment to the shower. Not to mention getting out of that shower, realizing I forgot to put the towel on the rack - again - then having to walk back through the frozen apartment, dripping and naked. It helps, though, that the bedroom, where I'd thrown the towel the morning before, is nice and toasty.

I've never lived in a place with base-board electric heaters. I still don't understand how they don't burn the walls. I'm sure they're designed not to, but in this place, where dirt comes out the bathtub fauscet if I turn it too high, I'm not sure what works and what doesn't the way it's supposed to.

Another relief that has helped me sleep better lately is knowing that Robin's raging piss-fest really had nothing to do with me. Little girls...wow. yesturday I had a great Bogosian monologue spun out infront of the mirror that seemed to explain the most sutble nuances of an insecure girl's defense against low self-esteem. Maybe when I feel like other people deserve more attention in this diary than me, I'll try to remember it.

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