Alewife Bayou: July 1998
hangover without fun
one july ninety eight noon
It's six o'clock
And it's time to rock
And my head is beating like a drum
In the broad daylight
I feel like shite
And I can't remember last night's fun
-- from "Living in America" by Black 47
And it's time to rock
And my head is beating like a drum
In the broad daylight
I feel like shite
And I can't remember last night's fun
-- from "Living in America" by Black 47
Except I didn't have fun last night. I hate feeling hung over when I didn't even get to drink first.
This was one of those mornings where you get up, feel horrid, and think, maybe if I sleep for another half hour I'll feel better. So you do, and a half hour later, you not only feel worse, you're less lucid. You decide to try just one more half hour, this one'll surely do the trick ...
And that's why this postcard is stamped "noon" instead of "ten a m."
The interesting thing about riding the subway later than usual is that it's summer in Boston, which means that if you ride after about ten, you see tourists. You can always tell tourists. They have a map and they look puzzled. Boston tends to defy conventional methods of navigation.
I usually want to offer to help them - they look so lost! - but then the boy part of my brain says, no, no, they'd probably rather figure it out on their own.
This is why men don't like to ask for directions. They're not necessarily stubborn or egotistical about their abilities (although some are) ... they'd just rather figure it out for themselves.
it won't make a good movie
one july ninety eight eleven p m
I found myself mentally composing a feature film in my head which would be a sequel based on the TV show "I Dream Of Jeannie."
I hate movies based on TV shows, even when I liked the TV show. They're needless. In most cases, I'd much rather watch reruns of the show itself. But this would have been a little different ... which is why I'm not going to write it as a movie. The opening would have been rather grim, it would have departed from formula in a number of ways, and it would have contained sex - all no-nos when movieizing a TV show.
Fortunately, not only is the premise great story material, but I can easily remove all the TV references from it and have it intact. So I am beginning to write it - it serializes into small chunks well - and one of these days, you may see it.
men forget that style counts
two july ninety eight eleven a m
Dear Aussie read the non-hangover postcard and the VR politics postcard, put two and two together, and astutely concluded that I was suffering from "porn hangover," the inevitable result of a long, fruitless search for horizontal games.
Don't mess with Aussie - she's sharp as a tack. Actually, I didn't stay up any later than usual and I did do a certain amount of successful flirting that night, but I feel sure that she has placed her finger right on the root cause.
Aussie also adds
Is that why men don't ask for directions? Seems pretty inefficient. I like asking strangers for small favors like the time, a light, or simple directions. I figger I'm doing them a favor, letting them rack up cheap karma and be Mister Know-it-all.
The girl part of my brain agrees. It makes conversation, they get to be competent, and goodwill is had by all. It's also a nice way to flirt. The boy part of my brain really prefers to solve the puzzle of Getting There all by its lonesome - it's an adventure, see.
To see this in action, try something like orienteering, where you basically get yourself lost in woods and try to navigate out again. This is a generalization, of course - road rallies are the same thing in cars, and the best and most competitive rallier I ever knew was female - but in general, boys take it as a competition, and try to get out of the woods as quickly and efficiently as they can, and girls take their time with it, stopping to have a look at the different kinds of flowers and feel the wind in their hair.
That last is not a criticism; I like the girl method. I believe that finishing first is one thing, but men forget sometimes that style counts. Straight men. Gay men generally understand about style - in fact, at their worst, they become obssessed with it.
i will never get enough feedback
three july ninety eight seven p m
I just finished a major web task and, as usual, I am depressed. I am depressed not because it's done, I am depressed not because it was a semi-major effort which its intended audience probably won't even care for very much (although that's so) ... no, I am depressed because I spent the afternoon on it and now it's done and I urgently want someone to look at it, to evaluate it, and I can't just grab one of these people and haul them over to look because I only know them through email.
I mean, one of the good points and one of the bad points about knowing someone in person is that you can call them up and bother them. Great if you're doing the bothering, bad if you're being bothered. I usually can't be bothered, but I occasionally want to bother someone. Which is selfish. Oh, news flash there.
When I get in moods like this, you understand, I don't want praise necessarily; I want feedback. I want someone to look at something and tell me whether they liked it or didn't and why. I don't get enough feedback. I may never get enough. It may not be possible for me to get enough.
email anxiety
four july ninety eight two p m
I'm suffering from email anxiety again today. I check email more often than most people and forget that I'm the only person in the universe who expects twenty-four-hour turnaround on email - which I freely admit is unreasonable of me, especially when corresponding with people who get a hundred messages a day. (I get about forty a day.)
I'm waiting to hear back about something relatively important and I'm telling myself over and over to be patient. It's only been a day or two and they're very busy over there. I'll be calm now. Yes.
wine and fireworks
five july ninety eight one a m
Back from the patriotic events of the evening. A friend of a friend has a balcony overlooking the Charles River, right where they put the fireworks barge. Every year, of course, the Boston Pops has a nationally televised concert for the holiday, and they perform it in the Hatch Shell on the Charles. Crowds down both sides of the river.
We couldn't see the Hatch Shell from where we were - a little too far upriver - but that wasn't a problem. On the side of the river where the concert was, they'd set up a series of gigantic TV screens, facing the river - and one was directly across from us. Of course you can hear the music about halfway across Boston from anywhere, and we also had the television in the apartment on, just for good measure.
The TV was actually a nice touch - it allowed us to see occasional closeups and also provided a curious echo effect, where we'd hear something on the TV and hear it a moment later over the river. Keith Lockhart, the conductor, plays to the camera something fierce, but he's so cute, charming, and talented that he can get away with it.
I also met someone I hope to be making a business deal with in the near future (it was his apartment), and drank three glasses of nice Shiraz, a glass of Portugese vinho verde, and two glasses of a so-so Merlot. (They weren't full-sized wine glasses, thank heavens, or I'd be asleep on the apartment rug now.) Oh, and I learned three things about fireworks:
1. I get bored with watching them after about fifteen minutes. Actually, I think I already knew that, but I see fireworks so seldom that I forgot.
2. Fireworks have an optimal angle for viewing. I thought they were kinda omnidirectional, but the TV showed that the fireworks were clearly being aimed to provide the best view for the folks at the Hatch Shell - from where we sat upriver, at the source, they were pretty, but some weren't even the same shape as what was on TV.
3. People are dumb about cameras. I saw a lot of flashbulbs on the far side of the river during the fireworks. Fireworks are really tricky to photograph properly anyway, and those little flashes illuminate, what, ten feet in front of you? On the other hand, as was pointed out when I said this at the party, the fireworks are bright enough that they're likely to get something on film no matter how they do it.
Anyway, that's my moment of patriotism for the year. I don't indulge in it much. It's worse for me than the alcohol. And sometimes leaves a bigger hangover.
we only remember failures
six july ninety eight eleven a m
I work with technology and I know that it's silly to expect it to be one hundred percent reliable ... so why do I get cranky when things fail? The FTP for this site was down all last night, and I suspect that another site is refusing to deliver email to me.
It's human nature that if a device or entity delivers six months of flawless performance followed by a day of utter failure, all we remember is the utter failure. It's not fair of us, but we do seem to remember the lows more vividly than the highs, in general.
I have to go catch up on the crisis backlog now.
only southerners respect scarlett
seven july ninety eight one a m
Back from seeing Gone With The Wind. Restored print. Original aspect ratio (it's square). Four hours with intermission. It was a long night, but a good one.
Truth is, I hardly notice that GWTW is that long while I'm watching it, and that's maybe the best tribute I can pay it. It's undeniably a cheesy movie - every time I see it, the accents sound worse and worse, the acting looks more like pathos (except Gable, who seems to be laughing to himself about the whole thing), and Melanie gets a little harder to bear. But it's also a genuine Epic Film, with a little bit of everything, and a sweep so large it's hard to even say what the film's about. And you don't notice the four hours.
That having been said, I watched this film tonight in Harvard Square, the only Southerner in a theatre full of Northerners, and I realized that there are some things that these Northerners will never understand. No, I'm not talking about slavery, although I hardly see GWTW as glorifying it, and some of the audience members apparently thought it did. I'm talking about Scarlett O'Hara.
Do you have to have been born in the Deep South to have any respect for Scarlett whatsoever? I'm beginning to think maybe.
Look - Scarlett is mega-passive-aggressive, and perhaps more than a little psycho. After the midpoint of the movie, she's also not an especially nice person. She does some things that make me wince. But what's missed is that this woman, who prior to the devastation had never worked a day in her life, pulls herself back up to prosperity by sheer stubbornness - she may do some nasty things, but she does what she feels she has to do, and she does it well. She cries and wails - then immediately picks herself up and does what has to be done. She has no fear of anything except starvation.
I dunno. I don't mourn the Old South the way some Northerners think all Southerners still do, but I also don't understand - and I speak as a relatively ardent supporter of female superiority here - why more people don't respect Scarlett O'Hara.
Oh, well. I'm rehashing old ground. The very first Circular Cruise talked about this, and said it better. At any rate, the movie was very enjoyable, even if I did want to kick the people in the front row who giggled through the whole thing.
finding the web everywhere
seven july ninety eight eleven a m
This actually happened yesterday evening, but after returning home from last night's Cinematic Event (see previous postcard), I was too tired to write about it.
There is an area of concrete outside the Harvard subway station's main exit. It has nice places to perch and do nothing, and is therefore perpetually full of Disaffected Urban Youth of various stripes. We call it the "kidpit" and it's the usual rendezvous point.
While waiting for someone to emerge from the bowels of the earth, I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt with block lettering on the front saying "MTV IS LYING TO YOU." On the back, partially obscured by his hair, was what was obviously the beginning of a web URL. I waited patiently until he moved enough that I could copy the whole thing down in the margin of the magazine I was reading:
[http://www.drawingflies.com/]
It's a band - as a moment's thought would have told me - although the copy on the first page is really entertaining and worth reading. [Dec 2004: The copy has changed many times by now but amazingly, the URL still works ... unlike the one below, which I had to edit.] More importantly, the irony isn't lost on me that we have reached a stage where not only is there an URL for everything, but they get printed on T-shirts.
David Simpson, a cartoonist I discovered recently, has a cartoon which I am reminded of at this juncture:
[Ozy & Millie #13 from Jan 1998]
By the by, the URL used in the strip actually exists. Type it in and see.
unrepentantly unsympathetic
eight july ninety eight one a m
I just finished revising a story that I'd gotten some critiques on. It's a better story now, but the protagonist is still unrepentantly unsympathetic and I'm keeping her that way. Never mind that I hate watching these angsty movies with not a sympathetic character in the lot. I'm entitled to write one every now and then, and it's a welcome exercise since I usually write plucky heroines and happy endings. If no one wants to read it, I'll understand.
I have reached the point where I'm aware that I will never write down all the ideas I want to write down, or even come close to catching up. It's encouraging in one way - I know I'll never run out of material - but it makes me unhappy to know that some of my more vivid ideas are statistically unlikely to see the light of day.
good frank and bad frank
eight july ninety eight eleven a m
I don't know if I have a lot of dreams where I'm a fugitive of some kind, or whether I just remember more of those because they disturb me enough that I come awake at the end. This morning I was involved in some elaborate scheme by one man to trap and find another, younger, man. The older man was Frank Sinatra. It wasn't until I woke up and thought about it that I realized the younger man was Frank Sinatra also. Good Frank and Bad Frank.
Unfortunately I never knew the young skinny heartthrob Frank. I knew Vegas king mafioso thug Frank, the old rude man with the ego and the heavy connections. And this may be why I don't miss Sinatra. In fact, I have a hard time understanding what all the mourning was about.
It's generational. Being thirty, and thus in between two large herds of demography, I usually find myself thinking with the adults. On Sinatra, I find myself thinking with the kids. He was an old dude who sang bad loungey music, like "New York, New York," a song I overdosed on permanently after hearing it three times.
I grew up on New Orleans piano boogie. I grew up on my mother's love of Glenn Miller. I grew up on Elton John and eighties technopop. I grew up on real bluegrass. The crooner range of the spectrum is one I'm colorblind in. Even if Frank hadn't been a thug, I probably wouldn't have liked his music much.
As I was composing these thoughts in my head, I went in to get my morning coffee and the store was playing Frank's version of "Anything Goes" - a perfectly fine, perfectly silly Cole Porter song that he ruins by oversinging, by stroking his personality in front of the microphone. That's Sinatra to me.
i hate re-editing
eight july ninety eight eleven p m
I hate re-editing fiction. It's always a pain in the neck. It improves the stories, though, and when I'm done I always look back on it with satisfaction. And during the process, I'm too involved in it to complain. It's only at the beginning, when I haven't started, that there's lots of whining and moaning.
Fortunately I still haven't heard about the disposition of the website I'm editing all this fiction for, so apparently there's no hurry. Grrr.
two shards of lyric
nine july ninety eight five p m
Just back from a rare trip to the record store. New Shonen Knife and new Barenaked Ladies. Two bits of relevant lyric from the latter follow.
How can I help it if I think you're funny
when you're mad
Tryin' not to smile when though I feel bad
I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral
Can't understand what I mean?
Well, you soon will
I have a tendency to wear my mind
on my sleeve
-- from "One Week"
when you're mad
Tryin' not to smile when though I feel bad
I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral
Can't understand what I mean?
Well, you soon will
I have a tendency to wear my mind
on my sleeve
-- from "One Week"
If you will not have me as myself,
perhaps as someone else
Perhaps as you I'll be worth noticing
Then even a eunuch won't resist
The magic of a kiss from such as you
-- from "I'll Be That Girl"
perhaps as someone else
Perhaps as you I'll be worth noticing
Then even a eunuch won't resist
The magic of a kiss from such as you
-- from "I'll Be That Girl"
It's always interesting when you hear pieces of your psyche exposed in someone else's material. It's a nice feeling - like the writer sympathizes - but it also feels like someone poking you with a sharp stick.
In a tender place.
two sets of propaganda
nine july ninety eight eleven p m
TEHRAN, IRAN - Even a few days after the fact, there is still jubilation over the football team. It's the closest thing to a unifying event this poor country has. Their victory over the U.S., and the spirit of friendship between the two teams during the games, opened a lot of eyes to new possibilities. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing.
The people here don't know which propaganda to believe. Khatami keeps telling everyone that the U.S. isn't all that bad, that they really want to get along, that western friendship would be a nice thing to have for a change. His unspoken message: our policies are keeping us in the dark ages.
The mullahs are saying that the U.S. hates the Muslim faith, that capitalistic excesses breed corruption and inequality, that letting the U.S. infiltrate would result in a decline of faith and morality.
The problem is that every single one of those assertions is true. The U.S. is no Satan, and contrary to U.S. belief, all Muslims are not intolerant misogynists. But 'normalizing relations' with the U.S. would undeniably change Iran forever.
And change is both a good thing and a bad thing.
mobile shredding window
ten july ninety eight five p m
At lunch today, passed a truck that looked like a delivery truck - but it was a mobile shredding service. They come in and shred your secrets, then they dump the shreds into a door at the back of the truck and move on to the next customer's site. Odd way to make a living, but if there's money in it ...
As I passed it, though, I saw that there was a little window built into the side of the truck, so you could look into the cargo area and see how high the shreddings had piled inside. Whee!
It's not especially practical - the window doesn't go nearly all the way up the truck body, and it's just as easy to open the back door and look. That window was put in there strictly because somebody had a sense of fun, and hooray for that. Design should address the inner child every now and then.
the keys to my head
thirteen july ninety eight four a m
Dreamed I was one of three people being hypnotized for a project of some kind. The second person looked a lot like Natalie Merchant; the third was a puffy balding man (I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was Sinatra again). When it came my turn to be hypnotized (the hypnotist was one of my co-workers), I started to get dark images of being strapped down and electroshock and nasty stuff like that, and I panicked.
It reminded me that, although I have fantasies involving loss of control, where I basically place my mind and body in someone else's hands, they are just fantasies, and waking ones at that. My dreams know better - in truth, letting someone else manipulate parts of my brain scares me silly. Who knows what they'd do while they were in there? There is no one on earth I trust enough to hand them the keys to my head.
This ties in to why I haven't done any drug experimentation. I don't want to alter my personality. I might end up with something worse that I can't get out of.
zero hour comments
thirteen july ninety eight one p m
I didn't write any postcards this weekend, you'll notice. I was very idle this weekend.
The project I'm trying to bring to fruition has been going for several weeks; no comment from the teeming masses, no considerations to take into account, no feedback. Now, with zero hour looming ahead, people are starting to check in. Thank you for your comments, ma'am ... and where were they last week?
This Y2K stuff is really beginning to frighten me. I'm seriously wondering if I should start making preparations to try to hide from Civil Disorder, as rioting and panic is euphemistically called.
Disjoint musings. I was going to write about the yearly art project in Somerville, but I'm feeling too fragmented today. Maybe tomorrow.
forced to earn a living
fifteen july ninety eight eleven a m
Sorry about the lapse here. I have hit a low ebb over the last few days, because I am having that sinking confidence problem again.
Here's the thing: When it comes to work, my objective is to make a living wage while doing as little as possible. I'm relatively honest about it. I rarely want to put in supreme amounts of effort on any project that isn't of personal interest to me. I have a work ethic, but it only gets invoked with things like my web columns or my fiction. There is nothing that other people are willing to pay me to do which I could possibly work up that degree of interest in. Sorry if that sounds selfish.
Fiction doesn't count. The older I get, the less convinced I am that people will pay me to write the kind of fiction I want to write. I have basically given up on the idea that I will someday make my living from writing. I don't have the self-promotion skills, I seem to have an uncanny knack for writing un-classifyable and thus unsalable material, and I won't prostitute myself writing genre books. But none of this is germane right now.
Anyway. I feel like I've basically reached the position and pay level that I have by bluffing. I don't really know what I'm doing, I just read the instructions. Most people don't read the instructions, you know, so if you have patience and research skills, you can present yourself in a good light about nine-tenths of the time.
Every so often a project gets to the point where I can't neglect it or dismiss it anymore, and then I panic. Every time, I think, "This is it. This is the time they'll catch me. This is when I'll screw up and they'll figure out that I wasn't qualified for the job all along." Frequently I'm working on things where I have utterly no idea what I'm doing - where I'm literally reading up on how to do each step before proceeding.
I am, needless to say, at that point right now. And when I get like that, I don't feel much like writing, which is my usual outlet. It requires too much thinking. Or put another way: imagine I have only a finite amount of Deep Thought available every day. Normally I don't use it at work; I try to arrange things so I don't need to. Therefore it is free for writing. This week, I'm using it all up at work, via necessity.
Ergo, I played a new game on my computer for about six hours last night and for about four the night before. Twitch games - no intellect required.
I'll be sure to keep up my obligations here over the next few days though; can't let your regular affairs fall into disarray just because you're forced to work for a living for a change, after all.
place to meet a drag queen
fifteen july ninety eight eleven p m
Boy am I ever amused.
The Improper Bostonian, a little weekly which is way too conscious of its own hipness for me to truly love it, has a "Boston's Best" article every year. (You know ... best hairdresser, best Italian restaurant, and so forth.) This is usually the only issue I pick up, because it's always entertaining, and some of the choices are actually useful information to have. Plus, they always throw in a few weird entries to keep it entertaining.
One of the weird entries this time was
Place To Meet a Drag Queen
Victoria's Secret at the Burlington Mall
Place To Meet a Drag Queen
Victoria's Secret at the Burlington Mall
You've always wondered who bought all those leopard-print G-strings and fire-engine-red merry widows. Now you know. Of course, sizing is tough, since this particular retailer seems to believe that all women are built like Baywatch extras (in addition to having the same fashion sense), but with the current fitness craze, many transvestites are svelte enough to fit into lacy lingerie cut to Barbie doll proportions.
That'd be amusingly true even by itself ... but ... guess which Vicki's I always shop at?
So much for my always bringing along someone for protective coloration!
not jumping off a bridge
sixteen july ninety eight five p m
Just to let you know ... I'm a lot better now. Over the past two days, I've solved some of the big technical riddles that have been eating at me, and everyone who works with me and also happened to read that postcard told me I was nuts.
So if you were worried that I'd jump off a bridge, I'm not.
More later after it's dark and my brain is cool enough to write.
sushi after dark
sixteen july ninety eight ten p m
A nice walk. Had beer and sushi (not together; green tea is really the only beverage that works with sushi). I don't eat sushi as a full meal very often, because to fill me up I need between twenty and thirty pieces of sushi. That's pricey. But tonight I was hot, and the sushi was perfect for the weather, and I felt extravagant.
I wondered why the tuna looked so unusual, and then I tasted it and realized - they had the good tuna tonight, the belly tuna ("toro" vs "maguro," for those who know the sushi-speak) that is exceedingly hard to get in this country, as the Japanese tend to buy it all up.
Walked down Mass. Ave. to get some coffee, then turned around and drank it as I headed back home. After nine p.m., but the streets were full; restaurants were packed; people were walking around and chatting. Cambridge is finally learning how to deal with this heat thing: Everything good just gets moved to later in the day.
windows art project
seventeen july ninety eight eleven a m
I suppose I should say a few things about all the art. I looked at a lot of it last night while I was walking, and I noticed more of it this morning.
Somerville has a "Windows Art Project" every year in Davis Square, where businesses are encouraged to put art of some kind in their windows for a few days. It really does make the square look interesting - there's all these tidbits, and some of them aren't easy to see, so you stumble across little goodies in the course of your day-to-day transits.
Most of them are at ground level, but last night I was looking across the square, waiting for a traffic light, and I saw some excellent photos up in third-story windows. Because of the trees, that was almost the only place those photos could be seen. It was like a present, a reward for standing on that exact spot and being attentive - or lucky.
Although most of the windows belong to merchants, they've all been really good about not doing anything commercially exploitative. They do sometimes put out paintings that their friends and relatives have done, and sometimes the paintings are nothing to write home about, but it's a welcome change of decor anyway, especially in a place where merchants don't bother updating or even having window displays very often.
In Davis Square, the good stuff is usually visible from inside the store, not outside. Nice to have that change occasionally.
the great hair crisis
twenty july ninety eight one a m
This is a little late due to more lovely Sunday server failures at my ISP, but history will one day duly recall that this was the weekend of the Hair Crisis.
Here I have to mess with the gender envelope yet again. Forgive me. Men are not permitted to have hair crises. Unless they're gay. It's perceived as a prissy thing, I suppose, or goes back to that whole ethic about how men are not supposed to admit to caring in the slightest about how they look - even though of course they do.
On Saturday I got a Bad Haircut, and it was my own fault entirely. As I've noted before, I have a very hard time with hairstylists. (I still prefer "barbers"; to me "hairstylists" style hair, whereas "barbers" cut it ... but never mind that.)
I never know what to say to these people. I don't speak the language and I don't know how to tell them what I want. On Saturday I actually tried to tell someone what I want and it was disastrous.
What I really wanted was to say: "Look: I am only here because my hair is starting to get in my eyes and puff out on the sides of my head because it's very curly and it does that. I want to fix those two problems while still remaining a person with long hair."
What I got was very short on the sides, a short curly dome on the top, and a long fan of curls descending on both sides of the back of my neck in the rear. I looked like Billy Ray Cyrus.
Did I refuse to tip, state my grievance, and leave in a huff? Of course not! He did exactly what I asked for. I paid, didn't say anything, and went home and nearly cried into my pillow. Oh, God, it was horrible. Now I will never want to go back to that place again.
On Sunday I went to another place and had it salvaged by cutting the long hair in back off, and the sides and top have been trimmed even shorter. I now look like a skinny Marine, but it's better than looking like I should be wearing a Motorhead T-shirt.
Of course, none of this comes anywhere near what I really want my hair to look like, which is feminine. I just can't muster up the audacity to go into a hair place and say "I don't want my long hair to look like boy long hair. I want girl long hair. I want it to look good long without my having to tie it back. When I tie it back I look like every other long-haired hacker geek that I work with. I want something pretty."
It ain't gonna happen.
the car spa
twenty july ninety eight four p m
Went to make the car happy this afternoon. It's one of those places where you sit in the car and mechanics swarm around you like you're Marilyn Monroe singing "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend." I love it. It's like a car spa.
I used to do all that stuff myself - change my own oil and so forth. I don't anymore. And it's not a prissy thing or even much of a laziness thing - it's more fundamental than that:
I no longer have a driveway.
I won't work on a car if I have to lie under it with any part of my body sticking out into an area of traffic flow.
This seems as appropriate a time as any to mention that I will be gone from Wednesday to Sunday, so you won't see any postcards during that time period. Sorry.
an unexpected discrepancy
twenty-one july ninety eight two a m
I was going to post the previous item in a timely manner. I was also going to write about how industrious I had been this evening.
I not only made the car happy, but did laundry, cooked a big pot of gumbolike stuff, and put my finances in order. Any one of these things would normally suffice as my duty for the night. To accomplish all four in one day indicates that I'm feeling especially guilty about being non-productive, a theory which my mood earlier in the day supports.
The gumbo was an especial triumph, since I am generally not very good at the "let's see what's in the fridge to use" school of improv cooking. But it was lovely and we each had about a quart of it.
Unfortunately all of this has been rather tainted by the fact that in doing my ledger I found a large discrepancy between the amount of money I think I have and the amount the bank thinks I have. And now I've been up late trying to clear through a huge backlog of unreconciled bank statements, because I want to make sure I haven't missed something obvious before I call the bank in the morning.
Not the way I wanted to spend my evening's free time, although it is rather nice to not feel guilt about that huge pile of unreconciled bank statements for a change.
report from NYC
twenty-eight july ninety eight one p m
It's been a while. I apologize for the delay - I was hoping to write a postcard on Sunday night - but after a five-day absence, the backlog of things I must do, things I should do, and things I really want to do had stacked up to an astonishing degree. I don't really carry any awareness of my ongoing commitments until I neglect them for a while - then I become aware how many of them there are.
At any rate, the trip to NYC was lovely, although it underscored my impression that to really do Manhattan properly one must have a great deal more money than I possess. I wanted to buy several dresses that probably cost more than our entire budget for the trip, for example.
And we never did go south of Houston Street, where the streets stop being numbered and rectangular, and the neighborhood gets funky. This means we didn't go into SoHo (SOuth of HOuston, get it?) or Greenwich Village or the Lower East Side or any of those places. Next time.
I did manage to find some Japanese culture guides which I couldn't locate in Boston, and a children's book that I didn't think was in print, and we saw some museums we hadn't managed to see on previous trips, like the Guggenheim, but in general we spent the bulk of our disposable trip money finding good food. I could eat in a different restaurant every night in NYC and never run out; they'd open faster than I could eat.
One important food side trip involved Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Krispy Kreme is a southern chain, which inexplicably opened two locations in NYC a year back. They make a heavily sugared glazed donut, very much like sweetened fried air. A Krispy Kreme doughnut is astonishinly sinful if hot, and not bad even when cold. We rode the subway all the way down to 23rd at nine o'clock in the morning to get Krispy Kreme. It was so much better than Dunkin' Donuts that words fail me.
The NYC locations are big successes, I'm told. (They even have a listing in Zagat's.) One can always hope they'll come to Boston.
Then again, it may be best for my dietary intake if they don't.
[Dec 2004: They did.]
redecorated
thirty july ninety eight one a m
You may notice I've redecorated.
I've also got a system behind the scenes which prevents me from needing to schlep files all over the place (fine word, that) every time I want to write a postcard.
There's also a surprise attached, which I'll tell you about tomorrow.
[Dec 2004: This referred to a visual design change on the entries, which have since been reformatted more than once. This was when the journal first got automated code so I didn't have to change a lot of HTML by hand with each entry. The site went through a period of rapid image changes over the next couple of weeks after this, some of which you'll see comments about later. All these design changes were later supplanted by the final Alewife design. I'm not sure what the "surprise" alluded to - which I never did talk about - was either.]
the green bed
thirty july ninety eight ten a m
My skin grows paler while I sleep
Every morning there must come a moment
When I pull back the outer leaves
I look down at my white bark
I creak, slow, graceful,
uprooting
myself to the ground below
I am lovely and frightening
When I pull back the outer leaves
I look down at my white bark
I creak, slow, graceful,
uprooting
myself to the ground below
I am lovely and frightening
Later the blood pumps
And I am only human.
And I am only human.
australian stamps are not cool
Dianne wrote me, saying "Dash it! Australian stamps are not cool!" But there are stamps from other countries besides Australia here.
At any rate, these stamps are only temporary. I'm using some which came with Painter, my art program. I didn't have time to come up with some better ones. If you have any ideas for a set of ten non-ordered (that is, I can pick one basically at random each time I post) small rectangular objects I can use as "stamps" here, pass them along to me.
Heliotrope, the little naiad-like helper who handles the postcards for me, has a close relative named Clematis. Clematis is over in the gallery, and she's looking for poetry. Do you have any?
But - enough process. I hate looking behind the scenes.
i love overcast skies
thirty-one july ninety eight eleven a m
Payday.
This morning it rained! and I am bubbly. I've been bouncing around and telling everyone what a wonderful day it is and all, and being cheerful, and they all think I'm crazy - it's dark outside, gray and damp and skyless.
But I love overcast skies (my favorite is the yellowish supercharged gray silence right before a thunderstorm) and I love them best when it becomes unnaturally dark, when you wake up and look at the amount of light in the bedroom and think, with a thrill, "Gee, shouldn't it be lighter in here? Something's wrong!"
Besides, it's the first day in weeks that it hasn't been too hot to think.
07 March 2026