Well done keeping to my promises. Rather than writing once a week, minimum, I've managed (unintentionally) to bookend the month of February.

This is an excerpt from my own mind. It is translated into the third person, to make it sound much more dramatic than it otherwise would:

He's thinking that when he walks alone through the city, and he does walk alone often, mostly to work and back from work, that he sees everything through a lens of whipping-cream-thick irony. He doesn't know this (how can we ever be certain!) but he suspects it. The awe of midtown which aroused him last year in some terrific way feels dull. Midtown, slim and tall in a black gown. Her hulking scyscrapers, the motion of everything, the appearance that everyone is dressed up to conduct important business, doesn't strike him like it did when he came up for the day from the little place with the quaint brick buildings, as he did, to ride elevators to way up high floors and sit in rooms with big windows listening to people talk fast and preparing to recite rehearsed and hopefully impressive white lies. Who taught him to think that way? Who changed his context, mid-stride?

To be continued when I don't have to run and eat Cookie Cake for Eric's birthday!!...

Blogging Again

It has been a shamefully long time since I posted my thoughts on this page.

I'm back, with a commitment to post at least once a week. That said, I have no plan. The only thought I can't shake is one that is not even mine, it belongs to Auden. He said, or maybe he sang, or perhaps for fun he chanted: "How do I know what I think till I read what I wrote?" In fact, it's possible those words are not Auden's at all. I haven't the first idea what truth is today, the phrase I quoted may not be the quotation at all and I'm too lazy to look it up (I take the elevator lately, I sleep 10 minutes later lately, I look for shortcuts and I excuse it by calling it efficiency) but I can tell you that it's how I remember it when I heard it from Kieron in Oxford and that's how it stuck so it's truth as I need it to be.

I was standing on the subway this afternoon. I was leaning against the door with rebellious disregard to the signs suggesting the dangers inherent in doing so. Actually, I was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I don't like to read when I'm standing stiff and upright. Somehow, the risk of a fall out and onto the electric third rail in exchange for comfort seems worth it by the end of the work day. Anyway, the train suddenly decreased its velocity, and the guy standing across from me (near the front of the car) fell into an exaggerated tumble. Not only did his back knee buckle, but his entire center of gravity swung downward from his chest to his right hip. This violence sent him crashing into an ambiguous looking silver door that seemed to be guarding a small room. The door's silver latches and weathered exterior were no match for the tumbler's moderate weight. The door hurled open and light from the car, along with my fellow commuter, poured awkwardly into an empty conductor closet. The physical comedy was too much, and I burst into a fit of laughter which I attempted unsuccessfully to dillute. With all the weirdos in this city, there aren't enough people who laugh when they see something funny. Sadly, I'm the former and not the latter most of my daylight hours.

I thought the State of the Union was Ironic last night. George W. Bush telling the citizens of the United States that we are "addicted to oil" is like Eminem proclaiming that the problem with America's youth is its addiction to "rap music." It's also a bit like this commercial I saw or overheard the other day - Phillip Morris offering money or some other sort of assistance to people who want to quit smoking. It's also a bit like ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife. Or meeting the man of your dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife.

Physical Space and the construction of it continues to be hugely influential in my moods. This summer I felt free and capable, and this summer I was living on the top of a mountain and when the clouds didn't enclose me entirely, I could see for endless distances. There was so much depth and with depth mystery and with mystery potential and with potential possibility though they're one and the same but whatever way your stare at it my mind could wander and float and explore.

Now, I live in an apartment with windows only on the ends. It's long and narrow and the kitchen doesn't allow in any daylight. When I look out my window I see streets or alleys but my vision is always cramped by perpendiculars. My office is so small and I'm in a tiny box in a tiny cube which I became paranoid of, I recall, back in my imagination as I was floating or falling out of a raft into level 4 rapids through the jungle and I know it it was then I thought to myself what sacrfices am I willing to make? Won't I feel like I'm not alive? And yet. And yet. New York.

I know it now because it seems to have come out of me in writing. I'm paranoid and needy when I get in small spaces. To compensate for my cramped imagination I need constant praise and reinforcement and people telling me it will be OK and it WILL be ok but I can't see it when I can't see out and yes that's why I call out for help so patience it's only who I am when I'm trapped and I swear the only thing I have against boats while we're on the subject is the limited options for movement. It's a legit thing, this need for movement. It explains why I take the 4 or 5 as opposed to the 6, when scientific studies that I myself have conducted prove beyond a shade of a doubt that the 6 takes just as little time if not less on occasion to traverse the tunnels from Grand Central 42nd Street up to 86th, and yet, and yet, I take the 4 or the 5 DEVOUTLY and the reason must be because of there is less stagnance and more movement. It's going going constantly! stopping only once for a quick breath and a release and then it's back and it's moving and it's leaping! and it's gaining speed and flying through the underground quicker and quicker and faster and faster till the light comes exploding through the windows and with a sudden burst it's here! and it's gone.