By Just L
Date: 26 January 1998

Hypnotized

Hypnotized by my video monitor, Monday, 2:21 p.m. Supposedly searching the web 
for grant funding information, instead I find myself straying and meandering
toward the “Blender” for consolation.  Is it my penchant for romance and relief 
which draws me closer, or the sight of the hearts gyrating inside and its 
allusion to blades? I am unable to solve this riddle, so instead I stare 
blankly at my blinking cursor.

My eyes force the cursor’s blink to accelerate. I feel like Matilda.
I can sense the pulsating of the fluorescent lights being channeled through
my body.   Now, I feel nauseous. No, not sick, just “speedy,“ as if my body 
has become that sound you get when you blow into a red hots or jaw breakers box.
You know the old kind with the cellophane window? 

More distracted than ill: my head is buzzing, yet my brain is numb, empty of 
all intelligence. I don’t care about anything except that there may be some 
extra peanut butter cups in the bottom of my desk drawer. If I were on an 
"Allie McBeal" episode, my head would be as large as, oh wait that’s MTV’s 
"The Hea;" O.K., O.K., my entire body would pulsate to the beat of my racing 
heart, but in that kind of Pepto-Bismo s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n . . . . consequently 
becoming smashed in a heavy vault door.  Am I presuming a cause and effect? 
Have I lost you? I don't know. I don’t want to know and I can’t figure it out 
right now.  How I long to be Aeon Flux.  She wouldn’t give a damn, and she’d 
have something witty and annihilative to say  to boot! 

Can’t you see my heart is broken?  My damn heart is broken and I am maintaining 
the appearance of work:  keyboarding, web-searching, looking pensive.  What did 
people do before computers? Fake-typed in that way a five-year-old does or 
intensely stapled bunches of paper together, I suppose.  Before the 1990s, 
they had the smoking break escape.  “I am going outside to eat a chocolate” or 
“take a zoloft” or “I need to swing in the park” just doesn’t have the same 
immediacy.  Besides all of the swings in the park are no good anymore since 
they took out all of the big swings to prevent injury law suits.

Denver won.  That’s great for Elway.  Why the hell am I thinking this right now?
The “underdog” factor? I will overcome? Trying to convince myself that someone 
in the world is happy today? I am not happy.  I am strong, independent, smart, 
successful, and on certain Saturday nights even beautifully sexy, but not happy.
No I do not have P.M.S. either!  

For goddess’ sake, why do you always have to say that?