Today is all better. The twenty-sixth of December, however, was a nightmare.

The day we got our bookcase was supposed to be a really happy day.

Several weeks ago, I ordered a custom made bookcase in a gorgeous shade of blue, slightly weathered and well waxed. It had to fit a very tight space, and so I had it made extra deep to accommodate the majority of our many, many books. I also had the crowning on top designed so that the bookshelf could stand easily beside a wall on the right. Standing over 6 feet tall, it’s an impressive piece of furniture to behold.

It was delivered sooner than expected. We had not yet made the room ready by the time the call came informing us that it would arrive between two and four o’clock in the afternoon. A flurry of activity ensued, and tensions rose as our room took on a distinctly deconstructed appearance. Trouble is, that tension sent Kisha headlong into the worst panic attack she’s ever had. She hyperventillated bad enough to pass out twice. My beloved suffers from chronic PTSD brought about by events in her life that are not my place to discuss here, and panic attacks are a serious issue when they occur. To help combat them, Kisha has a prescription for Ativan. She took the usual dose when the panic started to rise. Unfortunately, the pills apparently failed to do their job, and in her panicked state she took several more, then several more. Sometime during the sever panic attack she ingested all the remaining pills in the bottle plus the remaining pills in another bottle of Ativan. I was not aware that she had done so until she said, in a somewhat muddled and worried tone, “It’s all right… [but] I just took a whole bottle of Ativan”. more…

Ah. My Web site. Hrm. This must be what it’s like to move in to a really nice new home. Firstly, I can’t really believe I’m here; I feel caught in transit. Secondly, there’s this feeling of having not successfully, let alone fully, unpacked. I have all this room and no idea where to put everything, or how I want it to look (to me or anyone else). And I don’t even want to think about the why of my moving here or the simultaneous events that were going on when I did. It’s not like the place feels tainted by them, but you’ll understand that I’m still somewhat recovering from what proved to be a very bad time for me and my family.

It has taken me well over a month just to personalize my blogroll.

I’ve this image in my head of friends dropping by (not even parking or turning the engine off, mind you) and wondering if a porchlight means anything anymore when none of the other lights inside are ever on. Anyone peering through the looking glass of their computer screen might intuit the boxes – some empty, some full, the rest somewhere between – and wads of packing stuff strewn about (newspaper, foam, squishy bags of air), or sense the presence of many empty Top Ramen boxes – the lingering scent of MSG, blended with the scents of late-night-coffee, Jo Malone’s Pomegranate Noir, stale smoke and unwashed laundry, countless books.

Not to mention recent giftmas season additions, the wrapping paper and packages still lying beside those already opened. I’ve no clue where we’re presently going to put the Stanley Kubrick Archives and the signed edition of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Curse of Lono, though, thankfully, the presentation copy of The Moon of Hoa Binh fits securely in the closet.

In any case, I am here. Sometimes – were you in the right place at the right time – you might observe me standing outside, gazing in through that same looking glass, furrowing my brow and ruminating over the big what-to-do. More often than not, though, I am, of late, at work, or sleeping, or spending time with my beloved, my immediate family. I am living the life of a relatively average human being who lives here at the beginning of the (so-called) twenty-first century in America, trying to find my way like anyone else. It’s not always, for me, as a modus operandi, something conducive to blogging. Or to doing much else. I’m behind on reading numerous editions of The New Yorker, and I’ve completely failed to even crack the pages of the most recent instalment of the nearly completed J.K. Rowling opus, though, to be completely forthcoming, I have managed to see Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, and the VIP room at Paradise Showgirls.

If you are dropping by, I hope that this entry satisfies you. Check out my updated blogroll and know that I’ll be back jasaic. Sooner or later, I’m bound to get things set up the way I want them.

Mars continues to recede as slowly as it approached, and with it goes the predominant feelings of these last few weeks. I think my mind is clearing a bit, now, but it will be a few more days until I have the time to take stock in it and assess the situation I am in.

But let me say this much: I know that this time – encompassing mere months – has been a hard time for a lot of people. Earthquake, hurricanes, tornado; genocide, ongoing wars, civil unrest, terrorism; all we need is a global pandemic (which may, in fact, be waiting in the wings) and death will have a full house.

That I and my family have been dealing with death – both recent and imminent – closer to home than, say, Darfur or Iraq, Indiana or New Orleans: what can I reasonably say of that? At what point does one’s personal grief get lost in the world’s?

We all know that it does not. If anything, the reverse is what often happens. Thus, as children starve and soldiers die, I grieve all the more over the death of our beloved cat and feel the poignant anticipation of my mother’s death. And who would blame me? That which is of my life is truly mine, whether good or ill. In context, my experience of the world is immediate and real in a way that upstages the experiences of others, even though I am no less aware of the reality of others’ experiences.

I want to stress, though, that I am no less aware of the reality of others’ experiences. I am aware of where in the world I am, aware of the differences, in kind and degree, between my experience and the experiences of others. More pointedly, I am aware that to a significant degree I am a very fortunate person, and I know – or rather, believe – that I must consider just how fortunate I am if I am to come to an honest understanding of my own circumstances in the world.

When we arrived at the animal hospital, her breathing was shockingly ragged. I don’t know what I expected, but I’d swear that one of the assistants there said Pinkie was more alert and active. It crossed my mind that somehow we might find ourselves bringing her home, that somehow she’d recover, get better, get back to her old self. But that wasn’t going to happen. more…

The sun set tonight like an embarrassed pumpkin, its carved face, with toothy smile and triangle eyes, turned away. The moon was nowhere to be seen, but I knew it was blanched. Howsoever the day could have gone, it wound up the way it did because of how it actually went. Today was a bad, bad day. So of course I decided to start my first-ever official web log by talking about it. Perhaps I believe that there’s nowhere but up to go from here, but I’m not sure I’ve ever believed that wholeheartedly. more…