I'm going to make a lot of money then I'm going to quit this crazy scene

A little bit I gauge my emotional growth on my reactions to songs. Scratch that, a lot-tle bit I do that. It is less embarrassing than reading old diary entries. The first year I knew I was an Adult was the first year I understood this song. I wish I had a river, I could skate away on had always seemed too maudlin, I skipped that track as I devoured the rest of "Hits," feeling more interested in a Chelsea morning... milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too.

I remember that first gray kitchen in New York, no windows, Soviet bunker exterior, baking something in December. One bakes in December to build something, build it and incorporate it into your body, sloppy batter to puffy cake, a chemical miracle, incorporated later in and around your midsection. A little practice run, a little test, yes I am capable, yes I can frost this cake, yes, I can live this life.

The song came on the radio and I was stopped, mid-stir or whisk or oven-knob-crank. Like it had been translated from the Greek. Like I had turned up my hearing aid, instead of the stove.

Yesterday, at the store, searching for someone to talk to about mini-quiche, there she was. Joni Mitchell, who at this point has probably converted to Judaism or lives so far north in Canada that there are only wild elk to do any real damage to a fir tree. Her spacious cottage located directly on a frozen river, ice skating available at any point during the year, barring any ill effects of global climate change on permafrost.

I am still 25, though, and urban, and identify exponentially with this rural longing. I am selfish and I am sad and I can only hope that next year or maybe the year after, I will make a lot of money and I will quit this crazy scene. Though, mostly the make a lot of money. Oh who am I kidding? Milk and toast and honey, a song outside my window, it came ringing up like Christmas bells and rapping up like pipes and drums, oh, won't you stay, we'll put on the day, and we'll wear it 'till the night comes? Until next year, anyway.

Re: (but actually not a re:)

... a song eternally apropos. Thanks for that. Now you've got me listening. And it's flurrying outside... for the first time this season... and it's December 1st.

Talk about apropos.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, in this post. I mean, I did talk about it, but I'm not going to anymore. Stop.

Remember telegrams? Stop. If not, watch The Sound of Music or the episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte is in a legal battle with Bunny. Stop.

I've been watching this all morning:



I find it endlessly entertaining. Maybe you will, too.

And so it begins;

the world is a dangerous place, not to mention for a slippery crocodile skin heel, there are cobblestones and dog poop and rain slipping down in and around my sockless foot, which is red now and would pout if it knew how. I am sent on a foggy and rainy holiday mission, I am stomping through the street, admiring my own steamy breath, and, thirty days hath September, April, June and... oh, shit, the wreaths are up around our lobby and oh my god, it's happened, nowhere is safe, I heard this song in a public place.

And if that's not just the exactly exact song I just don't know what is.

If that song is not just the perfectly fitted galosh or trench or umbrella with an ergonomic handle then I just don't know who I am.

Things take

time.

Maybe other people know this, as in, feel it internally and are talented at waiting. Patience formulated in their bone marrow and then pumped deliberately into their bloodstream. Rhythmic heartbeats, steady lungs.

Growing Brussels sprouts, for example, takes seven months. Planted in June and then finally, Thanksgiving, little marbles rolling around in hot butter, glowing greener and then browning at the edges, next to vibrant orange carrot cubes. A pie must be baked; cooled; then placed in the refrigerator, a heavy baby. Later, the impatient, the greedy, the naughty, can sneak under the tin foil with a fork and steal a crisp slice of apple, re-solidified by the cold.

The time it takes to gain a pound? To digest the contents of so many brown paper bags, heaved from the trunk of the car?

To have a proper vacation there must be enough nights and days to leave underwear strewn across the bedroom floor. A getaway with a tightly organized suitcase is no getaway at all. Glasses must be lost on some dusty bookshelf; a hunt for the second boot under the couch. Settle, compress, lose, forget. Unclench.


The time it takes to light eighty candles on a birthday cake, but then, consider the lifetime it took to deserve such a party. The rapidity of damage control after dropping a match on the metallic doily, the alarming speed with which fire eats. The short laugh of my twenty-five years, in the face of geologic history, or, a sleepless night. The sound of the third, creaky step on the staircase, the hum of the house, dishwasher, Bach etudes from the back porch. An old friend's car, in the driveway, memory preserves them.

What my mother fondly refers to as our White Trash Garden:

But yes, thank you, I'll take another helping. Lengthy holiday-themed reading today brought to you courtesy of glassesglasses.

happy thanksgiving

My father just ran to the store to get some "loin cloths." He dashed out in his "leisure pants" to the Price Chopper, so that our turkey can be "mummified."

I am on standby here, armed with the salmonella slicked baster, watching floppy-eared moose dance on the television. Someone in earmuffs and a scarf is describing the electrical battle techniques of an anime character. Eager high-schoolers in feathered caps dash down Broadway in matching sneakers, wielding trombones.

Leaving New York last night I realized the only people left on the subway were drug addicts and cheerleaders, or baton twirlers, from Albuquerque or wherever it is they get excited about these things. When there are adolescent blonds on the A train it is time for me to leave and come North, to fill my role as drip-catcher, potato-masher, joke-laugher.

Got to run, lots to be grateful for!

This week has been an experiment in gray,

smoggy, felted, stripey, streaky, any-which-way you hadn't expected to see the sky. I realize it is only just Wednesday but the hours of Mon/Tues dragged along like a string of snot, first billowing out the nostril, ballooning a little, an itchy trickle, maddeningly slow during the fury of bleary-eyed tissue fumbling.

We have vitamin D deficiencies and need the sun. God's failed creatures, the dinosaurs, withered away from smog cover - they looked upward with watery eyes to see the slate explosion that was the sky. They stamped their digitless stumps into the mushy earth. Emotionless beasts, requiring only palm fronds and space in which to roam, ignorant of their rapidly approaching paleontological demise. We may never know if they were warm or cold blooded but they certainly did not check their watches for the arrival of a train or struggle to express themselves properly in a lengthy email. A vague, subtropical malaise. I attempt to sniffle at it with dignity, ignore meteorites, wear a hat.

Re:

I took my first gel tab of Vitamin D this morning. You and I, though hours away from the other, are joined in vitamin deficiency.

Who knew that, I, omniscient as I am, believing that the whole urgency of obtaining/consuming enough Vitamin D was merely a fad- like wisdom teeth/tonsil removal- would later find, due to extensive blood work, that am subject to severe deficiency.

It makes sense, really. I don't like the sun. I don't drink milk... or remember to take my Calcium + D supplement. I don't heed the e-mail advice from my mother:

Since you need vitamin d, you should go outside and walk today, on the sunny side of the street. it is BEAUTIFUL outside. also, I need you to do some research for me on paint colors and a mirror and light for the downstairs bathroom.

OK, then. I will most likely fill neither of her requests.

Turning 25 really puts things in perspective. There's a lot of preventative measures one must take... to avoid bone loss, wrinkles, jowls, FAT ASSES.

It adds a great deal of stress to one's life, and stress, as we all know, is a leading exacerbator (not a "real" word) of many of the above.

I'm already thinking about getting preventative Botox. Because, as we all know, men generally get better looking with age, and we women just get worse looking.

And each year it becomes harder to take off those "holiday pounds."

I don't think I will celebrate any holidays this year.

I will forgo those parties held mostly by middle-aged women whose agenda is to make the younger generation of women suffer as they do.
I will pass on cocktails.
I will even pass on truffles.

Lord Jesus, as your "birthday" swiftly approaches, grant me the strength of resistance. Grace me with your your ability to take pleasure in Styrofoam tasting wafers that obviously only contain one calorie.

Bless me with perseverance.

my own private mayflower

Like coming out of the closet I realized I was American. What a terrible shock, previous dreams of exemption and ex-patriotism and flaky biscuits on a sunset gondola ride dashed.

Slipping into the black drape of New York makes it all the easier, a better definition, an easier out. A magician's cloak or a vampire's cape or something swept around a royal Count. Great costume, Olivia, but where are you really from? In anticipation of my upcoming northerly train ride, visions of a sweat scented bar crowded with blue baseball caps, and then, streets, empty of pedestrians, anxious auto-door lock, nearing plywood planked windows.

Lately, I have been starting each indignant sentence with: "Yo!" and realizing.

It just keeps slipping out, like early Eliza Doolittle. Like how photos always capture my phantom lazy eye. Like a bad case of the hiccups.

It's who I am, I know it now and as tooth-knock as it sounds I might wear it like a rainbow patch on my backpack. A Chinese character, tattooed on the back of my neck. Everybody has one, under their particular black cloak.

eyes glued shut

This morning the city felt like study-abroad. Why foreign, New York, today? What am I far away from, which I was near to as recently as Friday? Maybe it's the clouds, horizontally hazy, striped all across the sky, casting a dim dull glow on things. Reminiscent of late winter months in Dublin. An unusual gray, either matching the chrome skyline perfectly - or a the result of a damper, more reflective atmosphere, increasing the reflective qualities of the buildings. It feels further North, today. So do I.

Yes, I moved to New York City

because I hoped to spend the better part of my adult life underground. Not like, I am a member of some counter-culture revolutionary group that blew up a building one time. Not like, I am in a band that no one has ever heard of, but I wear a feathered headdress and play the piano fairly well.

No, I mean like, literally underground, under concrete and sewer and manholes and electricity. Under what I assume used to be farm soil or river sludge or some Indian burial ground or the compost heap from a spätzle factory back when things were New Amsterdam.

When I wistfully dreamed of my early-to-mid-twenties, as a teenager, maybe riding the city bus in Albany, I would just gaze out the window, falling leaves, a man walking his dog and think: God, I wish I was staring at the rusted iron of a subterranean pipe.

Thank you, science: I have alleviated my need for sunshine, with one gel-tab of vitamin D each morning. Just think of the immunity I am building, sharing an enclosed airspace with upwards of sixty strangers! Think of the reading I am getting done, an extra half hour of information absorption due to the unexpected stalling of a B train at 34th Street.

How To Fight Loneliness

Copy those Wilco lyrics into a notebook. Painstakingly, by hand, ink and paper fusing, tattoo this information on the wide-ruled page and then close it, jam it into your desk drawer, shove it shut. Feel free to grimace, or swear aloud as the drawer jams, after all, you are alone and there is no one to impress. Better to rote along with an artist's interpretation than come up with your own ideas, even if "smiling" is a terrible suggestion. You should never lie, and a forced smile is just a painful physical untruth.

Don't read emails from your mother, either. No matter what they are about it will be upsetting. Instead, accept unsolicited advice from the receptionist across the hall, she will hand you a book subtitled: How to find the right man for the real you. You have never, not once, discussed anything personal with her before. You thank her, and then say, "I need this."

Stop saying things like this to people you don't know. This is also lying: slipping along through the day, conditioned, conditioner, slippery, feminine, smiling, agreeing, nodding, acquiescing. Winking.

Yin, yang: power it out on the elliptical machine, like Bridget Jones. Watch that movie, in your bed, at approximately 9pm. Both of these practices are like legal drugs, free from irreparable damage besides potential muscle injury. I mean from the lying in bed, not the exercise. Your best bet, my mish-mosh of advice, is to stick plainly to these simple things. Endorphins. Plot. Stay here for a while and let the complications disintegrate, like beef tendons, melting and re-fusing like when you re-heat a leftover steak. Ah, a tender result.

When you learn something wrong the first time

it is impossible to reconfigure your thinking, the paths have already been worn down in the wrong direction, the breadcrumbs already scattered throughout the enchanted forest. For instance: "Episcopal" will always sound, in my head, as though it had an extra dozen syllables, my confused childhood attempt walking past St. Andrew's on North Main. Es-clip-obs-sick-a-pib-ble.

Something new, though, comes in on all channels. It doesn't know where to stick, it floods, like the kitchen of a cheap condominium. Five senses, plus the sixth; the bewitching, glittering gumdrop doorknob on the looming gingerbread house. Like, last night I watched Sleepless in Seattle for the first time. Attempting to fill my cultural void, attempting to fill a Tuesday night void. I was driven to distraction by Rosie O'Donnell's pumps, by Meg Ryan's chignon, by Tom Hank's boyish good looks. It was too late for me and that movie. It was too late for me, with the twenty-year fashion cycle, not to eye critically the long trench coats of the architects and the geometric jewelry of the babysitter. My neural paths have already been formed: lesbian, plastic surgery, Inside the Actor's Studio. Going back now is just too strange.

New Trend: Thank You, Mr. President

When meeting the Chinese Head of State, is important, apparently, to "represent."


Is this ensemble (Note: jacket) the work of Rachel Zoe?

Obama: Yes, we are a mad poor country now, and owe you, like, 500 trillion yuan, so I obviously I must dress accordingly- sorry, I couldn't afford a fancy Presidential jacket. I had to wear this brown puffer coat from Nordstrom, that looks like those of your guards.

I do actually think I remember exiting my bed from the less-used side this morning.

Is it a negative personality trait that I have already pre-determined today, Tuesday, to be One Of Those Days? Or am I just mature enough and full of self-knowledge and worldly wisdom that I can sense the subtle vibrations of extreme irritation that accompany this type of day, when ill-balanced humors result in splatted breakfast foods, stained blouses, misplaced keys, and preening, cantankerous fax machines? No really, why, in 2009, should I have to STAND next to a gray plastic box, waiting, like a patient mother with her young son at the public restroom? Cranking out a single sheet of white paper with an inky streak down the center, Message: Line is busy.

Oh I'm sorry. I thought we were the species of Homo sapien who WALKED ON THE MOON. Patience is not my most abundant virtue.

And though I should have the capability to empathize, having been on both sides of the proverbial 'velvet rope' myself, or rather, both... ends of the walkie-talkie [I mean, what person under the age of 25 in New York City has not held a job re-routing pedestrian traffic for the set of a film?] so I get it, I really do, but please, let me walk down my pigeon-shit-splattered, methadone clinic back alley, my morning routine, my geometrically plotted path of least resistance from the subway. I am not excited that you will shoot a Dunkin' Donuts commercial here this morning. I am not impressed by your headset and I am not... oh, what can be done? I will not yell at a stranger, and you simply cannot reason with a machine. Such is a Tuesday. Such is life.

Certainty!

and you will know it when you get there.

and it will be a hard journey,

and it will cost you dearly.

and it will be the most perfect unison.

and it will be, oh, nearly blinding!

and it will be a twisting, swelling comprehension, rising up in your chest.

that is how it will feel, when it is just the right thing.

and it will be a soy latte, from Gimme Coffee. and it will be marked with a heart.

--

The only other thing I can compare this to was the time I mixed up the perfect Jameson and ginger ale, from my tiny rolling bar next to the low-handled, white closet door. It is an old house. Unmeasured pour, shaky, over a bookcase containing rusted household tools, it blended together tart and bubbly, and tasted, though of course utterly devoid of the round fruit, just like apple juice. A marvel, a miracle. A possibility.

keep quiet and listen

It is not often I eschew music for silence. Or rather, ambient noise. Silence is a difficult effect to achieve. I guess today I am just so pleased to be back amongst the living that the whir of traffic, eleven floors down, is stimulating enough. Comfortably emotion-free. The plastic click of this weird keyboard, someone's high heels down the hallway. Noticing, that there are an infinite number of little indentations in these old wood floors. It's not my heels that do it, so I imagine the century or so of spike-heeled secretaries sashaying, important client on line 1. Here is a delivery from the brown box company.

Expected sounds: I know the gait of my coworkers. I can hear, all the way from the elevator, the frantic shuffle of my boss, its unmistakable energy. The sound of gum chewing in my own mouth. The guy down the hall, asking what language they speak in Somalia? French? African?

I am accepting my present levels of openness. They do not need to be pried or crowbarred into deeper experience with the soft tones of a love song. They do not need to be jostled into animation by the hearty strum of an electric guitar. Besides, the unseen danger of alphabetization! One minute, Liz Phair, the next: Liza Minelli.

When feeling permeable to outside influence, silk, easily wrinkled, a down pillow, retaining the shape of a head, blotting paper, oil stained at just the mention of a nose, stick to the safe stuff: silence, or Rufus Wainwright. His music will never be tainted by real-world experience; lest I be "drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue" in which case, I'd appreciate the soundtrack.

let things open and close

Every day, a new and different misunderstanding of everything. So I cling to what I know: I live in the right city. And on days I feel radiant, the set dressing is all in place, the wardrobe flattering, the soundtrack relevant, poignant, even, lending the proper undercurrent of dramatic excitement to my activity.

But oh, the awful truth is just that so much is dependent on one's nose not dripping, or one's head not feeling as though it is being prepared for Egyptian burial. So much is dependent on feeling like all of one's atoms are in agreement, vibrating though they may be. Some days, the days of worse uncertainty, they threaten to zap away in all directions, a sudden reversal of scientific law.

A day removed from my own life, I am like a ghost in this apartment. Observing, from this new, empty perspective. And what is there to see? Not enough, to fill all this time. A rattling, steamy kettle. The violent red of the backyard tree’s leaves, they glow, nearly, but the color cannot be captured digitally. A box of cake mix, a can of beans. The ghost sits in the corner, haunting. A jar full of doubts.

To be terrified is to be alive, or so I say to myself. At those most vibrational moments, when the spaces between certainties are the largest, I am most free from risk. What more is there to lose, how much further could I shake away, dissipate? Alright. I will just blow my nose, and wait it out, and let. Let things open and close, as they do, as they will.

re: Swine Flu

Right, so that post may be the most hilarious thing I've ever read because I can very clearly picture you, in your nubbly grey (I will spell it with an E until I die) sweater, in bed.

Despite my own hypochondriacal tendencies, and the fact that I am a great fear-er of the H1N1 pandemic (and pandemics in general), my inclination is to say that you do not have swine flu.

It is possible that I believe this only because I find the thought of my best friend sweating, in bed, in nubbly sweater, dying, of a pig-born virus 1. utterly ridiculous and 2. utterly horrible.

Ridiculous because there is an entire book series based on a swine...

named Olivia.

And... your favorite muppet? Miss Piggy.

And... one of your great artistic endeavors? PIGGIES- in all different outfits and scenarios.

It's nice that because I am in Albany, I can lie and say that if I were in NYC, I would be right there, taking care of you.

Because we both know the false nature of the statement, I feel it isn't truly a lie. The lie is negated by the lie-ee knowing that the liar is lying.

Whatever, I love you, but I am afraid of pig diseases.

In my absence, watch Pride & Prejudice- a dripping wet Colin Firth cures nearly everything, as we know from past experience, and I'll be damned if you do not find yourself healed as he emerges from that random pond on the grounds of Pemberley.

If, however, you are still sick after watching that... my bad. I guess you do have swine flu.

swine flu,

face hurt, high fever, clammy hands, nightmares of pickle relish. Fantasy of a strawberry flavored Gatorade bottle, chilled at length in the refrigerator. Dripping bottles of champagne, stored in board game boxes. My brain, heated up. Ah, the strange things a few degrees of body heat will do.

Will I die like this, alone, in a nubbly gray sweater? In ill-fitting lavender colored pajama pants? The hours of 9 to 5 suddenly a no-man's-land, only me, in my bed, and the unhappy psychotic across the street, yelling. I like the quiet, between his outbursts, but I do not like the heavy beat of my heart or the cross-eyed feeling I am getting, looking at this screen. Dispatches from my bed: if there is no blog post tomorrow, dear readers, I have succumbed.

Health insurance be damned, the doctor's office is an hour of subway ride away, across a bridge, over a body of fetid water. Over my fetid body will I go there, risking life and limb to dizzily collapse onto the third rail. Yes, I understand now. This is how one might become a subway panhandler, each minute of fever another significant loss of sanity, soon I will be wrapped up in newspapers and singing a husky song of regret.

So it begins to rain and the little droplets shiver the last yellow leaves, I will shiver my last, dramatic moments of life away in this warm bed.

There are an infinite number of

mistakes you can make on a daily basis, even something as simple as ordering a lunch special from a natural foods restaurant which comes served on a bed of seaweed. On a scale of 'one to mistake' we can place that as three-quarters my error of judgment and about forty percent error in the judgment of the chef, though perhaps the wholesale seaweed manufacturer could be held responsible for the quality of the product, which smelled like the wet pants of a dead fisherman.

Not to mention the mathematical errors which can and will occur at all junctures. Anyway, infinity is a concept, not a number, which is why I chose it to title this post. What with the seaweed debacle I feel inclined to minimize potential hazards throughout the rest of today.

So conceptually, which is the only way to see things, as our visions are filtered through our personally scented gas masks of experience, you could say to yourself:

Olivia, you have just consumed an ungodly amount of kale, and of this, you should be proud. Perhaps satisfaction would have been better served, imminently, by the Taco Salad, but do you now find yourself slumped sideways in a stupor of caloric resignation? No. Fiber, nutrition, energy. What kind of a mistake is that?

And so long as I am haunted by that beach-combing scent, that pungent sub-earthly note, I will be safe from a repeat-error. I guess the best we can hope for is that we will calmly weave past experience into future projections and then find respite, underneath, in the shade of that crazy carpet, the now, the present moment. For now we will take: 1:47 PM, Wednesday, November 11, 2009, where I combine metaphors of weaving, ocean and gas masks in a way unprecedented by anyone in the human race.

the future is a construct

Sometimes I think of the titles of these things before I know what they will be about.

Life...

is like a totem pole. I'm no structural engineer, but, it might be important to write into your contract that a geotechnical investigation will be required to determine the soil quality, before work commences.

There you are, etching the distinguishing glyphs, carving the grimacing bird's beak with your stone hatchet, totally unaware of the strength of the winds from the north-west. The gusts never felt so violent before, from the ground, where you crouch, gingerly applying the berry stain. Not until hoisted to its remarkable standing height, over 100 feet tall, does it become apparent, the need for stability, the wild whipping of the wind.

Life...

is like a totem pole. You run your fingers up and down, trying to decipher the carvings and glyphs, like a blind person reading braille.

Only you aren't blind, and never learned braille.

everything in its place

Junk food is only for bus rides and cheering up, and peanut m&ms are almost like trail mix, so they are designated as appropriate travel food.

Sick people go to the hospital but sicker people lurk around the perimeter, smoking cigarettes by the revolving door or generally being addicted to opiates. Folding their cardboard bed back up around their packing blanket and moving along when the sun rises.

I do not belong on the street corner with a several-thousand-dollar laptop hanging heavy on my shoulder, digging into my tendons and presenting a glowing portrait of middle-class confusion. I would never put myself in such a position but there I am, looking hungrily in all directions for the arrival of the Best Western Hotel Shuttle. The man who I walked past twice, in my confusion, snaps at me, West Side Story style, from behind his shopping cart apartment. I take a few steps back, behind the shadow of the building and hope that his delusions will keep him occupied, solitary.

Seventy degree weather does not belong in Boston, but then again, neither do I. Am I an eager student, clutching a biodegradable/reusable mug of bold blend coffee? No. Am I an emaciated vegan cyclist, dreadlocks flapping in the highway breeze? No. I am here on unfinished business, temporary lodging, miscellaneous mystery solving, category D: none of the above.

To get away will be to appreciate going back. To be in a hospital, and healthy, is to take the stairs to the third floor, bounding up each step with a new enjoyment of blood to the face, sweat to the skin, feet on the ground.