Archive for August 2006
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup
Walked downtown along Sixth Avenue after work yesterday and once I got to West 4th, I thought I’d have a hamburger at Julius’. Called my friend David Y. to have him join me since he lives around there, trying to be all spur of the moment, but unfortunately he was in California styling a catalog shoot for Williams Sonoma Home. As I talked to him on my cell, I eyed the bar and it’s attendant cluster of flies across the street. The more I thought about it, the more the notion of me sitting alone in a gay bar while eating a not very good hamburger in the day timeseemed sadder and sadder. Was I going to drink or not? Either way the vibe was dicey: was I goignt o be a fellow barfly, or some goof regarding the whole thing from ironic distance. Ultimaely I turned around and walked back down 4th. I dawdled, browsing menus and then decided on Oni noodle. There I had a murky and rich Hakata ramen. The noodles had just the right amount of bite. I was tucked into a corner table, and had no ironic distance on the meal at all. Afterwards I lost the fight with my better judgement and had an eclair from beard poppa.
Work on clearing and decluttering the office continues. I don’t quite know what to attribute the shift in attitude to but I have had much more success getting a handle on my various piles of stuff. Part of it is that I am trying to change my vision of everything from one where each item has to find its final resting place (the putting everything away model) to one where each thing is in the process of being moved onto the next part of its life cycle (a more “what is this doing, what am I going to do with it?” approach).
While talking to David I invented a new term “fauxganization“. Fake organizing. It’s one thing I’m very good at. When you take all the junk you have, stack it in size order and arrange the stacks in parallel rows, you’ve “Fauxganized”. Nothing is any clearer, no decisions have been made, but it seems like something has been accomplished. David’s version is that he dumps all the accumulated mail in a bag and stashes the bag in a closet, and it’s true – his apartment has always seemed very trim to me. Now i know it was just fauxganized. So it’s a copyrighted term now. Watch for my new books: The Fauxganization Man, Fauxganizing For The Home, and Fauxganization Tips for Troubled Teens – When You’re Grounded Until You Clean Up That Damn Room. Plus if this term really gains acceptance, it’ll boost all of our scrabble scores. After all, it’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Abundance, I suppose…
Here’s a root I found on the street on top of a stool I found on the street.
An interesting effect of the changes I’ve been trying to make over the past few days: I notice how much time there actually is in my day, and how quickly that time vanishes once the TV goes on. Old news I know (and in part I sing this refrain every year about this time. The trick is how to make changes last once the stresses of the school year really kick in. I t shocked me yesterday when, after a very active day at work I got in the door to the apartment ready to get more accomplished, turned on the set “just to watch the Simpsons” and felt all the energy drain out of me for hours. My sense of that abundance of possibility in my life dribbled away. In part I was justifiably tired from a busy day at work. But there were other forces at play as well. I tried reading the New Yorker and just glazed over. The rains seem to be signalling the end of my long walks, and I need to find another vehicle for my musing. Otherwise, there is nothing to oppose to my long ingrained habit of distracting myself.
None of this is an absolute good mood or bad mood. Which is interesting. A temperate emotional climate has always been the hardest thing for me to achieve. I’d much ratrher have drama, or jubilance. I was taught that if there’s no huge crisis, there’s no attention forthcoming for me. And I guess there are things happening in my life that would qualify as crisis. But I don’t feel like riding that particular white horse these days, going into an emotional jag over them.
I’m trying not to let yesterday’s plummet happen again today. Trying to breathe on the subway, to take more pictures, to eat more carefully. To finish with a dish and to clean it. To be alert to the actualities around me and the pleasures they provide.
Thanks to everyone who offered good wishes on my post yesterday. We are the best evidence for each other that the universe is indeed abundant.
No more, no less; it’s a magic number…
Today is my third anniversary here on LJ. I suppose I should be unleashing some profoundities on the passage of time and the many enhancements of my life that have been a direct result of my presence here. Right now I can’t think of any. Sounding Board, Crying Towel, Hive Mind, Meme Herd, Cat Fight, Finishing School, Party Posse, Love Heap, Ecounter Group, Dating Service, Feeding Trough: this is some community. Some of you make art out of it; some of you make literature; some family and some of you make me so happy I waste my time waiting to see what you’ll do next that it’s no waste at all. I always feel sad for my non-pixelated friends who still don’t get it.
The long hot summer…
It’s probably been seven years that I’ve been playing poker with these guys. Yesterday out of a table of six, there were four of us that went that far back. The games: follow the queen, leather bar, gay marriage, push comes to shove, psychic friends network, murder, omaha, good cop/bad cop, Martha Stewart public service, supermarket, dropsies, screw your neighbor, crazy pinapple, anaconda, night sweat baseball, bathhouse and two that I’ve made up: antichrist and mutilation. Cigars and pipes, and a tiny fluctuation in our financial fortunes. It can only take a dime or two to make someone really chicken out.
Last night I didn’t have such great cards, but I also did very little with them. The hands I won pretty much had to be given to me. Sometimes It’s frustrating to feel like I never really get any better. Of course that’s not quite the point. The point is to be able to look around the table and see friendly faces, wave your hands and go “Whooo! Free Card!” whenever we check all the way around the table, to share a smoke, to host and be hosted, to make a moment of bliss in the day.
Funny things happen…
… when you change the rules. Removing anything unrelated to food from my kitchen allowed me to sit and eat two meals at the table in the last two days, which meant in turn that I didn’t eat them in the bedroom, where the TV is, which means that I didn’t turn on the TV, whch means that later in the evening I decided not to turn on the TV which meant that I carefully listened to an album and then went to sleep which meant that I got ten hours of sleep, had all kinds of dreams and woke up in an utterly different frame of mind this morning.
Avoiding the constant comment check helped with that as well.
Play date….
Today Leghigh got a visit from Lola. My friend Michelle brought her by. Lola was one of the three other boston terriers in Lehigh’s pack, and it was clear that she was the one who accepted L’s dominance. They played together a lot, but Lola would surrender any toy that Lehigh wanted. When we walked out to Prospect Park, Lehigh was always in the lead. The best point of the day was when Michelle presented L witha toy snake and and then L kept bringing it over to Lola to get her to play tug of war. They finally got into it, each whipping their torsos back and forth while holding onto seperate ends of the toy. Then they just wore each other out. M’s gone now and Lola with her, and Lehigh seems a little pensive. She doesn’t get a whole lot of company besides me.
On another note, it’s so depressing when you’ve listened to an album so much that when you turn it on becuase you want to listen to it you tune out because you’re too used to hearing it, and then half of it is over before you even realize it. Happening to me right now with the Pernice Brothers. Do I go back and put it on from the beginning? Put it away for a few months?
Well wadda ya know…
… I did, by extending the notion of the “end” of the day a bit, actually get my desk at work cleared! For the first time in three years I’d say. And it dovetails with my sincere desire to begin the new school year with no obstructions, so to speak. Still plenty of things to take care of, projects to move along, but there is no huge heap of “what is that?” to cause anxiety just by being amorphous.
The brevity of my posts to lj today had nothing to do with getting that accomplished, of course.
The next goal is on the home front.
I'm the King of Jubilee Jumbles 