my body is fucking with my head

i found a button of paul pfeiffer! sonic boom was selling a rack of pins near the cash register with a sign proclaiming "nerds!" it was a toss-up between this and the comic book guy. it lives on my bag now. alas, i have received no comments about it yet.

my face feels like it belongs to someone else. i just spent 5 minutes in front of a bathroom mirror, testing different expressions to make sure all my muscles work. they do. but it feels like someone has poured cement on my skin... a heavy pressure, unnervingly clausterphobic. how much is my 'disease' and how much is just me? this tends to happen when i am chronically exhausted. this is the more likely reason... i have been waking up tired for the last week or so. sleep inconveniences me. i always worry that i'm missing something. i like MS for this- it is a physical bitch-slap to take more prudent care of myself.

that said, i am at a cafe with a gin and tonic. it's only 9pm, after all. the night, in my mind, is still young, even if i feel internally starched and therefore rather subdued and isolated.

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this building on the corner of terry and howell (downtown seattle) has always appealed to me. it has a hideous, stumpy, dated quality; someone designed this with ambitions of what: a passe version of beauty? pure functionality? it never has fit in with its surroundings, which i admire. but part of me quietly suspected, especially once all the vile (and vacant) high-rises started sprouting up around it, that it was not long for this world.

today i was proven correct. god damn it, anyway.

i love its imposing angularity! it was probably an insurance company once. sadly, i don't even remember.

it has already been tagged by amateurs.

we finished reflexology and have started craniosacral manipulation. the instructor, pete, is the same teacher i had for muscular anatomy & kinesthiology (a 2-term purgatory). i had been warned that teaching the craniosacral classes "brings out his woo-woo." (that sounds filthy; i am merely quoting.) ten minutes into yesterday's class he was talking about 'power animals' and how 'we all have a spirit we identify with.' this was related to a tale he told about a friend of his who was visiting fairbanks, alaska (!) and happened upon a whale bone for sale in a gift shop. (i was sprawled on the floor, doodling, cynically wondering if selling whale bones was even legal. i never fucking noticed. my parents still have a 12' strip of baleen that they regularly polish with floor wax, but they bought it from a guy in togiak on the sly.) apparently this friend of his was mystically drawn to this whale bone "and realized at that moment that the whale was his power animal" pete said earnestly. "it was very expensive, but he bought it and brought it back to washington."
i was so close to making a smartass comment about oosiks, but i didn't. god damn it, i should have.
i have always pretended to be far more cynical about life than i truly am. i am actually the most gullible, idealistic person i know. but i was cringing inwardly at the, well, 'woo-woo' of it all -this is why massage has such a flaky rap! do i have to start liking fucking waterfall music next? are you going to tell me about my past life as a fucking princess?- until we did our first c-s exercise: the suboccipital cradle. son of a bitch, it was cool. i can't explain it properly without making myself want to vomit at the bona fide frippery of it all, but it was... buzzy. i felt my partner's occiput release beneath my right pinky finger. c-s is essentially 'listening to bone': feeling the fluid slosh around inside the skull, achieving balance, transferring energy. it requires complete focus on your partner and your own grounding.
maybe that's really what it's all about- focus. if properly focused, it is very difficult to fuck up anything. being receptive to what your 'client', for lack of a better term, is feeling, makes it impossible to give a shitty massage.
this can also be said of making love.
god, i sound like a fucking fruit.
today the ascerbity returned to the pedagogy. stickel, the abrasive little man, was teaching business. we are pretending to be motivated about our career plans once we graduate. "geezer massage will be the next big thing!" he announced. "this is the self-indulgent generation." we critiqued actual job listings and resumes that he'd pulled off craigslist. "yeah, this one sucks" he said dismissively. "and she went to school here."
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i am always on the lookout for new and exotic seafood.