manhattan is beautiful when you fly in. all neat and organized. gridded and partitioned off perfectly and symmetrically. twinkling lights everywhere. if you are high enough you can see the entire eight mile strip lit up. sam said that new york is relatively dark on sunday nights. when some of the city lights actually get a night off. i wonder what that would look like. one of the things i miss about the city is how everything is open all the time. new york is also kind of fun in the summer. despite the sweltering heat. i probably can't complain much about the heat because i was lucky enough to only have to ride on the subway once (thanks sam and brian) so the heat wasn't terrible. sleeping in until noon or two helped too. the last two days i was there, the skies were perfectly pale blue and the clouds were plastic.



as always, new york was filled with friends, food and fun. and deep dark talks. and lounges. but no clubs this time around. thank goodness. i'm all clubbed out. i like the lounges though. i didn't eat at any of the usual places. no hot dogs. no republic. no sushi. very odd. but that meant we had a smorgasbord of mcdonald's fajitas, mexican corn, puerto rican chicken, amaretto cheesecake, falafel, and who knows what else. i miss street vendor peanuts.



amit had his moving out party on saturday. and then five of us had his moving in party on monday. which consisted of me and babbs being jammed in with the furniture while sam, vivian and amit rode up front, careening from 55th to 112th, hitting every pothole on the way. amit rented the most bootylicious moving van ever. everything was falling apart. we could see the brake lights click on and off from inside the van. and let's not get into the steering gauges and implements. which were missing, detached or wiggling around with reckless abandon.



babbs did his poetry thing at a little bit louder. and got mad love. as he always does. some of the other poets weren't so good. at least in my humble opinion. but it was an open mic so that's to be expected. i'm sick of love poems. just because it happens to you doesn't mean that it's the most important thing in the universe. and sex poems? unless it's good. stop it. then again, i'm discounting the courage of these people, who get up in front of a roomful of raucous people and open themselves up. that's deserving of a clap or two. or one.



i miss having too many people around. i miss wondering where we're gonna eat because we have fifteen people. i miss parties to go. i miss making stupid memories just by being. i don't think i stayed long enough. but i never do. think. that i'm staying long enough. thanks caroline and leslie for parking and actually coming into the airport to send me off. who does that anymore? usually it's just a drop off and a quick whatever and a goodbye. caroline, you're swell!

timere. sometimes, when i take out the trash behind my house, i get afraid. i lift the trash cans and do the awkward holding of arms really far away to prevent contaminants on my body thing. and then i duck walk with the trash can down to the curb. that way, i don't have to hear the dragging sound of dirty plastic on serrated concrete. that freaks me out sometimes. the dragging. i'm also afraid to get ants on me. but who isn't afraid of that? i always halfway expect someone to jump out from behind the trash cans. but honestly, who hangs out around ant infested suburban trash? irrational fear, it's the greatest.



this propensity for fear is probably another reason not to have kids.



i used to run sometimes, from mike's house to our house. even though it's only two blocks. i always look near the sewers for frogs. because frogs can move erratically, and you never know what they might do. frogs are clinically crazy man. in a related fear, i'm a little afraid of hong's driving. but for the record, he's an excellent driver. i'm not afraid of thunder though. i kind of like the thor rumbling action. lightning is way cool too.



the most intense fear i've ever felt was back at avalon. when we walked into the community room and i thought i saw someone scary sitting on the couch, in front of the TV. in my defense, it was very dark. and it was very late, or very early. and heather was dead scared too. but probably only because i jumped backwards into her. i wish i could xena battle cry like sharon. that seems like a good skill to have.

it's so easy to hurt people. inadvertently. on purpose. whatever. i seem to be extraordinarily good at it. there's a part of me that absolutely scares myself. the capability to hurt someone. and to not understand why. and to not prevent it. or fix it. as someone pointed out, that would imply, and logically lead to, the fact that "i don't care when i hurt someone." is that true? i'm not quite willing to go into answering that question yet.



actually, to go back a step. i do understand. when i hurt someone. usually i understand why i hurt someone. i might miss the details but i'm smart enough and empathic enough to sense sadness. the terror of it all is that i hardly respond. or i prevent myself from responding. even when i sometimes know i should. thus leading to confusion. and frustration. i'm utterly capable of putting things on the back burner. i can have things weighing on my mind while doing other "insignificant" things as well. like having absolute fun. it's like a personality disorder that doubles as a super power. i go into the phone booth trenchcoated and emerge in plain underwear. as opposed to the super kind. if things are bothering me, shouldn't i try to take care of it right away? as opposed to hemming and hawing and dealing with it in my own sweet time? while leaving plot strings dangling left and right?



i'm also excellent at avoiding confrontations. or just avoiding altogether. consciously or unconsciously. i'm not sure i like resolutions. i'm not sure i like thinking. because thinking would lead to answers. and sometimes answers aren't necessary. or wanted. or sometimes, maybe it's because i already know the answer. and i don't like the answer. so i avoid the conversation. until i'm hammered into a corner, and i have to deal with it. i'm not complex. i'm indecisive.



i think i'm totally and inherently inconsiderate. in all the important things. i can open doors. offer water. present pillows. i can be hospitable. and nice. but considerate. sometimes not. geez. i'm not even convinced i'm totally against this side of myself. then again, maybe i should dig more deeply into this side of myself. before i settle on any conclusions. this is what i do. i bring in millions of material witnesses to stall the jury. i hesitate. i hop back and forth from one side of the fence to the other. i blow cigarette smoke into and out of my lungs. and call that thinking. maybe i should quit.

it's in the cards. i've never been whupped so hard at anything i expect to be decent at. i've never full on played spades before. i've seen it a few times. but still. i was terrible. babbs and leslie doubled us. us is me and sam. but mostly, it was me (i made some bonehead plays and i think sam wanted to kill me. thanks for not killing me sam). course we were getting the worst cards ever but can bad luck account for everything? maybe. actually, in this case, i'm 90% convinced we just had terrible karma. but enduring a few hours of super losing was a new experience. i don't think i've ever lost so consistently at something. losing again and again. rinse and repeat. i felt helpless and almost dumb. but then the super ego returned and life righted itself. and then we proceeded to get creamed by babbs and les again, in some romanian card game. i'm never going to vegas. i'm bad luck. either that or i just straight suck. let's go with the bad luck option. it smells better.

gadgets and gizmos aplenty. i'm trying to become my own psychologist, instead of relying on my friends (well, one friend in particular). i admire and wonder how girls (and some guys) can figure out their emotions and feelings exactly. like trace and pinpoint things from effect down to cause. i know what i think about lots of things. but i get lost sometimes when it comes down to how i feel. or how i'm affected by something. i think i allow fifty percent of myself to shine through. but i'm not really hiding the other fifty percent. i'm hiding maybe twenty five percent. the other twenty five percent is just confusion. so i guess there's a missing twenty five percent of myself that is just hazy and undiscovered. virgin country. maybe it's better to have a quarter of me undiscovered. to know oneself perfectly would be highly disappointing (not to mention incriminating). and maybe i resist diving into that last twenty five percent because of that exact reason. james bond isn't shagadelic just because he's cool. he's an international man of mystery too. with cooler gadgets than me though. maybe i'll be able to colonize and exploit myself soon.



i'm absolutely terrible when trying to explain something about myself. when it doesn't concern what i think or what i think i think. i'm best at giving opinions. i have lots of opinions. not many personally applicable answers, but i'm chock full of opinions. and theories. got plenty of those. a digm a dozen.

ana·chronic discrepancy between the chronological order of events and the order in which they are related in a plot.

off to new york. be back in a week. yip.