It’s 2:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, I’m writing this from bed, drinking coffee while wincing from a caffeine headache because I’ve switched to decaf. Today is the last day of summer and I’m spending it inside. It’s beautiful out, warm, sunny, the freeway is busy, my blinds flutter with perfect swirling breezes. It’s only the last day of summer in that the day and night are just about to strike even; that precarious moment of equinox. But the weather doesn’t care. Nights in SF are finally friendly to bare skin.
The skies will be the most clear until the edge of October. I have a lot to read. I’m thinking about capitulation. The agreements we make in order to meet our needs. I’m reading about interlocking oppressions, about how time and context affect our ability to move through the world. I need to articulate an understanding of both denial and privilege. How sometimes we surrender in order to progress. I’m wondering how well I do with that.
There is that balance of needing to be right and admitting when I’m wrong. That comes up a lot being the headstrong person I am. Headstrong, head of household, in my head a lot. How much capitulation does getting through a day require? It’s these invisible vice grips of restraint I’m often fighting alone in my mind when situations that simply require a yes get ignored or pushed to the back burner.
Am I making any sense? This is the type of writing I used to send in emails to my best friend, until she demanded that I start a blog so that she wouldn’t feel pressured to store them in an archive for some day later.
It’s the last day of summer and a pile of laundry, the perpetual pile of laundry, is giving me the eye like the corrupt sheriff in an old western. We’re in a high-noon showdown, it’s me or it, one of us has got to go. Cue the flute and bass riff.
As a grad student, capitulation comes at every meeting with a professor, every grade negotiation with an undergrad, every expense that I didn’t have planned in my monthly budget.
Historic agreements are being made this very moment. The boys are playing soccer, are in band and not seeing their father on as regular of a basis. I’m so fucking single right now, it’s amazing. After this past relationship imploded with a few keystrokes on my laptop, I told myself no dating till after the Equinox. Capitu-fucking-lation.