My Dorothy Parker Day

Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;

I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.

I hate my legs, I hate my hands,

I do not yearn for lovelier lands.

I dread the dawn's recurrent light;

I hate to go to bed at night.

I snoot at simple, earnest folk.

I cannot take the simplest joke.

I find no peace in paint or type.

My world is but a lot of tripe.

I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.

For what I think, I'd be arrested.

I am not sick. I am not well.

My quondam dreams are shot to hell.

My soul is crushed, my spirit sore:

I do not like me any more.

I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.

I ponder on the narrow house.

I shudder at the thought of men.

I'm due to fall in love again.







Ah, Dorothy Parker is so visciously brilliant! Luckily

I don't have the need to devour her quite so often as

when I was 19 and sitting in the bathroom sink drinking

Old Crow, but today she came to mind and I needed her as

desperately as ever. In the last 24 hours, I have dealt

with an insurance companies who thinks my birthday is

in the year 1900, my son's on-line financial aid scholarship

request form ala the federal government (GAG PUKE) which is

due in 8 hours, tax returns and a bout of something strikingly

reminiscent of mental illness. I hate it when my brain attacks

me like this and it's not even over anything interesting

like oceans or crushes or music or lost, dead friends. Maybe it's like

our Feng Shui consultant said, the 920 square foot house I was born

is hopelss, beyond a bagua or a fountain or a candle, that even putting

a mirror under the toilet or getting the tv out of the bedroom

won't stop the craziness from pushing the walls in.