$disanpoter

mi bubble es tu bubble

in a few minutes, bis and i will be out the door and on an overnight bus to Bilbao and a 6 day excursion through el País Vasco - Basque Country, but the last hour or so has been a pleasant lull after a frenzied day trying to sort out lost luggage issues and buy a few replacement items to keep the cold out of my toes and the stink of over-worn clothing out of my nose.
christmas eve and christmas were surprisingly americanized since we spent our meals with other students in bistra's masters program, stopping by one girls apartment for a drink with the entirety of her boisterous and jovial family then having a more subdued dinner with another girl and her nuvo-hippie cousin. he was a nice guy and eager to share his recent experiences (and pictures) from burning man and a month long meditation training. after a photo tour that included several shots of the making of a plaster booty-monster, he very sincerely offered to walk us through a short meditation exercise. being christmas and all, we were up for delving into the somewhat spiritual, but i had a very difficult time keeping a straight face afterwards as we went around describing the ambiance and particularities of our imagined safe zone 'bubbles.' there's more to that, but the bus awaits....or won't, which is the real issue.

so sweet and so cold

i took myself to mcnally robinson again today - this time for a reading by the authors of A Book of Beginnings and Endings and The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner. I'd been more intrigued by the former, because i have always been interested in the idea of publishing a collection of endings. I bought both books; i think they will be thought provoking, though the first author's reading was annoying. she was clearly responding to the cultural expectations of poetic prose emerging out of the slam poetry movement, for she employed the same softened speech, sing-song intonations and arbitrary word stresses you find in bad slam poetry, the kind that mimics the style to compensate for a lack of substance or genuine motive. it's a shame, too, because what i read of the work beforehand was fairly good and got completely lost in the delivery. both authors had a refreshing balance of theoretical and critical knowledge of narrative without getting mired down in over-intellectualizations either in the work or the discussion.
during the question and answer, betsy called. i hopped out and agreed to come meet up with her and the D of infamy up at chat n chew. that made for some interesting interactions, not least of which was an evolving friend:not friend motif. more on that can possibly be found here, either in the presence of words or by way of their absence. after we went to decibel to digest the situation and dispense of any lingering misgivings by way of innebreation and a bit of willful absurdism: we played drunken haiku. it was, as it should be, amusing and a poor literary showing (on my part at least...betsy's were better). hers are at the link above; mine to follow (bold words are the ones we had to incorporate):

the sniffles

one of my best-friends is moving to Spain. i've known this was going to happen for at least a half a year now, and as the time's ticked down i've been more or less resigned to this inevitability. now, there is no more time; she leaves tomorrow, and while i was going to spend some time with her this evening, she got caught up with packing boston and now won't get home in time for that. instead i have written a poem (a terrible one, actually, but so it goes) about this waiting for emotions to hit that has been an underlying state of mine for at least the past week and especially this afternoon. with an increasing frequency, i have felt this impending loss wash over me in subdued momentary ripples, and the very nature of them being so far from overwhelming has got me thinking about this trope we have in society of the nearly tearful goodbye. the one where instead of crying, we address our non-crying and conspire to draw ourselves back from the brink that is open emotion. there have been a few moments in the past few months when we have enacted that scene - not in any false way, of course, but still, we've consciously, explicitly diverted the conversation from the topic of leaving to abort getting choked up as soon as we begin to.

it's as if, in those moments, we (all of us who do this) hold as simultaneous truths both the sincerity and the ridiculousness of our emotions, and being unable to go further within that paradox retreat instead - but why should the non-tragic be ridiculous. it reminds me of a conversation i was having two weekends ago with another person, who i don't yet know well enough to share my emotions with (that condition is relevant to this; but not enough to go into, so you'll have to explain it to yourselves). that conversation touching upon situations far more heart-wrenching and difficult than any i have experienced, left me with an uncomfortable residual impulse to justify the hurts of my own life as lesser but still real. why do we have these impressions that lesser forms of loss or injury are less valid simply because they are less extreme? why should the loss of a friend's presence be something we are expected both to register and shrug off simply because it is not permanent or complete? why this convention of expressing our reserve instead of expressing what is there?

variations on the theme of positively insane

i don't remember the last few weeks. i think i've been out every night, but i really couldn't tell you where. like last night, i'm fairly certain i was more exhausted than intoxicated. in my memory it unfolds backwards before me like a flowing stream of chatter and bright voices and silliness. i was planning on having a quiet night to myself - then bistra called, and instead of checking out the music at south paw on my own and then making up for my complete lack of exercise this week, i headed into manhattan, ostensibly to chill at a hookah bar for a bit and then see where our moods took us. if i had known how many places i'd go after that, i'd have eaten more than a bag of popcorn for dinner. we walked to the hookah bar in the east village. the cover was ridiculous, so we left without drinking, and walked instead up to the karaoke bar i'd gone to weds. it was a more interesting crowd last night, but they became obnoxious by the end. after we met up with allison and deme and their friends at a celebration for an indie screening. apparently the film was quite good, but i wasn't invited to the screening so i don't know (not that i should have been invited or am upset by this. afterall, i'm contentedly done with the whole film scene). it was much more fun than i expected it to be. i was anticipating a more mingled crowd, but when we arrived, we hung out mostly with those four - which, i think, was a thing i very much wanted and didn't realize nor can explain. but something about the dynamic and the particular kind of non-attention one gets when simply around established friends who are doing more of the interacting let me relax in a way that i haven't been able to in all the excessive socializing i've been up to lately. in that way it was the exact opposite of last saturday, when despite a general liking towards everyone at the table, i felt alone and out-of-place. after that we went downtown to cafe wha? and danced a bit to the cover band. i finally remembered i needed to eat something and got some fries with mayonnaise.

the other quality of the night that's becoming a quality of my social interactions in general is a lack of detail and control. it's odd thing and it's taken me a while to figure out what the shift is. i haven't been tracking my conversations as much while i have them. it used to be if something was mentioned and then side-lined, it would stay in my thoughts as something to return to, and when the opportunity arrived to reintroduce it, i would. having a conversation with someone acquired a derivative goal of neatly concluding each raised topic, so as to avoid the lingering suspicions after it was over that something might have been misconstrued or misunderstood, or that some chance at greater commonality might have been missed in not saying something. often lately, my conversations have a single meandering thread. it's unsettling, still. it leaves the impression that i've missed or forgotten things or that i've perhaps said or done the wrong thing, but i think (i hope) that it only feels like things are missing because of how much less over-processing i'm investing in.

so in conclusion, (and here i'm going to do what one is never supposed to do in a paper: list out all the things i didn't mention before) it's been a crazy few weeks. monday i may not have done anything. i'd scratched my cornea and could barely open my eyes they were so sensitive. tuesday was the first bridge and beer night. it's amazing how tipsy you can get when you bet drinks of beer instead of chips during poker. wednesday was karaoke night. though i enjoyed the company of those who came, the place was a bit of a disappointment. i think it will only be an alternate karaoke spot. plus, i think it'll be a few weeks before the next karaoke night - scheduling wise it's difficult. thursday was a work party, which was very fun, and included the unexpected pleasantness of getting to know some of my collegues better. part of what i was enjoying about the prospect of a solitary friday night was looking forward to a less packed week next week. that lasted even less time than the plans for a solitary friday. no sooner had i anticipated some time at home next week then i realized i had once again planned something for every evening. monday i've got a group dinner to go to. tuesday i'm volunteering. wednesday is card night, and thursday i've got a gallery thingie to go to. friday's open, though, judging from recent events, i'll lack the will-power to decline any particularly intriguing invitation.

this is what i mean when i speak of craziness. no sooner do i wonder whether i'll see my friends at all in the coming week than i discover i've booked my evenings up completely. but do i stop? do i change? please...

il faudrait l'inventer

there's been more discussion regarding a permanent position for me at the place i've been temping at. it's exciting, but it also inevitably comes with reflections about the path my life is tacking versus the one expected of me, not just professionally but socially, romantically, etc. today, these reflections hit me in the form of an image (and a fairly cliched one at that): an empty road through barren land and a figure who has just stepped off it and stands looking toward the horizon the road leads to. of course, being delivered an unsolicited vision from your mind comes with it's own chain of amendments. the idea that the road can't be so easily regained, that in this representationi of divergent paths it should be something that is slightly out of reach once left - a path through an endless chasm of only air or at least a floating strip above the figures head. and this change in turn, recalls the fall. lucifer and choice, free will. the heal upturned, the moment where the ball of the foot remains in contact with the path departed but the body has passed the point of balance and must, has no choice but to continue.

none of which is to say i'm unhappy with this situation or feel i've made profound mistakes. it's just interesting how starkly my mind portrays it to me - how very real and ever-present is the sense that my life is developing counter to this other set of options rather than simply emerging from a course of its own.

seriously?

i've had one of those wtf weeks. some of it's not even worth the effort to put into details. the irony is that most of the week has been upwards of pretty good. monday i was fortunate enough to be invited to a highly amusing comedy show and then hung out with a group of y'all that i just generally enjoy spending time with. wednesday, again, with karaoke night i spend most of the evening enjoying myself in the company of friends. thursday, i got to play pool with someone new - and had an excellent gyros funnel sandwich from the place on macdougals for dinner to boot, and now i'm off to see my family. only two events marr this summer week: the fubar condition of my laptop (and the associated expense of saving the data on it) and the appalling behavior of someone i know, which has reminded me that there's a certain brand of arrogance, delusional self-righteousness, willful disrespect for one's fellows, dismissiveness towards basic ethical standards that i just never get used to. then again, the wtf reaction i have and that those close to me have, is why i'm happy with myself and my friends. i don't think i ever want to lose that.

it's just a shame that those events dragged down my momentum to get things done. i didn't do nearly as much as i'd hoped to in my evenings. i didn't get to write anything or learn more about the chinese opera or facepainting. i didn't get the chores i'd wanted done, either. on the upside, it's been a reminder of how thankful i am for the general progress in my life and a counterpoint that highlights just how pleasant my other activities this week have been.

homo thigmophilian

one of the interesting things i've learned reading this Rats book is that rats are thigmophilic (i may be misspelling that), which means they like to touch things and they rely heavily on touch to identify and negotiate their world. i was remembering this today as i watched the performers of the chinese theater workshop painting on their stage make-up at the natural history museum. i'd stopped by after brunch with Lan and her friend Ichiro to see what new exhibits they have and discovered they were having a special festival on mythic creatures. (They also have one on frogs, which I'm so looking forward to checking out this friday.)  watching the face-painting, though, my skin recalled the sensation of cool paint gliding off the bristles of paint brushes, which got me thinking, once again, about my own thigmophilic lifestyle, with my ceramics and my polished wood and love of warm stones and dewey grass, and then wondering whether most people also are as keyed into touch as i am or whether it's more often a taken-for-granted sense. the attention we as a society (or collection of societies) pay to touch as it is used to enhance sexual interactions could be an argument for either side. on the one hand it points to how much of an impact it can have on us; on the other, it pitches touch into a rarefied context and in doing so diminishes it's significance in non-sexual experience. that's all i got on that. i went to see the chinese opera exposition after that and was distracted from my musings on touch.

the mini-opera performance was pretty sweet too though. it was a scene from the Journey to the West where Monkey King steals peaches from a banquet and heaven and then fights Dragon King. I was disappointed there wasn't more singing, but entertained by the acrobatics. i'll be looking into this art form more now. and i may buy some face paints - fun fun. i would so love to have a face painting party, but let's be honest, who would come?

other than that the weekend's been pretty good. I was bummed friday because i either hadn't heard back from friends i'd reached out too or had heard back from them that they were out of town or otherwise unavailable - so i was all resolved to enjoy my solitude - by sheer force of will if necessary - when one did call back and invited me to party thrown by some vassar graduates. this is not to say that i was not, in actuality, enjoying my solitude. i'd been reminded earlier in the week that part of why i've become more susceptible to concerns about whether the people i've met and attempted to befriend recently actually like me is because i've shifted to far into trying to be social at the expense of the things that make me interesting to myself.  and really, how can i, with my concerns over maintaining a realistic perspective and realistic expectations about life, convincingly represent my interests as interesting if i haven't actually been pursuing them. it's like linguistics. can i say i'm fascinated by linguistics when at this point it manifests itself in nothing more than wordplay? i don't know. better to dig out my notes and refresh my memory.

oh, right, so the point of that. i had actually been enjoying my evening. i'd gone to a gallery talk on drawings from austria and germany at the morgan library and museum then sat in the atrium cafe, drinking a beer and nibbling a mushroom croutin, listening to the string ensemble and attempting to sketch one of the players.  realizing quickly that i should stick with practicing on things that don't move, i switched to my own shoe but with nearly equal results. then i wandered out into the breezy evening to plop myself in a park somewhere and study the new art book i'd bought on japanese homes and await more information on the possible party. i'd just exited with my phone rang and thus the timbre of the evening shifted.

the only mildly negative happening of the weekend were an errant comment about passive aggressive intentions and the discovery that someone who had claimed not to have a key to my apartment, then not to know where it was, and had in other ways blown off my requests for its return, then used it to retrieve something from my apartment. i don't really care to go into the details of this unpleasantness. but it has put me in a frame of mind today to be less hopeful - no more pessimistic - in regards to my recent (by which I mean the last few years) efforts to reach out and befriend people. it sucks, but it'll pass.

on the plus side, i have a tentative plans to play pool with a guy from work next week. yay for pool and yes, yay for new interesting people.   

i also saw scoop and sherrybaby last night with AHo. the former was awful; the latter...nearly exceptional. so i'm saving it for a post of it's own once i've digested my reactions to it.

oh and finally, on an amusing note, i was somewhat hyper yesterday while getting the movies and ingredients for dinner last night. i kept making 'we' comments and i realized it wasn't so much a royal we usage as a energy-overflow 'we,' kinda like my enthusiasm was too much for one person and so it needed to implicate more actors. all in a casual playful way. otherwise, you know, i'd be a crazy person.

of shoe horns and sweet moods

harvest moon. each time
it rises, it ends the world
with each breath, each sigh

the first time i saw a harvest moon, i thought perhaps the world was ending. not that i really believed that, but sometimes the vision of something can be so breathtaking it raises the thought in your head in spite of the soundness of your modern science-informed disbelief. i was alone in the first house we had on shelter island - it was the summer i worked at coecles harbor and thus lived alone during the week while my parents were in the city. the house was set just back from the wetlands and looking out, you saw first the tall reed grass and the lone scragley tree, then the still water, and then the gentle slope of the causeway and little ram, then the sky. the moon was rising where the causeway met little ram. it was a fiery orange, watery and wavering over the dark green of the island at night, and it was consuming the sky. i can find no more emphatic way of describing it for someone who hasn't felt it, it just seemed fitting that the world might end in the gradual swallow of that mellow yet massive orange orb.

harvest moons make my soul ache. i just told this to my friend A Ho, but i doubt it seemed very relevant or significant in the midst of an IM chat. we're picnicing tonight. i'm looking forward to it. as if the above isn't indication enough of it - i'm feeling in the mood for serenity and beauty. positively pastoral, which is always an odd feeling to have sitting in the hard, urban-minded chest of mine. it's the beauty thing. beauty heals me. it's my spirituality.

in other news, this morning i was thinking of having a party at my apartment in the not to distant future. this got me on the topic of themes and i thought i could have an silly 80's movie party where we watch Dark Crystal and the Neverending story. why did i think of these? i think because i've lately been in the mood (on the plasmating level of thinking and mooding) for a movie night and because i sadly do not get to go to a lecture tonight on parchment - oh and because in confluence with this someone on facebook had an image of two old elvish people - all of which reminded me of the aura of arcana cultivated in NES...anyway so this led to the slogan "M is for Mangey" because they both have mangey puppets. but, this, i quickly realized would not be an attractive party quip...but could make for an excellent smarmy t-shirt!

Co-incidentally, shortly after i thought this to myself in the midst of a simultaneous conversation about the shortcomings of the frameword we're building our data management application in, my co-worker CD offered up an equally amusing (and more usable) product. I had exclaimed in surprise and preemptory enthusiasm that i'd found some functions in the function reference that might actually be useful to us. A moment later, I corrected this saying, well...they show potential for being shoe-horned into something useful - and CD said, yes it's too bad they don't use that as a marketting tactic, pass out a bunch of shoe-horns with [the name of infrastucture service] printed on them. so it was amusing to me. so what. i'm a dork. we know this already.

slow pick interludes on the acoustic guitar

do not a folk-rock following make...

so i've been listening to Z100 for the late morning. i'm doing mostly data entry at the moment because we've got a large set of crappy data that just can't be accurately imported into our new system using some kind of parsing rubric (this by the way, bites. sucks. blows. and hugely, but so it goes). i figured it was a good opportunity to re-expose myself to the mainstream. fergie's got a song that's apparently popular "Big girls don't cry." It's a far cry from fergilicious, but someone needs to tell her that no matter how soundly her writer has placed the sound in the folk rock/light rock niche it just doesn't fly. even i, who can't help but stop and listen to some nice acoustic thrumming was impatient for the end.

on a high note, i was amused by the attempt - then i was further amused by the 'hey (hey!) you (you!) - i don't like your girlfriend" song that followed. now that's an entertaining throw back to an 'older' sound.

also, i've been told to check out a band playing at housing works in a few weeks. so i'm looking forward to getting home and looking them up/checking them out.

oh - and the "hey there delilah" song. that's just a solid quality tune. i like. you should listen to it.

(and don't think that i'm missing the ridiculousness of me acting like these are all as new to you all as they are to totally out of touch me.)

hope and stasis

i'm listening to Dido's "Do you have a little time" this morning. It seems like an appropriate selection today, though i'd be hard pressed to say why. There have been times in the past when i've felt exactly what she describes in it toward one person or another: "if you should stop for a while you will find me standing by, over here at the side of your life." If anything, I feel like the person she describes - only without anyone waiting around on the sideline - and amidst a fog of others in the same condition. (and of course now, this has prompted an image of us all as atoms bouncing around and occassionally passing off electrons to eachother). Perhaps it's that a feel more and more like I, and the people i care about, are on both sides of that situation, and this song condenses the poignancy of that opportunity cost into its simple words and the heavy inevitabiliy of the orchestral line.

anyway. i'm sombre today. life is hard. i feel blessed for the recent good things that have come into my life: new friends, new acquaintances, new opportunities and new exposure points for long standing interests. i feel at peace with the possibilities of maintaining a rich and rewarding life that serves some value to more than just myself, but it's been very hard going getting to this place. and it makes my heart ache that we are often so alone (or feel so alone) in our efforts to get there.