Tuesday

The man across the way has violent sneezing fits every night.  I only ever hear it in the summer, when it's hot, as both our windows are open.  Last night it cooled down enough to grab a blanket, but we're at the start of a heat wave.  Thankfully, work stays at a comfortable temperature, the attic will be unbearable by mid-week.

Have to keep the boot on for two more weeks, so, grateful for the dry weather.  Both feet swelled up last night, iced them for almost an hour.  Not sure why the pain, still there in the morning, and I laid in bed after waking up, contemplating the act of standing, and walking down a flight of stairs...was consequently late for work.  Broke down and started the prednisone I was supposed to start last week.  (I don't like to take it, but it works.)

The air was dry grass, then jasmine.  Sprays of water from the early sprinklers drifted softly back down to the ground.

Had to return most of my books last night, checked out new ones, but don't like two of them, so might return them rather than suffer through.  Finished all the others, minus the owl book, it had a hold, so couldn't keep it.  Interested in the ideas of the stories we tell ourselves, the ones we believe that form our existence.  Have a lot of ideas I've been wrestling with from reading "Brave New World."  Ideas especially around the Savage, societal expectations, and Shakespeare as oracle.  Went to a volunteer after party for the Seafood Fest and had a long conversation about the latter idea (not just Shakespeare, but literature, or writings that are re-discovered, and then used without any idea of context to inform your world and how you respond to things) with a man whom I sat across from, because there was an empty seat.

Saw "Fool for Love" on Saturday night, and then Monday heard that Sam Shepard had died. (RIP.)  Seeing it on stage changed my thoughts of what it was about.  The director, in his notes, made a comment about gas-lighting to control the narrative, and yeah, I see that now, but when I first read it, at 21, I saw it as "fated" love or something (in a twisted way), and then after working on a monologue last fall, saw it as an abusive relationship, and perhaps not just a game to see who can hurt the other the most, but maybe she really does want to be away from him.  And then seeing it on stage on Saturday night, it became about the Old Man, and how all that happens is the repercussion of his fantasy life, his inability to own up to anything.  I'm still trying to write something about it.

At any rate, it's the stories we tell, that take on a life of their own.  How we may never know what any truth is, how different people in the same event and circumstance define the truth of what occurred differently, and how that shapes who we become and how we determine future events.