"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.