quiet places

I have been going out alone of late. New York has places where you can sit alone and feel entirely comfortable. Narrow dark places with candlelight, where the staff is laidback, friendly and infinitely patient. Where you can sit and savor your life without feeling in anyway strange or self-conscious. Where you are somehow insulated such that you don't have to give a shit what anyone says or thinks of you - so you don't.

There are few (perhaps no) vast open spaces here that make you feel like you are alone and at one with existence here. But there are small quiet places that somehow make space. That make you feel like you can hear your heart and take a breath, be still.

And of late, I have been thinking that I wish that I could bottle this sensation and take it with me to remind me that at one time in my life I was here. I was really here and it was, even, at times, delicious.

Which makes me think of a scene from the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's" so described in an article by David Dunlap:

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY looked wistfully on the face of Manhattan as she prepared to depart for Rio. "Years from now, years and years, I'll be back," she declared. "Me and my nine Brazilian brats. I'll bring them back, all right. Because they must see this."

The power of imagination

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

-Barack Obama

do not disturb

It's 1:41am on the A train and people are tired.
Solitary bodies bundled and leaning, chin into chest, temple to window, eyes closed, slightly swaying to irregular rocking.

New York is tired.
The train is almost warm.
Not quite
but if you raise your shoulders high and scrunch your neck low, it feels like something.

New York is tired. Just worn out.
Seeking silence unable to hold on
to the state of waking.

Jarred by the periodic announcements of obvious things through the loudest of crackling speakers slightly muffled by the preaching of the shouting poet demanding your guilt, your shame, your conscience and your cash, all without rhyme, or meter, or one image, even, to snuggle up to.

Jackass.

Shoulders slumping and sagging because the trip is long
and you can't always hold on - sometimes it gets away from you.

Holding a book open, words unseen trailing off with lids aflutter.
Body curled and reclined across three seats, hands holding, enclosing but unclenched. Winter is long and silence, sleep, respite is rare - stolen occassionally in the soft intake of air, underground on orange seats.

Not fit for social interaction

I am in this weird phase where I can't take a compliment. I can't even recognize them when offered.

*sigh*

Time to audit Communication 101: the art of listening.

A Daddy complex?

I will admit that the major major crush that I have on Kevin Smith colors my opinion of all of his movies. That being said, I just watched "Jersey Girl." And I really liked it. The Sweeney Todd scene is HILARIOUS. Makes the movie. No question.

I have developed some new crushes recently and on older men. Go figure. Perhaps this is a breakthrough.

I am the last person to discover just how delicious Colin Firth is. I always knew that he was a good looking man. But in "Mama Mia" I found that I couldn't take my eyes off of him whenever he was on camera.



And after watching "Dan in Real Life" following "Little Miss Sunshine" I have thing for Steve Carrell too.



There seems to be this growing genre of sensitive single Dad movies: Jersey Girl, Dan in Real Life, Definitely Maybe. The marriage is out of the picture and the movie focuses on father's and daughters - very disney.

I am not sure who they are supposed to appeal to, probably single women in their late 30's who melt at the thought of a man who can nurture. Come to think of it, Colin Firth played one of these sensitive single dads in "Then She Found Me."

Oh no. It must be the hormones talking. That and the cheesy movies.

your own personal -----------------

"I subscribe to Krishnamurti's principle... he said that "we need four billion religions." Now that number is up to 6.5 billion - a religious tradition for everyone on the planet, 6.5 billion paths to God."

-Rob Brezny

life at low resolution

My new year's resolutions for 2009 were to: 1. love my life and 2. be less frumpy.

Five days into these resolutions I am in the throes of sick. The kind of sick where you are weak and sweaty, have no appetite, everything tastes icky and you just feel out of sorts. I spent the whole weekend sleeping and watching crap on Netflix while playing minesweeper very badly. I pretty much blew myself up all over the place. I was in fact too delirious to really track what I was doing ... But it was strangely compelling.

And I snapped my eye glasses in half this morning on the way to work. I am trying to see through them with a strip of electrical tape holding them together. With my astigmatism, the fact that they are not precisely joined or firmly cemented together makes the world look that much more wiggly and weebly. Is the Universe trying to tell me that I am a powerful creature who, not knowing her own strength, must be gentle and patient with the world? Or is the Universe trying to tell me that if 2009 is to be the year of less frumpy, I will need to get some contact lenses, asap?

I am leaning my upper body against the desk so that I am closer to the screen and so that should I collapse at least I will be face down which somehow strikes me as being safer. I am drinking ginger ale non-stop as it is the only significant source of calories that I have taken in since two taco on Friday night and it is the one thing that tastes slightly less like ass.

It's a hilarious and somewhat anti-climactic start to the new year. Apparently, loving my life right now consists of loving Ginger ale, loving Minesweeper, loving Netflix, and weekends that you can sleep away, undisturbed, in a bundle of fleece.

Speak for thee

Today I saw an online dating profile in which the fella had written the loveliest words:

"When everything is lonely
I can be my own best friend
Get a coffee and the paper
Have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons
And my window reflection"

"And I know you have a heavy heart
I can feel it when we kiss
And many men stronger than me
Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it"

At first I was caught his words and then I had this suspicion that he probably didn't write them. They were way too good for exclusive use on a mere online dating profile. Which turned out to be the case. He had pasted in the lyrics to the Bright Eyes song "Lua" which has gorgeous lines.

I imagine that he was posting it to find someone who also loves Bright Eyes and would immediately recognize the song and send him a message about how that was her favorite song or how she loves Bright Eyes and her favorite song is blah blah blah, she's seen them in concert blah blah blah.

But what if this is the song that describes him, his life right now, where his head and his heart sit. If that's the case it would be wise to steer clear of him, cuz he sounds like trouble in an adorable 20-something package.

The other day I ran across a dating profile in which the fella pasted in excerpts from Camus' "the Stranger" which was very strange. Of all the books one could quote to impress and attract girls, "The Stranger," would not be one that I would think to pick.

Now I am wondering if I had to take the words of others and use them to describe myself or to attract a date, what words would I choose. A quote from a Whit Stillman movie or a Kevin Smith movie? A Beastie Boys song? If you had to, what would you choose?