I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that having access to all of one’s e-mails for several years should allow the refinement of particularly effective advertising. Still, seeing these two back-to-back was a bit jarring this morning:

Thanks a lot, GMail. Are there really people out there who are worried that Facebook is closer to taking over the world than Google?

As Goo Goo Dolls would put it, “Scars are souvenirs you never lose. The past is never far.”

In other news, while it wasn’t the most impressive book overall, methinks it was particularly well-timed for me to read Siddhartha this week. There’s a lot of insight in there about the particular paths that might be tempting at this juncture of life and good reminders of what roads are full of folly. Especially interesting as I play some poker and wrestle with the material reminders of my past that I want to haul out to Jersey.

Been sleeping and dreaming too much lately. The hazards of being home. Have extended my home visit a little bit and then will probably be taking about a week to cross back over the country. Leaving Saturday maybe? Still a little bit in flux. Might hike in Rocky Mountain NP, but definitely skipping Grand Canyon and LA, as were possibilities even a couple days ago. Feeling daunted enough about driving another 3k-4k miles at this point.

Next immediate stop: The Frontier!

For those without Facebook, here’s the latest album of pics: Volume 3.

…is going to be a good day.

For the first time since I began to occupy this apartment sometime in September, I am mercifully free of the dripping dropping plipping plopping noise that has unceasingly emanated from the bathroom sink. And feeling rather sheepish for not taking care of this a lot earlier. Of course, my crude methodology for said caretaking was the product of an initial reticence to report the drip to my landlord since he’d shut off the cold water’s flow to the sink just prior to my occupation. Or the prior tenants had and he’d neglected to notice, in conjunction with the town-appointed apartment inspector.

Basically, it seemed counterproductive to report something to the landlord that evidence suggested he’d both known about and attempted to cover up, or at the absolute least heavily neglected. There were also questions of tone-setting: did I really want to be the tenant who called up with a complaint on day three in a building? He’d have every reason to assume I’d be hauling various contractors and nitpickers through the place daily. Of course, it’s also possible that he didn’t know and he wouldn’t hold an early maintenance call against me, but the drip was manageable enough that I just didn’t much care either.

Thus days passed. And soon weeks. A couple visitors came after a couple months and were sequentially freaked out by their disastrous encounters with the cold tap, no less so because every faucet turn in this place is strangely reversed from the customary rotations found in American homes. I kept forgetting to warn people before their use of the bathroom, then kept hearing a vague scream and gush from said locale when people realized that merely tapping the cold knob brought an unstaunchable flow of frigid water. In I went, repeatedly, to rescue the startled guests.

Over time, the leak slowly worsened. My little tricks for twisting and pulling at the knob so it stayed just so and only let out drops instead of a trickle started to lose effectiveness. I even resigned myself to the idea of not using cold water in the bathroom sink at all, brushing my teeth in the kitchen, but I couldn’t even restore the shut water valve from my initial arrival in Highland Park. The trickle slowly became a small steady stream. I did my best cramming of it just before I left for a month in New Mexico and hoped that the water shutoff valve just took a few hours to take hold.

Upon return, the stream was even stronger. To the point that it has greatly interfered with my getting to sleep the past two nights in a way that even the steady rhythm of periodic dripping didn’t. After forty-eight hours of just trying to put up with it, I finally took a screwdriver, pliers, and hammer to the thing. At last! The knob of extreme brokenness had met its match:

Unsurprisingly, it was remarkably easy to twist the underlying mechanism that actually controls the water flow once the loose knob was unceremoniously removed. And now, as I type, I have a drip-free bathroom sink. And an errand to run at Home Depot at some point before vacating the apartment. And a fervent hope that my landlord doesn’t read this blog.

If you’re wondering, Ol’ Drippy is also a reference to an obscure Aqua Teen Hunger Force character who prompted Fish’s first introduction of the series to me. The other day, a propos of little, he mentioned to me “I miss Ol’ Drippy.” Sadly, the phrase worked on a number of levels, none of them particularly unsad.

It’s snowing now, the foretold precipitation swirling and flying across the lamppost out my window that usually annoys me but also serves as a spotlight for every snowstorm or rainfall. I’ve considered going out to construct a fort or a snowperson or even just to play, hoping the cover of late overnight might shield me from the askance looks I could expect to garner from this very serious community and its residents. I’m not on a campus anymore no matter how much time I spend on them, not twelve or sixteen no matter how much I feel it. I’m probably expected to react to snow with the tired frustration of those who believe it’s important to live, but have already forgotten how.

I didn’t even react to snow that seriously troubled me that way, though. Coming back from the debate trip to Dartmouth, the snow was piling high and ferociously throughout New Hampshire and well into Massachusetts. It was probably the least safe driving conditions I’ve faced since the drive a week earlier, but competing with Montreal before that or another drive back from Dartmouth or the hurricane upon return from a more recent PC. Yes, all my most dangerous moments behind the wheel have been in pursuit of (or retreat from) a debate tournament. Except perhaps the one time I fell asleep on the way to the Grand Canyon and woke up in the opposite fast-lane of a 70 mph highway.

I am far from all of this tonight as I wonder how late I can stay awake to watch the flakes fall, snow that’s supposed to be gone by morning as the southern storm drives warmer weather north to melt tonight’s joy. Somewhere in all this is a series of metaphors about the way I live, the way I should, the way I get myself into trouble. Or maybe it’s a story of patience and perseverance, that putting up with a drip is a branch of unconditionality and acceptance that has served me poorly but itself patiently persists within my character. In the modern world, we have only snow to remind us to be patient, piling itself in passive opposition to the daily chore and routine, insisting that an amalgam of the softest, gentlest entities create the greatest bulwark against hasty human pursuits.

The air is pregnant with impending snow today, the entire high sky taking on a gray-white hue as though snow were the literal product of such a sky being chipped and chiseled into flaky falling flecks. The radar maps say it’s far away still, but the feel of a person as they walk through our three-dimensional metaphor ought outweigh any technological override. Any moment now, the clear paths and piled yards of my frigid neighborhood will find new comrades, paratrooping in to reinforce their ranks.

I’m back in Highland Park, in Jersey for the foreseeable as I try to make my resolve to improve this year a reality, struggling against the siren call of visits to grocery stores and other overlit places I only ventured to in pairs, or not at all. Each week is to be punctuated with the refuge of a debate tournament, the travel and camaraderie and distraction found therein, the opportunity (as especially this last weekend at Dartmouth) for truly elevated discourse and exploration of ideas. The community of college debaters is such a distillation of intellectual vigor and passion that I am frankly surprised more people do not find themselves gravitationally tied to it as I do. No doubt its periodic overcompetitive acrimony is a deterrent, as might be the distractions of normal life and its beckoning stress and responsibility. But given its unmatched ability to perpetuate thought in an exciting way, there’s no place I’d rather spend time and energy, at least for now.

I’m at a crossroads these next few days, determining how to approach what are likely to be my last few months in New Jersey. There’s a need to reintegrate a three-month novel project into my daily routine without it swallowing everything else whole. There’s a need to determine exactly how much unpacking I want to do for a temporary stint in this apartment, what the ratio of energy is between making things more livable here and making the move unbearable at its conclusion. There’s a need to place other orbital parts of my life in their respective aspects, to figure out where things are going and what good uses of time really are. Priorities, trade-offs, balance, perspective. Really, life is never any different than this – these are always the things one must weigh when looking at existence. It’s merely that most people are too busy to look at existence too often, while I have nothing but time.

I guess I look forward to a time when I feel too constrained by other priorities to examine my own priorities. Although I can see the drawbacks of that too, and I must be careful what I hope to see.

In the spirit of trying to get my engines revved, of trying to buck up and plow through the life-maintenance shlock that must be cleared away to get to the good (creative) stuff, in the theme of embracing a life that is controlled almost entirely by other people but can still be viewed from my own perspective, I will close with a video. It’s one I was sent about a week ago by my friend Michael, one that he said reminded him of me and I say reminds me of who I used to be, long before I ever met him. Who I must be again, or could be, or could take a couple pointers from. While we collect more information about life as it progresses, if we’re paying attention, we don’t always improve. Sometimes we go backwards, we lose vision, we lose touch with what is essential. Here’s hoping this can help you restore, as it does me, at least on the margins:

Boy, can I not wait for this year to be over! Who’s with me? Yesterday I found out that I need a root canal, which joins my wife leaving me and kidney stones as great things that have happened in the second half of 2010. Not all of these things are equal, of course, but the piling on could really stand to stop. Forgive my lack of posting lately, but sometimes trying to live one’s life overrides trying to chronicle it. Suffice it to say I don’t feel totally poetic lately.

A couple days ago, though, I joined my parents for a trip to Bandelier National Monument. I’d thought it was my first time ever there, but upon arriving I realized I’d been there briefly with my Dad once before, though not climbed up toward any of the cliff dwellings or anything terribly detailed. This time, I took lots of pictures so I wouldn’t forget:

The remains of the dwellings at the base of the cliff.

The holes in the cliff face are all either footholds or former dwellings.

The cliff face.

Looking up the cliff.

Cool formations, with a vista beyond.

The view from the cliff.

Dad with his camera.

Reminds me of Yosemite.

The old apartments.

Lookout.

The old community below the cliffs.

High rise.

Easy access.

Hole in the wall.

Majestic.

Dwellings more conveniently located.

Cactus!

The sign between my parents says “Do not handle the bats.” We saw no bats.

Winter scene.

The remaining snow.

Red wood.

At the base of an upcoming climb! (The camera case belonged to other photographic tourists.)

Going up…

A light in the distance.

High atop the cliff.

Streaked with airplanes.

Sunset in the distance.

The highest kiva.

Sun sets on the highest kiva.

Various distances.

From within the kiva.

Twilight.

The loneliest tree.

Going down, with people I don’t know.

I climbed down the ladders facing out from the wall, since they felt a little more like steps.

Looking back at where I stood, ensconced in the cliff wall high above.

My favorite tree in the park.

When I hit the parking lot, I thought the closest car was actually my car. From a distance, it even looked like it had yellow Jersey plates. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that they were Nuevo plates. Upon even closer inspection, it was revealed that the plates read “119 PFT”. As in 119, my current address in Jersey. As in pft, the dismissive onomatopoetic statement of derision. As in, maybe the idea of staying east is laughable. Yeah. This moved me pretty significantly, though it hasn’t managed to literally follow suit. Yet.

Nifty sign near the little village of shops and ranger housing near the visitor center.

On the drive home through the Jemez Mountains, we saw this gorgeous winter horizon.

Dad got out the binoculars to look at a distant herd of elk.

Aspens in snow.

Bonus shots from my parents’ camera: it’s me, looking strangely happy.

Bonus shot 2: me climbing.

Bonus shot 3: my mother and I on an untolled bridge.

Before the year ends, it’s supposed to snow again, my friend Brandzy is supposed to show up, and I may write in this space at least once more to sum up what has almost certainly amounted to the worst year of my life, despite the successes at Rutgers debate and the completion of my third novel. As I once told Mike Galya, there’s really only one portion of one’s life that really matters. 2011, you better be better.

My previous record was 620.

This year, I folded every single bag. Except David Winks “Gris” Gray folded one bag, and Matthew Randolph “Fish” McFeeley folded two bags into paper airplanes that had to be unfolded and refolded properly. Other than that, I folded, sanded, candled, and laid out every single luminaria of a display of seven-hundred and seventy-two. My Mom was a tremendous help with lighting, and my Dad was also of assistance troubleshooting a disaster with propane canisters that were either too old or too finicky or both. In the end, after a couple hiccups, everything was lit by 6:00 or so.

And then the crowds came.

It’s hard to fully contextualize luminarias for those who have never seen them, which is almost certainly most of you. The traditional minimum is to do the sidewalks and pathways leading to one’s front door. If one has a wall, one adds that if one’s making an effort. And ringing trees is also fairly basic. But the complexity and intricacy of the yard and house that my father has rebuilt makes it particularly prone to diversification of lumis, especially with this year’s roof additions. And my tenacity and unending appetite for the little bagged candles.

This year, perhaps more than any prior, the efforts were vastly appreciated by the masses of New Mexicans and visitors who mob a few neighborhoods in Albuquerque each Christmas Eve. I watched enthralled from dark interior windows as group after group came, stopped, and stared, many if not most posing for pictures in front of the expansive display. Cars stopped dead, many parked, some even opened their doors. Flashbulbs popped throughout the night. Whenever I was out amongst the display to get some air or switch out a few prematurely burned-down candles, people called compliments and accolades, culminating in a late teen’s remark late in the night: “You guys win!”

It was unseasonably warm last night, a good fifteen to twenty degrees warmer than most Christmas Eves. Perhaps more importantly, it was windless, making it feel even warmer and failing to disturb the bags and their interior flames. More perfect weather for luminarias I’ve never felt, nor may it ever come again. For it to coincide with this amount of effort and to be met with this kind of appreciation is the only thing I could ask for on this loneliest of Christmases.

Pictures, you say? Oh, yes, there are pictures…

Nearly full view of the house from across the street.

Getting closer.

From inside the side gate.

From the left.

From the far left.

Little bit softer now.

From under the arbor, on the porch, centered on the pampas.

Many angles.

A three-layered wall.

Close up.

Far out.

The front porch and front roof.

Interior porch, including table, tree, and fountain.

Up on the roof!

Look right.

Back to center.

And down.

Zoom in on the pampas and the front tree.

Rooftop rows.

Side walk.

Pampas, one more time.

Levels galore.

Two in my room’s window.

The porch revisited.

Straight on till morning.

Elevation.

So many bags!

Obligatory internal shot.

It’s bad that all I can see in this one, as a perfectionist, is the one burnt-out one.

All is what it seams.

Under the eaves.

Garage-front row.

Magic.

Blurry wallside.

Internal.

Welcome.

View from the bottom.

Follow the path.

Many paths.

The curve of the earth.

Walking back in for the last time.

Facing the side gate.

The lone window bag.

Good night.

Merry Christmas to all so inclined. May these holidays give you peace, comfort, joy, and light.

A visual follow-up to Before the Snow…

Living room in blue.

Shed a little light on the subject.

Fire in an empty theater.

Dis mantle.

Nesbitt waits patiently…

…grabs for the burrito…

…and wonders why the burrito was taken away.

The first snow sticks!

It’s pretty flaky.

Quick accumulation.

Like a real lodge.

Our work here is done.

Five times larger than the leading brand of snow, and twice as reflective.

Makin’ tracks.

Haunted tree.

The back deck.

They were pining for snow.

Gateway to another world.

A rabbit, a chicken, and a bowl walk into a snowstorm…

The tips of winter.

Almost Dickensian.

Table for four.

Not only did we wind up with less snow than predicted (it stopped only an hour or so after I was out running around taking these pictures), but it mostly melted by midday today. Albuquerque rarely stays cold enough to keep snow around for days at a time, unless we get one of those stalled-out swirls of precipitating cold air. Like so much of life, it was fun while it lasted…

My month-long return to Nuevo Mexico is off to a bit of a rough start. I just can’t seem to get in an emotional groove I feel good about. Someone or other told me the first holiday season would be especially challenging, but I really had no idea. And then I remember how difficult it was just to sort through ornaments. Sheesh. The way things are going, I’m starting to believe that I need to spend mid-2011 and thereafter in a new town I’ve never lived in. Or visited. With all-new stuff. Yeah, that’s going to happen.

Anyway, here’s some things that are all-new and might not even be depressing. A couple shots from Albuquerque, but most of these are scenes from yesterday’s trip with the parents to the Salinas National Monument, home of several old missions on the east side of the Manzano Mountains south of ABQ. They’re pretty neat, even if they do represent Catholic co-option of native religion, culture, and people. So it goes.

Abandoned apartment building in downtown ABQ – they never finished building it when the boom went bust.

I could swear that part of the Senior Project film that Gris did with Bay & Toby was filmed in this back alley. Or that we were initially going to film some of my homeless-man scenes there but then shifted to another nearby locale. It’s funny what being back in one’s hometown can do to the memory.

The iconic towers of the ABQ skyline.

Nesbitt L’Orange, my parents’ relatively new cat.

Trains!

Abo, the first of the three missions.

Big sky.

Abo meets big sky.

Ruins.

Long wall.

They don’t make contrast like that everywhere.

A tree grows in the ruin.

Light and shadow.

The horse we rode in on.

The door is ajar.

Almost like Nebraska.

Mesa with tracks.

Best sign ever.

Cactus in bloom.

Arch with parents.

This is Gran Quivira, whose color is more traditional stone than the traditional mission color.

Room with a view.

A view of the room.

My father, gesticulating wildly.

View of many rooms.

View of the basement.

Quorai, the last of the three.

Church in state.

Slice of sky.

Sunset within.

Glorious ruin.

Ground level.

Contemporary interruption.

Almost Aztec.

A little bit of sol.

Runs down the hallway…

Silhouette.

My favorite window.

The moon, incoming.

The sun, outgoing.

Not much to say today except that I’ve concluded the day after Thanksgiving may be far better than the day of. No, not because of the shopping. I’m not sure I’m going to buy (or accept) any gifts this year. Just because, if one’s not tied up in shopping or being conscripted into working on the day after Thanksgiving, it has all the same advantages of the holiday itself with even less inkling of the pressure or expectation. We spent the whole day lounging, mostly eating, playing board games, eating, reading, eating, talking, and eating. I think I’ve actually gained weight this trip.

Anyway, another installment of my recently increasing proclivity to turn this into a photolog:

Storey is obsessed with leaves, vol. 47.

I just liked that a big van with “Press” in the window was parked so close to a funeral parlor.

The inscrutable sign on the wallside is advertising cheap and safe parking, presumably on the shell of steel beams.

Avoid.

Crisp skyline.

The trash almost made it.

Ben always did like turkeys.

Storey is obsessed with leaves, vol. 49.

Tiers.

Industrial/Waste.

Fish!

Snow!

Heavier snow.

Ariel & Michael’s new fireplace.

Before…

…and after!

First Thanksgiving as a married couple.

Boggle!

Fish =! amused.

Food, glorious food.

Happy cooks.

Risk!

The game gets intense.

As a brief postscript, Fish wants to ask you all what the odds are of getting T-Pain to help out with a cleverly written and imagined spoof of the ever-fabled “I’m On a Boat” web video phenomenon. If you’re not pretty sure he’ll go along, you’re a pessimist in his book. Fish’s, not T-Pain’s.

It’s been a rough couple days in the northeast. People say things like that which they have no business saying. Most people in the northeast have probably been doing just fine. There’s preparations for what appears to be the northeast’s favorite holiday in the offing. After all, Thanksgiving was born around here, built on the backs of people who have since been chased out or eradicated, leaving only the overstuffed turkeys and their caretakers to gloat over the bounty of having more ruthless ancestors than others.

Highland Park today is dressed up in its Thanksgiving finest: overcast and all the leaves have faded to that brown dead crinkle that rattles above or crunches below and makes everything look like red-brown Thanksgiving print napkins. People walk quickly and wear jackets universally and seem even more hurried and annoyed than usual. Maybe it’s from this observation that I acquire the hubris to say things like it’s been a rough couple days in this part of the world. Maybe it’s from spending the better part of a subway ride and an extended period in Penn Station crying without a soul bothering to so much as ask if I was okay.

Yesterday I got home and caught up with the things online I’d missed over the weekend. One of these, among my favorites, is checking out PostSecret, reading the scattered private thoughts of countless strangers as illustrated by their innermost ravings. It’s an idea we all wish we’d thought of and one very much in line with my ideals as a person writing this blog – the exposure of normally suppressed feelings so they might live, breathe, communicate, and ultimately hearten. And then my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a stark postcard:

And the hovering over the card on the page led to the flipping of the ‘card to the back:

Now, this one would’ve caught my eye anyway for a couple reasons. A, I read all the cards anyway and usually pause to contemplate all the implications. B, this is pretty much exactly what Emily would tell you about our situation, though I can’t necessarily speak to the relationship status of the other person involved, so who knows. But the most important issue is that the handwriting on this card is identical to that of said individual. Trust me, I had almost a decade to learn that handwriting, to watch it over her shoulder on debate flows or see it on hastily scrawled notes left behind or to read it on a notebook or textbook I was carefully lifting off her sleeping torso where it had fallen on her exhausted frame.

Now there’s some realistic counterpoints to consider. For one thing, the odds of Emily sending anything to a website like PostSecret are basically nill. The second thing, the most powerful, is that the postmark faintly visible on the back says SC 290, indicating pretty clearly that it was mailed from somewhere in South Carolina, where many zip codes start with those three digits. Is it possible she concocted some obscure way to send a card to Carolina for its submission to Germantown, MD? Sure, but any sense of feasibility or reality is pretty much knocking this down to zero. I often wonder about those postmarks and whether there’s some PostSecret sharing syndicate to make sure that especially high-voltage cards aren’t traceable even to a particular state, but I think this is considered an acceptable risk by most people.

No, the far more likely explanation is that someone else with Emily’s precise handwriting found herself in an almost identical situation to hers, or more appropriately one they would describe the same way. At which point, all kinds of larger cosmic questions arise. There have long been serious subscribers to the theory that handwriting is an indication of personality. In fact, many prison programs attempt to rehab criminals by changing their handwriting first under the theory that the link between letter shape and mental frame is so significant that it can be reverse-engineered. So what does this handwriting indicate about loyalty, faithfulness, approach to marriage? And out there, somewhere, someone who is not Emily or the author of this postcard is reading this and thinking that this handwriting looks an awful lot like theirs and wondering about the role of micro-destiny in their own path.

All this would seem to carry a little less weight had I not nearly bowled into Gwen on the street again the other day, in the midst of ill-informed debaters getting us lost on the streets of New York City on the way to Fordham. (Which, by the way, went pretty well.) She’ll forgive me for reprinting from her subsequent e-mail to me: “I’m starting to feel as though we’re being a bit cosmically messed with. Like we’re tinseled cut-outs in some toy theater production that just happens to be our lives.” And she, like most everyone, hasn’t even read The Best of All Possible Worlds yet. I’m starting to feel like that book is the cork in the center of the island on “Lost” – once I released it, deep important secrets were on the loose that wound up turning my whole life upside-down. This is a ridiculous thing to think, objectively, but most empirical studies would reaffirm it anyway, especially in light of how reality-bending the work itself is. All this would feel less significant had Russ not spent ten minutes trying to explain how LA feels small compared to NYC because you can always bump into people in the former and he never once bumps into someone he knows in NYC because it’s too vast, even though he knows tons of the City’s denizens. And then I told him my experience was a little different.

My experience is always a little different, it seems. Most people don’t have the capacity for such high volumes of things, be it crying or talking or writing or marveling at the construction of the world’s interactions. It’s not very realistic or practical to spend such time on such things. It’s better to do the dishes or laundry or buy furniture or hang pictures and somehow keep it all together. But it’s not all together and rote mundane tasks rarely help keep things that way. All I can do is contemplate, try to keep everything in perspective, throw up the poisons that seem to enter my system, and try to keep the phone charged for when I myself am running out of juice. It’s a good thing I have several scheduled days with other people coming up. Russ’ll be here in 90 minutes and all my dishes are in the sink.

A while back, some friends of mine were featured in the New Yorker’s Book Bench for their pre-marital alignment of wood-housed tomes. So I figured it was time, now that I’ve actually organized them properly, for me to feature my own post-marital stack of reading:

I guess I was surprised overall how few books I actually have, though it’s worth noting that this is a heck of a large bookcase. Not really purchasing textbooks in college contributed to this, as well as long spates of library-based reading, which is starting back up again. This will probably stabilize my shelves for the time being, so this’ll be what I’m looking at perhaps for the duration in Highland Park. You can’t quite judge a person by their bookshelf, any more than a book by its cover, but both are perhaps more indicative than we give them credit for.

Here’s a bit of a more clearly labeled analysis for those who are having a hard time parsing covers or recognizing precise volumes:

No surprise to see Bradbury leading the pack, and many of the others are clearly favored. Kafka and Salinger have few enough works all told that they don’t quite merit labeling, though veteran readers of the latter will at least recognize the rainbow-on-white spines of his slim pieces. Which reminds me that I need to rebuy Nine Stories at some point. Wow, that recollection makes me sad. Anyway, I think Irving and Coelho suffer here a bit from being read during library phases, as does Huxley a bit despite his strong showing. Whereas Card and Rowling might get disproportionate credit for the thickness of their works. Hemingway also suffers from, if anything, a name that’s too long to make look okay on this graphic above.

Now I just want to go read. Maybe for the rest of my life.

I’ve been really sad today. A little angry, but mostly profoundly sad. I decided it was time to take a walk.

Here’s what that looked like:

Long road ahead.

Mysterious ground-seeking tree.

Groundcolor.

Camouflage.

An opening.

Upon reflection.

Knock here.

White wind.

A glaring sign.

Underwater cam.

Contrast.

Twilight crossing.

Looking up at gravity.

Weep me a river.

Wade in the water.

Eating club.

Impromptu lake.

The smallest tide.

The shadowmakers.

No grilling.

Goose stepping.

Good posture.

They see the light.

Takeoff.

Cruising altitude.

Catching trash.

Glow gull.

Waste management.

Puddle vision.

Portrait of the artist as he now feels.

Aspiration.

Recycling.

Deus ex folium.

This is an albino water buffalo:

I post it in lieu of a picture I took of Fish & the Madster while they were here for almost a day which they asked me to refrain from posting. The unposted flick is cuter, but not by much.

Debate-wise, this weekend was not ideal, but it at least seems to have featured an assault on the NOTY (Novice of the Year) board by our youngest generation, though we didn’t stick through three outrounds just to find out. We collected a whole bunch of 3-2 records and a new judge for the top of our scratch list! Good times.

Outside of debate rounds and performance, this weekend was a darn good time. The team had a great time hanging out and our ride back involved epic games of Ghost that both came down to the final letter. I got a chance to see Brandzy, breaking our longest-ever streak apart, hanging out literally all night at IHOP and wondering whether or not we actually existed. Then Fish/Madster came over and we all celebrated the end of Daylight Saving(s) Time. Would that Jaque were here to really put some pep into it, but I guess he always liked Spring Forward day more because of its implications for early evening activity than the mere opportunity for a “free” hour of sleep.

I have discovered a new favoritish place in town, namely the Palace Diner in New Brunswick that’s just a hole-in-the-wall breakfast/lunch joint operated by an (at least today) ornery but efficient old gentleman. I’m not eating out a whole ton these days, but I might a bit more if I start incorporating the Palace into the mix. I was long overdue to find an affordable breakfast spot in this state, having repeatedly come up empty in Princeton.

I have spent most of the weekend being way too cold or a little too warm. My throat is scratchy, but still stable. My thoughts are scattered and they’re cloudy. I found the end of Point Counter Point particularly poignant on this of all days. The light is failing early and I am overdue to take my leave.

I took the train down to Philly this weekend. Except not really “this weekend”, because I didn’t leave till Sunday night and I didn’t get back till just about now. So the “weekend” can be Sunday through Tuesday in this frame of mind. Such are the hazards of not having a job or a schedule or a life.

I spent a ton of time with Ariel and Michael and a little time with Fish. I ate a lot and spent a lot on meals. I took a lot of photographs, many of which will appear below. I walked a LOT. I enjoyed the train rides and stations and my book. I have nothing pithy to say that sums up this trip, except that I was very sad for a lot of it but also really enjoyed the company of the three people I saw, especially in 1:1 interactions. More and more, it is clear that one-on-one time with anyone is the best way to get to know and understand them. Clearly there are limits on the viability of knowing someone from one-on-one time who either changes rapidly or refuses to be known, but assuming a reasonable level of sincerity and earnestness in the interaction, then one can best learn and understand from solo matchups.

Which is not to say that larger groups don’t have their place. They assuredly do, as a platform for boisterous good times and fun. But to emphasize those at the expense of individual experience is to miss out on the real connections that form the basis for any lasting communication.

I sound rambly even to myself, already, so I will perhaps say it in pictures instead…

The platform in New Brunswick.

One of the many lonely small SEPTA stations between Trenton and Philly.

Clouds and wires.

Bustling city.

Perhaps my favorite shot of the trip.

Train station at night.

Bridge.

Time.

The trains run on time.

Poster that hauntingly reminded me of my honeymoon.

Fish at the South Philly Tap Room. This had to be retouched because the lighting didn’t come out well when I uploaded the photo, but I love the expression.

Uber Street!

The last line cracked me up for some reason.

Horsehead poles – this looks more like I’d expect Britain would than Philly.

It is October.

A treeward nook.

There was much discussion this trip about the inability to escape noise in modern civilization. Here we see the watchful eye of radio waves.

Brick.

Bird unwired.

The city’s pillars and its supports.

Cat penitentiary.

I fell in love with this building that rises high above part of downtown Philly.

Here’s a closeup of the balcony atop said building.

Fall.

Alley, window on the world.

The goat!

How I roll.

Structures.

Miles walked in Philadelphia: 14.4
(+1.8 to and from train station in New Brunswick)

It’s been a long time since something went right for me. This weekend, a whole heck of a lot went right in a hurry. I am trying to get used to the feeling of being really super-happy. I was silly-smiley all weekend as things unfolded, especially today.

I am too wired to write effectively, but I want to capture my thoughts in their giddy haze. The setting was the University of Maryland at College Park, and the action was a debate tournament. Obviously.

In roughly chronological order:

• We got to Maryland on-time Friday despite traffic and checked-in to a GA I last attended at a tournament I won (Hybrids ‘01 with Kate Myers).
• I got to debate in a double-LO attack in a demo round with Mike Buckwald.
• We found (good) food after almost starving to death after rounds and going to housing.
• We found free parking on campus thereafter.
• I was able to retrieve my sleeping bag from GA hours after the building was locked by reliving my high school break-in-to-tight-spaces self by slipping through the narrowly open window.
• Two words: Party Bus.
• Knowing Dave & Kyle are in a 4-0 round.
• Getting to watch Dave & Kyle in a 4-0 round.
• Dave & Kyle winning a 4-0 round.
• Ashley calling the shot that they’d be a non-breaking 4-1.
• This meaning that Ashely & Gordon upset the 4-0 in their pull-up round.
• Both Dave & Kyle and Ashley & Gordon breaking in their respective divisions.
• Both breaking teams picking up in varsity quarters & novice semis.
• Dave & Kyle picking up semis while good rumors come from novice finals.
• Not judging finals.
• Dave & Kyle have qualled and gotten RUDU into their first final ever.
• Epic finals case.
• Floor speech mayhem.
• Holy speaker awards, Batman!
• Finding out ABom & Nisha just missed the novice break.
• Waffle House!
• 
• Ghost.
• Being too wired to sleep.

I could get used to this. Watch out, APDA, RUDU has thrown down the gauntlet. And we had fun doing it.

I am doing my dishes
for the first time
taking care not to nick, chip, scratch
the shiny new colors
as they turn in my yellow-gloved hands

The sink is smaller now
the light harsher, more grim
but my hands are just the same
holding the plates and bowls with care
that you seemed to disregard

It is stormy outside
like that day in the Badlands
the picture you chose to define it all
your new paradigm, status, independence
a day with me, and we were happy

I can see your reflection
in the plate’s concentric circles
glinting light off the o’erhead fluorescent
like the cloudbent sun on your glasses
that tumultuous day

I hope you’re happy now
but you’re not, and I’m not sure I mean it
it’s something people say
when they mean it and don’t
and I understand, oh I understand

I love you and hate you
like these dishes
you helped me buy

Your parting gift
as you turned your head, walked away
toward a future you long pictured
but never bothered
to truly see

A sequel to For the Last Time.

Today had a good energy, at least at the outset. I want to capture that feeling, that sense of purpose and excitement that I began the day with, without compromising this post to say how I feel right now. The difference was made when I hauled out the camera to upload the photos I took this afternoon, held and beheld some of the implications of the camera in my hand, and almost had to throw up. I should’ve given this camera away, not kept it, gotten the new one. I have been too magnanimous.

It is impossible to write about the energy then without reflecting on the roiling anger and frustration now. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that this cannot be the simple story of a simple walking tour in search of furniture. Perhaps we shall begin again to try to go back to that moment, for that moment was real and is captured, in part even on film. Just as the moments captured so often before on film are also real. Before before. No matter how poisoned or sullied they all have become, how washed in the hot blood of betrayal. This is not getting any easier.

A line is a good way to begin again, no? This morning I decided it was time to get some furniture. Oh, I have plenty of furniture, don’t worry about that. But I lack some living room accouterments, specifically a couch and a nice comfy reading armchair. I have been wrestling with the idea of getting Craigslist to fulfill these needs, daunted by the twin threats of bedbugs and my own lack of a truck or ability to haul seriously large furniture toward my domicile. Surely Craigslist is infinitely more affordable in its offerings, but would the delivery and warranty of a new couch be worth the extra cost? I have yet to decide, but thought walking to various furniture stores in the region might help set my mind in order.

Thus, I headed out on a clear fall day, clear and getting colder, but not yet frigid. It was frigid a few days ago and I got sick, but things are much improved and reminiscent of good days in San Francisco. My first stop was in Highland Park, just around the corner from me, a place so close I’d been surprised I hadn’t noticed it on my first few trips into the quaint downtown in my new town. 212 Raritan. As I approached, I became more and more certain I should’ve seen this as a furniture store until, just then, I saw it was… now a bookstore. In fact, the same bookstore I’d idled in a few days back. Nighthawk Books. Formerly a furniture store, now quite different. So it goes.

So I turned around and crossed the Raritan, this time meaning the River and not the Road. The view across the river looked like this:

And my own walk across looked like this:

There are these strange buckets of flowers that drain naturally onto the pavement of the bridge below, permanently soaking the shadowed areas of said cement with something between a puddle and a pond. The flowers are bright and cheery, but the water is annoying enough to make me question the effort at beautification. Or at least prompt a larger effort at drainage.

In any event, the walk was bright and sunny and I soon concluded I didn’t need the extra (third) layer I’d brought just in case. Periodically I stopped to observe how New Brunswick looks in the daytime as I approach it.

For example:

Note the Rutgers banners lining the lampposts all along the avenue. It’s almost required for any place of business in either NB or HP to carry a logo or sign or some indication of their support of the institution. I’m not sure if it’s because all of their income comes from students or people directly related to the university or what, but it inculcates a good bit of school spirit for my adopted debate program, if nothing else.

Anyway, I kept trudging along, eventually passing the train station wherefrom I may someday commute:

On my way to the designated cluster of furniture stores whose addresses I’d carefully copied, I was almost tripped by a consignment shop with little bits of furniture out front. My eye was caught first by a nightstand, then by a small chest of drawers, and five minutes of negotiation later, I’d acquired two pieces of furniture I’d not set out to get. Still, it seemed like a good omen and I was very satisfied with the price. I promised to come back with the car by day’s end to pick things up and quick-stepped toward the cluster.

The first of the places proved to be under renovation, recently vacated by its furniture-bearing former occupant. So I was 0-2, but with the unexpected bonus of the place I hadn’t researched. The next place was intimidating just to walk into, but I persevered anyway, overwhelmed by lavish displays that seemed sorely out of place in the largely immigrant neighborhood in which the store was situated. I felt the fabric of a couple couches, somewhat wistfully, well aware that the lack of price tags indicated the old adage… “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” I hightailed it out of there before the staff could ask me what kind of an impostor I thought I was.

The next place, just a bit up the road, was so intimidating I didn’t set foot. Not so much because the items looked overpriced, but rather they looked frilly. And overpriced. The whole place seemed assembled by a rejected Disney princess who was consoling herself on her dismissal with an abundance of floral antiques. Not a pretty sight. There may have been a couple reasonable looking lamps, something else I’m in need of, but it just wasn’t worth the risk of being attacked by the overall atmosphere of stepping into the middle of a dainty doily.

And thus I booked it home, passing back under the overpass on the way to the bridge:

And arriving home to pick up the Prius:

(My place is the front-right corner of this building, ground floor.)

I paused just briefly to reflect on the lush greenery of my new neighborhood:

And then drove through the middling traffic to retrieve my new wood items. But not before jotting down the address of one more place, a discount furniture place in nearby Edison that seemed to have relatively reasonable prices on nice new living room material. After the quick pick-up in NB, I headed once more back across the Raritan, followed the directions, and wound up in an industrial area of my greater region only to find a for-lease sign on the building I’d been directed to. Yup. Three of the five furniture stores I’d sought today were permanently closed.

When my Dad came out here a few weeks ago, he’d been impressed by how much wealth and success and prosperity seemed reflected in the entire east coast and especially parts of central Jersey. He’d commented on it repeatedly, noting the construction and newness of many of the buildings, especially those associated with the school or the hospitals nearby. But it takes an exercise like today to realize that things here aren’t exactly peachy. I see plenty of commercial real estate boarded up, lots of subtly shuttered places here and there with Princeton phone numbers vainly calling for new enterprise. But the turnover of so many places still listed on the internet map as functional locales with numbers and even websites, this puts it into relief. Maybe furniture is disproportionately affected by the recent change in economic climate, which would certainly make sense, but maybe it’s most everything.

By nightfall, I was home and unloading my new nightstand and drawers, not yet to the point of sudden rage at the indignities of this particular camera and all I have been made to endure. I was exhausted, a bit of a backfire to my new plan of walking a lot and improving my general fitness. Heartened to see that the last of the dishes had shown, that things were coming together, if ever so slowly. I still lack soft furniture on which to flop. I still lack a feeling of being home.

Miles walked today: 3.8

“There’s got to be someone we can trust
out here among us.”
-Wallflowers, “Three Marlenas”, as heard at Home Depot today

Yesterday was almost an okay day. I couldn’t tell you why. I guess part of it was that Emily and I weren’t bickering over e-mail as we have been wont to do lately. Today is harder, for reasons again mostly inexplicable, but perhaps in part related to our correspondence. Emily chose today to contact a lot of her friends and a fair number of mine to state in a very detached way that we were “going our separate ways.” It was a hard e-mail to read, mostly because of how emotionally vacant it seemed. It also left out any mention of the guy who’d been the catalyst and centerpiece of the whole question. I know she thinks that this isn’t about the guy, but to tell the entire story without there being another guy just seems to make the whole thing even more cavalier and capricious than it already actually is.

Whatever. Ultimately, everyone tells themselves a story so they can sleep at night. Me, I cut my hair.

It’s a complicated issue, this one of the haircut. Obviously my hair has a lot of symbolic import for me and it was important to mark the occasion of mourning and loss with a physical loss that reflected the kind of sacrifices I’ve been told I have to make against my will. It’s also a little bit about someday being able to attract someone else, getting my hair back to the length that turned the most heads back in late high-school and early college. And more than even being in a position where I might be able to actually attract someone else anytime soon, it’s largely about feeling like I could. I feel so profoundly unlovable right now that any small glimmer of hope or confidence is an incredible boon.

So now my hair looks like this:

Ariel and Michael accompanied me and held my hand (and my hair) through my first professional haircut in over two decades. I was insanely nervous, but was very pleasantly surprised by the demeanor and approach of the woman who actually took the scissors and clippers to my head. I’m really pleased with the results and could have even gone a little bit shorter perhaps.

Largely because of my nerves and my caution to get it right, I didn’t end up donating the hair. Many people have asked about this already. I wanted to, but found the hair donation centers to be remarkably picky about how they want their hair delivered and precise stipulations. That’s their right, I guess, but they have to understand it’s going to deter a lot of marginal hair donation. Anyway, the hair instead ended up on the floor:

I am overdue for an actual shower where I think my hair will start to wave and bounce up a little and take its more permanent shape. It’s such a little thing in some ways and yet feels like such a big deal. I guess everything feels like a big deal, part of reducing the scale of the horizon down to a day or even a few hours at a time, just trying to muddle through and find the next thing to look forward to, the next thing that isn’t totally desolate and bleak. The days may just alternate for awhile, struggling between really arduous and surprisingly not awful. Fish’s car died today and I can sympathize. The energy it takes to go, to try, to move, to be, is just overwhelming.

At least I’m still capable of contriving a way to give looks like this occasionally:

So it goes.

Consider this an addendum to my earlier post today. Go read that, because I think it’s more interesting than this one will be. But this one has videos! Feeling strangely prolific today, like all my energy from traveling has been stored up and is ready to be unleashed.

In hell, you can watch all the baseball games you want, but every single commercial break between innings or for pitching changes carries the exact same sequence of commercials. And in the ninth circle, the commercial sequence in question leads off with a horrifically over-masculine aggressive commercial for a new planned-obsolescence rollout of conventional shaving apparatus. You know, like this:

Unfortunately, I live in hell, masquerading as a place called “New Jersey”. As Robin Williams said in one of the twenty greatest films of all time, “I found you in Hell – don’t you think I can find you in Jersey?” So this is my experience with MLBTV. It makes me a lot more likely to exit early from a game the M’s are already losing 8-3, but might also make me cut bait on a game where the score is reversed. I have never moved so fast for a mute button so many times. Ugh.

I really need to update my favorite films list. It may include this:

Yes, I am telling you all about seventeen times to see this movie. You need to listen.

Seriously. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube in twelve parts. Do it already.

Also, this:

That one’s available on Vimeo. In one take. People are just giving away thought-provoking cinema, people. Take advantage.

Finally, I’ve used the appellation “Tiny House” so many times lately that I realize I may never have explained the origin of same. It’s not just because the house is small; it’s also a reference. To this:

I have to agree with the YouTube commenter who expressed anger when he realized that this was just a spoof commercial and not an upcoming reality series. That is, I felt that way until Em & I began our own personal reality series last August when we got here.

If you missed it in the last post, please let me know if you want to read The Best of All Possible Worlds and you haven’t done so in some way already. Eight people signed up on Facebook already. Don’t risk being the thirtieth person on your block to read this book or something. And by “your block,” I mean “planet Earth.”

From time to time, I feel the need to post a rambly cattle-call of happenings in my life and links around the web. I should start designating a day to do this and making it something like a regular feature, but that would probably require me approaching this blog with the discipline of a professional columnist.

• It seems I don’t write much about politics here anymore, largely because of the twin forces of Duck and Cover and TMR getting first crack at my political musings. I almost cross-posted this commentary on Obama’s lack of Socialism here, but instead I’m just linking it. Enjoy.
• As promised yesterday, I recently put up the APDA Nats brackets for 2010, complete with results of submitted brackets from current APDAites. (Those distant from debate should note that this is not how APDA Nats is actually structured, but a hypothetical based on the NCAA basketball tourney.) This hasn’t generated as much discussion that’s gotten back to me as I expected, but I’ve heard rumors that people are still enjoying it from afar. Given that I’m on a bid to become Tab Director of Nats 2011, this will probably be the last of these I do for a while… it seems a little weird for people involved in the Nats tab staff to publish a ranking of debaters partaking at that tournament, which is why I didn’t do one in 2007.
• The last two M’s games have been amazing. I missed the Tuesday game because I was doing prep work with the Rutgers team for Nats, but yesterday’s was a real gem. I am a huge fan of the new additions to the team, including the fact that Milton Bradley seems to be happy and ready to produce for this team. But Chone Figgins is threatening to become my favorite Mariner. Between the steals and the walks, he reminds me of Rickey Henderson so much it’s ridiculous. And I loved Rickey Henderson. But he seems to have even less of an ego than Rickey, which was the latter’s one annoying trait. Then again, Chone isn’t exactly contending for the all-time steals title.
• Did, in fact, get our taxes in on-time, yesterday. We do owe both states a little money, and TaxAct scammed us out of more money than they should have. But it’s done and the Feds owe us a lot.
• I wonder if the West will characterize this bombing as “freedom fighting” while everyone else utilizing these methods are “terrorists”.
• My mental state and health have continued to be somewhat subpar in recent weeks. The main issues seem to be a general feeling of dissociative malaise and surreality that may just be endemic to April, and also migraines. I’ve been averaging about 4 migraines a week, an astounding spike in frequency that seems inexplicable when observing normal triggers and factors. This combines uncomfortably with this dreamlike sense of reality that’s overtaken much of my last 2-3 weeks, which may partially be related to the subject matter of the current novel I’m working on. (Though I haven’t been working nearly as much as I’d like, but I’m mostly doing plot work to enable really cramming on output in the next month or so.) I feel largely like I’ve been looking at my life from 30,000 feet, or at least 30 feet, watching myself live instead of actually being in a first-person view. It’s strange and makes me sound completely nuts. I’m not completely nuts. I just feel more like I’m living through a filter than that I’m actually fully here. I sort of feel that this reality is all illusory anyway and that life’s core realities are a little like our souls playing a video game (but with meaningful consequences) on this planet, so maybe I’m just more aware of that reality.
• The other explanation for the above issues, of course, may be that there’s something seriously wrong with my brain. I’m inclined to think otherwise, but it’s good to keep all the possibilities in mind. I’ve told Emily to keep an eye out for me behaving really erratically or out of character, which would be indicative of a possible brain tumor. I’m not actually that worried, though, because the migraine symptoms have been so classic. (Though such symptoms also mirror those of tumors and aneurysms somewhat.) The other factor that I entertained was that I was somehow drinking decaf coffee – that the batch of Folgers I’m working through is either mislabeled or contaminated somehow. Because honestly, foggy worldview, increased tiredness, and more migraines could all be explained by caffeine deficiency too.
• Debate Nationals this weekend – always one of the most exciting times of the year. I’ve attended 7 of the last 11 nationals prior to this one and this weekend will make 8 of 12. For all that I probably should feel a little strange about being so old and having seen so much on APDA, I really feel nothing of the sort. I think I’ve been in the work world long enough to understand just how meaningful and valuable I find the APDA community to be, to treasure how rare its intellectuality is. I’ve been thinking a little about how much work I’ve put in to the Rutgers team, all unpaid, and realizing that I don’t see any of it as a chore. I think this is what it would be like to really love one’s job, because I do it all voluntarily. I’ve worked for organizations I truly love before, but never felt this way about the actual work. If the writing doesn’t work out, I need to figure out a way to swing professional debate coaching. Possibly in Africa.
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