What kind of graduate school closes early on weekdays, is closed half of all weekends, and publishes ‘building hours’ that are completely and continuously ignored? Talk about ridiculous.

—

Addendum: Some things, goes the saying, are simply not meant to be, and tonight bears this out. Tonight I was not meant to study. After arriving at school only to find it closing some three hours earlier than its already ridiculously early closing time, I went to Cosi, sat down, ordered a drink and a sandwich, and then found that their wireless access was down. So I gave up on the stuff I was going to work on and decided to do some reading / note-taking, whereupon they proceeded to dim the lights to jazz club levels and began loudly playing the most obnoxious Southern California music (including my all-time song-nemesis, “Brown-Eyed Girl,” which never once stopped playing at every gas station, K-Mart, and beach cafe the entire year I lived in So Cal, and perhaps the only song on Earth I can not as a result bear to hear).

I asked for a check to get out of there and 45 minutes later, once I started to get *really* cranky, they finally brought it.

Clearly today is not to study, so I am just going home to the I-House pub to watch whatever remains of the Super Bowl after all.

It should be nice, and for some reason I am suddenly looking quite forward to it.

It’s nearly 4.00 and the building closes at 8.00. But I’m going downtown anyway. I’m not getting anything done here and I will clearly continue to not get anything done here. The bed is already a distraction. Combine with drinks, cameras, novels, and the telephone, all of which are calling to me, and there is no hope.

At school I am more focused and able to make things happen, and there are a lot of things to make happen just now, provided the school doesn’t close early today or somethin’. Dammit.

It all makes me wonder: was I ever disciplined enough to study at home? I think the answer is “Yes, I always am, once everything is overdue and the time crunch is an emergency.” The point is to keep from getting to that stage and to develop instead a lifestyle based on good habits. That’s the Buddhist in me talking, but he needs more input into things in general, I think.

Laundry started at 1.15. By the time I’m showered and wearing it it’s 3.00 or later. Maybe today is not for school, but is rather to read at home. I just found out it’s Super Bowl Sunday. If I were still living in California I would so be watching it. Living in New York, I am so not.

—

I thought for a moment there was mold growing on the surface of my desk, but then I looked more closely and it’s a drop of Chartreuse that has crystallized to form a little explosion of sugar spires. For some reason, it feels like it would be a shame to clean it up just now when it’s gone to all the trouble to crystallize like that, so it’s gonna live there for a while.

—

I like life right now. I’m just sayin’. (Just gotta be sure to keep my head on straight, not lose the killer instinct, etc. Should be doable.)

😉

—

Almost noon. I feel good. Subway, laundry, subway, school, subway. It’s gonna be a nice day.

in a fit of unhappiness in spring of last year. No point, just reminiscing.

—

Off to the races.

I feel metaphysically odd this morning, and dumbfounded at the thought that it will take me forty minutes on the trains to reach the school, which is where I intend to go. It seems an insurmountable task, or at the very least, a tremendously frustrating one. Normally I love the subway (the crowded platforms, the sensual experience of the tunnels, lights, wind, and sound, the romance of anonymous arrival and departure, and so on) but today the notion that I have to navigate such things just to get to the place where I intend to work seems absurd. Today it is certain that I live too far away from my actual life, though tomorrow I may feel differently.

—

Heh… “My actual life.” This has been an undefinable quantity since November, 1999. Upside: I have now forgotten the precise day. There’s a certain joy in that (okay, not a huge one, but one takes them where they come).

I think it’s on days like today that I am in danger of simply walking all day, from one end of the city to the other and back again, without actually stopping for anything more than a drink or a coffee, and without actually talking to anyone. At the end of such days I never have anything to show for my time, and I always feel vaguely silly and antisocial. But they do seem to happen.

—

What the hell is wrong with dilettantism? By my reckoning it’s a high calling.

—

One always has to wonder where cynicism ends and self-doubt begins. Or are the two interchangeable at some level? God, that’s a thought.

—

Things I have that I (regrettably) don’t use:

– A small pile of umbrellas
– A nice insulated coffee mug given me by a friend
– Two bottles of Dave’s Insanity Sauce
– A long zoom lens with a T-Mount for which I have no adapter
– Memories of driving long, winding roads in Piedra Blanca with Neil Young playing
– Post-it notes and post-it tabs
– A brown leather jacket that somehow seems too small these days
– Sense, hahahahahaha

—

The desire to own a guitar again is tempered by the fear that I won’t actually be able to play it at all. It’s not as though I was ever any good at reading music or tabulature anyway, and now my hands are more accustomed to cameras and keyboards than anything else.

—

Weather in New York has been very good at marking my emotional states since I got here. Basically every time I’m happy as hell it’s raining or snowing. I’ve tried to imagine, just for play, that I have the power to influence weather patterns inadvertently with my emotional states, but so far I haven’t managed to suspend disbelief.

—

Zen is basically communism, bamboo plants for luck, good manners, and light clothes in empty rooms.

—

The noise that traffic “makes” is actually the street itself crying out in pain and annoyance at thousands of feet and tires bearing down pitilessly on its aging skin.

—

In Southern California, I would get up every morning and ride my bike about two miles to work, down a slight hill. On the way, I would stop and buy two sugar-free Monster energy drinks for caffeine (to which I had become addicted while on tour a year or so earlier). I’d arrive at the office and say hello to everyone and feel like an outsider. Not upper management, not invited to those meetings, not one of the interns or role employees. I’d sit at my desk and drink caffeine and work the database and edit pages and turn up for conference calls with aging academics on the east coast and I’d wonder what I was doing with my life and how I ended up there. I’d break for lunch and eat at the Taco Bell by myself because I preferred it to the strange and banal humor of the office lunch culture. Then I’d come back and work the rest of the day slipping into deeper and deeper dream states until I realized that myself and one or two other senior managers were the only people in the building. Then I’d ride toward home, but wouldn’t stop. Instead, I’d head directly to the end of the neighborhood, into the chaparral, and down the craggy cliffside to Goleta beach, where I’d sit and look out to sea and try to imagine that I’d stayed in Chicago instead.

—

“I think Im going out of style
I think Ive known it for a while
I think Ive known it with a smile
I think Im going home”

—

Now it’s 11.00 and I’m still sitting here like a lemon. Damnation, I gotta fucking go. Tschüss, me blog. Catcha on the flipside.

Today I derive stupid pleasure from squatting here late and pantsless as if I didn’t have to go to work at all. Take that, you lot, I look a fool and I’m not even on time. Hahahahaha, grrrr, got you all good.

—

Things:

– The Internet represents the triumph of the aphorism over other text forms
– Every individual suffers from one or two basic flaws; these never, ever change
– Time spent in employment is a greater loss than the same spent freelancing
– Socks are emasculating, but so is wearing shoes without them
– Perhaps feet are simply emasculating
– It is now almost three years since I was last a union member
– Human blood has an inexpensive look to it, when you see it in isolation
– A clock’s hands are required to jump-start time
– No pain, no gain

—

I’m late.

Gotta be careful w/me self, I’m pretty wide open on this one and the feelings are intense. Yow. Hella good tho, so long as I stay sane and don’t jump it all.

It’s late and I have to go to bed, clearly.

I should never post tired.

“Everybody I know is falling apart
Everybody I know wants to die…
…wants to find…”

God almighty this music gets me. I don’t know how the rest of world gets on without this disc.

I have to get myself a guitar and start doin’ that thing again.

Have . to .

In the middle of the day,
on the open street,
you see for blocks and blocks ahead of you,
pavement, buildings, pedestrian dreams—
as though your destination
was your destiny,
your footsteps
your fantasy,
your outer reach
a New York mile.

And then you walk, sure, like always,
but you don’t
(with that sneer on your face)
let yourself think you gonna get there
before the music stops
before the lights change
before the sun goes down.

‘Cause when those gaslamps come on up,
with their green-yellow pathos,
you’ll still be walking,
hands in pockets,
hat pulled low,
cigarette in mouth…

…and everybody needs to live,
and everybody needs to die,
and everybody has a story in the city
that’ll never get told,
where they don’t wait for salvation,
or the sun to rise again,
and the blocks go on forever.
(Cigarette in mouth.)

Keep this in mind, brother,
and pull on back.

In the crux of the moment,
just pull on back.

Okay, I was feeling a bit inspired and was gonna come home and write. Then I get here. No good. Absolutely no good. This is not a writing space right now. I don’t know if it ever will be. The I-House room in Chicago, on the other hand, was perfect.

The space you are in has a massive effect on your ability to know (and to say) what you mean. This is not an “honest” space in any sense of the word, it is a constructed space. It reflects little about me or anything I know or think, and doesn’t support my being (literally—there is no place in the room in which I am comfortable).

On top of that, I had a big, hairy business email to respond to. Dammit, now I am all uninspired after typing that lengthy reply. Fuckfuckfuck, I hate that.

Everything in life is in good shape right now. Okay, not the details. Those are a disaster. Behind schedule, no money, healthy as the bends, sleeping so often I can almost remember what it’s like, etc. But the other things, the things that matter—those are amazing.

I am so fond of my life sometimes… Must sound odd, but it’s true. It’s not just that lovely things are happening (they are, by the way)—it’s that I’ve been sailing this ship for so long I’ve come to love it, idiosyncratic and a bit leaky even though it may be. We’ve been everywhere together, my life and I.

—

I’m taking a day to do some things that need to be done. I’ll do a little make-up time on Saturday for the office, but for today I am working on:

– Photos
– Meta-academics (i.e. conferences, journals, roles, blah, blah)
– Couple phone calls

—

It’s snowing; little flurries are wandering past my window, aimlessly exploring New York. They look almost bored. Perfect, absolutely perfect.