goodbye summer...

it seems so odd to me that it's suddenly august. well tomorrow it'll be august, if we're really being technical. but where did the summer go? i look at all the new yorkers and tourists and what not sweating their asses off with disgruntled looks on their faces... and i'm thinking all that sweat has GOT to be leading to weight loss... but then i look down at my own sweaty body and notice... nope.

life just keeps ticking by... and the more that i think about it, the more i wonder... what the hell am i doing here? not so much here... but HERE. with this life. i walk the sidewalks and have these conversations with myself (in my own head mind you, we wouldn't want people thinking that i'm crazy), and i have these ideas about what direction i think a novel should take, and by the time i'm sitting down again, i've completely forgotten what i would have written down. i so don't want to become one of those writers that walks around everywhere with a tape recorder... but i really might have to do it.

i pay attention to the random bits of information available on the subways... and i've seen this passage many, many times, but for some reason... reading it yesterday sort of stabbed me in the chest. i'm sure you've all seen it somewhere:

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something ….Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion." - E.B. White

i agree with this thought wholeheartedly... and it serves as a great reminder for me to continue to be passionate about my life here and what that means. i need to focus on my passions and stop worrying about other unnecessary actions or courses. i write... i photograph... i remember that i am passionate. i am a person of passion.

now if i only i could get laid. :)

little did he know it was one avocado...

do you ever find yourself saying things... funny things (that only your closest friends would ever get)... to complete strangers? i do that all the time. inside joke phrases that only certain people know. i'll just blurt them out, and then have to backtrack with "it's funny to some people".

one of my best friends was in town this weekend, and we had such a blast. she got in late thursday evening and after canoodling for a few brief moments, got ready and hit the town. that night we hit five bars, ended up dancing with a bunch of europeans (i ended up stealing one of their passports and have no idea how to get it back to him... poor francisco), falling in the snow three times total (i have bruises everywhere), and stumbling home at 5 in the morning.

friday, we got out of bed at 2pm and spent part of the day shopping and wandering around the city. it was torture for me, jasean was somehow feeling just fine. came back home, got ready, and went out to dinner at STK and enjoyed one of the BEST meals i've eaten in my entire life. make note... if you come to visit, this is where we will dine. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven... seriously. then we went to naima to meet up with legendary house producer Jay-J, to celebrate his birthday and hear him play some great records. i danced my tooshie off. if you need to find it, it's on the floor somewhere at naima.

saturday, we got up a little earlier and headed to the Met to get us some of that darn culture stuff. jasean and i are similar when it comes to appreciating art. we like and dislike the same things... don't linger toooo long, and really only care about the impressionists. so we saved that wing for last and spent a good thirty minutes drooling over my favie monets.

she wanted to make sure that she saw ground zero and the statue of liberty, so we hauled it downtown as the sun was going down. the lady is not that exciting from the financial district in the dark. by this time, she wasn't feeling well and i was tired, so we went back home to rest before another night out.

except, we never got out of bed. she had become puking sick and my head was hurting so badly that i could barely see. that lasted until she left the next afternoon, and now i'm sicker than i've been all year. poor things. we still had a stellar weekend and it was so great to spend quality time with her... but now i feel like death, so excuse me while i slurp down some soup.

carry on.

sidewalk etiquette you miniature person wielding an umbrella!!

i am from seattle, washington. i don't know if you're aware of this, but it rains there... sometimes. therefore, i am an AMAZING driver in any kind of precipitation and will not pull out an umbrella on the sidewalk until actual full sized droplets are bouncing on my head with any proximity to each other. if they are five seconds apart, get over it.

so today, as i walked to the dentist for my every-six-month cleaning, i found myself getting more and more annoyed by the douchebags on the sidewalk. here's the thing... if you're short, unless you follow the proper umbrella holding rules, you are going to poke me in the face as you walk by me. LIFT UP YOUR UMBRELLA!!! the tall people will lift theirs up higher, it'll all work out, but avoid pushing your umbrella spokes into other people's faces!! i do not understand how human beings can be so unaware of themselves as they walk down the street. you see the other people around you, don't you? it's even easier to spot them when they are also carrying football field sized bright orange umbrellas. because if you're going to carry an umbrella, CLEARLY you should be able to keep your entire golf cart dry at the same time. imbeciles. stay to the right, keep your umbrella above eye level of the people around you, and everything will be okay.

sidewalk rage is a growing problem in new york city. we must all do our part to make the sidewalks safe. i like my eyeballs, and i'd like to hold on to both of them. i know that's madness, but really.

today was also the first time that i had the opportunity to stand up next to my dental hygienist. usually i'm already sitting down in the chair when she comes in, and she usually leaves to go work on someone else by the time i get up to gather my things. not so this time, because i'd brought in stanley (my night guard) for a quick cleaning.... so as she was finishing him off, i stood up to grab my jacket (and hat and scarf and purse, if we're being thorough). i've always known that she was petite and adorable, but good lord i LOOM over her. she turned around and then tipped her head all the back to look up into my face. we both started laughing. then my dentist came in the room and she's also just as beency.

everywhere i go, i'm surrounded by little people. i'm about to change my name to dorothy and be done with it.

happy gobble gobble week. carry on.

you can be my bodyguard, i can be your long lost pal...

it's not just me going through things... it would appear that at this stage in life, an asston of people start questioning their paths, their goals... the way their lives are going (or not going as the case may be). for those of us that AREN'T making six figures at the age of 28-30, we begin to wonder what all the effort we put into our daily lives is for.

is it the right move for me to move to new york, for example, and invest two to three years in the publishing industry, when that isn't going to guarantee that i'll be able to focus and pump out an amazing commercial novel... not to mention have it picked up and published by a good house? is writing my avenue? is it a GOOD thing that i took a massive paycut to move here and pursue this, all the while wracking up more debt and living a just-slide-by existence? what's the point? and having ten people as devoted blog readers does not a best seller make. can i assume that the general masses are going to want to read what i have to write? who knows really... but i suppose that it never hurts to try.

that was a tangent, i wasn't even going to write about that originally... but i just read a slackmistress blog about her disenchantment with her life as a struggling writer, and it gets me thinking. that's all.

anyway, back to 'going through things'. a little while ago i had a falling out with someone that i'd sort of befriended... and it ended in a melee of angry emails (on her part), with her calling me self absorbed, etc. and i calmly refused to agree with her. and as upset as i was about that incident, my rational mind had to work out WHY the relationship had unfolded that way. and the answer is this: there are some people in your life that you tell things to, and some people in your life that tell you things, and very few people in your life that get to know and have it all.... the true reciprocal love that is a great friendship. and with this person, i really didn't care about her, and she might have me. and that is where the communication failed. i am an endless outlet for divulging feelings... for some reason people like to unleash the floodgates at me and tell me what's going on in their hearts. i am a great listener... usually. i give good advice, and even via online communication, offer comfort. i very rarely unload to others... and if i do it's usually to the same few people (which i'm sure is overwhelming, i just don't want to complain over and over and over again, so all twelve thousand of my friends get the latest gist)...

obv there's a lot going on in my little noggin right now... must... get... out. why am i even talking about this?? i don't remember. SEE!! this is why i can't concentrate and write a bloody book. my brain cells aren't working together.. it's a team effort here folks let's get it together!!! this weekend, i'm writing chapter one... photo editing be damned.

traffic, shopping, and comparisons...

i find it painfully amusing (read not that amusing at all, but slightly interesting in my bizarre little mind) that you can jaywalk to the high heavens in new york city, but you can't turn right on a red light. i'm sure these two are correlated, but still. i'm all for pedestrian right of way (which they don't actually have), and yet a part of me is still that seattle driver that would want you to wait for ME and my bright, shiny bumper.

i've noticed recently that i pay a large amount of attention to what other people are picking up in a store when i'm there. or, more to the point, i pay attention to what OTHER people are also picking up the same items that i am. i have a thing about shopping in large bargain stores like H&M, because i really don't want to be caught on the subway wearing the same thing as some frumpy woman with 80s bangs. is that bad?

here's my amazing seque from comparison shopping to 'comparison shopping'... i slay me really. i notice that i worry too much about what other people are creating. i tend to comparison shop my talent. not 'shop FOR talent' or put my talent up for shopping, in a highway 99 ripped stocking, i'll give you a treat for twenty dollars kind of way (holy tangent). i mean that i look at what my peers are putting out (photographically speaking) and compare my work. one really shouldn't do that when talking about art and creation... but i still tend to do it. i compare myself... like i have every day of my life in most categories. learning, sports, popularity, life success... and now photography. it's hard not to do... but i know that a good number of them are comparing themselves to me too, which is so silly.

i don't have any actual conclusions about the above... i suppose i'd rather hear YOUR interpretation about why we feel the need to compare ourselves in general. i mean... who really cares?

well... besides me of course. carry on.

my valediction prediction...

just go with it... it rhymes.

i have very intelligent friends... i do. i'm not going to lie. such things usually make me feel good about myself. for some reason, new york has provided me the opportunity to increase the knowledge level of my friend base. why is that you might ask (or you might if you actually cared about what i had to say... so thank you... for those that actually, in fact, you know... care)? i think it's because there's a pretension that goes along with this place. people really seem to care about where you went to college, and what you studied, and the number of degrees you have (because one bachelor degree doesn't really cut the mustard), and all that flim flam. whatever. sit at a table with me and my coworkers on any given day and this will be the round up: yale, yale, stanford, harvard, oxford, brown, yale, university of washington. pretty sure that last one is the dactyl (good call). it amuses me. but at the same time i can't stand verbal showboating. it's a fine line, but in the publishing industry, advanced vocabulary is routine.

i left los angeles because i couldn't stand how plastic the city was... and not just in a surgically cosmetic sense... the people just seemed to have no souls. i lived there for two years and didn't generate one meaningful relationship with a single person there. tres boring. but i find that i dislike new york for the opposite reason. there is meaning, but does soulfullness exist here?

back to my original topic... whenever i find myself puzzling over the meaning of a certain word or concept, i know not to trouble myself too greatly with it. i simply lean my head out my office and ask the general nearbys what the answers are. more likely than not, it is my bff at work R... and in today's case he came through for me. again.

during lunch S posed the following question: i know that the opening of any letter is called a salutation, but what is the closing called? the answer: a valediction. R wins again.

and now you can all consider yourself enlightened...

a busy weekend and the vroom vroom...

thank the ceiling for small favors... after a very busy weekend of traveling and shooting (new jersey and connecticut), i found myself back at home on sunday evening preparing for a date that never happened. he was tired. feeling slightly deflated about the way this new romance had fizzled, i decided to take a stranger up on his offer to take me on a bike ride... and by bike, i mean the real kind.. the motorcycle.

we did a full swoop of lower manhattan, at about 70 miles an hour, the wind blasting me in the face, my legs doing their duty of keeping me on the bike... and a grin deliciously plastered across my face. overall i never loved living in southern california, but i certainly do miss those weekend bike rides out ortega highway... stopping randomly for beers and mexican food. last night i had a taste of that again, and boy... it was just what i needed. JUST... WHAT... I... NEEDED!

until next weekend, when we ride again... i'll be here enjoying the smile that won't leave my face.