It is all such a difficult endeavor for me. I don't want to be bothered explaining, or complaining; I don't want to be bothered trying to tell some convoluted story (a true story) of unimportant detail which I pretend will, in the telling, exonerate me from the guilt of having chosen to live my life irresponsibly -- or more accurately, unresponsively. As I write this, the quote up top, which is selected randomly when the page loads, says, "As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. - Leonardo DaVinci".
My sleep has not been easy nor has it come promptly. Never was that more evident than immediately after I whacked my keyboard six weeks ago and killed my old computer. That first night I actually cried. No more did I have a soothing perception of connectedness to all of you -- strangers mostly, distant certainly, safe and comforting. I was plunged into the dark space of my own life, which was not made dark by my giant, bright monitor; my life had been increasingly abandoned to the darkness by me. I have easily ignored the darkening all about me by obsessing on this artificial light to which I have returned tonight. I am here with ambivalence.
While I was away, I rediscovered my apartment. It was a mess. I vaccuumed up the biggest piles of dirt, washed and scraped surfaces of ancient dust -- some of it had nearly fossilized -- and rearranged my living space around my tiny, one-person dining table, leaving the desk with its dark monitor like a relic of another time. I started showing up at work much nearer to on-time than ever before. I started spending quiet, no-stress time reading National Geographic before bed. I re-employed my stereo system as a tuner -- rather than as a sound system for Winamp -- and I listened to NPR and the BBC's The World Today, finding the former almost as disappointing as I feared, while discovering that the latter is far better than I had expected. I began to spend more time bathing and shaving and brushing my teeth. I started buying fresh vegetables. I did laundry, and folded it and put it away, all in the same day. I cleaned the bathroom.
"A well spent day brings happy sleep...". I spent last night here, in front of this computer, indulging my addiction. I went to bed at 8:00 AM this morning. The first day I got this system (it is a new one, the old one is as yet irreparable) I was reluctant to resume my obsession. I didn't write anything here for nearly a week. I have always known there was something beyond the monitor -- mostly I have know that with fear and I immersed myself in this pool of light, hiding. Now, I am newly curious of the unilluminated life behind the monitor, having returned to it briefly. And now when I am in front of this monitor, I find myself leaning to the side and peering around it like Norman Rockwell peers out from behind his easel in one of his self-portraits.