Addictive personality

Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.
I'm obsessed by the bean. By the smell. By the way it enters my throat, trickles down into my veins and infiltrates my brain with life, hope, chi. When I'm awake, I'm thinking about it, about the frozen beans in my fridge. I eat three per day, and savor the flavor of chocolate and the earthy espresso.
How long till August 22?
Dana says she doesn't understand my addictive personality. I tell her she must have a thyroid disorder.
Addictive personality: as though people could become addicted to my personality. Or I could be addicted to personality. What is "personality"?
Last night I wrote a mental letter to Rick, my teaching mentor, in my head. I argued against his idea of excellence, based on disability studies. That "excellence" is contingent upon an established norm, that we don't blame ordinary people for not being able to hit a baseball like Big Papi or sing like an opera diva. And yet Rick would have us believe that all who are not daily striving for such excellence are somehow slackers, lacking initiative.
I used to believe that wholeheartedly. I believed it straight through freshmen year, through most of that summer. I was high strung, emotional, nervous, anxious, continually tensing my shoulders in fear of relaxation. Stay alert or you'll miss something.
Maybe it was Dragonball Z. Maybe it was the yoga or t'ai chi. But I learned to shut down that drive sometime during sophomore year. A switch in my head that still wants to be in the on position. I can feel when it flips on; my breathing changes, my cheeks flush, my shoulders hunch, a guilty knot appears in my stomach, and something goes down my spine--adrenaline, probably. Cortisol. Fight or flight.
And it hurts like hell.
I know I have it in me to be like Dana: to be addicted to action, motion, hard work, responsibility. I also know what it does to me. And instead of becoming anxious, sick, tired, and tense, I choose to find peace by subordinating excellence to my own sanity. To my personality.
Which may not make me the best, most organized teacher in the world, but it does make me a good person. I wish I didn't have to choose between those, but those are the set of terms I've been given, and until someone comes up with a cure, I'll have to keep making that decision.
Of course, I'll never write that letter. It won't do anyone any good; if you haven't lived with it, you can't understand it.
That being said, I've decided that it's time to try last ditch measures for getting back to a baseline pain level. Walking, yoga, and a massive cut down on sugar. Full doses of Ultram. Whatever it takes. I have an addictive personality, and it's time I use that to my advantage.
Frak you, FMS.

"I've never been a man"

On May Day 2006
In Findlay Ohio, where the roads are uneven with dust. My cheeks are sore, but not from the sunburn flush my face.
I want to be able to be angry again.
Here your servant was sent out amongst them. The Separation from the Sword doesn't intend
Departure from the World. No, we are safe in our Bubble, in our troublesome days; the Orb does protect our way from all but Stones of compassion and trust.
The music in his ear is partly mine; I'm a drop of a note, a ceasura, over Ropp's pit infinite
in its Sunday night TV.
We are sure of our hope, on these gravel-topped roads, of Reasons, not scapegots, to unload the rites of Spring and Ribbons and uncovered sores. The Face meets the Face in noodle-based plates, and desire unsated to melt with the grass at last runs mimetically wild.
In Bluffton, Ohio, the music was played, the standard was raised to dance around...we sang of the new earth, new grounds, bearing us. The greetings were made, the skin's limit was breached--oh, the touch reached us deeply apart from the curse.
The reason it hurts is unexercised joy