Had to take two panic pills today, in the AM. I was dizzy enough that I almost fell down, and had shakes. This rarely happens first thing in the morning, and I don’t think it’s happened at all for a couple of months. It resembled how I felt the day I landed at the emergency room but it was not as bad, and the pills worked pretty quickly. I ended up sitting in the bathtub for over an hour, talking into the field recorder about all manner of eternal fascinations as my anxiety receded and could stand up without fear of falling down from the dizziness.

The day I went to the ER one of the orderlies asked me what was my deciding factor in coming to the hospital. I said it was because I could not stand up in the shower, which was true. But today I sit in the shower as routine, and by the way it’s been one of the best adjustments I’ve ever made to my daily rituals. But had I not made that adjustment and if I normally stood I don’t think I could have stood in the shower for very long.

This day pretty much got away from me, though, not that I had any particular plans for it. Sometimes I think I don’t have much time left, and why should I bother doing anything. What is left for me? Not much that I really want to do except walk. With the snow I could not do much of that today but I tried.

Walking has become my religion. That is what flâneurs do, of course, but for me it’s taken on a meaning beyond just sauntering and observing things. That is the traditional definition of a flâneur, one who has the luxury of time to simply amble about a city all day observing and making comments on the nature of things. For me the term has evolved into something more akin to soul-searching and a quest for meaning found through earnest pursuit of something you will not be able to identify until it is found. It has also evolved to include listening to the sound of my voice. I hear myself more and more these days, saying soft things that only one with the calm luxury of time and the dubious benefit of solitude would utter in his mind or even aloud.

I saw my ex-gf on the street a few days ago. I managed to get out of her way without, as far as I could tell, her seeing me. I would like to know how she is doing but it still seems that hostilities linger (though not from me) and that anything I say is going to be heard as something completely different.

I called in from a payphone to talk about it (took three tries before finding a phone that let me complete the call) but I don’t know if I’ll post it. It’s depressing.

I thought about posting more of that payphone call-in stuff to the main payphone site but I don’t think site visitors are expecting or are ready for something like that, and I don’t know if it’s something I want to share in front of a lot of people anyway. That kind of thing, whatever the subject matter I happen to be on, just never seemed appropriate on the payphone site, which seems ironic but that site evolved off into other directions that I guess are more “mainstream” than would be appropriate for something like me talking to my dead father from a curbside payphone while wearing his Zero King jacket.

I just attempted to establish penpal correspondences with some random people, for the hell of it. I had a brief back and forth last month with someone whose profile said she’d been bullied her whole life and that she had only had one relationship, which was abusive. I think she was 42. She repeatedly described herself as “ugly”, which kind of made me wince. I guess I can take her word for it, since I never saw her picture, but she seemed angry at life. But you know what? I wanted to understand that. But then the source of her discontent didn’t seem too deep or complicated.

There have been people whose anger became a mystery to me after the passage of time. The above-mentioned ex is one, the owner of this building another. My mother’s anger is not such a mystery to me, though its true depths and legitimacy always will be.

Damn, thinking about this is making me dizzy again. Should stop.

I don’t like that term “ex”. It of course sounds as “X”, like the person has been Xed out of existence, when that of course is never true.

…

I met some cool people last night. You know they’re alright when the first order of conversation is about how we wipe our asses.

There’s been a running gag between a bartender and me about a comment made a few years ago by a mutual vegan friend of ours. He said that vegans don’t have to wipe their asses, but they do anyway just to be sure. I never made much of the comment, believe it nor not, but it was memorable. I did not interpret the comment to mean that vegans are somehow better than the rest in the spirit of those who think their “shit don’t stink”. I just heard it as a bodily function comment that lack of meat and cheese in one’s diet produces turds that don’t have the sort of sticky stuff that most peoples’ feces possess.

I relayed this comment to the bartender about a year ago. As proof this person remembers every single thing I say he mentioned it to the vegan friend just last week. The vegan vehemently denied ever saying it but I know he did. There is no dark recess of my mind from which I could have summoned on my own the idea that some people don’t have to wipe their asses.

After his denial of ever saying it I looked around online and found a mix of anecdotes from vegans, with some people saying they wiped like anyone else, others saying essentially what my friend said about not having to wipe but doing it anyway just to be sure.

That is how the conversation between and me and these two people got started. I think it’s a boyfriend/girlfriend couple but they might be married. I’ve seen them at the bar many times and they seemed nice enough but kind of insular. I’d never seen them talk to anybody but the bartender, not that I spend enough time there for that observation to mean much.

The woman told the bartender that she was vegan, to which the bartender looked over toward me and said “I heard vegan’s don’t have to wipe their asses.” That brought me into the conversation which kicked off mightily when I said that a vegan friend of mine said he didn’t have to wipe his ass. After she denied the claim she volunteered that she wipes he ass righteously, which in turn led me to describe my use of Colon Cleanse years ago, then discussions of the greatest dumps we’d ever taken, and so on. It was great. The woman seemed to have an extremely broad range of knowledge about all things, from arts and tech and basketball to who knows what else we’ll discover in future encounters. The dude was funny as hell but pretty loaded, nothing wrong with that except that I could not follow a lot of what he was saying.

I was thinking these were the first new friends I’d made in years but that excludes the bartender, who I’ve known for maybe 18 months, and who I consider a friend even if our interactions outside the bar have been entirely through email and texting.

…

Hmm… What else is there to report from this day spent mostly indoors? The storm seems to have lived up to expectations, or has it? I can’t tell but it was pretty messy the few times I went out.

Speaking of making fundamental changes to my daily routines (sitting in the shower) I’ve decided to give up being something of a coffee snob by grinding the beans and only buying big bags of Starbucks French Roast. I’m just going to get ground coffee and go back to the French Press, abandoning the Aeropress that seemed like such a breakthrough but has caused a good amount of mess (as has the grinder).

Sleep is going to be an adventure tonight, as it always is when I take the panic pills and cannot drink. I should really move the pills away from the bedside, where they stand among glasses of unfinished vodka gimlets and a small bottle of Svedka. Accidentally mixing those pills with the quantity of booze I consume could kill me. I suspect something like that is what got Sandra.

Dizziness is gone but still feeling jumpy and off. Tomorrow will be better. That’s the trap, though. The problem with the pills is that they work too well. If past patterns hold true I should feel good as new tomorrow, and that will have me thinking I can drink again. Sometimes that works but not always, and I end up with a colossal headache the next day. This is how I try to game the half-life of these pills while not really knowing what I am doing.