High stress

Greetings,

I am under high stress. I think people don't consider the work they love stressful. What is really stressful is when you have to do something but you keep thinking about other things. My life isn't particularly difficult (well, it is, but only in the sense that math is difficult), but I can't focus on one thing. The sword of Damocles is hanging on by a thread.

Actually, I wish it would just fall. Somehow I think I would be more formidable at picking up the pieces than holding things together as they stand. I'm only on day three of my two month adventure through dry math, and my heart won't stop beating like a madman's. My brain won't ever consider a single aspect of this life, and, in considering it, make it beautiful. So it's all ugly.

What I would consider relaxing, besides racketball, would be to speak broken French with Agnès the way I used to. What would be really relaxing would be to spend the evening of a truly hot summer day in a coffee shop near union square, reading Joyce or Bukowski or the Power Broker or the Death and Life of Great American Cities. Or to silently peer over these books to contemplate a woman not as a part of my life but as a part of life as a whole and remember that since it (life) keeps chugging I have nothing to worry about. Suddenly age 22 can be romantic again, and age 30 is a dream as is 70. But this won't happen until I'm 23, I'm sure, so my heart keeps beating so incredibly fast. And my brain still surges with useless intellectualism.

An eerie coincidence

Have you ever noticed that the Gym is just like a dance club? Notice,
first of all, that you have to put on special clothes to go. Specific
shoes, no jeans. Then while you're in there you can't make eye contact
with other people. Well, you can, but it's a bit awkward. The whole
time there's dance music thumping away, while you pump yourself up
trying to look entertained. You can go by yourself, but you'd much
rather go with your buddies, so you can make fun of the other people.
For example, you might have a grand old time pointing out a fat ass or
the hugest boobs.

Of course, in the gym, you're not trying to pick up girls but rather
trying to get a good workout, which means getting the best machines.
Think of these as the analogue to girls. The best machines are always
surrounded by guys, not letting anyone else cut in on their action.
Sometimes you see a machine that's perfectly deserted from far away,
but when you go up to it you see that it's broken. Maybe a piece of it
is missing, or it's simply not plugged in. Maybe it's too much work
putting the weights on it yourself. Either way, all the other people
in the gym noticed this before and that's why there's no one using it.

As a side note, my favorite 'machine' is really just those two metal
arms that you can suspend yourself on and lift your legs up. When I
use it, I kinda feel like I'm snowboarding.

Fun Thoughts

-Racketball
-New sneakers
-Haircut
-Early morning drive
-Going out by myself...
... to go meet a girl
-LaTeX
-Brownstones
-The smallest city around
-Un petit d'un petit
-Bringing booze: PBR, belgian-style
-Computer in coffee shops
-Stashing a supply in the glove-box
-Biking to running
-The utility of mathematical finance
-Crappy guitar when hungover
-Mountain-climbing when it's way too cold
-Expensive paper
-Depot Postale
-Thinking of this list as a blog