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Yesterday, lying in bed, on the verge of falling asleep, I was suddenly struck with the strangest sense of not being here at all, not quite. I'd almost jumped up, turned on the computer (since this is the kind of weirdness that you can't actually bother real life people who'd have to answer the phone with) and posted something like, Tell me I'm real, tell me I'm more than just this shadow I think I am... I never wanted a touch, any touch, someone else's hands on my body so badly, just to tell me I exist outside my own mind.

(no subject)

Attempted the first morning run in three weeks & barely managed six lengths (some six or seven km) through the park in a rather longer time than I care to mention. Gah.

And that's about all the activity I can face today, except hop over to my parents' place to water their plants and possibly do my laundry, since I'm running out of towels.

I'm tired of feeling drained all the time. It's been two weeks since I've had the energy to do more on weekends than quietly collapse and take every minute of rest I can get. Three weeks since the last morning run, since the last time I went out to take photos. Thursday at work I had what may or may not have been a minor breakdown, sitting in out storeroom-cum-kitchen for half an hour, unable to stop crying, for no real reason except that suddenly it was all too much. I'd dragged myself to work the week before despite the less than pleasant side effects of the antibiotics, because I'd stupidly believed that things would immediately & miraculously improve afterwards, which of course they didn't, and suddenly it felt that there was nothing left of my life but work, sleep and feeling sick. Over the last couple of years I (think I) managed to address and accept the inadequacies and imperfections of my life, the way it fell rather short of my (and, probably the greater problem, everyone else's) expectations, my inability to form relationships, the lack of perspective and challenge of my work-situation (Perhaps this isn't the best or healthiest way of dealing with things, but I know I don't have the strength to make any fundamental changes, at least not at the moment, and the alternative would be to drive myself into depression again by constantly comparing myself to some day-dream ideal I'll never reach, and hating myself and everyone happier and more successful in the process.), but it's a fragile balance, and too easily shaken up even by minor crises.


All right, body, I get it. I'm rethinking my relationship with you. I'll treat you better. Just get healthy again, pretty please?


* * *


In the meantime, lethargically watched too much tv, not to mention all of SV S4.


Read, although over a longer span of time than just the last three weeks:

Ya,sar Kemal, Mehmed, mein Falke (beautiful, although I prefer his later books).

G. di Lampedusa, Der Leopard (very vivid and evocative, liked it a lot, even if it isn't a book I can actually connect to).

E.M.Forster, The Longest Journey (a re-read, still/again love it, sad and strange and very beautiful), A Room With A View (another re-read, never my favourite among his books, but not-quite-light and not-quite-sweet, and I'm genuinely fond of it) and Where Angels Fear To Tread (this one I barely have a recollection of having read before, and for some reason still don't like it too much. It's not bad of course, but, IMO, too academically constructed. With all of Forster's novels his characters and plots are very much vehicles for the message he wants to convey, but here more than anywhere else none of the characters strike me as alive nor their actions as natural, rather than illustrating some point.)

Naomi Novik (naominovik), Throne Of Jade and Black Powder War: Now there's something that freaks me out a little about reviewing a book when the author's only a mouse-click or two away, especially with the culture of squee'n'gush prevalent on livejournal... Not that she'll ever read it, but still. It's not as if i didn't like the two sequels, but I wasn't as charmed and delighted as with the first book. The writing is good, there's plenty of lovely world building, enough plot to keep the story going, and I rather adore the dragon characters, but for me the problem is that for all the miles covered geographically, emotionally it just doesn't go anywhere. The first book was carried by the development of the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire, but this is from the beginning established as such a strong, mutually exclusive bond, to which even lovers must always come second, that there is little room for other emotional connections to form, and despite certain philosophical differences and the angstiness over possibly being parted in ToJ, the Laurence-Temeraire relationship has little room for development left, either unless Laurence should discover some Chinese spell to turn him into a dragon and they live happily ever after.

But then again, the problem might not be with the novels at all, but rather lie with the fact that I've made it through all but two and a half of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels before my exasperation with his rambling style of narration won out over my fondness for his characters, and perhaps I'm a little hesitant to start all over again with O'Brian light with dragons...