november,
or,
the mo in which to wri your no

This time last year was pretty hectic. Between the middle of November and the middle of December, I spent time in LA, San Francisco, Spokane, New York and London. (Oh Spokane, how out of place you are. How impossible you make it for me to forget my roots.) And of course there were moments here and there at home in San Diego.

I don't have any illusions about being such a jet-setter this holiday season. While a weekend in southern California is in the works for later in the winter, and the idea for an early springtime trip to London is brewing in my head, and my mother's ordination is beckoning me home in January, and the possibility for Thanksgiving weekend spent in DC - minus turkey day itself, a Brooklyn affair - hardens into a plan, all this belies what looks to me like a bleak couple of months. Part of me is apprehensive about them.

Why this is, I'm not really sure. Maybe something to do with companionship. Some of the things I'm looking forward to most in the near future are Stan's visit, Thanksgiving dinner with my great big non-family family, and my as-yet-tentative weekend in DC with an old friend - all things that will distract me from the unavoidable fact that I will no doubt die alone, surrounded by books and shoes.

Which is all the more likely given that I have an uncomfortably persistent suspicion I will die before my 23rd birthday in May.

No, really, I don't know why I'm a little bit apprehensive. Nor do I know why I'm blogging about the feeling rather than curing it with a novel and a glass of shiraz.

the thing

The thing with Halloween is: if your costume isn't coming together, you can just ditch it and wear pretty much nothing but stilettos and underwear, and people won't really pay you any heed.

The thing with wearing pretty much nothing but stilettos and underwear is: there are going to be pictures out there of you wearing pretty much nothing but stilettos and underwear.

i'm tired...

...and don't, therefore, have the energy to tell you about Lord of the G-Strings and the adventures of the Throbbits.

But my GOD, someone needs to.

Biscuit, I'm passing this one to you. Whenever you're ready, hon.

forget it

I'm giving up Kerouac. I'm going to read a novel about life, literature, France and sex instead. So much more rewarding.

natural wonders

What we meant to do on the roof was watch the lunar eclipse. What we did on the roof was watch the guy sitting in front of his computer across the way and wonder whether he was looking at porn.

little joys

Today I got to use the phrase, "Speaking of stray babies and buttless chaps," which was pretty great.

a solicitation

I may be able to conjure rationalizations at purchase counters, but at other times my mind isn't nearly as dependable. Right now, for example, I'm having trouble making some of the simplest decisions. I need help.

The number of books I've read this year is edging unexpectedly toward 50, and at this point I might as well try and make sure I hit that mark. Just for fun. If you know anything about my job, you know that my brain needs food. But what should I add? And do I count each of the Snicket books by itself? How about the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

Furthermore, I'm starting to feel like it's been too long since I sat in a cramped, uncomfortable seat on an airplane. I think this is the longest I've gone without flying anywhere in ... ok, not that long, like a year and a half. But for awhile there it seemed like I had a monthly cross-country or transatlantic or at least west coastal commute, and I miss the variation of scenery. I want to go away for a weekend. But where?

Unrelatedly, today a temp in another department at work was rude to me and my boss said, "If that happens again, he won't be a temp here anymore." BOO-YAH.

had to

It's not difficult for me to come up with a reason to buy something, if I can afford it. Not even a reason - a necessity. I had to buy frozen yogurt today because I was NOT going to let my measly $2 subsidy card at the cafeteria go to waste. I had to buy cranberry juice because I couldn't let Annette's $2 card go to waste, either. I had to buy boots because the boots I was wearing made my feet hurt. I had to buy Eternal Sunshine because it was on sale, facing me down at the store entrance, and because I was already holding the new Elliott Smith then I had to go buy Shadowlands and A Muppet Christmas Carol so that I wouldn't look like a total indie tool.

After all of this I got on the subway and continued reading On the Road, and realized the amount I spent on frozen yogurt, cranberry juice, boots, three DVDs and a CD could have funded Sal Paradise's ventures for a decade. So a little bit of perspective there.

Someone across from me on the train asked if I liked the book and I replied honestly, which is often a mistake, and said it was one of those books I can't tell if I'm enjoying or just feeling self-satisfied about because I'm Supposed To Read It. I'd used that line on Seastreet the day before and it seemed to pass for a legitimate opinion, but my literary subway companion didn't look impressed. "After I read it, I hitchhiked across the country," he said. Uh-huh, way to go, man. "I'm not going to do that," I told him.

and now, your regular programming

So, given that

there's no cable internet at my apartment, but there is a standing offer from my landlord to use his wireless network

and

my iMac G4 is incompatible with Airport cards Extreme and Express

and

Apple has discontinued the standard Airport card

prospects for my ever being internet-connected at home looked pretty grim.

Luckily, I found a place to buy the discontinued card - that is, Jason suggested it and Biscuit called them to ask if they had the card in stock and I went to pick it up. But then I was confronted with a whole new set of hostile conditions. And given that

the card came without any instructions

and

I own exactly zero tools, because when I packed up to leave California and was down to the last few square inches of box space, it took one look at my totally crappy stupid tool box for me to decide to ditch it

and

this is me we're talking about, I'm one of the people who uses the instructions Target gives you to assemble, like, a soap dish

(though let me just say that I am NOT one of the people who watches the flight attendants when they're doing the belt bit)

it is very surprising and exciting for me to say that I managed actually to remove the panel underneath the computer, install the card, replace the panel, and connect to my landlord's network, all without tears, gnashing of teeth or any sudden, violent explosions.

So my own noncommittal tendencies notwithstanding, I may be able to end the Great Draught of Posts that's caused me (and apparently you, you sweet thing, and no, I am definitely not getting married) not a small amount of chagrin over the past month. Stay tuned.

disappointment

I don't believe in omens, but when I read the Sunday New York Times and saw in its top story the description of an LBJ campaign ad as showing a girl "picking the pedals from a daisy," I couldn't fight the feeling that a dark cloud was passing overhead.

a girl's best friend

I shudder to think of a world without seam-up-the-back fishnet stockings.

i'm back ... not unlike a certain eighties sensation

Before last night I had never been inside the AMC theater on 42nd Street, so I couldn't have said with complete assurance, as I can now, that screens 19-25 are located approximately eighty-five stories above street level. Even so, I could have said with near-complete assurance that traversing about half the vertical distance from the street to the screen by running up an escalator that's going down is not the most efficient way of getting there. Nor is it, with the possible exception of the first few seconds when the memory of doing it as a child kicks in, any fun.

But when there's only one escalator between Level One and Level About Half Of Approximately Eighty-Five, and it's going down, and none of the elevators are functioning, and you (or your generous friend who covered you because you were late) already paid for tickets, then running up a falling staircase is what you have to do in order to see a movie about zombies that you end up being pretty sure will put you off crowds and blank stares for at least a decade.

All in all, an evening that involves going up an escalator going down and watching a movie about dead people who are alive has a kind of backwards quality to it. Someone might say (if he or she were a strange sort of individual) that the only thing that could make such a night even weirder would be a surprise appearance by a band that was popular in the 1980s and is trying to make a comeback.

The thing that made my night even weirder was a surprise appearance by Duran Duran. It turns out you have only to go to the wrong Times Square movie theater to have the experience, however unasked-for, unnecessary, and perhaps unpleasant-smelling but if anyone asks I said nothing, of seeing Duran Duran in the flesh. And by "seeing," I mean "being hustled by security employees doing an admirable job of snatching every person who enters the door and depositing each one nearly at the feet of."

Now, I won't lie. I've heard Duran Duran on the radio and not changed the channel. In the past ten years. But, as I wished to tell the bustling Loews employees, tonight was not a good night to deal with living, breathing Duran Duran. I had a friend to meet. A movie to see. A tooth-grindingly, hair-pullingly busy day at work to deflate after. A home internet connection to wish for. A missing cell phone to worry about. A delicious pumpkin risotto eaten the night before to fondly remember. A party to plan an outfit for. A mystery about a certain Jacques Snicket to be consumed by in my mind.

And that was just from 7:30 to 7:40. By 7:40 I was anxious to move on to other things, like deciding I'd left my phone on my bed, fretting over the likelihood of three more tooth-grindingly, hair-pullingly busy days at work, looking forward to seeing Stuart again, actually getting to the right damn theater, and wondering just what did happen to Beatrice. But apparently the powers that be thought a dose of Sad Comeback Attempt would fit into my schedule, and the rest is history, or as we like to say in blogspeak, now saved in the archives.

whoa

I just dreamt that my parents were Marge and Homer Simpson.

I think that scared me off sleep for awhile.

Anyway, I'm moving today, and won't have internet at the new place for a week or two, so sit tight. I'll write again from Brooklyn.

PS: Thomas Friedman is back!

a letter fell

There was no reason for a letter to be in The Grapes of Wrath, but it fell from the pages anyway when I flipped to Chapter One last night. It fell as though it could have been anywhere in the world until I'd opened the book and pulled it out from between the pages. It wanted to be found, it seemed.

I'd seen the letter twice before. The last time was recent: early summer, maybe late spring. The first, a few years ago, was when I wrote it - transcribed it, rather, from scribblings on two envelopes and the back of a receipt. My scribblings.

The rest I don't remember - when I wrote the original, where I was that I couldn't find any real paper, how long it was between the original and the transcription. What compelled me to write out the nice, neat copy that was in my book? Was I dating the original or the transcription when I wrote "November 16" at the top?

One thing I do know is the reason I didn't give it to the person to whom it's addressed. The same reason I never asked the questions in the letter aloud. Timidity, vulnerability, unwillingness to be tough or, most of all, to let go of something ...

The thing is, I'm not even curious about what I don't know of the letter. And as for what I do know - it has to do with a version of myself I'm far enough beyond that I'm done even feeling guilty about being so irresolute.

The only thing I felt when the letter fell from the book was faint annoyance. There's always something more, another reason not to let my selectively hyperanalytic brain forget entirely. Another reason to open up Movable Type and blab. But it's stupid. I hardly care anymore. And after all this, the only lesson I can come up with is that I need to get my hands on a Pensieve*. With a lid.