Monday, September 29, 2014

"Before" shots

I just decided at this very moment to change the rules of Blog Everyday September. The rules are that I don't have to blog everyday in September. Dang, it is easy to change rules without cause or warrant. I feel just like a credit card!

Then again, I feel vague and blobby with super low interest. I have no special offers and I give out no points for using me. I don't give anyone the thrill of instant gratification or the illusion of free money. I can't transfer anything and I come in only one design. So, not like a credit card at all then.

I want to avoid making this blog post a downer. It's just...just....arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. What the hell lately?  My life feels like one gigantic "before" mural on the side of a rotted out dilapidated building. Seeing photographs of myself I think "That's the before shot." I have an iPhone full of before shots now. I am the newbie everywhere and I don't know what I'm doing. I'm full of misinformation and assumptions and I get the feeling I'm getting dumber and dumber with each passing day. Time was I could make a declarative statement, with vim (if not vigor) and not question it. These days, I mentally question everything I say right after I say it. An esprit de l'escalier of a different kind. The kind where I never come up with the perfect retort or answer, not at the right moment or on the stairs afterward. I know I've joked about being neurotic for most of my adult life but I might actually be telling the truth about it now.

I get metaphysically winded now. Yesterday I spent hours formulating a plan for the next three weeks, during which I have no less than six hundred million things to take care of and doing exactly none of them, choosing instead to pull down the blinds and lie down in the dark.

I'm turning my lack of job offers into my own private hair shirt, making the global problem of joblessness a penance for some unknown cosmic wrong I committed in my last life and it feels a bit like I'm stockpiling my inadequacies all at once, for some future bunker where I'll hide out after the nuclear explosion dust of getting old and lonely settles.

I find myself Googling phrases like "How to cope with change" and "Making your own luck" and "How to not infer meaning in the meaningless". I haven't gleaned anything useful but all three of those phrases, among others, were autocompleted by Google the first time I typed them in so this cheese does not stand alone. She stands, unpasteurized with her brethren, susceptible to any foolhardy idea or preemptive worry that comes along.

I need a good boiling.

I just reread all this. I sound a little crazy. Just a little. But I really feel like this is my time to go a little crazy. Just a little, I promise. It's Monday. I move out of my apartment in three and a half weeks. This morning I found a dead roach under my bed, put there by one of my cats at some unknown time between 2010-present. I'm going to go ahead and let myself get just a little bit Tower of Pisa for a moment. K thx.




Wednesday, September 17, 2014

I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning out of boxes and closets and assorted corners of my apartment in preparation for a move (I finally ran out of money, but that's another story for another blog post) and I came across my collection of mix tapes. I'm holding on to these items so that they will have to be pried from my cold, dead hands; I love them that much.

I thought I would share with you my track listing from a mix tape I made for myself that I titled: Bored! Summer 1995. That would have made me 18 going on 19. This is the track listing:

Cambodia -- Dead Kennedys
Miss World -- Hole
A Violent Fluid -- NIN
I Palindrome I -- They Might Be Giants
Juke Joint Jezebel -- KMFDM
Dopehat -- Marilyn Manson (apparently they liked the word "dope" for song titles)
Sweet Jane -- Cowboy Junkies
Killing Game -- Skinny Puppy
How Beautiful You Are -- The Cure
Redemption Song -- Bob Marley
Lithium -- Nirvana
Serenade for Winds K.36, 3rd movement-- Mozart
Am I Wrong-- Love Spit Love
Kraut -- KMFDM
Girl -- Tori Amos
No Woman No Cry -- Bob Marley
Fake Plastic Trees -- Radiohead
Thank You -- Tori Amos
Suck (Live) -- NIN
The Dock of the Bay -- Otis Redding
Which Describes How You're Feeling All the Time -- They Might Be Giants
Yes, Anastasia -- Tori Amos
Dumb -- Nirvana

Ahem. I really WAS bored that summer. If I can recall correctly, I was home from Freshman year at college and apparently not in any way bothered by KMFDM, what with putting not one but two of their songs on my mix. Be my...sister salvation... I'm cracking up. I was spending my Saturday nights at Voodoo's, swooning over goth boys in fishnets and working in some crappy cafeteria, brooding that "no one understood". I just really want to give the young me a big hug, complement her skirt and let her know, in the most gentle way possible, that she is a loser. But that it's ok.

Also, I appear to have been into grunge, industrial, goth, 60s soul, classical, reggae and what I like to call "quirk" music. Much to my deep, deep chagrin, I let rap of that era pass me right by. I regret it. I truly do.

So there's mix tapes just like this taking up real estate in bent boxes that I carry with me from apartment to apartment and have lasted almost 20 years. I have such distinct memories attached to each of these songs, I'm so glad I have this peephole into my past. And I frankly have a hankering for some Skinny Puppy now.

Bonus points to whomever can match this post's title to one of the songs from the tape. Just read the meaning and it shouldn't be too hard.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Grubstake me!

grubstake
DEFINITION
verb

: to provide with material assistance (as a loan) for launching an enterprise or for a person in difficult circumstances

When I started this entry, it was the word of the day. That was two days ago. I'm going to start viewing Merriam Webster's word of the day as a kind of harbinger of things to come. Turns out, I could use a grubstake. A literal one and a metaphysical one.


I missed two days of posting this month. Those two days have been lost to history. Imagine just exactly how critical the information I carried on those two days could have been. I could have lugged around wisdom unparalleled. Rucksacks swollen with brooding, boxes crammed with worry, duffle bags filled to bursting with my incessant need to put off what I could do today. Modern day classic!!

Friends, my brain is fried, my nerves are sizzled, my heart is charred, my soul sous vide. I'm cooked, through and through.

I've missed the other part of my drafting compass, the one I was promised the moment I read John Donne in high school.

And though it in the centre sit,  
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                
It leans, and hearkens after it,  
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, 
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; 
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    
    And makes me end where I begun.

I definitely need the stalwart stick in the mud because, my peoples, I doth roam all over the damn freaking place.

In my previous online journals, I used to tag my posts with more regularity and it was always amusing to me to see how often I posted about a particular subject. There were clearly defined patterns in my daily life and I was (somewhat) more inclined to limit my complaints or at the very least, sparse them out. One of my tags was called "Money, aka the bane of my existence" and I'm reasonably certain it made the top three most frequently used tags in my journal. I don't tag this journal that often but if I did, I'd change any and all discussion of money, my lack of it, my pathetic IV bag-like dependence on it to carry the following tag: ARRGGGGHHHHH.

And just like an IV bag, I've been hungrily draining what little money I had squirreled away to do vital life functions, things like, oh I don't know, pay rent and energy bills, fill up my car with gas to get me to my part time jobs. I knew in the back of my mind it was not sustainable; this would have to do until a full time job came along. Well, five months later, no full time job is yet forthcoming and I think at approximately 10am this Monday morning, it hit me in the face. I have to look at my apartment, home for lo, these four and half years and say aloud, with feeling: I gotsta GO!

It's the where, how and why God why of it all, though. The ass kicker. I even found time this weekend to lament all the fucking shit I'm going to be missing out on this fall: friend's visits, huge life events of people I love. All because of money aka the bane of my existence, pervasive and pernicious as ever.

I might be broke now but I still harbor dreams, my darlings. Dreams are free. GIFs of dreams are also free (unless protected by copyright, in which case, let me know.) Here's my next dream, GIF style.

I'm the cat in this dream btw.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Prog rock prince

As of this typing, it is 11:24 am. Some observations about the day so far:

I have no idea how to dress for this weather. At the moment I'm wearing what I call a Seasonal Compilaton. I have capri length pants on with a blouse and a short sleeved sweater and a scarf. None of it is appropriate for the weather nor does it look right. If my outfit were a person, it would be an adolescent, still trying to figure out who she is.

I'm almost totally positive that the woman I saw at the bagel shop this morning, munching greedly on savory looking breakfast is going to get undressed tonight and just spill over with poppy seeds. They are going to rain from her body and scatter to the floor in a million pieces after hitching a ride like so many plankton. It will happen to her consternation and also, I hope, her amusement.

A library patron just asked me if we owned CDs by what is probably every single known prog rock band that ever existed. He was super annoyed that we had maybe two. Sorry, dude. The library buys according to the need of the community and unfortunately, the need for ELO, Bachman Turner Overdrive and Yes is not as in demand as you were led to believe. Apparently he comes in this library a lot and will heretofore be known as the Prog Rock Prince. In my head.

I just had to help a Spanish speaking patron with some information because out of a hefty staff in this large library, like two of us speak Spanish. Geez. When will Americans start speaking Spanish already?? Anyway, she wanted information about who was running for local office. That would normally be simple enough but there was the language barrier, her computer illiteracy and the fact that it isn't all that easy to get translated, detailed information about hyperlocal political candidates. I felt exactly like everything I was telling her was just turning into "a doy a doy a doy" by the time it reached her ears. She finally told me to give her the website and that her grandkids would help her navigate it. Someone should invent a universal translatable app for political candidates during election years. Get on that.

So far, that's all I got. With a morning like this, I can't wait to chronicle my sure to be thrilling and chilling observations of the afternoon.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Exhaust

It is strange to be working a long day at two jobs on the anniversary of 9/11. For the past two years, I've made it a point to be out of the country, with my sister. Today she is out of town and I am home and I've been so busy that I spent the majority of the day with my mind in "you are forgetting something" mode. It is much easier to ignore that mode, or at least to put it on mute, when you are drinking foreign wine and pointing at exotic buildings and monuments.

I was so busy doing non-computer related things that I was spared most of the news/op-eds/armchair historian's takes on what this day means now that it didn't 13 years ago and what are all the things we should be doing instead of remembering. And even though I was working and learning and being trained all day long, I still wasn't forgetting. In the back row of my brain, all the way in the cheap seats, I saw all of it, the 13th encore.

But, just like every year, the engine had to chug along. To be completely honest, I'm more like the exhaust than engine at the moment and I've suddenly found myself at 10:30 again with nothing in my head but how little was in my head.


Quick throwback to yesterday's post. This explains why the moon was so bright last night. So, not an absurdist play after all...


Wednesday, September 10, 2014

In Between

I spent the entire day in the car. I drove many miles for a good reason and I just rolled home and am catching up on the days email.  The last thing I feel like doing is updating but it is Blog Everyday September. So here I am, if only to share this: On my way home, driving in an undulating sea of rearviews and red lights, the moon was so bright and yellow and low in the sky that I got the strange sensation I was visiting another planet, during some other era. The ancient moon and the modern lights with me somewhere in between. Sometimes doing something so utterly normal, like driving home, feels like it happens on the set of an absurdist play.

Maybe I'm just sleepy with nothing to say. In that case, goodnight!

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Spain. Again.

Sigh. Last year I was in Spain at this time. My stomach hurts at the moment and I'm cranky. I don't feel like writing at the moment so instead I'm reading.

Here's a link to my entry about my first day in Barcelona:

It took a week to write, apparently.

And that time we visited the Casa Battlo:

And I popped my pimentos de padron cherry.

Climbing Monserrat:

And the vomiting mountain kitty

And the final reposted highlight:

The first day I fell in love with Madrid

I have a long, big day tomorrow. I'm sure I'll have something write about. Maybe.

Monday, September 8, 2014

A compact life

I just spent this afternoon and early evening moving my CDs from the stands I've kept them in for about 10 years, to a compact little square that can be carried around like a suitcase. I took the opportunity to weed through the ones I never listen to, never have listened to or simply feel flabbergasted that I ever owned. I'm certain I don't have to explain my attachment to these discs; I've carried them with me over decades of my life, from one living situation to another. They have, for the past four years assumed their place inside two column like racks on the side of my fridge and it has become high time to make space and lighten the load of my life. So I made the executive decision at 2am the other morning to buy a case on ebay in which to house (and likely bury) my CD collection, such as it is. The entire endeavor only took a few hours but it took me back years.
Some observations:


  • I have a small army of marvelous people in my life who, over the last 20 or so years have made me mix CDs full of music that has pretty much comprised the DNA of my life's memories to date. I have kept every single one and will continue to do so. I even had people I NEVER MET in real life make me CDs because we were virtual friends. Thank you thank you thank you, you know who you are.
  • I have a sneaking suspicion that someone at some point just dropped off a handful of their CDs surreptitiously and left them in my collection. How else can I explain the presence of five Devandra Banhart CDs??
  • CD production and design used to be so nice. I have a special edition copy of Neon Bible that came equipped with little flipbooks of an actual neon bible and one of synchronized swimmers. The Queen anthology I got for Christmas one year has pretty remarkable photographs in the liner notes. The double album by the Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is basically a small work of art. And then there were stupidly designed ones. An old Dave Matthews Band CD has one of those magic eye pictures on the front, managing to be both dated and ugly. Though I love the album intensely, I was never a fan of the photos on Pearl Jam's Vs. cover. It actually skeeves me to this day.
  • I distinctly remember the very first CD I ever bought. It is kind of embarrassing, so please find it in your heart to forgive me: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Swing Kids. Yes, the film was utter dreck and not every recording is a gem but I must say I still thoroughly enjoy the version of Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen on that soundtrack. It reminds me of being 15.
  • I was in possession of 20 sample CDs and not one of them was good. Not one. All those poor musicians.... Also, how the hell did I get all these samples?
  • I came across the CD single by the Strokes, New York City Cops that I bought at a music store situated right next to a multiplex in Kips Bay about 10 years ago. Not 20 minutes after I bought that CD I actually saw Julian Casablancas at the movies and asked him to sign my CD. I remember being so excited by kismet. Looking at the CD now, I can barely read his scrawl. But I swear it happened. My sister will attest!
  • It is so strange to think that all my music (minus the thousands of songs I have on my iPod of course) fit into this:


Therein lies almost my entire adolescence and adult life, compact with a convenient carrying handle. 

Naturally the more organized and/or space worshiping of you will question my desire to hang on to these little silver discs at all. I tend to agree with that notion but I simply can't let them go. Not yet. Getting rid of the cases was one thing. And, true, I have most of these uploaded. But I'm an old ass lady who enjoys the tangible feel of a CD, of lying on my stomach on my bedroom floor, reading liner notes and lyrics and singing along. Really, I feel like you should just let me be.

Quick question though: what in the sam hell do I do with these jewel cases??

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Knuckle crack

In an unheard of turn of events, I went out last night. It was to see a local cover band that I had heard about through friends. Turns out they are really, really good musicians and, possibly more important for a cover band, they are pretty great showmen. They have a schtick, certainly. But it works. And judging by the fans in attendance and their loyal following on Facebook, covering songs is working for them. I fully enjoyed their rendition of "In Between Days".I know that I had fun last night because I awoke hungover and with a stomach ache. It has been awhile since that's happened but if memory serves, that's an indication of a decent time out.

I haven't gotten too much accomplished today, my one day completely off for awhile. I cleaned my kitchen, got rid of some stuff. A few weeks ago I bought Krazy Glue for the first time ever and I've been applying it to everything. Doorknobs, umbrellas, my cat. I finally got around to fixing a pendant that broke last  year in Madrid when it was yanked from my neck as I leaned over the balcony of our apartment to see the street below. That was a five story drop and I raced down to the street to get it. I think I held on to it this whole time because I was just so impressed that I was able to find it on that cobblestone, high traffic street. Thanks to old krazy glue, it is fixed. I also got around to fixing a teapot, gifted to me by my mother, that my cats had knocked over about three years ago. I am the opposite of handy and generally, when something breaks in my apartment, I hold onto the pieces "just in case" I find within myself the urge and the impetus to fix it. Even on the rare occasions when that does happen, I end up totally unable to follow through, either through laziness or total ineptitude. So when I do end up being able to piece together something that was once broken, I feel so damn good. I get so proud of myself in the exact way that a kindergartner does when she crafts a turkey out of the traced silhouette of her palm. Art! Behold the beauty below.
Gobble gobble.
In case you were wondering, Krazy Glue is not the sponsor for this post. I just wanted to chronicle a lazy, hungover afternoon during which I was able to fix things. I admit that the world outside my apartment door is a little overwhelming at the moment. It is nice to be able to slap some glue on something in pieces and to have it be mended. It is exactly like a knuckle crack: satisfying and relieving, sometimes accompanied by a sigh.

I did venture out briefly to print up copies of my writing portfolio. The shop I went to was freaking bananas with harried parents and their sleepy eyed kids, piling school supplies into their carts. My trek into the store only lasted about 10 minutes but I was getting stressed out among all those damn kids. Damn kids and their futures ahead of them with their healthy pink lungs and all brain cells accounted for....damn kids.

I think it may be time to lie down for a bit. Happy Sunday.


Saturday, September 6, 2014

The Dizzies

Lately, due mostly to my carousel of jobs, people mistake me for being younger than I am or at least that I'm freshly unwrapped from the factory of library school. This happens weekly. Someone at some point will ask "So, are you still in school?" and honestly, I don't know how this makes me feel. I can't assume they are asking because I look young but I want to. So I do. Instead they are likely asking because I'm a new face and I MUST be freshly graduated, else why would I be working so many part time jobs. Maybe they are just trying to start conversation. I suppose it doesn't even matter. When faced with the question I feel frazzled and dizzy and other words that describe confusion using the letter z. I do get the dizzies lately. The effects of being mistaken for a newbie, I suppose. And my schedule, oh lordy. My planner looks like a calculus textbook.

I generally have to bite my tongue when asked where I've worked before, and just what the hell it is I've been doing. The response bubbles up from the base of my throat and demands to be spat out: Does it matter? I don't want to do THIS anymore. However, not having totally lost the plot, I realize it would be unwise to say such things to a new supervisor, a budding intern, a totally content coworker. So I swallow it down.

"Where have you worked?" A million places that got me nowhere.
"Are you still looking for a full time job?" No, I fully enjoy being 11 years into my career and juggling multiple part time jobs, Professor.
"Do you know how to sign me in to Plenty of Fish?" Ugh.

Okay so that last one is from a patron. There will always be a patron in every library asking for shit like that. I suppose it gauche, complaining about this. I need to stop before I fall down the wormhole. At the very LEAST I have this work. It has kept me afloat all summer. I can't shake the knowledge though. I know there is a pinprick in the life raft though and the deflation begins in about 5 weeks. I can already hear the faint hissing.

And it's really that knowledge that has kept me so cranky these last few weeks. I approach each and every one of these work shifts mechanically. They are hours long obstacles to surpass in order to get...where exactly? I don't know. I just know that my work has become my chore. The obligation of work is the piercing, shrill alarm clock every day. Sure, work has always been an obligation for me but I suppose it didn't seem so blatant before. I suppose the fact that I needed my jobs weren't always on the forefront of my mind. I probably always just assumed that I'd be able to find another one easily. I've been disavowed of the notion.

All is not lost, however. I have an interview in the coming week that I am looking forward to. It would mean a sea change. After rereading what I've just written, it would appear that I could use one.

I'd love to go out and drink tonight. Look for me out there. You'll be able to recognize me. Just look for the lady leaning a little, dazed look on her face.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Earl, or oil

Oleaginous 

DEFINITION
adjective

1

: resembling or having the properties of oil : oily; also : containing or producing oil
2
: marked by an offensively ingratiating manner or quality


That's the word of the day over at Merriam Webster and what a gorgeous word! I find it onomatopoeic in the best possible way.

Since I'm currently deep in the throes of my annual late summer viewing of the show Northern Exposure (I only recently realized that I rewatch this series at least once a year and always, inexplicably at the end of the summer), the word brought to mind the episode, cleverly titled "Jules et Joel". The episode is basically a fever dream of Dr. Joel Fleischman and in it he has a oleaginous (the first definition) twin brother who could not be grosser. Here's Joel as Jules or vice versa or something:


Apparently in the 90s, someone could convincingly play an alter ego by adding copious amounts of grease to one's hair.

When I Googled the phrase "oily people", roughly 100,000 Google images of women with perfect, pristine skin on their faces and shoulders pops up to accompany thousands of articles written for those of us with oleaginous skin. I fully understand people turning to the internet for skin care advice. I also fully understand people using the internet for advice on the "avoidance of oily people".

Peppered among the skin care images are visages of "oily characters" such as this one:


Poor Pete Campbell. I don't think it is an accurate word for him though. He isn't so much oleaginous mostly because he doesn't ingratiate himself after say, season one when he realizes Don Draper ain't having that, but also because he is more 1950s Yale grad in his looks than, say, Ratso Rizzo who surprisingly, wasn't on the first page of results.


Though Rizzo is likely 10 times the man Pete Campbell could be.

Also, I just realized that Dr. Joel Fleischman and Dustin Hoffman look very similar when they are oleaginous-i-fied. I think film and TV costume people honestly just add oil to actors' hair to achieve that sense. Bit on the nose, wouldn't you agree?

Today's word of the day also got me thinking about the one truly oleaginous person I've met in real life. He worked in the stock room of a bookstore where I worked a million years ago in Greenwich Village. I won't say his name because it was very unique but let's just say it was Cronus because it was actually along those lines. If I had to come up with a slogan to honor my memories of Cronus it would be to say he was an oleaginous, narcoleptic, heavy-mouth breathing, creepy, simpering blob of a man.  Every part of him was oily. He stood about 5 feet tall and brought with him a huge paunch that preceded him in every situation and atop of which he would rest his stubby, intertwined fingers while he proselytized about this or that, as though that belly was his podium and everyone in the world was his audience. 

Among many other things, he was known by the staff for breathing heavily and in the moistest way possible and for falling asleep often and without warning. One time I had to go to the stock room to ask him where something was and  he pointed half-assedly in the general direction of where I should look. I returned less than 60 seconds later to find him deeply asleep in his chair, his breathing wet and loud. He would often disappear for large amounts of time in the staff bathroom which at the time most of the rest of the staff had to chalk up to the obnoxiously large amounts of food he consumed at lunch time. What was later revealed, however, is that Cronus, responsible for unpacking all newly arrived items to the bookstore, would take some of the racier editions of magazines and hide them in a small, nondescript corner of the bathroom. These secret artifacts were discovered after his dismissal for crimes, the nature of which I can't readily recall but cannot fathom were grosser than jacking it in the staff bathroom. They surprised almost no one. 

I never think about Cronus except for right this moment and I wonder whatever became of him. He left his oily trail on my memory apparently. In fact, I would think that if nothing else, someone who is oleaginous would be memorable to most people. I mean, they'd cringe in the remembering but that's something right? 

I'm currently paranoid that my hair looks oily and so will wash it thoroughly. Thanks for keeping me clean, Merriam Webster! By the by, Noah Webster looked like this and I'll let you pass your own judgement on his 'do. 






Thursday, September 4, 2014

"Getting fat on flav-o-fibes."


I'm posting this video in lieu of a longer post because I'm working many, many hours today and I've got a book to finish g'd it. Also, I'm feeling super silly and nothing is a better accessory to a silly  mood than my beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000. This video is edited to highlight the best scenes from one of the best episodes ever, "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank."









Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Three days from around ten years ago

I've mentioned (I think) before that I used to keep a journal online through another website. I don't really readily recall why I stopped writing in there except maybe I had fallen out of the habit after updating it regularly for about seven years. I'm glad I did it. I met so many wonderful people through that community, friends I met and hung out with in real life, people I dated, and those rare and wonderful friendships I maintain virtually only. I have at least five people in my online life whom I have never met in person but who I consider friends for many years. Is that odd? Maybe. But I'm happy they are there and that social media makes it so easy to maintain those virtual relationships right alongside old friends from my past and new ones from my present. Even though it is terrible, social media is wonderful.

Another thing I enjoy is mining the entries from that site. It is like peeking into my brain from 12 years ago. I'll sign into that account sporadically and I hope I'm not being annoying but I love this access to my past. I love reading about what I was doing/thinking about/wanting a decade ago. (Hint: drinking/men/men who drink). It reminds me of those halcyon days of city living and being in my twenties. Or rather, it allows me to look with considerable distance and insight at my twenties during a very unstable period in NYC when I was usually broke and depressed with halcyon colored lenses. And isn't that the same thing?

Anyway, I was digging through there today and thought for today's blog post, I'd share a few gems from various times. Apparently I wrote in almost exclusively lowercase letters back then. Excerpts from various entries are included below:

9/8/04:
saturday evening all my cousins and their SOs and nancy piled into my hot apartment where we ate pizza and drank beer and joked about life and each other and how lucky we are. then we all piled into the hot subway where we sweated and didn't talk at all for fear of sweating more.
we arrived in soho, got our tables and drank and drank and drank until we were so full of drink that going elsewhere to drink seemed like the best idea. and we did. and then we left five minutes after arriving. (mental note: don't return to the iguana club on 55th st.)
so then on the way home at 4am from the diner, i witnessed a couple fighting. he shoved her into a car and drove off. i hope she is ok. she did beat the crap out of him before being shoved into the car so i have high hopes.

I remember this night vividly. And I never did return to the Iguana Club on 55th Street though I cannot for the life of me remember why.

12/16/04:
i am weary of the machinations of female friendship. i am tired, tired sicktodeath of passive aggressive emails, constant introspection and self analysis and deprecation, suppression of urge in favor of even more self deprecation. i just want to ration the emotion and self loathing, save some for later, put a lid on the boiling pot, put it in a storage facility in long island city with a fucking month to month lease.

i want to hang out in a sports bar and talk about genitals and sports and swig whiskey. i want to be flattered and lauded silently through wandering eyes. i want to walk into a room and inhale testosterone.**

now where's my chewin' tobacco?

**not to be confused with body odor.

and though pablo neruda wrote this about being tired of being a man, i shall transform it to my needs as i think it applies well:

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

from walking around

ok?

I don't know for certain but I'm reasonably certain I know which of my former friends this email is about, considering we spent a huge percentage of our friendship arguing over email. Normally it didn't bother me so much but there were moments when I felt I had lost the plot and I truly craved the friendship of males for the sheer balance that creates. One is not better than the other, I don't think I ever thought that...I was just frustrated by passive aggression which is a staple with some people. I'm going to overlook the clear stereotyping I've done here because I'm still in touch with that frustration and sometimes I really do crave more male friendships. I've never really been that good at them for one reason or another.

3/21/05:
things i did on friday:

-displayed waterworks in front of n at benny's burritos. 
-drank $3 margaritas. 
-walked around greenwich village, perused an awesome tucked away, practically fossilized book shop 1/2 the size of my apartment.
-drank some more at the slaughtered lamb just before the roof erupted in a torrent of jacuzzi water from a place above the bar. 
-contemplated what it would feel like to be electrocuted by the still on television being slowly soaked by the torrent of jacuzzi water.
-added to the trillion memories n and i have at the slaughtered lamb that are both odd and wonderful at the same time.
-waited seventeen hours for a goddamned n train to arrive and take me to astoria.
-left a stupid, drunken and emabarassing voice mail for my sister since she pissed me off so much that afternoon (and i'm still feeling bad about it)
-fell asleep, fully clothed, with one shoe on my foot.

Yep. Pretty much.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Violent melting

Summer has decided to melt away violently. I didn't think that melting was a violent action but as I entered the hot wet mouth of outside this afternoon, I felt violated, shaken awake by the burning sensation. And whiny.

We've gotten through the last three months with barely a drop of sweat but now that it's September, we are all being taken into humidity's not so loving arms. Maybe it is because we have been spoiled all summer long, maybe we are always just humongous babies about either extreme heat or extreme cold but everyone's claws are out today at the library, including mine. Also, everyone decided to strip down to their crazy to show off how hard they've been working on it allllll summer long.

An example: There is a new face has begun to "grace" the library. He listens to his iPod loudly and it is usually speed metal and he talks to himself saying things like "It is such a shame they are all going to die soon. We have a jihad." He wears fatigues and carries what looks like a legit army regulation backpack. A colleague of mine helped him set up his apple ID and he put his birth date as: 6/6/66 but he doesn't look older than 30 or so. He is not rude or anything but there is a vibration around him that communicates wordlessly the following phrase: I am going to fly off the handle any second now. Sooo, that's pleasant.

Another example: There is a woman, let's call her the lady in black, who is a regular library user of the computers for god knows what. I know you think I mean she uses this particular library's computers regularly but no. No, I mean she uses most of the 60 or so libraries in this county on a more or less daily basis. She often asks us for the phone numbers and hours of various libraries as she's leaving here, in her daily uniform of black pants (with large, gaping holes in the thighs), cowboy boots, black t-shirt, cowboy boots and baseball cap. Her phone is constantly ringing. She will walk into the library in a frantic tumble of annoying noise, ask for a computer pass and on her way to the computer area her phone will ring. She will talk loudly at god knows who for 40 seconds, hang up and the phone will immediately ring again. We have tried to overhear her conversations, something we don't really have to reach to do since she is so loud and what we've gathered is that she is in the throes of a lawsuit and is in the process of suing someone over a car. Perhaps it doesn't translate well to text but this woman is pretty much the bane of my existence at this library. She is frantic and insane and she has holes in her pants and I've seen her expansive belly protrude from her shirts like a cracked alabaster globe. She demands phone number after phone number of library after library and in 11 years in this profession, I can firmly say that no one has annoyed me more than the lady in black! I am sincerely sighing aloud with relief that, though there is still some time left to go in my shift, she hasn't yet showed up today.

The crazies have now and always will populate the local public library. It is in the DNA of such an accessible institution, as it is with the NYC subway, bus stations and every gym I've ever visited. It just seems like they are on hyperdrive right at this moment. I don't normally feel unsafe behind the reference desk and honestly that probably has more to do with the physical barrier between me and the rest of the public (even if that "barrier" is waist high and easily breached). But on days like today when the crazy feels amplified and the sweaty masses just drip in those front doors, it just feels ominous. And it literally stinks.

Whenever I get nostalgic about my career, that is, the career as I imagined it would be when I was fresh out of library school, I just remember days like this, when the sweaty masses seem inflated to the point of bursting. I recollect easily that time a woman threw a computer monitor clear across the room, that time I was verbally harassed by a patron for not allowing him a fourth hour on the computer, that (those many) time(s) parents left their children at the library long past closing time and I just the strongest urge to violently melt into a puddle under the desk, forever losing contact with the crazy.

Then again, if this kind of crap didn't happen, what on earth would I have to write about on this, day 2 of Blog Every Day September?

Oh good, the lady in black is here.


Monday, September 1, 2014

LOFTE Syndrome

It is ironic that the acronym for "Blog Every Day September" is BEDS because on this, the first day of September, I have not left my bedroom and in fact have only just now, at 4:45 pm, have I changed out of my pajamas. I am not ashamed of this sequence of non-events; I am in fact in need of a day encased inside my pajamas, doing only a little at a time, like someone recovering from a long illness. The only long illness I've had recently is lack of full time employment (LOFTE Syndrome) and I don't need my pajamas to recover from that. I am, in fact, typing this from my bed...though I did eventually get dressed.

Anyway, I'm attempting to blog every day this month just because it is something to do that isn't in the name of procrastinating doing something else. That's as good a reason as any if you ask me, and because you are reading this blog post, you asked me. So there.

All laziness aside, I woke up this morning with an inexplicable feeling of optimism. It defies normal logic. There really hasn't been any tangible reason for a sudden shift in my normal mostly pessimistic with a dollop of optimism way of thinking. It isn't really a symbolic day for new beginnings (though Labor Day has always been viewed with dread by my mother as the beginning of the cold, dying and dead seasons) and it isn't like everyone is off from work today. We as a country still have the uncanny, greedy ability to force people to work on even Labor Day. I can't really pinpoint why I'm feeling so good. I suppose at some point during my lifetime, I'll learn to not analyze good things; it always spoils them.

I did get a few things accomplished without having to leave my bedroom. I filled two large garbage bags with clothes and shoes to give away. I've lightened my load. Maybe that's contributed to my metaphysical lightness, who can say? I've recently realized that I will soon have to move, for one reason or another. Either I'll get another job, requiring me to relocate or my lease will finish by February and as such, I need to not have a bunch of crap I don't use/need on hand. I prefer doing the activity of moving a little at a time than to wait until the night before and stuff things into boxes at random in exhaustion. Nothing good has ever come of that. Just ask the me of my college years when it was de rigueur to get blitzed the night before summer break, having not packed a single item in preparation of leaving the dorms at 8am. Basically what I learned from cleaning out these two bedroom closets is that I have a lot of crap that I don't need or use. You learn something new every day.

That is pretty much all I have to say about today which frankly, is kind of impressive since I didn't leave my bedroom. Expect thrilling adventures for the rest of September. Well, expect me to leave my bedroom. Maybe.