vox diabolicawe own you. our contracts
are sealed, signed, delivered
with your first breath,
solid gold from first to last.but you love us, helplessly.
we're not the origin of your vices;
you do such a wonderful job of those
all on your very own. we're stain-free
from your sordid desires.we don't inhabit but abide. we claim
nothing but your blame. among ourselves
we swap stories; nothing we can invent
is so creative as what you do to yourselves.
the angels claim your guilt and
we smile, go our own ways.we never fell as much as sauntered slowly downward,
coated in a bubble of enormous thoughts
from the One Who. Sent down, given charge,
we are your humming machinery of life,
your pistons, your elbow grease,
everything you have accomplished,
we have stood at your elbow.We surround you, make you comfortable,
our birthright your birth, our pride
your free will. Like posessive parents,
we hover, help invisibly, push a little.
But we have our secret pleasures, too--
the roar of an engine in the highway,
the purr of industry, the stock ticker
and the sensual way money circulates.you are born, tiny perfect packages into this world
we have created, ready to assume your place
in this structure of ours. You are ours,
you love us without thinking,
play your parts and we thank you for it.Solid gold. Every breath, deeper in debt to us.
It is an equillibrium we enjoy.—3/30/00
vox humanaBetween the sadists and the lawyers,
we are tongue-tied. So many
of us there are, incapable of
moving in chorus, throwing down
this semi-divine yoke. Free will?
Nothing but an attractive nuisance.Give us something to bow down to
(something to submit to)
something to dream about
(something to devote ourselves to)
something to move us
(something to obliterate us)
something to pray to
(something to love us)
save us from your angels o lord
(save us from your devils)But if good is not good and evil is
the machines of buisness then we have been
framed. Let us pray.And all that comes back is silence.
We care nothing for truth. We care for love,
for comfort, for all of those things
that keep us alive, our need to continue.
We cannot eat truth, so we reject it.
The battle trumpets, the clarion calls—
out! let us sleep!Give us something to love us
(something to lie to us)
something to make us whole
(something to widen the gap)
something to stir us
(something to lull us)
something to feed us
(something to content us)
save us from your anger o lord
(save us from your inconstancy)Will makes us imperfect.
We are a curious mix of animal and divine
and deny both. Only you compete
with our superior selves
our beautiful rebellions.
You are our reflections.—3/30/00
(the empty set)Large thoughts, and hollow:
(I AM)
impression of vastness, of uncaring
beyond everything even Itself:(I AM)
paradox, this ultimate inheritor.
It is the thoughts the universe thinks.
from the week:3/20/00
I feel so smart.
Today, I had a mission. I really wanted to make a little CGI script that would know when my Webcam was on or off, and print on the page either 'on' or 'off'. This is not possible to do in Javascript, so I needed to give myself a crash course in Perl.
So I located a script that did something close to what I wanted to do (Well, it wasn't THAT close, but it was the best I could find). I opened up a couple of Perl reference sites. and I got to work.
Some slicing and dicing and swearing under my breath at the sites for not being particularly helpful later, I got it under control. I now understand Perl a hell of a lot better. I also understand Apache CGI stuff, as well as how to embed executed code in Web pages.
And then, feeling like I was on a roll, I decided to set up mail on my virtual hosting box. After briefly frustrating over Sendmail, I pulled it out by its roots and installed postfix. After configuring and testing postfix, I set it up to receive mail for three different domains.
Heavy geeking, and just in the nick of time. I feel better now that I've been able to indulge my obsessions a little bit. Things undone nag at me, a lot.
The living room and kitchen are still messy, but that won't take me but a little while to fix. and now: sweet, sweet sleep. mmmmmm.
3/22/00
Today kicked ass.
I was handed a work problem that required that I expand my (painfully) limited Javascript skills. I managed to stretch them some and come up with a solution that would work for everyone. Between this and the Perl script this week, I'm starting to actually feel like a real Web developer.
Tomorrow is ASP, I think, as I attempt to edit for clarity a couple of files that should be editable by the even most painfully novice HTML person. We'll see how successful I am at that; at least with that, there's help available should I need it. With Perl and Javascript, I'm on my own.
I was in a geek trance for a number of hours as I was working my way though this problem. For me, a geek trance happens when there's a particularly sticky problem to be solved and my skills are almost but not quite up to the task; I go into hyper-focused mode, patiently working on the problem until I either solve it or fall over in exhaustion. The demands of the body don't get through, people don't get through, nothing is real but me and the problem.
I spent most of Monday in this state as I was working on the Perl script. when the time came to take a shower, my mind wasn't particularly willing to be distracted, though I managed to actually get myself into the shower. In true distracted-geek fashion, I shaved one leg and not the other, and failed to notice this until Tuesday morning.
When I noticed this afternoon that my social skills were completely shot, I decided to leave work a teeny bit early and work out. The workout kicked my ass all around the gym. Today was me increasing the amount of weight I lift and decreasing the number of reps; I'll do this level this week and next and then start increasing reps again as my muscles start building up. It was exhausting, but it felt *good*; there's nothing like the serotonin rush that lifting heavy things gives me.
I then came home, drank a liter of water, and put in a chicken breast to roast. Tonight's dinner will be a roasted chicken breast and a salad with lots of good veggies in it. My body, as usual, responds superbly to being treated well and fed right; I'm already starting to feel better.
Quiet week continues apace. I'm still working at a feverish pace, attempting to get Doomcookie done and making the last few decisions (like, is the journal going to move? It very well might. Depends. It might not move for a few weeks from now.). But I also have enough time to stretch out in, and I'm starting to actually catch up on my sleep. The buzzy feeling I was getting from touch overload is fading, as well, which has contributed greatly to my sense of wellbeing.
I'm not writing a lot, being lost in tech stuff and body stuff, but I promised myself that I'd do whatever I felt like this week, not just what I felt I ought to do. I'm doing some processing on the whole Chris issue, trying to at least define the conflict within me, if not reconcile it.
As for body stuff, this is what I'm doing:
Following the Protein Power plan. At its core, this is yet another low-carbohydrate plan. In my case, I'm doing it partially to lose weight and partially to help treat my hypothyroidism and polycystic ovarian syndrome (both of which respond beautifully to low-carb diets). My diet has an emphasis on lean meat (chicken, turkey, and fish), soy, and vegetables with a high fiber content. The only dairy products I have are limited amounts of cheese and some cottage cheese. I try to avoid a lot of wheat products, as it seems I'm somehow sensitive to them; though I do just fine with my half-cup of All-Bran and unsweetened soy milk in the morning. I try to stay away from refined sugars entirely, which along with the no-caffeine edict handed down by my doctor means that I have very few choices for drinks at fast-food places.
For me, the diet is partially about treating my illnesses and partially about changing my relationship with food. I eat without thinking, sometimes eat without tasting; I eat what I know disagrees with me and then berate myself later for doing so. The diet forces me to think. It forces me to plan meals and snacks, and eat carefully. Never a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, it does get old after a while, but at that point I'm sticking with it just to prove I can.
Where this falls down is in social situations. I eat without thinking most when I'm around other people; food is something to do with my hands. Were I a smoker, I'd be a social smoker. And, plus, I have friends who love food, love preparing and serving it and make the most *scrumptious* stuff. Restaurants are particularly challenging; everything comes with bread or rice or noodles. The trick is to ignore the stuff I don't really want to eat entirely.
Other stuff I do: Water! 4-5 liters a day, depending on the weather and my workout. My body's actually gotten used to all this water, as far as I can tell, and though I still pee a lot, it's nowhere near what it used to be. The big reason for this is to avoid having ketones build up and damage my kidneys; keeping properly hydrated is absolutely essential to avoiding this.
And, of course, there's working out. I try to be in motion more or less continuously for at least 30 minutes a day; weekdays this takes the shape of 30 minutes on an exercise bike, and three days of lifting weights, generally for about a half hour. I love lifting weights, love pitting my body against everything I can throw at it. The burn in my muscles after a good workout is one of the best sensations in the world. And I love the fact that I can feel my body getting stronger, more sure of itself. When I'm actively working out, my back doesn't hurt at all; the constant pain just goes *away*. A big reason to build the muscles is that they keep that vertebra that likes to slip out of place in place and under control, and with that piece of bone in place, the rest of my back is happy.
I'm not really a sports girl, especially not a competitive sports girl. I hate competing with other people. I feel bad if I lose and even worse if I win. But weightlifting isn't competitive except with myself, and I can pretty much make sure that I always win.
And that's really about it, along with good oral hygiene and regular sleep. Good food, good exercise, water, and rest; these are the things I am built on.
3/23/00
I think we were playing Talisman at the House of Dice--some intricate board game that required a long playing time and plenty of beer and pretzels. That was the heyday of my crush on him, even knowing that he had a girlfriend far away. I didn't care; he was cute and smart and I figured more love in the world never hurt, even if it wasn't returned. He didn't seem to be too weirded out by my admiring gaze. If he even noticed.
[Later, I learned that he'd had a crush on me, too, but never acted on it because he didn't want to make things weird between him and S, who was the other leg of our booze-and-porn triad. ]
So we were there, and he leaned against the fridge. A bottle of chartreuse too near the edge tipped over and fell in slow motion, to the floor, where it smashed into little tiny pieces.
Chartreuse stinks. It's got a strong herbal smell, and it was splashed all over everything. I immediately jumped out of range of the glass (of course, I was barefoot. Do I ever wear shoes indoors if I can help it?). I returned after putting on shoes and helped him clean up, putting pieces in the trash and mopping up a bit.
The smell of chartreuse always brings back that night, and those feelings; the shattering of glass, a hopeless, fun crush. I haven't seen him in three years, now, even though he lives in the Northwest. I occasionally wonder if I'll ever run into him. He was a good friend at a time when I needed all the friends I could get. I miss him. I miss staying up till 3 am watching bad pornography and drinking, making fun of the TV and cackling at our own cleverness.
Those were fun days, in some ways. Hellish in others, of course, but those parts were fun.
