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April 19, 1997
It's almost 1:00 AM. I can't sleep. The wind is howling. Doors and gates are banging. The streetlights are flickering. All day yesterday I disbelieved the forecasts for a "nor'easter". I believe now.
So what do I do when I'm tired and can't sleep and the outside world is lording it over us puny humans? Write in my puny journal about my puny human life that's what. I reread several of my journal entries tonight and realized yet again that I'm just not making it as the next May Sarton or Anais Nin or Samuel Pepys... wait, I don't want to be Pepys... sounds too much like Peeps. Neither May Sarton nor Anais Nin were known for their graphic design. Nor was Pepys.
Here in the new world, it's not enough to be able to write. You also have to be able to design strong, impressive, cool, neat, original graphics. I get all tied up in knots about page design, never mind trying to come up with truly original graphics to adorn the page. My graphic design block is odd considering how visual I am. I'm told my photographs are pretty good. I make collages: some of which get a lot of positive reaction. One (of a series of six) I did last year, entitled Peacekeeping Forces still gets comments. Wish I'd kept it, all of them. But they've all been given away. So why can't I draw? Why can't I arrange blocks of color on the page? Why do I suddenly have a wicked headache? Why is Wilbur clawing at the radiator? Will it really snow tomorrow or is that a rumor? Who is Andre Breton and what has he got to do with this? If I were post modern would I be anachronistic?
If I were a walrus and you were a carpenter, would you marry me anyway? Wait a minute, I am the walrus. Or was that the cheese? Ashes ashes all fall down.
By the way, "nor'easter" is a made up word coined by the media. Think about it. Why would an old Yankee fisherman who consistently drops r's coin a word that emphasizes the r and drops the th? That makes no sense. Shouldn't it be a "no'theastah"? If they pronounce "north" as "noth", which many folk around here do, why would they change it when combined with "east"? I think I read somewhere that the media made up "nor'easter" as their idea of what old Yankee fishermen would've said. It's a folk word that wasn't coined by folk.
And while we're at it, I couldn't find "meme" in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Where oh where is a dictionary that defines "meme"? Was there an issue of Wired I missed where they defined it? Was the definition printed in orange ink on a red background? Was the whole thing shades of pink? At what age do people stop being able to pick out orange on red or pink on pink?
When did I go from being too young to being too old? When did I go from being the youngest xyz in whatever to being the oldest xyz in the whatever...room, project, group...
How can I be this old? My knee aches, my shoulder aches, my hands do whatever they do rather badly, I'm chronically tired, I lost my umbrella, and I don't know what a meme is... I remember the Wright brothers launching their flying machine like it was yesterday. I remember Henry Ford automating automobile production. I remember Benjamin Franklin flying his kite. I remember Pangaea. I could walk from Africa to South America then. And the birds hadn't even evolved yet. And yet they remember their ancestral homes in Gondwanaland. They need not ask themselves what was your face before you were born as they know their homes before their species evolved. Do we too long for homes we knew before mankind evolved?