"Deep Thoughts": May 2008 Archives

The Naked Science episode on TV right now is discussing "extremophiles" and the possibility that they may live or have lived on Mars. Sometimes I think there is a human equivalent to these microbes.

For those who don't know, extremophiles is a nice logical name for microorganisms that favor difficult environmental conditions - extremes of temperature or radiation, chemical environments that would be toxic to other forms of life, that sort of gig.

Don't you know someone who lives like that in an emotional way?

I do; a friend of mine was just telling me about his regrets at having left a relationship that I'd call doomed. The person he broke up with was married to someone else, lives more than a thousand miles away, and has - shall we say - lots o' baggage, in the forms of multiple dependents and health issues.

I told him it was okay, nay, good, to make an intellect-based decision in a situation like that, but I don't think anything I said penetrated to the decisionmaking center of his brain. Or, as he'd put it, his heart. He's probably still gonna get back into that mess. See? Extremophile.

I have apparently (I hope) grown out of such behavior, though it took me years and years, and it's not like I don't occasionally relapse and be drawn to something that's not so terribly healthy for me.

Though I think that the fact that for the past several years I've been able to eat healthy foods and only healthy foods with no difficulty whatsoever suggests that I probably have that ability in other areas of life.

At the moment, I am feeling very anti-complications, and anti-"settling." Anti-settling for less. Anti-settling down. All that.

I'd rather be airborne, thank you very much, and the concept of being tied to someone else, of having to give a good god-damn what they think of my every little decision and behavior, well let's just say it's an unsavory prospect. Apart from the sex, of course. That sounds appealing.

MASH. Embalming fluid. Baby's first pedicure. I can't figure it out.

Had one of those days where the stress was like someone set a big bomb ticking in my head, and all I could hear was the tick-tick-tick, barely being able to keep working over that sound. Went out for a walk and got into a mental fight with somebody at my client's office.

The weather was (again) too unsettled and stormy for safe biking (I don't mind riding in rain, but I don't want my boyfriend to rust).

Now I am sitting on the couch knitting my bicycle bag strap pad (say that seven times fast; I dare you) and thinking about the email "conversation" I had with Juno today, about the role of scent in personal identity, or more properly, about perfume as a form of self-expression, like smellable art. I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but I like it. And then I think about the larger ways that we tell tales about ourselves: our clothes, our tattoos, our jobs, our houses, our hair.

I guess I tend to think of the physical containers we occupy as so often getting in the way of being seen for who we are that it seems weird to also have most of our self-expression be centered around outward manifestations of personality. Or rather, to have to drape our expressions of self around the random containers we inhabit. But then, maybe adorning and/or altering our bodies (whether in temporary or permanent ways) is a form of bringing the self to the surface. Even if it doesn't necessarily make the same kind of sense to a viewer as it does to the person doing the expressing.

I mean, it's like art: people get tattooed because the design has some kind of meaning for them, but then everyone who looks at it has to have that meaning explained, anyway.

I am rambling, once again. It's not a fully formed thought, but then, this is a blog, not a novel or a treatise, so who the fuck cares.

Micro, macro, that's how my brain likes to go. I say this because I just looked over at my cat and had some sort of formless thought about her that brought me into the room again. That's pretty much her job, I guess.

Anyway. I am in love with my tall socks lately. Well, love is too strong a word, but you know what I mean. Lots of late suppers and long brunches, bike rides in the park, that sort of thing.