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.

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.

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.

tecate, 5 am.


well, almost.

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

and yet, my life is moderately interesting.

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

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

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

but needless to say, funny.

always funny.

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

so. so. so.

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

oh my. oh dear. oh life.

oh, good.

sunrise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

summer summer.

how you slip by me, you stealthy bastard.

of interest, of late:

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

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

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

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

oh, july.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oh, july - you will be worth waiting for.