Apparently, those allergies I battled the other week? Either the prelude to a cold or the set-up for one, which came hard and fast and knocked me right the hell off my feet. It was like a rope-a-dope, or something. Tuesday I started getting cranky and achy, and then Wednesday and Thursday just outright sucked.
So that’s what I did this week.
On the plus side, I got a loan that should carry me a while, and went to my first eye exam in several years. I studied hard and passed with flying colors (ha!).
While sick, I watched the so-criminally-underrated-it-was-canceled-after-eight-episodes Love Monkey, which starred Tom Cavanagh in the titular role and concerns days in the life of an A&R rep for an indie music label. Really, really great show based on an actually decent book with the same name by Kyle Smith. Then again, it was one of the single instances when the adaptation was better than the source material, and those eight episodes became one of the most perfectly executed television series I’ve ever watched. Doesn’t seem to be available on DVD yet, but I’m sure some resourcefulness and good ole’ fashioned Google fu can help.
This is the first part of the first episode:
With February just around the corner, there’s lots to do, but then again, I feel like I’m always saying that, so I think I’m going to stop and just, you know, do them. I fear this blog became a bit too much like a journal and a bit too little like . . . well, something really awesome.
Anyway, more after I can fully clear the glue out of my head. And maybe beer and venison tonight with my best buddy in the world. Sounds therapeutic to me, even if it is, like, two degrees out there.
As expected, I’ve had Go West in my head for a few days now. As also expected, I haven’t minded much.
So here’s the thing: one of the reasons I came back to Jersey and with the intention of moving back to Manhattan was that I thought I had to figure some things out. It’s a phrase I used several times. I expected some deep self-analysis and introspection, perhaps? I’m not sure, exactly, if only because such phrases have always inspired me to eye-rolls. Like the whole “I need to find myself thing.”
(I thought I had to find myself once. So I started looking, and after not long at all, I did. Find myself, I mean. I was under my bed, and boy was I surprised to see me)
And so I’ve been thinking. As I’ve been writing. I’ve been thinking about MAs and MBAs. I’ve been thinking about NYU and Regis. I’ve been thinking about What I Want to Do With My Life.
As though I hadn’t been already.
It’s been a joke among my friends lately that I’ve become a bit of an academic gypsy, except without the whole eyeliner thing. The word “nomadic” has come up. A few people–including my own mother, in fact–remarked further upon the idea: that I can’t “keep running from” . . . well, I don’t know. People say “things,” but nobody’s exactly specific.
But the thing I’m realizing is that I’ve been doing what I want to do with my life. I’ve been talking about Hollywood and LA to people, and how much I disliked the “city” itself, but I loved USC. I went to Denver because I knew I sought city life but also missed nature; I thought Denver would be a good place, but after only a few months, I started missing home and Manhattan. And I really missed home. I missed my family and friends. And I was thinking of here, of Jersey, as home.
So I came home.
All those things, I wanted to do. I wanted to be here right now, and here I am.
Saturday night, I went out to see my buddies play. This was a common activity when I lived here a few years ago; I would go out to Philly usually at least once a month. I would knock a few back. I would dance. I would smile and hug my friends and laugh.
Which basically describes this past Saturday night. I did all those things.
I was just talking to my sister, telling her I felt anxious. Telling her I didn’t know what I was doing. She asked me how much thought I’d given it, and I told her: “A decent amount.” To which she replied: “Well, then, why don’t you stop? You’ve got too much time on your hands. Get on with it.”
I keep hoping for clarity from confusion, self-knowledge like some beatific epiphany–but if I heard someone say something even remotely like that, my first response would be simple:
“What does that even mean?”
The other night, I dreamt I danced twice, once in practice and then again as performance. The following evening, though, I knocked one back and I smiled and I danced for the simple sake of dancing, because, really, what other reason would one need? Is this anxiety I keep feeling just the universe’s way of telling me to stop trying to control everything and just let life happen?
I don’t know, but I’m not sure I should give it much thought, either.
I hate to say that it seems as always that the rich get richer while the poor get laid off, because that’s way more cynical than I generally tend toward, but, well, it really does seem that way, lately.
It’s kind of a shame Obama can’t just step in and say, “Guys, we just gave you $5 billion. You’re not slowing production or laying anyone off. What you’re going to do is give free cars to all the customers your banks/dealerships are denying new car loans to.”
You should totally read the book before you go see it, and if you can get your hands on the audio version: listen to it. Gaiman reads it himself, and it’s brilliantly creepy and hauntingly charming in all the best ways.
I’ve been battling allergies off and on since . . . well, roughly since I got back to Jersey, I guess. Yesterday, my head felt as though someone had filled it with glue, and today ain’t a long shot better. Last night, I tried to crash early before realizing I hadn’t eaten dinner, but I found a half a cheese steak in the fridge. And it was from the local Pat’s, which makes the only good cheese steaks in town (my favorite overall goes to Jim’s, on South Street, but I’m usually blissfully inebriated when I eat them, so sober mileage may vary).
Anyway, last night . . . I just had the weirdest dreams. Besides the cowl-cloaked quasi-religious rites-chanting people in the mall, of all places, there was the dance exhibition, of which I was, apparently, the lone participant, and at which I busted a groove to, of all things, “King of Wishful Thinking,” which was apparently sourced from a car stereo and blasted through amps. And by “participated,” I mean twice, because first I had to practice-dance for it, and then I had to real dance, and I still couldn’t help mangling the rondes du jambe or the pommes du terre (I jest. No potatoes were mangled in the making of my dream).
And I’ve never even seenPretty Woman (only parts of it).
At first I misremembered the artist as Mr. Mister, but it was actually Go West, which left me thinking: but I just got back from West. I want East, or more accurately, just North.
So now I’m going to have that song in my head all day long, but then again, there are worse things. I like that song. By all day long, I’m talking about my trip to my optometrist, which I’m actually in a very nerdy way looking forward to, because I haven’t been there in, like, three years. I hope he doesn’t bitch me out (I wear contacts I’m only supposed to use for, like, a month at a time. I’ve been using them for slightly longer than that).
Good news, though, is that otherwise, I’m writing more lately. This makes me happy. I thought I was working on a novella called Meets Girl, but I just started the second act and I’m only up to 24,000 words and it appears there’s way more than 16,000 to go. So for now I’m just going with it. It’s a post-modern literary fantasy in the grand tradition of novels about writers writing novels, so obviously I’m hoping it ends up way more exciting and interesting than it sounds on paper. So far so good, I think. I thought about doing one of those widget-y things to publicly track my word count, if only because it would so totally shame me into writing more, but they seem like more effort than I care to make. I’d really like to finish it soon, though, so that I can then finish the erotic fantasy I first finished a draft of, like, nine years ago.
Man, I’m so slow sometimes.
Anyway, tomorrow night, I’m out to see my buddies’ band play, something I haven’t said in three years or so, so if I’m scarce this weekend, it’s all that. Combined. But for now I’m off to see the wizard, who is actually my optician, but then again, fixing my eyes is pretty damned magical in my book.
I’ve read enough reactions on blogs and Twitter that I suspect that having been singularly unimpressed by today’s inaugural poem is not an uncommon reaction. I’m sure Elizabeth Alexander is an otherwise fine writer, and I’m sure the great crowd and the singular historicity of today’s event affected everyone, but whether it was in the delivery or the content, I’ve sensed many people feeling decidedly meh about the poem.
A Twitter friend tweeted that everyone criticizing should try and do better, and then specifically challenged me to write and share when I said I wish I’d been invited, and I thought, you know what?
Gauntlet accepted. Bear in mind, I’ve had a few hours, and would revise, but here’s a start:
“Just One Smile”
It’s his smile.
Of few other presidents or men
Do we remember a smile–
Kennedy’s hair and Nixon’s sweaty brow,
Roosevelt’s bear and hat
(Teddy and Frank, respectively)–
But today we have a smile,
a bright bream
wide as the day is long,
true as words on a page,
genuine as the bills in our pockets
and worth every bit as much as that currency.
If we could fold our lips into our wallets,
exchange them, one man to another,
ours today could be a rich country.
We would worry less about tax cuts and the Dow,
less about how we might pay for our children’s health,
because we would know our smiles can heal.
Our smiles can help.
Just one smile,
sure-placed and sincerely bestowed,
offered without restraint, without caveat,
offered, most important, with warm certainty
of its own return,
can change the world.
Just one smile can turn a global tide
and change a single person’s mood.
Just one smile can be the change
we want to see in the world
and offer to all who receive it
the courage to invest in the audacity of hope.
The power of just one smile
is that it does not belong to one man,
charged on this day to accept the great burden
of leadership and generations–
(bring us your tired, your weak, your poor in spirit).
The power of that one smile is that it inspires mine.
And yours.
And yours and yours.
And yours and yours and yours.
Just one smile inspires all of us
to believe again.
Not in a flag or a country or a world,
but in our own ability to change it,
and to shape it.
To believe again in a dream
of a world in which our character might be our capital
and smiles our currency.
Today, we smile.
Some through emotional tears,
many in ecstatic joy,
all in relief and celebration.
Today, we realize that the answer is not solely
“Yes, we can,”
or “have,”
or “did,”
or “will,”
but all those responses punctuated by our certain smiles.
Just one smile
provides relief.
Just one smile
proves we can overcome.
Just one smile
turns the other cheek
to years of heartbreak and struggle,
bullets and tears.
Just one smile
can make a difference.
And so, in these tough times
of darkness and despair,
when it seems impossible
to reach out to your neighbor
to offer your help
to make a difference,
remember that just one smile
can.
And does.
And will.
One image among many you can find right over here. Really fascinating stuff. It feels odd to say something like that I love that the name of the Nagasaki bomber was named “Bockscar” and to compare the spelling to an LOLcat, because immediately I start to think of the actual devastation it delivered. I just read, the other day, an account from someone who survived that terrible 1945, but I’ve read enough in the past few weeks I don’t remember where I saw it.
The more we continue to refer to Barack Obama as our nation’s “first black president,” the more we continue to guarantee the frustration of Martin Luther King’s dream that we as human beings be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.
Barack Obama is, so far, nothing more nor less than our nation’s 44th president. Whatever achievements he accomplishes in that position will be accomplished because of his strength as a human being, not the color of the skin of one of his parents.
(Edit to add: I really must credit my former student, Peche Toney, for beginning the inspiration for this thought days ago, I’ve realized. She posted the sort of note that made me proud to have once been her teacher, and I obviously thought it was extraordinarily cogent. It was only reading that Yahoo! news article that began to solidify the same sentiment in me.)
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