Random Thoughts

1. Every so often, a phantom buzz will vibrate on some part of my body. It could be anywhere, the shoulder, the forearm, the solar plexus. The sensation is exactly like receiving a phone call when my cell is on vibrate.

But on my abdomen? Or my kneecap?

Other people have noted the same sensation. A buzz, an urgent search for the phone, someone is trying to get a hold of me, the discovery that the cell is nowhere near the ribcage.

Would this occur if cell phones had no vibrate function? Is this an outgrowth of our increasing reachability? Perhaps the body is reacting with a dormant fight or flight mechanism. Phones evoke tremendous anxiety and yet are endemic to our culture. As we adapt to higher and higher levels of observation, with cameras and GPS trackers sewn into the hems of our jeans, is our body alerting us to the virtual eyes and ears everywhere?

Or perhaps this phantom buzz has existed since the dawn of humankind. Cavemen felt it and could not attach it to anything external, so it went unnoticed. When Goody Hawthorne of old Salem told the minister about "dragonfly wings beating beneath the skin of my thigh", he probably had her burned at the stake. In World War II, when PFC Garrett complained of a buzzing sensation in his armpit, perhaps he was sent to the psych ward for battle fatigue.

I wonder what other modern inventions have caused or illuminated strange bodily reactions?


2. I am curious and nervous at the prospect of living alone. I'm not worried about loneliness or safety (though I think those are wise areas of concern) but I suspect that certain heretofore uncultivated eccentricities will finally be allowed to unfurl their great wings.

I'm not thinking I'm going to go all Marquis de Sade and write on the walls in my own filth (however, I suppose I shouldn't damn myself with brazen pronouncements like that.). I have always considered myself a tiny bit alien, and I wonder that I might lose, incrementally, the parts of myself that make me human.

Admitting to such a tenuous grasp on my own humanity should send up red flags, I guess. Time will tell. Hopefully, the great experiment will begin at the beginning of February.

3. Holy Fucking Shit. It is cold outside.

Every year it's a new shock. I've been living here for 16 years and when Winter shoves me up against the lockers season in and season out, I respond like its the first time, every time: I cry, give it my lunch money and run and tell the principal...who does nothing.

Today, I wont be such a weenie. Today, I'm prepared. Today, My lunch money is all. in. pennies.

Take THAT.

4. I swear, the worst place to drop or knock over anything is the bathroom.