Tonight I was on the R train (taking the longest route home possible) and when passing through the Courtlandt Street subway station and I started to think about the newspapers on the platform and whether they were from seven years ago. And then I started to think about how that was seven years ago. And then I realized today is the four year anniversary of my move to New York City.

Right after that I thought about the perfect poem to describe that feeling of how the general history reminded me of my particular history and how it was all sort of uncertain and nostalgic. But I just spent about twenty minutes looking through Google for this poem and I don't think it exists after all. Which makes me wish I had a photographic memory so I would always be able to quote exactly what poem I was thinking of. Or maybe I should just write my own poems. Or go to bed.

What Not To Do: Late Night Messaging

As many of you dear readers have experienced, I have a penchant for late night, less-than-sober, text-based communications. It's something I am certainly not proud of, but it's who I am and I don't know what I can do about it short of developing breathalizer software for my phone and computer (hear me Steve Jobs?). Normally message recipients are good friends and occasionally *cringe* former lovers. Last night, however, I managed to send the following message to a Facebook friend who I went to KINDERGARTEN with (and haven't seen since I was fifteen, probably):

I noticed that you're currently employed by Legal Seafood. My sister has been gainfully employed at the Park Square location of that same chain for the last three years... I was thinking you might be unwittingly working side by side for the last several weeks without even knowing your connection! But, basically, if you're working with a girl named Molly who looks uncannily like me, you should say hi, cause she's my sister.....
Late'
Rose

My concern is not really that I said something stupid. The content isn't particularly damning. I just think about how it must look to recieve such a random and syntactically quirky message with a 3:47am date stamp. Not good. Not good.

Hardly a Post

So I'm a jerk and I never update. Noted. Mea culpa. But here's what's news lately:

1) My new sunglasses are so fly:



Sometimes I'm wearing them and it's like, "Damn, New York. Can you stop sweating me for a little? Cause I have to walk here."


2) You should all try the 2007 Muga Rose. It's not super cheap but it's well under $20 and it's easily the best rose I've had in over a year. So delicious.

3) It seems likely that I'm looking for a new job. I want to keep working with wine and I feel pretty open to what's available. Hit me up if you know something.

I just had to tell myself, "Rose, it's 3:15 am and you are going to publish a blog post about dating? Get your mind right and go to bed."

Teenaged

So there's this girl who has been sitting on my stoop all day. I am pretty sure she lives in the building cause I've seen her before. And I don't know for certain that she's been there all day, but let's say it's been an hour or two. I would guess she's fifteen. All she's doing is scrolling through her cell phone and flipping it open and closed. I mean, I haven't been watching her continuously, but as far as I can tell. It's important to note that I don't have one of those grand, Brooklyn, Do The Right Thing kind of stoops. The stoop is an inch and a half higher than the sidewalk. The point is, she's almost certainly just sitting out there cause she has nothing else too do and doesn't want to sit her apartment because of family or heat or whatever, but mostly boredom. At least things might change a little on the street. You know cars drive by. Occasionally there are bicycles. The point is, do you remember how boring it was to be a teenager?

Thinking back, I have no idea what I did to pass the time when I was fifteen. Except Shakespeare summer camp, of course. Leila and I took the T to places like the Cambridgeside Galleria because were so used to the Copley and Prudential malls that they were boring. Malls are categorically boring of course, so it seems like we must have been bored once we got there too. And I guess I listened to the radio alot then as well. Which means that I must have spent alot of time at home near the radio. Jeez. So much time just passed in my life without anything happening.

So far this summer has been incredibly boring. No offense to anyone I have had a great time with in the last month. The days are just full of pointless scrolling through internet pages and long walks and magazines. I feel like I am waiting for my life to happen which is how I remember feeling when I was a teenager. And it's really dumb because I'm obviously old enough to know that you have to make things happen and that sitting around drinking coffee like a dullard is not how to do it. Which is unfortunate because lately that's all I've wanted to do.

Melons

Recently one of my coworkers told me that pure watermelon juice has an almost immediate laxative effect if consumed in large enough quantities. I haven't remembered to test this claim with research or experimentation, but it would be a sort of weird thing to fabricate, so I believe it. Then today I read this about the arousing effects of watermelons. Which leaves all of us (or so I imagine) wondering about the intersection of these two unexpected properties of this refreshing summer fruit. Which is sort of a gross image and generally involves too many seeds.

Failure of the Algorithm?

According to IMDB, if I like How She Move I might also like Porky's and The Notebook.

Like Wearing a Hat of Someone Else's Haircut Over The Haircut I Asked For

Dearest Readers,
Do not get student haircuts. My "long layers" vary between three inches and a foot and a half. I think I might have to pay real money to get this monstrosity fixed. On a side note, if you get an obvious haircut, will anyone who notices tell you it's awful?

Announcement: Growing Up

I'm alone in the apartment for the week. Which is mostly sad and lonely. Especially because without Richard I always forget how to watch TV and just spend hours on end watching TLC. And really how many makeovers can you watch before they loose that magic?

But about five minutes ago I had this sort of epiphany. I was putting my dinner leftovers in the fridge and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by how grown up I am. Like the beginning of a Meg Ryan film, I was sitting on the couch sipping wine thinking about my life. I refrigerate leftovers and do my dishes after I finish eating. I am fastidious about my fiber intake. I carry band-aids in my wallet. I even remembered to buy dental floss today cause I'd run out.

And I'm turning twenty-five. In five weeks. I've been obsessing about it for the last couple months and I'm finally comfortable with being a quarter-century old. I know it's silly to get hung up on a number, but everyone has to face the stigmas attached to growing up at some point. And I'm ready to grow up a little.

So here's the announcement: I'm gonna be a lawyer. I took my first practice LSAT today. Helen is kindly lending me her prep books. Logic game practice isn't going to be the funnest summer activity I've ever undertaken, but there's a sort of thrilling challenge to them from a certain perspective.

Top Seven Songs

So I've been tagged. In my opinion this is one (very small) step up from sending along chain letters or involving friends in pyramid schemes (though I only know about those in so far as they played a role an unusually boring episode of Mad About You), but I am going to respond. I am not, however, going to tag afterward. Mostly because I don't really know anyone who writes a blog who would actually respond to a tag. Except maybe Tommy. So go ahead if you like, Tommy.




I am supposed to list my top seven (why seven?) songs at the moment with explanations for each. If I were to be completely honest this list would consist entirely of songs by Mary J. Blige, but since the explanations would all be "She's so awesome," I thought it would be too boring even for this blog. So here it is. Seven songs I like a lot right now. Keep in mind that I exist in a strange musical bubble.

1. "No More Drama"- Mary J. Blige
I picked this as the representative song of my Mary J. obsession in part because it awesomely uses the theme song to The Young and the Restless (which Mary J. awesomely name checks in the lyrics). But most importantly, I think it's a lesson we can all stand to learn, no matter how many times we've heard it since 2001, "No more drama in my life." Yes.

2. "Happiness is a Warm Gun"- The Beatles
According to my iTunes (which knows nothing of what I listen to away from my computer) this is my most played song. Which makes sense because I sort of rediscovered it a month or two ago and ever since then, it will just pop into my head and I'll need to hear it. Mostly I get stuck in the beginning, "She's not a girl who misses much..." It has a great build and a great chorus as a pay off.

3. "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"- Neil Young
So for about three weeks in April I listened to this album constantly. It started out when I heard a live version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" during a yoga class and the line "It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game..." repeated in my head so many times that I went out and bought a used copy of the CD (because my dad's copy was in Boston, which is too far away to steal. Or borrow). So the title track is my favorite right now because it has those light hearted "nah-nah-nah, nah-nah, nah-nah"s on the chorus and I think that's appropriate for the season.

4. "Are You That Somebody?"- Aaliyah
Full disclosure? I downloaded this playlist of the "Top 100 R&B Songs of the 1990's." Treasures untold.

5. "Warrior"- the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
So when I'm at the gym and I'm feeling more aggressive or angry or something, I listen to the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs instead of Mary J. Blige. It's not often, but it happens.

6."A Case of You"- Joni Mitchell
... is probably my favorite song of all time.

7. "Try a Little Tenderness"- Otis Redding
This song will forever be attached to that scene in Pretty in Pink when Ducky spazzes out in the record shop and does those crazy pelvic thrusts. But I've been listening to lots of Otis all spring. He's wonderful.

So yeah. Nothing on this list is particularly current or interesting, but that's just the kind of music I listen to. No apologies.

Book Discussion Group: On imagery and nostalgia

On my way home from work tonight I had this strong bout of nostalgia for a college I never attended. It was a longer wait for the F train than usual and I was reading to pass the time. I started Americana by Don DeLillo earlier this week, mostly because it seems like everyone is always talking about how great he is, and even though I don't feel like I'm really into it (like I won't read another chapter instead of going to sleep at night), I like it. Anyhow, between the wait and the train ride I was probably reading for almost an hour. And I was thinking about this conversation I had with my friend Jean last night about descriptions of place and how important they are to stories and, at least so far, Americana takes place in New York City, so the descriptions are vivid in this way that they are not only so obviously and brilliantly concocted out of images from the mid-twentieth century cultural zeitgeist, but they are also images and places I live among everyday (or at least to the extent that I am in Manhattan, which is often enough).

So my nostalgia had to do with this fantasy I have about what life in "normal college" dorm is like. In this nostalgic reverie I pictured myself returning to the dorms at one-thirty in the morning and going down to the second floor (because my nostalgia is specific enough to place me on the fourth) to knock on the door of some dreamy English major I knew would be up (probably reading Proust or something awful like that). Anyhow, we would sit on his bed at a perpendicular angle to one another, with my back against the wall at the head of the bed and his against the wall against the length of the bed, and eventually, after dissecting imagery and the power of the ego in literature or whatever words we were using to mean "It's really fucking good the way he says that," I would tuck my feet under his thighs and we would feel really close but probably not even kiss because those situations always feel too heavy and cliche anyhow.

This fantasy is fraught for several reasons, starting with my cynical disdain for English majors and Proust. But also because it reveals the ways that my college experience was purposefully a-typical in a way that highlights how my late teens were to a large degree shaped by a desire to be "a-typical" and how it's strange but I sometimes regret that. But really only because lately my life is full of times like now when it's after three in the morning and I can't think of a single person who it would be appropriate to call in order to discuss literature. Maybe I'm just too old for that.

But when I came home I was glad to find Richard awake and we drank beers and watched the season finale of Greek, which is really a fantastically sincere show, but maybe feeds my college nostalgia-regret fantasies a little too much.

One summer I did this writer's workshop at UMASS Boston. I was turning fifteen and my parents didn't really know how to handle the too old for camp, too young to let loose balance. I didn't produce anything so fantastic (except perhaps that poem about bathrobes that I might be able to recite to this day), but I wrote this one essay that was published in the magazine at the end of the course about writer's block, pasta salad and my toes. This post is basically a rehash of that story, ten years later (oh god, I am so old. Pour me a metamucil). Also an excuse to mention my fantastic sneakers.

Sometimes it seems like social interactions are comprised of exposition ("I have done x, y and z things since we spoke last"), debate ("Obsessive attention to capitalization is NOT a valid reason for disliking e.e. cummings as a poet") and advice. I think I might be really into advice. Both giving and receiving. I don't know that I'm good at it, but there's something rewarding about the exercise of figuring things out through conversation. Lately whenever I am giving advice, even to myself when sitting on the couch wearing one shoe, the word perspective comes to mind. I feel like I use it so often that it is becoming meaningless. But when I look at things objectively it becomes clear that the only reason I feel a certain way so strongly is because of the circumstances around me. Give it a try. Is there really any problem you have, like something that's bugging you or unsatisfying, that couldn't be changed with a shift in perspective?

When I was talking to my mom the other day I came to realize that it's probably impossible for a single person not think about her love life. Even if you aren't really wanting to date or meet people, if you aren't with someone part of you is probably looking. It's a strange cycle and it makes things sort of annoying. I don't want a boyfriend but being single is kind of a chore. I wonder if people who have taken religious vows of celibacy are really completely free of this. Or if it's more an exercise in pushing away thoughts of sex and romance. I actually can't remotely comprehend the cloistered lifestyle. It's awful but my life is completely selfish in ways. And selflessness on that scale is... something other than what experience as life.

To be frank (because who really reads this anyway?) I feel a little bit funny about what I write on this blog and how personal I get and what the real purpose is. That last paragraph is probably the most I've ever written about my love life. Sometimes I have ideas for posts that would betray a specific event or feeling I'm having and I get nervous because I think that someone else will feel betrayed or that my exboyfriend will read it or blah, blah, blah. But I was thinking about the last few months and from my usual perspective (visualized as a stick figure on a director's chair in my brain) I haven't been doing much. But when I looked back at an old email I wrote in March (and never sent) I realized that there are a lot of things that are pretty different now. I was fatalistically perceiving time since I broke up with Josh as a flat line of events (work, walks and whiskey). But actually I'm in a totally different place now. And if reading something I wrote could make me realize that, could alter my perspective if you will, then it really is important to keep writing regularly and hope that the self-involvedness will dissolve eventually. Phew.

FIN

On Love

Tonight I was in a public bathroom reading the graffiti on the stall door (as is my wont) when I realized that the common symbol for love (a heart or <3), when paired with an "s" to make it grammatically correct, looks a lot like the common abbreviation for versus (that is vs). Although an amorous woman may have written Deidre "loves" Shaun (intending <3), it's easy to imagine how their time at the Irish pub might have ended in more of a Deidre "versus" Shaun kind of way. Which is just another way that our symbolic language is working much harder than we think.

Sunshine and an Announcement

Perhaps the best way to approach weather.com is as a silly diversionary activity. For example the hour-by-hour forecast is currently showing little thunder clouds every hour until five but my window looks like this:



The glare of sunshine obscures the fact that there isn't a single cloud in the sky. So I am going to open more windows and pull back the curtains and drink coffee and listen to Rubber Soul for a little longer then get dressed and walk to work. Screw you, weather.com.

But I have exciting news for you all (if anyone even reads this anymore). I am going away. Not permanently or tomorrow, but definitely going, going, gone. So for the months of September and October this blog may return to its original mission statement. I'll be subletting my room in Park Slope (anyone who's interested should enjoy television, wine and Samuel Beckett) and heading below the equator for the first time in my life! Right now I am thinking about buying a one way ticket and making my way back north with many stops along the way. So are you in South or Central America? Will you be in the early fall? Do you think there's somewhere I absolutely must see? Let me know!

Finally, I promise that I'll think about trying to be better at this blog. I am honestly in a very strange place in my life right now and sometimes it's impossible to put what I'm thinking into typed words that others might read. Mostly because it would read something like a kitten mewling at the door when it's starting to rain.

"In My Life" has just started to play and I can see the bottom of my coffee cup so I should sign off now, but I miss you all.

What I Should Be Doing With My Time

1) Flying.

2) Getting a good night's sleep.

3) Planning for the future.

4) Blogging?

Slate, Apartment Clean

Yesterday I managed to have a pretty low-stress (for me) dinner party. I made super easy comfortable stuff and we drank a ton of wine and it really wasn't a big deal that no one really knew anyone else. Anyhow, it made me realize how very much I love my apartment. There were only six of us here yesterday, but the room felt so full. Not uncomfortably so (it does when there are eight...) but just happy full. The yellow on the walls and the brown lap shade made it soft and warm feeling. Sure the chairs aren't that comfortable and the legs seems to be coming off one of them, but I love the way everything has been found, acquired, bought for a couple dollars and the overall effect is so unified and personal and feels reflective of me and of Richard. So it's really great to have people that I've met in various places all sit in this space and drink out of these cups that I found in a shoebox on the street.

I am feeling excited actually. Not because I am really doing anything special. But because I know that I am about to. I think it's a sort of thing with spring time. Right now it's still pretty chilly most days but the sun has been consistently brilliant. It's great because I have all this time and the stupid-big sunglasses so I can just walk where ever seems sunniest and soak in all the vitamins (or just D, really). I am thinking and planning and having ideas and throwing them out. It's like exercising a muscle. The change muscle. Feels good.

Not by way of explaination exactly....

but when you're crying lying down, the skin behind your ears gets wet. It tickles in an infuriating way.

Welcome Home, Indeed!

Yesterday, as our plane was taxi-ing into the gate at JFK the pilot announced that it was 15 degrees Farenheit outside with winds of up to 25 miles per hour. If it were relevant or customary, upon take-off earlier that day he would have announced that the outside temperature was hovering between 78 and 80 degrees farenheit with nary a cloud in the blue, smog-streaked California sky. Yes, I am home. California was just about perfect. The weather, sights, friends all wonderful. Like an early Spring now cruely plucked from my too easily fooled finger tips.

When I finally ventured out of my apartment this evening to buy some lentils (friend to the broke and irregular) I wore the following clothing:

(underwear and bra, given)
1. tights
2. boxer shorts
3. jeans (in that order, yes)
4. wool knee socks
5. other wool socks
6. hiking boots
7. t-shirt
8. hoodie
9. wool sweater
10. wool coat w/ lining
11. wool hat (under pulled up hood)
12. wool scarf
13. glittens

Recommended: Other People's Blogs

I know it's annoying to read posts that are all about not posting, so we'll leave it at this: I have no excuse. I am just not that good at it...

Ok, but here's the thing. I have some friends who really are. Leila, who has been my friend since sixth grade and lives quite near me now (might be moving closer! fingers crossed!), writes a blog about Boston restaurants as her job. In addition she has a personal blog and a tumblr (I don't really understand that phenomenon but it's fun!). For those keeping score that's three blogs she updates exponentially more frequently than I update this one blog. Additionally she is funny and informative while she does it. Were we not such good friends it might be intimidating.

Tommy, another old friend, though one who lives a little farther away, is also a very consistent blogger. He really posts everyday. And not because he's participating in some contest like me in November. His blog is basically about whatever he wants to talk about but he is always very earnest. It's striking how much he sounds like himself when he writes (or in his videos, but that's not the point). It's very charming.

Finally my room mate, Richard also makes his living writing blog post (and making advertising work right). In addition he has a personal blog that is also much more frequently updated than mine. While the subject matter is somewhat random he certainly has me beat for late-night, inebriated content. Whereas most of the posts I write after a bottle of wine are little more than a mess of misspelled words* and non-sequiturs, his are filled with a poetic self-deprecation that is both apt and hilarious. That's probably why he posts his and mine remain in the draft folder.

So if you're here and wondering why I haven't posted in a while (though it's probably because I'm on vacation... three days!!!!) you should try any of these trusted recommendations. Also if anyone knows how I can make one of those fancy link bars in the margin I'll include them there.

*Richard is my personal spell check (notably in the tags and titles where my general spell check doesn't work).

Haiku for Tonight

I have spilled lots
Of things in my purse but cough
Syrup is the worst