Paul Attinello

Author: paulattinello

  • [untitled]

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    by

    paulattinello
    in

    He is nearly on time. He smiles. We talk of rents, deposits. He laughs about a former lover, I earnestly explain the thermostat. He says he’s very interested. I pass him, feeling a wave of heat, to go into the kitchen. He follows, and we discuss our sleeping habits. When he is gone, I stand,…

  • Onyegin

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    by

    paulattinello
    in ,

    Got some work done, working off of a precise list of Things To Do over the next two days. (As they used to say in seminars: it’s amazing how much you get done on the day before you go away for vacation – and wouldn’t it be even more amazing if you could be that…

  • Support

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    paulattinello
    in

    Something lucky happened two days ago – my yearly employee review. Yuck, you say? – my history with these in British academe has been somewhat variable; I don’t mind working on plans and lists of projects, but my last review with our old Head of School was frankly disturbing. No surprise – the old Head…

  • Fragments and overview

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    paulattinello
    in , ,

    At 2:30 am, my smoke alarm goes off. There’s no battery in it, there’s no smoke, it just malfunctions. Somewhere in what I’d watched that day were the bleakly sunny rooms of an everyday Los Angeles apartment, with all its implied background – that strange flatness, that subtly disturbing sense of endless emptiness that is…

  • Missing a beat

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    by

    paulattinello
    in

    Still weakened, woozy today. Hard to describe, really – like a slight illness, but not with feeling actually bad… felt better in the afternoon, fairly normal in the evening. All of which made a slight break in the cycle of thinking, second-guessing. As I am of course a rigid personality, some breakage in my cycle…

  • Solaris

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    paulattinello
    in , ,

    Continued light-headed, or perhaps woozy, all afternoon. Didn’t go to Catherine’s birthday dinner. Did go in for interview with prospective postgraduate – and I’m sorry if it sounds heartless, but what a waste of time that was. Well I suppose that in the larger sense, as I gave her advice about where she should consider…

  • vertigo

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    paulattinello
    in

    After taking my pills a few hours ago, started to feel strange – tingling, disoriented. An acute sense of feeling my internal organs (possibly illusory – there aren’t any nerves in there, are there?) and a shimmer of minor aches. (This after being pleased that my gums stopped aching after I took some echinacea….) I…

  • Through the mazes

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    paulattinello
    in ,

    I continue to respond to the summer and its work in a rather murky and unsatisfying way. The weather has moved quite firmly from hot to chilly, and gray to boot (not ‘grey’, it’s not that subtle). I have piles of things that need to be done, but plenty of time to do them –…

  • Entangled in the blankets

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    by

    paulattinello
    in

    I woke shortly before my 8:30 pills, turned off the alarm, went out to the couch to lie for a bit more: engaged in an interesting (to me) psychological game, which had a depth that only gradually became evident – imagining myself differently, as someone who was going to get some things done today (marking…

  • Seasons

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    by

    paulattinello
    in

    This frozen twilight, ice holds my breathing under and alone. I brush away wet darkened leaves, lean down on your grave… Direct, above, strong sun gives flame to your arm across my back; I push aside green branches, catch your morning eyes and smile – [Los Angeles, 11/4/91-9/21/92]