Wednesday, December 16, 2009
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.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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.
Friday, October 23, 2009
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).
Monday, October 12, 2009
Ill Wind
Monday, September 28, 2009
Busy Bee
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 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.
Monday, September 14, 2009
From the Ridiculous to the Sublime
Monday, August 31, 2009
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
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.
Friday, August 21, 2009
August
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.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Coming Out of the Dark
Monday, July 20, 2009
"Are We Doing Klute?"
Monday, July 13, 2009
Life Is, In Fact, a Movie
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.
Friday, June 26, 2009
If They Say Why, Why, Tell 'Em That It's Human Nature
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.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Houston, We Have a Problem
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.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Return to the Land of the Not-So-Living
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.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Away Message
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".
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
A Minor Fall and a Major List
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.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Fluff
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The West is the Best? The West is the Best?
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.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Away Message
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
I Will Have This Hair
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
What Recession?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Learning Curve
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
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Orienterror
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