They say you reap what you sow. I've just been flogged with my own stupidity, so I guess I have gotten what I deserve. Considering some of the situations I have found myself in, the level of my continuing optimism is, at times, staggering. But it always comes back to bite me in the ass.
End of story.
People -- okay, NEW YORKERS -- keep asking me about Florida, so here you go:
Florida is nuts. It's really beautiful here, especially in this particular area, but it's also weird and as my friend Jacquie would say, "trash-tastic!" The other day I saw lawn ornamentation consisting of a 6 ft. wooden boat with plants growing out of it and the words "cheaperhere" painted on the side. Pictures are forthcoming.
The big news these days is basically the entire state is on fire. There's a major drought, so brush fires are cropping up all over the place, that is when some deranged lunatic isn't deliberately setting them. The nearest fires are 40 or 50 miles from me, but there are so many of them that no matter where you go, you smell smoke. At the beach you can see big yellow clouds of it hanging over the horizon. Lovely.
And here's the really important stuff: Unless some terrible unforseen thing happens, I will be in NYC the weekend of June 20-21. I'm hoping to extend the weekend a little and spend four full days/nights in The City. Please hang out with me, I get lonely.
Leonard Cohen makes me feel okay. Not "okay" as in, "yeah, I'm okay, could be better," but "okay" in the most thrilling sense: "You know, maybe I'm not just that flagitious, lurching half-human wastrel I feel like inside; maybe I'm actually pretty okay."
Considering we're talking about a guy who did a hell of a lot of writing about depression and social injustice, I guess that makes a sideways sort of sense.
Most people I know have heard Jeff Buckley's cover of "Hallelujah", or at least remember the creepy songs "Everybody Knows" or "I'm Your Man" from one of several recent movie soundtracks, but there's way more interesting stuff you should know about Leonard Cohen. He wrote and was actively publishing poetry for eleven years before he started recording music. This explains a lot, because he is most celebrated for being a brilliant lyricist. He has released seventeen albums (some of which are actually "essentials" and "best-ofs", so they don't really count), but the best, by far, is the first, The Songs of Leonard Cohen. It came out in 1967 and if you ask me, he could have never made another song after that, and he still would be respected as one of the best songwriters of the last fifty years. Here -- the lyrics to "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong":
I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me. But the room just filled up with mosquitos, they heard that my body was free. Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night and I put it in your little shoe. And then I confess that I tortured the dress that you wore for the world to look through.
I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit. Then he wrote himself a prescription, and your name was mentioned in it! Then he locked himself in a library shelf with the details of our honeymoon, and I hear from the nurse that he's gotten much worse and his practice is all in a ruin.
I heard of a saint who had loved you, so I studied all night in his school. He taught that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule. And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure he drowned himself in the pool. His body is gone but back here on the lawn his spirit continues to drool.
An Eskimo showed me a movie he'd recently taken of you: the poor man could hardly stop shivering, his lips and his fingers were blue. I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes and I guess he just never got warm. But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice, oh please let me come into the storm.
=:=
Here's some more Leonard Cohen trivia: He lived for several years on the Greek island of Hydra, where he wrote a book of poetry and two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers. While he was there, he became romantically involved with the wife of another writer (a guy named Axel something-or-other whom Cohen was supposedly friends with), which is where the song "So Long, Marianne" came from. After that he moved to New York and, duh, lived in The Chelsea Hotel (where he hooked up with Janis Joplin and subsequently wrote "Chelsea Hotel #2", which contains the line, "giving me head/on the unmade bed/while the limousines wait in the street"). Three of the songs from his 1992 album The Future were used in the soundtrack to the movie Natural Born Killers. Cohen is Jewish (go figure) but spent somewhere between three and five years at a Buddhist center and was eventually ordained a Zen Buddhist monk. Oh, and did I mention he's Canadian?
When I was loooking up the lyrics to some of his songs to use in this post, I found out that Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this past March, and is touring this summer, for the first time in -- I think -- thirteen years. Which I guess makes this an astoundingly timely plug. Also, there's apparently a Lionsgate/Sundance documentary on his life called "I'm Your Man", and his first three albums were re-mastered and re-released last year, so you should go listen to them. And don't say I never did you any favors.
I realize ripping on The Hoff wasn't invented yesterday, but nobody does it better than, well, The Hoff. This video is a masterpiece of self-ridicule. I've got to hand it to him, he pulls it off so brilliantly, it almost looks like he's not kidding.
When I was a kid, someone like The Hoff would have been referred to as a "Larry." As in, "what a fucking Larry." I'm about to bring "Larry" back. Other words and phrases I'm working on bringing back:
janky: "My janky Ford Festiva won't go over forty without leaving the transmission on the side of the road."
jam-up: "Damn, girl, those biscuits & gravy were jam-up! Give me another plate!"
not a crime, per se but an offense, nonetheless there's no rest, in a bag, in a box, in a drawer ashtray, not a relic, remains yet to be given away by who, to whom i didn't want it anyway where did the maps go?
Someone who knows told me that one of the things I'd miss most about New York would be the food. He was right. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love mah food; fortunately, I'm not afraid to cook it myself, especially when I can't just go out and get what I want.
So recently I was craving some falafel. In Fort Pierce, Florida, expecting to go out and find a hot, tangy, fresh falafel sandwich is akin to waiting up all night for Santa, or expecting to jump off the top of a skyscraper and not get dead. Ain't happening. Long story short, I found the can of chickpeas in the pantry, the proper spices, cilantro, olive oil, the pitas. . . I even had yogurt and cucumber so I could make raita. I didn't have a choice. Even after I read the warning in the recipe about how frying falafel inside would make your whole house smell like a Lebanese garbage can (in August), I still had to do it. This is the result (note glass of $6.99 Pinot Grigio in background):
It wasn't exactly Mamoun's, but hey, I was shooting from the hip. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but for my first attempt, it turned out pretty damn good, even if my house did stink like the armpits of a thousand camels for three days afterward.
Stay tuned for reports on my backyard landscaping project (Prospect Park, here I come) and the new P.A. system I'm installing in my car: "this is a beach-bound honda accord, next stop will be the 7-11, stanclearclosindoorspleez."
This blog would not exist if not for my relationship with a certain friend, a discussion we once had on blogging in general, and my skepticism of its ability to fulfill. Everyone who blogs gets their jollies from it in his or her own weird way, and I won't deny that I have enjoyed stroking my particular neuroses through the writing itself, as well as pandering to the voyeuristic desires of my imagined audience. But I'm not here today to get into a discussion on the psychology of blogging. I want to talk about how the internet has essentially turned my friendships into magazine subscriptions: we all get to read and enjoy each other's anecdotes and photos, without having to put any effort into actual personal exchange. It's made me a lazy friend, and I'm not proud of that.
How many of you check out the blogs and facebook/myspace pages of your friends more often than you actually see, speak to, or write to them? It's okay; we all do it. It's convenient, it's a fun diversion, and sometimes a few minutes during a workday break is all we can spare. That's what those sites are there for, anyway. I put some effort into maintaining my blog and myspace page because I know a few people here and there actually are looking at them. And I want them to be looked at. What I don't want is for glancing at a couple of websites every now and then to take the place of real interaction.
I have seen photos of the husbands, wives and children of people whom I haven't spoken to in years. I know who their closest friends are, and I can even see jokes they're shared and notes they've written to each other. I know where they've been on vacation this year, what they've done with the house they just bought, what bands they're listening to, what they watch on TV, what books they're reading, who they're sleeping with, and which presidential candidate they support. There's not really anything wrong with all of that, either. Or is there? I imagine running into an old friend and having this awkward conversation:
"Hey! I haven't seen you in ages! How's it going?"
"Well, I got married last year to..."
"Yeah, I saw that on your MySpace page. She seems like a great girl. Pretty, too."
"And we have two kids, they're two and four now..."
"Mattie and James, right? They're adorable. I saw the photos you posted."
"Right. So we bought a house and we're...."
"Yeah, I love what you guys are doing with it! The addition was a great decision, and the landscaping is perfect."
"Thanks. So, uh... I read in your blog that you just moved back from New York. Going back to school, eh? Journalism? Good choice, I always thought you should be a writer."
"Hey, that means a lot. Thanks. So, I'm really digging being back here and..."
"Yeah, seems like you've been enjoying yourself. Love those pictures from the beach. And I see you've gotten yourself a boyfriend."
"Right, right. So... Is there anything new going on in your life? Maybe something I haven't seen on MySpace?"
"Uh, no, actually it's all there."
"Great, so I'll just keep checking your profile."
"Yeah, same here. Wow, keeping up with friends these days sure is easy!"
"No kidding. Say, maybe we'll bump into each other again in a couple years and avoid eye contact so as not to have to have another vapid conversation about absolutely nothing."
"Great! See ya, or not!"
=:=
So getting back to the friend I mentioned earlier... Our current relationship is a perfect example of what the above dialogue -- though exaggerated -- represents. Through no fault of his or mine, we've become habituated to learning about each other's lives through our respective cursory web representations, and I think we've been fooling each other into thinking that that's enough. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know there are wonderful, exciting, life-changing things happening in my friends' lives, and it's a shame that we don't always get to share the stories behind the photos and the status changes. I'd really love to hear how my friend feels about applying to grad school, or what he thinks of the new R.E.M. album, or how his love life is going. Another of my closest friends just became engaged, and I didn't get to hear the excitement in her voice because she told me the news via text message. And on that note, I'll bet my friends are vaguely aware that the profound thing that I share with my boyfriend simply can't be summed up by the words, "in a relationship," but they're probably too busy to ask. Just like me.
I do love that we live in a time in which technology is advancing faster than I can adjust to it; it's fascinating and exciting, and I thoroughly appreciate the entertainment and conveniences I have been afforded. I just don't want the use of these things as part of my lifestyle to take the place of living, y'know?
You might disagree, if you're judging from the looks of my waif-like sister, but lemme tell you: everyone here is fat. I mean everyone. And I'm afraid I'll end up that way, too. To combat this seeming inevitability, I went out last week and purchased a mountain bike. I rode it all that afternoon, exploring the woods and the riverbanks of my old neighborhood, loving the feel of the wind in my hair and the straining of my muscles as I pushed myself to my sweaty limits. Then. . . I parked my Trek 800 in the garage and bought myself a '92 Honda Accord. Much better for fatting -- I mean getting around in.
For all you folks out there who've been silently shaking your fists at your respective screens each time you check in here at the dinghy to find that I still haven't published a lurid tell-all on my southern shenanigans. . . well, it's almost time. Almost.
First, I need to address just how goddamn hard it was to say goodbye to these sweet jokers:
=:=
Yes, Florida has been good to me this time around. No, it isn't only a vapid wasteland of shopping malls and identical pastel-colored condos. It's strange and beautiful, and I'll tell y'all about it real soon.
This made me feel both very, very happy and very, very sad. It also made me feel small and self-absorbed. I should be making lonely people happy with balloons. I should have hugged my Grandparents more.
I guess it's highly unlikely that anyone reading this doesn't already know that I am moving back to my hometown in Florida on Tuesday, but I figured I should mention it just in case. Maybe I've recently acquired some new fans. Maybe I live in Fantasyland.
Speaking of living in Fantasyland.... My usual method for coping with stress is to simply refuse to acknowledge whatever it is that's freaking me out until it magically goes away on its own. This works more often than you'd think. This time, though, it's essentially impossible, because I'm freaked out over something that I decided to do, and which I am actively participating in right now. I mean, if I decided to ignore the fact that I'm moving until it went away, then I wouldn't have moved at all. So instead, I've thrown myself into some sort of weird fugue-like state by sequestering myself in my apartment, sleeping at odd hours (and hardly at all), and taking long breaks from packing during which I: a) obsessively check my e-mail, myspace account, and a handful of selected blogs, looking for updates, and: b) spend inordinately long stretches of time in the lonely hours of the morning playing cutesy puzzle-type computer games which were obviously intended for those in the 10-12 year age range. Also, at one point yesterday morning I found myself captivated by this mesmerizing e-card (thanks a lot, Jesse); only when I finally tore my eyeballs from the screen to look at the clock did I realize that there was a problem: I'd been watching it over and over and over for a full thirty-five minutes. No shit. I don't know if it's the creepy hypnotic voice repeating "I LIIIKE YOU" over and over or the pulsing tropical dance rhythm, or what, but - look, I'm watching it again right now - I think this card was designed to lure the weak-minded (like myself) into its expectation-free jungle utopia, and keep us there indefinitely. "No more, no less." I dig it.
My conscience is nagging me to finish packing, already, so I can get down to the business of enjoying my last few days in New York, but I'm finding it difficult for reasons I can't quite articulate. Oh, well. The jig is up tomorrow anyway; N.Eck has some farewell fun lined up, and I know I'm bound to have a good time whether my emotionally crippled inner asshole likes it or not. Then Monday night I say "goodbye for now" to my dynamite old pals PK, Jenny, Chuck, and The Mac.
Okay, back to packing, cleaning, and the real world.
Anyone who talks to me on a regular basis is well aware that I've been having an existential crisis as of late, mainly with regard to the fact that, at the ripe old age of thirty, I'm still treading water professionally. (How's that for a euphemism?) Fact is, I've got only a handful of college credits and a spotty resume full of short-term jobs ranging from "vacuum cleaner sales" (yeah, there are some stories there) to "business owner" to "architectural estimator" and finally, "bartender." It's been fun, but I can't live like this anymore. I'm stuck, and it's -- to say the least -- uncomfortable. What to do? The simplest answer is, I've got to go back to school. Now.
In the year and a half I've spent in New York, the only thing I've accomplished is becoming even more poor than I was when I moved there. Living in New York City is both exhilirating and exhausting; while there's no place I'd rather be, I've realized that I may have to ditch The City -- at least temporarily -- for someplace where the rents are low and the commutes short, if I intend to maintain full schedules in both school and work. So. . . I'm seriously considering moving back to Florida for at least the next couple of years.
This scares the living shit out of me. It feels even more frightening than my spur-of-the-moment move TO New York, when I got on a plane with two suitcases, a pocketful of cash, and no fucking idea what I was going to do when I arrived. What's so scary is that I know exactly what I'm getting myself into if I decide to return to my hometown, and frankly, I'm not sure how I'll handle it. Remember "Cheers"? Well, this is a whole TOWN where everybody knows your name. And just about everything else about you, your family, and anyone you've ever dated. Walking into a bar after a two-year absence and having the bartender pour my usual drink before I have to ask for it, while laughingly recounting the time I constructed the pyrotechnic "party hats" for my entourage. . . well, somehow the familiarity didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. More like a cold creepy one.
Am I just a chicken? Does it matter? I'm starting to feel that coming home is the wisest choice.
Well, folks, due to some crazy unforseen circumstances, I'll be in Florida until Monday, February 11. Once things calm down a bit on the home front, I'll be available for mingling, etc.. If you're in or near the Fort, then we probably haven't seen each other in a while, and you oughta give me a call.
Listen, here. I recently found out that Aesop Rock, my favorite white Jewish hip-hop virtuoso, played a free show at Southpaw (which is a mere six blocks from my apartment) the other night. And NO ONE bothered to tell me about this. I thought you guys were my friends. The worst part about it is that I actually walked by there before the show, saw the line of people wrapped around the block, and thought, "what the hell is going on there? I'll have to find out when I get home," and then of course promptly forgot all about it. I SO would have been there. SO. Would have.
It's so cold in my apartment right now that my hands are going numb. I'm wearing outerwear inside. Also, I'm hungry. And I have to pee, but it's too goddamn cold to take my pants off. I just opened up the fridge to get some milk, and it's warmer in there than it is out here. WTF?
I just realized that it's been about a month since I last posted here at the dinghy, which prompted me to reflect on just what I've been doing with all that time. . . .
Christmas was spent the same way last year's Christmas was spent: Hanging around my apartment, alone, dicking about on the internet and telling everyone I spoke to how I was "just about to go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge." I moved into this apartment five days before Christmas last year, and knowing that I was going to be spending it alone got me thinking that I should create a new tradition for myself, which would be to walk across the bridge on Christmas day. I imagined myself gazing out over the East River while reflecting on the past year's accomplishments and all the blessings in my life, and walking off the other end into Chinatown with warm yuletide feelings of thankfulness and self-satisfaction. In reality, my "Christmas Tradition" is apparently to just browse craigslist in my pajamas for hours in search of comedic gems (and dates) and talk a lot of game about walking over the bridge.
I did get to speak with every other living member of my family on Christmas (there are five of them; we're not a very formidable clan, except for my mother, who pretty much defines "formidable"), so that was better than nice.
AND later in the evening I had dinner with the ATL, who even came bearing gifts! "Listen here, if you don't get to be with your family on Christmas, you damn sure aren't gonna go without any presents to open." We had oysters and champagne and onion strings and wine and burgers with bacon and bearnaise sauce. It was fun and delicious, and the whole evening somehow managed to warm the cockles of my shriveled, black heart. In related news, I've been rockin that new Skeletonwitch CD pretty hard.
Then came the 30th, when a dozen of my closest friends (okay, two of my closest friends, as well as five people I hardly know and four complete strangers) gathered to wish N.Eck a happy birthday. We sat around a big, round table at Lil' Frankies, which has the worst name and the best Italian food of any restaurant in the East Village. Ray and I had scrumptious duck ravioli, and more importantly, I learned that the secret to appreciating the band Bright Eyes is to listen to them in your car while driving around Omaha, Nebraska in the snow. Also, receiving a bi-weekly paycheck from them seems to help.
New Year's Eve came and went with an anti-climactic sort of ppffffffftthhthht.... It was N.Eck's birthday, but we had already celebrated that, and nobody was really all that drunk, even though I worked really hard on getting us there, and when we thought we had found a new funny interesting stranger to welcome into our group she ended up getting lost in the crowd (or running like hell, is more like it). My night-long wild goose chase for the elusive and mysterious MB ended with a big, fat handful of nothing, as is par for the course. But we all had a great time nonetheless. Ray did an excellent job with the camera, as usual, making everyone look beautiful, even the ugly people -- see:
The first few weeks of January were spent mostly in Midtown Manhattan, entertaining the lovely ATL, drinking too much, and enjoying the life of the standard business-class hotel resident. You know those stories you read about people who live in hotels -- writers and artists and other "eccentrics?" Well, now I get it. I totally understand why someone would choose to live in a hotel. Only thing is, the Marriott Courtyard Midtown East ain't exactly The Chelsea. Also, Midtown sucks. I started to feel like my personality was being systematically hacked out of me every time an overly-made-up fur-clad middle-aged woman looked me in the eye while tottering past me on the street.
Turned out there was a hidden benefit to spending so much time in a black hole of vapidity: Returning to my neighborhood felt like some kind of triumphant homecoming: my creativity re-emerged with a vengeance, and after I spent adequate time with all the parts of my apartment that I had missed so ("oooh, kitchen, I love you so much, microwave me some Easy Mac, yeeeeaaaahhhhh..."), I sat down for a much-needed beer at The Gate and was able to complete my first fully-formed, coherent, publication-ready piece of writing in months. (This is not it.) Also, I like to bake biscuits in the middle of the night, and you can't do that at the Marriott.
Last night N.Eck and I ate at Mama's, our favorite spot for BYOB tall-boys and big, heaping plates of lukewarm delicious. He succeeded in getting my tiny pea-brain all addled with linguistic jargon, as well as securing my participation in some sort of glove-dropping social/linguistic experiment, which will probably be, like everything else N.Eck is involved in, fun as hell.
In other news, I'd like to know why my brushes with the Falcon are always so weird and awkward, when we clearly share the same sense of humor and many common interests, as well as being of perfectly complementary heights. Probably he just likes chicks who are prettier and skinnier than I. Also I am weird and awkward. And have zits.
Now it's time to clean my apartment and bake cookies. I'm so domestic! Pretty soon I will have to buy a crockpot and a housedress and relinquish my sensuality forever. But in the meantime I intend to perfect the hazelnut-butter chocolate chip cookie. Taste-testers are welcome to sign up via e-mail or text message, but be warned, the early bird gets the cookie.
