i may already be dead, just not typed.

i can honestly say that i haven’t been myself at all for the past.. oh six months or so. i don’t know what it’s been.. but it’s been something a little crazy, a little dangerous, and completely off the course of who i want to be.

again, i fall a bit to the dramatics.. but that’s pretty accurate: at least so far as i can remember, i’ve never been this frustrated.. or stressed.. or anxious..

the real issues is the price it’s taken on me and who i am. the other week i went to dinner with a friend. in talking about people and communications, she complimented me by mentioning that she thinks that i’m very good at being the person to keep a relationship.. i couldn’t help but cringe at that: while i think at one time that might have been founded to some extent, i feel that, anymore, i’m the slacker in relationship, i’m the friend not returning calls or answering emails or just saying “hi” now and again.

so tonight i did something i haven’t done in months but that always makes me feel good: milling around in a book store. books.. books all around.. surrounded by stories, how can one help but be utterly and completely humbled?! at what other time are you that thoroughly enveloped by heroes and horrors, tragedies and triumphs, the monumental and the mundane? television – nope, that’s coming at you from one direction, one story at a time.. the internet – same deal but possibly even less stimulating since on average, there’s less media. nope, if you want to be surrounded by power, feeling, humanity, go to a book store.

by night’s end, i’d bought a movie (stranger than fiction) and two books, the dharma bums by jack kerouac and the mysteries of pittsburgh by michael chabon. stranger than fiction i bought because the last time i watched it was the last time i felt relax, together, and free, powerful, in control of my fate. the dharma bums because i needed a novel about the west and/or nature and, flipping through it, it seemed to foot the bill. the mysteries of pittsburgh because reviewers put it in the same family as the great gatsby and catcher in the rye, both of which i put down feeling.. settled, more capable of wrapping my awkward mind around my awkward world.

i spent the rest of tonight watching stranger than fiction a couple times. i love it, i really do. i don’t know what it is that the movie gives me.. but i just know that i feel like me again for a bit. and thanks to the advent of dvds and the dismissal of tapes, i don’t even have to wait for it to rewind before i feel that way again.

admittedly, i probaby doesn’t hurt that i have a crush on ana (maggie gyllenhaal). she’s a little bit punk and also seems like she could be from the 20’s or 30’s, which seems to be a bit of theme for me (zooey deschanel isn’t exculeded from that.. especially since she’s named after one of my favorite salinger characters and quoted as saying, “i love old music, old movies, screwball comedies, vintage clothes and basically i’m an old-fashioned gal”). the punk side of the story is probably what draws me to k.. and, before she jetted, to a (though she was punk in a more subtle way). but those aren’t options anyway..

and besides, i digress. not to be a spoiler but the movie ends on what has to be the essential point.. and exactly that which i think i’ve lost touch with so much in less than a hundred and a half days..

as harold took a bite of bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank god for bavarian sugar cookies. and, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten danish, soft-spoken secrets, and fender stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. and we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. they are here to save our lives. i know the idea seems strange, but i also know that it just so happens to be true.

and, with that and thoughts of my own life’s accessories – a florida gators hat, rumi read aloud, orange shirts, books underlined with red ink, photo booths, breakfasts and bakeries, and countless other pieces that make up my life’s mosaic – with that, i’ll go to sleep.