September 03, 2005
I'm feeling very melancholy today.
It started with a panic, a whirlwind of 'must pay the rent' that took me by surprise. I never had rent to pay before, and it...scared me, I guess.
And it kicked off something that I suspect has been building since the hurricane came through. It is like time has been suspended around me, and I am wading through a morass of shoulds. I should be using this time to more advantage. I should be charging off to NO to help. I should have gone there last week, when it was still itself. I should be reading, I should be cleaning, I should be...something.
The television flickers warzones, dark and terrifying, and they are nextdoor. There are rumors of looting even here (Rumors, they tell us, no more than that. But we will lock down the campus, just in case. Be careful when you drive, you may be carjacked) No power, no water, they are dying, and dying so close. And all I do is flip channels. Screaming, babies, cholera, underwater fires. The helecopters buzz by overhead, one after another. And sirens. And all I do is flip channels. I am too afraid and too small to do anything more.
A friend of mine is volunteering with the Red Cross. She's disabled, in pain most of the time, and still she's going. In a weeks time, she will be taken away for maybe three weeks of living on cots, of working to help people, and I think: "If I didn't have a job. If I had a regular job" but I am unwilling to do it now, afraid of losing my place here where I have just started.
I cleaned. And cleaned. And in the end there is still mess.
So I sit down at my computer, and find myself reading Rachel's archives, and missing her so terribly. Because if she was here, we would sit on the couch and watch something terrible, eat popcorn and make fun of it and talk about Buffy. It is a very selfish thing to wish, for that little slice of normal pie, in the midst of all this suffering. But I am tired of being afraid of what's outside of my door, and of being alone inside of it. If she was here, she'd know what to say to make this go away, or at least make it get small. But instead I just read about the cricket invasion, and stories I know because I lived them: the emperor fork, the orgasm on a plate.
Finding myself drifting, and dreaming of England - the cool damp air, the grayness, and the rose blooming in January.