5.23.2005

sitting on the sofa on a sunday afternoon

Returned yesterday afternoon from a 48-hour Colombo trip: two nights, several dam-project meetings, one new friend made, one ‘old’ friend reacquainted (from November, but whatever), one eerie deserted-pool swim, one lovely posh dinner, one movie (Million Dollar Baby: Not All-That, But Okay), one Bistro dance session, one beautiful late night at Galle Face in the sea spray, countless sweaty rides up and down Galle Road, three bus tickets to Jaffna purchased. One bagel.

Got some difficult news late last night, past my bedtime, which probably made me more emotional about it than I should be. Well, what to do. I should be busy busy busy today, starting-finishing some work before Tuesday’s Jaffna departure, but eh, I feel ill and pensive and petulant. It’s hot out and I want to be in the ocean, or in Central Park. Am thinking about moving to Colombo and asking myself, why would I want that? Reasons are many and perhaps not unmixed with bad motives like “I am lonely in Kandy.” (For the record that’s my own damn fault.) Colombo is hot and expensive and what would I be doing there, exactly? My research, right, but after that: do I really want to be living here any more?

Whinge, whinge. Nothing is really all so bad; I should go write all this business in the private journal and not all over the web. There is a giant bug on the window. I can’t write here about the two things I’m really thinking about, so.

On the other hand: there are exciting things happening out there in the media: here is a BBC.com article about Companions on a Journey my new favorite (only? one of three it seems) gay Lankan support and advocacy group. Given that recently I had started being really frustrated by the straightness of, you know, everything here, it is so good to read about it. I am sick up to here of thinking and talking about straight relationships.

Listen up, people of Sri Lanka: your romantic problems are starting to seem boring to me. I want more complicated thinking, more lurid scandal. Actually, no: romantic problems of any kind are starting to seem boring, or rather exhausting, to me. My work is running out of new things for me to get intellectually hot’n’bothered about. One possible cause of this: no advisor, thus no one with whom to talk seriously about it-all. Also, I am tired of no one caring where I am and what work I’m doing (or not). Desk jobs suck, so the possibility of finding something else to be doing, come July, isn’t high. How’s that for unfair: in America, I’m barely employable in any kind of officey/businessy environment; here I’m overqualified for anything else.

Ennui: gah. I think this is what “feeling sorry for yourself” is about. Right now, it’s either that or be uncontrollably, pointlessly angry.


as Ross would put in his blog:
if someone said i would succumb
if someone said i'd be so dumb
after all the sleepless nights when i turned on all the lights
i would have hit them

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,just have a good time while you are in Sri Lanka. Don't stress & plan, things will work themselves out. You seem to have so many friends in Kandy, why move to Colombo? As a "straight" expat living in Colombo who has decent social skills and isn't bad looking, I have been living a "lonely" life here. My "loneliness" has little to do with the availability of potential partners .Its more to do with me than which city I live in.

Rebecca said...

thanks, np.
Many of my Kandy friends are moving on out in the near-ish future, and it's damn frustrating to have no decent restaurants, theatre, movies, etc. available. Plus I also have friends in Colombo. Damn expensive there, though.