Oh, Monkey, Monkey Me! (2/23/09 Monday)

A Julie-day such as I haven't had in months, if at all, and there was nothing special about it. I've simply regained her trust. I'm still a nervous wreck anywhere near her, but I don't avoid the proximity. Today, incident brought us near often, and though I was nowhere near natural, I managed to meet her eyes and match her jests. It was a relief to laugh with her. I'm not raising hopes--that soil is exhausted--but trying to find normal. Though I'm often acutely aware of her presence, I do a better job now of not being so aware of her presence as to make every action of my own about her and the hope of her noticing me. It's easier to do my job.

Then I remember that first Tuesday in December, when I was giddy to see her after what seemed an eternity, little knowing that everything I'd built would be torn down without a thought within a few hours. And I think of how the awesome hair-day is always followed by the most horrendous one. Perhaps this sounds fatalistic. Consider, then, that Book Monkey has not yet made the blog roll. This time the sabotage could be my own. I worry that she'll think I'm seeing signs again, especially since I've made such a turnaround in the past week with my attitude toward her. I don't want her afraid of me again and of her actions towards me.

When I didn't see Book Monkey Says on the blog roll, I was miffed. My first chance to look for it came when I replaced Julie on the desk at eleven. She'd even left that page up. I scrolled down the roll, though, and didn't find the blog. I emailed the Web 2.0 committee asking how long it took for that to happen. Later, reading the blogs in the roll, I came across someone writing, in passing, about the difficulty she was having modifying the roll. I commented on that post that I was eager to see my blog on the roll, but that I'd try to be patient. In order not to corrupt Book Monkey's persona, I signed in with my Bright, Ironic Hell username and password. Now, if she clicks on that, thinking she'll find the blog to which I was referring, she would get BIH. Great.

But I am eager to expose Book Monkey. It's important before I can continue posting to it, or even before I write much more of it. Though I don't want to simply translate the real action to fiction, I need to get the feeling from the consequences of the exposure. I want the fiction to "happen," to present itself to me. It's almost as if the reality is the role-playing for the fiction. Oh, boy, I like that. I'm seeing these characters as real, and I don't mean I'm seeing the person they're base upon, because that person was just the skeleton, and now they are flesh-and-blood. Book Monkey is not me; May is not Julie. And Gail--who is she? She's Gail! I don't know a Gail, real name or otherewise. Fiction (except for delusion) has not come from my pen for many years, and it's never come like this, so real. How much realer is it about to get?