PROCESSing

This time tomorrow I'll be in the desert.

Crazy part is, it'll actually be a real desert. It'll be the kind with dunes and dust and rolling shadows that trick your eyes. It won't be the desert of the soul, the parched graveyard of the mind, or the dark night of the spirit. Nah, it won't be any more of that existential shit. It'll be the kind of dry I can hold in my hands. If I can stumble through one more urban day, one more day skating on this glass and iron grid, I'll get on a plane and wake up in Vegas. And then I'm going to drive.


The idea is to pitch my tent in Death Valley, pour a bourbon, make a fire and think about this:

PRODUCT VERSUS PROCESS
or....

prOcess versus PRoducT
or...

OCESSP sveRUS prOCTDu

I finish my semester this evening. I want some kind of internal brass bell to ring. A button. A gong. I want Anthony Michael Hall to punch me in the shoulder. But what I've got instead is, well, creative process, which looks a lot more like a bunch of work halfway through its life cycle, some inspired, some shit and all of it only breathing if I fill it full of my helium. Somehow this feels anticlimactic.

Last semester, after reading the equivalent of the Library of Congress' bibliography section on international politics and the Middle East and acing a final and three major papers, my husband and I went out and drank a paycheck's worth of wine. The first toast was along the lines of, "here's to doing something tangible and easy to toast to!" This semester's toast will be something like, "here's to coming up with some solid concepts and then getting a little off track after workshopping them, but finally accepting that taking a bit of breathing space will inevitably restore buoyancy to your craft!" Salut!

This was a process semester. Scratch that, a process year. I'm seeing this whole school-slow-as-molasses thing as an exercise in forced process. It's like that scene from A Clockwork Orange where the guy's eyelids are forced open with those little metal prods so that he can bear witness to the atrocities of the world before him. I will be forced to surrender my need for a moment of conclusion. My consciousness will be scrubbed of words and phrases containing the likes of "content", "pages", "bang it out" and "nail it".

I will get comfortable with the following idea:

I AM NEVER FINISHED.

And if I can't get comfortable with it yet, I'll just get drunk and go hiking.

Happy Hollowdays

Oh, Gawd, it's good to be back here, layin' down font in my tiny piece of e-real estate. It's like diving into a warm, electric swimming pool. This blog, my unrestricted voice, home of shit poetry and endless depressive job-hating, blonde strand-coveting exploits. It doesn't have to have a market or a point, page views or analytics. It doesn't have to be search engine-friendly. It can just be a little square of space and I can just show up, walk around, post, scream, yell, cry, pontificate, paint, shatter into a million pieces and glue myself back together sideways. And I don't have to care if it makes me any money or determines my future or gets me out of my job or gets me in any doors or buys me freedom or gets me sponsored or opens my days or makes me in any way better or more accomplished or successful...or stops...the...gerbil wheel...even.for.a.second.

November went down like a shot of vodka. I hardly remember it. It says here I last visited the ranch on October 23rd. Well, shit. Since then I've gone another year grayer (but you'll never see it), spent Thanksgiving in jammies drinking Moet, bought a near-eight foot tall Christmas tree and filled it full of sparkly things and am now staring down the final two weeks of my semester. I've written fiction, for God's sake. Real fiction. Well, fake stories about real people that I've imagined. I can't believe it. I'm halfway through the required manuscript, which is due in a week. I'm still not sure where it's going, but if that isn't this year's fuckin' t-shirt slogan, I sure can't think of a better one.

I think my Korean herbalist may have reset my internal hard drive. Since Halloween I've been drinking a vicious brew I named "the hell broth", a mahogany-colored liquid packed in cellophane bags printed with stags that I've been downing twice a day before meals. It's meant to strengthen my liver, which in Chinese medicine is responsible for a whole lotta goin's on, including anger, mood, headaches, muscle pain and imbalance. The instructions were strict: no alcohol, pork, fried foods, fats, sugar or raw vegetables while on the regimen. I did pretty well for most of the course of treatment, except for the Moet, which in my mind isn't really alcohol but is more of a tonic. I've noticed over the month an odd sort of sedation. In someone like me that's beyond obvious and more than welcome. It's hard to explain to people that you're taking something you don't understand the contents or the effects of. I guess it's also hard admitting that I don't understand the power of my mind over the health of my body.

This is always a dreaded time of year for me. The minute "Santa Baby" starts playing in Food World at the start of October, I'm pretty much ready to smash a pecan pie into the face of cheer. I used to find it sad that some people wanted to spend Christmas at the bottom of an Old Fashioned, thinking that being jaded during the holidays was a cliche. Well, it is. But so are fireplaces and holiday home makeover shows. What can I do? This season is an emotional minefield. I've come to accept that it's better if I have an escape plan. This year it's the desert. I can do trees and carols and family and the whole biz if I can just go see some southwestern sky and breathe some red dust. I believe in the cleansing powers of the desert. Get me to a place where I won't hear "White Christmas" for at least two days, and I'm good to go.

Death Valley, here I come.
Should be all clear out there.

I Will Not Think

I've been told that if my pulse does not improve I'll be put on herbs. This is Chinese medicine for "get your shit together."

I've been meditating with a back full of quills on the long bed in the small sleeping closet at the acupuncture office for several weeks now. I'm trying to figure out a way to process my emotions so they don't make me sick. To learn, as I've been instructed, to imagine that emotions are like a picture frame and mentally drape a sheet over them when I don't want to feel them. To see emotions like food. To take them in, digest them and then pass them--never storing them as pain. There are apparently all these ways to picture emotions and do something about them. I've been picturing ways to picture picturing them. Or something like that.

As my doctor turned out the lights and left the room last night he asked, "Do you have any questions?"
"Yes," I replied, pleadingly. "What can I do? Can I cut anything else out, stop eating eggplant, use more fresh ginger in my diet, perhaps add a little light jiu-jitsu or something?"
"There's nothing else you can do. Except...worry less. Ponder less."

Now, to be fair, he said this with a small hint of the desired irony that one with a back full of hot needles would demand in a moment like that. And then he left me in the dark. And I thought. I thought about thinking less. I thought about pondering less. I thought about worrying less. I worried about worrying less. And then I made a small vow. For one week (let's not kid ourselves here), I'm going to imagine a sheet. And when the grinding machine begins to chink, chink, chink away, churning itself into nothingness, I'm going to put up that sheet and let those thoughts hit it.

I'm not going to worry.
I'm not going to worry.
I'm not going to worry.

Okay, let's revise.

I'm going to worry...less.
I'm going to worry...less.
I'm going to worry...less.

And after this one week, I'm going to see what worrying less has done.
Because hey, I sure know what worrying does.
(Insert blank space here).

Ill Wind

Well, it's official. I won't be representing my country in the Ironman triathlon in June. For that matter, nor will I be able to continue my work as a fit model, UN Goodwill Ambassador and Dan Brown's ghostwriter. It's all become too much. I'm overextended, outwitted, undernourished and ornery as hell.

I've developed these cravings, see, for pickled foods. I'm waking up nights wanting gourmet doughnuts and grilled cheese. None of the usual fare satisfies. Don't want beer. Can't be bothered with caiphrinhas. Don't wanna feel altered. Just wanna feel hidden.

It all started when I heard about Muir drinkin' that pine needle tea to get more "sequoiacal". Purple juice, restoring color. I thought, 'I'm only drinkin' this here Kool-Aid. Somethin's wrong.'

I don't see sky. My roof is these fluorescent bars. I've gotta see something mightier than silver, more ancient than chrome.

I miss mountains.

The electric city is electrocuting me. Blue wire, red wire, motherboard. I'm plugged in at the fingernail. Muir said "overcivilized". That's too kind. Overdone, overzealous, overboard, overwhelmed. Over it.

I went to see my acupuncturist last week. I sensed the wind element, the presence of which had sent me to bed for days with migraines and a piercing pain that crawled along my spine like a spider wearing stilettos. He said my lungs were exhausted. In traditional Chinese medicine they govern growth and maturity. In his strangely stoic and well, "sequoiacal" style, he explained its root cause as "too much sitting on one problem for too long."

Did I say I miss mountains?

Busy Bee

MUSE

Well, things have been hoppin' around here. Sho' nuff, after writing the post below I felt compelled to go and visit my aspirational arm ornament in person. Now, in fourteen years of New York City living I've never been inside a designer store. Not once. But I actually broke the fourth wall for the Gucci. She'd been replaced on the pedestal by a hot little purple number so I had to seek her out. This gave a sexy, black-clad store clerk the opportunity to ask what he could do for me. I described the bag in question and he led me right to her.

"This one's special. We don't have another one like her", he said. Of course not. "She's got a real unique edge. She's sophisticated without being dated. She's playful." 'My God, they get right inside of you', I thought. He put her in my hands and I ran my index finger over each of her weighted, pristine details. The gentleman behind the counter described the features that made her uniquely a Gucci. The zipper pull, lining and structure. The irridescent metallic fabric. I slipped her over my shoulder and strode to the mirror. I watched her dangle from every angle. I was wearing jeans and a pair of black Chuck Taylors, but I coulda been in a Mugler bandage dress and a pair of Fendi booties. She transformed me. I brought her back to the counter, traced the stitching on her underbelly and stepped back to take her in. She was mine.

And then I walked away.

I got myself a little gig this week. I'll be writing about beauty trends for Examiner.com , a culture site with readership in 109 cities. This means great exposure and maybe a little ca-ching, but mostly the opportunity to report publicly on my product fetish and tell you all about critically important things like how to wear the half-black, half-white manicure in real life. You know, world news and matters of national security. Hey, at least you'll be outfitted in the event of another financial crisis. Don't say I didn't warn you that the strong brow was back for fall!

I saw U2 at Giants Stadium with my husband, who is their fan. But before that, I saw Muse open for U2. Muse is my new muse. I can't stop listening to them now, despite having had them on my ipod for 3 years and being pretty into their huge, dramatic sound. Think Queen in a mash-up with Metallica and Radiohead. Throw in a frontman in a pair of really tiny red jeans and a huge white piano and you'll have Muse. Fist-pumping and showstopping. Made up entirely for the fact that a huge Jersey gorilla of a man asked me to move out of his way during the first song in U2's set, which froze me self-consciously in place and kept me from moving for the duration of their show. "Stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it"? Bono didn't know the half of it.

Better than all of that, I saw Fanfarlo at the Bowery. Beautiful and strange and Swedish. Trumpets and saws and fiddles and guitars. A small, buttoned-up frontman with a butterfly vocal that flew out and soared above all of our funky, stoic heads. Such romantic lyrics for such a young gent. I feel so lucky to live in New York, to be able to stand on two legs at midnight and listen to six strangers play me music I can sway to.

Life is good in the electric city.

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

All I can say is, never underestimate the power of a glossy patent handbag.

This slick sack? We've begun seeing each other. Well, it's not formal, actually. I see her and she just sorta stares back, invitingly. I haven't introduced myself yet. She's kind of a loner, actually. People tend to put her on a pedestal. She sits astride one just so in the gleaming Gucci ghetto on on Fifth Avenue and 54th Street. She's worth two paychecks at least, maybe three, and I usually find those kinda girls pretty intimidating.

I'm afraid that if I brought her home I'd have to stop wearing mom jeans. Girls like these usually demand a certain garment-related savoir faire, and bare minimum that you can at least stand in heels for longer than fifteen minutes without pulling out your pair of Chucks. There is a school of thought that these kinds of gals encourage your A game. But secretely I wonder if just like the awesome patent ankle boots from Bond Street that seemed so brilliant two years ago, she'd really just spend most of her time at home in curlers waiting for a "special occasion" at which to make an appearance.

Thing is, though, I want her. I know it's cliche but she just gets me. For one, we're both in touch with our dark sides. She loves metal, she's soft-bottomed with all the pinches and tucks you'd expect from a sophisticated woman of a certain season. And the best part? It looks as though after a long, late night she broke her heel and fell into a pool of gasoline. If things were to get too hot she could burst into flames in a second. That's just the way you'd want any good broad to be: nice and shiny but never precious.

Partie D'Août Deux

Alright, August. This is it. We've come to the end. You've wrung me out. You've somehow managed to slip into Blogger and fuck with my font. Even my Georgia, August. Even my Georgia? My own familiar black typeface now looks foreign. And suddenly there's a tab here I've never seen, labeled "Monetize". What won't you monetize, oh sodden month? This lowly changeling blog too?

Most of you know I rarely post real-life photos. This isn't that blog. I usually feel a thousand words are worth a thousand words flat out, no arguments. But once in awhile a picture metaphor is just too damn honest and it is necessary in this blog. The above is from a corner of my office. Not "mine" per se, but the one I work in and among and inside, and around. I go to this corner often to retrieve paper for the copier and last week I finally stopped in front of that motivational poster on the floor, which has been there since January. This is a wall. This corner. This office. It is glass or steel or a magnetic field or a piece of cellophane or epoxy or nothing at all. But I am trapped inside it. I feel trapped inside it.

August is my credit limits slashed, company 401k closed, car in the driveway unwilling to start, doctor dropped by insurance, dental plan gone, $11oo in cell phone bills and a stack of mail unopened. This is a wall. These bills, this loss of security. It is glass or steel or a magnetic field or a piece of cellophane or epoxy or nothing at all. But I am trapped inside it. I feel trapped inside it.

I think I've come to understand something. I've been boxed in because I've got to learn how to become more resourceful. If all my outs have been well, stubbed out, then I'm gonna have to use my imagination. If I can't fly away because there's no more plastic, can't drive away because there's no more rubber, can't bail myself out using the mythic retirement fund and escape into temporary unemployment, then I'll have to figure some other way to get out of this job and get within the same country as the life I want. Basically, there are no more excuses and there's no easy way. It is glass or steel or a magnetic field or a piece of cellophane or nothing at all. What happens if I poke my finger through it?

Most of you also know I'm not into having my freedom encroached upon. I'm the girl who had it tattooed in Latin, festooned by laurels and anchors where the Kundalini don't shine (what's that saying about a good way to lose your freedom? Have it tattooed in Latin?) as my permanent middle finger to expectation, obligation, boundary. If only declarations were the same as decisions.

I start school tomorrow. I'm taking Beginning Fiction and I'm totally terrified. I'm trying to remember what the hell I was thinking in May when I signed up for it. I have no idea how to write stories. But as I type that last line I'm thinking perhaps this is part of the new emergency exit plan. Maybe I'm going to have to write myself a new story with a mad, unexpected ending. One that involves a fabulous escape plan.

August

Morning's Inner Monologue
Rush hour,
heat index.
High-class cattle in column dresses.
Moo.

UV
My decolletage is freckled, I fear, permanently.
Micro calico remnants of two Adriatic weeks.
The final map charted by rising heat
from Diocletian's Wall
onto my chest in water bubbles.

It reminds me of the line
from that Ball play,
"freckles ruin shoulders", or
something like it.
Shit, I'm ruined.

Alright, enuffa that shite.
It appears that the soupy summer slosh has begun melting my heart, soul and most certainly cerebellum into a murky pool about to be splashed onto the side of a taxi. They don't make Pacino movies about August bank robberies for nothin'. I'm spending far too much time alone in this office while the rest of my "team" is off in one Hampton or another, or telecommuting or...whatever. I've taken to listening to endless streams of NPR for company, their steady tones floating off on the air conditioner's hum into the dark recesses of our computer closet. "Well, I began my career with a fellowship to do some work in Burundi..." Hisssssss.

It's so odd being stuck in Manhattan in August. Well, let me go back. I mean it's odd that an entire city empties for a month in the first place. But given that reality (the reality that nobody works in New York in the summer), it's strange to be someone who is, commuting into Midtown with the few sweaty blue shirt suckers who have to be present for their TD Waterhouse teambuilding exercises. Slosssshhhh.

I'm running out of ways to creatively clothe myself for the 75% humidity. When I'm alone on Thursdays and Fridays I wear flip flops and tank tops that don't conceal my wide, black bra straps. Today I'm wearing an acid washed gray hat with nautical metal stars on it. I added hoop earrings, hoping it might give my look an urban edge. It did that, alright. Now I look like I'm working at an Amoco station. I can tell when I've hit a homerun because our doormen actually make eye contact. But when I come into the office in on Fridays looking like I'm headed for a public beach near the Florida panhandle, they refuse to acknowledge me, even though I've been walking through those doors for over eight years. Ssssouuup.

Perhaps it's worse now that we have a new tenant in the office. She's a classic New York cosmetic professional: poised, sophisticated, and beautifully packaged. She wears a suit of sleek black armor every day that perfectly displays two enviably chiseled guns. And she's one of those heel types. One that can pull it off. She's got loads of spiky, spiny skins and leathers. Some are sharp points, some rounded, but all tall as hell. She's like a chic boutique tower, warming her leftover pasta in our dingy old microwave, chatting me up about this and that. It always feels as though I'm standing in my underwear when we're talking. Something about her makes me feel naked. Lately, it's been just the two of us in the office. She runs her business on the other side, but she's close enough that I can overhear her conducting conference calls. She's diplomatic and assertive. Sometimes I'll turn off the air conditioner and just sit and listen to her talk on the phone as the room warms up. When I came in this morning she said she loved my hat.

Heeeeeaaaatttt.

Coming Out of the Dark

My husband has been subletting on the sunnier coast for just nearing six weeks now. I haven't written much about it because, frankly, I haven't known how the hell to talk about it. When he visited LA in March to explore his career options, our lives took a sharp turn toward what is commonly referred to by our actor friends as The Inevitable: the sometimes-hard-to-swallow reality that the big pool of work lies out west while the cultural and intellectual baby pool we really wanna congregate in floats smack dab on this lean and leggy east coast isle. That sharp turn was both unexpected and exciting, but we knew things were never gonna be the same and that eventually, some kind of really hard decision was gonna have to be made about place or career or both.

Shortly after the March trip, we decided to pool every financial and emotional resource we had to send him back there as an all-out immersion experiment...just to see what would happen if he...lived there, for a time, as an actor, undivided. You can read his blow-by-blow at CouldYouPleaseJustNot. Below is my east coast version of that all-out immersion experiment.

It's no secret that I've taken a pretty bumpy ride to Psycho Town this summer, visiting my relatives on the dark side often and with gusto, downing vodka sodas, even digging deep to dust off the old agoraphobia. I picked a fight with our creepy neighborhood cross-dresser after he tossed an empty cup into a flowering bush, audibly sobbed my way through a documentary about modern China's stranglehold on peasant farmers, spent an afternoon detailing the back panels of my bathroom door with a bleach wipe, spent all day in the dark watching Michael Jackson's funeral, and peeled, and peeled, and peeled hardboiled eggs. When my sister came for a visit she complained that I'd become too controlling about the way the bathroom hand towels were folded. I laughed at her reflection in the mirror as I picked away at a microscopic eyebrow hair with a pair of tweezers. Those goddamn things, they'll make you crazy.

After that battle royal with all my filth and fury reached its zenith, I sat stunned in the muted mustard hues of my psychopharmacologist's office, where she inquired in her usual cool, anonymously eastern European way, "what ees zees depression of which you write on zees intake questionnaire?" We made a subtle medical adjustment to my chemical makeup. But I know there's no kind of gel-coated cocktail for what truly ails me. Uncertainty.

I walked down Park Avenue after the appointment thinking that it isn't at all being alone that's been hardest about my husband being gone. In fact, it rather suits me in some ways. It creates a wide open internal space in which those pithy little obsessive demons can emerge and thrive inside me. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. They rear, they terrify and then I can purge them. But what's caused all this utter insanity is not that he's gone. It's that that there seems so much attached to his being gone: possibility, upendedness, alpha, omega, beginnings, and endings. It's so weighted, his absence. But rather than grounding me in anything I could hang onto and derive some meaning from, it instead sent me surging straight up into the stratosphere without a capsule. I've been Major Tom, looking down at the life I had, watching it get smaller and smaller, seeing nothing ahead but a big, black, starless sky.

Perhaps I've broken through the ozone or something. Or at least begun to. I'm feeling ready to harness all this intensity, all these feelings of directionlessness and kid fears and use them to, I dunno, make some discoveries. I don't wanna pick fights with the creepy cross-dresser anymore. I don't wanna peel eggs on my porch in the rain or be obsessively tidy. I don't even care about getting blonder (okay, that might be a stretch). I have no idea what we're going to do about LA. I have no idea where we're supposed to be or what the right decision is about anything. I think we did the right thing by forcing change where we could, by surging forward in spite of having no bona fide evidence we should, but I don't really know that we did. What I want most to do is just say that. I. Do. Not. Know. I don't know, I don't know, I don' t know. I'm thinking the more I hear it, the less like a life sentence it feels. The more like...a second skin. Something I can breathe in.

So, there it is. Some tiny little shred of it. As it is today but will not, in any way, ever shall be.

Amen.

"Are We Doing Klute?"

This is one of my favorite things Stephen Colbert ever asked a guest on The Colbert Report. Jane Fonda was on and Colbert was attempting to steady his steely glare as she slithered all over him, trying to get him to drop his persona for a moment during their interview. He asked her, biting his lip, "are we doing Klute?"

I've been asking myself the same question ever since I visted Shaun, my new hair stylist, who I've finally decided is the man I'm going to cheat on my Russian blade-wielder with. I went to him for a second opinion on the "I'm not making you blonde!" opinion I've endlessly received from my longtime confidence cutter. I'm trying once again to force change from the outside in, hoping that by moving on from this silly power struggle which continually finds me unable to assert myself in the face of a woman holding a pair of thinning shears, I will not only be able to leave behind a head full of dated stripes, but will also reach in and wrap my hands around my mojo and pull it the hell out into the open again.

Shaun wants to give me a "loose, wavy, coulda-been-a-boy's-cut-in-the-Seventies-but-looks-like-a-less-structured-Fonda-Klute-cut" in a cool beige hue. I've been turning that one around in my mind's eye for a couple of days now. It could be the kind of thing where I'll look back on this post once I'm wearing a "loose, wavy" Joan Jett on my own ass-graced, curvy body and think, 'it sounded like such a good idea at the time', or it'll be just like the cut that was part of the evolution that created this blog in the first place: my "slick-severe-coulda-been-a-bowl-but-was-more-Bladerunner-dipped-in-chocolate-bob" that began a revolution of the soul. That's the one I'm wearing in the Facebook profile photo I recently had to remove after admitting to myself that I simply don't look like that anymore.

Nor do I feel like that.

I'm reading over these missives wondering how this became a melodramatic hair blog. When I first started writing OneKate posts, I was eating transformation for breakfast and making meatloaf outta the leftovers. I wanted to talk about reinvention, growth and potential. To be fair, I'm predisposed to the subject matter. I'm a Scorpio. I thrive on all that phoenix and flames shit. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, folks. I love it. And at the time, I was running (hard, 5 days a week), rattling all kinds of bits and pieces loose, discovering edges and ledges on my body and in my mind I never knew existed. But that has slowed, yes, and now I'm softer in spirit and silhouette.

So too, has my momentum in other places. I've been replaced in my mediocre QVC job by a young woman who my boss refuses to stop referring to as "that pretty little girl". From mediocre to invisible. That's not exactly the transition I was working for. I'm so apathetic about my job, I can't even be bothered to surf the internet in my newly acquired spare time. Most days I keep busy by reading through our takeout menu folder. 'They have muenster! I'm keeping this one on file.'

I feel like I've become a person incapable of real, meaningful change. If I can't change the fact that there's a little girl hawking cheap cosmetics on TV in my place, my persistent feeling of directionlessness, our inability to pay for car repairs, this panicky cat at my feet, slow computer, these blasted permanent vertical frown lines, or the behavior of each and every person on earth except me, then I'll just change my goddamn hair. I continue to lighten my shade up top, hoping it'll eventually lead to a lightbulb. In essence, what I'm saying is, my scalp has become the only place I feel capable of making the kind of change I can actually see (there goes that melodrama again). But it's sorta true. Life feels like it's stalling. Has stalled.

So, I guess the answer is, YES, WE'RE DOING KLUTE.

Until we can do something else.

Life Is, In Fact, a Movie

Things I Thought Only Happened In Movies, But Actually Happened This Week:

1.) Someone asked me to "sex up" a line about venture capitalists and private equity firms and see if I could make another about bank lending requirements sound more "embellished, provocative."

2.) I watched too many Dateline: Investigation and 48 Hours: Hard Evidence shows in a row, then went to bed and was terrified of a thunderstorm.

3.) I stumbled on a massive, stunning, original abstract oil painting at a Brooklyn "Break-Up Sale". The woman sold it to me for $20 because she just "couldn't be around it anymore" and needed to "move on". I am an accidental collector.

4.) I ran into a man I had a massive crush on in school as I was sporting the following ensemble: an ill-fitting green tank top featuring a between-the-tits coffee blot, an odd, sweat-matted Morrissey-inspired pompadour and a pair of denim capris refusing to hold their roll, which meant they came to an abrupt end roughly 5 inches above my ankles. On top of that, my dog wouldn't stop hassling his Papillon mix.

5.) I drove through Manhattan in a daze early Saturday morning. I was on my way to Brooklyn to move a friend to a new apartment. The windows were open, Billy Joel was singing about something blue collar, I turned onto Broadway. Out my passenger window I saw the tour groups pounding pavement, seizing sights and suddenly, I came to. When I looked past the dashboard, I was in Times Square. In my car. Alone. Me and the Jumbotron. I Was Legend.

If They Say Why, Why, Tell 'Em That It's Human Nature

I really wanna write about Michael Jackson. Less in tribute, though I'm burning a candle in my mind's eye as I type this, remembering four solid heartsick adolescent years devoted to love of him above all others. No, I'm thinking more about time. I wanna talk about time.

It's curious the way the sudden, shocking death of a cultural icon both stops time in a breathless moment and seems to stretch it out before us as if it were a film reel or timeline of our own lives. Every memorial image we see flashed across a flat screen or find ourselves rubbing from newsprint-stained fingertips might as well be one from our own narrative.

When I heard the news yesterday I pulled the needle off the record. Time stopped. I sensed instantly, as millions did, that it was the end of an era for me. If the day I told a doctor about my own family plans, the last night I held my grandmother's hand, the first time I set foot in a developing nation, or the last time I did something just for the money wasn't the exact moment I knew my childhood was over forever, Michael Jackson's death was. Pale yellow cardigan-clad Michael and his come-hither stare on the front of my Meade notebook, teary screams from the general admission seats at the Thriller concert and hours spent decifering the meaning of the Liberian Girl lyrics are no longer part of a living, breathing person. They are stopped dead in time.

But in the same breath, I am fascinated by the way time moves, by the passing of it. It's astounding that life moves fast enough that it can be encapsulated into a consumable hour-long visi-byte. That we can watch a person grow, morph, change and that all along, we are doing the same. It all went so quickly. I was ten when I first saw him. In parachute pants (me). I'm 33 now. As I watched the progression of Michael Jackson's life in images last night (all night), I was watching my own in my mind, with a similar sort of fascination. I'm not an icon. But I have spanned time.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Hello? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?

Oh, great big, knowing Blogosphere, I'm rubbing the sides of your truth-granting orb in search of insight. I've consulted family and friends, the profoundly indifferent school financial aid office, the bottom of my Prosecco glass. I'm at your feet now, Supreme e-Leader. Is there a path? Am I on it? Does the one I am on lead to a trash receptacle, deserted beach or twelve foot electrified fence? Are you busy with a crochet project? Should I come back later when you've finished your Sudoku?

Here's a brief update. Financial aid for next year came through. Well, when I say "came through" I sort of mean more that it exists out there on a piece of paper sorted into a bunch of columns said to "assist me in financing my education". I've spent the two weeks since I received the letter trying to figure out why they call it "financial aid" if it doesn't aid you financially. In any case, mine is not a story of true sob. I am not the first child in my family to attend college, offspring of first generation Americans or making minimum wage. I am merely a person trying to get a piece of paper, fulfill my potential, find some direction, change my life midstream. It's expensive, all that becoming something. And sadly, next semester, I can't afford to do it as I had originally laid out for myself on that steel-coated, infallible, never-say-die road map of mine. They gave me HALF. Half of what I got last year. Numerous phone calls to my 401k plan administrator to inquire about disbursement, countless humbling analyses of my credit card statements and several shameful attempts to derive an ounce of humanity from anyone working in financial aid later, it comes down to this: go part time in the fall, rack up some personal debt and stretch my supposed two-year plan out over four long years (until I'm nearly old enough to qualify for the social security degree program), or go full time in the fall as planned, rack up LARGE amounts of personal debt and finish the degree in two years. Though, that plan may have me taking online classes from inside a sanetarium, where I'll be serving time for trying to stab floating red credit card balances out from behind my eyes with a mechanical pencil.

Or that's how it all seems at the moment. When I write it out, it doesn't sound as catastrophic as it feels. But see, I had this plan. I was going to finish the degree that it took me so damned long to decide to pursue and then I was going to be off trying to...well, use it...somehow. I don't know why it always feels appropriate to quote When Harry Met Sally on this blog but in honor of Harry, I have to point out, when you decide what you'd like to spend the rest of your life doing, you'd like the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible. He was so right. But that's a shameful paraphrase. I would like the rest of my life to begin as soon as possible though truthfully, maybe this is happening because I'm still not exactly clear just what it is I'm supposed to be doing with said life. Oh, when will I learn that existence cannot be wrapped up by gifted writers of dialogue? Maybe there is some method here. Maybe I'm not meant to plow through the halls of academia so quickly that I finish with my little paper proof-of-purchase no more fleshed out (mentally) than I am now. Or maybe I just want so much to believe that I've made a choice that will translate into change that I have to see it that way.

In any case, I'm trying to imagine that this little blip appears on my electrfied life grid the way a slowing N train to Astoria would: momentarily stalled and perhaps off schedule but not yet retired to the big subway graveyard in Coney Island. It's hard to see these traffic jams as part of the larger infrastructure, as having any meaning to the greater flow of things. I think this is a lesson in priorities. I think so, anyway. I've vowed not to decide on which course of action to take for at least another week. I feel like there's something I'm supposed to get from the debt-to-emotional/professional/psychological investment ratio thing. Of course, it could also just be a good old fashioned lesson in patience, in which case I'll be really fucking pissed. I learned that one standing in line for gelato three weeks ago.

Return to the Land of the Not-So-Living

I think I've finally slept off my five day jet-lag hangover. It's sad in a way. Getting up for days on end at 3:00 a.m. because my body still wants to believe I'm dreaming in a canopied, brocade-draped bed in Venice is sorta romantic. It's like straddling two worlds, holding on to what eventually becomes the mist of memory for a few days longer. But then, predictably, trudging up the Ditmars Boulevard subway station steps slams me concretely into focus. We ain't walking Dubrovnik's city walls no more, Dorothy.

I felt something akin to physical pain as I slogged through Bride Wars, Confessions of a Shopaholic and He's Just Not that Into You on the flight back to New York. Swimming in the Adriatic rendered me completely brain dead and zapped my attention span into a thin, flat line. I could hardly open my Atlantic Monthly, which I'd faithfully carried with me the whole of the trip, really, really meaning to complete that article on happiness. Instead of reading, I slammed plastic cup after plastic cup of Diet Pepsi with my traveling companion, who sat bolt upright in her seat, staring blankly into the endless sea of scalps in front of us.

At one point I wondered aloud why it is that I continue to subject myself to these extended bouts of travel when the return becomes more and more brutal as the years go on. Sitting on a Delta flight with my knees at one with my solar plexus, it felt impossible to understand. The more trips I take, the easier it is for me to detach from my own reality completely. But plugging myself back in, opening American newspapers, reactivating the data package on my Blackberry has become a heartbreaking routine, weighted with disappointment.

Travel is like crack for me. The planning, the executing, the experience, the rush of being out of my element--I seek it out and am willing to risk danger, debt and alienation for the fix. And I've discovered that the withdrawl part, which descends as I'm standing on line at security to return home is as intense as any kind of depression. The notion that I've run out of the drug, come to the end of the line, seen what there is to see, felt the breeze, climbed the stairs, tried the fish and that there can't be any more for now is something I'm unwilling to accept. Like a junkie, I'm strung out on my own wanderlust.

I was gonna tell you all about Croatia. Lemme give it to you in a mood-stimulating capsule. If instead of climbing a metal ladder into a cellophane blue swimming pool, you descended the same ladder over a cluster of rocks into the sea, you'd be in Croatia. If the width of your embrace were like an impenetrable medieval wall, you'd be standing above Dubrovnik in Croatia. If thin crust pizza and sardines were like currency, you'd be cashing in in Croatia. If you woke up every morning to espresso and azure, red rooftops and laundry lines, you'd be waking up in Croatia.

And Venice? Ah, it's mandatory. Miss it at your own peril. The memory of waking up to the sound of feral cats meandering its canals will stir inside me forever.

I guess this is the bargain. The more I see, the harder it is to reconcile it all with my New York life. If I wanna cash in on the experience, I gotta pay that price. For now, I'll be keeping my memories alive by watching Girls Next Door over a pot of Istrian white truffle mashed potatoes.

Forever forcing my two lives to come together.

Away Message

Real Housewife of Atlanta to Depart for Croatia Friday.
This is the headline on the front page of the tabloid that is my life. I had a plan to perfect myself pre-Mediterranean vacation that included spray tans and a head full of sparkling blonde hair. As I write it I am able to see its inherent flaws. See, the reality is you can take the National Lampoon's outta the girl, but you can't take the girl outta the National Lampoon's. It doesn't matter where on earth I go, I'm always packin' Clark and Ellen.

The Real Housewife mention is in reference to the fact that I now more resemble a Buckhead property-purchasing cougar than a glittering Hollywood ingenue (not that I coulda passed for one prior, but I was hoping for the hair of one). I went in to go totally blonde on Saturday and came out with a head full of food-colored stripes and an anchorwomany haircut that has me looking like a Bravo reality show casting wet dream. Every time I look in the mirror I think of butterscotch pudding and those Archway lemon ice cookies my grandma used to love. In light of my new MILF porn star hair debacle I decided it was probably best to cancel the spray tan. Why add fuel to the fire?

I managed to finish my semester with straight As, of which I'm immensely proud. I sweated through a killer Twentieth Century International Politics final, a research paper and two presentations. In the end, I did the work I wanted to do. I recyled all the reading I did for the semester over the weekend and it filled an entire clear blue recylcling bag. I let it sit on the living room floor for a few hours, thinking that all that paper, what must've amounted to ten pounds' worth, is now inside my head. All those thousands of lines actually translate into something I own. I guess that's intellectual property. You can't foreclose on that shit.

Mercury's been in retrograde. My brother wrote asking if I was experiencing any difficulty with communications as a result. "What're you talking about?" I asked, right before spending five solid days on the phone with representatives in Bangalore trying to figure out where a slew of my frequent flier miles had gone and why I was suddenly locked out of my credit card websites. I keep picturing those kids in Slumdog Millionaire with headsets on. "Yes, Mrs. Cox, I can understand why you would want to know where your frequent flier miles have gone. But before I consult my manual, let me inform you of an exclusive offer for cardmembers."

It's time for me to be in a berth on a big, anonymous sea. I've reached maximum density. I'm gonna take my citrus cookie-colored hair and go get righted. I have got to remind myself there's a world beyond Megan Fox on the cover of Elle magazine sporting a shoulder tattoo that reads:
"WE WILL ALL LAUGH AT GILDED BUTTERFLIES".

A Minor Fall and a Major List

The "Minor Obsessions" list is getting a full-page spread this week. My attention is divided into 16 slender slices of a fat, overloaded pie and I keep alternating between thoughts of long, delicate golden necklaces and former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

My semester ends in two weeks. I'm a third of the way through a phone book-sized study of the investigation of the aforementioned Prime Minister's assasination in 2005. It's horrifying, fascinating and frustrating. I've never written fifteen pages of anything more than a hate letter to my best friend in high school. And that was in pink pen, on wide-ruled notebook paper. I think it's safe to say that academic writing is not my, comment dites-vous ?, forte. To me it feels like writing from inside an ice cave behind a door with no knob. Walls, walls, walls. 'Let's see...I want to say that a massive revolution was the result of the assasination, whoops, lemme add a little teeny number up there after that date, whoops, gotta go down to the bottom of the page and cite that source, whoops, let's go back up there and, shit, where was I? Okay, yeah, so...a massive...whoops, that's a bit flowery...let's say large scale...yep, that'll work.' There are a thousand silky, delectable words slipping and sliding around inside my brain trying to ooze their way out on to the page: sybaritic..adulate...ambrosial...MELLIFLUOUS! When this semester ends I'm going to stab a valve into my scalp and let them all drain out, one by one, the sap of stunted prose.

Besides being able to speak again in my usual embellished patois, I intend to read. For the last four months I've felt like I was sleeping with my secretary every time I read a magazine article or a few pages of a novel. I found myself sneaking peeks at US Weekly in the magazine aisle at CVS, craving like carbs even a few meager lines of non-academic text. I bought myself a copy of Celebrity Hairstyles on Saturday and saved it all day, dangling it in front of myself like a chocolate carrot to be nibbled upon completion of five pages of my paper. When I met my self-imposed deadline at 9:00 p.m., I tucked myself into the couch cushions and skimmed through the photos of Blake Lively and Michelle Williams and drifted into and out of consciousness, just as the glossy pages of hair mags are designed to make one do.

When I do allow myself a freebie, I devour the "literary porn" on this website. Now, I'm not in any way hip to the shit. It's a nine year old site. But the editor came to speak to my class last week and rendered a room full of competent, edgy women completely senseless. Ever since then I've been fascinated by the notion of making a living writing about sex. Scratch that. By the notion of people who (read: men) make a living writing about sex. Go there. I guarantee you'll lose an hour immersed in descriptions like "milkweed excretions". Exquisite, elegant writing about things between legs and under arms and behind doors. Bonus: music and literature and fetishes. What else can I say?

I'm reinventing myself for summer. I think I've got it basically down. It'll be a cross between Rosie the Riveter and Nicole Richie. Sound doable? I'm thinking hippie headbands and red lipstick. Dangly, bangly, spangly necklaces and 1940s "can do" spirit. Stockings and flip flops. Bangs? Perhaps. In any case, I've been making a list of "must get" items and it includes roman sandals, self-tanner, plastic sunglasses, purple shampoo, and a gigantic hat. Don't worry, it'll totally come together.

Just in time to show off the above new look I've earned two delightful ruby red rings around my eyes. Courtesy of some bizarre reaction to the season's first application of gazillion SPF sunscreen I'm wearing alien spheres on my face that look like skin glasses. Bring on the warm weather styles!

This week, one of my professors actually said: "There are no dull stories, only dull writers."

Just let that one sink in a little.

Fluff

Because not every day is a Chrysalis kinda day (despite efforts to the contrary), this blog has temporarily been renamed My Cotton Thoughts Day. I will now pull thin, wavy strands of airy brain candy from my skull and deposit them on this blank e-page where they will live to grow furry with inconsequential blog mold in the internet concsiousness for eternity.

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Okay, so first things fuckin' last. What's the deal with my Facebook page being slammed by friend requests from platinum-haired LA starlets looking to add my name to their growing roll of F-lister friends like Criss Angel? They lure me in, see, and take advantage of the fact that in my old age names and faces are beginning to gel into one giant personality conglomerate making it now nearly impossible to catalog the gory details of everyone I've gotten drunk with in the last twenty years. So these Facebook marketing co-opters know I'll likely see the request, think I might know the person and perhaps peruse their profile to jog the old memory for an image of the two of us wearing sombreros at someone's birthday party in 1995. They hope, of course, that I'll be so impressed by the fact that this person's friend list includes the likes of Justine Bateman that I'll sign my fucking firstborn away to the Facebook promo devil so I can be overwhelmed for life with notices about this girl's every appearance on NCIS. Nice try, Facebook, if that's your real name.

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I spent Good Friday wandering through the Union Square farmer's market. I bought a hand drawn rendering of the Chelsea Hotel silkscreened onto a canvas of hot pink satin. It is now my favorite thing ever. The side of the building sort of fades off the canvas into a fog of black ink. It looks like it was left out overnight on 23rd Street and corrupted by smog--the hotel straining to come through the haze into being. I met a man, "Joe", who had a little table set up near the subway entrance featuring a potted flower, a jar for donations and a professionally-lettered sign that read: "CREATIVE APPROACHES TO WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT". Feeling "in the flow", as my mother would put it, I asked him for a creative approach to the NY/LA conundrum. When I laid out the conflict that's pulling me apart like a Rolfing machine, he told me that I may love New York but I haven't been able to enjoy it. I'm still trying to figure out why that made sense to me at the time. He also suggested I begin thinking about what it means to let go of what I think I know about staying here. He illustrated the suggestion by having me hold a stack of paper in my hand until it became uncomfortable, asking me to note how I had made physical adjustments to accomodate and accept the pain (touche!). Then he asked me to drop it. When I let go, the papers scattered into an abstract arrangement on the ground. As he was picking them up, he said "See what happens? When you let go, it turns into something else." I got it. The conflict had taken a new shape. There was possibility in the burden when I let it go and it spread artfully across the pavement. But I couldn't see that as long as I kept holding on to it, accomodating its weight. As I was leaving I told him about the Chelsea satin. He said I was collecting memorabilia. I cried all the way through a cinnamon toast frozen yogurt.

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I've registered for fall classes. I'm having trouble digesting the passing of time. Only a moment ago I was eating grilled cheese in January, awaiting a student loan refund. I've decided that each semester I'll take something terrifying. In the fall it'll be fiction. The last time I told a story on paper the lines on the page were an inch wide and we were writing about Halloween witches in crayon. Scary, indeed.

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While I still have papers and finals to feast on, all thoughts lead to that, up there. That's Pula, Istria, Croatia, site of my first bona fide summer vacation since going to Indianapolis to visit my grandma in 1992. Now, given that the photo comes from Wikimedia, it could be a beach on the coast of Libya for all we know. But I'd go there too.

The West is the Best? The West is the Best?

Alright, there's simply no point in putting this off any longer. I have to talk about it. There's, gulp, um, gasp (grips chest), see, kind of, maybe, well (falls to knees), there's this chance...that we may have to move to L.A. It's crazy even writing a thing like that. Now it's just out there: L.A. Two little letters to encompass incomprehensibly endless black ribbons of highway, sprawling white houses with red tile rooftops and people I don't know. Two little letters to explain what I'm not sure I can.

My husband is much clearer on all of this. A month ago he flew out to Angel-Town on something of a lark. An opportunity to scale the western face of the acting business popped up unexpectedly (in the way these things seem to do) and he decided to leap on it. We knew the minute he booked his ticket that he'd begun to shift the tectonic plates of our east coast life. The thing is, we've suspected for some time that he needs to be there. Blah, blah, the market here is so limited, there's so much more work out there, he fits in a few little type-y niches that might actually work in his favor on the sunnier side (multi-ethnic!, yay!). But more than all of that, in a way we couldn't quite articulate to each other before he left, we were somehow ignited by the idea of our lives being turned upside down. I didn't tell him at the time but I felt strangely amenable to the notion of an undeniable shift. Translation, if something happened, I might be up for it.

He was gone for two weeks. We didn't talk much about anything concrete while he was away. But I knew the day he drove the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu for the first time that he might be seeing L.A. as a real possibility. In honor of all the difficult conversations beating down our door I went right out, drank a night's worth of jumbo margaritas and went home sobbing in a cab at 3:00 a.m. The next morning I woke up resolved that he should go there and I should take some time to figure out what the hell I want to do.

I've never felt more sure that now is the time for him. It's partially cosmic, partially timing. Either way, he needs to be able to say he really went for it and I appreciate the value of that. It's more complicated for me. I haven't yet been able to romanticize L.A. to myself. Now, don't get me wrong. I can more than imagine Friday nights at Santa Monica pier and weekends hiking the hills. But my husband's got a hook, an angle, a reason to be there. I don't. Except for him. And while he's a big, important reason, he can't be my only reason or we'll be fucked. We just will.

So for the moment, we've decided he's gonna go. He'll spend the bulk of the summer there trying to rustle something up. We've also made a few other decisions. 1.) Nothing, nothing, NOTHING will ever be New York. We're accepting that and moving forward with the idea that everything we do will be in an effort to get back to our grubby, glittering gray goddess. 2.) The idea of never seeing what else is out there for us is way scarier than facing a world we don't understand.

I'm trying to be open to all the ways this could happen. If nothing else, my view of our current reality has begun to shift. I can't believe how immovable I've become. Thinking for a moment about living in a world where people wear shorts in March and meet each other through panes of car window glass, shop in shiny suburban grocery stores and eat avocados year round has gotten me pondering what is trash and treasure to me here. And that has to be a good thing.

So, onward and...westward? Well, at least I've started going blonde.

Away Message

This post is an homage to my beloved London, which I will visit for the last time as my company's on-staff whipping girl next week.

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My bizarre foray into the world of on-air spokesrepresentation at QVC has come to a close, which means the next time I wander through the gentle, perfect greenness of The Regents Park I will be a mere civilian.

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Sadly this does not mean I am finished for good. I continue to drift along aimlessly at this job, which is by now my own personal version of the embarassing co-dependent relationship I've had countless friends try and explain to me. It's a sandpit I can't seem to extricate myself from--one that has made me bitter and ungrateful for even such a splendid thing as weeks at a time spent in the glory of London's company. Well, if I can't yet figure out how I'm going to make the transition that validates this blog's existence, I'll at least take London back from the oily grip of obligation and make it mine again.

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See, my job has been sold off, along with anything and everything having to do with QVC, to another company. I've trained my replacement (a Midwestern-er Nora Dunn), and I'll actually be doing an official "hand off" to her on air, as if we were Couric and Viera. Naturally, I didn't plan for it to go at all this way. I'd planned a clean break, giving plenty of notice when I started school. But immediately after I began classes the company got a huge sales opportunity and, as the ink was not yet dry on the contract for the buyout, there was nobody else to do it but the ol' workhorse, the ol' lipstick queen, slinger of shellac, wheeler-dealer, buyout-broad...me. Translation, they kinda made me do it. I hemmed and hawed, I even went home and cried. It was one of the worst weeks of my life. Made worse by the fact that I utterly hated myself for agreeing to do it, for having so little backbone, for not liquidating that pathetic little 401k and walking the fuck out the door. But somehow I said yes. It's a complex web involving the fact that the people I work for are extremely maniupulative, I'm easily swayed when I feel obligated to something and, well, dammit I spent nearly three years building a molehill into a blessed mountain and wanted to see it through to the bitter end. Bitter, indeed.

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Even writing out the minutiae of this situation makes me feel slick with that oily residue. I mean, who gives a shit about sales opportunities? The bottom line is I don't want to spend the rest of my life making other people money. Period. So, I'm doing this trip and then...I don't know what. There is nothing left of my job except me answering phones here. Oh, and making coffee. I forgot the making coffee part.

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I haven't seen a street in London in the last three years. Not really. And lemme tell ya, I've been everywhere, man, I've been everywhere. But I have missed out on the delicate details: the shimmering green blades of grass in Hyde Park, the perfect edges of a box of Bond No. 9, the musty elegance of the Courtald collection, lacy spines of Parliament, coriander and chutney, Times at rush hour, clotted cream and brown sauce, all of it so rich with tradition and so hard to hold on to tightly because I was there on someone else's time.

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I've decided to make a trip this summer that is just for me. When I arrive I will not immediately unpack my straightening iron and line up all of my high heeled boots. I will not make a taxi reservation to take me to the studio. I will not sit on the edge of my bed and practice my "sell" to my reflection in the darkened tv screen. I will not call the office, check email, or look at any numbers. I will instead pack a bag with nothing in it. I will buy a scotch egg from Paul Rothe and Sons on Marlyebone Lane and eat it as I walk to The Barrow Boy and Banker pub at the end of the London Bridge, where I will spend an entire day drinking Chiswick Brown and watching everything thing I've missed.

I Will Have This Hair

Just as Germany wanted France in the first world war (I'm learning this!), I want this multi-dimensional, layered flaxen confection to be mine. I'm about to take a mid-term on the international levels of analysis for world conflict and instead of studying Paul Kennedy's "power perspective" I can't stop running my fingers over the mouse, urging it toward the Google icon to search for photos of Kate.

I've reached the part in the school year where I a.) think I am an ass-sucking dumb dumb who can't internalize concepts or structure a decent essay, b.) think all my professors think I am an ass-sucking dumb dumb who can't internalize concepts or structure a decent essay, and c.) fear that my academic pursuits will not be transformative but rather fruitless and (I can't think of a good word to go here. See? It's true!).

Since it's only noon and I'm sitting in an office in Midtown, I can't have a glass of wine. Even in this laissez-faire, ethics-free work environment a liquid lunch would be considered untoward. So, in times like these there is no better salve for the uncertain soul than perusing glossy photos of "newly curvy" models with my dream haircolor. I'm feeling like a decent grade might be elusive so instead I'll aspire to follicular light-headedness. I'll strive to be blonde.

I actually wrote an essay for class on this very subject last week: hair as a canvas, a place to make discoveries and declarations. It came back last night with the following comment: the piece was fun but the material uninspired. Well, shit. Back to Kate.

Uninspired, perhaps. Escapist, absolutely.

The endless reinvention continues.

What Recession?

R.I.P.

Money Tree (June 2008-February 2009)

This is actually our second-generation money tree. The first one officially killed itself when we moved into our new apartment. Who could blame it? What with the major rent increase, it just couldn't self-motivate to promote prosperity any longer.

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I bought this money tree immediately after because I'm totally superstitious and believe in shit like money trees. This one was lush and full, reaching and striving out if its little pot toward greatness. And then in January, as I was fretting my way through the Christmas holiday, preparing for school, obsessing over adult acne and downsizing, a little brown border slowly began to develop around its leaves. At first I came home to one, then two rigid crusty leaf remnants on the floor under the TV cabinet. I ignored it. I continued to play a relentless stream of morning NPR with its elevated recession talk and analysis. I poured more and more coffee. I applied more and more Retin-A. And then my face began to dry up too, peeling away, layer after layer, revealing a rippling map of arid wrinkles on either side of my brow. I eyed the money tree. Dry. Me. Dry. NPR. Dry.

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With each passing day the money tree surrendered another leaf or two. I found one on top of my American Poetry Anthology and yet another in a little crystal bowl of seashells. And each morning I'd wake up and gaze in the mirror to see myself peering out from under an onion skin, recessing too. The money tree must've shed its last leaf the same morning I woke up to NPR as my alarm, declaring, "Good morning. Nissan lays off 20,000, posting a loss of $8billion." The radiator steamed and clanged, sucking moisture out of the air. As I rose in the dark and stumbled into the living room, I saw the tree's skeletal, spiny trunk and branches laid bare on top of my bookshelf. I felt a short wave of despair rise and wash over me. 'This is it', I thought. The vapors of the recession had finally made their way up through our vents and floorboards that morning. It was really true. We had another suicidal money tree.

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I let it sit on top of the bookshelf for nearly a week, partly as a reminder of how dry we really were, partly because I hoped it could be revived. Finally, I stuffed the entire tree in its pot into the kitchen trashcan where it was kept company by Ramen wrappers and other evidence of the drought. In its place I now have a little rose plant featuring two delicate miniature red blooms. Its tag declares it a "love rose" plant. I've been nearly drowning it in water.

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I can deal with two suicidal money trees. But a love plant with a death wish would finish me off.

Learning Curve

Hola Chrysalis Comrades,

I've been thinking of you all over the last few weeks and missing my little blank Blogger box with all its fancy do-dads and formatting tricks. I've wanted nothing more than to fill the box full of bon mots in the small Georgia font I adore and tell you everything that occured to me as I sat in desks, in classrooms, in buildings, behind strangers.

But I've been filling notebooks instead.

I can't believe all the business involved in being a student. I have a packing list that now guides my morning preparations. Highlighter? Check. Student ID? Check. Homework? Homework? Did I actually ask myself that? Check. My husband has my class schedule and what nights he's responsible for dinner written out on a sticky note posted above the stove. We promised we'd never post those kinds of couple-y notes anywhere in our kitchen. Well, the days of verbal kitchen communication are over. Sticky notes and take-out abound.

I've made a couple of acquaintances. The sad news is that absolutely nothing about making friends is different at age thirty th...from the experience at age thirteen. You walk in, scan the room for empty chairs, try to make a minimal scene with your coat and its clanging belt buckle as you unload into your seat and...pull out your cellphone? This is an adjustment I haven't yet made. Getting used to a room full of students typing away on BlackBerrys before class will never seem normal to me. It's so isolationist. It keeps you from ever having to ask, "what was your name again?" or "did you do all the reading?", those crucial inquiries that bond strangers in a classroom to each other forever.

I'm looking for kindred spirits. I know for sure the VOGUE intern in my Writing for Women's Magazines class isn't gonna be my girl. She didn't respond when I asked if someone was sitting next to her and then sent text messages through the whole class. The young woman who walked with me to get books after my Writer as Traveler/Explorer class was another story. She lit a cigarette outside the building, asked where I was going and I liked her right away. I've spent the week deciding how I'll address her when I see her tonight. Mix this concern about social ineptitude with an obsession over learning the difference between Shi'a and Sunni Muslims and you'll pretty much be inside my head after two weeks of classes.

I've at least survived all of the "hi my name is__and I hope to get __out of this class" requirements. I now know what my professors look like and have turned in homework. It's all happening. I'm taking my cues from my fellow students. Oh, cool, yeah, I'll bring coffee to class. Everyone does that. Funky glasses are mandatory. Pea coats and combat boots, iphones, messenger bags--all part of the uniform. The learning experience is a broad one, no? And boy, I've got a lot of learning to do.

Yours,
OneKate

Orienterror

Tonight marks the beginning of my new life as a student. I'm totally terrified.

I'll be attending orientation at Wollman Hall. It just sounds like an orientation hall, doesn't it? Wollman. Wollman Hall. Scholarship practically bounces off of its sturdy syllables. I've officially changed my preferred method of carting items to and fro from patent chic to utilitarian Jansport. I loaded up a chunky black two-strapper last night with an apple (yes), sandwich and pretzels. This morning I slipped in my brand new spiral notebook, an ice blue Meade beauty with a textured matte cover eagerly awaiting my class notes. When I hoisted the padded straps over my shoulders the awkward new weight tested my balance, pulling back as I pitched forward--two different agendas in conflict. On my way to the train I caught a glimpse of myself in a store window: a studious-looking Quasimoto.

Choosing a first-night-at-school outfit posed another challenge. I wanted to look young and Village-y, to somehow pull off magenta tights and an extra long scarf. I thought I'd even anchor a French twist with a pencil. Casual student-next-door meets foreign supermodel. In the end, the best I could come up with was a wide satin headband, some black glitter hoop earrings and a pair of lace-upVans. A David-Lynch-re-imagines-Lily-Allen-with-an-office-job kind of costume. The only salvation was my ipod and the Beasties circa the last time I was actually in a classroom. Hopefully nobody remembers Ill Communication's release date.

Talking with my sister, who begins her master's program tonight, we realized we have no idea how to be students in 2009. "Should I bring a laptop to my first class?", I asked. "That's kind of Harvard-y", she replied. Right. I'm nobody's Elle Woods. Except for the fuzzy pencil topper part. "Don't we just need Pee Chees and Trapper Keepers?", she squeaked. Golly, I thought so. The last time I was in an academic classroom we used computers to play The Oregon Trail. This is gonna be bananas.

My biggest fear is that I'll become a shrinking violet, somehow defaulting to my high school self--alienated and silent. Or that I'll find I'm out of touch, bringing my Bics to a Blackberry convention. Or that it won't change my life. Or that it will.

I suppose no matter what happens it's too late to turn back now. Every day will be an exercise in avoiding a self-imposed complex about my age, status, accomplishments. I've spent much of my life running from the way I felt in high school but maybe there was more to learn from that time.

I can only hope that nobody will be egging my car in the parking lot this time around.

Fingers crossed,
OneKate