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Location: Work.
Contemplating: Evening chores.
Listening: "Living Under June" ~Jann Arden.

Per Peter's journal, things down at 1260 are currently not as bright as they could be. Both of us have been having difficulties writing, sleeping, and generally functioning for a while now--a state that was recently exacerbated by the ripple-effects of the events of September 11 in the media and the political realm. We sat and watched the Bush address--scanning the crowd for Jeffords, smirking at Hillary's expression of utter boredom, and amazed at the number of elderly, Caucasian, thin-lipped men they managed to fit in one room. We've mined snippets from CNN, BBC, AP, CBS, and anything and everything in between. We've tried to cut through the prevalent double-speak about "different enemies", "prolonged strategic strikes on multiple targets" and "this new war". We persist in pointing out that this is not war--not officially, not yet. We read in Harper's about Israeli soldiers baiting Palestinian children with insults and then cutting them down with M16's. We contemplate emigration, but we don't know where we would go. It's not that easy.

It wears us down in the wrong places, leaving our rough corners intact, pushing through the soft centres. We're tired and the apartment is cluttered and our neighbors let their children run wild, shrieking, at 3:30 in the morning. We're reclusive and cynical and smoking too much and eating too little.

So tonight, I'm planning on putting myself to work to try and lift some of the malaise hanging over the house--wash a load of dishes, finish a load of laundry, mop the kitchen floor, find a good recipe for chicken and vegetables...trying, in essence, to get us rearranged somehow.