a poem, lost; inspiration, lost

Today's one of those days when I have neither anything important to report nor any inspiration to write anything else compelling.

And, in fact, even the poem I wanted to share with you, a lovely little gem called "Poem," by Douglas Goetsch, seems to exist only behind the firewall of the New Yorker website. It's great, beginning with an apparently casual discussion of finding the poem's theme (which he 'fails' to do, and says as much) and ends with a note made all the more poignant by the fact that you don't even see him building towards it.

But now, I can't even show it to you. I can just describe it, and urge you to try and find it on your own.

So, again, I find myself with nothing to say. So I'll stop throwing useless words into the void and let you get back to the rest of your lives.

Average

Today was average--ie, for the purpose of blogging, it was boring. I taught. I came home. I went to the gym. I wasted time online, and reaffirmed my suspicion that even the Internet is getting boring from too much use.

The only things of note, as always, were points of human connection. Before classes, I was able to chat briefly with my mom and my older brother, Alex, and at greater length with my younger brother, Scott. It had been too long, and it was great to catch up on his life and tell him about mine. I've said it before, but I do love Skype!

Tonight was nice, too, as I got to chat with a couple of guy friends from Seattle, both of whom happened to be on way late--it was 3am there when we started talking; near 5am when we stopped--and so were on in time to chat with me at normal time, while none of my non-time-zone-restricted friends were on. I love the backwardness of how being far away sometimes actually facilitates conversations.

And that was it! Pretty average day; I won't waste any more of your time with it.

What do you write about

...when you do nothing all day?

I suppose you can make a comment on how you want the Taiwanese elections to be over already, so they will stop sending squads of be-vested people all over the city to campaign at your doorstep...

From all I can see, they all seem to be from the "obnoxiously loud and constant advertisement" party...

Or you could offer up another ode to Cracked.com, my constant stand-by on days where you do nothing--and they do have a video now explaining once and for all all those impossibly happy traffic cops and sign wavers.

Or you could throw in a clip to something you've recently discovered (or, in this case, rediscovered) on Youtube. Like Bum Reviews (Twilight linked below!) and Sassy Gay Friend (Romeo & Juliet!).

Or, you know, you could do all of those things. Because if there's one thing you're lacking at 2:30am after a full day of doing nothing, it's originality.

Nothing

That's what I have to write about today: nothing. I got up at noon and was careful to eat a healthy meal to prepare myself for a grueling afternoon of falling asleep on my book and watching a podcast.

The rub, of course, is that today was NOT supposed to be one of lethargy. I have an application due in 10 days, and so far I have only a first draft of the big essay, which, at present, looks as though it has swallowed parts of the other two essays I need to write. Today, I was planning on teasing these components out and nurturing them into independence, and then filling the holes they left in the original with the dozens of crucial experiences I had left out in my first enthusiastic writing spree.

But, given my current mental state of mind, I have a hard time imagining that whatever work I would do would be any good whatsoever. So...I'm stuck sitting and waiting and hoping that the people I asked for recommendations get back to me SOON, and debating the merits of just getting SOMEthing done. I did turn in my first weekly report today--a bit of a pain, really--but that's it. I guess I should go write the dialogue for Morning English at Han-Min, which begins Wednesday.

Oh, and it's the Moon Festival today! Which is why such lounging was possible on a Monday--Taiwan National Holiday. (The 7-11 is still open, though, and they gave me a cool Moon Festival folder when I went down a while ago to buy eggs.) Moon festival festivities typically include sitting outside with your family, eating moon cakes, barbecuing, and eating pomelos and putting the skins on your head like a hat*, all while watching the huge full moon. Yesterday, Tom told me that today is supposed to have the brightest full moon in six years. But the sky here, unfortunately, is overcast and rainy--retrospectively, yet another reason yesterday's barbecue was so amazing: it's been all but impossible to celebrate today in Kaohsiung. It was big, bright, and almost full yesterday in Taipei, at least!

Ever seen this before? I definitely used it to run for student council in high school, and it's labeled "watermelon helmet cat"--but yeah, that's definitely a pomelo skin. Happy Moon Festival!

So far, by the way, this has been the summary (and highlight) of my day:

It's a Taiwan-shaped mooncake, given to me by one of my students! And note that this picture was taken on my bed. Yep, my day in a nutshell.

So I'll go back to eating off of the mountain of moon cakes I received from my students, LETs, and Dr. Tsai, and maybe see how much I can wake myself up to accomplish.

Either that, or go watch TV. Hmmm....

*not my class, for the record. But cute!