bending_sickle | If I'd known how much packing I'd have to do, I'd have run again.*

Despite – or perhaps due to – not doing anything today, I’m calling it quits. So here I am in bed, a measly Long Chicken in my belly and no internet. Neither of these two states are good. Add to that the fact that my mouse finger (and hell, whole wrist) aches, and you’ve got a pretty down little Sickle. Not Pit of Blah, not Dodos of Doom, but kinda…Blanket of Defeat. (Yeah, that works.)

The only good thing of not having any internet it that I can take my time writing this post out. (Forget that I’ve already posted today. Posts are good!) I thankfully left my previous post open and with the last embedded YouTube video open, because I’m so hooked on Skinny Puppy’s I’mmortal (and yes, that apostrophe does sit right there).

I think I’ve figured out why I’m so peeved at my supervisor and her suggestions. (Well, apart from her never addressing my questions, like why she didn’t tell me this earlier.) It’s not that they’re bad suggestions, it just that they’re way too late. And despite what she might think, combining previously well-delineated sections does require a bit of rewriting and jigsaw-puzzle-arranging. (Which, by the way, is hell.) Allow me to explain with a crack metaphor.

Imagine a suitcase. This suitcase is huge and overstuffed and it’s impressive the number of things you’ve managed to put in there, but somehow you did. Not only did you go through the tedious closet choices of what you need, what you want, and what you have to take if you want to take something else, but you’ve also actually packed it all in. And not just any which way, oh no. All that stuff – the three different black t-shirts, the just-in-case-it-snows-in-July coat, the summer dress so new it’s still got the price tag and the brown skirt so hideous it too also still has the price tag – all that had to be neatly folded so as it would be recognizable upon opening the suitcase.

Then it had to be packed into some sort of order – the dress at the top, the brown skirt and coat at the bottom – or else you’d be running around your hotel room at 3 in the afternoon in your underwear with a room service mojito in one hand and half your bikini in the other, panicking whether you actually packed the top or if it’s somehow crawled into a shoe at the bottom of the suitcase and wondering whether anyone’d notice if you went about topless. So to avoid scenes like these, you’ve taken care to pack all that ~~junk~~ precious cargo (clothes are never junk) into little groups and layers. Once crude layers were formed, you found that you also had to do a bit of creative match-making with certain ungainly objects, hiding the pantyhose in the purse or the toothbrush down the curlers, trying to part folds of cloth and thinking how unfair it is that Moses had it so easy.

And then, once that’s all done, there’s still the actually Closing of the Suitcase, which required more grunting and sweating than the weekend before last's (highly disappointing) one-night-stand.

Imagine you’ve done all this and now you’re sitting on the suitcase, toiletries in one hand and a cigarette in the other, basking in the glow of a job well-done. You’ve just started eyeing the plane ticket and calculating traffic delays when in walks Inconsiderate Bastard. Now, you’ve been seeing Inconsiderate on and off the past few months, but he never calls and never once yet has he told you something nice. It’s always, “Let’s watch things explode!” with him. Whatever, you’ve booked him a bloody Active Volcano Walkabout Tour while you soak up some rays, so that should do it.

Inconsiderate stands there, watching you bask (probably memorizing the image, ‘cause with his skills, he’ll never see it again) when he blurts something out. You choke on your cig. He repeats himself. Your toiletry bag drops from your nerveless fingers.

“You want me to what?!?”

“I just thought you ought to put the coat up on top. I mean, they’re calling for rain, you know. And maybe you could put all the cotton items together. Did you pack any woolens? Yes? Well, those would be better packed two layers below the sandals, I think.”

What are you supposed to do? You’re back-broken from packing the suitcase in the first place, in what you consider to be a perfectly logical order. Sure, Inconsiderate’s suggested order make sense, maybe even more, but you’re used to your own order and know exactly where to find everything, down to the little red scarf (in the left knee-high boot). Furthermore, you might neither have the time nor the strength to repack – or, as Inconsiderate puts it, “reorganize” – the suitcase before it’s time for you to hit the road.

Well, ladies and gent’s, I’m going to stare at the suitcase for a bit, nod at bit at Inconsiderate and then, the second he leaves to watch Die Hard 2 for the forty-second time, I’m going to sit right back on my suitcase and light up.

* Harry S Truman
** I do not, have nor, nor ever will, smoke. But damn if sometimes I couldn’t use a cigarette.