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another day evaporates to diversion. Today it was HTML tweaking that preoccupied me, especially the selection of colors. If I am in an especially anxious mood, I can waste hours switching colors, uploading, gazing stupidly, then switching and uploading, ad infinitum. Here's a neat little utility I found at javascript.internet.com (of course, I don't use it when I'm anxious, cuz it makes color selection efficient, which works against my desire for diversion).
There's probably a dozen things bothering me. This cold has gone on too long, though I have relished the time-off (three sick days plus regular days-off—I've practically been on vacation!). In the morning I have to go to the 'Dark Tower' (aka UMass Medical Center, where many of my fears reside), to see my neurologist (who thinks I hate her, since I have a history of avoiding her). And I started talking last night.
maya Angelou was silent for a long time as a small child. She is the poet asked to read for the Innauguration of President Clinton. Of the anxiety which that invitation caused her, she said, "I come from the creator, like everybody else, trailing wisps of glory, and I am up to it." Her silence began in her childhood after she told her mother about a man who'd had sex with her, and as a result that man went to jail. In her view at the time, her speech was able to cause great harm, so she gave it up—for almost a year, I think.
It's funny that I should start talking at a time when my actual voice is weak and raspy from this cold, but it's not my voice I used; it was AOL's instant messenger. I was chatting with chiphi2x. Now, that's not such a big deal in the totality of things, but for me it marks a kind of revolution... and I have to thank him for allowing me space enough to initiate a conversation. That is valuable to me. I needed the time to decide on my own whether I wanted to respond to his letter or not, and he allowed me that. He extended a hand, and just waited. It's so simple. And when I was pacing about, wringing my hands, and feeling anxious about how I should respond or even if I should respond—he waited, for three days, five days, seven days. Any contact from him at that point would have been a subtle intrusion, and in contemporary social encounters, such subtlties are usually ignored, if noticed at all. If he made contact, I would have responded politely, but I would not have finished sorting through all the emotions that making contact brings up for me. I would have pretended it wasn't an issue, that I hadn't been feeling any anxiety about it, and I'm fine thanks, how are you? But he waited, and he didn't go away.
Maya began speaking again, eventually. She resolved her concerns when she realized that her talking was not all that big a deal, that shit happens (I'm paraphrasing, here) whether we speak or not, and that she would really rather talk. Thanks ChiPhi, I don't mean to make a big deal of it, but it is for me. And that's OK.
Talk to you later.
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