October 13, 2000: shelves that need cleaning from basement to ceiling
and it felt like a winter machine
that you go through and then
you catch your breath and winter starts again
and everyone else is springbound
and when I chose to live
there was no joy, it's just a line I crossed
it wasn't worth the pain my death would cost
so I was not lost or found
I've been thumbing through my three new Tufte books (see Wednesday) and, wow. These books are dead sexy. There's the paper, for starters. It's acid-free rag linen paper, with the kind of weight that practically dares you to try and tear it. It's smooth and dense without being glossy. It smells of the reference section of libraries. The sound of my fingers caressing the surface is a whisper.
These books are of much the same construction as books published three and four hundred years ago; treated with care, these books will last at least that long. There are pop-ups and flaps and rich, rich color.
And there are no wasted words. The book is *designed*, with side notes rather than footnotes or end notes, and paragraphs that end, generally, before you turn the page. The book is designed so the discussion of a figure occurs on the page the figure is on. Beautiful. Inspired, even. I am *such* a bibliophile. I'm turned on by these sorts of things.
Everyone who works with information should have copies of all three of these books. I mean that, very seriously.
Some of you who read Chris have probably read his entry from the 12th and are now scratching your heads and wondering, "what the hell is up with *that*?"
Um, well, the full story is a bit private. And not of all *that* much interest to anyone who's not us.
But, yeah, we've been talking a lot the past couple of weeks. A lot of what he's been trying to tell me for the past few months has started to make sense. So.
We're in a relationship. Or something. It's *not* by any means monogamous. Enough of a relationship to be sweethearts, not enough for partners. Not really *primary*, but...it's there and it's been wanting to be acknowledged for a while now.
On occasion, I wonder what the hell I'm thinking. But then I remember that when he spends the night, I sleep better because whenever I wake up crying with nightmares, he quiets and calms me and I go right back to sleep and don't remember the nightmare in the morning. And, well, that's worth a lot to me.
I'm getting clearer on what I want, which is good. We've acknowledged that sooner or later one or the other (or hopefully both) of us is going to find someone else, and we'll deal with it when it happens. For now, though, we're pretty happy.
No, I have no idea what this means for my sexuality. I've actually shifted in the past few months to admitting that, yeah, I'm a 95/5 bisexual--95% attracted to women, 5% to men. I'm attracted to women in general and only very specific men. "Lesbian", for me, is most often a convenient rejection shortcut--it actually means, "If you're male, I'm not interested. Please give up before you embarrass yourself." After all, I'm attracted to very few men. Most of them are just impossible for me (though I can be wonderful friends with them), and there's *nothing* that can change that. And i'm perfectly capable of letting guys I'm attracted to know this if I want to act on it. So it's easier to set the expectation of "no sex here, thanks" rather than letting guys get their hopes up.
But, yeah. I seem to have been given some space to redefine myself a little bit, and to work on some of the divisions in my psyche. I seem to have a lot less trouble with dissociation when I'm not under a lot of stress, when I'm not being asked to do things I don't want to do, and when I'm not around a lot of people who want me to be a certian person. This has been having some interesting effects on the rest of my life, as well. I'm actually a lot *more* distractable when I'm more together than when I'm not--I lack the complete and utter absorption I can achieve otherwise.
Dealing with expectations sucks, though. There, the sum total of 26 years of life experience: it bites when people expect you to be a certian way, especially when you really *want* to please them.
Maybe it's time to figure out who *I* really am....
