I was going to post a deep and reflective birthday post, but this is much more urgent

Can you drink Attic milk?

This question drifted up from the nether reaches of consciousness, as I was trying to convince my brain that it really did want another hour or two of sleep, despite the bright sun and the sticky green leaves outside my window and the kids hollering at each other from the sidewalk. I was quite lucid for most of the time surrounding this question, thinking more or less alternately about my in-progress assessment of pragmatism and objectivism and about love. But in the midst of this, the question was asked: Can you drink Attic milk?

I don't remember who was asking; it was definitely another voice, not native to my identity. It followed naturally enough from the conversation which preceded it (of which I can't remember a word), but I felt, a minute after it had been asked, that there was more to it than appeared on the surface. It was a test, of sorts; much was expected from my answer. No mundane "yes" or "no" would do, I must try if I could to be witty, or insightful, or encyclopedic.

This posed a problem because I had no idea what the question meant. Attic milk? What is Attic milk? If, as I first guessed, it was milk left over from the time of Attic Greek, my answer was easy: a dryish, deadpan response about the milk's probably having spoiled by now. But even that was problematic. Surely milk from the 5th century BC would have long ago not only spoiled but hardened, crusted, turned black and finally discomposed entirely. My answer contained its modicum of wit, but it left an opening for my interrogator to up the ante, to come back with a correction which, if also phrased wittily, would leave him or her indisputably victorious in the conversation.

On the other hand, the "attic" could mean the upper storage area of a house. If so, did that mean milk that is stored in an attic? What special properties would such milk have? Intuitively I imagined it being very cold, and therefore couldn't see how it would be different from regular old refrigerator milk. On reflection, though, I'm recalling that most of the attics I've been in were oppressively hot. In this case the milk would probably be well on its way to following the other kind of Attic milk, and also the attic would smell horrible. But even so I feel there must be more to it than this. If attic milk is a substance distinctive enough to have its own name, there must be something particular about it, beyond its storage temperature. Only I can't imagine what.

Wikipedia's disambiguation page lists, apart from these two usages, only the names of three companies: the US and Canadian branches of a record label, and a German computer game developer. I can't make any sense of milk in either of these contexts.

The interrogator is gone, of course... disappeared almost immediately after posing the question. I haven't even had an opportunity to pass or fail the test contained in it. I suppose this is a good thing, since I'm pretty much at a loss. Can you drink Attic milk? Can you drink attic milk? Attic milk...

Well? Can you?

one tuesday evening...

I think it's amusing the things that happen when I don't eat consistently.

Act I
Here's the story of my day: I get home from work at 7:30 am, as usual. I go to sleep, as usual when I've just gotten home from work at 7:30 am. I wake up around 3 pm, as usual.

I shower, blah-de-blah, I marvel again at how easy my hair is now that I've removed most of it. I decide against eating anything. I'm not hungry, and I'd rather get to Jamie's soon. So I drink a glass of juice and count that as breakfast.

Mike drops by, which is awesome and UNusual (although he said he was coming, so it isn't a surprise or anything.) By the bye, I think it's grand that when people drop by to see me, usually they're dropping by Jamie's rather than my house. No one even asks if I'm at home anymore. Why would I be?

Anyway, Kurt comes in a little later to finish the game we began yesterday. By now it's getting onto 7 pm, which means I haven't eaten a meal or anything decent, really, for about 16 hours. Just the juice, and some coffee... oh, and two cookies that I got because they were fresh-baked. One reason I like hanging out at Jamie's better than at home is they bake cookies and make sure to tell me about it, if I haven't noticed, so I can have some while they're still hot.

It's about halfway through the game that my mood starts to drop. Kurt says a few irritating things, as usual, and I know I'm in trouble when, instead of rolling my eyes and laughing at him, I look at him blankly, or maybe with a tolerant half-smile, I'm not sure, because I have the distinct sensation of some hot and slightly acidic liquid sloshing around in my stomach. This sensation I have come to recognize as a particular type of anger, only as it happens nothing in Kurt's remarks has merited this strong a reaction. About ten minutes later it dawns on me that I am food-deprived, and therefore moody. Very well.

After this my play becomes slow... I am quite chilly but my skin feels hot. The beginnings of a headache are developing directly behind the bridge of my nose. No one is paying attention to me... in fact no one seems to have the least bit of interest in me, except Kurt, and that's only as an opponent who's taking way too much time to play moves in a game which she is, anyway, losing. Meanwhile, the part of my brain that doesn't lose its grip on reality no matter what mood-factors are in play is telling me to hurry up and finish the game so I can go home and eat some food.

I finish the game; I lose by 18 points. Respectable. My post-game banter is lackluster, however, though he tries hard to get me riled into saying that next game I will beat him with just a six-stone handicap and one eye blindfolded, or some such ridiculous claim. I recognize that my ability to socialize is severely impaired, that any form of interaction will only depress me acutely, and that the best thing I can do is keep my words short and get out of there with as much grace as possible.

Act II
Trader Joe's makes a terrific Portugese bean & sausage soup. This is my dinner, along with some good thick slices of double Gloucester with Stilton. I love the way Stilton just sort of melts if you let it sit on your tongue, and I love the way the white bean in the soup mush against the roof of your mouth. It is an immensely satisfying meal. Meanwhile I have been flipping through the TV channel menu (these late nights are starting to bring back my TV-watching habit), and found that TCM is airing The Thin Man. I feel like I've seen this before, but I must not have, because none of it was familiar.

Five minutes in I have decided that I want to be Nick and Nora Charles. Or one of them, at least, with a suitable partner to make up the other half. They're more or less a wealthy, American, alcoholic version of Tommy and Tuppence, and we all know how I feel about Tommy and Tuppence. (Well, Molly does anyway.) This is a very funny movie, but I find that I am laughing aloud a good deal more than I normally do when watching a movie by myself. I note this casually but don't fret about it, only wishing that there were someone else here who would appreciate it as much as I do.

About ten minutes later I remember that eating after a too-long fast tends to cause a brief spike of euphoria. That's probably why I'm laughing so hard. No doubt this is my body's way of reminding me that yes, food is good and yes, we would appreciate being regularly supplied with it, thank you very much. I wonder if it works, though... rather like when we used to give our dog a treat after she would run away and come back. It's supposed to reward her for coming back, but doesn't it simply encourage her to run away more often, so that she can enjoy the treat upon returning?

No, I'm not going to start starving myself as a way of inducing a cheap high. It wreaks havoc on my go game, anyway.

The Thin Man is a grand movie. It sparks a number of reflections, one of which being that there's something sexy about married people sleeping in separate beds, whether in the same room or a door apart. I wonder why it's so not-done in modern American culture?

Act III
The movie is over, and it's only 11. I won't be ready for bed for hours. What am I to do? That was such a fun movie... why oh why was there no one here to enjoy it with me?

This last reflection is the subject of many minutes' ruminating, mostly in circles. My social circle is too small. I shouldn't have left Atlanta. I should move to Chicago. I'm too stuck in my routine, I need to break out. I begin to understand, for the first time in many a year, the appeal of dating... spending time doing something enjoyable with a new person, with all the curiosity and brimming possibilities. The idea of meeting and interacting with new people is so much less wearying with all my newfound honesty...

But anyway I'm lonely now, and no future break in routine, even if it happened tomorrow (which it won't, because I work tomorrow, and this thought, too, depresses me), will fix that. I flip to other stations; Frasier distracts me for a while. This seems to happen every so often, that I find myself suddenly with great stretches of empty time, and fall into a well of loneliness until I develop a new and satisfying routine. All last fall and winter Kurt and James and I went out nearly every night that I wasn't working, so I didn't have any of those sitting-at-home-looking-for-things-to-watch-to-distract-myself nights (and when I did, it was a treat.) Now everybody's taken up other activities. And I, as usual, am the last one to recognize this, so I don't keep pace with them and find new activities of my own, at least not until after several weeks of these sitting-at-home-depressed nights. And anyway it's not that easy to find new activities. Especially not for someone who's more or less nocturnal. I could go to the iHop and stay there for hours, but am I likely to meet people there, people I want to spend time with? And it's people I need. If only it was NaNo month... I could go online and talk with all kinds of crazy aspiring novelists, and meet a bunch of the local ones. Next November is too far away to wait for, though.

I read blogs. I download five more songs by the King's Singers, mostly madrigals. I cry while listening to If Music Be the Food of Love. That's the low point... after that, I start to pick up again. I begin to see my loneliness as an experience, to be absorbed, relished, but most of all used. How to use it? Why, of course, to write. And write I do. Thanks for reading.

an evening with Emily

Togetherness does not necessitate conversation...



...although if you laugh aloud at something you are reading, you will probably be asked to share it.











If you can possibly manage to eat your hummus with raw garlic and olive oil, it is highly recommended that you do so.




And let it be known that if Emily ever meets Colonel Brandon, she will marry him on the spot.

The Wrapper

There is a yellow bubble gum wrapper on the floor, lying just beside the crack where two slabs of cement meet. The girl in the pink glasses has passed by it three times today, and this is her fourth. The first time she was in a hurry, late for the second day in a row, and so she didn't really notice it, didn't even know she had seen it until the second time, when she saw it on her way to a meeting and realized she was seeing it again. The third time she saw it (though she must have passed by it once more, coming back from the meeting, but was talking to someone and didn't see it then), it occurred to her that she might pick it up. But she was on her way to lunch, and had a crossword puzzle she wanted to finish, so time was precious.

Now, however, lunch is done, and so is the crossword puzzle, except for one square in the lower right corner, where either an 'a' or a 'u' might go, and she doesn't know enough about astrophysics to get the cross-clue (she could look it up, of course, but then she will have already lost.) And she is about forty-five seconds ahead of schedule, which is of course ample time to pick up a bubble gum wrapper and throw it in the trash, and so there is no earthly reason why she shouldn't. And in fact her step falters for just a minute as she passes it by, but she keeps walking toward her office. She is surprised that it's still there, that in all the hundreds of people who have passed by that day not one of them has picked it up... but then, neither has she, and then wonders how many of them have thought this same thing, passing by, have noted it each time (except that once when she was talking to someone) and wondered who was going to pick it up. And out of all these people who might have picked it up, how strange if she should be the one to actually do it-- and how many of them, passing once again by the spot where it had been, would think of her, though of course not knowing that it was her, wondering who had finally picked up the wrapper, just as she would be wondering, now, if she had passed by this fourth time and found it gone.

At this thought she nearly turns around to pick it up, but by now it is several yards behind her, and she can no longer spare the time. It has seized hold of her thoughts by now, and she keeps thinking of it through the afternoon, as she sorts papers and transcribes recordings. Will it still be there when she leaves? That is the great question. It is almost unfathomable to think that, out of hundreds, not one would pick it up... unless (and this possibility has not escaped her) no one else has noticed it at all. If it is still there, then either no one but her has noticed it, or they have noticed it and have all failed to pick it up for reasons similar to hers. If it is not there, then at least one other person has noticed it, and more, has stooped to do the extraordinary. It is chiefly on this possibility that she dwells, and thinking of this person she is both a little jealous and a little in love.

Leaving the office, she fixes her eyes eagerly on the ground. It is possible, likely even, that in the back-and-forth motion of the day it has been kicked one way or the other, so she begins looking before she reaches the spot by the crack where it was lying before. It is not in any of the corners leading up to the spot, or under the doors where a stray bubble gum wrapper might be likely to lodge. She comes up to the right crack on the floor-- no wrapper. She looks to the left, to the right, down the hall-- not there. She goes on a few more steps to see if it has been kicked further in this direction. Her heartbeat has actually quickened. She must drink less coffee.

No. It's not there. Someone has, really has, picked it up. And what does this mean? She finds, now it comes to the point, that she's forgotten what significance this is supposed to have. Feeling suddenly deflated, she continues down the hall. She can't keep herself from sweeping the floor with her eyes, just to be sure. But it is not to be found. So someone has picked it up... or it's been kicked through a doorway, or stuck to someone's shoe walking by. That extraordinary person whom she envisioned, that one of a hundred who actually bent to pick up the wrapper, is no more real and substantiated than he was before.

Never mind. She shakes her shoulders a little, impatiently, trying to dispel the absurd depression which has settled over her. She takes a deep breath. And, to prove that she is all right, that it doesn't matter in the slightest, that she is in fact quite happy (after all, the workday is over and tomorrow is Friday), she smiles brightly at the janitor who is sweeping the hall.