My Mood Now Is....

Cleo Lacking Buds, Enjoying Solitary Life

Remember Cleo, my friendly office plant? At one time she had a bulbous flowery appearance. Then she grew a mustache. After that she got a little depressed and her leaves started to fall off. I began to give her water every day and she bounced back into a windy, long-limbed creature. She hasn't grown any blooms in a long time. Does anyone have any suggestions or advise on this?

Comparison Shopping

I saw this over at Vulture and thought it was really pretty awesome. I got a camera for my birthday, so I don't need a new one, but can you guess which one I want now?

Canon 7D vs. Barbie Video Girl from Brandon Bloch on Vimeo.

HIPSTER DATING

Make a Melody

Find out what happens when drops can sing.

Maybelle says it's bad luck to put your bag on the floor

Tough skittles to my piggy bank I guess

Wes Anderson Does Spidey

This cracked me up while I was eating lunch today. Enjoy!

One More from Waiting for G

Here is another post from Waiting for G. I am posting it because I think it's true and insightful, and again general enough not to be to like I'm flashing my undies at you (metaphorically of course).

THE SPACE BETWEEN

Drunk dialing: don't do it. Drunk emailing: don't do it. Drunk texting: don't do it.
Sober words, no?
Why, however, is it that these rules of thumb get thrown out the window when a certain melange of alcohol and nostalgia become the puppet masters of tap, tap, tapping finger pads?

Here's the thing though, the content in those messages that slip through are not necessarily bad to get out, but one must know one's audience. A certain regret drizzles through your head the next morning when you realize you have wasted your words on stopped up ears.

***

Today I went for a walk and I came across a book of abridged Freud essays. I really enjoyed the seminar I took on Freud in grad school, so I stopped. I opened to a passage about some conference, German words, skip, skip..."Wait is this book in English?" I thought. My vision scrolled down and my language returned, but it was still of little interest. I opened to another place, where the binding had come undone. It seemed the owner had opened to this place repeatedly. It was a passage about hysterical women. The prevailing view of Freud, if you don't know, is that he was a misogynist. His writing on hysterical women is a great example of him at his worst.

In the passage he talked about how the physical behavior of hysterical women was actually an expression of a psychic drama. The behavior seems so aberrant to the common observer because they are watching a woman play two roles at once. Imagine you role played those conversations you have in your head with the imaginary version of a person who ticked you off. Of course, in this pretend conversation you've got a real zinger to zap him right up the crapper. Anyway, the line between sanity and hysteria is having the self-restraint to not play that out physically.

Why does the woman feel a compulsion to freak out? Well, according to F sexual energy needs to be released, but repression prevents the woman from a healthy release of energy so it comes out like that.

***

Drunk dialing is somewhat like that. One makes the rational decision that one will not extend one's energy into avenues that have proven unhelpful or even harmful. Yet, there's a reason you went down that road at some point and the memory of what originally took you there drives you to want to go back.

As long as one has good judgement the road remains blocked off. Alcohol, though, is an agent that removes the roadblock, so you go trotting down that path again. How can one avoid this? I think in some ways by acknowledging that desire to go down that road in the first place, before you put yourself in a vulnerable position. One can say one will just not get drunk again, but if one is like this one, some night of too little dinner and one drink too many will undo weeks, even months of this resolution. The point is not to avoid all types of vulnerability, but to find a way to live with and express that energy.

One must become a sculptor of desire and love and passion, possibly even hate. The materials are really incredible if you think about it.

Anyway, one way to look at the finger tapping faux pas is that it was a BIG mistake and whatever it was IS OVER. You are done with that point and need to move to the next.

That's one way to look at it, but it's a very punctual perspective; it loses the space between.

***

This right here, right now, is an ode to the space between. It is a 'here here' to the fact that something sparked an electric vibration in the soul. Go make something thing with it. Thank the universe that you have the divine inspiration of being affected by another person. Don't leave it swarming inside so that it comes out when you are least able to make it beautiful.

If You're Curious about Waiting for G

So I posted a lot this past week. Most of my days were filled with the details of moving the office, and since I have focusing problems without the trees to begin with and I've been off trees for 'a minute' as some would say, I posted a lot this week about what has been filling up my head. Mostly it's just been the music that mirrors my feelings. Anyway, my plans fell apart last minute tonight and I decided to post again. Earlier in the week for about 45 minutes or 30 Waiting for G was open to the public. I doubt that anyone even read it. I opened it up again because after going to check it out because of boredum I realized that it was good, really good--not to be too pompous.

Anyway, I blocked it off again shortly after opening because it's also deeply personal and although I am now in a different place, It's not a place I can go back to without wincing. What I like about that blog is how raw, open and honest it was, that though, came from a difficult time in my life. I don't think I'll ever want that to be open for anyone to see. Yet, I want to keep it around to share, for some people. Maybe you'll be one of those people. Anyway, I want to share the first post, because I am proud of the writing and because it's general enough to convey where I was coming from without being cringinly honest.

WAIT...WHAT''S HE SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE AGAIN?

In popular culture you hear about Native Americans smoking up to be taken to another plane. My main frame of reference for this is when Native Americans invite Bart into a tent and he has a wacky dream. Anyway, my closest experience to that was one long night of extracurricular activity, where I only had one thrilling revelation: everyone has his or her own view of reality and its true at the same time as everyone else is experiencing their own view of reality, but none of them are true on their own.

Most of the time we walk around safely bundled in the drama of our own reality, which is a source of succor. Yet, it can be toxic when we focus too deeply on our own reality without acknowledging that there are other ways of conceptualizing the playing field. For a moment I saw: the pulsating twinkle of multiple dramas crossing planes of reality into another experience.

***

I have a yoga teacher who I really like because she's open and welcoming, the way you think all yoga teachers should be, but this one is for real. One day, in a class when I was struggling to hold a pose, breathing hard, she came up to me and hovered somewhere around my face. I tried to ignore her, blurring my vision, looking somewhere beyond her and waiting for her to move on, as yoga teachers are supposed to do. She didn't. I gingerly guided my gaze towards her, letting my consciousness graze over her face for a moment, trying to understand what was up. At the moment of contact she locked me in with her eyes. "No fear," she said and smiled. She walked on. No fear? I wanted to tell myself I was befuddled, but I wasn't.

On another day she said, "You are a part of the ever-pulsating universe, always." This also made sense to me and it made me think about twinkling realities and such. When I find myself getting stuck in a negative thought pattern I try to go back to that place where I had my novel thought. Its not alien to the best moments of my yoga practice. It was a moment when I felt attuned.

***

Today as I flipped through Facebook pages I focused on the Yale, Harvard, etceteras posted on my friends' and acquaintances' pages. My universe started to shrink. It wrapped itself around my neck and wrung the tears out of my face. How humiliating. Envy is ugly and when you see it flicker through yourself as you blow, blow, blow at it without blowing it out, it becomes distressing, monstrous, inevitable.

I went back to work. I checked my scrabble games. I did work. I checked my email. I got a call. I waited for another call. A good call, a hopeful one. It did not come, but 5 pm did. I made my way to the train. I cried. "Don't look into peoples faces" I said. I got on the train. I acted normal. "I am a disgruntled commuter" I said. I am...I look into the reflection the glass makes. I look so normal, so mundane, so unbothered by the world, so neutral.

The weep came and went. Somehow I was home eating grilled cheese watching Angelina on the Actor's Studio. She's so beautiful. She seems to want to be shocking, different. I think of when she carried a vile of blood around her neck. I turn off the television. I go to my room. I said that I would clean it today. It really does need to be cleaned. I don't have comfortable underwear for tomorrow. I really should do laundry. I check Facebook instead. I check my email. I call L, not a good time. I call my cousin, get voicemail.

I google, "What career path should I take?" I am told I should write, be creative...blah, blah, blah. I take another quiz. My cousin is calling me back. I pick up. I talk. I talk about it all. I tell her that I'm distraught. Its all open before me and I don't know what to do. I don't have long term goals. I can't remember the last time I didn't have long term goals. I'm scared. I am unhappy. And I thought I had it all so together last month! Ha.

We commiserate. She tells me a story her friend told her. A woman in a cult, at least I think it was a cult, lived in a compound in Texas. She wanted to be rescued. She kept waiting to be rescued. Nobody ever came, so she was like, 'F it.' And she freed herself all by her lonesome. My cousin's friend thinks we, the late twenty somethings without a plan, should follow suit--quit waiting for Godot.

I've been trying to see. In some ways I haven't evolved away from that little girl who sat thinking, "What's it going to be like?," or more correctly "What's it going to look like?" The universe is shouting, "Its here! Its here!" and I'm not on a road with a friend. I'm in Grand Central and its rush hour and I can't remember if the universe told me what Godot would look like. I wasn't paying attention if she did, must have been daydreaming...always daydreaming. I'm spinning and I'm supposed to be balancing the future on my head! I'm spinning, spinning on my own head. One, two, six, seven, a thousand--uncontrollably spinning 'til it all fell down.

***

Anyway, according to P's friend, my cousin's friend, I'm not the only one waiting for Godot. Maybe the universe never told me what he was going to look like. You know? Well, so I was thinking, maybe instead of trying to figure out what G looks like, I should send this into the universe. I'm hopeful about what it will return.

Cat Crazy

I am on record as saying some bat-crazy things involving my cat. For example, a few weeks ago this came out of my mouth with complete sincerity, "I believe my cat might have been a human I knew in a past life," which I tempered by saying, "I also think I might have been an antelope in a past life, I can feel it when I run. I feel like an animal." Nuts? Un peu. It's not that I'm willing to bet my life on these claims. It's more like eccentric ideas I wish were the case. After all, my parents do ask about Ada, the feline I am speaking of, as if she were my life partner.

"Y la gata Arlette? Como esta? Anything new?"

"Oh yes, how is Ada?"

"She threw up a hair ball this week, but she's good"

And only half mockingly, "It's too bad she can't be here."

"Yes, it is"

It's not completely absurd that my parents are so interested in my cat. She's quite the social kitty. A real conversationalist. My cat does 'talk' to me, or at least sounds come out of her mouth as she stares me down intensely. I think though that there is a line between at times anthropomorphizing a pet farther than one should and falling into an abyss of unholy animal/human confusion. Folks this is what it looks like on the other side of the chalk streak:

Sea Wolf

Hey all,

No time to drag it out today. Just a quick note that Sea Wolf is rad. I kid you not. Check'em out below:

It's been a long week!

Hi everyone. It's been a long week and I'm a bit backed up in posting tidbits. I don't have time right now to do an indepth update, but I wanted to pop in and say hello. I'm taking a quick work break to bring you my two favorite New Zealenders and one of their sweet tunes, "Sugar Lumps." Enjoy!!

Diddly Doodle Do

Those are mostly my doodles. I took the picture with my phone, so I couldn't get a shot of the whole wall. The niffty Tim Burtony faces are drawn by Helena, my boss's daughter. Her dad's an artist. Looks like she may follow in his footsteps.

No Scrabble at Rosemary's Greenpoint Tavern

This weekend I met up with Beth for cheap drinks and some Scrabble. I suggested Rosemary's Tavern on Bedford because of their cheap and genormous styrafoam cups of Budwesir. For a while it was all good times. I was inching my way to victory sipping my beer when the proprietess of the establishment came to our table to inform us that games are not allowed at Rosemary's. This was sort of hillarious to us, but since we didn't want anyone else to get in trouble we tried to think up ways to keep others from committing our faux pas. Which do you like the best?