The good thing about where I work is it’s very easy to focus on just work and not get confused about friendships or comfortability.

I hate when people say flushing out when they mean fleshing out.

I find it highly amusing that my coworker is sitting there playing brick breaker during this meeting.

Does it ever really freeze in Montauk? (I was thinking about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.)

“Iran sends rocket with animal menagerie into space” was a headline on the news monitor in the office elevator.  I thought it was pretty interesting word usage.  First, I thought of the animals done up like circus animals, then I thought of the Tennesee Williams play, and finally I landed on the glass case in my grandmother’s house that has it’s own animal menagerie inside.

At this specific moment, my mind flits between ideas such as staying in New York and working hard where I am, which everyone seems to believe is best for my career. I consider moving back to Texas, specifically Austin. I consider checking out the west coast. I fancifully think about traveling through South America to really learn Spanish, possibly finding a graduate school in Argentina in which to enroll. Maybe it’s because of boredom. I don’t really know. I doubt, at moments like this, that I have the capacity or drive for actual lasting happiness, although I realize it is a common belief that happiness is not lasting – that there are only moments of it. Satisfaction, then. Contentment. I wonder if that’s where I am right now. I suppose it could be. So then, if so, perhaps it is not enough.

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting with a director of a different department from mine. He travels frequently for work. I commented that it must get tiring. He responded that it didn’t really bother him because he loves his job. I think that must be a really fantastic feeling. Granted there are so many different types of people in the world, but I wonder why I don’t feel that same level of fulfillment and whether I possibly can. I wonder if I should have majored in something else, or should have become a programmer, or what to do, now, knowing that I haven’t been terrible ecstatic with anything I’ve done, minus working those relaxed, low-paid hours in the studio, perhaps.

I wonder why so many other people seem content working for years at a job which doesn’t make them happy and I quickly try to change my position. Once again, it brings me back to feeling that perhaps I am wired wrong for society, but I don’t know. Today, I don’t feel any deep depression. I don’t feel that fear of being terrifically out of place. I just wonder if there is something better out there. I guess that’s the trouble with me. My mother told me many years ago that nothing is ever enough for me. I think about that often – about how right she must’ve been.

Anyhow, because I am a curious (or obsessive?) person, I came home to google the movie and see if I could find Julie’s original blog.  (I did – feel free to read it here.)  After her blogging project was complete, she wrote the book Julie and Julia, on which the film is based.  I think they probably made the character in the movie a little more likable and normal.  The actual blogger was a snake owning atheist.  Not quite the same wholesome character.  Although, being that she was born and raised in Austin, you have to give her a little credit.  Also, I don’t feel like I can form a fully educated opinion on the woman being that I’ve only read a week’s worth of her blog posts so far.  And anyway, I like this line: “I had never in my nearly thirty years of life eaten an egg, but I ate one today. So that’s where I am. In a week of this experiment, I have cooked 14 recipes, but mostly I ate my first egg.”

The length and detail of the blog posts really hearken back to an earlier time in blogging history, before we all had ADD and, certainly, before Facebook and Twitter.  Off to bed with me now.  Much more to read at a later date. :)

PS: Can you imagine this scene in Park Slope nowadays?  I feel like things must’ve been different 7 years ago!

I suppose I should be feeling at peace with the world standing in a long grocery line standing behind a skinhead mother buying organic fruit leather for her adorably dreadlocked son and in front of a couple with matching blue hair buying soy milk and Rao’s marinara sauce, but instead I feel mostly like climbing the walls.

We are living in the petri dish of our own halfway point.  The organizing, cleaning, exercise, and motivation has ceased.  We wait to see what will happen.  If anything will grow.

Ambition has ground to a halt.  Projects have paused midstream.  They often do.  Everything is on hiatus.  When left to its own devices, nature breaks things down – rot, weakness, crumbling, oblivion are inevitable.

Is there beauty in dystopia?  We used to think so. We were children (”We are all just foolish children, searching desperately for ourselves, and in that struggle, we are lost.” – Me circa 1995/1996) and everything we thought or wept meant so much.  It was never “Now what?” but always “What’s next?”  The world was rife with beauty, sorrow, loneliness, and possibilities – even in the futile sameness I perceived was out there.  My isolated, questioning tears seemed so significant.

We write things off as “the angst of youth.”  For us, it was a time of self-centered importance, to be sure, but also of analysis, of well thought out arguments lasting into the early morning hours.  Of ideas that created stories, self-published magazines, performances, and, yes, philosophical movements.  It was a time of possibility and action. Not, as now, of taking things at face value.  Accepting and not questioning.  Taking what is offered without striving for personal goals and growth.

These are the thoughts preventing my sleep tonight, probably because I’ve got a meeting with a tech recruiter tomorrow which has made me introspective.  In my dreams last night I was a super hero, graced with exceptional speed and the power to manipulate objects with my mind, but I was unable to achieve my desired transformation – to dissolve into a billion particles and disperse.  To escape the evil pursuers attempting to capture me and obtain the information I was privy to. (I don’t recall what this was.)  I wonder if we’ll ever understand the significance of dreams…

Is this odd, in-between place really where true change occurs?  Is the past gone forever?  Or, more importantly, are those people that we were gone forever?

Execute. Meaning. Fun.

What will your 3 words for 2009 be?

Lying in bed in Texas, I was awoken by my dad bringing in Justin’s cell phone. The alarm was going off.  It was 8:30 AM in NY, 7 :30 here.  I considered getting up after only 4 hours of sleep to walk down the street and see my grandmother (Nanny), a ridiculously early riser.  I’d spoken with my cousin Sheila the night before; she told me she and her husband (Justin) were going to have breakfast with Nanny at 7 AM.  Yeah, right.  Sheila is notorious for consistent inconsistency.

The thought occurred to me of playing a terrible practical joke on Sheila – pretending Nanny had died by getting there before her, conspiring with Nanny and hiding her, and basically lying through my teeth when Sheila arrived.  Obviously, this thought process got me thinking of how sad everyone would be if Nanny were to die for real and how devastated my cousin David would be.  How devastated I would be.

Mom, Me, Jared, and Val! - Halloween 1994

Thoughts leading on to other thoughts, I remembered the last time someone incredibly important to me died.  It was Dec. 2005 and the neighbor I’d had and helped raise (he was 6 years younger than me) and played with practically my whole life committed suicide. His mother found his body hanging in his closet.  I remembered going to his wake and half-hoping in that ridiculous manner that people do when they don’t want to believe reality that it was all an elaborate ruse and Jared would call it off at any moment.  Val! and I swore we wouldn’t be angry if he’d planned the whole thing as some gigantic practical joke, or even just some way to prove to himself that lots of people cared about him (people came out en masse – it was incredible to see the number of lives this young guy had touched).  I lost it as soon as I saw his lifeless body in the coffin.  Even from the entrance of the chapel, it was apparent the spark that was Jared’s being was gone forever.

I remembered that I’d dressed Goth that night and for the funeral the next day in honor of Jared.  It was something he used to tease me relentlessly about, even though he always conceded to letting Valerie and I dress him up and put makeup on him. It was at this moment that it struck me where my ankh was.  As I approached Jared’s coffin the day of his funeral to say my final goodbye, I ripped my ankh from around my neck and laid it on his chest.  Strange how we’re driven to do symbolic things, like adorning a corpse with a necklace before sending it into the ground forever, as a way of saying goodbye.  Utterly pointless but entirely human.

Mystery solved.  I wonder what it was about this thought process, this story, that drove me to get up at 7:30 AM after a mere 4 hours of sleep and type it up to share with my poor readers.  I feel a little guilty about it, because spreading misery is not my goal, but it seemed important, even interesting, to me.  I guess revelations and understanding are interesting to me.  Anyway, I am going to lay down and try to go back to sleep.

Follow Up:  I didn’t want to leave any of you guys hanging as I am sure you’re on the edge of your seat wondering, “Did Sheila show up at 7 AM this morning at Nanny’s house?!”  Like a good author and fact-checker, I just got off the phone with Nanny.  Sheila did not show up afterall.  Justin left a message saying something about abdominal pain (she is pregnant – sounds like a good reason).  I guess it’s good to be able to bank on the actions of someone you know pretty darn well.  Nanny did, however, make Schmawn* in the anticipation of Sheila and Justin’s arrival.  Don’t worry guys – my Justin and I will take care of it for you.  Good morning all.

* Schmawn is pancake mix + oil stirred constantly over heat in a big pot til there are tiny cooked pancake crumbles.  Served in a bowl covered with syrup.  Oh deliciousness.

After 2 years in New York, I still don’t feel as though I have ever lived here. Why is that? Is it because I know in my heart I am biding my time? Probably. Moving to NYC is something I did out of coercion—maybe persuasion is a better word. At any rate, I accepted it because I was looking to make a change in my life anyway. Chicago was the city I’d set my sights on, but America’s first city offered me a job, I already had family here, plus my sister was requiring me to go where she did, and Val!’s plans certainly included New York. There was no great reason not to move to New York.

I wonder if the feeling of living a transient existence and just waiting, waiting in limbo, would be the same regardless. I know Texas is in my eventual future, but I’d still like to feel settled and cozy in the interim—like I belong to a place and it to me. Like I have a positive, loving relationship with my current city, as cheesy as that may sound. New York, why are you so elusive? Is it entirely my fault?

I see it from the periphery. I see how cool New York is, how interesting it can be, and what it offers that no place else really does—something for everyone. It’s easy to rebuke NYC for being so hard-nosed, so unfriendly, so not midwestern/southern. I just want, for the rest of the time Justin and I are here, to love it like other people openly love it. I just don’t know if I have it in me.

Side note: On the way to see FIT’s Gothic fashion exhibit today, a black man was handing out a newspaper. The cover said “Racism! Hatred!” He tried to hand it to an Indian man walking right in front of me that did not take it. As I approached, he quickly pulled the magazine away from my sight and back toward himself. Strange, but that happens more than you’d think here. There are religious propaganda spreaders that hang out near Queens Mall preaching that God is black. They approach anyone that looks like a minority, but when I (or another white person) walks by, they back away or turn to someone else. In a way, it’s a bummer. What if it was something I wanted to know about?  It’s not like I’ve got religion in my life.  ;) Oh well, no biggie.

FIT’s exhibit was amazing and highly, highly recommended.  If you like black, lace, Gothic style, or are just curious, you absolutely must check it out!  I might write more on this at another time, as I am planning to drag Val! back with me… in full regalia. :)