Friday, November 24, 2006
November is National Talk Like A Robot Month
I don't know what the parties that you host in your dreams are like, but speaking for myself, the guest list generally includes a strange mix of people from all parts of my life -- sexy female friends fraternize with my embarrassing older relatives; my pre-adolescent students smoke and booze with college party animals. The mix generally provokes an entire range of emotions, but the feeling I am generally left with upon awakening is a strange sleepy sense of contentment -- I'm happy to know such a diverse crowd and I'm pleased that their juxtaposition has worked so bizarrely well.
Similarly, my November has been host to a pastiche of conditions, whether considered meteorologically, intellectually, or emotionally. Over this past month, New York has been bombarded with unseasonable highs and lows, icy downpours, weeks of slow drizzle, crisp clear photon-filled afternoons, and evenings composed of delicious other-worldly fogs. I have been voraciously ripping through short written works, devouring the casework of Sherlock Holmes, the horrors of H.P. Lovecraft, the memoirs of Harpo Marx, the magic of Angela Carter, the speculations of William Gibson and Robert Anton Wilson, and the incompatible
nihilisms of Douglas Coupland and Bret Easton Ellis (both of which I read as an impressionable high school freshman; the former remains, in my opinion, a writer of considerable imagination, talent, and wit; the latter remains devoid of these characteristics).
As a result, I've been of many minds as to my future -- I have many goals for the next few years -- which to pursue, and in which order? I had my mind fairly made up to leave my school at the end of the year and to pursue a six-month trip overland in Asia or South or Central America -- now I wonder if that fits in with my other pursuits -- my thirsts for community, for further education, for closeness with family and friends, for love, for excitement, for comfort, for joy and for contentment. I have a feeling that, improbable as it may seem, like a puzzle of sliding pieces and metal rings, I can separate these priorities and still manage to fit them together again.
And, at 27, I feel that I can only marvel at the experiences I've had, and give thanks to the unknowable machinations of the cosmos, for all of the wonderful people who make my life a joy (especially those who've been asking me when my next blog post was going up -- I write in my journal, but it's better practice to have an audience); for the Brooklyn community of which I've been lucky to be a part; for the always challenging, entertaining, and humbling role of being a middle school teacher in the ghetto; for the endless beauty that I bask in and dance through every day; and, too, for my many loves, I am grateful.
Some highlights of my month:
- an awesome Halloween where I got mad props for my costume (a saddhu for a friend's party, and as the Mystery Man from "Cosmik Debris" for Zappa Plays Zappa at MSG (photos forthcoming)
- going to see tons of art, some of it mind-meltingly good, between the DUMBO Underground Arts Festival, the Gowanus Open Studios, and the Vollard exhibition at the Met
- the midterm elections -- yay!
- fort-building and pillowfights in Baltimore
- running about a fifth of the NYC Marathon with the lovely Geertz sisters
- a fun party at my house which, though not as diverse as my dream parties, hosted a good mix of characters, where homebrew and an enormous bin full of commercial beer on ice entertained us despite the cloud cover shielding us from marveling at the Leonid meteor shower
- the cover story on Saturn in the new issue of National Geographic with amazing photos from Cassini of the planet and its moons including info on the possiblities of life in the orange smog of Titan or beneath the in the warm subterranean oceans below the icy surface of Enceledus
- a great Thanksgiving in Arizona, where I got to go on a couple of really fun hikes, enjoy some great food, go dancing at an enormous kindof cheesy club with a good band, get set up on a blind date which my entire family attended, and in general, enjoy good times with the fam
- last night, having a funny cab driver named Steve Buschemi coming home from JFK in the wee hours
- and this one night of delicious mists that stood outside of time --
I was spellbound, mid-stride, on the cracked and wet stone slabs that compose the broad sidewalks of Park Slope's side streets, frozen by some imperceptible breeze that caused the yellow leaves of a slender ash to shimmer in and out of existence; between the shadows and the streetlamp's glow, they fell like rain. Later, in the park itself, the sky hung above me like the glowing contents of an inverted cauldron as I stood in a darkened field surrounded by a ring of orange streetlamps which, doubly filtered through the misty night and my fogged lenses, appeared to be distant nebulae, the limits of the observable universe, around which white headlights whirled, the turning of the wheel...
I hope the season finds you well. Le me know by clicking the comment button below. I promise not to let my responsibility as blogger slip so precipitously again...
Similarly, my November has been host to a pastiche of conditions, whether considered meteorologically, intellectually, or emotionally. Over this past month, New York has been bombarded with unseasonable highs and lows, icy downpours, weeks of slow drizzle, crisp clear photon-filled afternoons, and evenings composed of delicious other-worldly fogs. I have been voraciously ripping through short written works, devouring the casework of Sherlock Holmes, the horrors of H.P. Lovecraft, the memoirs of Harpo Marx, the magic of Angela Carter, the speculations of William Gibson and Robert Anton Wilson, and the incompatible
nihilisms of Douglas Coupland and Bret Easton Ellis (both of which I read as an impressionable high school freshman; the former remains, in my opinion, a writer of considerable imagination, talent, and wit; the latter remains devoid of these characteristics).
As a result, I've been of many minds as to my future -- I have many goals for the next few years -- which to pursue, and in which order? I had my mind fairly made up to leave my school at the end of the year and to pursue a six-month trip overland in Asia or South or Central America -- now I wonder if that fits in with my other pursuits -- my thirsts for community, for further education, for closeness with family and friends, for love, for excitement, for comfort, for joy and for contentment. I have a feeling that, improbable as it may seem, like a puzzle of sliding pieces and metal rings, I can separate these priorities and still manage to fit them together again.
And, at 27, I feel that I can only marvel at the experiences I've had, and give thanks to the unknowable machinations of the cosmos, for all of the wonderful people who make my life a joy (especially those who've been asking me when my next blog post was going up -- I write in my journal, but it's better practice to have an audience); for the Brooklyn community of which I've been lucky to be a part; for the always challenging, entertaining, and humbling role of being a middle school teacher in the ghetto; for the endless beauty that I bask in and dance through every day; and, too, for my many loves, I am grateful.
Some highlights of my month:
- an awesome Halloween where I got mad props for my costume (a saddhu for a friend's party, and as the Mystery Man from "Cosmik Debris" for Zappa Plays Zappa at MSG (photos forthcoming)
- going to see tons of art, some of it mind-meltingly good, between the DUMBO Underground Arts Festival, the Gowanus Open Studios, and the Vollard exhibition at the Met
- the midterm elections -- yay!
- fort-building and pillowfights in Baltimore
- running about a fifth of the NYC Marathon with the lovely Geertz sisters
- a fun party at my house which, though not as diverse as my dream parties, hosted a good mix of characters, where homebrew and an enormous bin full of commercial beer on ice entertained us despite the cloud cover shielding us from marveling at the Leonid meteor shower
- the cover story on Saturn in the new issue of National Geographic with amazing photos from Cassini of the planet and its moons including info on the possiblities of life in the orange smog of Titan or beneath the in the warm subterranean oceans below the icy surface of Enceledus
- a great Thanksgiving in Arizona, where I got to go on a couple of really fun hikes, enjoy some great food, go dancing at an enormous kindof cheesy club with a good band, get set up on a blind date which my entire family attended, and in general, enjoy good times with the fam
- last night, having a funny cab driver named Steve Buschemi coming home from JFK in the wee hours
- and this one night of delicious mists that stood outside of time --
I was spellbound, mid-stride, on the cracked and wet stone slabs that compose the broad sidewalks of Park Slope's side streets, frozen by some imperceptible breeze that caused the yellow leaves of a slender ash to shimmer in and out of existence; between the shadows and the streetlamp's glow, they fell like rain. Later, in the park itself, the sky hung above me like the glowing contents of an inverted cauldron as I stood in a darkened field surrounded by a ring of orange streetlamps which, doubly filtered through the misty night and my fogged lenses, appeared to be distant nebulae, the limits of the observable universe, around which white headlights whirled, the turning of the wheel...
I hope the season finds you well. Le me know by clicking the comment button below. I promise not to let my responsibility as blogger slip so precipitously again...
