tecate, 5 am.


well, almost.

and i have been terrible. and by terrible, i mean, well, not at all. apologizing for incommunicado on the blog-front is the most self-indulgent thing you can possibly do. because let's face it, not many people are rabidly refreshing their pages, waiting for an update. i mean, my life is, well, normal. and normal isn't so, well, riveting.

and yet, my life is moderately interesting.

it's been a month of what. of realizations:

that no matter how far i seem to wander, i keep going back. to something that's what, true? maybe. true in a stupid sort of way. true blue. a saccharine stomper i almost chose at karaoke tonight, but settled instead on 'like a prayer'. which might be more appropriate. because let's face it, it's all very blind faith of me. i still have an interest in what i should have long abandoned as interesting. but that is the way the mind works. and the heart. oh, the heart. the heart is a pompous asshole in the world of living. and loving. oh, and liking.

but this summer, oh this summer, there were moments of clarity and moments of utter who-what-where-ity.

but needless to say, funny.

always funny.

tonight we went for dinner at joe's shanghai, where soup dumplings are king. you bite the top off gently, suck the soup out, then eat the inside. i'm sure that's some sort of wanky metaphor, but i can't be bothered to. suffice to say, it was lovely and really, so is life. despite its complete and utter lack of neatness.

so. so. so.

i am happy. it was all bittersweet. it was. but ultimately, so much joy emerges from that feeling of oh.

oh my. oh dear. oh life.

oh, good.

sunrise.

or rather, before sunrise. it's not often that i'm up when it's still dark. or rather, it is often that i'm up when it's still dark, but i don't usually rise before the sun does. no, i toss and turn in and out of dreams, fitfully falling back to sleep and climbing back into consciousness ever twenty minutes.

i've had this neurotic routine down for oh, a long time now. normal people, i imagine, set their alarms, settle into sleep, and wake up when said alarms say so. but here i am, anticipating the hell out of the morning. perhaps it's my constant gaze towards the future, the future, the future.

and the future is here, at 5:16 am. or rather, it's now. and now is quiet, quieter than the east village ever is. the revelers have stumbled home, and the delivery trucks have yet to bumble in. it is magic hour, i suppose - a magic hour that most find (somewhat) slumbery solace in.

but today i am up before sunrise, and already starting into the day.

it is august now, and somehow the summer has already been hanging round for months. time keeps on slipping, as steve miller would croon, from the jukebox in the bar down the street, if the bar down the street had steve miller in it. it doesn't.

but it does have 'so lonely' by the police. a track i play every time i'm there, not because i am, but because i like it. it's a happy sort of solo song. kind of like this no-man's hour - in between night and day, quiet rustle and hustle/bustle.

summer summer.

how you slip by me, you stealthy bastard.

of interest, of late:

in the far-reaches of brooklyn, i saw a huge empty storefront that had a 'grand opening!!!' sign on one side, and a 'for lease' sign on the other - as if in the short space of window, one entrepreneur managed to live out his narrative arc from birth to death of a salesman.

gazing from one end of a subway car to the other, i saw a devout, muttering hasidic, and a giant african american dad with 2 small kids, blue dreadlocks, white contacts, and vampire teeth. as different as they were, both were doing all they could to transport themselves to different realities with their looks and actions. too bad they both had to actually transport themselves on the mundane 2 train.

up at rockaway beach, i overheard a group of early twenty-somethings spouting off ignorant musings about thirty-somethings. ignorance without malice of course - just plain old, genuine stuff you would say if you didn't know any thirty-somethings at all. i remember doing the same thing at their age. now i just judge without malice (ish) - they were drinking boon's wine coolers. and reading cosmo.

those are three snippets for now. back to pretentious musings soon.

oh, july.

and that is less lament, more surprised statement. june snuck past me somehow, even though it was a stomper.

and by stomper i mean loud, and messy, and full of thunderstorms and lightning and enlightening moments that left me not a all enlightened, but muddled and puddled, and maybe a touch befuddled.

don't get me wrong, it was fun. there was karaoke and bowling and beer at tile bar. there was a funny beach party with a bouncy castle and coffee in the park and glorious walks to and from work in a summery-soggy haze. but there were also innumerable work headaches and at least one small heartache. and then there was the ambiguity and the awkwardity, which of course isn't a word, but should be one. all in all, june was an odd duck, one to be vaguely remembered or vaguely forgotten, depending on the day.

and now july. and a realization that i constantly pitter patter about the passing of time. every month it's 'can't believe it's already (this month)!' is it a perpetual yearning for what's next or what was before, or just the inability to sit still and enjoy what's happening at this very moment?

i don't know. but i know of at least one song that captures this perfectly. 'the wait' by built to spill. i think it's been reading my mail:

you wait for darkness, then you wait for day...you wait for august then you wait for may...

you wait for something that'll make the waiting worth the wait.

oh, july - you will be worth waiting for.

goodness.

gracious, great balls of what, of truancy? of neglect?

i have been a tragically awful correspondent. because, you know, i am corresponding with the invisible reader here, and that invisible reader is angry. a non-existent pen-pal waving a non-existent pen, cursing the sorry state of our non-existent letters. it's funny to feel guilty about not updating a blog that has a readership of -20, but you know, i am a very conscientious person, and apparently i like to feel guilty. so let me apologize, dear nobody.

and now that that's out of the way, onto the excitement of life since i last entertained with anecdotes and clever notes. or something. what has happened? well, i have worked. and worked some more.

and there have been some epiphanies.

yes, epiphanies. those things that make you suddenly realize that something you thought was something else is now just something else. yes, i intentionally made a tongue twister of that. fact is, there's no less confusing way to explain, unless, of course, i were to go into detail. and detail means real explanation. lowering pride, like a fishing line, into the depths of candid conversation. i cannot do that. or rather, i will not.

suffice to say, epiphanies sometimes suck a little.

but they are a necessary thing in life. they propel you forward. they don't hold you back. they make you talk silly.

they make you listen to songs on repeat, repeating to yourself over and over, 'i can do this. i can do this. right?'

and yes, of course you can. i can.

it's not so hard, really. a quick head shake, like snapping out of a prolonged daydream. and into the day.

into the summer.

into my first summer, in this dirty delight of a city.

it's going to be good, i know it is.

30/30.

and here i am. a week later, a week older. no, a year older. but a week further into something new.

it has been a fairly intense week. fitting for the changing of the decades. not that i have ever been one for gigantic birthday celebrations, but somehow this one ended up being a two-day affair. an affair to remember, and then forget, and then remember in bits and pieces.

friday was the new york birthday. it started at zum schneider, a bustling beer hall on avenue c. we toasted impossibly tall glasses of beer, and moved on into the night. a night that stopped at a few more watering holes, a friend's impromptu house party, and finally, a karaoke place, where i squawked an earnest rendition of journeys 'don't stop believing'. and i didn't stop believing, until the next day, when i believed for a few brutal moments that i wouldn't make my 4 pm flight to toronto.

yes, i made the ill-advised (but ultimately well-advised) decision to head back to toronto for a sunday wedding. and somehow, i managed to get to newark. to stumble onto my plane. to look out the window at the clouds in the magnificent skies and contemplate all the gloriously embarrassing cliches that you're allowed to contemplate on your 30th birthday, alone in the sky.

and i made it. and then i made it out again, for a lovely dinner with my oldest friends, and then onto the crooked star, and red light, where my other old friends were gathered to celebrate me being old, too.

sunday, i watched two new-but-old friends get married in a gorgeous ceremony in the courtyard of my university. and then danced and danced until my feet hurt and reminded me that i was 30, not 19. though, truth be told, any dancing in heels at any age would leave you limping. a delightful evening, indeed.

and then. nieces. and love. and family. and love.

and then back to new york. and so happy to be back. tonight we established some sort of club. a neighbors sort of gathering.

a i should know what i'm talking-about-but-i-am-a-bit-tired-ing.

i can't articulate now, what i wanted to, a few hours ago, but here's to spontaneity.

and life, really.

writing a letter.

and it feels really strange. strange because it's something on paper, with less room to go back and edit, re-edit. without the freedom to change the things that i’m trying to say into things that sound better than what i meant to say in the first place.

edit, re-edit.

no, this is supposed to be a true reflection of feeling. a true reflection of reeling.

i do feel compelled to copywrite the shit out of everything. and i really shouldn't, should i. there's that thing called spontaneity, which is so very refreshing, so very romantic, so very very. and i don't think i've lost it, no. after all, i still make plenty of unmeasured decisions, say things without thinking, say things when i'm drinking.

but in the writing, oh the writing. it becomes difficult to just write without re-reading, and in re-reading, wincing, and in wincing, changing, and in changing, moving further away from you, because nearness is honesty and distance is just, well, far.

edit, re-edit.