As I write this there are tears in my eyes/ways to know you're getting older

On a literal level, my eyes are really all welled up and teary. Terrible bastard sinusitis. Been under the weather the last couple of days. So most people get stuffy noses under the circumstances. It's not enough that the stuffy nose is terribly irritating, plus this feeling that there's something pinching the bridge of your nose. I get a bonus irritation. My eyes start going red and they tear up uncontrollably. That or one eyes turns into a leaky faucet and just keeps going all day, as it has done today.

I've been taking pills for the sniffles and so that I'll fall asleep and hopefully sleep through all this. The pills don't help at all with the eyes. I've finished up a bottle of Visine or Eye-Mo or something. Provides only temporary relief. My eyes clear up, then after about fifteen mintues they start going again.

Needless to say I'm in no real state to work. I'm having trouble focusing. This entry comes because, well i Feel that i have to write something. can't write creative when i'm sick and i can't work either.

bummer too because the work is becoming another shitstorm. After narrowly averting the big trouble just a month or so old, here comes another reason to get in trouble. The past couple weeks have been rained out. One would expect that schedules would adjust. they do not. we are expected to submit grades on time. oh, and if you aren't done yet, well the faculty room's open during the holiday. and you can also go to the faculty room when there's a friggin' super bagyo.

I can't work with being under the weather. normally i'm a trooper I can work through the limp and I've even taught when I lost my voice. But it's so terribly hard to check papers when your eyes are making like faucets. i don't know. doesn't really make sense to me why we can't get some extension. but then as too many friends have told me already, i should just keep my head down on this one and not fight back.

so i guess that when i'm well enough to work i will be swamped and trying to meet deadlines which are, well, they can be accomplished. they are possible. that doesn't mean that they are sensible. you could, conceivably, stack enough playing cards in such a way that mathematically, you could build a bridge to the sun. it is also possible that you put a bunch of monkeys in a room, and based on theories of possibility, one of them will type Hamlet word for word. Given an infinite amount of time these monkeys in the room will, according to laws of possibility, type all the great major works of literature.

Of course we're talking possibility. And as that optimistic saying goes, anything's possible. Probability is a totally different matter. Being sensible is yet another thing to consider. But as far as the work I have to do is concerned, I am pitted with the theories of possibility.

Way to know you're getting old: when you have to buy appliances and furniture.

Sometime this week as I woke up to stretch I heard something in my bed tear. There was this large rip and the stuffing of my mattress was coming out like somebody's innards when their stomach had been gashed through with a scythe.

Then just last night I was asleep and then I woke up because I was sweating badly. I looked over to the electric fan, which wasn't turning at all though I remembered it being on when I had fallen asleep. I checked and found that my fan had died on me.

Even with the terrible condition I was in, I had to head to SM with my mom to buy replacements for these things. I had an extra handkerchief along just for the eye perspiration. You can wipe away the tears, but you can't help the weird way people will look at you because they think you're crying and your eyes are all red.

It's such a mundane thing to do, go to the appliance store to buy an electric fan. In all the drama of the past months I had dedicated myself to a life of beauty and intellect. I was trying to find something beautiful about looking at various elecric fans, me being an idiot at this and my mother asking about wattage and other things that I should really learn to understand.

Then it was off to the mattresses. Another similar process. I mean, it's very weird. I normally buy things and I'm very excited about them. Usually it's either books or music or movies and I'm in my zone, I understand everything. Here these were things that were simple and mundane and everyday. It just reeked of domesticity.

I remember going out with Anna a few months ago and I went with her to look at furniture for their new apartment. A few weeks back we were drinking at Cos and Cel's and Cel and Anna got to talking about furniture and the like. I got up to get a glass for a drink and there were still price tags on their stuff. The conversation was steered to living room furniture and I saw a bean bag. There was a time when I believed that a living room full of bean bags would be awesome. Actually at times I still suffer from that belief. Then Cel mentioned that a friend of theirs had mentioned that they and their friends were all getting on in years and maybe the bean bag may not be the best piece of furniture for your sala set.

I had to think, hell no, I'd love to spend the whole night in a bean bag in front of the TV with a controller in my hands. but we all are getting older. Think of the kinds of old man's diseases my friends and I are started to get, or are in dread and scampering wildly to avoid. Those bean bags would do our backs no good. Sturdiness, stability, security. You see people with solid wood furniture or strong metal to serve them and you can't help but consider the metaphorical possibilities when you juxtapose these things with the limp, formless bean bag.

And still as we move neared to our 30s, some of us much closer than others, there's still time to go back to being a kid. Yesterday was Anna's birthday party and a good part of the time was spent with us huddled around a TV and PS2 playing or heckling each other at various fighting or wrestling games.