Do you get sick of me?
Because I get sick of myself.
Blargh.
When I do something, I really do it. Like: I might listen to all the Silver Jews records in my possession (well, except the newest one) like 476 times, reread Actual Air, and send Mr. Pistol a text that says, “Do you think if David Berman met me, he would want to be my friend?” (Answer: “Of course.”) I might decide to paint the dining room and a bookcase and the patio furniture. I might eat seven grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches in seven days.
And that might all be one week. Namely, last week.
When I’m right in the middle of it, it doesn’t feel compulsive. It feels exuberant!
Especially the grilled cheese and tomato thing. At some point it stopped being about desire and started being about lack of imagination. It started bumming me out. Is this a synecdoche for how much of a depressing loser I am? I wondered.
Yesterday was Day 8, and I thought we were out of tomatoes. I was going to have to eat something different, and that was a good thing. But then I spotted one last tomato, half-hidden in the hanging basket. It was one of those mini-plums that comes attached to the vine. I couldn’t stop myself. If I just slice it really thin…
I sat there eating the fucking sandwich, thinking: I hate myself.
And then, more gently: sometimes a person needs to open her skull and let a little air in there. But, sigh, HOW?
I met Lefty for some neighborhood perambulations. We hit Saved and Clem’s and Snacky. Nothing new there.
But sometimes it’s just a tiny thing. Sometimes it’s just deciding you’re not going to order the thing you always order at Snacky. Even if the thing you order instead is just a reshuffling of the ingredients of the original thing.
On the way home, a drunk Polish guy told me he loved me. And he wasn’t even one of the grosser ones.
I’m going grocery shopping today, and I’M NOT GOING TO BUY ANY TOMATOES. I don’t know what was I thinking in the first place: they’re not even good this time of year.
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