Boot up, Tune in, Log Off

Whew, I finally dragged myself off the internet, and it feels like I can breathe again. Why do I get so obsessed with things, like browsing the internet, reading movie scripts, browsing Flickr photos, reading blogs of friends, rereading my blogs? Can I say blog one more time?

I come to my big leather chair by the window and my laptop resting on the Ouija board with the idea that I’m going to write. But I look out the window and stare over the dead gray city and realize I don’t want to write at all. I have nothing to say this morning. I can’t imagine pulling two characters together and figuring out what they have to say to one another. But I will not give up. I’ll just keep typing here, right? Isn’t that the important part of the word “Stream-of-Consciousness Journal?”

When I move about the apartment in the evenings, I am filled with ideas. Wonderful turns of phrases, situations of intriguing conflict, a desire to slip into an imagined world for a little while, but I’ve got to put the dishes away. I’ve got to sort the real mail from the junkmail. I’ve got to brush my teeth and go to bed.

I remember some of the ideas now, but they lay limp in my hands like dead fish I’ve held out of the water for too long. It’s like that Tenacious D song “Tribute”: “This is not the greatest song in the world. It’s just a tribute…to the greatest song in the world”. Things like a comic entry about how I keep piling the recyclables on top of each other in the grocery bag in the closet. It becomes like a reverse version of Jenga, and I come up with strategies of how to nest cans within one another, then a bottle, then an upside down can clinging to the bottle neck. Anything to avoid having to take the recyclables down to the bins in the parking garage. Like I said, this is just a tribute.

Or the entry about how I’ve got a crush on the surly Latino woman at the Turtle Bread store. I love her smoldering eyes, not an ounce of fake cheer or sense of customer service. She’s young, short, plump like a loaf of bread just beginning to rise (I’m sure she’d love that simile... and you wonder why I’m single!) When I get a flicker of a smile from her it is appreciated so much more, a small crack in her shell. But then it’s gone again, and I realize I don’t want her to smile at me, because I love her for this crossness and “piss and vinegar”. My god, is that a real phrase?

I wanted to start a blog titled “Squidup!”, or use that as a chat name. It’s from the Cable Guy movie when the Cable Guy is doing his Dizzy Gillespie impression.

I wanted to write about my tour of the condos and lofts, and why do I always get a crush on the sales women showing me a place? I feel this odd flirtatiousness or connection with her as we walk quietly through the empty rooms. I’m sure I’m imagining it, but I feel like they too are aware of this sexual tension between us.

Ah, see; I’m tempted to log onto the internet again. Restlessness draws me there. I thought for a moment that I would like to work more on my personal home page rather than my blog. It’s like wanting to work on your home, build it out, make it more presentable. Your own little space on the web, gardening for people without a plot of land, but I would probably be a better person if I disabled my modem. Somewhere Timothy Leary is chanting “Boot up, Tune in, Log Off.”