Logic need not apply

It’s Halloween tomorrow, the obligatory spate of scary movies are playing over and over, and I have a few questions.

1. Why park the car so very far away from the body laying in the road when getting out to check on what’s going on?
2. Why not call ahead to tell the girl you’re coming? You know you’re all being stalked by a creepy psycho-killer, now is not the time for surprises.
3. What minority in his/her right mind would EVER hang out with a white chick who’s being stalked by a creepy psycho-killer?  Has no one ever seen a scary movie before? You’re not gonna be around for the final credits.
   NOTE: This might not apply if you’re old and prone to sitting in rooms filled with candles while chanting “Pain of the past, fear of the future, blood of the young” and doing some sort of voodoo ritual. In that case, go for it old man. Do whatever you want to do.
4. If you were at any point involved in a previous horror movie scenario that involved a hit and run accident on a deserted stretch of highway, why for the love of all that is holy would you stop on another deserted stretch of highway to walk much too far from your car(see point #1) to check on the body laying in the middle of the road?
5. What the hell is Jack Black doing in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer?
6. Why would the killer go through an elaborate drawn-out killing rather than just stab the girl when he had the chance?
7. Side note: why does everyone freak out and start smashing things instead of just turning off the machine that is being used to kill her in the long drawn-out fashion?
8. Why are all hotel main desk employees angry, doubting, mean assholes future victims?
9. Is it a requirement that to be a psycho-killer you must have a network of relatives to either act as accomplices or victims?
10. Why are bathroom mirrors the tool of the devil?

 

That is all.

For now.

I’ll be hiding under the covers if anyone needs me.

New York, NY

God, I love New York.

I must’ve walked five miles in 24 hours… 4.9 more miles than I walk in a week up here.

I love the way the pedestrian walkway that skirts a construction site is ten degrees cooler than the rest of the street.

I love walking up Park, past the giant glass banking buildings, at 3am on Sunday morning… seeing drunk party people and joggers.

I love that people look but don’t stare, and that art is lauded.

I love jumping up with a start, brushing the roach off the wall, then sitting to finish our sushi lunch.

Who am I kidding? I’ll never not be a New Yorker.

Roller coaster

There are times when I feel like everything’s so great… and then the cart jumps the track because some jackass decided it’d be funny to see what’d happen if he tossed a penny onto the rails. Why do those jackasses take such pleasure in not only causing the accident, but then in hanging around, laughing at the pain and deriding victims for trying to recover and help each other?

I just don’t understand.

I mean… I understand schadenfreude, to a point. It makes for some of the best comedy when done correctly. But this transcends schadenfreude. This goes to sadism, and it disgusts and saddens me.

I don’t know… I hold out hope that people are still able to recognize a friend in the darkness, and that there are still those who will reach out to support rather than destroy a stranger in need.

Growing up

I couldn’t have had a more typical night. Stayed up just a bit later than I probably should have, woke up completely before 4am, woke about four times to pee (so that part’s less typical), and then slept soundly right up until beginning the snooze cycle on my alarm.

Then I got off of the couch to shower and get ready to stand up before God and pledge to support, as godmother, my best friend’s daughter. That part is less typical. And all of a sudden I felt like I was nearly thirty, with marriage and children and things that are generally thought of as being “grown up” actually showing up as everyday real things. Felt like I was, because for the first time I really, truly, no denying it, was.

In 24 days I marry another best friend. How is it that I can stand up and say “yep, you two are married” and have that actually be real? How is it that I have become a person who stands in front of a congregation of witnesses and pledges support, or proclaims the bestowal of rights?

My mom told me that the scariest thing about growing old is that your brain never stops thinking you’re young. You wake up int the morning believing that you’re 18, only to look in the mirror and find a 54-year-old looking back at you. In my experience it’s not 18; I haven’t been able to understand myself as being past 21 though. Then all of a sudden I’m standing in a church holding a baby or sitting at my computer writing a wedding ceremony and WHAM all of those missing years speed up and slam into me.

Suddenly I’m nearly thirty, there are children and weddings, friends have become my rocks, and I realize that it’s perfect. It’s all exactly what I’ve always wanted and I’m right where I’d always hoped I’d be.

And then I go to bed and wake up thinking I’m 21again.

Weekend warrior

Why is it that weekends go by so much faster when you actually spend Saturday doing things?
I was productive this weekend… Very odd. Bought the pants I needed for a wedding, went to the gym, took advantage of the jeans sale, had a pt session, babysat, wrote a wedding ceremony, read some more of a book, watched three more episodes of my current tv show jag, had brunch, went canoeing, hung out with the roommate…

No wonder it feels like it was only one day long (or rather, one long day)

thoughts on a poem by billy collins

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

-Billy Collins

 

He forgot about car keys
and why I’d just walked into the kitchen.
But now that I’m here, I’ll put the cornflakes in the fridge
and the milk in the cupboard.
I know there was a reason why I wrote “scanner” on my hand
and I can even remember doing the writing.
Two days from now I know that I’ll know,
which adds to the frustration of not knowing now
yet is oddly comforting at the same time.
There’s something warm and safe in knowing that you won’t know,
remembering that you forget.
A peace that comes with the steady stream of facts leaving
and knowing that those important things
really aren’t all that important in the end.

Gym bunny

Joined the gym yesterday.
I left feeling pumped, elated, recharged, energized, all those happy “life is good”, I’m feeling alive for the first time in years feelings.
Today I returned. My noon boxing class had been canceled so I just did my assigned cario routine. I pushed myself – doing two minutes extra on each machine. Watching the cute girl on the stairmaster across from my bike did, admittedly, help me push through the extra time.
Afterwards I felt like I’d been… I don’t know. Not hit by a truck. Not drugged. Not beaten. None of those quite hits it.
I feel like I don’t have the strength to peel a banana. My body has been wrung out completely and now all I can do is lay in the couch and hope that at the end of every second page I have recouped the strength to lift and turn the paper.
I have to say, it’s oddly nice to feel this way again. Too many years have passed since I’ve done even this small amount of exercise – which is very upsetting to admit. It’s actually nice to have my body feel so emptied out; because I know that this is only the beginning, that it will slowly take more than just the little I’ve done to knock me down this way, and that the energy that comes in to refill my depleted shell will be fantastic.
Hey, after 20 years of being an athlete before quitting cold turkey, I embrace regaining my addiction.

It’s the little happinessessness

It’s amazing how simple things can make someone totally happy.
I just came across a bunch of CDs that I’d forgotten about… One of them contained a song that I haven’t heard in ages. Listening to it made me stupidly happy; I remembered using the song in a lighting project in college; I sang along to it repeatedly for about fifteen minutes. Danced around the kitchen singing.
Tonight I spent the evening on a couch with a six-year-old, watching Finding Nemo. There’s nothing like blowing a little kid’s mind by simply reciting a few movie quotes in time with some tropical fish.

So much importance is placed on stuff and events and other people, it’s easy to forget how unnecessary all of it can be. And actually, how all of it can really get in the way. When you can find joy in the singing of a song, you’ll never be dependant on anyone or anything else for your happiness…

Perchance to dream

Lately I’ve been unable to sleep. This is not only frustrating – sleeping has always been one if my great skills – but it’s also debilitating. When I don’t get enough sleep I get physically ill.
I was up until one this morning. I was exhausted, but just couldn’t stop reading.
Now it’s four thirty and I’m not just awake, I’m wide awake.
Had one spectacularly disturbing dream, in which I watched a beautiful woman die horrifically in a bizarre car race crash (it involved driving tiny stock cars up and down tight crevaces, lots of snow, one of those planes that lands in the water, baby bok choy, and a contest that hinged on buying a green sweater. I don’t pretend that my brain makes any sense whatsoever.)
All back to the point that I’m now awake when I should be asleep.
This past week was filled with night after night of insomnia-ish-ness. Either I couldn’t fall asleep, and lay there for hours, or I’d wake up at four thirty from a strange-ass dream and be unable to get back to sleep.
I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s getting real old real fast…

Where the wild things are

I left my doctor’s office and was sitting in the car, listening to a voicemail message, when I realized there was a rabbit hanging out on the lawn in front of me.
No matter how long I spend in suburbia things like this still seem wholely unnatural to me. Deer and wild turkeys (as opposed to the tame ones, I suppose) wander past my office window year-round and I’ve stopped noticing how many raccoons, possums, and squirrells lay on the sides of the roads. Spiders are commonplace in my day-to-day life and the god damn birds still wake me up at dawn.

Take me back to the land of tiny mice, giant rats, dingy squirrells, and nothing but roaches. Birds should have gnarled stumps for feet, creepy dead eyes, and “coo” in ominous gargles.
Am I romanticizing nyc wildlife too much?
Possibly.
But really, I’m not cut out for this Bambi and Thumper crap. I think it’s time my jungle turns back into concrete.