2-12-08 My Lungs are a Swamp

Woke up in the early hours unable to breathe through my nose, with a wheezing rattle chuckling down deep in my chest. I felt as if I were trying to breathe through cotton.

I was afraid the way that I've seen small animals like my cat be afraid - I was aware I was in what felt like a dangerous situation, yet I was calm and alert, knowing that something had to be done. I went into the bathroom, shut the door, turned on all the hot water, and sat while the steam loosened up the noisome crap, and I was able to breathe more easily.

2-11-08 Never Complain, Never Explain

On Saturday, we went down to Chinatown on a whim, not thinking of the thousands who might be joining us, what with it being Chinese New Year and all.

It wasn't nearly as crowded as you might expect, and we got to see the shortest celebratory puppet dragon ever (two guys beneath the puppet, followed by two more rather older-looking gentlemen, one playing a drum, the other clapping cymbals together in a relatively stirring fashion as they wound their way over the crowded sidewalks), as well as a man at a market serving a durian fruit. He sliced open the thick, thorny rind and scooped out the vaugely fetal looking sections of pulp while we stood around and gaped like the psuedo-tourists we were.

Then we went to a Malaysian restaurant where I could eat exactly 2 things on the menu (the rest of the menu was populated with oddities like duck's web, squid ink, frogs, jelly fish, and the like), and so I ordered the vegetable curry, the leftovers which I ate today for lunch, sweetened with a little coconut milk to alleviate the killing heat that brutalized me on Saturday.

2-07-08 Of Course

For the past two months, I have taken the same route from my home to work, a route I have gradually perfected: which train car to get on, which staircase to take, the beeline route I weave through the multitudinous crossing paths of my fellow commuters.

Today, I took a totally different route: different stairs, different cars - and I found my entire outlook shifted. I have always looked for the way forward through life, hoping I won't dislike it too much, waiting to put my foot down until the path appeared, never expecting to choose the way but instead waiting for what's available and choosing then.

Suddenly it came to me that I might actually be able to choose, if I wanted, to create one of the paths that came up - maybe not wholesale, but with a little bit of effort make another path, listening, head half cocked, for the voice that everyone seemed to have but me, that told them, "I want this", and which, of course, everyone has always told me to listen for, but which I never knew I had.

2-6-08 a dream of divine love

Traveling all over the city in a car, the landscape constantly changing (as it does in dreams), I am searching for something that was lost, or someone has something to give me. Perhaps I misplaced it, and only now am I ready to receive it back again. It is a sunny day, in a city that looks like San Francisco, with its irrational hills and its certainty of its own style, like a woman whose very extreme features would be ugly on anyone with less panache.

We arrive at the destination, and it turns out the thing lost was a song, a message, and the person driving (who? their face obscure, a memory of a gentle, slightly mocking, but not unkind, smile turning away to look out the windshield) turns on the radio to play the song "My Eyes Adored You" as sung by Steve Perry, and the universe explodes with light.

2-4-08 Eli Manning is pretty cool, yeah

As ashamed as I probably should be to admit it (do they revoke emo credentials? Is there an agency somewhere keeping tabs, making charts and graphs and annual reports? Will they come for my hair styling products?), I really enjoyed the Super Bowl. I love rooting for the underdog, and, as the girl whose house we were hanging out in clutched her bible to her chest, weeping while Captain Handsome and the Patriots struggled in vain to recover in the final seconds, I felt a real, albeit vicarious thrill.

Katie said, "pick a side, it'll be more fun." I walked into the night, roman candles bursting in the air over the brooklyn skyline, happier than I'd been in weeks, and thinking how wonderful it was to struggle, even if you think you're beat, and how fun it is to win, when everyone (maybe even, in your secret heart-of-hearts, you) thinks you're gonna lose.

2-3-08 Accordian sweetness

He sits at the end of the bench on the platform in the Atlantic-Pacific station in Brooklyn, playing accordian. He sees us listening and he smiles, asking, "You like Irish music?" in a thick Italian accent.

The music is sweet and sad, everyone seems to love him, and I'm pleased to see him make a huge chunk of change in thirty seconds - it seems well deserved. A decent man making money by making people happy.

1-31-08 Wealth. I don't has it.

The outer doors to Cipriani, a high-end restaurant across from Grand Central Terminal, are black, opaque glass, two stories high. Behind them are revolving doors, like at a bank, leading into an enormous hall with ceilings fifty feet high and a dining space as large as half a football field. I walk past on my way to work and look in, staring deep into the warmly lit opulence of table after white-linen-covered table, while small people, working industriously setting up for some event or other, place gleaming silver and starched napkins down on tables beneath warm gold and wood accents on the walls.

A little ache starts up in my chest, and I remember what it was like to (pretend to) have enough money to eat someplace like that.