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caffeine withdrawal with alcohol
Friday, May 3 2013
Today was day two of my caffeine abstinence, and unfurled similarly to yesterday. In the morning I didn't feel too bad, but by early afternoon my batteries had run out and I was finding it difficult just to sit in a chair in front of the computer. Again I ended up in the greenhouse upstairs, where, after watching another terrible episode of Revolution, I fell asleep. Temperatures were a bit cooler today than it had been yesterday, and while it was comfortable in the greenhouse, I didn't open a window like I did yesterday.
Despite my lethargy, I rallied this evening and went with Gretchen when she attended a sort of opening by Woodstock comic book artist Will Lyttle. Between shifts at Sunfrost, he makes comic books that he gives away for free (though today he would be selling a compilation of three of his earlier productions). The books' story lines center around the sublime power of nature involving vacant-eyed humans and magical owls, moths, and other enchanted creatures. The illustrations are gorgeous pen & ink scenes of stylized people and animals in nature, all of it patterned with the kinds of textures that only an obsessive-compulsive can bring to bear. His crosshatching is often so meticulous and regular that it looks like a sort of basket weave (though it's possible he achieves this using a computer program).
Today's opening was upstairs at the Golden Notebook, and a surprising amount of wine and beer had been provided. Quickly a line formed as Will drew custom covers for each of the 30 books he'd prepared for sale. (Will was raising money for a two month trip to Alaska.) He also offered $1 portraits, one of which Gretchen and I posed for:
As you can see, Will goes for the widely-spaced eye look, but even in these simple pictures he manages to capture a person's essence, usually in the shape of the nose or he mouth. I don't know why he decided to give me horns and an Illuminati eye and Gretchen a storm cloud; this seemed to be part of his reading of us as humans.
Deborah showed up and was somewhat behind us in the slow-moving line, and then (because such things happen when Gretchen visits the Golden Notebook) there was a shortage of staff, so Gretchen ran the cash register for 20 or 30 minutes while we waited for Deborah. (In Will's portrait of Deborah, he gave her antlers.)
I should mention that I had elected to drink wine even though my body's energy level was noticeably reduced from lack of caffeine. At first it soothed my headache and made me feel good, but later in the evening the combination of alcohol and caffeine withdrawal made for an unpleasant and seemingly-unfixable feeling in my body.
After we were done with Will Lyttle, Deborah, Gretchen, and I went to nearby Joshua's upstairs and managed to put together a fairly good vegan meal. We've had trouble with anything more substantial that appetizers, but today we made a new discovery: the vegan hot pot. (It must be new.) It comes with two slabs of tofu floating on a brothy ramen-noodle-and-mushrooms sea. It's simple stuff, but it works. And just because something is simple doesn't mean Joshua's can pull it off; their bean soup was watery and kind of gross, but not as gross as the barley-and-something soup that Deborah had ordered. Their french fries don't look very good (they look like those limp blackened greasy things that fancy restaurants pass off as fries), but they're not bad.
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