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?

Funny haha and strange

I have recently encountered a string of fellas who don't think that I am funny. They don't even break a smile for me much less volley a return to what I lob at them. Lovely guys, but clearly we don't share or even overlap in our sense of humor. The effect created in their company is that of the "Fun Sponge" a term coined by SD and several of his friends in grad school. The Fun Sponge is the humorless person who sucks all of the fun out of a situation.

I used to mock guys who said that they were looking for a girl with a good sense of humor. "You mean, she laughs at your jokes," I would say. Because that seems to be what most guys mean when they say she has a good sense of humor.

But of late, I am thinking that having someone really laugh at your jokes would be great. As opposed to having them say, "That's funny," or kind of barely smirking.

Sharing a sense of humor, sharing laughter is a great thing. At least as good as hooking up, sharing a great meal or kisses under the covers. And you can keep your clothes on while doing it, if you want to....

Laughter is a dimension of compatibility that I have not given much consideration up until now. But if I think about dating as a search for a life companion, I should consider it more. After all, who wants to spend the rest of their life with a Fun Sponge.

note to self and others

When you mean to say "A Clockwork Orange" which you have not seen, which Stanley Kubrick directed, you should not say "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which was directed by Milos Forman and starred Jack Nicholson who was also in the Stanley Kubrick movie "The Shining."

It may be that I have lost two too many neurons...

Cheap Thrills

Today, I have the worst craving for sweets. I could dive into a vat of cotton candy, eat my way to the bottom, and then eat my way back up. If that doesn't sound disgusting, you must be under the age of 9 in which case, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog.

Today, I have been stuck on the song "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations. I have listened to it at least seven times in a row. It's making me feel giddy and giggly, like my heart could burst into a shower of colored confetti.

If my life were a movie I would bounce out of work and run smack into someone very cute, who gives me a big old smooch and the two of us would walk away from the camera holding hands and talking as the music swells and the camera rises up and out into a view of the city at night.

If I were still in an a cappella singing group, I would give my left ventricle to sing the baseline.

In real life, I am dancing in my chair at the office and making a list of things to do for the rest of the week.

Hey hey hey! Hey Hey Hey!

The way you hold your knife

Reapply your lipstick, adjust the stockings, and let us raise our glasses in a toast to dangerous women.

Santa Baby, a roomba and a kitty

Roomba Driver @ Yahoo! Video

Well, maybe a creature was stirring

My landlady and my downstairs neighbors have been hearing this scrabbling noise in the walls. Being understandably creeped out by this, they called in pest control.

And so, a gentleman bearing the implements of rodent control came up into my apartment. The only man to see the place since the LYM decided that he needed to be away from me. In fact, the disasterous and mortifying state of my place has been my excuse to not bring any men home of late. And while I was mortified, Mr. Pest Control assured me that in his work, he has seen it all.

He walked around with a flashlight looking for holes, for signs, for droppings. And when he looked in my closet, jackpot.

When I first moved to Brooklyn, my parents had driven out bearing gifts of ramen, canned goods and two bags of rice. One regular white rice, which I kept out in the kitchen area. The other a bag of sweet Thai rice, which I kept in the closet undisturbed and forgotten. I basically opened an all you can eat sweet rice buffet in my closet and the mice came to partake. How could they not.

Despite this smoking gun, Mr. PC went through the rest of the rooms in an effort to identify all means of entry.

He walked into another room and saw a sign that I had taped up from last year that said: "Yoga twice a week."

"Does that help?" he asked.
"It's great," I replied, "although I haven't been to yoga in a very long time."

He asked if going to yoga would be my New Year's resolution for next year. I replied that my resolution for next year is: To love my life.

He grinned and said that that was his resolution for 2008. I asked him how that went and he said that he was going to make it his resolution for 2009 as well, along with being less picky.

Which also sounds like a good resolution to make.

All is calm, all is bright

It's snowing. Big fat fluffy flakes that drift softly, so softly. A soft touch to your hair, face, shoulder, the tree, the ground.

And the quiet that settles, surrounds and embraces.

Almost as good as a Vodka Gimlet as a recipe for happiness.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Despite my timid, introverted, shy, repressed, bashful, uptight personality, I do on occasion make an ass of myself in public.

On some days it doesn't even take alcohol to do this.

This leads the people who witness it to state the obvious to me. "I saw you out there on the dance floor all by yourself during that Beyonce song."

"Ah. Well yes. You did indeed."

They are just lucky that I didn't drop my pants first. I couldn't, I was wearing a dress.

------------------

More things are filtering through my memory and the memories of others about Friday.

Apparently, someone got sent home in a cab after having a scene with her ex. She woke up in her own bed four hours later and called me, confused, disoriented and with no memory of how she got there.

Apparently, someone woke up the next morning at home with a black eye and no memory of how it happened.

Apparently, I was smacking people on the ass on accident all night. I don't recall this but I was scrolling through my text messages and this was apparently my update to CK about how the party was going.

Deja vu but not

While in Champaign Urbana, a fella invited me to drive up to Chicago with him for a party. I asked if I needed to dress up and described two dresses that I owned. His reply was, "Pick whichever one has the shorter skirt."

I foolishly did and ended up being his date for a co-ed bridal shower in an inappropriately short skirt. I draped my cardigan over my lap for the better part of the night.


Today, I emailed CK to ask about what to wear. "My chubby valentine" or "Do the cha-cha in a haltertop." CK replied "Halter top. The more skin the better."

The situation may call for a cardigan. It may, in fact, call for two cardigans.

Has skin become the new black? It's getting a mighty chilly for that kind of thing. Madness.

Haute Cature

My parents bought Kitty a sweater.







I could barely take these pictures with my cell phone, I was laughing so hard.

Bluer than Blue

I just watched Wong Kar Wai's film "My Blueberry Nights."

It's frickin' gorgeous. And by that I mean that beyond having an extremely good looking cast, the look of the film is painterly and almost distractingly beautiful. There were shots that had these compositions that had the feel of still lifes ( still lives?), scenes shot through windows and doorways framing the action, delicious and drenched in color.



It is a mood piece. You see, you hear, you pick up the vibe, you imagine, you dream. It transmits frequencies - love, lostness, connection, uncertainty, strength, desire, floating, seeking, loss, alienation, buoyancy, the curious intimacy that you can only share with strangers.

Sometimes you sweat the small stuff

I am going through one of those "for want of a nail" periods in my life. It's not that a kingdom, my kingdom, is on the verge of being lost.

The scenario is more that there are things that I want to get done. They seem to be simple things. At least they seem simple until I actually try to accomplish them.

My options breakdown to: A. throw money at the problem, or B. solve a series of very small interdependent problems that lead to other interdependent problems that eventually lead to the ability to get things done.

And the internal dialogue goes like this: "Ok. Deep breath. This is totally doable. If I want to save the kingdom what I really need is to win this battle which requires me to have that rider which means getting this horse which means getting that horseshoe replaced. Yeah, I'd better get online and find a blacksmith to take care of this. Am I bringing my own horseshoes? Maybe I'll bring one just in case. And if I don't end up replacing them all, I really should ask him to check the nails on the rest of them, I wonder if yelp.com has any entries on blacksmiths ..."

I will try to talk about other things after this, I promise

On Wednesday, I went back to Momofuku with CK, SD, and PD. This is the Momofuku Ssam Bar. It was pointed out to me that there is more than one Momofuku in this city. I was a little worried that it would not be as good as I remembered it.

I was ecstatic to be proven wrong. The pork buns - this time I found myself licking my hand to catch the juices running out from the bun. I didn't realize that I was doing it at first. It was an instinct. And when I did notice, that did nothing to stop me. Love has no pride.

SD and PD love food. They eat with real passion. When the first few dishes came to the table SD partook and said positive things. But when the fluke arrived at the table, she was utterly won over and from then on you could tell that she was hooked.

They make a Brussel sprout dish that has changed my mind about Brussel sprouts. I won't eat them anywhere else, but I could eat them by the bowlful there.

The Brisket, my God, the Brisket. There were times during the meal where I couldn't make eye contact with other people. The experience was too personal to share. The Brisket was one of them.

The Spicy Pork Sausage with Rice Cakes were ordered on my account. Crunchy and chewy and flavored. This is not your run of the mill Rice Cake. If the chef will not have me, then I will offer myself up to the one who works the Rice Cake station. *swoon*

As I got full, I started to feel a little bit sad, because it meant that I would have to stop eating.

And as happened the other time, no one wanted dessert. We were so blissed out that sweets seemed so - unnecessary, though I can only imagine how they must be.

SD was beaming for the rest of the night. She would turn to me and say, "I'm happy. I'm so happy right now." I could only nod in agreement.