foot in mouth bud in hand

2010-02-07T15:29:00.001-08:00

40 day dream.

think i had one. only excuse i can come up with for not writing in about as much time. of course, i don't really need excuses, but there is something rather sad about blogs that sit idle, gathering internet dust.

so here i am, back again, ready to wow nobody with my nothingisms.

and nothing has really happened of import. well, that's not technically true:

christmas rolled through my life like a festive steamroller, taking me to snowy ottawa for a week of kids and cookies and using cookies to bribe misbehaving kids.

and back in new york, i greeted the new decade at, yes, tile bar. tile bar, my favorite local haunt, with its jukebox full of comfort food, was the perfect place to welcome 2010.

2010. everyone seems rather overexcited about this one - i wonder if it's because the chance of leaving behind not just one year, but ten - gives people the kind of blank slate sensation that just doesn't happen often enough in life.

whatever it is, it's a happy mood that hovers over things so far. even a few setbacks in my own little narrative haven't really dampened my spirits. maybe because i have other spirits on the rocks to help me through. or maybe, just maybe, because i've learned to swallow my own preachy acronym -

everything
happens
for
a
reason.

and it does.

so, setbacks - you were irksome, certainly. but you also gave me some pretty rad anecdotal fodder, and tuned me in once again to the fact that i have some of the loveliest friends ever. all of the conversations i've had lately - through every medium from ichat to texting to long talks over pints of guinness - have been gloriously pep talky and perspective changing.

which brings me to my next point - smart and funny people rule, and smart and funny people are everywhere in this town.

so yes. here we are in the second month of a year that's already surprised me with its eventfulness. resolutions have been made, broken and remade more realistically. winter's already overstayed its welcome.

the superbowl is on this sunday, valentines day is on next. february, throwing down the hits!

doubt i'll get punched.

2009-12-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

white christmas.

oh but it's white outside. whiter than snow. no, wait, it is snow. and a large percentage of it is probably greying into slushy sludge as i write. but for a moment, a tranquil, glorious moment last night - it was worthy of wonderland-like comparisons.

i happened to be out in it, of course - i always happen to be out these days. and these nights. it was the perfect sort of evening to huddle in the cozy glow of inside, but no, but no. off i went into the great white east village. thankfully, it was a quiet little gathering, which suited my mood. lately, i just want to take a break. and i guess i'm going to be taking one quite soon - in a few days, i'll brave the hordes of disgruntled travelers and head to newark, and onwards to spend a week in canada's capital town, i mean, city.

and what a lovely week it will be. good cooking, good family, good times chasing toddlers around. there's something great about trading in your adult cynicism for childlike wonder for a few days. you run around. you pretend to be a magical wizard, casting spells on little girls who aren't little girls at all, thank you very much, they're princesses! and aunty maddy, how could you forget that? yes, playing with kids is fun. exhausting, but ah, the reward of remembering that there is purpose in life beyond socializing too much and working too much!

so, yes. a week away from the madness that is this town, and the madness that has been 2009. i come back just in time to say goodbye to one of the stranger years in my life so far. now, i admit - i say that about every year, and rightfully so. every year is that much more bizarre than the one preceding it. and i suppose that is just how growing up feels. like some sort of rollercoaster you can't get off. like some sort of cliche you can't get off.

this is the time of retrospectives and reflective considerations of the last 12 months. i could do a greatest hits, i suppose. i mean, if this year was a tracklist, what would it look like? what would the song titles be for those amazing bands, january - december?

i shall think and overthink that one through.

2009-12-01T23:49:00.000-08:00

truancy unmatched.

october slipped into november, and now november is dangerously close to slipping into december.

oh wait, it just did.

cue jingling jangling jingle bells.

not sure why i haven't felt the need to yimmer - things have been extremely worthy of neurotic introspection. which is maybe why i've been absent - when things get crazy, you are less like to sit around writing about how crazy they are. perhaps crazy is the wrong word. more like, bizarre.

but maybe things are always somewhere in the vicinity of bizarre.

and now, 2010. about to begin.

there are a lot of things i want out of this year. resolutions and/or revelations to follow. for now, content. a bit weary, sure, but when, in life, are you not? i think the last few months of this decade have proven what i already knew about this decade: it was a certified wtf-er. and i know, acronyms are the least classy way of analyzing time. but truly, so much has happened, and so much of that which has happened happens to confuse me still.

adulthood is a trip.

2009-09-20T01:40:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-08-04T02:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

mayday mayday.

ok, so it's more like may 4th. i am sadly late for any sort of dancing around the maypole or even a couple cries for help over the airwaves. no, all i can do to celebrate the arrival of this the merry month of may is groggily rub my eyes and realize.

the time, the time, oh flying.
the good writing habits, dying dying.
the reader rolling eyes and sighing.

no, but seriously. may? mais, oui.

i suppose this is the moment i should start waxing pathetic about leaving my twenties behind, but i'm actually kind of excited.

excited to be really becoming a woman. kidding.
excited about really becoming an adult. kind of kidding.
excited about being taken seriously. seriously.

ok, not really. i am just complacent. but not the smug kind of complacent. just happy to be here. in this surreal little city. in this surreal little life. i mean, 10 years ago, i certainly faced the possibility of not making it this far. which is horrendously melodramatic, but it's true. i read a fantastically honest cancer memoir over the weekend, and it blew my sad little mind in the way it treated the disease and the experience with no kid gloves whatsoever. it was messy and ugly and he didn't make himself a hero for battling a horror that most will never have to. because as he put it, 'if you're an asshole before cancer, you'll still be an asshole after". and while i hope that i'm not one of those, i think i'm still the same person. just alive.

i would like to think that the experience of having a real life experience well before i was supposed to gave me a bit of perspective that carried me through my twenties.

but really, i fumbled through it blindly like most people fumble through every decade. with the beautiful human tendency to fuck it all up, then learn from it, then fuck it up again.

may my thirties be no different.

2009-04-21T20:57:00.001-07:00

tuesdays feel like wednesdays.

and wednesdays will undoubtedly feel like thursdays. and so on. i spent sunday at the office, see, which has thrown my work-equilibrium into a tizzy of dizzy. not that i don't work weekends, normally, but there was something about this past sunday that felt exactly like any other day at the office. everyone was in. there was the click clacking of other keyboards. the yip yapping of other people. the hem hawing of a humdrum 9 to 5.

only the sun streaming through the windows and the sound of spring outside gave away the whole thing. it was all an act, sunday. you were just posing as a monday to make us miserable. and it worked, making us work. jerk.

of course, i'm over it.

it's already two days later, which in slog-years feels like 100 million decades has passed. i have forgiven sunday, and am well into resenting the later days of the week. and by resenting, i really mean greeting them with passive cheerfulness. things seem to be looking up in a way that i just cannot be down about. cryptic, i know. it's best to be cryptic when you don't really know what you're talking about, see.

and it's may next week. may. may i just say, april, i hardly knew you? i mean, we did a little meet and greet. there was conversation, and a couple beers, a day at the park. but mostly i was too busy to notice, to care.

may i offer the month of may better company.

2009-04-11T11:49:00.001-07:00

rain rain go away.

well, maybe don't. i mean, you can stay out as long as i need to stay inside working. which is all day today, and well into the evening, and possibly tomorrow.

rain, that gives you carte blanche (or carte grey, in your case) to beat down and coat as much of the city as you feel like in soppy, sloppy puddles. so, go nuts.

not too terribly much to report of late. april is already well on its way. there was a trip up to 190th street to see the cloisters on a windy, medieval saturday. we noticed a russian couple doing a sexy photo shoot by the columns - an odd place to posture and preen, but less surprises me these days.

there was a day of sunny patios and sunburn and slowed down conversations. there were more friends passing through town, more new discoveries and fun evenings and random encounters. there was an ad party up on 29th street, with kegs (kegs?) and old skool hip hop beats, like pharcyde's 'passing me by'. very possibly should've passed that party by, but i suppose it was an interesting socio-cultural experience. later, i looked around and noticed everyone was either getting high, or getting low on the dancefloor. that was my cue to leave.

and there was work - ever-surreal work. lately it feels like a sitcom, without the laugh track - but i guess we all laugh enough to cover for the lack of canned giggles. after all, what else is there to do, really?

and already we're nearing may.

may, of course, will bring a marker in the passing of time - my 30th birthday. as i leave one decade behind, i will hopefully also leave this irritating way of faux-philosophizing about everything. not that that sort of bad habit goes away with age. if anything, the quirks and irks become more defined. but enough about that.

here's to another 10 years of pitter-patter to the accompaniment of the rain's splitter-splatter.

2009-03-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

april fool.

well, almost. there are a few days left of this merry month, but i've got a head start on everyone else.

see, i seem to have gone above and beyond the call of stupid, and assumed the role of march fool as well. congratulate or pity me - whichever you feel is more appropriate. either might apply.

it's been a strange little four-week medley of a month - full of foibles and follies and funny and pretty much no filler. oh, and a whole lot of that other f-word. as in: 'f, did i really just send that text?' or 'f, did i really just lose my voice?' or, 'f, did that really just happen?' or 'f have i really been here for 6 months?'

the answers to all of these f-tions, is, of course,

yes, yes, yes, and yes!

and do i regret any of it?

no, no, no and no...ish.

i mean, what is regret, really, but sitting around and mentally kicking yourself in the head (ass, and teeth) all day about things that you can't go back and change? sounds a bit snoozy.

after all,

what's a technological slip up in the grand scheme of things (flings/everythings)? what's one week without a voice in a life full of yapping? what's an amusing hiccup in a friendship's smooth talking? and finally, what's 6 quick months when i have years for absorbing?

exactly. april fools, march. i'm the one laughing now.

2009-03-13T23:38:00.000-07:00

friday the 13th.

and i feel lucky to be home, finally. to be alone, finally. seems like the past month has been a whirlwind - no, scratch that - a tornado of human interaction and social butterflying and meetings and greetings and finally!

i am home.

not to say that i haven't enjoyed it all - it's been grand and grand it will be again starting tomorrow, i'm sure. but tonight, tonight, sweet solitude. and now that i am finally sitting still for a moment, i am suddenly realizing all the randomness that's happened of late. and when i say random, i truly mean random. a friend of mine always makes fun of me for saying everything is random - it's how i usually describe pretty much any night i've had, event i've been to, encounter i've encountered. but truly, it is an appropriate word for my life. especially these days. these days, every day is slightly more off kilter than the last.

take this week.

it started off with a fever. hot and bothered, i couldn't be bothered to go to work. or, rather, i couldn't even get out of bed to even try to go. i read. i wrote. i tossed, turned, and got my nails painted the color of red christmas ornaments - the shiny ball ones that glint against the twinkly lights.

and i thought to myself, 'this week is going to be calmer'.

but no. come, tuesday i was well on my way back into the land of too much of everything. too much work. too much beer. too much amusing conversation. too much too much. when i came to wednesday morning, the remorse was palpable. the headache rolled over and kissed me smack on the lips and whispered, no, yelled, 'sucker!' and sucker, i was. after all, i had to go to work. and stay till 7 pm writing scripts. 'the rest of the week is going to be calmer,' i promised myself.

but then thursday rolled around - these 't' letter days stand for trouble, apparently.

and thursday the pain, the horror of the previous pain and horror had subsided. i was back, i was good - no, great - to go. and so i went. this time to an ad party at some bar on delancey. i do find the advertising scene in this town funny. i always get the feeling that i'm talking to that guy who did that ad, and i get a little tongue-tied, before i remember it's just advertising.

eventually i abandoned that sort of small talk for a lengthy and far too heated debate with someone about whether or not human nature existed. i argued that it did - and had i thought about it, i could have used about a million examples of how exactly it does exist from just this week alone. anyhow, the party was fun, the heavy metal bar after was funny, and the chips we stuffed in our faces on the cab ride home were the funniest.

i awoke this morning and realized that no, this week had not been calm, nor would it get calmer. a friend from london arrives tomorrow, and off we'll go. the sun will be out, and so will i. which is fine. i've got my night of nerdy quiet. and i've come to accept the reality that random will have its way with me whether i like it or not.

but thankfully, like it i do.

2009-03-08T14:59:00.000-07:00

another sunday.

and this one is particularly sleepy. i guess that's what working till after midnight all week will do to your weekend. it's like there's gauze wrapped round my mind, casting everything in a hazy dazy glow of stupid.

of note, two things:

came across a pair of pants lying on a sidewalk in park slope last night. there they were, legs splayed out like, well, like legs. how someone came to lose such a pair, i can hardly imagine. maybe it was a hipster molting out of those, emerging fresh and beautiful, in skinny jeans.

march is already marching ahead into spring. which is good news in a year of bad news - at least the change of seasons is a predictable joy in a world of crummy headlines and bailout deadlines. we watched the clocks move from 2 am to 3 am and suddenly the evening felt a lot more over than it had the minute before.

i'm sure we'll be thankful for the light soon, though.

after all, it's what makes the future bright.

2009-02-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

back to the future. or rather, the past.

the skyline is smaller, and i aint taller. just different. no, maybe not different. just distanced. and seeing it from a distance - from the plane, from the ferry, and the cab - just brought it home to me that this isn't home anymore.

the guy at customs seemed to agree --

him : "so, have you been to canada before?"

me: 'yeah, i'm actually american and canadian"

him: "ah (holding up my US passport) but i see you've chosen sides."

well played mr. customs guy, well played. even though i'm pretty sure it's illegal to travel with both. at any rate, it's nice to be here for a little while. it's quiet and twinkly and calm.

and there are fun days stretched out ahead. tomorrow i'll be reprising the famous role of 'auntie maddy' and entertaining endlessly energetic nieces. and then onwards to see old friends for what promises to be an endlessly energetic string of evenings, culminating in a wedding. two old friends are officially becoming newlyweds, and i am officially becoming even more of a cliche-spewing hack.

some things stay the same, regardless of what town i'm in.

2009-02-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

sunny side down.

it's beautiful out today, all smatterings of sunshine and blues. and for some reason, well, for a specific reason, i guess, i am thinking of another sunny time and place. one that exists in the distant past - seven years ago, to be exact. it was the fall of 2002, and my sister and her new husband had just started jobs as lawyers. she asked me if i could go out and spend time with her new puppy, as she felt bad for it, sitting alone all day. i was finishing my degree, and had significantly more time on my hands. and so, every day for a few weeks, i hopped on the streetcar for the long crawl across town to see zoe.

at the time, i had just discovered the magnetic fields, and made endless, enamored mixes composed of stephen merrit's clever melancholy. and so, i sat, on the long crawl, listening to the magnetic fields and gazing out at leaves, leaves everywhere. the songs went so well with fall, and with my rather youthful contemplation of life, of the future, of everything. it was an hour each way, to puppy and back. but i didn't mind. i liked the calming wheeze of the car on the tracks, the sound of '100,00 fireflies' over and over, and the chance to daydream.

growing up, i never minded going to church, or the opera or the symphony - things i was forced to do on a weekly basis - because they gave me the chance to daydream. to carefully construct conversations and scenarios between me and whomever was occupying my thoughts at the time. or to imagine myself in whatever successful job or situation i identified as successful at the time.

anyhow, that fall, i had hours of daydreaming, punctuated by visits with a little dog. a little friend, really. that little friend died this morning, and though i have always secretly scoffed at those who become devastated by the loss of things not human, i feel a tug. a nostalgic sniffle.

yeah, i know - a bit of a downer. not really meant to be one. she had a good seven years. and so have i. just another moment to reflect and think about life. and put on the magnetic fields for the first time in a long while. which isn't so bad at all.

2009-02-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

valentine's day and president's day.

what does that suggest - the power of love? i think huey lewis once waxed unpoetic about that very combination. but does being in love give you power or make you completely powerless? i'd argue both. which is why, i suppose, such an ambiguous phrase exists. at any rate, twas a weekend full of loving the place i am in, and in loving it, letting it take me wherever it wanted.

and that's the powwwwer of looove.

it started on friday, when i was coerced into going to a james bond tribute night. now, my interest in james bond could be described as minimal at best - but i allowed myself to be talked into this rather strange evening, after the orange glow of a great jones cafe pint and a terrifically bad, but mildly intoxicating bottle of chianti at dinner. so suddenly i found myself watching singers tear through all the famous bond theme songs. and it was delightful. i forget sometimes, that talent oozes out of every pore of this town - so even the no-names deliver name-brand performances.

saturday i agreed to go for tacos and bowling in sunset park. fitting valentines day activities, right? i mean, love is messier than cramming your gullet at a taco stand and can be as disappointing / exhilarating as rolling gutters and strikes. alright, so i just force fit all that - but it kind of works. and so we ate tacos and rolled more gutters than strikes at a divey old bowling alley called 'melody lanes'. the place was a fascinating cross section - hipsters, latinas, hasidic jews, you name it - they were all there, celebrating v-day to a soundtrack of gangsta rap and classic rock.

but the best part about bowling there had nothing to do with bowling. it was our bartender at the melody lanes bar - peter, an old italian guy in a bow tie and cummerbund, who offered up profanity-laced philosophical musings along with our 9 dollar pitcher of bud. this guy was at once kind of insane and kind of awesomely brilliant. which was an inarticulate way of saying we'll be going back to visit him, for sure.

after bowling, we wandered down into park slope, and did some bar hopping. the standout, commonwealth, had a jukebox full of eclectic loveliness, all handwritten mixes waiting to be discovered. there was something really odd about choosing from someone else's music - it felt like musical voyeurism - exciting yet a bit dirty. we weren't even there long enough to hear my careful selections, but the act of choosing was enough of a thrill.

and then it was off to williamsburg to go to a hipster party called 'eff valentines' - a bit predictable, really, but we were in the mood for silliness. there were hearts everywhere - heart balloons on the ceilings, cut-out hearts hanging on the wall, candy hearts in bowls. it occurred to me that this wasn't 'effing' valentines at all, but embracing it whole-heartedly.

sunday i went to see my friend's band vetiver perform stuff from their new record in the lovely little coach house behind frankie's in carrol gardens. my friend and i laughed that we stuck out like sore thumbs. or is that well-groomed thumbs. all the girls were in various shades of messy, fuzzy and flannel. which is not to say that they were unattractive - just the antithesis of our straight hair and bangs. i think i was the only girl there wearing a dress. we spent quite a bit of time outside by the open wood fire, which was delightful, but after we smelled like we'd been rolling around in a campfire. back in my neighborhood, we stopped in for a nightcap, and the guy sitting next to us at the bar could smell the campfire. of course, we weren't embarrassed, because he was the one sitting at the bar, alone, drinking a bud light on a sunday night.

we asked him what brought him to the bar, and suddenly found ourselves in a conversation with the most ordinary guy in the world. i didn't know that such a guy existed, but oh, he does. his name is mike, and he works as a trader at some big financial place. mike seemed kind of down on himself. he told us that 'he had no interests whatsoever, and that he was a boring guy'. i had never heard anyone admit to this, and i found it mind-blowingly sad. finding interests seems like such an easy thing to do. or at least pretend to do! this guy was openly aware of his failure to be interesting, and had no problem broadcasting it to anyone who was interested enough to listen. at least for a few minutes. i told him, jokingly, that the first thing he could do to change his damning status of 'uninteresting' was to pick a more interesting beer than bud light. he laughed, a little, but you could tell he'd keep on ordering bud light forever.

so all of this in a weekend. a weekend of meandering and musing and amusing encounters and thought-provoking conversations. can i bring it all back and neatly tie it in to the power of love? most likely, not. i let the city kind of wash over me this weekend, which is something akin to love. and i'm sure i felt its power. but mostly just a determination to write it all down, however poorly, so i have a record of all this funny.

to look back on and fall in love all over again.

2009-02-11T18:31:00.000-08:00

9:52.

and the big bad question for the evening is - do i keep the evening going?

do i go out again into the admittedly gorgeous springy evening and meet up with friends, or do i sit here, lazily, and contemplate my way into sleepytime? the problem is, once you get into the cozy, into the warming lull of home, you aren't super keen on venturing out into the world again. especially when there are worlds of opportunity to socialize and frivolicize. not that frivolicize is even close to being a real word. but you understand.

and i understand that my mind has made up its mind, and i am not going anywhere. after all, it has been an hour since i started writing this, and here i sit, listening to dreamy music and dreaming of, well, dreaming.

it is only wednesday. and thursday has drinks in it. and friday has friday in it. and then, a three day weekend that includes valentine's day and presidents day. so love and power, all wrapped up with a bow. or maybe just a little bit of possibility and a whole lot of reflection. that's love and power too, just articulated differently.

and articulation is key.

2009-02-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

saturday night.

and i have made the rather weak decision to stay in. though you could argue (and i will) that it is actually strong of me to have a quiet and productive evening in, rather than a money and time frittering night out.

i already had one of those last night anyway. it started at the divey bar across the street from my office. this bar makes no sense - it's a dirty bar in a fancy neighborhood. though i suppose even tribecans like to slum it occasionally. some sort of work party was going on - and overweight women and old men shimmied in the back to hits like, 'jump around' by house of pain. we agreed that 'jump around' could now be categorized as the kind of song you'd hear at a wedding. how the badass have fallen.

after guinnesses and a collective sigh of relief that this rather horrific week was over, we headed up to my local, the tile bar. yes, i think i can officially call it my local now. or at least, my go-to. and go to it, i do. it's just such a...bar. if your alien friend were to ask you to take them to a 'bar' you could take them to tile bar, and they'd understand. it's not a sports bar. it's not a pub. it's just...a bar. it has a tiled floor, a warm glow, a long bar, and a jukebox with about 20 mediocre albums. i think i've heard the police every time i've been in there. unfortunately it's usually 'roxanne' and not the far superior 'so lonely'. but it's a comforting sort of place. and sometimes comfort is all you want with your beer.

so that was last night.

and tonight is headphones and a bottle of brooklyn and writing.

nothing weak about that.

2009-02-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

and there's no leaving new york.

well, of course there is, i'm sure, leaving, at some point - but i love that lyric, especially repeated over and over at the end of a wistful winter song. i've read a lot of literature lately that calls out the yearning that people feel once they leave this town. you can complain a lot while you're here, but i suppose once you're not, you realize just how magic it is. and i say that begrudgingly - not because i don't think it's wonderful - i do.

i just find the endless fawning leaves me yawning.

when people rabbit endlessly about eating magnolia cupcakes and shoe shopping and strolling down bleecker, they seem to be projecting a life for themselves that doesn't exist to me, or possibly even to them. it's sex and the city season 1-400 rehashed and regurgitated into sad little unglamorous vignettes. i don't want that city or the sex in it.

i'd rather have my own stumbling bumbling adventures.

and oh but i am.

2009-02-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

football.

i actually have nothing to say about football, but it seemed an appropriate kickoff today. yes, kick off. as you can see, i am feeling extremely clever. and by clever, i mean hollow-minded and light headed and, well, dumb. i have been entertaining friends quite a bit over the last few days, and all that talking has left me with little to say.

but i shall soldier on, because i am a determined. or is that unable to shut up? possibly both.

evening is descending upon the city, which means everyone is rushing home to plunge their greedy mitts into giant bowls of 40 layer dip as they watch the big game. or is that the big ads? possibly both.

i notice that the sun set a little later today. spring may not have sprung yet, but it is certainly starting to twitch ever so slightly. i would love to give it a good swift kick in the pants to get it going faster. but i shall refrain, mostly because i don't know where to find good old spring, and even if i could, i don't really want to get into a fight with any of the seasons. especially not winter.

winter is a bitch.

2009-01-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

tuesday.

today i decided to try 'working' from home. which i must say was more like, 'eating' from home. it occurs to me that i'd be very good at freelance eating. or full time eating, if i found the right place for my skill set. (my skill set, by the way, includes chewing, savoring, and twirling various foodstuffs on my fork).

there are many, many places for me to develop these skills in my neighborhood. there are dumplings and donuts and pizzas and potato pancakes and noodles and nachos enough to make any appetite keel over in ecstasy. that said, i also cook. i mean, sometimes you just want to be at home, eating from a plate, not a container.

but there hasn't been much time for cooking lately. work is (always) intense, and i've had a slew of visitors. funny, no one actually stayed with me for the first four months of my adventures here, and now all of a sudden they are coming at me from all sides. which is delightful, of course.i had one friend come in last weekend, and another stay on my couch sunday, and now another this thursday. it never rains, it pours, right? actually, it seems to do a lot of both here - but i've got me some knee high rubber boots and i'm ready to puddle jump.

and by that i mean, play hostess.

2009-01-19T19:51:00.000-08:00

when errands turn random. or, errandoms.

tonight as i sat waiting for my nails to dry at the orchid garden (no orchids, not a garden), i closed my eyes briefly. not really to meditate or anything - though meditating at place called orchid garden would seem appropriate - just because i was sleepy.

when i opened my eyes, i noticed someone standing at the window. a tall, intense tattooed fellow in a black jacket, peered at me, then opened the door and came in. the conversation awkwardly plunked out, as follows:

"I just wanted to tell you, you're beautiful."

"Um...thank you."

"Here's my card. Just in case you ever want to go for coffee."

"Um..thank you."

and he was gone. i picked up the card, with my freshly painted nails (OPI cherry chick flick - worst name ever, and yet best, for this situation) and gazed in awe at the bizarre words. the job description on the card read 'shadow contractor". shadow contractor? what on earth (or other planetary entity) could it possibly mean?

when i left the salon, i realized he was, in fact, not gone at all, but was only a few steps ahead of me. and since he turned around, we were suddenly in stride, walking a few blocks together. the conversation continued on its plunking, merry way:

"So...where are you off to now?"

"Um, to pick up my laundry"

"Cool...I just moved back here from San Francisco"

"Cool...What were you doing there?"

"Oh...you know...the San Francisco art thing".

nope, i really didn't know.

but perhaps he came back because his shadow contract was up there?!

2009-01-16T15:41:00.000-08:00

out there on the ice.

last weekend, i skated to work on a particularly nasty sunday. the sidewalks were amateur ice rinks, and my lack of grips and grace proved unfortunate. slip slip, crash! i wiped out on wooster. which sounds rather poetic, but really, was just awkward.

this weekend, it's not icy but it's triple size cold. minus a trillion, according to my internal thermometer. that might be a slightly inaccurate read, but it's really damn chilly out there in the arctic, i mean, city. last night i made the mistake of first walking home two miles in the evening in just stockings (well, not JUST stockings, i was also wearing clothes, but stockings are essentially bare legs) and then going out into the freeze to meet up with friends. we had a warming meal at joe's shanghai - these fascinating little dumplings that have soup in them, so you have to puncture them with your teeth and suck out the goodness. it was one of those bustling divey joints where they seat you at huge round tables with a bunch of strangers. we were only 3, so were joined by about 7 teenagers out on the town, and a couple trying to have a romantic dinner. how i love being constantly thrown together with randoms. i mean, even the people i was eating with, i met randomly, and have only known for a few months.

after, we (stupidly? bravely?) decided to walk over to bleecker & 6th from the heart of chinatown - normally not a bad stroll, but in the dead of winter, kind of dumb. chinatown at night is pretty amazing - the narrow streets full of exotic lights and signs are right out of a movie set. we were on our way to a show, and had to kill an hour before doors, so hit a little pub called peculier near the venue. as so often happens to me lately, i walked in and realized i'd been before, but at a time i didn't know the city, so had no context to place the place. we took a seat at the back, and sat and gawked at a group of khaki-clad bankers guffawing at their khaki-clad jokes. they all had this uniform, even beyond their clothes - flowing manes and jowls. and when i say jowls i mean JOWLS. these guys were probably 23 years old, and yet they had the easy-living jowls of 55 year olds. we could not stop staring. and giggling.

the show itself was a bit disappointing - the band - school of seven bells are hipster-critic darlings of the moment - so it was interesting to check out. but they walk a fine line between good and total crap - the good sounds like a more modern cocteau twins, the bad sounds like celtic music for the kind of people who commune with fairies. so, hit and miss. a dj set by the juan maclean before was a bit uninteresting too - but it was amusing to watch people rave out like it was 1994.

today i tried to do errands, but quickly retreated into the cocoon of my apartment. i did make a quick stop at abraco, my favorite coffee shop. i think i might have a crush on that place. i get giddy when i go in. it's just so small and cute and the people who work there are so friendly it hurts.

anyhow, this little recap of my life seems to have no point, except to say it's cold and life continues on its happy random way.

mid january already...09, how you promise to fly already.

2009-01-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

an evening in tribeca.

as sophisticated as that may sound, it's not.

it just means i'm working late.

it is strange for me, foreign, to be up late on weeknights. i like early nights and early mornings - and this night owl business gets me a bit on the loopy side. i wonder how insomniacs can take it. there's something lonely about the middle of the night - the only sound is the buzzing and fuzzing of various machines and technological devices around me. the evening presses through the windows, as i click clack click clack away, like a sleepy, stuttering robot.

but never fear - soon i will pack up my things, and be off into the dark. the ride home is becoming an oddly comforting routine. hopping in a cab, sinking back into my seat, luxuriously, and watching the city speed by. ok, ok, it's actually more like me falling back into my seat, exhausted, and watching the city putter or zoom by me, depending on traffic, and listening to my cab driver bark into his mobile...

whatever it is, it gives me a few moments to reflect on another day in bizarro-world.

before i wake up and get ready to do it all over again.

2009-01-06T20:16:00.000-08:00

a new year.

of note in my 09 life so far:

a sunny, windy friday, leaving the chelsea market. an old man ambles my way, and as he does, his tweed hat goes flying off his head. inspired by the extreme kindness of strangers here, i scramble for it, pick it up and hand it to him. smiling he says, 'i'm not as fast as i used to be'. it is only then that i notice he only has one arm - on his other side, an empty suit jacket sleeve waves forlornly in the breeze.

a merry saturday night. in between beers and bars, in search of a restroom, we pop into a little, unassuming pub on 7th. its walls are covered with medieval paintings, its patrons are a noisy bunch. until we walk in. someone yells "SHHHHH!!!!!" and everyone else joins in. the entire bar goes silent. we look at each other, caught somewhere between dumbfounded amazement and hysterical laughter. and just like that, everyone goes back to chatting. in line for the washroom, we decide to test these strange waters by starting a "SHHHHHHHHH" of our own. it works. everyone joins in, the entire bar goes quiet. google searches the next day uncovers a silly tradition started to communally moderate noise. ridiculous, and so very fitting in a city where every place and person feels the need to have a schtick.

finally, a bright and early sunday morning, popping out to grab coffee at my favorite little hole in the wall, and a croissant at the bakery on my block, i feel suddenly, for better or worse (but mostly better) that i am home.

2008-12-23T19:46:00.000-08:00

today...

standing in the security line at la guardia, i was made to wait awhile. see, i lost my passport, so was only in possession of an official (though kind of unofficial, compared to a passport) document saying i could travel by air, courtesy of the canadian consulate of new york city. and so, i had to wait a little, while the security guy checked out said document.

as i stood there, someone beside me said, "Madeleine?" rather incredulously. turning, i saw an old acquaintance, from college days, whom i hadn't seen in, oh, about 7 years. he and his fiancee were just passing through the city, on their way to toronto from london, where they live. it was really nice to see him. and if i hadn't been waiting, i wouldn't have.

the security guard, after witnessing this reunion, said to me,

"see? if i hadn't held you back - you wouldn't have run into your friend. ... everything happens for a reason!"

everything happens for a reason! the idiotic wisdom i spout constantly! that is my catch phrase, so much that i have turned it into an acronym (EHFAR), for crying out loud! and here it was, being fed back to me by a random border security guy in an airport.

so very poetic. and so fitting, after a year of strange coincidences, happy accidents, serendipitous encounters, and seemingly annoying but ultimately helpful occurrences.

he was right. everything does happen for a reason. sometimes it just takes awhile for those reasons to surface.

2008-12-17T11:27:00.000-08:00

i'm dreaming of a wet christmas.

the treetops are glistening alright - but it's all precipitation. but whatever we seem to be lacking in pretty white stuff, we're making up for in holiday goodness. i guess it's not too surprising that a frenetic city gets frenetically festive: the streets are strung with lights that hang from street lamp to street lamp. trees are sold on every corner. even the pub i was in last night was absolutely plastered with twinkly lights and wreaths and santa stickers. a marching band is out near my apartment every night playing carols.

everything is kitschy and wonderful. i mean, merry and bright. i mean, merry and rainy.

regardless, it's good.

2008-12-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

goodness.

time keeps on slipping. and as it slips, so does my writing into a quiet oblivion. i really need to be more proactive with the upkeep of my meandering musings. i mean, what will i go back and laugh at, years on, if i don't document the idiotic adventures i've been having - the crazy things i see - the strange little moments i encounter? my memories? no, no, i need the mono-blogue, if only to fill in gaps my mind will surely develop.

so from now on, more of my snore-inducing chronicles.

lately....

in a bookstore on orchard, i heard a woman exclaim to the salesguy,

"Stuff White People Like?"

to which the un-white salesguy wittily replied,

"Yeah..white people like that book a lot."

loved. that.

elsewhere - much random socializing. this is the revolving door of my life in the big city full of little people that hop in and out of each other's existences. a few are sticking, and i like them very much. we had some epic adventures this past weekend - went to the tenement museum, had a chinese feast at congee village (but no congee, of course), to a few new bars, and a few old favorites - one in particular, is starting to feel a bit like my local. it is 2 blocks from my house, after all.

it was santa con that night - an annual event where hundreds of drunken frat boys dress as santa and carouse through the city's bars and pubs. why grown ups like to dress up so much i'll never know. a return to non-innocence, perhaps? an excuse to act stupid? probably the latter. twas surreal though, being surrounded by santas and accquaintance-friends, toasting brooklyn lager and discussing the state of our world. and by state of our world, i don't mean politics. i mean silly things, like books and music. and by silly, i mean very important, of course.

and now, a week till christmas. how that happened, i'm not sure. was buried under a stack of work the size of rhode island, i guess. and there was the holiday party - a ridiculously silly event that involved fez hats and mayhem on a stormy night in chelsea. or was it chelsea? to be honest, i don't know. but it was fancier than i normally am, that's for sure.

anyhow, enough of this yimmer yams. i will be back with something more articulate (i hope) soon. till then, till then.

2008-11-30T19:26:00.000-08:00

time time time a ticking away.

funny how it goes, and goes - and then all of a sudden, you realize something you think of as recent has slipped into the past - and is a month, a year, a decade ago. i was just discussing a christmas party with a friend, that felt like yesterday - until the date stopped us in our reminiscing tracks - it's december tomorrow. which means that another year has gone by.

but what really hit this home came about after a rainy day of meandering through the internet. after hours and hours of checking all my favorite sites and blogs and online haunts, i googled myself. c'mon, you know you've done it too. anyhow, i stumbled upon something that made me speechless at the passing of time, and how time heals all wounds, or at least, the memories of them:

i wrote that when i was 20. so almost 10 years ago now. that odd, surreal little year of my life i had cancer. i had completely forgotten that i ever wrote this. reading it over made me almost in awe of my former self. and note the heavy emphasis on 'former' - i am not that strong a person now, believe me.

illness and suffering have a way of changing a person, giving them a grace that is unmatched. but time, oh time has a way of making you forget. forget the things you wrote and the way you felt - and seeing this just made me realize that in 10 years i have gotten better, but worse for taking things, life, everything, for granted. so at the tail end of this thanksgiving weekend, i see, truly, what i have to be thankful for.

2008-11-29T23:34:00.000-08:00

2:30 am.

amazing how an early night here is a late night anywhere else. this is the city that never sleeps, and all i want to do is go to bed. i guess it's a 'when in rome' situation - because i'm not a stitch tired, though i just got home. and this, again, can be filed under 'early nights'.

of late they've all been, well, late.

and good, of course. and random, of course. the thing about this town (and yes, that is how i apparently start every one of my rambles) is that you end up having these moments, these experiences, that you'd only have with close friends elsewhere. but here, you share with strangers, and have fun doing it. wednesday i had drinks and fancy sushi and sake and more with a good friend and his friends. not so random, but still full of meet and greet and eat and sweet.

thursday was thanksgiving, which emptied out the town proper. it was dead quiet on the streets that normally hop and bop till forever. everyone was at home gobbling and i suppose, thanking themselves and each other for love and life and good in these rather bad times. or something as cliche. at any rate, it was quiet quiet quiet when my 2 new friends chester & pasha came over for orphan turkey-day drinks. we headed to schillers, all twinkly and touristy, for thanksgiving dinner, which was full of laughs and yes, turkey. after, we hit tile bar, where the bartender mixed us hot apple cider and maker's mark. delicious / deceptively strong. if i had to give thanks for anything later, it was that the bar was 2 blocks from my house.

and now it's early sunday morning. i had a fairly uneventful evening - first a pint at beauty bar, where they serve pints and manicures. because, you know, in a city of a million bars, every one needs its own schtick. after, we hit zabloski's in williamsburg for a friend's birthday. again, funny how these nights work. i went out to meet one friend. he introduced me to 3 others. he went home, and i took the 3 others with me. and so, another night of experiences with strangers. which again, is refreshing. and i know - refreshing might just be the most insincere sounding word in the word-o-sphere, but hey. i am not supposed to be articulate this late. just know that i am in awe of the everyday here. of how strange and different and defining it all is. how 2 months in, i know i've changed. except of course, i still speak in cliches.

good to see that some things stay the same.

2008-11-27T11:24:00.000-08:00

this is the day to wax frenetic and poetic about how there are so many things to be thankful for. and it's true, there are. for example, i am thankful the lovely little sugar cafe has a free wireless-connection, since mine has decided to go on a very untimely sabbatical. and so i get to see a parade of interesting randoms go by. on a holiday like this, i wonder what brings them to this narrow hallway of a coffee shop. are they alone, without family in the city, like me? or are they more into croissants and cupcakes than turkey and stuffing? hard to say. the two-some behind me are in the midst of a heated french language lesson. and while that sounds like a euphemism for romance - it's not. they really are just going over verbs and conjugations. loudly.

a few nights ago, i found myself at another coffee shop - a bakery, really - using their free wireless. it was a tiny postage stamp of a bakery, and the only other patron was an old man watching 'heroes' on a huge wall-mounted flat screen. why a small bakery would have a huge flat screen wall-mounted television is the first mystery. the second, of course, is why an old man would come to the bakery to watch 'heroes'. and why he would think i was interested in his running commentary on the show. and yet, i kind of was. even the teenager behind the counter and the british lady in the window got into the discussion. the random conversations you have in this town. people are willing to share just about anything - personal space, personal details of their lives - personal belongings. maybe it's how a city of transient loners has evolved to avoid loneliness.

at any rate, i left the 9th street bakery much like i'll leave the sugar cafe today - with a renewed sense of the strangeness of this place. but i dig it, oh i do.

2008-11-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

This morning, i stopped to buy a banana at a fruit stand at the bottom of 1st ave. the sign said, '25 cents each', so i picked one up. And then this absurd exchange followed:

"50 cents for that banana"

"But the sign says 25 cents!"

"This is America."

"But the sign says 25 cents!!!"

"It's American money."

"But the sign says 25 cents!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Ok pay me whatever you want."

Love getting hustled about bananas on my way to work. Really, it was so ludicrous it amused me, and i found myself laughing with the vendor as I handed over my quarter.

This is America, indeed.

2008-10-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

halloweenie.

never have i been in a town that takes this day of ghoulish fun more seriously. this is spooky on steroids, let me tell you. every night since saturday i've seen people traipsing about the city in outlandish costumes. yeah yeah, as ministry screeched, "everyday is halloween" in new york, but this week in particular is insanity. and on this, the day itself, i expect nothing less than mayhem.

the fun started last saturday, with a fete at possibly the nicest apartment ever. sure, that sounds like a major exaggeration, but this place was ridiculous. all 20 foot ceilings and chandeliers and fancy get-ups. a major downpour in between point A and point Party left us completely bedraggled, so we stuck out like wet thumbs in a sea of pretty this and pretty that. or is that sexy this or sexy that. what i mean to say is, the girls were all in various shades of hot.

i recycled my old slash costume, not the most attractive option, but certainly original for a lady. sadly, not original for a man, seeing that the host of the party was also slash. quick improvisation on my part turned my slash into "slashley" and all's well that ends well.

but of course, it didn't end there. there was another party on wednesday that saw another quick improvisation - a pair of stupid obama glasses and equally stupid sparkly headbands, and the democratic party was born. in a warehouse in williamsburg. mazel tov. this party was artsier, keg-gier. crazier. cartoonish animals mingled with geeky science fiction mingled with hipster hipster hoorah. very fun times, very friendly people. even a bit of a dance-off towards the end.

and finally, here we are on the day of days. naturally, there is a parade. i mean, why shouldn't there be one? doesn't it just makes sense to have a big celebratory march where people can celebrate, um, the legacy of trick or treating? well, even if it doesn't make any sense, it should be interesting. there's even a reenactment of the ferris bueller float scene. you know, the part where he leads the crowd in 'twist and shout'. not to mention the trillion random parties and warehouse functions. it's all almost a bit too cool for skool for me. or is that, uncool. i can't tell. regardless, i'll put my party face on, and venture out into the evening. because, well, that's what you're supposed to do in a new city. say yes to plans, regardless of how questionable they may be.

right? right?

2008-10-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

it's raining, it's pouring.

and i'm the old man who feels like snoring. honestly, one thing i am a lacking at the moment is a nice 8 hour session in dreamland. i seem to be tossing/turning my way into an insomniac of late. is it that there's so much to think about? or is my mind just too busy for a leisure activity as leisurely as resting?

it's not for lack of darkness. the pigeon coop apartment is very suited for slumbers. but perhaps that's part of the problem. i love basking in sunlight, and in the night light of street lamps and sky. and, of course, soon, i'll move to brighter climes, and we'll see if sleep eludes me then.

it's hard to believe that it's already november, the quick prelude to the holiday season - the trailer before the big christmas blockbuster. november always feels like a bit of an afterthought, or rather, a before-thought. at any rate, it never really gets the attention it deserves. and obviously i can't remedy that for the entire universe, but i shall make an effort to really savor this month.

which i don't think will be a problem, considering.

2008-10-05T13:10:00.001-07:00

and here i am.

settling into paradise city, where the grass is greener and the girls are pretty. and by pretty, i mean they are the prettiest damn girls i have ever seen in my life. there are gorgeous creatures adorning every corner, draping loveliness all over stoops and sidewalks, and oozing beauty, like slugs, as they parade down the avenues. of course, there's a lot of ugly too, which balances it all out quite nicely.

i guess there's just a lot of everything here. people people and more people. faces, places, spaces and races. all crammed into a mess of urban. my apartment is a tiny little shoe box, nestled in the back of a large cupboard of a building. it is dim and vaguely dirty, but still quite endearing. pre-war high ceilings and shiny old wood floors and plenty of room for all my art. and oh, there will be stories. there already are. the smell of incense from the himalayan gift shop downstairs wafts through the stairwell, as i hike up the four flights it takes to reach my apartment. my super is a crazy little man named freddy who wheezes. my neighbor has some sort of pet bird that squawks rather constantly. it is quite an experience, oh yes.

and the location, the location - i can walk everywhere. well, everywhere that's within walking distance. which is a lot. i can walk to work. i can walk to stores. i can walk up to union square or down to the williamsburg bridge. to the library down the street. to coffeeshops and eateries and everything in between.

i might just walk myself into oblivion here. and i can't wait.

2008-09-15T07:31:00.001-07:00

i do like mondays.

that's right, i do. after all, it's not their fault they're stuck at the beginning of the work week. it's not their fault they perpetually have to take the stage right after the superstar act that was your totally awesome weekend. it's not their fault you hate your stupid job, or your crummy classes. and yet, mondays are forever fated to be hated by the masses.

so let me be first to embrace the mundane of mondays.

this one in particular is easy to love. sure, i've got a ridiculously daunting two weeks ahead of me and a pit in my stomach the size of kansas. sure, i can't shake the feeling that i should have been writing scripts all day, rather than flitting about the office running my mouth off on various unimportant subjects. sure, i'm leaving town shortly and haven't packed a thing.

but it's beautiful, this sunshine-filled afternoon - full of promise. of hope and adventure. of all sorts of uncertainty and certainty that i am in for something good.

i guess it's not really a pit in my stomach after all. more like butterflies. pretty little winged things, knocking about against my ribcage and stomach with frenetic enthusiasm. making everything a flutter - turning my smooth talking into a stutter.

oh, who am i kidding, i'm a mumbler anyway. point is, mondays have a bad rap, when truly we should salute these unsung heroes of the calendar family -- for spring boarding us into new weeks, full of potential. for forcing us to get up out of bed and into new situations. and of course, for inspiring me to write such silly schlock.

here's to mondays. and whatever the hell tuesday brings.

2008-08-30T17:14:00.000-07:00

saturday night's

alright for fighting the urge to go out just for the sake of going out.

and sunday morning's perfect for waking long before the bleary-eyed club kids, and soldiering out for coffee and a clear mind to start the day. it's a long weekend - the last long weekend of summer - or the first long weekend of fall - depending on your level of optimism. personally, i've always seen september as this magical pause between the two seasons. sure the light is autumnal, but the temperature often soars to dizzying heights, which brings back tinges of the sultry, silly of summer evenings, wasted away in wasted splendor.

and speaking of wasted splendor, as i walked back from the coffee shop this morning i noticed a guy, in his early twenties, sitting on the sidewalk. he was definitely dressed for a night out on the town that had long since disappeared into the bright and unforgiving light of day. he gazed around woozily, as if trying to get his bearings, to piece together the hazy sequence of events that brought him to this spot... 'booze clues', as a friend once beautifully put it.

that he actually had to pause and take a little time out from his walk of shame struck me as half pathetic half delightful. i remembered the days of looking forward to friday and saturday nights, if only to get obliterated. which at the time, was a good time. but the funny thing when you live only for the party, is those next mornings. when you sit up groggily in bed (or on the curb, as the case may be) you have the strongest sense that everyone else has somewhere to go and something to do, and there you are, with nothing but a feeling of being left behind.

of course, you don't realize this at the time. after all, you've got youth on your side, which makes sketchy slips and dignity-dips seem kind of cute. but as you get older- even just a little bit older - anything too lurid just seems a bit passé. now this is not to say that i don't have my fair share of ridiculous, but these days, i know when to stop...most of the time. and even when i don't, well, i've got places to go and things to do in the morning, so i can't plunk myself on the curb and reconstruct the events of previous messy evenings - instead i toddle to the office and let others fill in the blanks for me.

which is so much more grown-up, wouldn't you agree?

2008-08-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

tuesday's gone.

and so is most of august. and as summer tapers off into the leafy loveliness of autumn, i try to recall what has been a whirlwind of a season. which, of course, sounds like a phrase from a regency romance - all masquerade balls and strolls through manicured gardens and flushed frivolity. the whirlwind here really only refers to the speed. the speed of days turning into nights, nights into new mornings and months collapsing into each other like tired lawn chairs.

this summer has been the fastest yet. possibly because there was more drizzle than sizzle - the rain rain wouldn't go away and then had the nerve to come again another day - and another and another, until the summer slid into a sloppy, soppy mess.

and while it might have dampened my shoes, it certainly didn't touch my spirits - yes, i'm still chipper and un-hipper than ever before. after all, it's been a bizarre yet wonderful little chapter. and i am the wiser for it all.

now, how much more randomness can fall possibly bring?

a truckload i'm sure.

i can't wait.

2008-08-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

the early bird.

gets the what, the worm? or just the glimpse at a morning that others have yet to glimpse - awash in pinks and greys - seemingly lit from within?

yes, i think that is all the early bird really gets. and along with it, a sense of calm. the condos that surround her - that were hopping and bopping till 3 am - are now mercifully silent. the drunken squawks of homeward bound yuppies have faded away, the labored disco beats of the rooftop party have beaten themselves to death, and the wailing sirens have sung themselves into a deep, deep sleep.

and for once, not a peep from the vast construction site that occupies a gaping city block across the way. gone are the typical wake up calls of yore - the cocking crow, the ringing bell - replaced with the urban alarm clock of clanking and cranes and building up, up and away with your view.

it is 6:45 am and the world is semi-quiet, cautious almost - like the day ahead is dipping its toe into the pool of the unknown, and hasn't quite decided to go for it. and of course, it will eventually throw itself headfirst into the sun-drenched splendor of sunday - but for now, for now - i enjoy the beauty of its hesitation.

2008-08-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

another sunday.

another rainy day. well, perhaps that's a bit of an unfair dismissal. it was a rainy day, but has since blossomed into an overcast evening. what a delight this summer has been! last night was particularly pleasant - ice-cold, saucer-sized drops splattered onto sidewalks and up my bare legs as i staggered down a sidewalk masquerading as a giant puddle.

for some reason, we decided it was a perfect evening to venture out for dinner, and as we crowded under a crappy little umbrella from walgreens, all i could do was laugh - there was absolutely no way we were escaping with even an inch of dry. i gave in and got soggy. at least the food and company were grand. by the end of the meal, i'd forgotten about my sopping shoes, and suggested the three of us head onto a little bar that just opened down the street.

today it's been back to reading. this holiday i have successfully traded in meeting and greeting for reading and eating. already midway through book #6. i forgot how wonderful it is to lose yourself in a book, reading by dim lamp light well into the early hours of the next day. i was up till past 2 the other night finishing a gorgeous and funny book by joshua ferris, called "then we came to the end". nailed office life. nailed advertising. nailed the ache and bemused fear of cancer diagnosis. just a fantastic novel.

i am getting so used to not working, it will be strange to head back. and of course, when i do- well, it will be different. different because my perspective has changed a bit from this little mental vacation, and also because my perspective is about to change even more. can't wait - and yet, i am thoroughly enjoying this calm before the storm of ch-ch-changes and logistics and details and organizing and and and and and...

i better nap while i can.

2008-08-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

funny how time slips away...

yes, i just threw down an al green song lyric (or song title, even) to start what promises to be a schmaltz-ridden homily on the passing of time, and how it just...well...goes. but never fear, i shan't discard you into that particular lost & un-profound. instead i'll simply say this: time is something i don't have too much of. at least, not in this current situation. which just makes it more precious really.

so beyond the gigantic to do list, what is to be done?

enjoy people. things. places. faces. stasis, all that's put me through the paces here. because though i gripe, i also have had a rather delightful little ride through the past 10 years in this crazy little city. when i was 18, straight off the plane from moscow, i had no clue what was in store for me here. so many things have happened. since i have a to do list ahead of me, here's a little "have done" list. since i moved to toronto, i:

lived at 8 different addresses.
graduated & post-graduated college
gathered gads of useless knowledge
fell in love a few times.
fell on the pavement a few times.
fell into a career one time.
survived cancer.
realized i wasn't a good dancer
foolishly decided rhyming is always the answer...

consumed too many beers, food and
enough music to furnish eternity with a playlist.

and all the while, i've daydreamed myself out of this town.

well, looks like i am finally getting my chance. or rather, finally putting plans into action. the next month or so is going to be one bittersweet bonanza. i'm sharpening up my sense of nostalgia in preparation. shouldn't be much of a stretch for this sentimental hack.

2008-07-23T19:09:00.001-07:00

a month of months.

and by that i mean something, though lord knows what. it's been a doozy, and as cliched as it sounds, i can't believe it's already almost august. look at me, becoming one of thooooose types of people - you know the ones - they spew expected, polite conversational empties like, "where DOES the time go?", or "time flies when you're having fun". but the thing is, that's a great question, and time DOES fly when you're having fun or anything else, really. thankfully it's been an extremely fun month, and much dust (or is that sparkles & streamers) is settling, leaving me to contemplate the hell out of all of it.

just got back from a fairly epic trip to chicago. epic in that it felt long, but was only 3 days. epic because well, i was on a fascinating little journey - and while my actions weren't anywhere as heroic as a typical odysseus - they were enough to at least inspire poetic musings on my part. saturday started as a rainy trek from o'hare to the puddle-ridden neighborhood of lakeview and ended in sun-soaked, beer-infused bliss at the pitchfork festival, watching the hold steady joyfully tear through their set. in between there were pints and laughs and lovely conversation, sushi and tsing tao (because having american beer would be so...american, at least, according to our rather sexist waiter). later we hit a bar named 'jakes', where dogs are welcome. a black and white mutt trotted around happily, and i was happy too -

good town, good company, good lord, what a random little adventure!

sunday came with a stroll around lake michigan. well, not all the way around, but at least a small stretch of it was explored. the birds were out, and so were the caterpillars - fuzzy, exotic little guys who dropped from the sky (or possibly the trees) onto unexpecting laps. a nature walk of sorts, and it all felt very natural indeed.

and then there was the music. back at the park, we geared up to let les savy fav wash over. and wash over they did. it was so hot the sweat literally descended when they played "the sweat descends". tim harrington's command of the crowd is pretty legendary. at one point, he was being passed around the crowd in a plastic garbage can. amazing. from band watching to people watching, to lazing against fences, and sipping pints, a glorious afternoon / evening passed. after LSF, came bon iver, dinosaur jr, cut copy and spoon. beautiful.

after, we sat in a mexican restaurant, digesting the day's events, but not really the amazing food in front of us. over-ambitious ordering left us with far too much. but those 4 bites of enchiladas verdes were delicious.

monday morning went too quickly, of course, but that is to be expected in these sorts of scenarios. adventures, trips, experiences - they all come to an end too fast - but i suppose that just makes them even more perfect in retrospect. later i wandered the art institute of chicago, gazing at stunning 'this' after stunning 'that', and the loveliness of the weekend sunk in.

hats off to you, delightful chicago. and hats off to you, delightful everything else that's happening to me right now. there's so much to look forward to i feel a little guilty looking back.

but it's all very worth recapping.

2008-07-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

hot times summer in the city.

and i'm loving every moment of it. there's a heatwave on and i'm right there waving back at it. hell, i'll even invite it up to my apartment for a beer. when the temperature rises to 30 and beyond, my eyes glaze over in content submission, my jaw slacks into a gap toothed grin, and well, i turn into more of a goof than i normally am, which is a frightening thought, really. but i adore this time of year. and this time in particular is in need of adoration. after all, i get the feeling that there won't be many more summers like this. or rather, that next summer will offer a different sort of adventure than this one is serving up.

and oh, the adventures this summer have been many. and as random as they have been plenty. which is a good thing. who wants order in life anyway? much better to greet each new day with willing enthusiasm, ready to have the conversations, meet the people, do the things, be the person you never expected to when you woke up, right? order be damned! ok, so i'm sure there's room for it somewhere. but on occasion, you have to give into the fact that you don't always know what's best for your own narrative. some larger force guides the novel along, and i accept the novelty of that.

how else can i explain the series of events that have left me bemused/amused/confused? my carefully laid out chapters just got all screwed up - like someone carefully removed the manuscript from my nightstand while i slept, took it outside, and joyfully scattered its sheets in the town square, the fountain and the river beyond it. and when i awoke, it was there, sure, but the tone was slightly changed, and there were new footnotes, new characters and plot developments. which can only lead me to believe that the ending might not be what i think it is. or, possibly that it will take a few more chapters to get where i always thought i'd be going.

talk about a page turner.

2008-06-17T17:32:00.001-07:00

mid june?

no, post-mid-june.

late june, even - though admittedly in the early stages.

life moves along at an alarming clip as usual. a brief glimpse of summer gave way to rainy chillers.

more ramble to come, but for the moment, a poem i absolutely adore, by hugo williams. i came across it in a book of british contemporary poetry the other day - my determination to be a hack poet has forced me to read poetry by those who aren't hacks at all. and so i sit, beer and poetry book in hand, contemplating life as a pretentious goon. here it is in all its melancholic splendor:

Along these Lines.

And so you cry for her, and the poem falls to the page
As if it knew all along that what we make of ourselves we take
From one another's hearts - tearing and shouting until we learn
How awkwardly, upstairs and behind shut doors we are born
Already owing interest on what we have borrowed from the
world.

2008-06-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

everyday is like sunday.

every day is cloudy and grey.

well, not every day, but today there have been moments, let me tell you. of course, now, just as we descend from day to evening, it has turned into a massive mess of gorgeous out - just in time to realize that the weekend is over.

and so is may.

yes, somehow the lovely month of may disappeared as quickly as it materialized. i think that's called growing up.

and so it's june. the month of warm breezes, and doing what you pleases, and patios and picnics and all the things that make summer, well, summery. it's also hopefully a month of resolve and resolute resolution. and solutions. i've realized that in all my time talking, i've done very little else. yes, i know very well how to pontificate about all the things to be done, and then, see, they never get done. which is fine, i can now admit a certain amount of un-hip hypocrisy.

now that the fog has lifted, i can actually shut up and do. ok, so maybe i'll never shut up - but i already have started to make small, small steps, tiny faltering stumbles into something good. and it's getting better. it's getting better all the time.

what will the next few months bring? other than sun and sighs and contemplating the meaning of goodbyes?

i don't know. and i also don't know why i insist on rhyming myself into schmaltzy oblivion. i suppose it's cathartic. and if you can't write silly willy-nilly on a blog, where can you?

at any rate, it's a sunday evening on the cusp of summer, and as i sit in my little nest of self-examination, listening to my ipod on shuffle, i realize it's my life that's on shuffle too.

but instead of track to track, it's instance to incident to conversation to realization to deliberation to heartbreak to heartache to cupcakes to mistakes to another cupcake to stomachaches to beer to fear to more beer to alleviate fear to laughing to loving to longing to losing my mind to work to shirk to so much work i wonder if i'll ever doing anything but work to wondering why i'm such a jerk to just focusing on getting through it all with some sort of wisdom. or just perspective.

shuffle shuffle shuffle.

i wonder where i'll land.

2008-05-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

nothing really to say today. well, too much to say, but the lump in my throat is just too big for yammering.

instead, some lyrics from a why? song that have been cycling through my head like the tour de france. over and over again. beautiful. tragic. perfect.

When we're on different sides of the globe
I thought we'd keep our veins tangled
like a pair of mic cables,
And if there ain't enough slack to reach
that we'd solder them together
and across oceans they'd stretch.

2008-05-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

another late bloomer.

and by that i don't mean things didn't get going till late. rather, things started so early i was already sucker-gone hours before it could even be considered remotely late. it is 3: 06 am and i am just arriving home from some sort of epic adventure. i think it's called summer. or early spring.

it started at 1 pm. i met a friend for pho. and by pho i mean bun. and by bun i mean a big bowl of vermicelli topped with pork and spring rolls and all manner of herbs and good stuff. a saturday must. ladies who lunch lunched, and caught up. then, some shopping of the vintage variety. which is basically lots of sifting, hemming, hawing, and then a few quick moments of uncomfortable change room fumbling, when you try to squeeze into various polyester creations, determined to find something (anything!) that looks remotely 'just so'. funny to think how old clothes were someone else's before you, so it's almost doubly hard to claim the styles for your own, as you mark your territory with primps & mirror poses.

then we ran into some friends - well, technically new friends - people i knew through other people through through through, etc & so forth. so we decided on beers at ronnies. set up camp on the patio. three hours later, we were happy, slappy, clappy and sappy. or rather, we were hilarious-ish. comebacks and quips were flying faster and furiouser than any vin diesel flick.

but yes, pints upon pints. and sunshine.

some discussion of a potluck that some of the new friends were attending ended up in a decision to go to said potluck, even though we knew none of the hosts. and so, a few hours later, we showed up on crawford, mango/papaya salsa & six pack of kronenburg in hand, and made more new friends in a back garden strewn with petals from a flowering tree above. later, one made crepes for everyone, and as we sat in some random kitchen, my eye fell upon the name on the subscription label of the new yorker, and wouldn't you know it, it was a name i knew very well. yes, this city is so tiny that you end up in a stranger's apartment that turns out to not be a stranger's at all.

this was simultaneously really, really cool and really, really claustrophobic. lately the social network of this city keeps getting smaller and smaller and tighter and tighter - the frequency of connection and one degree of separation and "oh i remember you from so and so, such and such" is getting out of hand. it really must be time to go.

we eventually ended up meandering over to ted's - odd to hit an oldskool spot with newfound friends. i recalled that on a hazy january night, years ago, i once i fell down the stairs there, and subsequently fell in love. were the two falling actions linked forever? is that why my left side still aches? after all, it's where the arm is and the side the heart's on.

it was a night. and it's been a weekend. and next week, 29. the future's so bright, i've got to wear shades. good thing i just bought new ones.

2008-05-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

realizing lately how so much of what i thought mattered tons and tons really mattered nones and nones.

a trite, trite (but so very right) way of putting things today.

i am at a loss for words. and even as i write that, i know that's a lie, since i can go on forever & ever about nothing at all - but seriously now, things are a bit wonky and weird and what and how and why and when did it all get so complicated? poetic i am not right now. thing is, i am facing the second funeral in 2 months. that's a lot of death, and deconstruction of my own life - after all, it's impossible not to analyze what you've got when you lose someone.

and it's these moments of loss that you also find yourself thinking about the other things you've lost along the way. maybe you've misplaced them in the clutter of your routine and now you wonder how you never noticed how empty your schedule was - maybe you cast them aside in your haste to get somewhere you thought would be great, and now you find yourself reaching out for them in your sleep - maybe they are tiny little nuances that never seemed of import, and now, well..are.

these are the times when those things come to your attention. rise to the surface. bubble over and out, into the forefront of your murky mind. so as i prepare myself for a flight cross country and into another, i think about things. and things and more things.

i'm reminded of a few old lyrics i once loved back in my adolescent days - there's zeppelin's cliched goodness, "i'm going to california with an aching in my heart". which is apt, though slightly cringe-inducing. and then, of course, there's joni mitchell "callllifornia, i'm coming home. will you take me as i am, strung out on another man, california, i'm coming home". which again, is apt. after all, it is my home, or rather, my first home. and here i go, returning to my place of birth on the occasion of death...

and it is a sad and rainy day in may.

2008-05-03T23:44:00.001-07:00

it's too late.

another ambiguous phrase that i can apply liberally to my life, like sunscreen, when you pump too much out onto your hands, and have to rub it into every nook & cranny, even if the sun will never shine on the crevices you adorn.

or something.

frankly, my over-articulation is getting a bit tired, only to me- or rather, maybe to everyone, and also me.

point is, i am feeling some sort of low, and i don't mean low in a depressing way. more like a "let's get this thing off the ground" way. i am tired of sitting around and thinking about what will be. and i am even sicker of my own self-righteous yimmering about what comes after that. frig, i just need to do, don't i.

2008-04-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

sunny saturdays.

today was full of determination and purpose and oh, whatever other vocabularrific words you can think of to describe that energy you get when you have, well, energy. to do things, to see things, to say things.

on doing:

cleaned my little window box of an apartment. listened to sun-soaked songs on repeat. put on my purple dress and headed out into a day of temperature and sugar highs. got my nails painted an alarming shade of dark bubble gum. meandered up to kensington, coffee in hand, muddled at heart. met up with friends, looked for dresses, but alas, the dresses eluded me. bought a bag. came home, drank a beer, ate some sushi, wrote a little. now i await a night of catching up.

all in a day's shirk.

on seeing:

felt eyes upon me as i sat on my couch, and looked up to see a man barbecuing / me-viewing. can't blame him, i stare at any movement (and shiny object) i see too. life is meant for looking. saw an ice cream cone the size of texas, and watched it move from my mouth to my lap to my mouth to my lap until it was gone, into the depths of my stomach. hence the sugar high. saw a fat little boy playing with plastic figures in the park, wholly unaware of anything around him except the toy-universe he'd created.

summer's peeking round the corner of spring.

on saying:

not surprisingly, here's where i falter. i can do and see with utter clarity, and yet when it comes to articulation, i am stuck. it's like the words are firmly lodged in my throat, waiting to see the light of say, and never quite getting the chance. tongue-tied is a pretty nifty way of summing up that feeling of sudden dumbness, isn't it? now is the time for talking. and instead i just watch things slowly slip into the future.

maybe i'm too caught up in your presence.

2008-04-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

oh dear. it has been some time.

and by some time i mean a long time has passed. and i also mean it has been quite a month, or however long it's been since i sat down to write in this. or on this. i suppose i could go into detailed detail, detailing all that has occurred these past few weeks, but on this quiet sunday evening, post-haste & waste, it all seems a bit much to go on about.

suffice to say that it has been strange. and by strange i mean about as peak & valley as you can get. there were moments of exhilaration, there were moments spent crumpled in teary town. sunny afternoons where i marveled at life, and an entire weekend spent at various funeral-related events, contemplating death, and the life that follows it. and all the while, i feel like i worked harder than ever before, trying to maintain a sense of normalcy in such an emotionally jagged series of events. which is very like me - escapism is one of my favorite hobbies, and boy, do i go hard rather than go home. i mean, losing yourself in a world of work is easier than working out things in the real world sometimes, isn't it?

i am cringing already at how 8th grade this all sounds - but i must get out a bit of my melodramatic dribble before i can be all pretty and poetic again. right? right? right.

at any rate, march was a wild ride - and ended at fever pitch - late nights at work, early mornings of gazing at the construction site across from my window and wondering what the day would bring - pints of guinness washed down with discussions of projects and past relationships and future plans. all the stuff of a bad 90's movie. but i guess you can't avoid these kinds of plot lines and dialogues once you get to a certain age. i mean, life is soooo deep right now. ok, maybe not at all. but i suppose we have this thing called experience to draw upon, which makes our self-indulgent waxings that much more profound. or rather, seemingly profound.

it was interesting to find myself at dinner at a friend's house on a saturday night, serving up food off of real serving dishes, sipping gourmet brew - civilized grown-up stuff. we all commented on such a descent into adulthood - and i say descent because in a way such relaxed company feels like a bit of comedown, doesn't it - even though it's all very elevated. then again, just the night before i was beery and bleary-eyed, searching for my coat in a dimly lit bar - which is way more of a descent, but still seems vaguely glamorous, because let's face it, debauch is kind of hot. moments later, my night rose to a half gorgeous half tragic swell, and again, though it was probably a low point for all involved, it sure felt like a high.

i guess again, this is a time of double standards - and strange dualities - sloshing pitchers around and giggling like juvies seems just as appealing as intellectually posturing and talking about "life". at least i know that both are equally silly.

but back to the time. the time that has passed, leaving me a bit breathless and more than a little confused. and the time to come, which is all still too blurry and unplanned for my liking. even though i am forever a fly by the seat of my dress kind of person, i long for the carefully laid out plans that ensure the success of well, organized people everywhere. or so it seems to me.

march is over. and this april fool is well on her way into another hazy dazy summer.

2008-03-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

long time no self-indulgent yimmer yammer.

i suppose i have been off on some sort of mind-sabbatical. and by that i mean absolutely nothing clever (though, perhaps initially it sounded kind of cool). fact is, i've been slack slack slack on the writing writing writing - well, at least, where this sort of writing is concerned. this is about as close to a dear diary as i'm a getting, and well, as you see, it's not the most illuminating, personal thing. mostly it's just me writing circles round my neurotic self - hemming and hawing and oohing and ahhing about my own melodramas. but all in the vaguest, vaguest way. yes, i am king of waxing so poetic that nothing ever seems concrete.

anyhow, tis march. the month of teetering into spring. the month of loving everything. or, so i am finding. ok, ok, there's the usual melancholy that accompanies small losses and minor tragedies...but these things are i suppose ephemeral. i will persevere. and figure stuff out. and think of far more beautiful ways to describe my adventures. really, sometimes i cringe at my own pedestrian way of documenting. i mean, who better to romanticize the shit out of my own life than me? and yet, i self-deprecate myself into oblivion. is that me being humble or me choosing to bumble through the possibility of greatness?

no matter.

2008-02-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

it's easy to make short work of a long weekend.

that sounds like something out of a greeting card. a snoozy woozy greeting card. and yet, there is truth truth truth in it, is there not? as this inaugural long weekend wraps up, i look back on it with fondness reserved for only the best long weekends. this one turned out fantastically, so it did. mostly because i actually put the effort into galavanting around the city, with an energy that surprised me. after all, i am like to sit around and think about the things i should be doing, while choosing instead to listen to music and play online scrabble and daydream.

but these days, it's about the doing. and there was doing. pints at the paddock, some dancing to hip hop, lunch at the golden turtle, the purchase of six gorgeous vintage dresses, a manicure, sushi & mexican, some grocery & perfume shopping, crayon coloring with one niece and cradling the other, coffee and beer dates and buying sally shapiro tickets with new mates and staying up late, but not too late. all in all, satisfying indeed.

and now i sit, listening to a mix i made entitled "the future". a grandiose, sweeping statement of a title. my friend in la sent me one, and i am sending one back to him. we're both at turning points in our lives. turning points usually make me dizzy. but i feel less so now. there is clear-headed conviction that all is well with the world. the last song "great release" by LCD soundsystem nails that feeling. there is a bit of melancholy, but it is awash in sunny, shimmering hope. just like i am.

2008-02-11T16:19:00.000-08:00

february.

that month that is teetering, teetering into the beginnings of spring.

alright, gazing outside makes that last sentence sound like wishful thinking. or is that delusional thinking. whatever it is, hope must be maintained on freezing mondays such as these, and so i will hope hope hope my way through this spell of ice and snow and slush and temperatures that snap angrily at your face, leaving your cheeks red, your nose redder, and your eyes watering so much you feel like you're crying.

and crying this month would be so cliched, wouldn't it? it's a month rudely punctuated by a day of love & the demonstration of romance. for the loved up, it's a moment of bliss, but kind of stressful bliss - sure, you've made it clear to the one you love that you are in love, but now you have to convince the world of your love too! bouquets! teddybears! proclamations in the sky! the bigger, the better the love, apparently. which to me is sad. it means that private expression is seen as, well, lame in its lack of publicity.

and for the single? oh the single - it's the day that no one wants to talk about. it's the big pink elephant in this room we call february. you can celebrate it in a variety of ways, all equally tinged with glum. you can say you don't care about the day - look at its commercialization of such a pure emotion! you can sit around regretting the what could have beens, the what should have beens, what would never even be seen as remote possibilities till this overly long moment of longing...or or or....

you can remember the fact that love could show up on your doorstep any other day. in fact, chances are you'll feel more satisfaction in love or out of love or falling in love or thinking about love on every other day of the year.

and on that schmaltzy note, it's back to writing poetry.

and on that schmaltzier note, it's back to pretending i am doing something cooler than writing poetry.

2008-01-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

snow day.

a calm day in the city that thinks it never sleeps, but actually enjoys long naps. or is that comas. all i know is this town is quiet as a mouse today. which is fine by me - it's been a quiet kind of month. oh sure, there are spurts and splashes of something that could be called loud, but on the whole, it's contemplative calendar days counting down to that thing called spring.

and what will spring bring? (other than alarmingly nerdy rhyming phrases, of course.) well, i think, decision. and precision, meaning picking the right things to focus on and well, focusing on them. this new year so far has really been marked by a new sense of determination previously unknown to me. i wonder if the new living space is giving me a new sense of...grace? no, something more like drive.

and even if that drive means i careen off a cliff into oblivion, well, at least i enjoyed the ride.

2008-01-21T19:08:00.000-08:00

here is a lovely video of bon iver singing, "flume". at the risk of sounding extremely nerdy & sentimental, this song's beauty stuns me. yup, that was both nerdy & sentimental. but seriously, this just bleeds longing.

perfect for a thoughtful january.

2008-01-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

apartment story.

when you think about it, it's an odd thing to move your existence from one location to the next. from one space, one room, one atomsphere to another - another so different you hardly recognize anything anymore. sure, it's the same stuff, the same detritus - but its backdrop has changed. and with it, you have changed as well.

now, i'm not saying that my move has made me into anything that i wasn't - but it can be a funny thing to stop - after all the rush and mayhem of moving - and realize that suddenly you are at a resting point, a moment of peace in a place that has suddenly become home. and that you are just fine with being in a slightly different mindset than you were before. it's all the cliched bits about pieces of puzzles finally settling into place and coming to life.

it is home for the moment. and home is where the heart is. or in my case, where the art is. sixty or so pieces of canvas and frames and photographs sit against windows and walls, waiting to be showcased. and sadly, in this tiny postage stamp of an apartment, some of their waiting will inevitably be in vain. but regardless, the heart and the art co-exist. happily, for the moment. oh, sure, there's always that sense of longing - longing for something that is ever somewhere that isn't here, but such is life. and such are highly silly musings on nothing much.

so here i'll sit in my new apartment on my new sofa (though new it is not - it has led many lives before it saw mine) and contemplate my newish existence. new in calendar year, new in motivation, new in peace of mind. for some strange reason, things have settled in my often frenetic mind. yes, i still yearn and yimmer yammer. but i have come to a realization that things will work out. and instead of thinking endlessly about what will be, i want to only think about what is being. and in that decision, everything that is now, will ultimately effect what happens.

yes yes, slightly cheeseball self-help styles. but kind of, well, apt.

how appropriate, that apt is an abbrevation for apartment.

2007-12-31T23:10:00.000-08:00

2008. here we go here we go now.
it's hard to believe that an entire year has slipped through my fingers, or some such cliched cliche. seriously though, where did the year go? wasn't it just new years eve of a year that's no longer new? wasn't i just waxing frenetic about every adventure i was bound to face in the fantastic wonderful futuristic year of 2007?

it boggles the mind, it truly does. and i realize that this sort of marvelling is more suited to a nostalgic 85 year old, than a forward-thinking 28 year old, but what can you do. this is an evening set aside for grandiose intentions. for impossibly high expecations. for schmaltzy reminiscing. for letdowns. for countdowns. for throwdowns. for showdowns. and in my case tonight, slowdowns.

for me, new years has never been a contender. oh, it's very sure of itself - confident, dressed to impress. but it lacks character, does new years - it's just a hyped up wizard of oz - all airs and no graces. all puff and no consequence. after all, when everyone is desperate to have the best night of their lives, they're sure to be dissapointed.

and so, you set out with no real plan in mind. and spontaneity gives way to fun, without the pressure. which is why i ended up having a late dinner at a divey dive in chinatown. 46 dollars bought us enough kung pao eggplant spring roll hot & sour magnificence to feed a small army. and their families.

then onto the embassy, a tiny bar with a warm glow and a soundtrack of pixies and interpol and all things happy. for awhile, we were the only people there. which was nice, on a night where cabs are scarce, and jostling is king. and strangely, 46 dollars again bought us nut brown ales and ciders and a 9 % beer that made me feel slightly underwater and over the moon.

ah, 2008. a year with so much promise. like every other year in the book. we're such a ritualized people, that we herd together year after year to celebrate the possibility and new-ness in the same way we've done it every year. creatures of habit, i suppose. i do feel that 08 will be different though. call me crazy. or just optimistic. there's just a crackle in the air, and it has nothing to do with the snow. it's how i'm feeling. it's how life is feeling. it's the way things are these days. different. and ready.

this year will be one to remember.

2007-12-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

snow snow everywhere.

falling down in drifts of what looks like powdered sugar, but probably tastes half as sweet, that is, if it has any taste at all. often snow just tastes like watered down watery what. like ice cubes, melted, leaving the stale taste of freezer burn on your tongue.

it's that time of year when you slip and slide down sidewalks, anxious to get where you're going, but equally anxious not to break your neck doing so. and so you stumble along cautiously, maneuvering clumsy feet in an awkward winter boot ballet - leaping over slushy ice puddles and pirouetting past scraping shovels, sinking to a final curtsy in a chilly streetcar seat.

winter brings flurries. of snow and activity. whirlwinds of parties and functions and dysfunction. it all leaves me rather breathless, and i don't know that it's because of the excitement. things are strange these days. stranger, maybe, then they've ever been. there's a flutter in my chest, like a trapped moth, beating its wings against my ribcage, jackhammering me into a state of happy terror.

i guess sometimes you realize the inevitablity of life. and once that happens, well then, you're screwed, aren't you. and maybe by screwed i mean enlightened. it's hard to say, really. figuring things out, even just a little bit, can leave you with a sense of longing for the ignorance you had before. if i'm this contemplative in the not knowing, what sort of mental epiphany will i achieve when i really know? i'll probably find myself halfway between insane and insanely relieved.

just another december day.

2007-11-18T16:47:00.000-08:00

it does seem stunning to me to realize that 2007 is almost at an end.

it was a strange and stranger calendar year, full of adventures and misadventures and well, enough fodder to cycle over and over neurotically in my little mind for the rest of eternity. but i shan't really, as a new year is about to begin, full of its own rambles & gambles & shambles.

and the rapid approach of a new year means getting to wax on endlessly about the best things from this, the dwindling year. ah yes, tis the time of the top ten - when every magazine and blog and news show preaches best of lists. well, i won't bore with too many, but instead focus on the most important - the top 10 songs of the year. or rather, MY top ten songs - the ones that were with me all through the drama, melodrama and silliness that was my 2007. so the emotive ones, i suppose i really mean. the ones i can put on, headphones pressed against me ears, and daydream:

someone great - LCD soundsystem.

i've gone off into raptures about this one before. simply, my favourite song of this year, and up there on the list of all times. there is something utterly devestating about this track, and yet the hope that shimmers forth every time i hear it is incredible. amazing, how embarassingly insincere that sounded, even though it was written with utmost sincerity. this is why i never write about music. but twattery aside, this song is gorgeous and will always define this year for me.

love to a monster - okkervil river.

the second most played song of my year (second only to lcd soundsystem). what does this mean? that i am a sad sack of an individual, who loves to lounge in a lethargic sense of loss? or just a nerd who likes to describe songs using alliteration? hard to say. all i know is i love love love this song. the words are incredibly sad, and yet, once again, i am not left with any lingering depression - only a nostalgic yearning, and the knowledge that like time, we all move on.

anorak christmas - sally shapiro.

this is one of those songs that sounds straight out of berlin in 1985. it makes me want to hop on the metro and ride into oblivion, staring out the window and dreaming color into the dark cityscapes that fly by.

foundations - kate nash.

musically, i dig the metronymy remix bestest, but this song on its own is all about the lyrics. "my fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundations, and i know that i should let go..but i can't." simple, and true. also there is reference to her boyfriend getting so wasted that he gets sick on her trainers, which i just love. so funny & heartbreaking at the same time. and haven't we all felt that we were hanging onto the wrong things because it seems right at the time?

province - TV on the radio.

so cliched, but this song sweeps over me. it's 4:37 of majestic melancholy, and when it's done i don't feel sad anymore. a bit nostalgic, maybe - for some of the moments that have faded into a definite past, but not too sad that they are gone. memories are sometimes enough, aren't they?

the ghost of you lingers - spoon.

oh boy. this one kills me. the stacatto piano. the echoing melody. as you can see, it turns my already questionable writing into moronic spluttering. this song was on repeat on my summer travels in europe - and so brings to mind airports and wandering and wondering and shuffling along moving sidewalks and standing in lines -- all the while gazing at various points of interest along the way.

guest room - the national.

really, all songs on this album should be on this list - boxer is incredible and i am absolutely enamoured with matt beringer, the lead singer, as he grips a bottle of red, singing his tortured little heart out. now, i may not be such a depressed artiste, but how i relate to some of his musings!

girls in their summer clothes - bruce springsteen.

a late bloomer for the year. an end of summer doozy that captures that end of summer feeling - there's still a longing for the warm days of june & july, but you know this song is lodged firmly in the gloomier moments when autumn takes over - when people are underdressed on overly chilly nights. this song is going to the fair and looking up at all the neon lights, drinking a beer on a patio when patio weather is most certainly done. it's wondering what could have been even though you know that not knowing is probably the best thing you could do. it's magic, really.

oxford comma - vampire weekend.

possibly the cheeriest song on the list. a paul simonesque delight, this song drips optimism and happy adventures. it came to me in the dreary month of march, and put spring in my step early. yes, i really did just write that.

stumblin' in - suzie quatro & chris norman.

finally, this is an oldie, so really shouldn't be on a top 10 list of 07, but i only discovered it this year. a schmaltzy gem of the best kind. mellow listening for melodrama. and stumbling in is such a great description of what we do, every time we take two steps forward into something like love. even if it ends up just being a crush or a fling or in the grey area somewhere between like and lord knows what - you never feel like you're walking straight, do you. you're clumsy and weird and cautious. but isn't it fun?

2007-11-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

ahoy the sundaziest of sundays here.

and that made about as much sense as my nonsensical life. and you know what? that's just fine by me. see, it's a chilly evening in this little town masquerading as a big city, and i am putting off work with all my might. and my might is legendary, let me tell you. at least when it comes to procrastinating.

it's been a pretty delightful few weeks, mostly because i got that thing known as my life back on track. not that it was really derailed, but it was stalling for some of october, and now november (or novembre, as i seem to like to call it, despite not being francais at all) is rolling along in a lovely ball of momentum and yellow leaves.

there wasn't anything of real impact to report - just in general, there was an electricity that's been missing. which of course, suggests that i was going around giving people shocks with my charged up fingers, which isn't exactly accurate - but i'm sure my energy has improved. and i don't mean in a new age sense. or hell, maybe i do.

2007-11-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

goodness, it's been awhile.

for some reason i have been bottling up the incessant desire to yibber yabber blibber blabber. but that sort of admirable resolve has dissolved, and here i am back again, welling up with useless lines to communicate. and fittingly, it's a sunday evening, my favourite night for introspection.

four days into november and as the temperatures are cooling, so is my ardour for being blue. you can only really be down for short stints - i must say, those who have the attention span for long term depression really are a determined bunch. it's pretty tedious sport.

sure, it's cool to mope around for a bit, but at a certain point pale and interesting invalid becomes dark and boring. you stay awake too late at night, staring out at the starry skies and wading through some sort of sleepy melancholy, then wake up too late, rolling over to bury your face into your starry, starry sheets, and wish you were anywhere but here.

of course, you know that here isn't such a bad place to be - in fact, it's pretty damn great. but self-obsessed sadness can be quite seductive. it gives you carte blanche to complain to your sympathetic friends, to feel sorry for yourself, to wonder and wander and wallow. even though deep down you know how irritating you find yourself in this sorry state - you, yes you! have turned into the kind of pretentious goon you love to hate. and so, you pull yourself out before it's too late.

yes, you shake shake shake the blues off. listen to the right kind of music - screw the torch songs, you need tunes that'll fire up your enthusiasm for life. of course, they can still have some element of bitter, of bad, of sad -- but there must be hope, whether it's in the earnest singing, the melody, or the lyrics themselves. songs by the mountain goats seem to do this well - where words like this make you smile, wanly perhaps, but you smile - you smile. i end this ramble with a few of my favourites:

I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us

....

The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it
But I drank it all just cause you hate it when I let things go to waste
And I wandered through the house like a little boy lost in the mall
And an astronaut could've seen the hunger in my eyes from space

And the wind began to blow and the trees began to pant
And the world in its cold way started coming alive
And I stood there like a buisness man waiting for the train
And I got ready for the future to arrive.

.....

i am going to make it through this year, if it kills me.
i am going to make it through this year, if it kills me.

2007-10-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

just another manic sunday.

well, not manic, really. more like muddled. befuddled.

as i try to put together the pieces of what seems like a puzzle, but is more likely just a rather uninteresting fact of life, i wonder. wonder if i am crazy, or just the same as everyone else in every other situation like this. it's funny, you can convince yourself that your situations are unique, and then you realize that gazillions, if not bajillions of people are going through the same heartaches and headaches as you are.

is it human to feel special, when really you aren't?

i suppose it's a rather wonderful brand of selfishness - after all, no one is going to care about your own problems like you are. so you might as well believe with all your might that they are indeed one of a kind.

all i know is that i know very little of anything these days. the autumn has hit rock bottom, as it were. and so here we go, en route up up & away to feeling a bit more lively and lovely. thing is, when you spend all your time looking ahead, you forget that your day to day life is real. it doesn't seem permanent, and therefore it feels less important than the next next next steps. and yet, it is all your time, isn't it.

so this time, it's finally time to decide what i'm doing in time, so i can enjoy truly enjoy my time.

and now it's bedtime.

2007-10-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

8:08 pm and the lights are off.

off and on. like my relationship with everything of late.

fickle pickle is my name. and yippy yapping seems to be my game.

fall. the perfect time to really secure your interests - gone are the frivolous days of summer, replaced with the crisp determined air of a season that's most important job is to purposefully march us forward into the next.

and yet, here i am, hanging onto the frosted flake loveliness of being aimless, as is kosher in june, or july. the joy of wandering around on balmy evenings, breathing in the dusk that kicks around till almost 11 pm. of leaving decisions to the last moment about everything - because you always know that if your plans fall through, others will magically appear. because everyone wants to flit about doing not much of anything with pretty much anyone in the summer.

and now it is 8:08 pm and the light is off inside and out - the sun set almost an hour ago, settling the world into darkness and the new, dimly-lit romanticism of hibernation and cozying up to anything close, including your comforter.

this time of year, music starts to feel really meaningful - as if it doesn't any other moment of any other season - but in fall, you feel it all. or you think you do. there's something in the air - in the way the leaves scatter across the streets in tri-color splendor, and in the vaguely melancholy tone of everything you see and hear and touch. all of this makes music emerge as the undisputed king of autumn. and so you load up your ipod with various mixes, and hit the streets, making your way through throngs of people in their coats and scarves, the modest heels on your boots clicking and clacking across the concrete.

your headphones are big, too big for your outfit, really, but you don't care. the soundtrack is far more important than your hairdo, isn't it?

and as you cycle through the songs, one chilly but sunny song after the other, you look forward into your future, and by future you mean winter. for it is there, waiting in the distance for you. and all the warmth of music won't save you from its cold mitts.

i wonder if you'll know better about anything then than you do now.

2007-10-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

it's a quiet riot of a day.

meaning, slow, lonely, with a hint of storms
that were and might still be.

it power showered all night, and now sunday has emerged from the fog --

a desolate mess of grey.

almost impossible to believe that we've wandered into october already. the endless summer proved to be quite the opposite, and fall has snuck up, nudging winter into readiness. yes, yes, this all sounds rather depressing, i realize. but some days you just have to embrace the cloudy and feel a little low. and by low i mean, well, aimless. on a weekend where everyone is off carving turkeys or watching others carve turkeys, i sit feeling murky.

not to say i don't have the option of various get-togethers, i just don't know that i want to exert that kind of social effort. which is very anti-me, and so chances are that attitude will get tossed out when i tire of it, ie when the time rolls around to get up and face the world of various get-togethers i'd rather not attend right now.

no, right now i feel like holing up and eating sushi and reading a novel. and giving thanks for what, for indecision? for the division of my rational thought and my irrational desire to fling myself head on into the who knows wheres of longing?

possibly. but also for the good (which there is much of) and even for the bad (which makes the good that much better).

and all that gravy.

2007-09-25T18:30:00.001-07:00

love love love.

LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
Uploaded by epb21

2007-09-16T16:32:00.001-07:00

the sunday night.

a cool, calm, collected kind of evening. one that is ready for anything. i'm trying to imitate that right now. though my inclination is to curl up and sigh, i shall overcome. and overexaggerate, as is only appropriate in a self-indulgent world of the internet. after all, there are so many hundreds of millions of bazillions of words floating through this world wide web, why should i feel guilty about adding my own stream of self-consciousness?

so blah blah blah jibber jabber jibber jabber. which is my intellectual way of saying, so there!

i feel like i'm always waiting. waiting for a phone call. waiting for friday. waiting for godot. alright, maybe i've never actually waited for a fictional character that's so fictional he's fictional to other fictional characters. but you get my point. i feel that i have a vast amount of patience, but dearie me, i am starting to get antsy. and not really about life, just in case you think i am about to launch into yet another ramble about changes, and life moving forward and getting my act together. i'm taking a break on that one, at least for a few days. no, right now i am impatient about something i like to call something something.

now, that's very vague, i realize. but i love to dance around things so. yes, i would much rather vaguely skirt the issue. notice that all words associated with avoidance are feminine? dance. skirt. put it delicately. i suppose we are known for our tendency to shuffle gracefully around elephants in rooms - and look pretty while doing it.

anyhow, i feel like i could be in it. fall. fall. falling.

then again, maybe it's just all this waiting has got me anticipating. more than i have in awhile. it is so hard to pinpoint. and yet here i go, trying to nail the ambiguity, when really i should just enjoy it while it lasts. because realization can sometimes lead to all the melodramatic stuff. like reality. and time.

i guess i'll just be satisfied with hitting rock autumn. warm my cold hands. and play it cool with my warm heart.

2007-09-10T18:22:00.001-07:00

there is a man who lives in the house behind mine.

you would almost say we're neighbors. ok, maybe we are neighbors.

anyhow, this man plays the organ. yes, the big reverberating, tinkly kind. and every night, the evening breeze brings me a wafting jam session, glorious in its extreme, unabashed celebration of all things cornball. i'm not a huge fan of that type of music, perse, but his dedication to the cause of soundtracking each night, literally rocking around the block is somewhat admirable.

he is doing, rather than sitting around and dreaming of doing. he decided one day that damnit, he was going to be an organ loner, and no one could stop him. he said to himself (and perhaps to his family - if they had any say in the matter), "if i want to spend my monday nights doing wailing renditions of "sunglasses at night" by corey hart, well why shouldn't i?"

and truly, why shouldn't he? why shouldn't anyone do the things they want to do? unless, of course, they cause some sort of pain and suffering for others. surely anything as benign as plonking the keys of an awkward, antiquated instrument should be lauded?

i yip and yap on about this because it makes me remember that dreams, small or big are all quite surmountable. and though that is possibly some of the pappiest pap i have written in, well, days, i must hold fast to such sentiment. because i am a big fan of talking talking talking and then not really walking. or rocking. or shocking anyone with my resolve.

and so i must. i must. i must increase my just causes and my clear, determined goals, and my will to be willing.

it's time for a little free fall.

2007-09-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

friday night delight.

here's a poem i read on my journey homewards - sitting on the plane, new yorker in hand i swooned. or did something kind of like an internal swoon - maybe my eyes teared up a bit or my heart fluttered. or something. point is, i freaking love love love this gorgeous piece of poetry. so much that it has gotten me back on the love train of thought. about writing. and publishing. and rhyming. and stealing.

here it is, in all its splendour, by james richardson.

"end of summer"

Just an uncommon lull in traffic
so you hear some guy in an apron, sleeves rolled up,
with his brusque sweep brusque sweep of the sidewalk,
and the slap shut of a too thin rental van,
and I told him no a gust has snatched from a conversation
and brought to you, loud.

It would be so different
if any of these were missing is the feeling
you always have on the first day of autumn,
no, the first day you think of autumn, when somehow

the sun singling our high windows,
a waiter settling a billow of white cloth
with glasses and silver, and the sparrows
shattering to nowhere are the Summer
waving that here is where it turns
and will no longer be walking with you,

traveller, who now leaves all of this behind,
carrying only what it has made of you.
Already the crowds seem darker and more hurried
and the slang grows stranger and stranger,
and you do not understand what you love,
yet here, rounding a corner in mild sunset,
is the world again, wide-eyed as a child
holding up a toy even you can fix.

How light your step
down the narrowing avenue to the cross streets,
October, small November, barely legible December.

2007-09-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

back to life, back to reality.

i believe soul II soul once crooned that over early 90's tinny beats and blips. and it was a very accurate lyrical throwdown - especially when applied to the post-vacation drip of, well, the time post vacation. sitting here back at the office, and it's a comfortable return, but also one that is accomapnied by a certain hazy lackadaisical phase.

everyone is moving around the office with a shared sense of autumn determination. i suppose the fact that many are physically moving not just their bodies, but also their entire offices from one space to another has something to do with it. somewhat thankfully, i am staying put in my little office, which i have yet to leave in the 2 lovely years i've been here. which is a fairly incredible feat in a place that moves people around like a checkers game on speed.

anyhow, here i am sitting still after a week of go go go.

spent a few days wandering around williamsburg and beyond - eating at little under-bridge diners, sipping pints and feeling impossibly un-chic in a string of impossibly chic boutiques. trudged back and forth over the bridge a few times, gazing down at the murky skyline and wondering how a city can be so very big and full of possibility, then retreated to little nooks and cranny hideaways in hipster hoods. also played a good deal of Wii bowling and tennis, or as we liked to refer to it, "morning exercise".

next up was a long weekend holed up in a divey delight of a hotel at broome & bowery. exposed brick, hardwood, and an unexplained gilt mirror duct taped to the floor in the hallway - maybe so we could check out our legs every time we walked by. which we did. the days following were filled with giggling, gaggling and haggling. alright, i sacrificed truth there for a killer rhyme sequence - but we did do much laughing and shopping. and, of course, moving in a herd of randoms. i suppose it's appropriate that in a city made up of hundreds of thousands of assorted strangers and foreigners, we would roll through labor day weekend with a crew as motley as you can get (though not in a vince neil kind of way).

so good times were had by this ramshackle band of merrymakers - dancing on ludlow, bloody mary fused brunches, lovely italian dinners at hipster meccas, much graffiti tourism, culture soaking, a bar called sweet & vicious that was sweet but vicious in that it didn't serve any food at a crucial moment in nighttime hunger, bad late night mexican joints where beautiful guacamole was paired with movie theater nacho cheese, meeting up with new buddies at various dirty bars, many, many photo shoots, and of course, the defining moment: getting doused in pepsi by a cracked out chick in a park near chinatown, thus ruining the one blowout i have ever paid for without getting my hair cut. which was horrifying, yet absolutely one of the funnier moments of my life.

but on that note, what is it they say again? new york is a city of tradeoffs. and i must say, i agree.

it's dirty but beautiful.
it's cruel but kind.
it's lonely yet filled with people.

it makes me talkie in cliches and yet still cooler.

must shut up now.

2007-08-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

morning of the morning of the morning of.

it's a sunny spectacular of a day and i'm about to go away.

yes, away from here, from the things and people i call home. of course, only for a week, but that span of time seems to stretch rather far into my imagination at the moment. off to the very metropolis i seem to heavily crush on, if crushes on big masses of brick and concrete, on streets and sidewalks, on alleys and alleycats, are possible. and oh, but i think they are.

so it's just going to be me and the big city. we'll go on dates, have fun, share moments. and in all my wandering, i'll be wondering about, well, everything. what is it about strolling solo through a foreign place that makes you get all reflective and introspective? it's like getting to know the unknown also forces you to get to know the known - the known being your mind, your feelings, your neurotic jackass self.

three days in brooklyn, three days in manhattan, six days of solitude. alright, that's a massively self-important statement. as well as an exaggeration. after all, i do have people to see, friends to meet, social situations to situate myself in. but there will be much daytime dilly dallying as well - gazing slack-jawed at spectacles, meandering through museums, snapping amateurish photographs..all the things that make time alone in a city full of things delightful.

and hopefully all the things that'll make me more insightful.

2007-08-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

splitter splatter what's the matter.

it's raining outside, or rather, spitting sporadically. and that is the kind of alliterative nonsense that i am digging today. it would seem natural that this kind of weather would breed clarity - all the drops splashing down should wash away any confusions and/or muddled things, right? but instead, it seems to just be swooshing it all around into a vast puddle of huh's and why's and hmmms and how on earth did i suddenly arrive here?

of course, uncertainty is kind of rad, isn't it? it's the kind of thing that gets motivational coaches all hot and bothered, as they pump their fists and preach excitedly about "getting out of your comfort zone!!!" and "embracing new things!!" and though i wouldn't necessarily use those cliches, i get it.

it's time to run out into the rain, without an umbrella, rihanna be damned.

after all, nothing is really cut and dry.

****and i am certainly not, after returning from the beer store in a torrential downpour. funny how a small drizzle can turn into a monsoon in minutes. and i, carrying two six packs in hand, splashed home, getting soggier by the second. it was a gleeful journey at first -- there's something liberating about just sucking it up and letting yourself get soaked. when the cardboard lowenbrau/stella combination started to sag, well, then i was in trouble. but quick thinking (and determination to save what i will later be drinking) abled me to make it through that. oh, but what a sight i was. blue dress bedraggled, hair shower-fresh, drooping beer cases in hand -- so beautiful was i that people were slowing their cars down to get a closer look.

anyhow, guess i got what i was proclaiming earlier. except the rihanna part. after all, who am i to damn such a pretty ditty?

2007-08-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

cloudy afternoon. swoon.

actually i do prefer the sun, but there is something kind of delightful about a day like this. dark and brooding, like the heathcliff of tuesdays. my office is dimly lit, which makes things even gloomier. but again, the gloom is oddly comforting. like a nap you just want to fall into.

speaking of fall, well, it is here. and though it might retreat somewhat over the next few days, it's not going anywhere far. probably just down the street to a motel to lay low. wait for next week, when september welcomes it with open arms.

funny how every year around this time, out of habit, we all get that back to school feeling. i guess twenty three odd years solidifies that heavy anticipation, equal parts fear and excitement - the unholy glee you feel opening a fresh notebook, a package of pens, or picking your first day outfit. the sheer uncertainty you feel about the year that's stretched before you..all of that stays.

and so every time i get hit by the crisp crisp air, that realization hits me like a leaf, smack in the face. ch-ch-ch-changes are on their way. and ch-ch-ch-changes are always welcome.

because that's what autumn's for, right? it's a time for the times to be a changing. and if you think i can't think of any other bad "change" song references, you've underestimated my endlessly useless retainer of a brain. i shall spare you though, and instead trail off into pitter patter, as it's time to go off into the freezing evening and stuff myself silly. because you know, that's how animals warm themselves in the colder seasons.

though it's not time to hibernate, oh no. it's time to carpe diem and all that. or to see william blake immortalized in artless graffiti. it's going to be a beautiful year.

2007-08-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

sundazed and possibly confused. no definitely confused.

there's trails of cloud across the sky outside my window - which sounds a bit like daydreamy pap, but i have to say, when the sun spills across your bedroom, you can't help but get a bit melo-poetic. of course, i wish i felt as chipper as the day looks - the amount of social butterflying has taken its toll on my fresh-faced energy. and so i sit, piecing together various incidents and in betweens from the last few days, hair slicked back into a lank ponytail, eyeliner smudged 'neath my tired eyes.

it was a weekend of engagements. not of the diamond ring variety - the ones where you arrange to meet someone somewhere somehow to do something. friday started off with beers and cheers and more than a few jeers, then moved to the neighborhood mcdonalds for some adolescent sustenance, then onwards to the concord cafe, where we pretended to be cultured, but really were just silly. a band crooned in the corner, and everyone hushed to rapt silence. that was our cue to leave, as silliness doesn't mix well with sincerity. off we went into the night. and into a cab that whisked us off to a house party where we posed for pictures with a large, pink stuffed fish. yes, it really was that surreal. next up was hemingways to meet up with a friend i hadn't seen in oh, twelve years. gone are her braces, and my thrift store army pants, replaced by black dresses and shiny hair, but the laughs were still the same - loud, unabashed waves of cackling. after, at a point in the night where you should really call it a night, we decided it would be a good idea to stop in at a random after hours party. and so, we stumbled into a basement full of smoke and hipsters. and not surprisingly, i stumbled out pretty quickly. my stamina for such things is limited, and people striking cool poses and exhaling smoke out their noses is a bit tedious. so there ended an evening of strange cross-city adventures.

saturday was less random, perhaps - but still quite frenzied and fun. a dinner party with lovely friends, full of aragula and shaved parmesan and bbq and red wine, laughter to the point of tears, especially when a chair collapsed during an anecdote about a chair collapsing, and possibly some living room dancing. so good were the times, that we didn't notice the inevitable passing of time, and so we missed the show we were supposed to attend. and so, we headed one block east to a birthday party on a roof, where we sipped lowenbraus and snapped photographs on some unsuspecting camera. or rather, on a camerea belonging to some unsuspecting fellow. he's in for a bit of a shock when he gets those developed (yes, some people apparently still use film!) and sees a bunch of girls hamming it up.

and now it is sunday sunday, my favourite day to wax on and on and off and off. it was a doozy weekend. and now i am woozy. my mind is a vacant lot. yes, i just wrote that. and you know what? it's a pretty good analogy. at least for the moment. because there are many, many (too many, really) things cluttering my head, but right now, i am too stupid to think about any of them. so i'll sit here with my headphones on, clattering away at the keys, waiting for monday to come and take me away.

2007-08-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

just another manic thursday.

well, it was manic earlier, with 3 hour presentations & clients & all sorts of focus pocus. and now, earlier has turned into later and it's shifted gears into sleepy splendour. nothing better than yawning your life away. i wish that i could, without any guilt, tilt my head back onto this black almost but not quite herman miller chair of mine, and let my eyelashes flutter flutter till they rest against each other. that is to say, until my eyes close. and happily would i nappily nap for a good twenty minutes.

twenty minutes is, of course, the magic number in the snoozy science of shut-eye. see, it's just long enough for revitilization, just short enough that you don't emerge, dopey-eyed and dreary. somehow i don't think my co-workers would be that impressed if they walked by and saw me catnapping. but amused? yes. they expect such things of me - not blatant slackerism, perse, but definitely googly eyed giggly behavior. which makes me sound like an imbecile, but really, i just mean i'm known as slightly sly, the girl who's always smiling/laughing - and therefore must be up to something. "trouble".

anyhow, later has turned into later still, and here i sit, in a tidier than usual bedroom, wide awake and wondering what to do with my aimless self. the obvious choice? to welcome slumber as i wished to at the office. but obviously now that i'm in this bower of dozing power, i can't quite shake the awake.

thankfully tomorrow is friday once more. and my dress is laid out by the chimney with care. or maybe just by the door. no matter. it promises to be a long weekend. or perhaps, a longing weekend? there is much social butterflying to be done, events to attend, gatherings to join, if only for a moment, before flitting off to another.

what will it hold?

what sights will i behold?

could this drivel i am writing could be any less gold?

2007-08-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

tra la la. i cannot seem to do anything except waste waste waste that thing called time.

seems that moments ago it was 5 pm, and i, bleary-eyed, was emerging from a day full of meeting/greeting, listening to my mind pleading for mercy. board rooms turned to bored rooms and there i sat vacantly doodling ballpoint pen masterpieces in the margin of my notebook. highschool or professional life? sometimes, it's hard to tell.

anyhow, it was 5. and now a blink later, it's past 11 pm, and the hands of the clock are rubbing together with glee as they ready themselves to welcome the midnight. happy new day. and did i accomplish anything in the hours that came between? by my calculator (and by calculator i mean me, face scrunched up in thinking cap splendour) it's been almost seven hours.

and yet, nothing of import has happened. i overstayed my own welcome in the office. till around 7 pm, swishing things back and forth in my head, like a submerged see saw. made a to do list. decided i didn't want to do anything on it. said hello to a succession of portugese cleaners, all of whom know me, because, guess what - i live there kinda.

ducked out into the evening, and was smacked in the face by the unshakeable feeling that fall is here. ok, maybe it's not quite here, but it's waiting in the wings, leaf blowers in hand, ready to do it's show stopping number, all red, gold and cold.

met up with a friend for guinness and good conversation. and if that sounds like a bad advertisement from the seventies, well, it very well could be one. but cliches i'll sling and praises i'll sing for that lovely beer, and i shan't be ashamed. post- a few of those, we hopped in a cab. which is truly, truly outrageous, really - but splitting one does peer pressure you into such a lazy mode of transportation. shame, really - it's the perfect time to walk home, meandering through city streets, skipping lightly over gutters and listening to music as your heart flutters. (rhyming again, it must be a sign of poetic greatness to come).

and then home again, home again, jiggity jig, piggity pig on the dinner and a quick descent into internet wandering and procrastination extraordinaire. of course, there's something fairly idiotic about feeling guilt for shirking work when it's way past work's bedtime, but such is the life of a, what, a career woman? a working girl? no, no, that doesn't sound quite right.

and instead of the time wasted producing genius from these click-clacking fingers - all you get is a play-by-play of a dullsville day. oh how irksome. oh how amusing.

chagrin.

with a grin.

2007-08-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

sunday sunday sundae in the park.

not an entirely accurate statement as i'm in my living room, but it does sound delightful, doesn't it? even though it's overcast, the sunshine could come from such pursuits. or something.

but really, outdoor lazing and ice cream grazing are not two things high on the priority list today. because, you see, i have been shirking the working. and if you think i can't possibly keep rhyming in that irritating way, be warned. my desire to talk in couplets shall not be scorned. alright, enough. point is, i have much to do that i have avoided. or maybe not so much avoided, but blocked completely from my scattered brain. is it the harsh transition from penning witticisms about beer to thinking hard about insurance? or my tendency for leaning my thoughts too far forward, when the present is ever presenting me with tasks that require my full attention?

all of the above, all of the above.

and yet, i can't shake this distraction. it's like there is one little thing in my head that's effecting all the other things - kind of like when one pesky reddish item turns the rest of your laundry pinkish (which clearly just happened five minutes ago to this domestic anti-goddess) - everything's swirling in the same mess of blushing tide. or rather, the same mess of muddled mind.

so what next? do i accept it and show it off to the world, flaunting this unintentional turn of events, proclaim that pink is, in fact, the new black is the new pink? or do i carefully extract the guilty item, banishing it to the back of my wardrobe, along with all the other tainted goods? the former seems to appeal more than the latter.

after all, who isn't pretty in pink?

2007-08-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

hangover the moon.

truly there is nothing more horrifying than the feeling that grabs you with its death claws the morning after. alright, so there are most definitely many, many more horrifying things in the world - but on days where the haze descends upon you like a giant cobweb, sticking to your clothes, your hair, your tongue - on days where your mind floats in the grey area between comatose and stupid - well, those are the days you feel justified in melodramatic wailings.

and so a thursday night has knocked my friday night out of the running. and friday isn't really impressed with such brusque dismissal. but gone is the stamina that used to let me flit from evening to evening, party plan in hand, ready to to rock and/or roll through every weekend. it's possible that it disappeared the moment i started using uncool phrases such as "rock and/or roll". or, when my body casually mentioned to me that i would be the death of it. i being my over-ambitious mind.

no matter. it happened and now things seem much less frenetic. or possibly less pathetic?

yes, i think that's a fair statement. optimism is the new everything. i mean, how can it not be when the pint glass is always half full?

at any rate, things are on the upswing. and though january can't come soon enough, the months in between are guaranteed to be almost too-interesting, like an overstuffed bookcase of hilarious anecdotes and cringe-inducing debriefs. packing in every single thing i love about everything and place i love.

because time is passing, oh but it is. which means it's time to stop checking my watch and just enjoy it.

2007-08-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

everything's moving and so am i.

mildly poetic words i wrote in a 10th grade melodramatic acid-induced haze. at the time, my parents had just informed me i was moving to russia with them, and was covinced that being catapulted across the world was, in fact, the end of the world.

little did my sweet sixteen year old self know that this was the beginning of a life-long love affair with leaving.

unlike my teenage self, i have no one to push me onto that plane. i have to do it myself. not back to the onion domed magic metropolis of moscow, of course, but somewhere equally fantastic in its unpredictability.

sometimes i feel like i'm going to look down and notice that my feet are moving and the rest of me isn't, like in some bad cartoon. there i'll be, walking on mid-air, near a cliff, and when i realize, i'll look directly into the camera, panic, and sink to the ground. but in cartoons they pick themselves up again pretty effing easily. will i be so lucky?

frankly, i could care less.

yes, i want to panic, to sink, to get covered in the dust-up of new places, faces and stasis.

these days, it's more "everyone's moving - so why can't i?"

2007-07-29T10:54:00.001-07:00

it's time to get back on this train of thought.

and by thought i mean writing. my dedication to the sport has been appallingly weak of late. which is really rather odd, considering it's the thing i love to do best. some would call it a passion, but i must say i find that word particularly cringe-inducing. and so i'll refer to it as my obsession.

after all, i write and rewrite everything - from conversations i imagine in my head to email subject lines to lists of things i need to make lists about - i am a rabid for writing. and yet, i notice i don't do it enough. oh sure, i write every day at work. but being a dedicated copywriter has turned me into a sloppywriter outside of the job.

turns out the drive and focus was motivated greatly by dislike, by angst and dissatisfaction. and now that i hardly mind the daily grind, my mildly brilliant spew has slowed to a mediocre trickle. of course, i've yimmered on about this before - it's the "artists need to be in pain to produce greatness" theory, and there's quite a bit of bullshit in that. but perhaps a touch of truth too. finding something to satirize, finding fodder to ridicule, finding heartbreak to pisstake - these are important pursuits in the life of a sometimes-funny always-trying writer.

so here's to the next few months being productive in more ways than one. to resolving to write about everything, instead of waiting for something to really tickle fancy. and to getting a life.

clink clink.

2007-07-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

from cannes to london to the wilds of western canada, i have been cruising quite the cultural spectrum lately.

my eyes are sore from gazing at endless points of interest, points of other-ness from the norm (or rather, my norm). and now my skin is equally sore from the hours spent under the hot hot hot saskatchewan sun.

and my mind is sore from weeks upon weeks of thinking, drinking, and sinking into a whole new frame of mind. or maybe it's not that new. maybe it's just the same frame, moved from picture to picture, trying to find the one it fits.

i know exactly what i want to do, and where i want to go. i just don't know the rest.

and the rest is, well, life, isn't it. knowing what you want to do and where you want to go are just the drive, the narrative, the plot. it's the people and the things, the scent of the subway in the morning and the crinkle of the sunday styles section of the paper and the little four leaf clover traced into your pint of guinness and the warmth that flows from head to stomach when someone says your dress is pretty and the naive butterflies and the heart-wrenching sagas and the silly adventures - these are the things that fill out the empty skeleton of a life.

so, it's not what or where. its how. and who. and most importantly

when.

2007-07-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

it's crisp out, and crisp isn't usually a word that's associated with summer - unless you're getting burnt to one.

but here we are on july the first, and it's chillsville out - cold blue skies and a sun that won't warm to me. and here i am back in the land of canada, on a weekend that celebrates patriotism and the essence of being canadian (what is that, even?) and red and white oozes from all our pores, and decorates the streets with streamers and confetti and other such dollar store gems.

and though it's been at least four days since i got off a plane, my ears are still ringing and there's a pressure in my head that's a thump a thump thumping me into the oblivion of ouch. what i mean is it's driving me to distraction. which isn't a bad thing really - in fact, it's probably just what the subconscious ordered - that way i don't have to really think about anything that might be troubling me. just focus on the beating of the drum in my mind. or the pure silliness of the sentence that just came so willingly off my typing fingers. i suppose likening my headache to some primordial drum just illustrates how things have gotten me stupid. and by stupid i mean pretentious and irritating.

tomorrow i get right back on a big ol jet airliner, which will take me too far away. well, far enough, for a week of culture shock rock around the blockity block. trying to pack clothes that won't make me stand out as some sort of metropolitan mincer. hard, when my entire wardrobe seems to consist of black dresses. and so i ransack the recesses of my closet, searching for that gingham sundress i once bought on a whim, those tank tops and flip flops guaranteed to dumb me down to dowdy.

it's going to be a trip. even more so than the one i just came back from. my mind is sure to be even more muddled when i return. perhaps that will make my writing clearer somehow. or perhaps not. after all, who wants method when you can just have pure madness?

2007-06-15T18:52:00.001-07:00

goodness gracious me.

on the eve of my vacation/adventure/ridiculousness, i sit in my muggy room, and to the soundtrack of a whirling ceiling fan, multi-task away my last friday night in toronto for three weeks.

tomorrow evening i am off to cannes, to soak in sun, sand and, well, the bizarre cultural experience that it is -- a beautiful shell of a town, constantly filled and refilled with various conferences and festivals. post-that, well who knows, really. i don't seem to at the moment - as usual, my chronic indecision has left a decidedly large question mark smack in the middle of my travel itinerary. i seem to see saw between berlin and budapest, possibly because "b" words roll of the tongue so well. sleepy burnt out lethargy might get the best of me though, so it's possible i'll just lie on the beach, gazing vacantly at the ocean for a few days.

and then london, my old flame - the city i longed for last year, for a short time, of course.

last, but certainly least glamorous, is regina, saskatchewan, where i will interview locals in dusty bars and empty fields. about beer. life is journal-worthy at the moment, i must admit. so why am i dawdling on writer's block?

2007-05-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

i am slowly going crazy. 1-2-3-4-5-6-switch.

crazy going slowly am i. 6-5-4-3-2-1-switch.

every day seems to be stranger than the last. sure, on the surface it's mundane monday or no news tuesday, but just below, it's all a flutter. all of it. so much to think about, so much to drink about. so much to wonder, worry over, ponder, and dissect.

what a funny way to describe thinking - to dissect - to endlessly pull apart conversations and situations, bit by bit, piece by piece - as though they were insects and butterflies ready to be mounted behind glass. and does any of that meticulous mulling ever really make anything clearer? or is that obsessive untangling of the tangled actually counter-productive - i mean, once the tangles are completely smoothed over in your mind, you might lose sight of what drew you into the tangle to start with.

or something.

perhaps i am in musing mode (though really when am i not) because i just finished a book of essays from my all time favorite column - "modern love" in the new york times. every sunday, a different writer captures a snapshot or snippet of love in their lives - so this book was an anthology of a bunch of these - from essays about finding new love, breakups, and affairs, to adopting orphans and losing loved ones to cancer - the list of love topics was endless. sadly this book was not.

i could not put it down. and then felt that pang when i reached the last pages - knowing it was coming to an end.

it is so easy to get caught up in the lives of others - to glimpse into the everyday heartaches and heartbreaks of people. and then of course, you realize that your own life has plenty of these essays in it too - half-written, half-thought through stories, summing up your relationships, your regrets, your happy memories.

yes, yes - schmaltz city. but sometimes you have to be, don't you.

2007-05-20T07:18:00.000-07:00

peaks & valleys, peaks & valleys. peaks & valleys are my life.

no, those aren't the lyrics to some horrifyingly maudlin folk ditty. though well they could be. no, i am just getting all melancholic on a very sun-filled sunday.

ups and downs and back and forths are suitable i guess, since i am currently out in the beaches, and so spend my time sallying from one end of queen street to the other. it's a two hour walk through more peaks and valleys - not physical ones, but the less tangibles - the fancy neighborhoods and starbucks and yuppie delights representing the peaks, and the seedy underbelly of queen east - in all its denim-clad booze-drenched splendor, the valleys. and as i walk through the changing cityscapes and peoplescapes, i listen to the same songs on repeat - songs that have turned into quite the soundtrack.

there's the wistful happy lilt of feist's "i feel it all" - i know more than i knew before, she sings, and as much as i hate carrying on a one-sided dialogue with song lyrics, i have to agree with her.

there's the simultaneously mournful and uplifting shimmers of the national's "guest room" - and much as i hate attempts at describing music in such poetic, pretentious fashion, i have to say that it is mournful and uplifting. just like life.

there's the anthem for my year so far, lcd soundsystem's "someone great" - and much as i hate the declaration of song of the year, i must admit that this is the song of my year - in all its longing and losing and dreaming not only of what once was, but of what will eventually be. you'd think after listening to it 100-odd times - in faraway places, at home, walking to and from work, sitting in my office, on airplanes, in the park - that this song would stop haunting me. and yet, i still listen over & over a song about things being over and how you feel when thinking it all over.

finally, this, the newest to land itself in my mind - spoon's "the ghost of you lingers". this song has stunned me, with its incessant keyboard banging joyful wistful everything. there, i abandoned all hope of describing that one with any grace or style. suffice to say it is everything i need in a song right now. here it is, in all its wonder and wonderful-ness. i will listen myself into oblivion as i wait for the stretch to smooth into something in between the peaks and valleys.

2007-05-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

oh boy oh boy oh joy oh joy.

it's a hazy dazy delight of an evening. time keeps on ticking into the future. yes, i just quoted some sort of garish steve miller tune. but you know what, on saturdays such as these, i am allowed some sort of unpoetic license.

see, i have some exciting news. or rather, i received some exciting news this week, and am attempting to funnel it through my usual nonchalant prose. it's all coming out rather clunky, but for once, i really don't mind.

last year i managed to win this little sadvertising competition that sent you over to cannes for a week. and, somehow, oh somehow, i've managed to weasel my way into winning again. found out on a typical wednesday, right as i was going into an endless conference call. and so, i had to sit there feigning something like interest while my hands shook and my heart raced like a roided up sprinter. sun, sand and staring off into the horizon, here i come. oh, and schmooze, and booze, and croque monsieurs at 5 am, and general good times.

yes, i have somehow managed to officially achieve lucky ducky ducky bastard status once again. oh, not in everything, of course - my melodramatic life musings will tell you that -- but in the case of summer plans, i must say, i've been rather charmed.

i count down to adventure.

2007-05-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

wow. i am not really sure what to write today, and as most who know me can attest, when i am speechless, it is a strange strange thing. of course, not knowing what to type really doesn't mean you're speechless, does it. more like blank-minded, shooting blanks, blank slated. actually my life is a whole lot like a fill in the blanks right now - waiting for things to naturally fill up the parts that are missing.

and what is missing? obviously not brilliance. ok, more like obviously not stupid jokes. but seriously - when do you ever really figure out the a-z of what's missing from your seemingly full life? is it the moment you wake up alone and realize you want to be with someone? the moment you wake up with someone and realize you want to be alone? is it the moment you finally see that what you thought was a spontaneous adventure is actually a tedious routine? or is just when you finally feel that it's time for little changes - baby steps into fulfillment?

i feel like i'll always be a lover of tossing around cliches & ponderings like this - without really ever doing something about them. what's that called anyway - is it lethargy? laziness? am i destined to be passive & neutral? a switzerland, if you will?

this meander is littered with question marks. which marks me as a meanderer full of questions.

which solves nothing, really. but doesn't it look delightful?

2007-04-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

oh how it is one of those nights. where you lie and wonder. and by lie i don't mean tell un-truths. or maybe i do. but only to myself. delusion is much more fun than real life, isn't it?

now, how was that for a cheery intro? i am really am working on my evening enthusiasm.

really just another example of melodramtics for dummies. a book i seem to be writing quite prolifically.

and why not? i mean, i love to wax on (wax off) about my oh-so-deep-and-meaningful soul searchings. i look into myself, see, and then see a murky, murky mess of well, messiness. my heart's littered with junk and discarded things, much like the the floor of my bedroom.

and let's not even start on my mind. an attic in desperate need of an overhaul -- full of forgotten conversations, half-finished stories and excuses. and stacked everywhere, everywhere! are wordplays. piles and piles and boxes and drawers and closets of wordplays, waiting to escape my mouth and see the light of play. wordplay that is.

you know those moments where you think, "well, things might be severely bizarre right now - but everything will settle into some sort of normalcy soon?" yes, those. is it just my perpetually high level of optimism to expect, to hope, to feel that things will somehow work out?

or am i just mildly clueless?

very possibly both.

2007-04-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

when oh when where oh where how oh how.

there you go - a lament for you. but a well-meant lament. i'm not really down. more like up-side down. mixed up like batter. muffin batter that has pockets of baking powder still floating in it. you know the one - so when you bite into it, it seems all nice and perfect, but underneath (or rather, a few bites in) the flaws appear.

but flaws are appealing, aren't they. or is that endearing. yes, they are endearing. the scars that allude to resolve through adversity, the lines that remind of laughs - these are the things that make us delightfully human. and if that sounded overly schmaltzy, well, that's because it was. aparently i am in the mood to be all dewy-eyed today. and by today i mean tonight, as it is once again later than it should be.

so am i overly sentimental because i should be writing about beer? perhaps. it would make perfect sense in this cruel, cruel world that the one night i am supposed to pen sharp witticisms about brew-drinking, i am instead spurting forth dull-minded girlicisms. it's like i should be doodling in the margin of this macbook, dreamy nonsensical things, or my name over and over in childish cursive. not that you can do that on a computer. but oh, imagine that you could.

2007-04-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

another saturday night and i aint got no buddies.

alright, so that's pretty much a lie, but it did sound good, didn't it. and there's a smidgen of truth to it, since my ichat buddy list is woefully empty at the moment. not that i expect a gaggle of gabbers at 9:20 pm. i myself should be out right now, but can't be bothered to move. lethargy has glued me to this chair, and it's a sticky business.

also, it is bone-chillingly chilly in this apartment of mine, even though the radiators are on. now, i know the radiators are on because they are hissing louder than a pit of snakes. in fact, they hiss so loudly, i cannot sleep. venomous evil things.

instead, i lie awake, daydreaming in the middle of the night.

2007-04-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

hazy dazy lazy.

an intelligent start to what promises to be a whole string of intelligent words. and by string i mean a knotted mess, tangled beyond any hope of untangling. spring was descending upon us quite beautifully, and then the snow decided to do one last encore. as it always does, every year. and every year we forget, and welcome anything above 2 degrees with open arms, open jackets, and even open patios. and then, the white powder snorts down on our little pretend-world, leaving us high & well, not very dry.

after all, this type of april shower will bring nary a flower. just an extra hour on the highway in traffic as we all trudge home for the holiday weekend. yes, home for the holidays - in my easter bonnet, i could write a sonnet. though i really haven't been much for poetry composition of late, something i'll have to remedy while i'm vacationing from real life.

what is it that makes us revert and regress as soon as we are under the roof of our parents?

i don't even have the excuse that it's the house i grew up in, and so it's like walking into the past. no, this house of "mine" is really just a facade. so any return to adolescent whine patrol is all my own fault. should i stay out past curfew and drink in the park? or stomp around hating my life, before locking myself in my room to listen to some life-changing grunge or grateful dead? so many options.

i think i'll probably just act like the outwardly grown up inwardly messy nerdling that i am, and write some poems, eat some gourmet, drink some red & think about spring. last minute snow spit, be damned.

it's coming, i know it is. and with it, a whole lot of who knows what.

2007-03-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

well it's all pretty pretty outside. which makes it increasingly difficult to do anything productive. unless daydreaming is considered productive. i mean, i'm taking things (people) and putting them into things (implausible situations) and adding things (really clever, rapid fire banter) and then making stuff happen (good stuff).

see, there's plenty of copywriting involved - it's just in my head, and none of it is going to sell a mobile phone. or beer. or large ladies clothing.

though i suppose all of those things could be worked into said daydream - if that made it billable.

and more likely to happen.

2007-03-25T14:01:00.000-07:00

i notice that most of my dronings here are actually more like moanings.

the woe is me thing is kind of '90's, isn't it. or is it only '90's if you write a song about it, or in your journal (or livejournal), or bombard various indie messageboards with your angsty musings? is the new woe is me for 2007 all about blog-fest of gigantic proportions? where you have your own space to showcase to the world your various indiscretions and emotional inconsistencies?

c'est possible.

it occurs to me that to be different, i should only let my fingers tappity tap the keyboard when i am happy-clappy. after all sunshine is so much harder to come by in this sad world wide web we live in. shall i be all unicorns and giggles and puppies?

i mean, i'm not really a downer in real life, honest. i'm about as upper as you can get, without being classified as an amphetamine. i turn all obstacles into some sort of relay race - and smile even when i'm bluer than the bluest meanie.

so why do i rabbit on like a sad rabbit here?

guess i am hopped up on a love of cheeseball introspection. show my cheery self to the world, and brood quietly through the internerd. LOL in real life, and bury my melodramatic musings in html coding.

works for me.

2007-03-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

another day, another bawler.

the sky is blue pristine, but my head feels like plasticine. malleable. muddled-able.

there are these moments lately where i wonder exactly where i am going on this little path called life. and then i wonder how on earth i managed to write that cliche with a straight face. and yet, i'm not really laughing. no, this isn't ha ha funny - it's ha ha ridiculous. or maybe just odd.

yes, odd describes everything right now - from the way that my head spins like a broken top to the fractured recollections of the previous evening to all the heartaches and stupidities and banalities of the day-to-day demise of me.

i mean, who am i really?

a melodramatic teenager in the guise of a real live adult? possibly.
a silly billy with a penchant for disaster? definitely.
a whiny blogger with little motivation and a lot of work to do?

yes, yes and yes.

2007-03-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

how is it that i keep falling behind on the poetry hoetry composition?

Another month slips through my felt-pen tips. must get cracking on the rhyme. and stop wasting time. and find a tree to climb. i feel that spring has sprung, an expression i abhor, but perhaps am using masochistically. yes, the snow has dwindled to pathetic puddles, the world is a dirty grey, and the temperature is shooting up like heroin.

Speaking of temperatures, i had to write some particularly horrifying copy about high heels the other day -- something along the lines of "It's spring, and temperatures and heels are soaring to new heights". Yes, you hear correctly - the sound of my soul being sucked into the vacum of whore-porate splendor. and you know what? i kind of dig the sound. it's got a ring to it, one that i can only describe as delightful. why? well, why not?

after all - to sum up copywriting in a line (appropriate, really to write a headline about writing headlines) would be to say:

Copywriting. The mind it enlightens, the writing skills it tightens.

2007-03-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

today was bookended by appointments of the aesthetic variety. was poked, prodded and tisk tisked at the dentist this morning. at 7:40 am, to be exact. what prompted me to book that early is simple. i am a morning owl. or would that be an early bird? whatever type of winged creature arises first, ready to burst with excitment for the new day - that would be me.

not sure if i was that peppy about going to get my chomp chomps checked out, but for the sake of the story, i'll pretend i was. toddled up to the far north (yonge & eglinton) to see dr. fisher and his cohorts. and by cohorts i mean hygenists. cheery chatty patty was ready & waiting, and off we went into the land of drill drill buzz buzz.

but not before she could tell me (once she found out i was in advertising), "ohhh i love those bell ads with the beavers? oh-ho, those always crack me up." well goshdarn it. so happy to see that mediocrity continues to wow the world. i had to quash her excitement by telling her i worked for the competitor. "oh, is that the one with the monkeys?" she asked disinterestedly, then trailed off into nothing.

so that was the cleaning. and then there was the verdict. ie the dentist. the man with the five year plan to replace every single tooth with a gold crown. or something. there were a few cavities. and a warning that if i didn't get a night guard, i would grind my teeth into oblivion. a night guard. that phrase brings to mind slumbering sentries from some sort of shakespeare play, not something i put in my mouth. i mean, just say retainer. or nerd gear.

instead he said (with a straight-face, mind), "at night, you can rely on the night guard. during the day, you can only rely on your will power". goodness, i didn't realize there was so much drama in the molar world.

so bookend beginning.

and then at the end of the day - at five pm - i crossed town to get my haircut - whizzing (or rather, inching along in a cab) by crappy front street sports bars filled with suits unwinding with lukewarm domestics in hand, and commuters breathing icicles in the air.

haircuts are a joy, especially at aveda. my hair cutter is a 24 year old adorable on his way to becoming the next, well, whatever the top of his industry is. cutting master? snipping extaordinaire? edward scissorhands?

we talked of new york and bad fringes to the sweet sounds of blades slicing through strands. and as piles were swept away by the passing sweeping up hair guy, i gazed upon a new me. or maybe just a new version of the old me-haircut. but it's a goodie. and not really an oldie, either.

so bookend ended. shiny smile, shiny hair. take a shine to me.

2007-03-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

friday slush funds.

or rather, friday slush fun.

knee deep in icy goodness, i trudged to the metro stop this morning. ok, perhaps it was only ankle-deep, but those moments where you feel the swift spread of water as it soaks through your boots and creeps from the bottom of your stockings upwards - they feel worthy of exaggerated description. and so i give it to them.

hours later, i still feel a bit chilled. in temperature and attitude. (note: i only use the word "chilled" in this context because of the double meaning of the word -- otherwise i would not touch it with a ten foot pole. or even a small stick).

point is, i've done a whole lot of nothing today, even though i have a whole lot to do.

and really all i want to do is love me up some guinness. is there anything better? i would venture to say there isn't. mostly because i know it's purely rhetorical, and therefore no one will argue. but guinness reallly is a delight for all senses involved, right? am i right? am i right?

yes. always.