on the melodrama of it all:

sometimes i get swept up in it, and that's kind of fun for a while.

but sometimes i am absoultely not swept up in it, and instead i watch it and that's not fun, per se, but it makes me smile, the real inside, eyes shining smile. NOW seems like a peculiar time to be watching it and moreover a peculiar time to be smiling, given current life events that it would seem to me should be more, say, affecting, but hey, I'll take it. (Forgive the ambiguity- sorry, but that's all you're gonna get. : ) )

the notion that just crossed my mind? its this, this strange part of me that can just step out and appreciate the lifeyness of it all as its unfolding that makes life- all of life- beautiful to me. even a good tragedy can be appreciated when you're looking outside in rather than inside out.

here's to life, and to seeing what makes it wonderful. : )

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/weekinreview/18zernike.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=df5a2bb5d32eae0e&ex=1195707600

I love this. I don't have time to write about it now, but I love it so much, I have to put it up now. So that not one more second goes by without people I love having a chance to access it through me. Read it!!!!!


“There’s a difference between love as it is presented in movies and music as this jazzy sexy thing that involves bikini underwear and what love actually turns out to be,” said the psychologist Mary Pipher, whose book “Another Country” looked at the emotional life of the elderly. “The really interesting script isn’t that people like to have sex. The really interesting script is what people are willing to put up with.”

“Young love is about wanting to be happy,” she said. “Old love is about wanting someone else to be happy.”

It is amazing- but then again, when I reflect on being human and being alive and the phenomenal propensity for adaptation that such a condition engenders, not so amazing- that I have started to find certain elements of this city, in a way, comforting. Not that I want to call it home for too much longer…but. But what?

I will explain, or at least make an effort to do so, but first I will digress. Because that is my way. : )

[Digression]: I think like a writer. I’m not sure if everyone does this or not, but a great deal of my day to day experience translates itself into neat- No, actually, not neat at all; massively disorganized, rather, adjectives and adverbs and other ways of making thoughts into black and white letters into words that might somehow make someone else understand whatever experience strikes me as worthy of translation. And in fact, making these words neat, or at least neat enough so as to be readable, to convey something entirely unique in terms universal, is the struggle, isn’t it? ([Digression within digression- on struggling]: Home Movie: Kelsey, 2 and a half years old. Christmas present- not opening easily. 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, four. Kelsey is still struggling. Sisters kindly try to help. Kelsey refuses; she is adamantly committed to a lesson apparently learned earlier that morning… “But…but Daddy says it’s good for me to struggle with the tape!” Note that I have no idea if I got the present open, or how long it took. I wonder….)

Okay. Enough digression. What a random one that (those?) was (were?); in fact, I might recommend rereading the first paragraph and then skipping directly to the one below. : )

Lately I’ve developed the habit of trying to categorize moments and experiences that seem particularly representative of New York into things I love and things I hate, largely as a result of a thought I had regarding the formatting of my thoughts into a little post/essay about living here. Obviously the neat little formatting deal I was going for- bulleted lists, short and sweet, straight forward- isn’t happening. Such is life.

Something funny kept happening as I tried to categorize. Most things, save just a couple, fit equally well in either category. I love hate the way Central Park is always perfectly beautiful, groomed and polished every single morning for maximal loveliness. Love that it is in fact lovely, hate that it is so groomed. I love hate the way that the unbelievable population density of this island means that a single individual is easily overlooked. If I wish to satisfy that universal human longing to be a fly on the wall, the invisible observer, no problem. I need only to sit quietly upon a bench and open my eyes. But if I have that other universal human longing, to be granted a real smile, to meet with my eyes another seeking pair, I am not so easily satiated. But the city's failure in this very regard spawns another thing to love- the way that, by simply acknowledging someone, by insistently meeting a stranger’s eyes and delivering a one second smile, I can fulfill a basic human need far too long unmet. I love hate the way that my neighbor guys say I’m like Jennifer Aniston, because I’m it, the token blonde haired, blue eyed girl of my block. I love hate the subway on rainy days- hate it because, frankly, it sucks, but love it because of the way it equalizes all the passengers by redefining our previsouly disparate commutes as the same battle with nature from which we’re determined to emerge triumphant. Not to mention that I have rain boots that are bright blue with sunflowers, and life simply CANNOT be taken too seriously while you’re wearing bright blue sunflower covered boots. Sometimes I think I should wear them even when it’s not raining. I love hate that sometimes I do, because no one ever seems to know what the weather is going to be like in New York. And I love hate the way this city makes you love hate it. How frustrating, how wonderful that everything just is and it’s up to you to twist it upside down and inside out and all around and turn it into something deserved of your intense love hatred.

That said, without further ado, the two things I could come up with that fit without question into the I hate category:

Penn Station at Rush Hour; AKA Frogger in real life. I take a deep breath and go for it, a straight shot from the subway turnstile to my train platform, but always, always, always, I am foiled by an inevitable smash into an overweight, tired out, unfriendly businessman. Game over!

Too far from my family and where I came from. (But don’t take it personally Manhattan.)

That is all.

But think more about love hate. Isn't it interesting that these words can be used interchangably so often, and that they depend only upon the subject of a sentence and not at all upon the object? And who knew that the rules of grammar could have so much to do with the rules of life?????????

: )

It occurs to me that great writing requires a level of candor I am not at all sure is conducive to great living, and therefore, I have made a decision to reclaim these unruly fingers of mine for a bit.

My apologies to you all, my legions of fans (great writing also requires some imagination), but in the interest of preventing bella calamitas, I'm done for a bit.

Ironic that I should compose and publish that first post this morning after having picked up Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses last night. As is of course my way, I had no idea, at least not consciously, what I was getting into when I got into it. I was at Penn Station, my train was delayed, and I decided I really had to have a book at that very moment, even though I hate to spend the money when I know I can order it for a tenth of what it will cost at the book store. But there is some value in immediate satisfaction, so I went to the shelves and picked out what I wanted and proceeded up to the register to buy it. The guy took my charge card and casually reminisced about when he used to have to keep Rushdie's book hidden under the counter...I didn't get it, he tried to tell me about it, I still didn't really get it, but I nodded so as to seem less ignorant. I told him I remembered now...in fact, I probably have heard all about it before and have just folded- or perhaps more accurately, crumpled- up that piece of knowledge and tucked it away in some semi-conscious crevice in the strange labyrinth that is my brain...

But I did a little reading about Mr. Rushdie today in order to inform a more conscious and usable portion of my brain...

Talk about writing and words and ideas and consequences...

I think I may have more to say about this someday soon, or maybe just someday...

Some people create trouble for themselves by speaking too freely. Words spill out of these peoples' mouths as though they have a will independent of the owner of the lingual equipment that forms them, and you cannot help but feel at least some sympathy for that bewildered owner as his face twists into an impressionist display of the helplessness resulting from the disconnect of his mind and his tongue...

I, fortunately, do not have this issue.

What is unfortunate is that I have this other disconnect, between my mind and my fingers, and they just start writing...and, oh god, what have i written, and why, oh why, is it so damn easy to put it out there..............?????? These letters just start making these words just start making these ideas, these sentences and then, "click!" And it's out there, and I'm out there, all of my carefully constructed personal boundaries betrayed by my fingers.

At least when people talk, they can count on the inadequacy of human memory to eventually forgive them. But writing...oh writing! It endures...