waiting for go(v)ot(e)

hey pete, thanks a lot for the note of encouragement. it was much appreciated.

i don't know why i get this way. but i wish i did (know why), and i wish i didn't (get this way). a lot of the time i feel like i don't have any control over my emotions, and the overwhelming fog of helplessness beats me down until i can't help but think of myself as stupid and incompetant. after all, if i can't even control little bits of my own mind, how in the hell am i supposed to accomplish anything worthwhile in real life.

and it probably doesn't help any that my more rational hemisphere (i can't even remember which is which anymore) is fully aware of what's going on, and just lacks the ability to do anything about it. i tried going to all the shrinks the health centers at oxy and caltech had, but none of them would take me seriously, simply because i was capable of sitting down and holding a calm and logical conversation with them. the fact that i knew i was fucked up seemed to them like proof that i could just go home and fix it up myself. well, i try to. and i fail. and it's depressing. and i'm tired of talking about this. if you have questions i'll answer them, but otherwise, we'll postpone this dreadful self-analysis until some other day.

***

in other news, a little over a year later, i finally got around to walking over to the sports center. well, to be fair, since it's shared with UNIL, and on their campus, it is about a mile away from my office. but anyway, i found out that they had yoga classes on tuesdays. so i wanted to try it out, since it's been a whole year since i've had a real instructor. but it was disappointing, for two reasons. first, i was all jazzed, 'cause i thought i'd probably be able to understand the french by now; as it turns out, this was hardly the case. i guess i need to work on my body part vocabulary some more, and there were a bunch of other unfamiliar idioms that she used to describe various spacings, and relative positions of appendages and things. second, it was a wimpy yoga class. this was the more disappointing. the first 45 minute class was supposed to be an 'introduction,' so i was expecting it to be light, but at the end i hadn't even broken a sweat. then the second 45 minute class should have been 'advanced,' so i expected it to get better. no banana. it was a little more involved, but it still didn't feel like exercise. this kind of class is why people have the misconception that yoga is just a pansy meditation kind of thing. sigh. i miss patti. (my instructor from caltech; the one who converted me to ashtanga.)

what with the nine hour time difference and all, i'm only vaguely aware of the fact that the country is in voting upheaval at the moment. i'm trying not to think about it too much, since i'll be fast asleep long before they anounce the results. i really hope it goes well. sure, i'm slightly safer than most, having a large, atlantic ocean shaped buffer in between me and the bad guys, but i really think the world has had about all it can take of this imbecility. god, i hope we win. not that i think it will be much better with the new guy, but it will be a little better---and like i said before, when faced with a choice between bad and worse, the sad, sad truth of it is that we have to go with bad. well, after the last four years, i think we all know that "it could definitely be worse..."