You can't go home again but even when you do, you try to figure out how to go on tour with a band

I've spent an inexcusable amount of time lately trying to figure out ways I can follow Arcade Fire on tour for the rest of 2014. It turns out they are playing in many cities that house people I know and can crash with, however, the one minor snag in my plan to spend my life dancing to my favorite band in the world is that I have yet to figure out how to finance such a venture and how to justify that existence to my parents. I may be almost 40, but unless I was to spread out my life beneath the haze of an umbrella made of umbrella smoke, I wouldn't be able to look into my mother's disappointed eyes like mirrors. Haven't I done enough by denying her a grandkid??? Over the weekend I met a lot of new people and two of them were a couple who literally said the following: "We don't know what we'll be doing this year yet because the Phish schedule hasn't come out yet." I chuckled and thought my judgey thoughts but honestly, it was only because I'm jealous. I might be safe for now because Arcade Fire doesn't have a Phish-ish following. Yet.

In unrelated news, this happened in January. Without fanfare. And I just found out about it this morning when someone shared the link to that article on Facebook. I found out about the shutting down of 7A in exactly the same way, also a few months after that happened and also because someone randomly posted it on Facebook. (Facebook. Erasing my past, one link at a time.) I actually teared up. Not because I'm a big hot dog fan or anything but because that place used to be across the street from the Barnes and Noble bookstore where I worked in 1999, freshly arrived to NYC with no money and no plans. I ate there when I was truly broke which was always. I was so sad to hear that Barnes and Noble closed last year and after I made yet another visit to a Greenwich Village that has morphed into something wholly unrecognizable to me, I think I finally understand that Thomas Wolfe was right. You can't go home again. It is just one more shuttered place in a city that, while always kinetic, has been in hyper drive the past decade and is barreling headfirst into a future I don't recognize and won't really be a part of and that kinda hurts.

And the thought of that book was a diving board. I heard the reverberation as I belly flopped into a handful of memories from that time in my life. I was reading "You Can't Go Home Again" when I first started at Barnes and Noble. And even though I didn't finish it and the pages of my copy have yellowed, I associate that book with commuting from Washington Heights on the A train alllll the way down to West 4th and that dirty, loud tunnel that greets you when get there. I talked about that book with the tall beardy Russian art school kid with whom I shared a Grey's Papaya hot dog with once, coincidentally enough. And it wasn't some deep analysis of the book or anything but because I had the hots for him, I've made it so in my memory. What more than likely happened was he asked what I was reading and then we likely made out in a booth at the Slaughtered Lamb. (And I can't bring myself to look up whether or not that place still exists. It was a hangout for me because they were lax about underage drinkers there and even though I was of age, most of my friends weren't.) Then I spent, like, an hour cringing because of how that whole debacle ended and I actually am craving a hot dog right now. But I can't justify eating one. Had I known the place was closing, I'd have gone for one last recession special. I'd have gone across the street to buy a book from the bargain bin and who knows? I may have run into a familiar face or two. Honestly, all of that would have depressed me even more, in a tangible way so maybe it is better that it depresses me from 50 miles away.

See, if I'd been following Arcade Fire on tour, I never would have even read that article! The cure to mild, depressing nostalgia is clear.

Meh. What's going on with you? Want to go get a hot dog?

Moron, at the very least

I've lately been settling into my life in a way that sometimes sends me into a panic. Panic brought on by contentment? I'm a walking oxymoron. Or moron at the very least. It's just that  I've grown so accustomed to whatever the opposite of contentment is...malcontent discontent, agitation, that looking around me instead of looking over and above me is having a strange effect. I am not used to not wanting more. I guess my subconscious is dealing with these calm waters by inventing things for me to be anxious about. This morning, in the middle of fretting about something that literally had no consequence whatsoever on my or any one else's life, I stopped myself. I was in the car at a red light and I just turned up the music and sang along and blocked out whatever it was (I totally remember what it was but it really is so stupid that I can't be bothered to relate it) and got to work, feeling really good.

Yet I distrust good feelings, rare as they are and even typing this, I grow frustrated and just how stupid I am sometimes. I tend to go from feeling good, to feeling distrust about feeling good, to feeling bad about not just feeling good, to your everyday standard stasis of existential dread. Right now I still feel really good but I had to blog about how I am not enjoying feeling good. Sigh. I'm okay with being a neurotic person; I just hope I'm at least a little bit amusing about it.

And so my brain has arrived in a place that looks not unlike the aftermath of every New Year's Eve party I've ever attended: everywhere there are clues that I had fun at some point but all I'm left with is a feeling that I should be ashamed, that I've said or done something embarrassing, some unease with unknowable origins. Because how can I just feel good without paying for it? What sort of unsettled thought will visit me any moment now? Is this residual Catholic guilt or does everyone feel this?

Every morning lately, I wake up with determination. I will get X, Y and Z done today and I will be able to file it away inside the COMPLETED folder. I will have a long day full of sunlight. But then I get out of bed and see it is still dark out, still time to meditate on things rather than do them, still time to sleep. I want to feel spring but I find myself fighting the faint echoes of winter in an involuntary, truly irritating way. And because I am still thinking, thinking, thinking instead of DOING, I'm starting to let the sound of my own wheels drive me crazy. I'm ignoring my contentment and instead projecting imagined agitation onto the world around me, seeing patterns and connections in the utterly arbitrary. On Monday I awoke to to light flurries falling from the dark sky. Simultaneously, there were birds chirping. The world had been reborn into daylight savings time just one day before. The days are prepared to be longer but the morning is so black...

I'm comforted that sometimes I can find "proofs" of identity crisis in nature.

I spend an unhealthy amount of time wishing we could will things into being, speed them along somehow. I'd have finished my novel (or started it in earnest).I'd be settled and really feel and appreciate it, just because I wanted to be. I'd have my days organized and to do lists with guaranteed completion or my money back. And Persephone, would have come back up weeks ago because we've all just missed her so much around here.

Oscarz Par-T

I had a late night last night and for the first time in a long time, I overdid it with the wine intake. Unlike most times when I find myself overindulging in the sauce, I didn't expect to nor did I set out to. I'll use my favorite explanation, which just happens to be the truth here: it just happened. I saw a wine I liked, and I went for it.

I volunteered to work at the Oscar viewing party at my local theater. This was the second year they had this event which is just what you imagine it is: the Oscar ceremony on the big screen, raffles, prizes, gourmet bites and unlimited booze. It is a great event that promotes the theater, brings together the community and gets a lot of support from local businesses, and one really famous local face, Isabella Rosselini (she is ethereal and a type of beautiful that is unreal). I had a great time last night but if I'm still living here next year and if they ask me to work the party again I will do it and I will take the next day off from work.

I had to get up at the ass crack hour on Sunday morning to help with set up and decorations for the evening. The theater was turned into a sleek dining room, covered in stars and our own giant picture of Oscar. I was cranky and unshowered but the whole setup took about two hours and was helped along by Louisiana blues being pumped through the speakers. I may start doing all my chores with blues in the background. Anyway, after we were done we all went home to get gussied up and returned, red carpet laid down, lights turned low and wine bottles opened. My mistake was having a glass early. It was like turning on a spigot.

My job was coat check girl. It was an easy enough responsibility: greet the guests, get their coats and direct them to check in at the back of the theater. I embraced so much fur and wool, inhaled so much perfume and felt a perma-smile forming on my face over the course of the evening. I deeply dislike fur and about 95% of perfumes on the market but damnit if I didn't feel just like a little girl hiding behind the sofa eavesdropping on her parents dinner party. I decided I liked that feeling and I liked working the coat check. Everyone was so happy to be out and about of an evening. I liked seeing couples dressed up,wives adjusting ties on their husbands, husbands helping their wives out of their coats...that I liked best. It seems like such a simple, thoughtful gesture. I may be worn out from this winter which refuses to quit, from shrugging in and out of layers upon layers over layers under coats. But it occurred to me that no one has ever done that for me. I carry fierce independence around with me all the time and by no means do I need any help with that sort of thing but I felt the tiniest hairline fracture in my heart. From...what? Regret? Jealousy? Wine buzz melancholy?

The ceremony was overlong but it was amusing. I had seen most of the nominated films and performances and most awards went as I expected them to. I didn't really expect Gravity to be so divisive a film. Some people in attendance really hated it and that is beyond me. I mean I hated American Hustle but I can see why people liked it. It just wasn't my cup of tea. The people in attendance last night who hated Gravity seemed to just hate it without seeing any redeeming quality. It's worst offense was that it was "boring" which perplexes me. Are we all so jaded now that a space adventure is boring?? In fairness, I had a pretty good buzz going so I may be misremembering the conversations. After about hour four, things begin to get hazy in my brain and if I was creating a timeline for last night I'd skip ahead to waking up this morning, fully dressed, my pillow my own personal shroud of Turin. I barely got out of bed in time to make it to work this morning and I've felt listless all day.
I can only thank winter (as unlikely as that statement feels to say) for sparing me the need to shovel my car out this morning. I would have turned around and come back inside.

Ironically enough, I got quite a lot of work done at work today. I had lunch with my grandparents, newly arrived from Honduras after a few months away to escape the cold and it sure was nice to see them. But by 4:30 I was checked out mentally and ravenous. My body made my decisions for me. Thai takeout, a few Law and Order episodes and cat cuddles. That's what it could handle and that's what I let it do. And it is now 9:30 and it is time for me to go to bed, in pajamas this time.

Sprain

It is definitely March 1st. March is one of those months that teases you into expecting an instantaneous end to a long season but never really delivers. It always promises green grass and green beer and white shoes but usually just barely coughs out the sun and even when it manages that, it usually hides behind a phlegmy gray sky. April is usually where it's at. I always forget that. Considering it is unbearably cold today, as it has been nearly every single day this entire winter, it is business as usual. I am trying to get past it all by reading ee cummings, working (just what in the hell else is new) and thinking about soup.

In true uncharacteristic fashion, I've outlined my budget for the next three months. It was like being inside a bouncy house. Correction: it was like ME at 10 years old, being inside a bouncy house: nauseated and with the full expectation that I'd sprain my ankle at some point. In terms of my budget, ankle sprain=going broke. But if my calculations are correct, I'll be ok until the end of June. By the end of May, rumor has it that my full time job will let everyone know if they can expect to be employed in the coming fiscal year. So, I'm not saying that is a looming doom that hangs over the heads of everyone in employment but... I personally have been envisioning all the book shelves toppling over one by one each time I walk through the library. So there's that.

I'm reaching back to the small corners in my memory for information to compile a status report on the first two months of 2014 and all I can come up with is how cold I've been. I can't remember not being cold. Even when I'm snuggled up in my bed under layers of clothes, two cats and three blankets, including a down comforter, I feel cold. Yet things did happen this year so far. After five and a half years, I left a part time job with little to no fanfare.  My director did not even acknowledge I was leaving. So, GREAT use of five years of my life there. I don't like to burn bridges, much less in a public blog, but there was only a fraction of ounce of love lost on my side of things. I'll miss a few people but honestly, I am so glad to be out of there. I already feel lighter and happier and, if not optimistic, then not totally negative. And all despite the fact that I am making a lot less money now.

And I started a new job, too. And things here are 180 degrees away from where I left and so far I love the absence of pessimism. It does feel like I imagine a second marriage to feel: you're still excited and hopeful, but it is tempered. I feel very even here. Feeling even is a welcome respite from my natural state of feeling slightly Tower of Pisa (so please, be kind if I'm a mess) and I'm grateful for a port in the storm.

As usual, I feel full of ideas at the moment. This is the 11am me. I would like to get into the habit this month of being the 11am me at 6pm, but only because my free moments usually land around then. Also, for the past few years, when the sun goes down, my body and brain transition automatically into "useless" mode after dinner. Considering I'm not getting younger, even with my projected death date being sixty one years away (give or take an hour), I feel the need to take each moment and use the crap out of it.

And on that eloquent note, it is lunch time. Happy March.

Magnet

I fully expect the afterlife to contain certain things. Avocados, Brahms, Frank O'Hara, padron peppers, everyone's pets, just a few examples. Another example would be that the concept of time would unfold as a succession of free days, during which one can wander the traffic free, clean, temperate streets of NYC, stopping at tea houses and happy hour spots with every single person that ever gave you a warm feeling in your life. If that doesn't sound nice to you, I just don't know what does.

However, until I get to the afterlife, and just on the slightly off chance that there isn't one, I've decided to play hooky and meet Nancy in the Village for tea, macarons, shared writing time and other Friday diversions. Those diversions may or may not include alcohol at some point. I can't shake the feeling, traveling as I do from Long Island, that I go on a mini vacation every time I come to NYC for a day trip. I feel slightly like a character in a Jane Austen novel who has been invited to stay in London for a week with her cosmopolitan friend. I will, of course, look for Willoughby at the ball happy hour later.

Then, of course, there is the neighborhood. I swear the West Village exists in a vacuum or rather, I keep this neighborhood in a tiny enclosed space in my brain, a buzzing, slushy, concrete village inside a souvenir globe, frozen in place in 1999-2000. I might even see myself there in the background, 23 and clad in a long black skirt and Doc Martens inside the Slaughtered Lamb on a Tuesday night. Sigh. When time is gone, where does it go?

Last weekend when my sister was visiting, we were having the umpteenth conversation about whether or not I can/will/want to relocate back to the city. I have exhausted myself in the debate. Actually, I've just confirmed with a reliable source that one cannot debate oneself. I am, however, as exhausted from thinking about it as I would be under a spotlight, stood behind a podium in a navy blue blazer, fresh from a road trip on a school bus.

When I'm carrying out my life fifty miles away from here, I feel settled. As it happens, everything in my soul rebels against settling, as evidenced by my undying restlessness. When I am on my way here or arrived here, I feel the pace and the energy and neurotic mass of movement and I feel: home. But is home always what is best for us? Especially when home costs so much fucking money? Anyway, my sister thinks that moving to the city has, at this point, become some sort of Utopia for me in that a)I think it will make me happier than I've ever been (despite the fact that I was born a restless person and that when I lived here, I often fantasized about leaving) and b) that it will not, in fact, make me happy in and of itself. She gave me some insight into the fact that if I did finally decide to come back, I should do so with the full knowledge that I'm still bringing myself, restlessness, grass is greener mentality and unsettled nature included. And she's right. Life in the city is not going to inject instant contentment. Nothing will.

But try to convince my brain of this, when I'm cozy with my laptop and a pot of tea on one of the oldest streets in Manhattan and right outside my door it is still 1999 and I'm still in my 20s and my hair is long and I share an apartment that overlooks the Hudson and the world is my freshly shucked oyster.

Ok, so maybe I'm a little mired in nostalgia. And maybe that means I shouldn't move back into the city expecting life here to not have changed. I can't help it. New York is the world's biggest magnet and I think I might have little pieces of metal in my bloodstream. The moral of the blog post is that I should probably see a doctor.

Senescence

• senescence
• \sih-NESS-unss\

• DEFINITION

noun

1

: the state of being old : the process of becoming old

2

: the growth phase in a plant or plant part (as a leaf) from full maturity to death

Today's word of the day is one I have always loved but rarely get the chance to use in everyday conversation. I put it in a poem once, using the second definition but if it is ever going to work in a standard conversation, it is going to have to be about getting old. For example: "I am not old. I am in senescence." Typing that out brought to my mind, for some weird reason, an image of being enveloped inside a web like cocoon, just like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings and as a result, maybe I don't want to use it in reference to myself in a conversation.

Getting old.

Also, when I say the word out loud, I'm actually surprised that there was not one band in the 90s that used this for their name. How could one not love a word that calls to mind so many things? What? Not everyone is a fucking dork? Ok, then.

Though I have no particular need to, I have thrown myself headfirst into work. Most of this I owe to other people making my schedule and some of it I owe to a deep panic about making less money. Still, there is a small part of it that has to do with my desire to create things and I'm holding on to that with white knuckles. The tight grip feels good though. It isn't fraught with "I want to do so many things but have no time" anymore. It is fraught with "I'm going to do this if it kills me." Sometimes raw determination, generally the very last stage of creativity before imploding, is what I need. Or a looming deadline. Either way, I am making every effort to not be idle.

Very few things hasten the state of senescence like working all the time. Yet when I'm extraordinarily lazy all the time I feel too old to be doing it. For example, the other week when I my local world was having its identity iced out by the unforgiving mean girl of winter and I lucked into a few snow days, I did nothing. I didn't leave the house, didn't clean up my apartment, didn't really write much. I watched movies, read some magazines. At the end of those few days, I felt worn out and old, too old to be that unproductive. When early evening rolls around and I'm wearing the same thing I wore when dawn broke, it feels like I'm one step closer to being gone forever. Of course it is a truth that just is on every day that passes but at the very least when I go to work, I can distract myself enough into thinking that at least I'll have done some small thing that will be evidence that I was there. I know it is all so stupid but it is how I've been feeling lately. So I suppose I'm grateful for the neverending work.

And because I'm a little bit of a masochist (who isn't?) I may blog every day next month. I'm not 100% on that yet though because in my senescence, I have grown fickle and noncommittal. No, I was always noncommittal. I just admit it now.

I long to have something interesting to impart in this entry but alas, I was just trying to kill some time during a lull at work. But it isn't strictly a "lull". I have things that need doing but no motivation to do them. Here is a real time snapshot of my desk and all of those papers represent something I need to process in some way, the magazines are trade journals I need to read through. On a scale of "I can't wait to do that" and "I'd rather sleep", I'm at a level "I want to run. I want to hide. I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside."

Challengers

This morning I had to stop in the supermarket before work to pick up some healthy snacks, having run out of everything this week (apparently this happens to your refrigerator and cabinets when you don't eat out all the time, who knew?) and as has been well documented on this blog, I love supermarkets and how they are a microcosm of everyone's randomness. I love how you can surmise someone's truth from what they lay down on that automatic moving belt to the cashier. Well this morning it seemed I was all alone in the store, apart from the people who work there but fear not, randomness occurred. The store was playing an 80s radio station and "Welcome to the Jungle" was on at full volume. So as I plowed through the mounds of oranges freshly arrived from the other side of the country just looking for least genetically modified looking one (LGMLO), Axl Rose was howling like it was 1987 on the Sunset Strip. There are few things more incongruous than hair metal and pushing a rusty supermarket cart, looking for specials.

In other news, I haven't blogged much. I have been insanely busy. This coming year promises to be nonstop. I can't say this upsets me but sometimes I'd like a moment to breathe. I am beginning to understand, however, that this is how I fill up my own personal void; I drown it out with work and places I have to go to and people I have to see. I suppose there are worse ways to fill the void. I can, however, see this becoming a problem at some point but that point has not arrived so let's just plug up our ears and la-la-la for awhile, mkay?

Despite my days being nonstop, I have been doing some introspection. I don't think I am capable of living a full day without being sucked into my own navel. I know it annoys me so I cannot even imagine what it does for my close friends and family members. Mostly what I've been thinking about lately is challenges. Specifically, how I tend to avoid challenges at all costs.

I'm always a little awed by people who take challenges without being forced to. I have met so many people who willingly take on challenges, whether it is mental, emotional or physical and lately I've come to realize that that concept is almost completely foreign to me. I try to learn new things all the time but the things I try to learn are almost always things I am almost completely positive I can do. For example, the last time I truly challenged myself to do something, it was a few years ago and it involved weight loss. In fact, nearly all my physical challenges involve weight loss, but not a specific exercise goal like running a 5k or lifting a particular weight amount or even getting to a goal number on the scale. My "goals" are always nondescript and general. "I'd like to lose around 20 pounds." I think subconsciously I've always wanted to keep things like that general so that if I didn't hit the exact goal, it would feel less like failure. I know I can lose around a number of pounds so I give myself that leeway; I am very easy on myself and I'm beginning to feel like this is a detriment.

This is something I would really like to change. I'd like to set specific goals and then I'd like to work really hard to meet them. I don't really know what that feels like. People have said "well you finished graduate school!" What I rarely admit is how easy graduate school was for me. At worst I found it time consuming but when it came to grasping the concepts and doing what needed to be done to finish the coursework, I always had the suspicion that I was doing something wrong precisely because it was incredibly easy for me. I think I may have intentionally picked the degree that was easiest and I intentionally ignored the one that I was most passionate about just in case I didn't do well. Classic avoidance.

Ok, so now I know that I want to challenge myself. What should I do? I don't want to be forced into doing something that challenges me. I want to be the master of my own fate (or at least believe in the illusion of control that drives so many people.) What is more than likely going to end up happening is that I will come up with a bunch of different scenarios and I'll dissect them all into tiny little parts that become so distorted by my breaking them down that I no longer recognize them as challenges and I'll have lost interest by then. THIS IS WHAT I DO. See how annoying this is?

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about. What have you been thinking about?

Oh and for no other reason than the word "challenge" reminds me of it, here's the video to the beautiful New Pornographers song.