See this is your brain on lithium if you care.

Things I have accomplished so far today:

• Got up and out of bed in the morning


• Fed the cats


• Ate breakfast before noon


• Disconnected water and electricity from old apt.


• (Re)figured how to get iTunes in miniplayer mode (I hate crazy meds sometimes)

Now all I need to do is take a shower, get dressed, and go back to bed. Ha.

As much as I hate seeing this sort of thing in other peoples' blogs, the seven deadly sins are just too medieval to pass up. Here goes my first quizzie thing:

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Very High
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Very Low

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

P.S. Why must I have a bulimic cat?

Ugh. Two funerals in one day. My second cousin blew his head off with a shotgun, and an old family friend faded away. My family traveled between rural towns like a circus troupe, complete with the amazing barfing boy.

Everyone's been talking about the weather. Well, this is what the weather made me do. Just yesterday, this was the dining room. Now it's the study. The odd thing is, Greg has been sitting there like that, smoking and on his computer, the whole time.

Managing to break free of the binds of apathy, I finally, after moving here from Texas nearly 2 years ago, managed on Friday to get my Louisiana Driver's License to replace my Tex-ass "driver license" (Texans have a serious issue with proper use of the apostrophe).

Lo! What progress has been made! I immediatley went to the Baton Rouge Public Library's Main Branch and got my library card, which was the impetus behind it all. Of course, I had to pay a small fine from 1998, when I left the city, but that's better than not eating in order to buy new books. Of course, every book on or by Sylvia Plath was checked out, but that didn't stop me. There was still Ezra Pound, Oscar Wilde, e. e. cummings, and a plethora of lesser-known poets waiting for me to thumb through their inky musings.

Oh, back to the Office of Motor Vehicles. If you can avoid it, do. Images evoked: sardines in oily tins, whale blubber, the smell of urinals, Kafka's castle but in smell-o-vision. And then there's the "Designated Smoking Area." Could they be Vogons?

When you get your first Moleskine, you think, "This looks so cool, just like it is," and you vow never to desecrate its stark black beauty, especially with anything so pedestrian or inane as stickers.

Then somehow, your sole little Moleskine begins to reproduce, and soon there are black notebooks everywhere. What do you do? Which one is which? One is for sketching, another is for writing, but which one is which?

One solution (for there are many others) is to iconize (yes, I just made up a word) the cover of your favorite black notebooks. Just like you might dress up a little black dress with a favorite scarf or piece of jewelry, why not decorate your Moleskine, but with a purpose?

Moleskinerie, a blog by and for Moleskine notebooks users and enthusiasts, used a picture I took and posted on Flickr as an illustration for a post entitled "The Death of Handwriting?" (What are they trying to say?)

And then, the day that one is published, I get an email saying that the guys at a blog called Pencil Revolution (What is the proper way to indicate the name of a blog, anyway, Greg? I imagine it would be setting the title in italics, since it's a body of work, like a book.) want to use another photo of mine. What is going on here? Maybe if someone gets me a digital SLR (don't forget the lenses—a macro and a zoom), people would start paying for my photos, and I could have an income.

I wish I had a digital audio recorder so that I could record the soundtrack to these postings: Greg's snoring. It is so amusing to me. Now if only we slept at the same time, instead of on completely opposite schedules.

I found these at the Goodwill Store next to HobLob on College. They were either $2.99 or $3.99 a pair. I love them. They're gaudy and they're name-brand and they smell like somebody else's feet (hyperbole) and I love them.

I also found a $50, huge, chunky wooden desk just like about three others I have bought before and left behind in various states. It has been sitting in Greg's parents' old mini-van for over a month now, waiting for me to clear a place for it in my apartment. I'm working on it.

Too much lithium may be numbing and thought-killing, but no lithium is worse, by far. Me brain no work, AND me brain aware of the no working. And me brain hate everything. Me brain can no deal with anything. Everything is completely irritating. And I'm afraid to take my antidepressant for fear of triggering hypomania (because it does), so am feeling very crappy about self too. And I can't concentrate, so it's very hard to do anything (except sleep) to distract myself from myself. No lithium till Monday, at the earliest. I would beg the pharmacy people for a few pills for the weekend, but I'm already so far gone that I haven't left the apt. (except for once to eat at IHOP) for over a week. Arg. And blah, for good measure.

this is your brain on lithium has moved to WordPress. The new address is http://pythia.wordpress.com/.

I have been experimenting with other blog hosts for some time, and I have fallen in love with WordPress. I will keep my LiveJournal, but as a different incarnation of madness. This will be the official repository of all the effluvia of the brain on less lithium than it previously was (which is therefore starting to work again). My more (or less) profound profundities (like all the drivel on smoking) will henceforth reside at the new address. Stuff like bookbinding and sock creatures and bathing and I love Greg will stay here.

...a way to enter Pessoa's dream world, a link to his dead ghost just as surely as a psychic at a seance. (BTW, are ghosts alive or dead?)

...communing with the spirits of dead writers.

...to enter a man's mind on a wisp of smoke.

...a prolonged pause that inspires thought. (Thought rushes up your nostrils and down into your lungs to be dispersed into your bloodstream...)

...a repose from the monotony of the daily rush to completion.

...a break from getting things done.

...a pit-stop in the rat-race.

...doing something while accomplishing nothing. (This is why smoking is still allowed in Congress.)

...an aristocratic pastime co-opted by the working class.

What is smoking to you?

Today/last night's accomplishments. And Greg's Valentine's Day gifts from me.

WHY, oh why is my stylesheet (which is actually THEIR stylesheet) MESSED up AGAIN???!!!????

I am the reverse Pythia, sitting here spewing out noxious vapors, babbling my nonsense that no priest will interpret. Tobacco, the laurel leaves of the New World. May they anesthetize my soul to its own imperfections. I don't just inhale the vapors, I spew them back out to poison the minds of all who dare approach me sitting on my tripod, communing with Apollo, the god of prophecy and civilization and poetry. Over-brimming with words, my touched mind spews its poison daily, an undammed river cleaving a canyon through the desert of my life.


[Feb. 7, 2006]

Remaking the landscape of reality into a smokey dreamland filled with friends, coffee, and conversation. Just as Pessoa says of writing, so too for smoking—it slows down time and turns life into a visual tableau on which you can write your own character and plot.

Smoking also perhaps helps to blur out those annoying little imperfections that plague real life. It aestheticizes life into hyper-real fiction. You find yourself hiding behind the smoke like a picturesque illusion.

[Feb. 7]

I'm back in the thought vacuum—that region of space-time in which my brain ceases to function. One of its hallmarks is that I have to start making lists of things that I want to do, because I keep forgetting. And if I don't make the list, I just end up staring blankly at my computer screen for hours at a time, a session of which just ended because Greg woke up and jolted me out of it.

My head hurts, probably because I have been sleeping most of the past 24 hours. I can't think. It sucks. I hate it. Maybe I should take some Tylenol.

Today's List

• Unsew messed up bits of sock monster


• Try to sew correctly


• Work on learning CSS (only if brain stops hurting)

Nat Sherman's Mint Naturals
Filtered, but long and skinny like Cigarettellos ("101 Size"). Very different taste. Very light and airy. Not much taste, really. The mint is more of a sensation in the mouth than a taste. It's like smoking the smell of mint, but not smelling it. A slight minty taste to the filter paper after a while. Extremely mild, so much so that I managed to exhale it out of my nose, more than once even. Candy cigarette. Cool mint.

[Feb. 5]