Okay, so i'm just bored with waiting to write until i'm upset about something. there's so many tiny wonderfuls happening every day that why not write about them. its about connection right?! well i'm making a concerted effort to type type type about happiness and connections. there's something you should or maybe, should not, know about me- i have a river of emotional tears on constant reserve beneath these blue/green eyes. and at least once or more a day, they show up- i'm a liver okay! i cry. i love. i live. that's just me. so today- my connection was with the oh-so-wonderful show NEW GIRL- yes, their last episode was a holiday one and yes it is now new year's eve afternoon- so yes, i am a little late. but i just maybe decided how dreamy this world is at the end of the episode, when they are shouting in the streets - friends together, wanting amazement- wanting spectacular-wanting to be there for a friend who is just bummertown- and demanding happiness, and loveliness- from the lights on candy lane. i, of course, welled with tears, slugged my pinot noir at this point and just let go. my connection today, and a lot of my days, is friendship. we are too too lucky to have the friends we have. so - whatev-errrrs- sappy, sure. here's to my amazing friends: here in new york, a far in iowa and los angeles and san diego and florida and d.c. and new mexico and chicago and abroad... i just like you, okay? ... a whole whole lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KRD8e20fBo


i'm disgusted with apathy.
i'm disgusted with us.
i'm disgusted that i haven't done anything
that you haven't
that we all are in the dark
and like the dark.
just do something. anything. stop putting your head in the sand. and take some sort of action.
in anything.
stop being passive.
for once... just live and be heard.
be something.
stop letting lies spread.


this: the cove. food inc. foreign policy. the us.

estranged.

my uncle Jim died. i hope his son is finding time to breathe.
my aunt Karen, my uncle's ex-wife is considering cremation
my mother says that ashes just get lost in the shuffle eventually
salt water pulls up to my eyes' brims and I bite my lower lip

who wants great great great great great so-and-so's ashes? she says
i want to want them. but i know i won't.

our family so close once and so foreign when meeting now

summer dripping down my temples, my spine, behind my ears
the air conditioner surfaces my allergies but I suffer through
"don't touch me... just... don't" when I'm burning, body
not under the covers or sheets
a steady panting is our ambient noise from Jackson,
we've just cut his coat to cool
browned noses even with the sunscreen
streets sticky with the smell of melting garbage
bags and bags stacked
the breeze picks up
sometimes
but even it feels like a wool blanket thick
i want ice cream.

Dumber-est

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good. - T.S. Elliot

Dumber-est:
My best friend was recently in a downtown, off-broadway play. The word DOWNTOWN itself is more that just a place of reference, it is a adjective that nearly describes an entire movement of theatre in New York. If I were to say something had a very DOWNTOWN feel to it, it would most likely be abstract or edgy, new and probably confusing... not easily understood the first time round. My friend's piece was just this: confusing. But that isn't saying it was less than enjoyable, I just left with thoughts muddled and questions. It kept me thinking for a few days after even, which I think is wonderful. A piece of art affecting me so much as to care beyond the exit of the theatre. Something I had to hash out and ponder instead of swallowing mindlessly like most of the spoon-fed sugar we are taking in mainstream cinema. It feels as if there are few movies being created today that challenge the mind, unarm our own comfort zones and push us to question... most are only distractions. Movies and plays with ideas that are overdone, saturated with sex and crudeness, with no parting gift of thought provoking conversation to offer as you exit theatre. My friend's show may have been cold without any sort of emotional connection, but it raised questions on the institution of marriage, on fidelity and love vs. lust. I feel valued by the writer and director in the sense that he didn't dumb down the material to increase his audience size.

AgH! work, write more later.

A Happening

"I often have a hard time understanding what large crowds chant at sporting events."






A Happening:
The bar was dead when I first arrived, a few tables filled with couples or trios drinking pitchers of happy hour beer. It was almost like an eerie stillness, weighted with anticipation, before the tornado hit. The Yankees were to play the Phillies in what would come to be the last game of the '09 world series. Steady streams of people started to flood in, and my pace of taking orders and delivering quickened. There was no point from 8pm on that I even glanced at the flat-screened T.V.s that littered the walls. I didn't have to watch the game to know every big play or score... the energy of the place buzzed as each New Yorker, so frenzied with excitement, relayed the score to my ears with "oohs" and "woohoos" and "awws". Chanting ensued, which made me laugh... a close friend of mine keeps a quote on his Facebook profile that reads "I often have a hard time understanding what large crowds chant at sporting events."... and from the moment the joined voices began to call out "Jeter, Jeter, Jeter" I couldn't help but picture the quizzical expression that would have clouded over my friend's face. It became an almost out-of-body experience, watching the mass of fans, faces upturned, eyes stuck to the screens... not even breaking their intense stares to reorder drinks or eat the food they ordered, which was most likely cold, sitting on their table, untouched for the past 10 minutes. I couldn't move through the crowd without playing bumper cars the whole way, and so as the game came to a close, I stood next to the bar on a box and just watched. Not the game but the people. When the Yankees finally secured the win, every single person erupted. I've never seen anything quite like it. People were literally, I kid you not, hanging from the bar's rafters. They were standing on the booth seats, swinging the lamps that hung above each table, cheering, throwing hats, and screaming screaming screaming. "We are the Champions" played out over the speakers of course, and the crowd simultaneously began to sing loudly along, top of their lungs. It was incredible, the intensity and overjoyed sense of togetherness. I almost burst into laughter at the silliness of it all... a baseball game causing that much commotion. And then as furious as its force had come, the crowd disappeared almost instantly. A modern day gold rush town turned ghost. Amazing.

Song on my brain: "Lalita" - The Love Language- Listen at: http://www.bladencountypress.com/uploads/1/4/9/9/1499665/02_lalita.mp3

A quarter

I can hear my heart on the pillow beneath my head. "I'm alone." beats the blood through my veins and the stillness around me is deafening. If I thought this is what I wanted, I was so very wrong.

A Quarter:
Cheetos and Nestle Butterscotch Morsels do NOT make for the healthiest breakfast, nor the most satisfying, but when there’s nothing else in the fridge besides expired skim milk and blackened bananas long past their prime, it becomes your best option. I am now twenty-five. Sunday was my birthday and my eyes have seen twenty-five years go by, day after day ... I still am not sure if I'm an adult. Every birthday since the end of high school has been attached to the same question: When do you know? Fact: I've been, for the most part, financially independent since moving away from home, and this is very adult-y. Fact: I have a job, adults have jobs. It's not the most glamorous work and certainly not the most lucrative, but it provides for rent and bills and food (if I happen to one day buy groceries), Fact: I have countless failures and accomplishments under my belt, which all adults maintain. Yet, all things considered, I continue to feel separate. The grown-up world seems foreign and old, boring and rigid... not something I would friend on Facebook or call Mom late at night to whine that they weren't including me.

To at least attempt to grow-up and join the work-day world, I moved from Iowa City, Iowa, the town of my college, to Los Angeles, CA. My time spent there may come up later, it may not... but only if absolutely relevant, as it wasn't my finest of hours. From Los Angeles I moved to the opposite corner of the country: New York. And that's where I am today, in my one-bedroom central Harlem apartment. Eating my less than appetizing breakfast at a time when I should be eating lunch, as I have just woken up after a rough night.

After a time, I got used to the hugeness of New York. The wonderful feeling of disappearance... of not being found. I could escape to a remote book shop in the west village or a park near Columbia University and sit for hours without anyone knowing my face, my story. Then all of a sudden, from traveling the same route from work to home, from picking favorite bookshops and park benches, recognition slowly peeled away my hugeness feeling about New York. I made friends at work, one or two time bar patrons became Monday and Wednesday night regulars. The 2.50 slice pizza place on the corner between my bar and the subway began to ask, "the same?" when I came rushing in, always 5 minutes from being late to my 6pm shift start.

Clarification: my job. I work in Greenwich village, where NYC students booze nightly and tourists crowd into tiny cafe/restaurants/bars that line the one-way streets. It now feels familiar to me, and should, being there for a year and a half. I recognize faces that frequent my bar and the 24-hour coffee house across the street. I now know what each season feels like on the walk between the subway's exit and my work's front door. I don't feel new, but things still surprise me. That's New York though, the minute things feel settled and routine, you stumble upon a happening that boggles your comfortable level of Manhattan fluency.

Song for today's thoughts: Living This Life- The Dutchess & the Duke from Sunset/Sunrise (2009) Hear it at
http://www.hardlyart.com/mp3/DD_LivingThisLife.mp3