thinking about comforting people
(I hope talking about what I do doesn't make it uncomfortable for people I comfort, but I'm doing it anyway)
( a lot of this is gonna just be all-lowercase short paragraphs with no periods )
Entry tags:
The king ponders on his porcelain throne...
Before: "Hmm, I need to take a crap. I should go to the bathroom."
After: "So I'll pack the running clothes and an empty water bottle tonight, and tomorrow morning I will stow them in my locker at the ASME lounge while I'm working. At 4 o'clock, I will knock off work, retrieve the items from my locker, and proceed to the Eppley Recreation Center. There, I will borrow a lock and a locker, change into the running clothes, and stow everything but the key to the lock and the water bottle (which I will fill before departing). This done, I will walk to the outdoor track and do intervals (400 m running, 200 m walking) until I have expended the water in the bottle. Then I will return to the ERC, shower, change into my street clothes, refill the bottle, and walk up to the Stamp to catch the 6:05 shuttle home. In the unlikely event that I am too late to catch the shuttle, I will take the bus or the subway, depending. Finis."
I amuse myself.
After: "So I'll pack the running clothes and an empty water bottle tonight, and tomorrow morning I will stow them in my locker at the ASME lounge while I'm working. At 4 o'clock, I will knock off work, retrieve the items from my locker, and proceed to the Eppley Recreation Center. There, I will borrow a lock and a locker, change into the running clothes, and stow everything but the key to the lock and the water bottle (which I will fill before departing). This done, I will walk to the outdoor track and do intervals (400 m running, 200 m walking) until I have expended the water in the bottle. Then I will return to the ERC, shower, change into my street clothes, refill the bottle, and walk up to the Stamp to catch the 6:05 shuttle home. In the unlikely event that I am too late to catch the shuttle, I will take the bus or the subway, depending. Finis."
I amuse myself.
Entry tags:
Stream of Consciousness: Before Art Class
The drawing class studio was ... disorderly is probably the word. There were the strange, rectangular frames stacked towards one wall (they looked like a modern art exhibit, but were probably some kind of stools), a strange miscellany of artifacts, mostly in unusable condition, littering another wall, and a sort of low, large table in the middle. My imagination suggested that the models might pose on that table when the time came for students to draw them.
One of the first things I tried to do, waiting in the room for class to start, was identify the purpose of the debris in the rear. My eye caught a skeleton - for anatomy lessons, perhaps, though it was broken. A tricycle, sans wheels, lay on its rusted frame several feet away, in the midst of another pile of things. I began to compose a sort of still-life in my head, of a broken skeleton (there was more than one, there may have been a skull I didn't see), lying as if it had fallen from driving the tricycle. It would be a post-apocalyptic scene, perhaps.
After a couple minutes of such contemplation, I decided to perch on one of the numerous round high stools in the room. They were those metal stools, four legs, a circular frame with wood in the middle, another circle acting as a support lower down. I was not even settled when another individual came in - one of those lucky, healthy people who could be thirty or could be fifty. A moment's exchange of words revealed him to be the professor. He advised me to sit in the other half of the room, telling me that he would be speaking from that end. I did so, grabbing for myself a chair with a hard back.
As I sat there, deciding whether to occupy myself with a few moments' drawing or with the reading of more online fiction, the teacher began to arrange the tables and easels for the class. Observing my laptop, he asked me how to connect to the local wireless internet - I answered in a somewhat muddled fashion, but told him what I thought he would need to know. Soon after, he suggested I review the handouts he had spread out before class, and moved on to arrange something else.
There were four handouts, neatly stacked. In a moment, I had gathered a copy of each, and returned to my stool. I was amused to see that the inventory of items I had found for the other drawing section did not apply. Reading through the others (skimming, rather) told me little that was unexpected, and less that I remember, although I was amused to see "John Cage" attributed as author of one of them.
That reading complete, I found myself again dithering over the two options, sketchbook or laptop. In the end, I found myself needing neither - the ten minutes I had to spend vanished well before I reached an conclusion. I grabbed my notebook for the class, and was ready when the teacher began.
One of the first things I tried to do, waiting in the room for class to start, was identify the purpose of the debris in the rear. My eye caught a skeleton - for anatomy lessons, perhaps, though it was broken. A tricycle, sans wheels, lay on its rusted frame several feet away, in the midst of another pile of things. I began to compose a sort of still-life in my head, of a broken skeleton (there was more than one, there may have been a skull I didn't see), lying as if it had fallen from driving the tricycle. It would be a post-apocalyptic scene, perhaps.
After a couple minutes of such contemplation, I decided to perch on one of the numerous round high stools in the room. They were those metal stools, four legs, a circular frame with wood in the middle, another circle acting as a support lower down. I was not even settled when another individual came in - one of those lucky, healthy people who could be thirty or could be fifty. A moment's exchange of words revealed him to be the professor. He advised me to sit in the other half of the room, telling me that he would be speaking from that end. I did so, grabbing for myself a chair with a hard back.
As I sat there, deciding whether to occupy myself with a few moments' drawing or with the reading of more online fiction, the teacher began to arrange the tables and easels for the class. Observing my laptop, he asked me how to connect to the local wireless internet - I answered in a somewhat muddled fashion, but told him what I thought he would need to know. Soon after, he suggested I review the handouts he had spread out before class, and moved on to arrange something else.
There were four handouts, neatly stacked. In a moment, I had gathered a copy of each, and returned to my stool. I was amused to see that the inventory of items I had found for the other drawing section did not apply. Reading through the others (skimming, rather) told me little that was unexpected, and less that I remember, although I was amused to see "John Cage" attributed as author of one of them.
That reading complete, I found myself again dithering over the two options, sketchbook or laptop. In the end, I found myself needing neither - the ten minutes I had to spend vanished well before I reached an conclusion. I grabbed my notebook for the class, and was ready when the teacher began.