you are my joy

The old brain's gone a bit south, I'm afraid. Not quite to the Dungeon Dimensions, but not to a place of bunnies and self-affirmation either, mmm. Still here, though. Not eating well, not getting lots of healthful exercise, not being nice, not being helpful, not getting out of bed before two in the afternoon, but still, by all that is sacred and a lot that isn't, still, still fucking here.

There is a meme knocking around the place. There are some people, I'm not entirely sure who they are, who want you to write "I love you" in one of your online media, as a statement. Of something. And I suppose the beauty of the thought is the spin you can put on it - one friend has used it to talk about how much she loves her friends, and another about how her faith has shaped what love is, to her. I think these are good things to write about.

But I can't do that. Because I am naturally a bit verbose, and maybe I did philosophy for too long, but it can't sit there just like a hanging predicate, it needs to be attached to something. Here, then, are some of the things I love.

I love the bit in Rent where Anthony Rapp - or whoever's playing Mark, but in my head it's always Anthony Rapp - jumps on the table and shouts, "The opposite of war isn't peace! It's creation!"

I love my friends. I do. I love how speccygeekgrrl can be reduced to anticipatory goo at the merest mention of the new Star Trek movie. I love that I only have to say "yarmulkes!" to make jacinthsong start swearing profusely. I love that teh_elb teaches me definite articles in Irish, that magic_doors shares my delusion that shouting "This is the Age! Of! Reason!" is the solution to all of life's little inanities, that hathy_col texts me pub quiz questions in some kind of serene faith that I'll know the answers. I love you all.

I love the Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin Undyin' Love Travellin' Show. I especially like the bits with the sloth. I love how upset Jack is that "the creature's eyes fill with tears when I enter my own cabin, when I have been nothing but civil to it."

I love the Ani DiFranco song, Falling Is Like This.

I love that there was a bowling alley on the Enterprise-A.

I love shimgray. I love the fact he is very delighted that if he marries me, the Indian government will declare him a person of Indian origin. ("I'd be legally brown! I could be stupid about race on the internet!")

I love sitting in steaming hot baths until they get cold, and then topping them up, and turning another page.

I love Reindeer Section.

I love roses. Shim stole me a single one from work, last summer, and carried it home in his hat; my parents send me a bunch every year on my birthday. There's a vase full on the kitchen table now, drooping pink and lovely.

I (think I) love Lois McMaster Bujold. I am halfway through Cordelia's Honour. It's kind of great, explosions, pro-choice agenda, blue cheese dressing, awesome love affairs an' all.

I love the US states of Iowa, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

I love truth and beauty and justice, I do not like hard-boiled eggs, I think English land law is nuanced and textured and difficult as all hell, I cannot keep this up for long because my god life is difficult when the barometer is falling, but right now I am depressed and unhappy and furious with everyone and everything and these are things that are better than being nothing at all, and if I have to carve the emotion word by every word out of a resistant universe of nothingness I will love.

My bed is pretty awesome too. Goodnight.