Am A Regular Joy To People Watch

Since I had to give up my Princess Commute, where J dropped me off a half block away from work and picked me up right in front of the door on demand, I have a strategy for my commute. It involved a bus and a train and a large purse. I always carry at least two books (usually a third), food, water, and various pharmaceuticals. And it is possible that those pharmaceuticals need to include anti-psychotics.

It occurs to me that The Bell Jar and American Psycho may not be the best combination. That reading about crazy people might make you feel a tad unhinged. And, as is often the case for me, when I wait a long time to read a book I try to make it more complicated than it is. But books that have a huge impact on a fourteen year old do not hit a twenty-seven year old like a truck. So I often read a lot more symbolism or complications in plot than is really there. So American Psycho confused me. Was I trying to make all of it be a hallucination so that he was just a loon and not a killer? Or am I just making something complicated that really isn't? This question just kept turning around and around in my head for a long time while I had little conversations with myself which of course Made Me Feel Sane As All Hell.

I finished them both, getting more and more irritated. And then in every summary of Plath everyone talks about how London the winter she died had the coldest winter in a century. As though a medical history including shock treatments and time in an asylum is irrelevant. What matters is that it was really really cold.

So I finish them both and manage to convince the nice young man who always seems to be on my bus or train as if we are living parallel lives and I SWEAR TO GOD he could be my twin brother because he has my father's straight nose and my mother's hazel eyes, that I need medication and supervision because I Talk To Myself Angrily About Novels. My third book, the backup one? Terms of Endearment.

Uplifting.

Tomorrow I think I will stick to Curious George Goes to His Economically Suitable But Soul Sucking Job In The City.

Much better indeed.