10:36 p.m. - February 06, 2003
Unfounded fears pushed back one glimpse at a time; I am patient and climbing.
One of my favorite assignments is located in a fifteen-story building in downtown Oakland that has a fifteen-story atrium with a three-sided balcony each floor. It's a favorite assignment because I enjoy the work, the people with whom I work, and the building and its atrium; it's an exercise in stepping beyond boundaries and in my own way I chart progress. Today I hung my head over the railing and looked down six times and while my palms sweated and my heart skipped a few beats I did not cut each view short and stayed the full 15 seconds. The last time I was in this building I could only look twice and for very brief periods and I was disappointed with myself.
I'm not afraid of heights generally - ever - but I'm intimidated by this atrium. If there's glass between me and the ground, a bungee cord around my feet, an operating engine humming, I love being high off the ground, derive a thrill and become giddy. No glass is another thing entirely but I feel it's more than that, something involving trust or security or control, the anxieties calling the shots. Such a silly thing really but I figure guerilla combat, these run-do-it-quick encounters, reinforces the nascent suspicion that no, wait, I am in control. And I enjoy this, saying I can do this and then doing so, even if it's silly.
Little things like this make me happy.
Have the day off tomorrow and I'll finish writing my paper due Monday. Working title is The Phenomenological Demystification of the Beast: A Kantian Reading of The Iliad. I'm loving the epic seminar too much; I'm tempted to change once again but no! It's linguistics and cognitive science until I'm done. Then we'll talk about literature a bit more.
Overall, a very good day. I'm glad; there haven't been many of late. Of late? Who talks like that nowadays?
