throat tickle, football, gladness, tiredness, sleep

Exhausted, but determined to write, so this will be a short diary-ish entry.

1) Worked my last coffeeshop shift today. Hurrah. (And then at the very very end of the shift, right before we set the alarm and walked out into the night, found out that the manager had scheduled me for NEXT Sat and Sun too. But I ain't doin it. No way uh-uh no way. Already called and left a message. Will call again tomorrow. Will send my dog to work for me if I have to. But I need, and I am taking, that time.)

2) I am coughing and sneezing, and that is not a good thing. I refuse to get sick. I will be sleeping very soon.

3) New Orleans Saints. I love them. Wow. Like kind of a lot. Normally I care not at all about football, but I watched the Superbowl kinda by accident and I think I am a Saints convert for life.

4) The Who, by contrast, were stilted and disappointing. And seemed just kinda wrong for the event. Roger Daltrey seemed tired and looked like Gene Wilder. Pete Townshend can still do that windmill-arm guitar thing, but the resulting paunch exposure was an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction. I loved them in junior high (and they were old then) - but I kinda think they need to retire.

5) Had a talk with a friend that confirmed we are friends, still, indeed. Gladness, relief.

6) I move in 12 days, and must have all my shazizzle sold, sorted, and packed in 10. (Holy CRAP.)

7) And so: to sleep!

A girl who's already half angel

Gabrielle Bouliane was a poet, filmmaker/cinematographer, and all around badass. We were acquaintances, not really friends, but she was one of those people who blurred the line, made the distinction itself seem absurd. The kind that made small talk feel not so small. - Hey, what's up Gabrielle? - Going out of my mind, but I'm making a film, and I love all my roommates, back in school and I'm broke, but hey that's ok - last week I had a terrible breakup but I wrote a great poem about it, and you? That kind of acquaintance. That puts you at ease and makes you think, we oughta be friends.

I saw her perform a bunch of times in Seattle, years ago, and admired and was a little bit scared of her fire, her skill, her blunt smart words, and her just-make-shit-happen-and-screw-what-anyone-else-thinks attitude. And also her vulnerability. She delivered the performance at the link below just weeks before she died from a rare form of cancer. (If the link doesn't work it's on my fb page too.)

http://bit.ly/b3WBV8

She is the second woman from the Seattle circles that I know to have died from cancer this year. Both deaths I learned about on facebook, a couple of weeks after I found out (from facebook) that each woman was ill. Facebook sometimes makes me want to hide. Not just from awful news like that, but from the old attachments and rejections and regrets that surround the awful news. And from the guilt that springs from even thinking for a second about the old attachments and rejections and regrets when hello, somebody DIED, here I am ALIVE, when I had stupid cancer too and could've died 5 years ago and really, why the fuck didn't I, God, when people like Gaby and Annie are gone?

But this is a self-indulgent ruse, I know, to avoid the hard business of living.

And saying I'm going to quit facebook is like saying I'm going to quit talking.

When I clicked "deactivate your account," I knew I didn't need their cloying second-screen ploys to bring me back. "Are you sure you want to leave? X will miss you! Send X a message!" Screw X. X hasn't even written on my wall in 3 years. I'm staying on for the deaths. The births. The redheaded half-angel exhortations. For the shit that makes me stop in my tracks and wake up, and pay attention, to the people that I am lucky to know, have known, have heard or seen or touched, been touched by, for even the tiniest moment in time.

Every moment, every attachment, every rejection, every regret: everything passes. Everything goes. Only one thing continues: life. And I'd sure as hell better do something with mine.

Cause if I don't, Gabrielle's gonna kick my ass.

cheatin'

OK. So tonight wasn't quite the big hot date with my Blog that I'd hoped it might be. The day was stressful for a tangle of ridiculous reasons - a somewhat rushed grant that I'd thought I would get done faster, no hot water in the shower, little money in the bank account, unresolved moving details, the lingering annoyance of a betrayal too petty to even have a fit about, but fit-inducing in its very pettiness, etc. This all added up to a thundercloud of a MOOD the likes of which I have not indulged in at least ... 48 hours, when I was grousing about the ugly inefficiency of LaGuardia and the outrageous price of bad coffee in the Detroit airport.

OK. So maybe I'm having a moody week. No: definitely I'm having a moody week. And seeing as I have no Menstrual about which to Pre-Syndrome (such a blessing, to be removed of the curse, except that it also removes an excuse!), I can only chalk it up to me and my attitude being out of whack and needing a little Talking To. Which I did and will continue to do, reminding myself how genuinely fortunate and grateful I am for all the good things & people in my life. Etc. I also cried at a TV show, either the Dateline Michael Jackson special, or maybe House or Gray's Anatomy. Or it might have been Friends. Maybe The Office. Not Star Trek - or was it? Anyway. One of those.

Not that I really watched any of that stuff, I am way too serious and focused for such things. I just had it on while I paid my utility bills online and wrote a job description for the contract gig I am ending when I move - hey! I actually DID do those things! I didn't just cry and channel-surf and eat too many rice cakes and feel simultaneously mad at and sorry for myself, I did all of those things AND got some shit done. If that ain't multi-tasking, I don't know what is. Take THAT, potential employers! Ha!

However, I did not have the groovy candlelit soft-background-music time I had planned with my blog, and since I have to be dressed, smiling, and serving suburban coffee in 5 hours with a well-intentioned but exhaustingly enthusiastic manager whose presence makes me feel like I'm getting run over repeatedly by an Up With People tour bus, I need to go to sleep. And this is where the title of this post comes in - just as I cheated on my blog earlier tonight by having a three-way with my remote control & online bill pay system, I am now cheating you, my readers, all seven of you, by reposting the customer review I wrote on airbnb.com about the loft where I stayed last weekend rather than writing that Chinatown post I keep teasing you with.

Dear readers, please accept my apology - and my gratitude. Suddenly, after writing the above, I'm in the best mood I've been in all day.

**

Review of "Real downtown loft Room #2" from airbnb.com (a site I highly recommend for any traveler, no matter what kind of mood I or they may be in!)

As the name implies, this place is the real deal: a spacious, spare, hand-built space that shares a stairway with a handful of Chinatown businesses. This is what lofts were like before they became "Lofts," got paint jobs, and started posing for big bucks on the pages of Dwell. Bedroom (Loft room 2) had a good-sized bed, an armoire with space for lots of clothes, a sturdy raw pine desk & chair. Lots of desk space and outlets in the common room too, along with a communal flat screen TV, sofas, and sociable but respectful fellow guests. Also, good kitchen facilities & GREAT shower. Kevin was a gracious host, very easygoing and helpful, even bought and installed a new wireless router my first day there because the one he had wasn't working so well. So now the wireless is super-speedy. And of course there is that excellent dog! Like the loft itself, Chinatown is old-school and unvarnished, full of crazy life and a culture all its own. Very convenient, but make sure you know where you're going when you step out the door, as asking for directions is not a dependable strategy. Not always easy to get a cab, but there are lots of convenient subway stops nearby. Highly recommend this spot. It disappears in April, so stay there while you can!

Friday Night Anticipation

For some people, Friday night means a hot date. For me, this week (and in general right now), it means solitude. But in the best / most productive of ways. And so. Dude. I can't wait for Friday night!

I will be done with a grant deadline and with the post-trip catchup, and I will have time to a) make travel arrangements for the move and b) write a full-fledged blog post about my time in nyc. And/or other things.

Till then -

goodnight.

Chinatown. Soon.

For the past 2 days, my brain has been full of Chinatown. I have tons to write about it. And some pretty cool photos. But now, I am exhausted. Long day of walking around Brooklyn looking for an appointment I didn't make, then flying home, then writing I big ol' followup/thank you email to the 2 people who interviewed me on Tuesday. And so. I must sleep.

So tonight's blog post is a promise to post a buncha Chinatown writing and images asap in a blog post. And that, I'm sorry to say, is all it is.

Goodnight goodnight!

Till soon.

W.

Chinatown in Pictures

I'll write more more more when I'm awake wake wake.

For now: some images of the neighborhood:

Day Before Yesterday's Post

Yesterday, Feb 1, a day after vowing to post every day, I skipped. Didn't mean to but I did. Fell asleep with the darn computer in the bed. Here's what I would've written - or part of what I'd written - if I hadn't! I was determined to finish this quickly so that Feb. 1 would still be yesterday when I posted, but I didn't make it. So. This is now the day before yesterday's post.

The first thing to say is: I'm in dazzling, insane New York, where I flew up yesterday for a job interview that took place today.

So yesterday, Monday Feb 1, I had gotten up at 4 am, flown to NYC, taken a bus and the subway and then walked myself and my luggage for an hour all over the Lower East Side (bad google map directions + "I can't buy an iphone yet" cheapness + "I don't need to buy a map" stubborness) before I found my destination - 41 Division Street, a skinny banged-up grey door in the heart of Chinatown. My host, K, who owns the 4th floor loft I had rented a room in for $55 a night via airbnb.com, told me to take the freight elevator to the left of the door - hooray, my heart delighted, no more suitcase hauling! - but a fat iron padlock on its bars mocked my hopes.

I swung stairway door (never locked) and stepped onto a dirty patch of floor that reads "Meyer & Vesele" in blue-on-white octagonal tile, from a time when others made their lives and livings here. A couple stood on the narrow stairs, arguing in Chinese. They let me maneuver around them, as I reached the 2nd floor, a different woman (where did she come from?) pushed past me and into another unlocked door on the 2nd floor landing. The room she slipped into was bright, industrial-looking - the upstairs of the market below, perhaps - and On the other side of the landing, cigarette smoke seeped out from under a mesh metal door. I looked through the door. I think jumped. Seamless rows of wide, black-edged computer screens with Chinese teens in front of them, all gaming or on email. A Chinese underground gaming cafe (minus the coffee, plus the cigarette smoke), completely invisible from anywhere but this tiny landing - but clearly not hurting for business. Onward up the stairs. I'm greeted in Loft 4A by K and his sweet dog R, an English white lab with a pit-bull-wide head and a tail that thumps against the wall when I pet him.

And now I'm in a world of clean white walls, raw pine desks, exposed brick & pipe, previously expensive second-hand sofas, a flatscreen TV, and a tall white guy with tousled brown hair who 2 decades ago could have been drinking a pitcher at Naples pizzeria after intramural lacrosse while my girlfriends and I huddled at the next table to deconstruct late-'80s sexual culture at Yale. He says R's coat is not so clean now, but in the summer he swims every day. I ask where R swims, wondering if the Hudson is safe - or maybe it's a nearby swimming pool. "The Hamptons," says K, in a funny flat way that says, "Don't ask me about my place in the Hamptons". He changes the subject. I am oddly relieved.

More tomorrow (which is, by now, yesterday...)