having anxiety attacks on the reg in  the  afternoons  these  past
couple days or maybe a week who knows.  which, sucks, but its  not
gonna kill me.  its also almost never one of those easy to  figure
out ones. instead I just suffer until i forget about it. whatever.

i've got my eye on someone these days as well, which is the  first
time in going on 4 years, when my mom died. so thats... something
i should feel more emotions about but damn, its not happening. its
not like going through the motions...  its like brewing coffe,  or
some other task  you  do  regularly,  but  try  to  do  well,  and
confident that you can.  its not a disengagement,  but...look.   I
know how bad things have gone before, and I am way more chill  now
than I ever was in the past when trying to court.  i think  that's
what's happening, im just keeping my chill because its  not  worth
worrying about.  nothing i do will be as bad as  dealing  with  my
mom's cancer and a terrible toxic relationship at the same time. i
can handle a lot.

i wish i felt those butterflies though. or maybe I do and its just
an anxiety attack now.

anyway

i started reading Miss MacIntosh, My Darling at the  end  of  last
year, and I am writing down chapter by chapter summaries[1].   the
book is ~1300 pages, probably the longest i will  have  ever  read
(with stiff competition coming from Infinite  Jest,  Don  Quixote,
and The Recognitions) and presumably  just  as  complex  as  those
other doorstoppers (add  in  Gravity's  Rainbow  to  that  mix  as
well).  With all other  huge  books  ive  read,  they  had  online
materials to help a lay person go through it (Ifinite Jest  has  a
Wiki, The Recognitions has a whole book of annotations [which  was
wickedly useful holy crap], and gravity's rainbow has "things that
happen in gravity's rainbow".  DQ has 400 years  of  criticism  so
yeah).  The only online resource for this  book  is  an  earthlink
homepage[2] that sort of offers a brief overview of the novel.

All those other books I mentioned are  stuck  in  my  brain.   The
events, the characters, the scenes, all have a very sticky quality
that i can't overcome (I was recalling GR for months, annoyingly).
And I think it is because I took a lot of notes, and I read a  lot
of notes for each of those books.  Others I  have  read,  I  could
barely tell you what happend.  I don't want to  devote  what  will
probably be a few months to this HUGE novel and not remember it.

if anybody else wants a helper for Miss MacIntosh, i hope that  my
summaries provide SOMETHING, though I will  not  attest  to  their
quality. I practice poetry, not prose.

[1]gopher://sdf.org/0/users/xvetrd/litcrit/mmmd
[2]http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eeichfr/youngweb.htm