As I sit and restlessly wonder
What my productivity prototype is supposed to be
Idly staring at my computer monitor
In a cubicle
Under fluorescent lights
I realize
I have not held a bottle of booze in my hand
To pour for someone else
For their tip
In months
With the staggering dawn
Upon my caffeine infused mind
Comes a quiet sadness
At letting go
Of who I can no longer be
Stunning images that make me happy. For we all know that photography is one of the greatest mediums of art. This post will be a jumbled mess of the mad mind that is constructing it. See below for details in what will probably heretofore be named Ramblogings. No. No it won't.
Martin Garcia. I have a certain fetish for water imagery in photography. I also enjoy nudity that celebrates femininity so when you combine the two it always jars in me a sense of peace that I cannot explain. Maybe it goes back to when I was younger and enjoyed the occasional skinny dip in the pool late at night when my parents were sleeping. Either way I find the imagery soothing and illustrious at the same time.
Sam Taylor Wood. Elegant juxtaposition of her body with a hard lined image. Exquisite.
For the love of all that is holy may I present to you what I have just now (un-fucking-fortunately) discovered to be your new favorite photographer. I chose selections of his photographs that made me burn with envy and admiration at the same time. I do not feel I should describe my interpretations of them, lest I diminish the value of the awe-inspiring beauty that is his talent and work. You look at them and make up your own mind. This is not highly interpretative, intellectual art. This is straightforward photography that happens to be extraordinary. Ladies and jellyspoons, Howard Schatz!
*sigh* I feel the way a schoolgirl feels the first time she lays eyes on her heartthrob crush that lasts her until she is fifteen. I. Am. In. Love. His vision, his fascination with the human form, his coloring, his diversity. I want to meet him just to see how he looks at the world. God I hope he has exhibits in NYC.
YouTube stupid video of the day goes to an old classic that is absolutely phenomenal. I'm not into posting the newest trend craze or whatever I'm into posting the ones I can watch forty times and still think is amazing. This video is simultaneously creepy and hilarious. It also helped me to kill eight minutes at work. I love how a YouTube video being successful can make you instantly world famous. The number one most viewed video on YouTube of all time is called Charlie Bit My Finger. I bet those kids got a Pepsi deal. Anyways, enjoy!
Jesus I need to start playing video games again. The graphics for Starcraft II are stunning. And I preface this with the statement that the last video game I was really, really into was the original Mortal Kombat. It's been that long. I had no idea what RTS was until fifteen seconds ago. Video games, or "crack for nerds," lost me when Grand Theft Auto started making shit encouraging impressionable young men to have virtual sex with a woman in the game and then gave them the option of killing them afterwards. That's pretty sick. Women have it hard enough with men fucking us over, hating us, and generally not respecting us. We don't need to begin the anti-woman hating "Boys Only" campaign that young. Jesus. I'm all for ultra-violence. But c'mon. That being said, if you buy this game can I come over and play?
Gadget that literally makes me whimper with desire right now the more I play with my friends:
And I'm not even a tech geek. But this thing is so cool it's retarded. Anyone in need of a sugar mama willing to buy me one of those and an Aston Martin message me. No. I'm not joking. The creators of Google are still single, right? Why does everything Google do make the world a better place? It's even a cool freaking name for a phone. Droid.
Onto bigger and brighter news...
There is a significant moment of pain that you feel when you click on the Facebook profile of someone you used to love deeply and who used to love you to find out that they deleted you. It's a small act sure and I am not giving more levity to Facebook than it deserves. But it's a gentle reminder that they no longer want you in their life. And this was only a friend. A friend I was crazy about nonetheless but it still hurts to know that they don't like you anymore and are showing it. I would go on to illustrate how social networking sites are ruining our lives but who honestly wants to read about that? I'd feel like some tween hipster bitching about cultural imperialism and how infringing the technological revolution is. I might as well turn on the Mountain Goats. And frankly, I don't even feel that way. Technology is Great.
Unexpected bummer of the day: Tony the Tiger is dead. Yeah you forgot about that didn't you. What a douche I am to bring it up.
Alright boys and girls the office day is over and I am going to Modest Mouse. Suck it nerds!
Office Transitions
It's time I got back to the Good Life.
So I have recently taken up volunteering for an amazing organization called Open Space Alliance, whose main objective is to preserve open spaces in North Brooklyn while doing community outreach based programs. I get with it the benefit of being able to see live shows on the waterfront with a heart stopping view of the Manhattan skyline. Thus far this summer I have been able to see Against Me!, Weezer, Faith No More, and a number of other great bands. This is like candy to a toddler for a music junkie. The most recent live show that I was privy to was Weezer. Weezer is a band that I have grown up loving. But like the ex-boyfriend you still love in a mostly platonic way many years after a break-up you aren't really that attracted to them anymore. However, seeing them brings back a lot of memories. I was reminded of being nineteen and moving in to my first apartment by myself. I was delivering pizzas at the time and living with a roommate who was encouraging me to become a bartender because I "have such an amazing personality for it." I used to drive around the city, smoking pot in my car and listening to My Name is Jonas, wondering what was in store for me next. I was contemplating college and living out the life of every naive nineteen year old who owns their own car and is suddenly imbued with the independence of not having a curfew in light of signing their life over for their own space away from their parents.
River Cuomo ran around the stage with a frenetic energy that you miss in live shows in an age where bands stand in the center of the stage, looking mostly apathetic to a crowd afraid to dance because they might look less "cool." You endure this because you love the band, even if you hate the pretentious douchey-ness of their fan base. It was electrifying. I bopped around like a middle schooler at their first dance with the cute boy from their American History class.
Songs about drunken nights sung by River Cuomo lulled me into some of my first all night drunk parties where we played Asshole all night and ended up with seven people crashing on my floor that started a life of partying and fun that I do not regret. Seeing them live again for the first time in almost ten years was an amazing awakening and a welcome reminder of my past. Weezer is ubiquitous with every music nerds initial foray into the world of dorky rock. They take us in with Buddy Holly and we are forever their slaves. While we may move on to the National and Devotchka, we never forget our roots. That moment when we first saw them all dressed in suits playing instruments in a scene that was nostalgic of Happy Days. The nineties were an amazing time to be exploring Americas rekindled love of good ol' fashioned rock n' roll.
All of this was coupled by running into one of my favorite people to hang out with, Dave, amidst the enormous crowd. It was a random meeting, almost kismet, and I am overjoyed to have spent the evening together smoking a little and bouncing along to Say It Ain't So with a fellow rock geek who was looking to relive a little slice of our youths. The show was absolutely spectacular and one of the best I've seen in New York. It was also the show that made me realize that when bands play in NYC they bring it in a way that I've never seen in Florida. I've only seen two bands up here that I was also able to see back home and the energy level is noticeably different. Having worked the VIP list for one of the shows I know that some of the most well-known names in music show up to concerts in New York. This means that the biggest magazines and music outlets will be present and reporting every minute detail of every show. Knowing this, the bands perform to a level that they probably do not bring when they play to smaller venues in other towns. Wow. The pressure of NYC affects even the biggest monsters of rock and roll.
If that's the case then what the hell do the rest of us do?
Tomorrow I start a temp job 9-5. I have not worked that type of schedule in a long time and I am very nervous. Thankfully, my best friend and to the end of my life partner in crime will be sitting right next to me, guiding me through it. I am scared. But I feel that it is time for change and this should be an exciting new development in an otherwise mediocre life. Let's just see. I would post pictures of the show but I forgot my camera. Because I suck.
Hot hot heat.
I love the way the laundromat looks in the dead of night when I am walking by it after a late night craving for a BLT and a pack of freshly taxed $12 cigarettes. During the day it seems like an ominous place. Everyone has such an intense objective when they go there. Get in. Clean clothes. Avoid eye contact with the Asian lady who runs the place and is always surly when you ask for change. Get out. At night it seems calm. Well-kept. Like a place that could potentially be a sanctuary were it not for the damn heat permeating the walls.
My late night strolls through Greenpoint bring such a powerful sense of peace. Pain I am not yet ready to deal with has surfaced in my chest and found a home there so these after hours ventures steadies them and makes them bearable. I think about all of the missed Blog entries. My ideas for a TV show I think my best friend and I should write. How I would love nothing more in this world than to write a comic book. My recent fetish for autobiographical humor like David Sedaris and Chelsea Handler. Then I wonder why I'm reading things that focus on that. Maybe it's because I'm desperately searching for my destiny while I approach my thirtieth birthday and do co-DJ gigs at Alligator Lounge, thinking about my unemployment running out while I fruitlessly search for jobs that aren't quite me. Then my thoughts turn to loss. Egregious, horrible loss that I am not yet capable of facing. Thoughts of my life, a life I have recently said goodbye to, and my future jumble into my head and reveal a hard, horrible anguish that terrorizes me and makes me unable to sleep. Hence the late night walking. Or maybe it's because my destiny lies in this stupid talent that I am convinced I do not possess called writing. I stalk the night time hours the way a dieting obese woman stalks a Dunkin Donuts. Shamefully and with an ultimate desire to seek validation through something they know is never going to give them what they want.
My recent unemployment has given me a lot of free time. And while I have been using that free time to explore NYC I have not found what it is I had hoped the freedom from 60 hour work weeks in the hospitality industry would afford me. A purpose. I know. It's pathetic. Poor little sad privileged white girl hasn't yet found her purpose. But fuck that. I'm almost thirty and am rapidly approaching my promised deadline of quitting smoking so I'm allowed a little room to be self-involved. Well, not really.
The spring and summer in NYC have brought with it a sense of home and openness I did not think was possible in this city. Upon arriving to this town to end all towns I was scared shitless, but hopeful. Then winter hit. And it was like a nuclear bomb exploding in this Floridian's life. What the fuck is snow and why do people think it's so great? Admittedly, upon my first sight of it in many years I thought it was pretty. Then I got trapped in it and walked home in knee deep drifts that would make even your Grandfather's stories of "we walked uphill" seem bland in comparison.
Warm weather came and people changed. We stopped walking briskly by one another in an attempt to ignore everything around us but our attempt to get warm and actually starting conversing outside of places while we lepers called smokers enjoyed our hedonist bounty. We began to be polite to each other again. Not on the trains, that's just ludicrous, but at least when we were waiting in lines at the bodega. It was a wonderful season to enjoy a glass of white wine on the patio while people watching dog obsessed people carrying on full blown conversations with their schnauzers like they were their children. Grand time to be alive.
Ha. Summer. Totally different animal. Heat. This Floridian knows heat. But this Floridian does not know heat without central AC. I believe that hell is without central AC. And unfortunately stocked with non-Alcoholic beer (that's kind of what makes it hell). No window AC unit made it even worse. In Florida there is water and greenery to absorb the dense wall of humidity that manages to skulk into every corner of your life. In NYC there is pavement and buildings that trap it in and enable it to jump onto your back like a stalker when you have no restraining order. Who the hell can live like this?
Cue romantic and clichéd movie music. Enter the boyfriend. That is an entirely different blog entry. I promise we'll get to that. He gives me (and installs!) an AC unit in my room. Everything should be perfect. Right?!?!?
Yeah it doesn't change the fact that I am unemployed for the first time in my life. Not adult life, mind you. Life. I have worked since I was 14 years old. It is not for a lack of trying. It is for a lack of skills. I detest not being productive. Marx said that we attribute our worth as humans to our ability to produce so I can't be entirely wrong. Unless he was. If that's the case then I'm screwed. Nonetheless I am idle and seeking more in this city that I have slowly (and begrudgingly) come to love.
This has been coupled with my Grandmother recently dying. I almost made it through this whole post without mentioning it because it is too personal. And too painful. I wanted this post to be another random musing of a lost soul but I cannot bear to not talk about it. I am hurting too deeply from the loss of someone I loved so much. I need the catharsis of writing about it because my chest aches so much that I feel I will never recover. I will not go off into a self-indulgent tirade about the pain of loss because we have all been through it. I did not handle it well. Needless to say that I spent two full days in a pot-hazed (sorry to my parents but I needed something to dull the ache), drunk state while I tried to cope with one of the most amazing people to have ever lived no longer gracing the Earth with her presence. What I will do, however, is remember her white knuckles kneading dough for baking. Her boisterous pride of her gravy recipe. Her infectious laugh that made everyone around her smile intensely just by hearing the sound of it. She would laugh at everything you said, making the most serious situations feel light. Her ability to make you realize there was a simple solution to every problem. The fact that you could not mention her name in conversation without eliciting a sincere grin that made you ecstatic just to be talking about her, let alone to know her. Her generosity and willingness to share anything she had. Her love of Jesus. Playing cards with her at the table at 2am with her always sportmanslike smile when she lost (when she was most likely letting you win.) Her hearty, whole body hugs at the end of family vacations. Her love of anything canine. Her beautiful Southern drawl that slowed down everything in the conversation and made you think about what she was saying. Her modest home with my Grandfather in Tennessee, a place she treasured so much she would never leave. Christmas mornings listening to Elvis and the porcelain dolls she gave me every year with blonde hair and blue eyes that I know she painstakingly chose because she loved me and wanted to make me happy. Her constant forgetfulness and addiction to coffee. Her chain smoking. How she always made my Mom let me stay up late when I was a little girl to watch TV. Her ability to find any toy I had ever lost and her village of winter houses she set up every year that used to light up. Her infinite love for her Grandchildren and children and her collection of diamond rings. Her unflagging patience for people and her genuine love of humanity. While her family lost the most the world in general lost one of the most spirited and kind souls we've ever seen. It's unfortunate, because people like her are what the world needs more of. I cry as I write this because not enough of us were able to be graced with her extraordinarily strong and beautiful nature.
Please go hug the person you love most in this world. Because the moment where you realize you didn't do it enough is a moment that will make your life seem insignificant.
