Travelogue, Day One: Into the Mouth of Madness

I’m writing right now on board Delta Flight 158, JFK to Rome, and the in-flight movie is Prince Caspian. If I’m lusting after the actor who plays Peter…does that make me a pedophile? I mean, the actor’s eighteen already, I’m pretty sure, and really…what does a few months REALLY matter? On a semi-random note, I just spent the last half-hour practicing Italian under my breath, using that handy-dandy booklet that Greg lent me, and I’m pretty sure the Italian couple sitting next to me thinks I’m insane. Or a giant slut. (“Non non, faccio solo sesso secure. Ho molte malattie!”)

So we should all be aware by this point that, as part of my duties / services to Theatre at Sea, I’m going to Italy for a couple of weeks. In my capacity as Group Director, I’ll be trying to make sure that the passengers on our lovely ship, the Crystal Serenity, are taken care of as far as our Theatre at Sea events go. In this regard, I’ll be taking over for Jess, whose feet, small and dainty and lovely as they are, filled some rather monstrously large shoes. Did I mention that I’m looking forward to this event with a mixture of excitement and boot-quaking dread?

So let’s see…where to begin? Well, I suppose we could start with last night, where I very hastily packed up a few shirts, a few pairs of pants, and some underwear into the little luggage carrier that Myia left me before she went back to Ireland. Yes, I’m a last minute packer. I stuck my tuxedo and a few shoes into my suit carrier, which looked rather iffy, and I rather ill-advisedly decided to pack up all of my D&D gear into my carry-on bag. Yes, I’m a dork! And yes, I plan to be doing some adventure / campaign planning during the wee hours of the morning on board the ship! It’s a bloody cruise ship and nobody on board will be below 50! What the hell ELSE am I supposed to do? Anyway, my carry-on’s a bit heavy, and I’ll go into what happened to my suit carrier in a moment, but my checked bag weighed in at a very sensible 20-odd pounds.

I stayed up rather late last night after packing, and I honestly don’t remember why. I suspect Guitar Hero had something to do with it, or maybe some random fact-checking for D&D, or maybe I was messing with my last bit of e-mail and finances before I left. Whatever. Point is, I woke up slightly later than I’d intended, dropped into Theatre at Sea ‘round 10:30 am, and, in short order, was told to transfer all of my things into a larger suitcase so that we could drag some of Patricia Neal’s books onto the cruise with us. Ummm…okay…

So in between copying all the files I would need for the trip, I was stuffing Pat’s autobiography, each of which feels like a gold brick, into the rather large suitcases that Philip had provided for just this purpose. They ended up a combined weight of 100 pounds, handle like a Mack truck on skis, and overall are a pain in the ass. I love working for Theatre at Sea. Adding to the fun of this last day, Kevin needed a check from me for the security deposit on the apartment we’re moving into. Since he was filming in upstate New York , I had to take an hour to run down to Martha’s and drop off the check, getting back just in time to leave for my flight.

Oh. Now I remember what I was doing last night. I went to see the apartment that Kevin and I are to move into. God…I’m moving to Brooklyn. With Kevin. (Heh – just kidding. Hey Kev!) I’m actually really excited about the prospect, because a) I’m getting tired of living like a college student, b) it’ll be nice having some company I can actually relate to for once and c) it’s new, I guess. I’s fond of new shinies.

Back to the matter at hand, I can’t say much about the cab ride over, except that I crashed somewhere around 73rd and Park and woke up just as we were pulling into the Delta terminal at JFK. Along the way, however, I had this interesting dream where George Dubya was visiting the New York Library at Bryant Park and I got caught trying to smuggle a gun in through customs. My subconscious is terribly anvicilious. I snuck a peek through my luggage before going in, just in case I somehow stuck a Beretta in there without noticing, and proceeded through check-in without much ado. Given that there were a couple of hours before my flight, I went to have some exceptionally bad Chinese food and do a bit of reading before my flight. About halfway through the meal, I got a text from Sherry that read, “Please tell me the flash drive in the computer isn’t the one you’re taking to Venice.”

Aww, fuck. This trip is starting real well.

Philip had left an hour earlier, so there was no way to pick it up again. After entertaining some fairly wild options, the best of which involved Sherry fed-exing the drive to Rome and the worst having her fly it over in a hot air balloon, I realized that there was nothing on the drive that couldn’t be e-mailed to me or uploaded onto our file server. So that was done and, crisis mostly resolved, I proceeded to almost miss my flight, largely owing to a very well insulated toilet stall.

But for the sake of everyone involved here, I’ll skip the specifics of that story.

On teh suck

I was initially going to talk about work, but then I realized that talking about work is arguably as interesting as an in-depth discussion about the mechanism of paint drying, so to preserve you all I'm going to skip everything. Well, skip everything except the portion where I get to go to Europe for 12 days. On a cruise. That's right, bitches, I'm going on a 12-day cruise to Venice, Sicily, Florence, Rome (well, Citavecchia, really, and yes, I enjoy tossing out random obscure Italian cities knowing that exactly 12% of the general populace and 0.2% of my readership knows what I'm talking about), St. Tropez, and Monte Carlo. I will be doing so on the Crystal Serenity, which is one of the few cruise ships that managed to obtain a Berlitz five-star rating this year. I know this because Cruise Travel magazine's annual publication says so (nyah nyah!)

The caveat? I will be group director for this cruise, which basically means that I will be the go-to bitch for roughly eighty crotchety, angry octogenarians. Is having to smile 12 hours a day worth a free trip to Venice? Obviously my answer was yes, but having gotten off the phone today with one of my irritating, demanding wards, I'm starting to have juuuuuust a few second thoughts. Ah well, worst comes to worst I can go with a ready supply of booze and a few caps of arsenic.

On a different note, I spent the evening playing beer pong with Darien and Brandon, knowing that Darien will be moving out of New York and going to LA come Thursday. Wait for it...wait for it...oh yeah, there it is. That sort of choppy sensation where you realize that a big chunk of your soul just went flying out into the uncaring void. I'm going to miss her a lot.

Mind you, I've gone months before without seeing Darien - most recently where she went to Italy for about three months. It's the sort of thing you get used to when you have a lot of friends in the theatre business. But...knowing that she won't be back in just a month or two, that I'm not going to be able to look forward to an evening of good Thai food and totally random discussions, and her ever solid advice about the pease porridge soup of my love life...that just sucks. If the expression "sucks" might be related to how much it actually sucks by a ratio approximated by the relationship of a Hoover to, oh, an F5 tornado.

Still, she's going to a better place, as it were. LA holds a lot more opportunity for her, and for what she wants to do, than New York does, and...well...as she's stated, it's really just time to move on.

Hrm. I'm usually a bit more eloquent when I'm mildly drunk, but I'm stacking a pretty spectacular hangover on top of that, so the best thing at this point is possibly to just head over to bed.

On review

So this would be my second post of the evening (technically morning), and I've just spent a little bit of time consolidating my blog posts from the past several years. Was this necessary? Arguably not, but frankly I'd forgotten that I'd written half of these posts, forgotten where I'd written them when I finally remembered that I'd written them, and then I'd forgotten the password for the damn blogging site where I'd written them once I remembered where they were written.

So there, after a really minor effort, I'm finally and fully consolidated. I choose you, Blogger! You will be my online journal of choice from now on, and I will simply include a link to you, beautiful you, wherever I may feel a need to post my blog in the future. We will sing happy songs and weave sad tales together, and I will hold you and love you and never let you go. Wait, where are you going, Blogger? Don't go! I love you! I love you forever! You were going to meet my parents! I have baby clothes picked out and everything! Oh God, why? WHY?!

Oooooookay. Now that's starting to creep out even me.

On a semi-random note, I was reading over what I'd written about Chris (Ah Chris. Dear sweet, funny, straightforward Chris.) back in May, and I actually find it rather funny now. In much the same way that I find the fact that I wet the bed when I was a toddler funny. Obviously, things didn't work out with Chris, and while I would like to say that I'm considerably wiser now and would do things vastly differently, I would also find such a statement highly, highly dubious.

So taking a leaf from Chris's book, actually, I'm going to stop posting about my romantic endeavors for a while. Maybe once I'm fully, solidly, steadily in a relationship, I'll toss in a mention here and there. Until then, the gossip will have to come from somewhere else.

On stinky, unwanted children

Hello blog. I return. Has it really been only three months since I've written? I find that curiously unfathomable. It seems like entire lifetimes have passed since I last wrote here. Certainly my love life has died and resurrected a couple of times since we last spoke.

Wow, I'm not even sure where to begin. So I'm not going to! No recap for you! Ahahaha! My cruelty knows no bounds, and you will not know all the things that have occurred over the course of the last several months. The ordeals that have changed me from that poor, innocent boy looking for love and happiness to this cynical, surly soul who would mug a beggar for the change in his cup and then kick a puppy on his way home. A blind, three-legged puppy who wags his tail whenever someone walks by, despite months of cold neglect, for the simple joy of a pat on his head. Yeah, that puppy. I ate him. It was delicious.

Yeah, okay, so I dated a few guys, broke up with a few guys (is it breaking up if you haven't even been dating a month?), and now sort of feel like that prototypical gay who seems to flounce aimlessly from one relationship to another. They (whoever "they" are) were right about online dating, by the way - just because it seems like you're compatible on the numbers...doesn't mean there's going to be the slightest bit of chemistry. Dear Jesus have I got stories...if I hadn't scoured them out of my brain. With bleach. I'm sorry, were we talking about something...?

Things now are...interesting and not at all straightforward. I don't particularly feel like elaborating on that, except possibly to say that whenever things SEEM to be straightforward, fortune seems to enjoy dropping a seriously obese kid off into my neighborhood pool.

On knowing there's worse out there

So I was hanging out with Rick last night at the Bread Factory, and in between Boston clam chowder and cheesecake we came up with a terrific idea:

Dante's Inferno, the Musical. With such memorable musical numbers as, "Oh My God, I'm on Fire," "The Cerberus Shuffle," and "Song of the Flatterers." We're thinking that if it has a high enough budget, we could have a big bronze Satan at the end rise out of his ground, flapping his wings and chewing on the three sinners (with understudies playing the roles of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius). We'll crank the AC really high to simulate the chilling effect of being at the farthest possible point from the Grace of God, and use nifty immersion techniques like a chorus to do the moans of the damned. It'd be so terrific!

On a slightly more serious note, I actually did briefly contemplate the logistics of a musical about a high school drama class that attempts to put on "Dante's Inferno, the Musical" using a shoestring budget. There's nothing very solid, but I decided that they'd have freshmen carrying signs like, "Canto II: The Lustful" across the stage to indicate where Dante and Virgil have ended up. If I'd actually experienced what it was like being in high school drama, I could probably make this idea considerably more successful than anything I could produce at the moment. Oh, and if I could compose. That would probably help.

On hoping prostitution isn't a necessity

So a rather disturbing event occurred today at work. It seems that Jess will be leaving us to manage a dog walking company. She'll be making *enormously* more than she is making now and she'll be getting benefits to boot, so I'm quite happy for her. At the same time, however, I'm dreading the possibility that I'm going to be asked to step into her place, as the only other permanent full-time employee at my company. Yeah, we're a pretty tiny company, and being a manager of any sort pretty much runs against the grain of my being.

I dunno. I enjoy working at my company. I get paid lunches, lunches paid FOR me, and a very relaxed work atmosphere. So I actually make *substantially* more than my hourly wage seems to suggest...although I don't get any sort of benefits, which sucks. Maybe it's just that sudden and massive changes that may have long-term effects on my surroundings make me very uneasy. While not necessarily a creature of habit, I do prefer that I have a nice, level surface to work from.

Although...I HAVE been contemplating moving to a new job for a while. It'd be nice to have benefits and a pay rate that will actually let me assemble something resembling a savings account, but I kind of hate the idea of sacrificing flexibility for it. Plus, it seems incredibly difficult to find a decent job in New York without offering illicit services to somebody. I think that someone with my level of experience and technical skill ought to be considerably more marketable than I currently seem to be. Wait? Was that a non sequitur? I'm a bit tired right now.

Anyway, perhaps when I hit 30, if I still haven't really done anything to speak of as a creative professional, I'll start contemplating getting my Masters and going back to engineering. Perhaps.

On cheese alerts

So I've had three rather successful dates with The Boy, and that's been quite marvelous. We entertain each other, we make each other laugh, we have both stimulating and idiotic conversations ("Did you know that you have the softest arm hair of anyone I've ever met?") and we cuddle during movies. Wonderful, right?

Except my intuition is telling me that...well, basically that I'm not really his number one choice. Mind you, he clearly likes me - I mean, good lord, we've had three dates, and we're planning a fourth for next Monday. Who'd be so masochistic as to go on that many dates with someone whose company they don't enjoy? But there's just...something. I don't really know what it is. Maybe tiny hints my conscious mind has glossed over, but that my subconscious has picked up on, which collectively suggest to me that although The Boy likes me, he has his reservations. I have my insecurities, but I don't think that's them talking. There's just...something piercing through my usual armor of excessively over-compensating self-confidence. (That was a joke. Laugh, dammit!)

Of course, I could be excessively overthinking this. Because clearly I don't overanalyze things, or obsess about tiny, stupid details most rational people wouldn't even notice. *Eyeball roll*

Anyway, to keep my entire post from being a self-indulgent whine-fest about The Boy (Oh, you know what? This is totally idiotic. Chris! His goddamn name is Chris!), I'd like to add a little advisory to anyone who's planning to purchase a house. If, in the contract, it's listed as a short sale...run away. Run away like there's a t-rex up your skivvies. The fact of the short sale makes actually purchasing the house SUCH a bloody chore that unless you're paying SUBSTANTIALLY under the market rate, it's just not worth the trouble. I've been wrangling with lawyers and loan agents and real estate agents on behalf of my mother for the better part of three weeks, and it's getting to the point where I just want a zombie horde to chew all their faces off, I want a meteor to fall on Wells Fargo's national headquarters, I want a herd of elephants to stampede the house in question into so much inedible pancake, and I want violently malevolent fleas to eternally plague the original seller of the house for not paying back his mortgage in full.

If cosmic justice is the order of the day, I think Wells Fargo deserves some divine smiting for the shit they've put my mother through the last month or so.

On reconsideration

So I've had a bit more time to ruminate about The Boy, and I'm thinking I need to take a more balanced approach toward this. Now, anyone who really knows me would probably yell here, "But you try to take a balanced approach to everything!" Well...yes. I'm a pretty cautious guy except where relationships seem to be concerned, because the moment I like someone a great deal (which often happens as early as the first date) it's like I practically want to drag him into a chapel. I mean, really. Wow. Creepy much?

My aunt remarked to me in the past about my cautious streak, and again, I generally agree except with regard to relationships and oh, careers as well. I've already transitioned from engineering pre-med to acting, which is about as anti-conservative as you can get, and I've said I have this nasty tendency to plunge headlong into forming attachments to guys who, frankly, may not have that same attachment to me. I look at Isti and the way she knew Diaz for a good two or there years before they started dating, and now they've been together...what? 9 years? Or I look at Dave, and the way he and Jordan seemed to date in a very casual sort of way before becoming joined at the hip. The way they got together just seems a lot less...turbulent, maybe, than what I always seem to put myself through. Then again, Isti and Dave both are much less...erratic, I guess, than I am. It's just that the difference in our approaches seems to be the difference between slowly gliding down a slope, or hopping off a cliff. The first is obviously a lot less painful, but considerably slower, more cautious, and arguably less fun. At least until the splat at the bottom.

I'm just bringing this up because...I dunno. Maybe it's acknowledging that my natural tendency isn't particularly healthy for my emotions, and I'm trying to insulate myself a little in case things DON'T work out with The Boy. Mind you, I hope that they do (I *really* hope that they do), but at this stage it's probably wise not to become too attached.

Ha. As if I had any choice in the matter.

On squee'ing like a blooming idiot yet again

So today was the big day, and it's 2:17 in the bloody morning, my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton balls, and I really ought to just get in bed and sleep, but I really, really wanted to get on here and put this down before the moment is lost.

God, where to start? Well, Sherry and I went out drinking like we'd planned. Jess did, indeed, still feel like an ambulatory ball of pestilence and rot, so she opted to go home instead of coming out with us. I exaggerate here - it sounds like I'm suggesting she was a shambling mound shedding disease at every turn. She really just felt like crap and looked a bit wan, is all. Anyway, Sherry and I went out and had drinks at the West Side Brewery. She gave me a brief lesson on the difference between lagers, ales, and stouts, and we mostly made lewd comments to each other the entire afternoon while I fretted endlessly about the date with The Boy tonight. (Yes, we've decided to just call him The Boy for now, rather than that heinous acronym.)

Oh! The reason we actually were drinking at 3:00 in the afternoon (which is so incredibly white trash / hick that I'm sitting here cringing just thinking about it, and I'm imagining everything I'm typing up to be spoken with a heavy Appalachian accent) is that Philip, whom I work for, was holding a birthday party for his 7 year-old granddaughter. And her 30 friends. As Sherry and I were walking out of his apartment we commentated on the numerous children heading up to the apartment. I think we got out just in time, because otherwise I'm pretty sure we'd have been mowed under fairly quickly by a swarm of midgets. There were at least 10 adults supervising the party, but my money remains on the rugrats.

Anyway - Sherry helped me pick out a flower after we drank. It ended up being kind of a bulbous monstrosity anyway - a bright yellow and orange tulip on a stem that was probably two feet long. It could have been used as a bludgeoning instrument if it weren't so floppy. I had a major brain malfunction and didn't ask for the stem to be cut - I think because I liked the two little leaves jutting out near the bottom - and it wasn't really until we were in the subway that I realized how ridiculous it would be for him to carry this thing throughout the evening. Well, I had my bag, and I'm sure we could've stowed it if it became really inconvenient.

So I get to the Thai restaurant I'd scoped out earlier - Pam Real Thai Encore (I know. Did they draw magnet poetry out of a hat or something when they named the place?) I'd never actually been there, but I checked it out online and it had good reviews for a decent price. Anyway, in spite of a miscommunication in which I briefly feel like I've been tossed into the Twilight Zone, we meet up. Being the stealthy son of a bitch that I am, I manage to sneak up on him yet again, this time while he's reading a menu, and give him my flower without feeling too much like a buffoon. His reaction is about what I'd expected - flattered, but a bit unsure how to manage the flower for the rest of the evening. I really should've gone with the orange rose. That was comparatively small, compact, but still stunning and just about perfect.

Anyway, we spent a lovely time at Pam Real Thai Encore (I'm still not tired of saying that). The food was indeed excellent, as advertised, and his company was delightful. I'd actually typed up sort of a summary of the evening, but subsequently decided that I don't particularly want to go into details right now and deleted it all. Let's just say that he surprised me a couple of times, quite pleasantly, and I wasn't nearly as much of a ninny in that regard as I was on our last date. I will say, however, that we decided on our way out of the theatre that there will be a third date. We don't know when or what we'll be doing, but there will be one, and that makes me very happy.

So in conclusion...I'm awfully taken with The Boy. I think you knew that already, but it bears mentioning again. I'm awfully taken with The Boy. I guess what makes this more noteworthy is that...I think he actually likes me back. Perhaps not as much as I like him (would I be arrogant in sticking a "yet" in here?), but hell, it's only our second date. Which kind of brings me back to earth again, and reminds me that I get attached to people just way too fucking easily.

(*Whispers*) But that doesn't stop me from liking him!

On being too lazy to open a closet door

So I have this interesting little complication at work.

On Thursday, Sherry, Jess (hopefully, if she's not still feeling like the black death walking), and I are going to go out and have a drink to celebrate the fact that Sherry is done with her finals. If I didn't have a date with the boy-whom-I-won't-mention-because-I'm-superstitious-and-don't-want-anything-to-jinx-this (henceforth referred to as the BWIWMBISADWATJT...I think I need an acronym for my acronym) afterwards, we'd probably be getting plastered. On a Thursday night. How trashy is that? But anyway, we'd be getting plastered and having a grand old time, because both Sherry and Jess are good-ole Southern gals with utterly un-Southern sensibilities.

My other co-worker, however, is planning to come with us. I'm going to avoid names, since she has her own real estate business and I don't want to embarrass her in a professional fashion, in case someone searches for her and, with that random one-in-a-million chance, ends up over here instead. Let's just call her...ah...Tang.

Tang is...eccentric, for lack of a better word. She's currently fixated on a man who's in the middle of a divorce and who has two children, and she cannot seem to understand why, precisely, getting romantically involved with him would be a bad idea. She seems to have sort of an intellectual grasp of the concept, but it clearly hasn't sunk in because she comes to Jess or me periodically to confirm that yes, dating the divorcing man is still a bad idea. Bad Tang. No man candy for you.

She also seems to have this unhealthy interest in me, I suppose since we're both Chinese. In any case, she intends to invite two of her friends, both apparently very nice Chinese girls, out drinking with us. And that would be fine, except that it's flagrantly, blatantly, full moon on a cold black night obvious that she intends to set me up with one (or both? Eek!) of these girls. Is it bad that my current impulse is to stand up and scream, "Get your fishy vajayjay twin-pack away from me!"

Jess has suggested that the solution to my problem comes in the form of two words: "I'm gay."

I sidestep a moment here to assure everyone that I am by no means a closet case. I'm not very flamboyant, but everyone in my work place (and all other places I frequent) knows that I'm a total queer. Everyone except Tang, that is, and I'm rather resistant to the idea of telling her. I'm not afraid of any vitriol - I could totally get her ass fired if she starts being overtly hostile around me - but the thought of having to field her questions about the matter, or worse, attempts to "straighten me out," is just wearying.

Yeah, basically I'm not telling her because I'm lazy.

I suppose I'll just let them know in no uncertain terms that I'm not at all interested, and console myself with the fact that I get to meet up with a cute, sweet, hilarious boy immediately afterward. I'm kind of excited about the prospect of getting him a flower for our second date. I was thinking something not too ostentatious - a single rose, perhaps, in lavender. Sherry has, however, been trying to convince me that I ought to get him a calla lily or sunflower or some other bug-eating monstrosity. And I'm like, "I want something sweet and simple. Not something I can use to club him over the head. I'm pretty sure we're past that stage of social development."

But dammit...the calla lily is looking pretty attractive.

On cutting habits without methadone

I think my attention span for new and swanky things has gotten drastically shorter as I've gotten older...or perhaps the daily grind of work, then rehearsal, then bloody eternity on the A train has simply killed my desire to do, oh, just about anything else by the time I get home. Except Guitar Hero 3. I swear, that game is like crack. It will probably give me arthritis by the time I'm 30.

I am a little annoyed by the work-rehearsal-sleep schedule right now, because I'd actually like to start going to the gym again on a regular basis. That would, however, actually require me to get up at 6 or 7 in the morning in order to get to the gym before work, and since I don't get home until 11:00 or so, that would basically mean I'd become one of those people who doesn't do anything except work and go to the gym. Seriously igh. Still, this sedentary lifestyle is making me feel more than a little bit like a lazy slob. Mind you - I know that I'm not a lazy slob. Since I'm technically working upwards of 10-12 hours a day and I do an immense amount of writing on the train, I'm probably accomplishing more than a good 70% or 80% of the general population. Knowing, however, doesn't really help when I realize I'm getting a bit soft around the midsection. I suppose I could restrict myself to cardio for now, which is a little less time-consuming than the weights regime that I usually aim for, but...I dunno - I'd like to pack some muscle onto my frame before attempting to get cut.

Somehow, in the course of debating all this, it ends up being that the only thing I can readily sacrifice is sleep.

At least I've more or less managed to cut World of Warcraft out of my life for the time being. There's a time-consuming addiction if there ever was one.

On springing eternal, as always

Psst...can I tell you a secret, oh online blog? And it will be a secret, because nobody knows about you. None of my friends are aware that you exist. Only the faceless crowds who browse the community might stumble across you, and I don't care if they know. Will you be my hole in the ground? Will you hear my little secret?

I like a boy. He's sweet, adorable, witty, and hilarious. We've only gone on one date, but I like him. I like him a lot.

Keep this to yourself. Let milkweeds and bluegrass and stalks of fennel grow over the earth with which I bury this secret. Let them whisper it into the winds, if they like, and let that wind carry it like dandelion fluff around the world. I don't mind, because by then, I'll have either let him know just how much I like him, hoping he feels the same way, or I'll have once again found myself in the position of the fool.

And I'm okay with that.

On the inanity of online journals

It occurs to me that half the reason I don't post more on online journals is that I don't really consider the day-to-day details of my life really much worth mentioning. I mean, would I really care, years later, whether I had pizza or salmon for lunch today, or whether I had to fence yet another phone call from someone with too much money and too few manners?

I have a pair of journals from when I was somewhere in the vicinity of 7 or 8 years old. They were required writing when we first got into class...and although I'm glad I kept them, I wonder a bit what the hell the point was. To make us write? We had English assignments for that. Maybe they were meant to make us more introspective, more...hmmm...thoughtful, maybe. Or however thoughtful you can be at 7 years old. I'm looking at an entry right now, and it reads: "Describe how your life might chang if there were no t.v. It will chang a little then I'll have to work every day your friend Yingzhi"

Yes. Very thought-provoking. I'm a little astounded that, even though I was only 7 and relatively new to the US, I wasn't able to come up with something a little more interesting in half a bloody hour. Come on, younger me! You're embarrassing me! I'm also mildly disturbed that we were encouraged to befriend an inanimate object. Isn't that like saying, "Here, since you're so socially inept you can't seem to get along with the other kids, why don't you try talking to this bundle of notebook paper instead! It'll be great for your self esteem!"

Or is that cynical of me? *GRIN*

I probably shouldn't make fun of it. I might not have fallen in love with writing if it weren't for those strangely nerve-wracking half-hours every morning. And truthfully, I'm pretty glad I have this little window into my much younger days. I'm not sure there are that many people who can say the same.

On money shots (or lack thereof)

I'm of a mind to start talking about space fish and tropical pink dolphins and boxes that talk and an evening sky in which alien stars peer down and offer differing opinions about which team will win the World Cup.

But I'm not going to talk those things today.

I have been thinking about various stories that have been swirling around in my head since time immemorial, or maybe just time that I'd prefer to be immemorial. My neurosis won't allow me to physically work on more than one story at any given time, so while I'm wrangling with Homecoming the rest of these ideas are floating around in a sort of metaphysical pease porridge. I'm sort of hoping the simile won't extend too far into the realm of truth, and that I won't have to throw out the entire foul concoction after nine days (or years, as it may be).

It is, in fact, possible to think too much about a story. You can outline yourself to death (or, in this case, boredom, which may as well be death). I actually have monolithic towers composed entirely of binders organizing my notes and character profiles and histories and worlds and systems of magic and dead gods, and I suspect by sheer press of imagination they're on the verge of attaining sentience. I spent so much time trying to sort out all these little details and to make sure everything was not only coherent, but novel and interesting and possibly even pertinent that in the end, I got cold feet when it came to actually writing those stories. I keep thinking I'll get back to them someday...and who knows, maybe I will. For now, however, I'm coming to adopt a much less...premeditated...method of writing.

You know, after all meandering I do in these posts, you'd think I'd eventually come to some sort of grand, majestic, life-affirming point. But really, I kind of just dribble off and go nowhere. It's like a poorly shot porno that ends before the money shot.

On dues

My coworkers are easily among the most patient people alive, because I am an incredibly difficult person to work with. This is not because I am myself difficult, stubborn, stupid, or incompetent...but because more often than not I am WAY too chipper for any given work day, enjoy singing completely random songs while I work (today's selection, "Poor Unfortunate Souls" brought to you by Walt Disney's "The Little Mermaid"!), am a nosy git and have a habit of looking over people's shoulders when they work. They also suffer the brunt of my angst whenever I'm in the throes of yet another crush on yet another cute, delightful, marvelous, and utterly uninterested boy. I love my coworkers (except when Jess is in a mood, which she's occasionally in. She's delightful when she's had enough sleep and isn't being stressed by a hundred batty old rich women.)

Although I am surprised one of them hasn't just stood up and bitch-slapped me at some point in the past. After being on the receiving end of endless questions from the coworker I mentioned in an earlier post about why, exactly, she shouldn't date this divorcing man, I've gotten a certain appreciation for how annoying an infatuated person can be. I blame it on my sparkling personality and charming demeanor. How could you possibly hit somebody as eloquent and as pleasant as me?

Changing topics, I'm going home to Virginia to help Mom move from her temporary apartment into a new house. I've been meaning to talk with her about certain things that have been occurring in my life, so I expect that by the end of the weekend we will have either grown closer to each other emotionally or be attacking each other with sharp objects and nuclear devices. Maybe both!

On utter irresponsibility

It's 8:17 in the morning, I've gotten roughly half an hour of sleep because I stayed up most of the night doing yet more of those bloody irresponsible things I'm so incredibly fond of doing (but not what you think), I'm currently so pepped up on caffeine (my first caramel macchiato in years, because I suspect I will be in dire, dire need of caffeine this entire day), and the foremost thing running through my mind right now is how someone can become such a cynic that they can sit in the elevator with you and not respond when you smile and wish them a good morning.

The second thing running through my mind is what a fracking idiot I am. Funny how we revisit these themes every time I blog, no? Except you get a double helping today. Woot for you. I should rename my blog, "Warning: Incoming Wangst!"

On coworkers

It's 3:22 am, I'm still up for no apparent reason, I can tell that I will probably go to sleep and wake up around 8:00 am for no apparent reason, and I'm blogging because I'd decided today during lunch that I'm bloody blogging tonight and no amount of exhaustion was going to stop me, by golly!

I truly, truly wish I had a shot of whiskey or tequila something strong and vile and suitably engine-cleaning right then, because the end of that statement demanded a shot of something that really ought never to touch a human esophagus. Although, in very instantaneous retrospect...anything that ends in "by golly" probably doesn't deserve a drink stronger than warm milk.

I digress here to mention how much I hate warm milk. This is a story I often tell friends who (I think) haven't heard it before, and I'm reasonably certain that's the case for most of my friends in New York and a goodly many in Virginia. Basically, during my first few years in China, while my father was getting his degree here and my mother was supporting him by working at the local photography factory, my grandparents on my mother's side felt that the most suitable breakfast for a growing boy was boiled milk with an egg or two made sunny-side up tossed into it. Yes, it tasted about as good as it sounds, which is to say I'd almost rather have eaten live, wriggling nematodes. Almost. But being the obedient Chinese boy I was supposed to be I ate it and never complained. The entire awful concoction was also laced with a small amount of sugar - arguably to make it more palatable - but really it just lent the thing a sort of insidious quality that makes me surprised I still like sugar as much as I do. It's like it was trying to fool me into liking it. Here, little boy, eat this! It's sweet, so it must be good! What? What do you mean this tastes like soggy pig bladder?

So, to this day, warm milk and sunny side up eggs, together or otherwise, are two substances guaranteed to nauseate me.

This may also be part of the reason I get maybe one good night's sleep in seven.

Anyway, back to work - one of my coworkers is romantically fixated on a man going through a divorce with his wife of several years. He has three children. She doesn't seem to understand why, precisely, getting involved with this man would be a bad idea. My general manager and I have actually spent some time trying to explain, much as you might to a ten year-old, why dating a divorcing man is generally a horrendous idea. ("No, honey - you can't date the emotionally unavailable man with three children. Now go back to bed.") I couldn't believe I was having the conversation. It smacked of trying to explain to a person why strapping bleeding beefcakes to her ass and jumping into a shark tank was a bad idea.

Halfway through, however, I stopped wondering how on earth this woman had managed to avoid being eaten by ravenous sharks the last thirty-odd years, and started wondering whether this was really what mainland China was doing to its people. Now...I've lived in the US since I was five, and for all intents and purposes I am an American. I still do hold to some strong emotional bonds with certain Chinese ideals, but on the whole, they've been filtered through my parents and, thus, aren't nearly as concentrated as they might have been had I grown up there. I look back on my parents' marriage - the colossal, possibly even leviathan, gaps in communication; what seems an almost complete unwillingness not only to compromise, but even to accept the other person's viewpoint as potentially valid; the years of festering resentment over the most trivial matters - and in that context my coworker doesn't seem all that strange at all.

I haven't visited China in ten years, but relating to people, communicating with people, and being willing to open yourself up to people can't be such an alien concept in my ultimate homeland, can it? I mean, humans by their very nature need to reach out and touch people, find other people in sympathy with them, socialize! Can an entire society exist that makes a woman fundamentally unable to understand why, exactly, a man who is trying to sever a very strong emotional bond with the woman he's loved for years isn't exactly prime dating material? And so unable, in fact, that I think she's asked me to clarify at least a dozen times the last two weeks why, precisely, seeing him is probably a bad idea?

Unless, god forbid, this is some kind of bizarre Chinese mating ritual? "I'll talk to the computer guy about my fixation with the divorcing man! That'll make him like me for sure!"

Don't laugh. I wouldn't be contemplating this if it weren't a definite possibility.

On repetition

A certain consideration I've had recently, is the repetition of certain events in our lives. The idea that certain things, however different their superficial characteristics, are actually an iteration of the same kind of things that we've already experienced and have come to accept as a part of our lives. In some ways, I wonder if, even if we believe we seek out new and novel experiences, we actually have a subconscious tendency to draw to ourselves what is familiar and, however tired we believe them to be, comfortable. I don't think any creature can exist in a state of constant flux, regardless of how much they might believe they need the stimulation of novelty.

Is it an indication of cynicism or experience, when one looks at something that ought to come as at least sort of a surprise and says, "Hmmm...that's new, but nothing I didn't expect." If things always change, do they, in fact, stay the same as far as we're concerned? Does it make sense that someone can get used to even a state of consistent instability?

Sometimes it feels like I'm running in circles, even when I think I'm taking a left turn into new territory.

On what's in front of us

Today was a good day.

(Editing note: What the FUCK was I thinking writing such short, unrevealing blogs? "Today was a good day"?! This is meant to help me remember with fond nostalgia my misspent youth? Hell, it's been barely half a year and I can't remember the tiniest detail about what the hell happened on this apparently good day. Ugh! Get it together, past me!

--Edited 8/22/2008)

On dilemmas

Why do we do this, form these endless iterations of ourselves that circle around the real thing, like vultures around a camel dying of thirst? Why do we hurt the ones who would be close to us, for fear that they might actually touch us at our core, and scathe ourselves no less in so doing.

Why do I constantly spout rhetoric that has nothing to do with the real matter at hand. God, I'm such a Libra (or a procrastinating fool. That works too.)

I stand at a Gordian knot, but I can't seem to find a knife sharp enough to cut it with. And the two obvious solutions tear and shred at two things so central to me that to act on one or the other is to deny something fundamental about myself. Unfortunately, time is not on my side.