too much candy gonna rot your soul

More to file under pointlessness.

SP: What about Zachary Quinto?
me: I'm not sure, I don't think I liked the whole Emo Spock thing.
SP: He was totally Emo Spock! Oh- don't you think the Shat is somewhere cursing JJ Abrams' name right now?
me: Yeah, his head must have exploded when Leonard Nimoy appeared on screen. Poor Shat.
SP: Yeah, but they couldn't put him in the movie, he would have chewed up the scenery to high hell.
me: Bones was my favorite.
SP: Bones! Where do I know that guy from?
me: Oh I don't know, little indie movies like LOTR and The Bourne Supremacy. Sheesh.
SP: Who did he play in LOTR?
me: Um. I don't remember right now. I think he was related to the blonde chick.
SP: IMDB, hold please.
me: Also, I love Simon Pegg, but that was the crappiest Scottish accent on earth.
SP: He was weak sauce. Do you know he and Ricky Gervais hate each other?
me: What?
SP: Don't worry, they've made up. Oh, you know what, I might have to watch the movie again because I didn't understand all the time travel stuff. It gave me a headache.
me: Oh, that's because you haven't caught up on Lost.
SP: Why, is it the same type of travel?
me: No, it's just that then you remember that Star Trek is a JJ Abrams' movie, and you think 'oh yeah, none of his plots ever make sense.' And then you stop trying to figure it out.
SP: That reminds me, I don't know what the hell is going on with Fringe either.
me: I rest my case. Also, I think I had a seizure during the previews for the new Transformers movie.
SP: Eesh, there is no way I am going to see that crapfest. I can't wait for the next Star Trek movie, it's going to be great!
me: Don't bet on it. Abrams is really good at ruining things.
SP: We're back on that? You're such a hater.
me: Alias.
SP: Whatever, I choose to hope. Star Trek movies are all about optimism.

SP is the only person I would dream of having this ridiculous a conversation with for such a prolonged period of time, especially while completely sober. Because she's something of a genius/mega-productive member of society, I think it's healthy for her to talk about nothing once in a while. If you think about it, it's really just for her benefit.

it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

I keep thinking I ought to have something meaningful to write before posting, and today, I had an epiphany. Since when did anything of import, significance or meaning ever get written on my blog?

Here's something to file away in the Idiot Chronicles, which really should be a recurring column here. Previous installments would include the time that I went for ages without replacing a lightbulb in my bathroom because I didn't own a ladder high enough to reach it. Today's byline would include: things I really should be able to do by now but can't.

It's this absurd juxtaposition: I'm getting older, but I'm wholly immature in so many ways. Evidence that I'm getting older (or maybe evidence that I'm living in a hot dry ninth circle of Dante's creation): my eyes have been getting really dry by day's end, especially if I'm staring at a computer screen or reading for too long. Evidence that I'm wholly immature: I bought eye drops and just discovered that I am really not capable of using them.

I had blocked out my knowledge of this fact. I've somehow managed to hit fossilized status without wearing glasses, and therefore, without ever donning a pair of contact lenses. It occurred to me several months ago that I had missed out on some fundamental developmental ability as a result of this. My classmates and I were supposed to dilate one of our eyes so that we could look at them for an ophtho exercise. Now, most of you that have glasses or get your eyesight regularly checked already know this is a relatively painless process that just involves getting a few eyedrops to chemically dilate your pupils. The instructor said, "you can either put the eyedrop in yourself, or have your partner do it for you."

I turned to my partner and said, "I think you'd better do it." Trying to play it off as brimful is not actually a 3-year old, I quipped, "After all, it's good practice for when you have to do it to your patients." My partner proceeded to get the solution all over my face. In fairness, the fault was not his as he kept painstakingly dropping the solution into my eye, and my eyelids reflexively rebelled against the idea of anything foreign entering. After he had turned red with frustration, I finally ordered him to hold my eyelids open and take the bull by the horns. He was fairly traumatized by the whole thing, while I found it massively entertaining. I never have to worry about having no patience with my patients, because I am pretty much the worst patient on earth on all fronts.

I'd conveniently forgotten all about that incident until this evening, when I tried to put artificial tears into my eyes, and thought to myself um, how am I going to manage this then? Yes, sometimes the thoughts in my head have a British accent, I don't know why. In the end, I think I got half the solution in my eyes, and half on my cheek, and that is my definition of success. It made me muse at those scenes in films or on television, where a character whips out a bottle of eyedrops and just plops them into his or her eyes without so much as a mirror nearby. If I did that, I would look like I'd just come in from the rain.

Also, I pulled a baking fail yesterday. This was especially disheartening because I used the last of my eggs in the endeavor, meaning that I could not bake something else to perk up my spirits afterwards. Maybe that tendency should also go under the Idiot Chronicles, come to think of it.

I do not know where does it go when it goes

Even though I can be outgoing at times, I am best known for my silences. It’s not sulking, sometimes I’m not even angry or sad or hurt. Just quiet. Just nothing to say. Sometimes the silence comes on because things have gotten too intense and I need to inject distance however I can. Sometimes it manifests because I am at an impasse, and somehow the only thing that will solve the problem is to close my mouth. And sometimes, the silence begins as a question- every so often, I wonder if I am speaking to someone, or if I’m just enjoying the sound of my own voice. When I close my mouth, I wait to see if anyone speaks. If they don’t, they must not have wanted to know what I had to say in the first place, I reason, and the silence thus stretches out.

But it is a stretch. The silence fills a span, and then I get so overwrought, so taut, and I know, when I’ve reached that point, that I have two choices. I can snap back into place and resume the conversation. Or the elastic snaps, the connection breaks entirely, and there’s an end.

I used to be a person that didn’t believe in endings. Nothing ended, everything was temporary, all could be mended or broken all over again, and this was both frustrating and comforting. But now I know there is such a thing as permanence.

I know because, when the silence stretches out, there’s always a choice. Sometimes I’m not consciously aware of it, but some alarm goes off, and I come running back in a panic. Are you still there, is it too late, can we resume? When that happens, it no longer matters who was right and who was wrong, it no longer matters why the silence first came upon us, it no longer matters whether it will come again. I just need to speak, and I need to hear that voice in response.

This blog started because of silence. And I think this blog has been silent lately because the person who I so often had in mind when I wrote became a mirage, dissolved, disintegrated, irreversibly disappeared from my life. Not a ghost, just a void. A string wore down over the years and in the end it frayed with so little fanfare. It was a whimper, not a bang. But that’s the thing about a world ending- does it really matter how much violence is involved? Does that change the fact that it’s the end of the world as we know it?

It is the end of the world as we knew it, and I feel fine. But sometimes I don’t. I don’t know how to write about it, how to explain that a conversation which lasted over 15 years finally came to a close. Because it’s not heartbreak, this feeling. It’s an odd feeling to reconcile, when you know something you cherished so much is over, and yet you know it has to be and that it makes sense that it is. You wouldn’t do anything differently, you regret nothing- and yet, there it is, the silence.

Maybe that is the end- when there are no words.