Diablevert

The List, the Dreaded List

So, I'm still fairly early in this process, where I pack up my life and cares and start anew, rising on the stepping stones of my dead self to better yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm still in the fun part: The part where I get to make neat little lists of things to do, and feel all organized and take-charge, and don't have to actually do anthing, yet.

I spoke of lists; really, it's one list, The List. It started it a couple months ago, a very short little thing, stirring in its simplicity:

1. Get ticket
2. Send Stuff
3. Find House
4. Find Job
5. Write About Above

Five things! Who can't manage five simple things? Idiots, that's who.

Now, as the time for departure creeps ever closer, those five simple things have begun to break up, fragment, like walking closer and closer to a pointallist painting (remeber when they had that bit on Seaseme Street? Or maybe it was Mister Rogers. Or Reading Rainbow. Somebody had that bit.) About a month from now, I think it's gonna feel like I'm nose-to-canvas with a Seurat.

For now, though, the transformation has just begun. It's started with my daydreams; lately, I've been trying to move beyond idle images of a quiet Sunday in my Tastefully Decorated Cozy Cottage (located in an amazingly cheap yet charming and soon-to-be-fashionable area) toward more concrete details and planning --- ought I to get moving insurance? Remember to check the voltage of the DVD ....how much would it cost to get a new CD player? I must buy this thing and sell those; I should follow-up with this person and send that one an e-mail; ect., ect. And the list burgeons.

What troubles me is not the things I think of when I set myself down to plan but the things I think of when I do most of my daydreaming, that is, during boring work and work related meetings; while crammed ramrod straight into the center of a packed L; just before the phone rings or my boss starts talking...I seem to just manage to think of something when I have to stop thinking of it and direct my attention elsewhere.

Such missed thoughts pester me like flies, a harsh buzz that swoops by my inner ear and away again as soon as I make a grab for it ---- BZZT! Make a Doctor's appointment! Don't forget me, I'm important! BZZZzzzz --- and I am left flailing around, peering searchingly into the attic corners of my mind, attempting to snag that darting thought and smack it down into an ink-black splat on the list.

The curse seems worst when I'm lying half awake in the mornings. It's most often then that a useful thought will land and begin a delicate upward crawl that just tickles my senses, and then I'll roll over, over shake it off, nod out for another couple minutes, and spend of the rest of the day knowing I have thought of something really important, and useful, and necessary, and not being able to remember what it is.

I'm sure there's a word in German for that.

I shouldn't complain too much, though; often enough I'll be saved, hours later, by a pure flash of inspiration: "Important documents! That's it! I have to make copies of my passport and other important documents! Praise, Jesus! Halleluja!" Often enough that I've decided to make this my whole strategy for figuring out what to put on The List, anyway.