Friday, May 23, 2003

I'm invisible. You can't see me. Or do you just ignore me?

Thursday, May 01, 2003

I'm feeling good today. The air is crisp and just right for my broken-in denim jacket.
I'm in touch with timeless elements...namely a fresh bowl of Cheerios. I mean, Cheerios have been here forever.
Don't we all remember them from the very beginnings of our childhood? Today's bowl is with bananas.

And I'm reading a good book. William Gibson's (of Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic fame) new novel Pattern Recognition
Here's an interesting part I read this morning concerning how the protagonist, Cayce, is troubled by her current employer's way of manipulating her into taking on a job she really doesn't want to do.

"She [Cayce] isn't feeling easy with any of this. She doesn't know quite what to do with [Hubertus] Bigend's proposition, which has kicked her into one of those modes that her therapist, when last she had one, would lump under the rubric of 'old behaviors.' It consisted of saying no, but somehow not quite forcefully enough, and then continuing to listen. With the result that her 'no' could be gradually chipped away at, and turned into a 'yes' before she herself was consciously aware that this was happening. She had thought she had been getting such better around this, but now she feels it happening again"

"Bigend, a formidable practioner of the other side of this dance, seems genuinely incapable of imagining that others wouldn't want to do whatever it is that he wants them to. Margot had cited this as both the most problematic and, she admitted, most effective aspect of his sexuality: He approached every partner as though they already had slept together. Just as, Cayce was now finding, in business, every Bigend deal was treated as a done deal, signed and sealed. If you hadn't signed with Bigend, he made you feel as though you had, but somehow had forgotten that you had."

"There was something amorphous, foglike, about his will: It spread out around you, tenuous, almost invisible; you found yourself moving mysteriously, in directions other than your own."

copyright 2003 by William Gibson


I had to buy new jeans last night. I'm down to a 38 waist, from my maximum of 42. 30 pounds since January. It reminds me of the time I was showering in the co-ed shower at one of the dorms at the University of California at Davis. I was sitting in the shower, letting the water spraw down over me in one of the few pleasurable moments of that time of my life. Looking down I noticed my stomach...that wasn't there...gee...I've lost weight. And I was glad...because weight had been a problem in my young life.