weird part ii

i'm eating soup for breakfast.

it's not so strange as it's almost noon so i can call this an early lunch. the only breakfasty thing about what is in front of me is coffee. coffee is creeping back into my life after a brief reprieve. it's not awful. i have a cup or two a day and it's nice. it's more the ritual of it then anything. i wake up, i put the kettle on, i grind the beans from the random bag of coffee i won at last years nanowrimo's 'night of writing dangerously' and dump the fragrant grinds into the press. the smell of ground coffee is intoxicating. i remember not being able to smell coffee for years after working at a coffee joint where i would marinate in it all day. my only complaint is that it doesn't taste quite like it smells. the soul of the bean seems to be left somewhere in the bottom of the press. one would think the essence is what is drawn out and poured into your cup, but it seems like the opposite to me. i consume your extras, your superfluous, the things you can live without. and it tastes ok. and it makes me vibrate in my seat. but it's not your soul.

i am consuming hot things. soup and coffee. both taste horrible together but somehow make sense.

my fever broke around 6 this morning. it woke me up after 2 hours of sleep to tell me that it's ok, it's leaving me. i kicked off the covers, sweating and limp. this fever business, so much like an exorcism.

i'm definitely feeling normal despite the crusty feeling i get when the heat is on.

i laid in bed most of the night cranky and frustrated with myself. why are you so fucking broken all the time? i meant mentally and not physically though the physical is what seems to show itself more readily, especially in the present. it's easy. it's tangible. i have a cold because i only brought one pair of socks to portland and someone probably coughed on me. my finger hurts because i sliced it while wrestling with a squash. things get more complicated when what is broken is something you can't quite wrap your hands around. i can't see my crazy, but i can feel it whirr around my head as eyelids flap at rapid pace, like morse code transmitting to the world, · · · — — — · · ·, maritime distress, i am only smart some of the time.

i find myself googling simple things just to make sure that things mean what i think they mean, i second guess, i think too much about something and it goes from being an ultimate truth to complete blather. this was last night until i fell asleep thinking about almost purchasing 'the love wife' by gish jen at powells but didn't because i have 5 books sitting in my room waiting for me to read. i had picked it up, walked around with it and put it back 4 times. it's these things that make me crazy. somehow holding and carrying the book around felt like enough. i don't need to buy you. you are $5 and you are not worth this purchasing anxiety. i had enough in me to carry it around the store, but ultimately did not want to have to carry it home in my carry on. when we stopped by reading frenzy afterwards i bought a tiny comic and that was worth carrying home. gish jen is universal. i can find her on amazon and make the book come to me.

setch and i talked about broken homes and estranged families last week. i feel like the odd man out sometimes because my family seems complete. we're too full. we're overflowing with people. cousins and more cousins and more aunts and uncles. i wonder if it's the inaldo thing or if it's the filipino thing. when i worked on sutter street and frequented the nearby walgreens for prescriptions and chocolate the little filipino ladies there would talk to me like i was their niece and talk to me about 'wowowe'. they'd ask if my mom had the filipino channel and i'd tell them that she did and the last time i was home it was on all the time, even when people weren't home, even when my dad was asleep with his mouth open in the barcolounger. without even knowing me, i was their family and they eventually started telling me i needed to get married and have babies.

the carabao is the national animal of the philippines. i often confuse this with caribou. it's times like that when i wished i had wikipanion installed into my brain.

carabao is also a famous rock band from thailand.

i remember when i was a kid how my parents and my aunts and uncles used to eat with their hands.i remember seeing rice stuck to their hands as they talked and gestured and i'd wait to see if any of it would go flying. none of it really did. i don't remember when they stopped eating kamayan. at some point my mom started to make this cheese ravioli with cream sauce, sundried tomatoes and shrimp. she also started to make this 30 day fruitcake. it was all downhill from there.

i no longer know how to eat filipino. i barely eat american. i guess i can say i now eat californian.

except for this soup and coffee business. that's just eating weird.