i was made at right angles to the world

Every now and again, at the most random times, I get this feeling. It's faint, like a wind whisper or the scent of perfume as someone rushes by. It's this intimation of mortality, this feeling that we are all, every one of us, sitting here, spending seconds and minutes, utterly oblivious to the fact that we could die right now. That's not quite right, though. Not quite oblivious or ignorant, because we obviously know we could die any second. It's just this feeling of vulnerability, like a sitting duck, as they say. We are such insects, you and I, sitting idly around, just waiting for some big oaf to squash us into oblivion. A stroke, a heart attack, an accident. I don't think about this often. I'm not obsessed, and I'm not Emily Dickinson. But like I said, every once in a while it washes over me, and I get so scared and aware. It's so troubling.

Now, to lighter topics! I watched It's Complicated tonight. It's a romantic comedy with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. Meryl and Alec were married once, now divorced, and Steve Martin is Meryl's new love interest. As I'm sure you've figured out, Meryl and Alec end up having an affair, rekindling their old love, blah blah blah. The movie starts out so wonderfully, and indeed, the first hour and fifteen minutes of the movie is great. It's light and funny, with excellent performances, and it's heart-warming, in the way true love can be. But then something happens, something shifts, and it's no longer cute. Meryl suddenly pulls away, she becomes an unsympathetic character, and she never really redeems herself. She spends the last half hour repeating to everyone who will listen that there is no longer a spark between her and Alec, but we've just spent an hour and a half of movie time, which is like ten years' worth of real life time, seeing this great spark, and so nothing computes and it doesn't work out. It's annoying, and I hate good movies that are ruined by idiotic endings. Fail, people! Fail!

I did learn, however, that Hunter Parrish in Blu-ray HD is probably my new favorite thing ever. Yum.

In other news, I'm still having this on-again, off-again lower back pain, mostly on the right side. When it's actively hurting, I'm sure it's a kidney stone; when there's no pain, I'm sure it's just muscular, from the way I sit or the way I sleep or the way I stand or all three put together. It doesn't feel like the pain I had before my last kidney stone, and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that stones are painless when they're in the kidneys (even if Rae Jean tells me they're not). It's a dull ache, nothing sharp, and certainly nothing that would put a man in the hospital. So if it is a stone, it's still hanging out in my kidney. It needs to stay there, because I'm not in the mood for the excruciating pain I had last year. Or two years ago. How many years ago was that, anyway?

Otherwise, not much to report. I wrote a little bit tonight, half of the next scene in Eternity, and I finished the Cunningham review, so that's a load off my back. I really, really need to set some unalterable deadlines for this grad school business, but I'm bad at that. I am taking the GRE Lit test in something like three weeks, so I should probably start looking over the test prep book for that in the near future. I should also probably pick the schools that I'm applying to, and get out some emails to professors so they know to expect a slew of requests from me in a month or two. I just wish there were some guarantee, some consolation prize, because knowing that I could go through all this trouble and not get in anywhere, that I will probably not get in anywhere, is so discouraging.

Ah, life. I miss my youth, the days when everything was guaranteed and every pain I had disappeared after a single night's rest and I didn't have to do anything or think about anything or worry about anything. I had heartburn, bad heartburn, for the first time a few days ago. Heartburn! Heartburn!!! Can you imagine? Heartburn!!!

I just... I dunno. When did we all get so old?