help me stay awake, I'm falling

I love the 80s

Perfect evidence that my photography skills leave much to be desired- this is really the only useful picture of all that I attempted to take at Bay To Breakers last weekend. Still, a wave of nostalgia hit me when I saw these Pacman paraphernelia at the start of the race, and it was one of the few costumes that were not seen in duplicate over the course of the race.

I'm operating on three hours of sleep, so this post will make even less sense than my usual ramblings. Have you ever actually been angry with yourself for still being awake? That's how I felt at two o'clock this morning. I was trying to determine the cause of my insomnia, and could only think of how I had spent my time earlier in the day. I've been so caught up with work that it became acutely clear that my job is 99% fluff. Seriously- meaningless confection. Oh, it all seems very urgent and do or die, but in the end, it's completely intangible.

Tangibility is a big deal for me, something I could not have known before. I didn't know I needed it until I experienced life without it. I like the abstract, some aspects of it. I like the thinker, the visionary. But, at the end of the day, to have nothing concrete to show for the daily grind... it feels completely wrong. Cacaphonous, incongruous. Nothing is quite what it should be. So my antidote was to go home and make scones. It may sound foolish, but just being able to say at the end of the evening- there, I have this to show for my effort- brings me great comfort.

That still doesn't explain the insomnia exactly. I dropped the scones and an overdue birthday present off to JP at 10:30. In his neighborhood, it's as though the carnival is always in town. I got out of my car and PHA-TACK!, a handful of firecrackers went off on the sidewalk directly in front of me. When I told JP about this, he shrugged as if it was a nightly occurrence. Then he poured me a glass of port. If his neighborhood is always festive, then JP can surpass it by always being on holiday from reality. Nothing is ever a big deal, nothing is ever urgent, things are just thrown together and the end result always fabulous, just like that, effortlessly. I envy him that.

So maybe it was the green monster that came over me when I got home twenty minutes later. Either that, or just the intangibility of everything suddenly became intolerable. The unbearable lightness of being, maybe. This weird feeling that I'm treading water, and I can't find the shore. I was just looking for something, a piece of wood, some sign of land.

Speaking of which, it's nearly time to go watch Lost. Naveen has not been killed off yet, though he's still claiming to be an Iraqi. I think it would be an excellent plot twist to have him admit that he's actually South Asian. And my boyfriend. JJ, are you listening?!?