I have two shelves full of records. That might not seem like a lot. I see movies where a character has rows and rows of records, piled up on sagging shelves. I can't understand where they get all that music. I think even if all my CDs were records, they wouldn't take up that much space.

Maybe they would. I don't know.

I have three juggling balls. They are made of beads held together by sewn-up panels of vinyl. I can't juggle very well, but I'm working on it. I'm trying. Sometimes I practice.

I have a guitar that I rarely play. It was my brother's guitar, but he didn't want it anymore and so, several years ago, he gave it to me. I can't tune it, really, so I use an electric tuner that I bought when I was in college so I could tune my electric bass, which I also still have. I really never play that anymore. The amp stopped working on a regular basis a bunch of time ago; I think it was around the same time that I bought the electric tuner.

My girlfriend really shaped the place up today. It was her day off. She works most Saturdays. When I was home alone on my first day off yesterday, I did a lot of work around the house. I say this partially to make myself feel better for the fact that I didn't really help her today, but also because I sort of did some stuff yesterday. It wasn't a huge thing, but I did as much as I could. I have this badly sprained ankle thing and being on my feet around the house yesterday sort of screwed it up worse. I took off my sock last night and parts of my foot were blue. Today it hurts, and, also, my hamstring on that leg is really starting to tighten up, since I can't extend it when I walk.

So I spent a lot of today sitting in the recliner reading and watching television. I read some short works by Kafka and watched the NHL All-Star Game. I also did some writing, but very little. While my girlfriend was sorting through this immense pile of paperwork that has accumulated since May 2003 in various baskets, shelves, and not-so-hidden-enough corners of the house, she found two checks in unopened envelopes made out to me from the split of some crazy stock I own that I think has something to do with the couple of shares my uncle gave me when I graduated from college. The two checks totalled about $15. She also found a ten-dollar bill somewhere. So after she was done sorting through everything, we went out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant. They forgot her rice, but she had a nice dessert and I had two drafts and some good food. We're really poor, especially lately. It was a treat. The waiter sucked, so I only tipped him $2.50. The bill came to $22 with the crappy tip, so we still made out three bucks ahead of the game for the night.

I have about a dozen notebooks in a few different places throughout the apartment. I started writing in them about six or seven years ago. Early on, I found a particular model notebook that I really liked and so I've been using that one for a while now, so most of my filled-in notebooks look the same. In those notebooks is an entire novel and more short stories, sketches, reflections, poems and just nonsense than I can even begin to imagine. Maybe when I die they'll be published in a journal that someone will give someone else for Christmas, because it isn't the kind of thing that the gift-receipient would ever have bought for himself.

I don't know about that. But it's amazing that so many words could have come from someone like me who wasn't even very much aware that they were accumulating so quickly. The words have just sort of fallen into the white spaces over time, and now there sure are a lot of them. I think I probably have more words in notebooks that I've written than there are notes in all the records and CDs that surround me. And I can't juggle, but I keep trying, slowly, barely even realizing that I'm doing it, so maybe someday I'll be able to juggle fiery batons of steel.

Wouldn't that be something?


- posted by seanmh @ 11:40 PM