Frogshake

I obsess about the most ridiculous things or rather about unimportant, wee parts of my life. Not that I have OCD – or at least I doubt it very much – but sometimes I feel a little out of me, as if standing next to me, wondering what on earth I’m up to. At times a problem totally consumes all my thoughts and energy, and I am unable to help it, bitching at myself afterwards for not having done anything of any importance whatsoever.

Sometimes, when some stupid problem grabs my attention and takes it hostage, I am unable to let go and am unable to concentrate on the task at hand. Be that work for my studies or trivial things like watching TV. My thoughts drift off, circle around the problem like vultures, ponder it, weight and measure it. After a couple of minutes I usually realize that I’ve missed a couple of minutes of the movie I was watching without even noticing it. Then I usually start roaming the house. I walk up and down the stairs, into every room, feeling restless. Maybe there’s a solution under this pillow? I can feel the problem manifest itself in my stomach, poking and thrusting, begging to be let go. Little bugs dancing under my skin. “This is madness!” I think but continue obsessing anyway. Crazy indeed.

On days like this I tend to get literally nothing done. I go from doing this to doing that, not actually doing anything but waiting for the next day. In the evening I usually start to feel really, really bad. I go like “Shit, I haven’t accomplished anything today,” but then decide not to start working now and do more work tomorrow instead (when has that ever worked for anybody?). By that time I’ve stopped obsessing, for whatever reason. The problem always fades away; always gets freed and runs off. Unfortunately, with it goes the day…

When I woke up this morning I reached out to find my alarm clock, not yet knowing where my head and my feet were. I successfully distinguished my alarm from a remote control, dragged it toward my eyes and the first thought that ricochet through my mind was “CMON!”. I’d slept too long. Not that I had an appointment or anything, but I’d planned on getting stuff done today. Strike 1!

After having sorted some of my thoughts I saw my bonsai tree…and realized that I hadn’t watered him since last week’s Saturday. Poor guy. Strike 2.

Then I dragged my still lifeless body to the bathroom, doing my morning routine which involves putting in my contacts. Of course, gravity overpowered me and one of them fell from my finger right to the floor. Here’s the thing: looking for a contact on a white floor, being half-blind because you don’t know where the hell your glasses are, is some rather mild fun. Strike 3.

Three strikes. I am out for the day, I get it. However, fate seemed to disagree. I bet fate was sitting there, watching my morning go to hell and thought “hm, what could I do, what could I do next? There gotta be something that’ll push him over the edge and make him kill himself.” As it turns out, fate really is that way. I sat down in front of my laptop, checking emails, when I heard a familiar yet hate evoking sound: carnival music. For some unknown reason, which I’d rather not know, a carnival marching band passed by my house, which kind of is in the middle of nowhere, at 10AM. 10AM!!! What is wrong with those people?! Strike 4.

On the plus side: I didn’t kill myself. That’ll show fate.

Apparently, I’m scary. The way a person of color scares a white supremacist. I was sitting in the bus a couple of days ago, minding my own business, when a mother with her child sat down opposite of me. Immediately, mom started inspecting me, meanwhile not listening to whatever boring story her daughter was telling. Mommy’s eyes wandered from my shoes to the top of my head, then to her daughter and what she said was “let’s go sit somewhere else.” Yeah, thanks. If I had worn a t-shirt with “I want to kill you” printed all over it, I would’ve understood her reaction, but since I hadn’t, I didn’t.

Not that I have a problem if someone thinks my black clothes equal evil (though, I pity people who roll that way), but I didn’t just appear out of nowhere, I was sitting there before she sat down and, well, she saw me sitting there. So instead of going someplace else right then, she sat down and decided (?) to be a bitch.

I did not give this incident much thought, but started wondering after a while: how unconsciously discriminating are we? People who say that they are so tolerant, they never discriminate against anybody are simply denying what they really feel. I think we do discriminate. Constantly. So, are there no tolerant people out there? Can’t we simply not discriminate people around us?

I think there are many, many tolerant people out there and I like to think of myself as one of them. Tolerant, of course, as in I really don’t mind what people do or how they live as long as they don’t shove it in my face (Hello, we would like to talk to about God). I’m not really talking about ethnicity or alternative lifestyles as anyone who dislikes somebody for color of the skin or sexual orientation is retarded anyway, but I’m talking about how people actually behave - how they are, or pretend to be in public. However, who can really deny that when we meet someone for the first time, we instantly have this like/dislike feeling. Either totally cool or a total dufus or indifferent (which is kinda negative, too, don’t you think?). So maybe her reaction was a delayed response to her initial sentiment toward me, or indifference turned into disliking. Naturally, I cannot blame her for not liking me, but whatever the reason: I can blame her for acting like a jerk, which is what really bugged me.

Is discrimination necessarily bad, though? Isn’t it sometimes more like a big eye rolling. Last week, as I saw this guy, prancing around with his fancy cell phone headset thing in his ear, chatting, my first thought was “how incredibly stupid some people are,” and even though this sounds quite hypocritical - I enjoy being that way. If people practically invite me not to like them, I accept, not caring if they are red, green or purple. If I think some gal looks like a hooker, I have no problem with pointing that out to a friend. After all, being mean is kinda fun. However, I, at least, have the basic human decency not to make people feel like shit (not that I felt like shit, I was merely stunned by mom’s behavior).

Going back to my initial question ‘how unconsciously discriminating are we?’ I come to the conclusion that it’s simply how we are. At least how I am. Even though, I (and I assume others as well) usually suppress my initial judgments, they are still there and I can’t help it. Nevertheless, I want to wear the tolerance hat and who really wants to take that away from me? After all, we are all in the same boat.

Already, the idea to become a blogger turns out to be less than great. I wasn’t expecting a turn for the worse that fast…after all, I just got started with this whole blogging business.

After a more or less relaxed evening of desperately trying to find the right balance between nice-to-look-at and I-don’t-necessarily-want-to-scratch- my-eyes-out I settled on the skin/color combination you are admiring right now. Having done my good deed to mankind for the day, I threw myself on the sofa and enjoyed James Bond playing with his Octopussy. I went to bed at 2:30AM.

3:23AM (approximately): I was still wide awake, questioning my decision to go for the expensive hair conditioner the other day, and debating whether to turn on the TV or not.

3:36AM: The TV still off and content with my purchase of a 15€ hair conditioner but still not asleep I decided to get up and have a glass of water. Here’s the thing: if you are desperately trying to fall asleep gulping down a big glass of semi-cold, fresh, sparkling water is not quite the best idea. All those little bubbles march down your throat, tickling, fox-trotting their way to your belly and then rush up and explode into your brain, leaving you not only even more awake than you had been before, but also slightly dizzy.

3:46AM: Loo.

Around 4AM I finally fell asleep having a weird dream about frogs (this can’t be good) and a bullfrog called Jeremiah, which probably is even worse…

I hate not being able to sleep as that is exactly the time you start asking yourself all those questions (is Mitt Romney’s hair real?) to which nobody knows the answer anyway (do plants have feelings?) and in the end you end up dreaming something really weird (for which I blame this blog) . . . I guess next time I’ll try to avoid hurling myself into a void of unanswerable questions and just get hammered until I pass out (avoiding dreaming in the process). At the very least the aftereffects will not be as horrible as the dreams you have if you don’t go for the liquor cabinet.

Jeremiah was a bull frog
Was a good friend of mine
I never understood a single word he said
But I helped him a-drink his wine…