please stand clear of the closing doors While your wings were flapping... Thoughts on a war with Iraq: Nine questions we need to ask Admittedly, written a month ago, but most of the questions asked are still highly relevant. Further questions to ask, of course, include: How will the instability created by an American attack, and impending victory, affect not only the rest of the region, but the ability of terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction in an Iraqi black-market free-for-all? What will this shift in war-on-terror tactics do to the already-declared war on al-Qaeda, apart from diverting attention away from that war's shortcomings (if not outright failures)? What precedent does US pre-emption set for the rest of the world, and in conflicts/disagreements such as but not limited to China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, Pakistan and India? (Which is to say, does amoral action by the world's reigning hyperpower set us on a perilous course of pre-emptive strikes and rapid escalation in regional conflicts around the globe?) What is accomplished by Congress' promise of a "quick vote on Iraq," as asserted by the Associated Press today, when that body serves as the principal forum of thoughtful (re: not hasty) debate on matters of US policy? Should we not hold Congress to a higher standard than a simple rubber-stamping of the President's all-but-sealed-and-delivered, un-Constitutional declaration of war? More compelling, but somewhat long:A Dangerous Game Finally, an essay "Dick Cheney's Song of America" in this month's Harper's makes a strong argument that all the rhetoric we've heard from the White House and the Pentagon in the past year has little to do with al-Qaeda and September 11; in fact, it's just a case of the emperor finding a new set of clothes. Global dominance by the US has been a goal of Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. since their involvement with the previous Bush administration. Last year's attacks have only given them an opportunity to more fervently pursue it, while a stunned and cowed populace quietly acquiesces. His brother's keeper Foster Hetherington loves to fish. He has since he was young. One of the many advantages of living in rural Vermont, he’s quick to note, is the presence of enough rivers and lakes to keep his bait box busy. He knows the best techniques for catching trout, after years of practice. He used to show his brother just how. On the morning of September 11, he had fishing on his mind. Like so many others, Hetherington, 30, watched the tragic events of that day as they unfolded on the news, huddled around the office TV with his co-workers. At the time, he worked in institutional sales in Middlebury, VT, peddling financial research services to money managers across New England. When the markets closed that morning, his work-day was effectively over. He asked his boss for the rest of the day off; within the hour he could be on the palliative waters of Lake Dunmore nearby. Like the rest of the country, he was shaken by the attacks. He could use some time to clear his head. Hetherington’s request was denied, so he took the time to call family members instead. He spoke to his father first; then he called his wife. Janine Hetherington, 28, was in her office at Middlebury College at the time, where she works with the Annual Giving department. She and Foster – who took her name when they married – met during their years as Middlebury undergraduates; they graduated together in 1995. She asked if he had spoken to his sister-in-law, Rachel, to check on his brother. It seemed like an odd thing to do. As far as Foster knew, Peter Morgan Goodrich, his elder by three years, was safe in his Boston office, where he worked in Research & Development for a software manufacturer. He was probably watching the news with his co-workers, just like his brother. It didn’t occur to Foster that he might be in harm’s way; he didn’t travel often, and he hated to fly. Janine had to explain. That weekend, the family had gathered in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Foster and Peter’s parents lived. Sal and Dawn Goodrich, who had raised their sons in the small town, were retiring to the Vermont countryside; Foster, Peter and their wives had spent the weekend with the Goodriches, helping them to pack. During dinner one night, as Janine recalled, Peter mentioned a conference he would be attending that week in California. It was a detail Foster missed. When the weekend was over, he hugged his brother as usual and said goodbye. Now, on the morning of the 11th, he was suddenly anxious for his brother’s safety. He called Peter’s wife. When she answered the phone, her voice was choked with tears. Peter’s plane, she told him, was among those missing. Foster felt a lump growing in his throat; he immediately feared the worst. Planes didn’t just disappear, they didn’t get lost. If a plane goes missing, he knew, it soon had to be found. It wasn’t long before the fate of Peter’s plane was determined. The plane, United Airlines Flight 175, was the second to be hijacked out of Boston’s Logan Airport, striking the World Trade Center’s South Tower at 9:03 am. There were fifty-six passengers on board, as well as the two pilots and seven crew members. Peter Morgan Goodrich was among them. When the news was confirmed, the family converged on Sal and Dawn’s new home in Bennington. Most of the house was still cluttered with unopened boxes and unhung picture frames. A drop-cloth covered the living room sofa; Sal Goodrich had woken up early that morning to paint. When he heard the news of the hijackings from the television in the next room, he set his brush down and went to turn the volume up. A wet coat scarred one wall like a fresh wound. The family arrived not too much later, singly or in pairs. They consoled one another in the barren rooms. In Japanese iconography, the dragonfly represents new light and joy. It is said to bring the brightness of transformation and the wonder of colorful new vision. -From the prospectus for the Dragonfly Foundation Foster likes to recall his travels with Peter – both as children growing up, and more recently, when the two would escape on their frequent outdoor retreats. Peter was fascinated by the natural world, and had a limitless thirst for knowledge. Often, as they backpacked across the New England wilderness, Peter would stray from the trail, turning over rocks and combing the river banks for small, subtle treasures. He was an armchair entomologist, enthralled by the vast species of insects in their native habitats. The dragonfly was one of his favorites. He saw it as a perfect manifestation of nature’s artistry. Foster finds himself returning to these thoughts often. Apart from the solace they provide, he turns to them as a source of inspiration: Earlier this year, spurred by his emotional unrest and the dissatisfaction he felt with many September 11 charities, he took the first steps toward establishing his own organization to cope with the grief of last fall’s tragedy. Now in its infant stages, the Dragonfly Foundation is both a tribute to his late brother and the other victims of the terrorist attacks, and an attempt to fill the void he found in the aid offered to the victims’ kin. The Dragonfly Foundation, Hetherington feels, would have made his brother proud. Unlike many of the September 11 charities which lend financial assistance to those affected, the Foundation is meant to provide a spiritual balm. Taking advantage of the abundant natural resources afforded by the Vermont countryside, it will offer the families of victims a tranquil environment in which to gather, console and, Hetherington hopes, heal. He has been negotiating a deal for a 100-acre parcel of land near Lincoln, Vermont, that would serve as the site; over the course of the next five years, he hopes to have four or five houses built on the grounds to lodge visitors – each equipped with all the amenities of home, including kitchens and laundry facilities. Guests will be able to reserve a house for a night, or a weekend, or up to a week. The only costs incurred will be for food and travel. The scope of what Hetherington envisions is ambitious. Apart from providing the victims’ kin with a quiet place to reflect, the Foundation will offer a broad range of recreational activities: canoeing and camping, mountain biking and fly-fishing in the summer; ice climbing, Nordic skiing and sledding in the winter. The geography surrounding Lincoln is ideal, with numerous wooded trails winding through the shadows of the Green Mountains, and a trio of streams that converge to form the New Haven River nearby. Hetherington even has plans for a partnership with Middlebury College, hoping to invite faculty members for a series of educational and cultural symposia. But what makes his vision so unique is those it benefits. “[The Foundation is] for the brothers and the sisters,” he explains. “It’s for the parents, it’s for the children. The widowed. It’s for everybody. Our main goal is to bring the families at large together, and to help them heal.” In the wake of the attacks, Hetherington found that the charities to emerge from the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon focused almost exclusively on the spouses and children of the deceased – “and that’s wonderful,” he quickly acknowledges. But while he is among the first to applaud all that’s been done for the husbands and wives, the sons and daughters, he’s stung by the disregard shown for others who have been as closely affected. “[The Dragonfly Foundation] came from the lack of support that [our family was] getting from other nonprofits,” he says. “It came from the lack of support that we were getting from the U.S. Government. It came from the lack of consideration that the U.S. Government and other nonprofits gave siblings and parents. It’s unbelievable.” As an example, he cites the challenges his family faced in dealing with other organizations. Numerous calls he made to the American Red Cross were left unreturned; and it wasn’t until April that the first bits of aid trickled in from the Catholic charities in Massachusetts. Only recently has Hetherington been able to seek counseling to cope with his loss. Until now, he simply couldn’t afford it. (Phone calls to the American Red Cross were similarly left unreturned. For its part, the organization lists as a primary goal on its website, “Financial support to families who lost a breadwinner as a result of the September 11 attacks.” “Need based assistance” will be available for “dependents, extended family or non-traditional family members” in the future, but no time frame is designated.) Hetherington is working hard to ensure that the resources of the Dragonfly Foundation will be accessible to those who need them – unlike his own experiences with other charities. While he doesn’t intend for the Foundation to turn into a half-way house, he does expect to open its doors to more than just the immediate families of the deceased, understanding the vital role friends and extended family play in the healing process. “Any family that has suffered such a traumatic loss relies on and looks to friends and extended family members for support and comfort,” he acknowledges. Also, in addition to the victims of September 11, he plans to offer the Foundation’s services to anyone who has lost an immediate family member to terrorism or airline disaster. By his estimates, that makes its resources available to some 40,000 people worldwide. Lincoln locals who may envision a parade of visitors to their humble town can sleep easy, though; Hetherington foresees a weekly influx of no more than twenty individuals – and that, once the Foundation is fully operational. Which is still some time away. Despite his dedication and fierce ambitions, Hetherington admits most of the Foundation’s goals are still adrift on the horizon. He currently has pledges of ,000 from private donations; by the end of the year, he hopes to have million to work with. That would enable him to begin construction of the first lodges some time next year, as well as breaking ground on a “Town Hall” that would act as a public forum for guests. Within five years, if all goes according to script, the Foundation as he envisions it will be up and running. For now, though, the Dragonfly Foundation remains a work-in-progress. Commitments from local inns will allow Hetherington to begin welcoming guests this summer, despite the modest resources at his disposal. And there’s still the matter of securing those funds. As time goes on, though, Hetherington is confident many of the fuzzier details will sharpen into focus. Perhaps the greatest obstacle he faces is not letting his impatience get the best of him. “The Foundation is a long-term perspective,” he admits with a smile. This June, Hetherington and his wife celebrated the birth of their first child, a boy. “It’s difficult to remember that at times. But it’s not going to go away. I won’t let it. “It’ll just take time. It’ll just take time.” For more information on the Dragonfly Foundation, or to make a donation, contact Foster Hetherington, 28 Pearl St., Brandon, VT, 05753. Phone: (802) 247-6924. E-mail: janifost@sover.net. Can I Get a Witness? Confessions from the Juror's Box The Kings County Courthouse at 255 State Street is a marvelous testimony to the bygone era of crumbling government buildings. It is charming the way grandma’s gnarly old sweaters were. I had arrived at 8:30 on a shimmering spring morning; in my hand, I held the letter from Wilbur A. Levin, Kings County Clerk, welcoming and compelling me to jury duty. Though instructed to report at 8:45, I was invigorated by my country’s call; I wanted John Ashcroft to be proud. Others were apparently of similar mind. As the minutes ticked away, dozens of prospective jurors began to coalesce. The immediate comparison that came to mind was of dew-eyed immigrants on the shores of Ellis Island, standing at democracy’s threshold. I am sure others were thinking the same. The doors opened at 8:45, sharp. We formed a long, slow, single file into the building, as armed guards inspected our bags and manned the metal detectors. While I waited outside a squad car pulled up, and two burly policemen emerged, jerking a cuffed delinquent in tow. My heart raced: a criminal, right there before me! Here was a specimen of the vile breed that made my service to God and country so necessary. Here was an evildoer of, I was sure, the most reprehensible kind. Soon another car pulled up, and a third, both depositing their criminal cargo at our doorstep. There was no end in sight; the city must be teeming with them! I imagined a steady caravan of squad cars extending deep into the sunlit day, a legal undertaking of Sysiphan proportions. I squared my jaw for the grave battle ahead, thinking of our boys overseas. The guards rifled through my belongings with the delicacy of a Daisy Cutter. I thought with patriotic pride: I have nothing to hide from my country. The room where we assembled, Room 303, was as drab as the 23rd Amendment. The flaking walls were painted an off-putting yellow, perhaps to remind us that there was no glamour in the execution of justice, only grim necessity. The prospective jurors were equally dour. I was thankful that I chose a somber outfit that morning, eschewing my characteristic plumage for what I hoped was a fair approximation of “jury casual”. This, I thought, was the outfit of the people – this was the uniform of the struggle! Behind the sullen veneer of more than a few sets of eyes, I was sure I saw a spark of recognition. “I am with you, my brother,” is what they seemed to say. After 15 minutes, a stout, snow-haired man in a bureaucratic suit waddled to the front of the room. He was in his mid-50s, it seemed, with generous eyes and rampant jowls. He sat behind a podium and looked at us over the edge of his great, gnarled nose. He might have been a fullback for the ’76 Steelers. “Lighten up people,” he bellowed, “it’s not that bad.” He said it with the assurance of a proctologist. He distributed copies of courthouse literature as we waited for the last few late-comers to arrive. These included the Juror’s Handbook, which whittled an abundance of legal jargon down to a glossary of eight terms, and the Jury Pool News (“Jurors Do Civic Duty, Find True Love,” read one dubious headline). Just as I was settling into the finer points of a voir dire, however, his voice again rumbled over the P.A. system. “We’ve got a little movie for you guys to watch. You might wanna have your tissues ready,” he deadpanned. “It’s a real tear-jerker.” Had there been ample lighting in that bleak room, it would have now been dimmed. As such, the film commenced. What followed was a panoply of justice through the ages, beginning with the primitive nation-state democracy of ancient Greece, through the oft-barbaric rituals of medieval Europe, and culminating in – you guessed it – the American justice system today. “The idea of justice has come a long way,” 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley assured us, from the days when accused criminals had their hands plunged into vats of boiling water, or were bound and tossed into a lake to see if their sinking bodies might be buoyed by innocence. But as my ordeal in the bowels of the courthouse would soon lead me to wonder, was that truly the case? And more importantly, as the thoughtful integrity of Ed Bradley segued into the whining prattle of Diane Sawyer: Where could I find one of those vats? The film mercifully wound down – the title of which, “Your Turn,” reminded me unsettlingly of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” – as a montage of real, honest-to-goodness Americans paraded across the screen. Each waxed patriotic on what a richly rewarding experience their jury duty had been. Flags waved conspicuously in the background. Somewhere, I’m sure, John Ashcroft was beaming. Room 303 was hushed by what it had witnessed, as the din of due process buzzed in the halls outside; clearly, justice – much like inanity – possessed the ability to stupefy. The credits rolled, and the room returned to its dim fluorescence. The woman next to me was adding rouge to her rouge. The clerk again trudged to the podium. “I’d like to welcome you all to jury duty on behalf of Judith Kaye, Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals. Jury duty is a privilege and obligation for citizens of the state of New York. If you haven’t done this before, I promise, it won’t hurt. And when you’re through, you won’t have to come back for at least four years. “If you’ve been convicted of a felony, please step forward.” (From the Juror’s Handbook: “Those individuals who “qualify” for service – a U.S. citizen and county resident; at least 18 years of age; with no felony convictions; and able to understand and communicate in English – may eventually be summoned to report for service.”) None stepped forward at this request, although I briefly considered what sort of minor felony might perhaps free me from my privilege and obligation. But no, I thought, shunning such disregard for civic duty: That would be letting the terrorists win. The clerk called forward anyone who could neither speak nor understand English – a blatant Catch-22! Alas, a few foolish souls ventured forth, bearing the pleasant, bemused expressions of Slavic yam farmers whose spring harvest had borne an unexpected bounty. The woman beside me snickered. “If you don’t know English, how you gonna know what he sayin?” Clearly, she had been here before. (My father, a Greek immigrant, had tried this trick years ago. Behind the thick bristles of his moustache, he shook his head vigorously at each of his interlocutor’s questions. It wasn’t until an interpreter was called into the room that my father’s grasp of the English language suddenly, miraculously, tautened.) The clerk urged us to sit tight and disappeared behind a mysterious door. As the minutes unwound, more than a few prospective jurors reclined across a row of seats, or curled up beneath the day’s Daily News. The room began to bear an eerie resemblance to the Port Authority. A grizzled man took conspicuous swigs from a brown paper bag. Beside me, a doughy forty-something with a full beard, Aamco baseball cap and ragged green sweatpants pressed a subway map to the tip of his nose, reading intently through his thick-rimmed glasses. I was sure I’d given him change once before. Finally, a full-bodied Latina swaggered to the podium. Was she announcing that the 10:15 to Albany had just arrived at Gate 4? She cleared her throat. “Lieberman, Joseph. Thomas, Clarence. Wolfowitz, Paul. Cheney, Richard. Thurmond, Strom. Zahn, Paula.” These are, of course, not the names she said, nor even a reasonable approximation. But as the real names were called, the jurors rose one by one – some with the triumphant glow of Bingo winners at the K of C – collected their belongings, and retreated into the enigmatic Jury Room “A”. When she was finished, the woman leaned heavily against the podium. The P.A. system amplified her sighs. It was as if she had just sentenced them for unspeakable crimes. Before I proceed, I should perhaps mention that I sat through a good three rounds of name-calling before being summoned. This is no great crime, for there are an abundance of ways to pass the time while waiting to be called into Jury Room “A”. Behind me, for example, was a spirited debate on the methodology of hair coloration, waged by three women whose peroxide-smitten hair made their claims to authority dubious at best. Not far from them sat a man who was gently weeping into his coffee. Another made good sport of a scab on his neck. Yes, it’s often hard to buy such entertainment. When the time came at last for me to leave Room 303 behind, I did it with all the reluctance of a child called inside on a summer night, dragging his somber feet. Jury Room “A,” it can be said, is the very locus of democracy within the walls of the venerable courthouse; only replace “locus” with “break room” and “democracy” with “snack machines.” If the grim Room 303 had left me nonplussed, this room certainly failed to revive my faith in the American way. In fact, it left me with the discomforting feeling that I was about to be shaken down for my lunch money. The floor sagged noticeably beneath the weight of the vending machines, two of which – significantly, perhaps – were “Out of Order.” A large vinyl Snapple banner was strung conspicuously from the ceiling. Its presence seemed especially fitting: Justice is, after all, made from the best stuff on earth. But the fact that it hung unevenly from a tattered thread sat about as well in my stomach as their Diet Peach Iced Tea. A nervous man with mousy hair and small, fleeing eyes followed us into the room. He took a quick role call and told us to report to Court 27 on the building’s 10th Floor, but to not, under any circumstances, enter the courtroom until asked. His eyes suddenly sparked with mischief and malevolence, as if he hoped one of us might dare try. We shuffled to the elevator banks, grumbling small talk. We waited, and waited. I had a sneaking suspicion that somewhere high above, perhaps on the 17th Floor, four giggling judges were holding the doors. Finally a bell chimed and one of the doors opened. There was a huddle of wan faces inside. “Going down,” someone said. Their eyes stared blankly as the doors shut. When the elevator returned to our floor at its own methodical pace (apparently, elevators 1, 3 and 4 were strictly ornamental), the group filed in. It was not an accommodating fit. The others smiled sympathetically as I walked to the stairwell, steeped in its deep, stygian darkness. On the 10th Floor, a bailiff was waiting for us in the hallway. He handed out clipboards with questionnaires attached: Were we employed? (Freelance writer, I scribbled, a happy euphemism for “No.”) Did we have any friends or relatives involved in legal professions? (Both of my brothers are dating law students, which admittedly leaves me feeling like something of a qualified failure in my parents’ eyes.) Have we ever been victims of a crime? (This forced me to drudge up a particularly haunting memory: The second day of Junior High, on which my beloved Swatch watch was stolen by schoolyard thugs. To this day I’m reluctant to wear a watch on my wrist, although whether that’s a matter of trauma or physical discomfort is open to debate.) It was a quick, fairly painless survey. I was terrified of what hidden biases it revealed. The lawyers craned their necks to watch as we entered the courtroom, taking careful note of each of us, undoubtedly forging their preliminary opinions, nodding. Each held a copy of our questionnaires, on which they had already begun to scrawl. I felt like a blushing bridesmaid, hoping to meet with their approval. We filed into the pews at the rear. The judge entered and we rose; he took his seat, and we followed suit. On the wall behind him was a wooden plaque, with the words “In God We Trust” deeply engraved. Beneath it, in red and blue neon, a sign depicting the two balanced scales of justice. It gave off a slight electric buzz that wavered in the air around us. Clearly, this court was open for business. We were introduced in turn to the District Attorney, a thin, hawkish woman with cropped hair and a smartly tailored suit; her assistant, a noticeably pregnant twentysomething; and lastly, desperately, the Defense Attorney, who appeared cartoonishly hapless. He was a rough draft to the DA’s clothbound First Edition, permeating the disheveled space around him with an air of no-frills public defense. Beside him sat the defendant, a black youth in his early-20s who was, we would learn, to be tried for weapon’s possession and second-degree murder. He wore a neatly pressed button-down shirt and a pair of khakis with a sharp crease in them. He looked mildly disinterested in the events around him. Three court officers sat nearby in the midst of a private joke. One was progressing through deepening shades of red, her blond hair swept across her forehead, a hand over her mouth as she choked back her laughter. The judge, who had also been given a copy of our questionnaires, shuffled the papers in front of him. The stenographer was furiously typing. The Sixth Amendment guarantees to “the accused…the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state.” Despite such noble sentiment, there’s little in the way of groundwork as to how such a jury should be assembled. Around the time of the Constitution’s drafting, we can assume, the execution of justice undoubtedly fell into the hands of white male landowners (a point both Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer failed to address); today, a similarly constructed jury would be inadequate, to say the least. Consequently, the collective jurors in Court 27 were as strategically diverse as the students in a college prospectus. It was an impressive sampling of the melting pot we imagine America to be: blacks, whites, Asians and Latins, male and female, young and old and even older, sitting side by side before the egalitarian face of the law. Said face, of course, being personified by our sunken-cheeked judge, whose tightly curled locks did not discourage comparison to a Brillo pad. At the end of his long, sloping nose, a set of steel-framed glasses were firmly perched. His lips appeared to be pinched shut by an aggressive aunt whose aim was slightly askew. He pried them open and began. Resurrecting the spirit of Torquemada and other fine purveyors of justice through the ages, our judge tore through his curt inquisitions like a child who finds pleasure not in the gifts he has received on Christmas morning, but in the swift, urgent uproar of torn paper and mangled bows that preceded it. The proverbial wheat and chaff were flung to far corners of the room. A middle-aged black man who professed a suspicion of law enforcement would not make the cut; likewise the elderly Latina who admitted that, despite the defendant’s innocence until proven guilty, the fact that he was apprehended near the scene of the crime clearly showed that he was “up to no good.” Even I, when my time came, found that Lady Justice was a fickle mistress, whose exacting needs were not so easily met. “Mr. Vourlias,” said the judge. “Yes, Your Honor.” “It says here you had a watch stolen.” “Yes, I did.” He looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “Did you report it to the authorities?” “No,” I said, feeling my face flush. I had let the Justice System down! “I was young at the time. I think I just went home and cried.” He looked at me with unmitigated pity and contempt. Let the record show that there is no place for weakness in the court of law. The judge had no further questions. The lawyers scribbled frantically. Once the judge had sufficiently mined the depths of our collective conscience, he turned the floor over to the attorneys. The DA rose to fire the first salvo, looking up to the clock on the wall and offering the preface, “Since it’s getting close to lunch, I’ll try to make this quick.” The Assistant DA smiled with sly confidence. Her execution was breath-taking, flawless. She flung accusations, aroused our indignation, our sympathy – at times, even, our love. I thought her long, bony fingers were plucking at the strings of my heart. This man, this treacherous villain…this bloodless, cold-hearted, steel-jawed desperado – oh! we would make him pay. Lady Justice, I intoned solemnly to myself, let me be the vessel through which your will is meted out. The judge held his head in his hand, rubbing the temples with his fingertips. Now the DA began to engage us directly. Were we willing to keep an open mind about the defendant before us? Did we understand that the burden of proof fell on her, the accuser? Would we be able to hear out our fellow jurors, but without compromising our own beliefs? As her inelegant hands danced through the air before us, they seemed to tug at cords on the backs of our necks; we nodded sagely, spellbound. She sat down with a flourish. My eyes moistened. The Defense ran his fingers through the unkempt mane atop his head. He took off his glasses, neatly folding them and laying them down on the table. Then he put them back on. He rose and turned to address us. “Um.” If the DA represented the letter of the law, the Defense was but a bill being filibustered to death on the floor of the Senate. He stumbled through his presentation, pausing to stare blankly at his notes, back-tracking as often as he proceeded. He made repeated note of “the deceased,” finally acknowledging at one point that he had forgotten the victim’s name. At times he appeared to invent the events that transpired as he went along. His shoes, tragically, did not match his suit. The defendant twirled a pencil around his ear. His questioning unraveled in a string of legal improprieties. He wasn’t simply coaxing us along; he was leading us by the hand. “I’ve found,” he began in one instance, “that most jurors…”. Or, “If I were the one in the juror’s box…”. The wiry DA objected fiercely. The judge, glancing wearily at his wristwatch, overruled her. The rough beast of justice slouched towards the lunch hour. With an apocalyptic sigh, the Defense abruptly concluded. He took his seat beside the defendant, who stared unblinking through his thin wire frames. Briefly, I thought, the scales of justice on the wall flickered. We suffered through a pregnant pause, perhaps expecting him to rise and give it another go. He rearranged the papers in front of him, distracted, as if he had only just realized at this late hour that the Chinese take-out menu was nowhere to be found. The judge’s head rested softly on the knot of his tie, taut with all the precision of a hangman’s noose. His eyelids fluttered. The court officers huddled together in sly conspiracy, grinning. Slowly, the judge began to stir, looking through the cobwebs to the clock on the wall. It was quarter past one in Court 27; a grumbling stomach beside me had reached its own verdict. The bailiff instructed us to rise, and he led us out into the hallway while the attorneys conferred inside. We had already been told that the majority of the jurors for this trial had been picked from the previous pool; only a lucky few from our group would be needed. This produced a distinctly low level of anxiety in the hallway. One woman anticipated her lunch order to meticulous detail. Two others dissected the performances of the attorneys like Monday-morning quaterbacks. I fell into conversation with a man who taught English literature to troubled teens. The bailiff called us back into the courtroom. We filed back into our seats – 12 inside the juror’s box, and the remaining five (including myself) in the gallery’s pews. It was twenty past; the judge looked sternly displeased. The bailiff read three names and instructed those jurors to stand: one, a scruffy young idealist who had already professed his opposition to capital punishment in a triumphant non sequitir; the second, an attractive writer with dark lipstick and large, sympathetic eyes, who wore a long, black sweater over a long, black skirt; and the third, a thirty-something Latino who identified himself vaguely as working “in computers.” The judge told the three to remain standing, while the rest of us adjourned for lunch. We blinked dumbly at our sudden dismissal, wavering between relief and disappointment. The bailiff opened the door and beckoned us outside. The attorneys had gathered in a small circle, leaning in toward one another. The defendant stared out the window, where a rich swath of blue was punctuated by tight, swirling clouds. In the hallway we exchanged garbled enthusiasms. The teacher and I shook hands with firm giddiness. We piled into the elevator with an air of collegiate, back-slapping fraternity. I returned to Room 303 an hour later as per the instructions of the judge (who had – perhaps unintentionally – avoided eye contact when we crossed paths at a deli nearby). The heat inside the room had steadily increased throughout the day, and I fanned myself with a stray copy of the Jury Pool News. It was two-thirty when I took my seat amid a sea of familiar, petulant faces; more than an hour passed, and still we sighed to the tune of the hissing radiators. I held a plastic cup beneath the spigot of the empty water cooler. A drop began to bead but refused to fall. Beside me, a burly man crushed his cup and dropped it into the trash can, his lips still wet. Our gnomish clerk was nowhere to be found. By four o’clock, our restlessness began to grow unruly. Factions galvanized in all corners of the room: the truculent young professionals who barked into their cell phones; the plump, perfumed housewives whose frustrations puffed in loud exhalations; the stone-jawed laborers who had exhausted the common ground of box scores, their faces chiseled into seething masks. The mood slowly bubbled to the boiling point of insurrection. I paced the hallway, clenching my fists and teeth. At half-past four, the Latina again bellied up to the podium, two large golden hoops dangling from her earlobes. Without preamble she sent us home for the night, telling us to return at ten the next morning. We exchanged puzzled, hopeful looks. She nodded toward the door with encouragement. Moments later the building had belched us onto the sidewalk, as two cuffed juveniles were being led past us inside. They wore over-sized down jackets and baggy jeans; their bodies seemed two sizes too small. Beneath the hoods pulled down to their chins you could hardly see their faces. The cops pushed them unkindly into the building’s gaping maw. Outside it was warm and bright. the intro that wasn't... There are certain luxuries we Americans enjoy, much to the consternation and envy of our international peers: Andy Rooney, of course, comes to mind; breakfast cereal and Colin Powell, SUVs, The New Yorker, Dick Vitale, the rich legacy of NBC’s Thursday night line-up, etc. One can go on and on, depending on a) whether or not one lives in a bubble; b) where said bubble was bought; and c) whether or not that bubble gets HBO. (We also have Kim Cattrall, and others have noticed.) It is neither unreasonable nor uncommon to find Joe or Mary Jane America taking these privileges for granted. After all, who can pay rightful tribute to Del Monte canned fruits, with their rich, ambrosial syrups? What scientific formulae could truly unmask the miracles of E-Z Cheese? As a child, I often recited the alphabet to the tune of “I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid”; and though this does not necessarily illustrate the point at hand, I feel it is telling all the same. The international community voices its indignation at our unfair advantages with numerous, plaintive ululations. These often take the form of quaint alliances and nifty treaties that assure each member will have a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, in the event they find themselves outside the house of favored-nation status, staring at the banquet table of American commerce through the opaque windows of embargo. We, for our part, allow the rest of the world to kick our pants across a soccer field every four years, eschewing that amusing sport for more reasonable pursuits, like globalization. We also have bombs like you wouldn’t believe. In the words of that famous old playground saying: We’ve got the world by the nuts. Fortunately, our government dissuades shows of hubris among the general populace, reserving such displays for itself vis a vis the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, and the rubble-strewn ruins of Afghanistan (which I believe means “pothole” in Pashtu). Despite their tough-guy posturings, our elected officials have gone to great lengths to remind us of the grave responsiblities that come with being a privileged American. Following in the foot-steps of athletes who donated portions of their sizable incomes to 9/11 charities, for example, the members of Congress – in an unprecedented move – spent a full session waving tiny imported flags and giving the President standing ovations, furiously God-blessing the U.S. of A. Talk about sacrifice! Even our schoolchildren – tomorrow’s freedom fighters – were encouraged to dip into their piggy banks for the sakes of impoverished young Afghans. You may remember these poor souls as among the many who had scampered to collect the bright yellow aid packets our benevolent bombers dropped on them; often, they found bright yellow cluster bombs instead. “My bad,” said Uncle Sam, or something not at all dissimilar. In the spirit of this newfound responsibility, President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft – the most God-blessed of them all – have reminded us of our obligations as free citizens, such as fervent prayer and unwavering support of our elected officials. Now, you may remember Mr. Ashcroft as the blushing schoolboy who was easily flustered by a set of marble mammaries. Mr. Bush, if you recall, found that pretzels and near-beer, much like his Biblical rhetoric, can often be quite hard to swallow. These are two great, grave men who will some day have monuments erected in their honor. (Mr. Bush would chuckle at the use of the word “erected”; Mr. Ashcroft might dispute the erections altogether.) Side by side, they are a formidable force for democracy, moreso than such predecessors as former President Bill Clinton or venerable wrestler Hulk Hogan. We would do well, as a free people, to heed their words; for if there is any lesson to be excavated from the ruins of the 20th Century, it is this: Might makes right. A distant second, however, is: Freedom is not without a price. Third might very well be: Curb your dog. But it is to the second that we must pay homage, indebted as we are to those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom, by which I mean “soft money” campaign contributions. For those of us of more modest means – whom, for example, are reluctant to check the box for the Presidential Election Campaign on their 1040s – the price of freedom is less tangible, bound by the spirited principles of democracy our forefathers would inexplicably capitalize, and to which they would often add superfluous “e”s. And so it was with this sense of noble obligation that I decided to do my part for God and country, for the proud flight of the bald eagle, for the rolling plains and the majestic mountains – singlehandedly, if need be, thwarting the will of Osama bin Laden and evildoers near and far. Yea, with this profound sense of responsibility in the one hand, and the letter compelling me to serve in the other, I reported for my first day of jury duty. Thoughts for the New Year A better poet than myself wrote sixty-two years ago today, 'To those whose beauties were too brief: Farewell, dear friends.' The traditional gesture is, of course, to say goodbye to the old year before welcoming the new; and perhaps this year we do it with a greater urgency, knowing with that uncanny heart's knowledge that though we are duty-bound to remember, we would prefer to do it from a comfortable distance. And of course, the greater we distance ourselves from the past, the more quickly we bring ourselves to the future's threshhold. Standing there with our clasped or unclasped hands, staring dumbly at the door with the unfamiliar number, we might do well to hesitate before turning the knob, not sure what hidden horrors may be lurking just inside. Pausing for a minute, then, on the fresh terrain of a year that, however briefly, bears no mark of grief or outrage, we can undoubtedly find many people and things for which we're thankful: whether it be a friend who makes his presence felt at just the moment it's most needed, the old professor who taught you to see both the cloud and its lining, or the stranger at dusk in a densely crowded street, who froze you with a stare that lingered long after hers became just one more of the anonymous faces that forever are coming and going. It is our most humble and greatest prayer, to say simply, 'I am grateful and blessed for the life I have.' And it is enough to say we made it, for now; which anyone with a heart and mind can tell you is about all we can rightfully ask. Goodbye, goodbye, your year will not be missed or forgotten. Here's to hoping we never see another one like it. Love, Chris New Year's Day, 2002 my first rejection! i mean, not including your typical friday night. jennifer sweeney, editor of the Life section at salon, writes - in response to 'The New Pilgrims' (see below): This is beautifully written and I am grateful that you thought to send it to me. Unfortunately, it won't work for the site. But don't let that discourage you. I would be happy to see more of your work. yes, still giddy, am i. The New Pilgrims By the time the last of the turkey had been carved, and the usual cousins slurred the usual thanks over a bottle of Zinfandel, it had become painfully clear that this was, more or less, just another Thanksgiving. We bemoaned the fate of the hapless Lions; we smoked cigarettes in a backyard cipher and shared the latest family gossip; and we watched with a mix of shock and admiration as Uncle George’s plump fingers navigated a box of chocolates with all the delicate expertise of a master pianist. Once again, tradition had grabbed us in its frightful talons; but after two months of Taliban and anthrax spores and Osama bin Laden, it felt damned good to believe in the Norman Rockwell world around us. We are not a close-knit family, but we rise to such occasions as tradition would decree to at least fool the average outsider. We are, in that sense, somewhat all-American. But after stumbling through the cordial receptions at the door, the anxiety of the carving, and the silent intrigues of table talk (the recent death of a cousin from AIDS had not quite made the family newsletter), we comfortably settled into our coffee and politics. It was mostly agreed that the war was proceeding with astonishing smoothness – another Desert Storm, even – and the bold assertion was made that “I would be surprised if anything like that ever happened here again.” I threw out my expected counter-arguments and rebuttals, and it was mostly agreed that I read too much for my own good. My nightmare scenarios were discredited, my fool-proof logic revealed to be a cornucopia of misinformation, due in no small part to a liberal education that bred far too little faith in government. Mine is a generation of narrow-eyed cynics, suspicious of every wave of W.’s wand that seems to make another civil liberty disappear. For the others around the table – my parents, my cousin Jim, aunt Sue and uncle Wayne: children of the ‘60s, all, who gave birth to our band of skeptics – there was only cynicism for their left-leaning daughters and sons. Who were we but a pack of shrill, scuff-kneed brats, spoiled by the fruits of a decades-long peace, hungry for our own Vietnam? We polished off the pumpkin pie and remembered September 11. Wayne is an engineer for Con Edison, and was on his way to an emergency preparedness conference in Miami that morning. Fate is not without a sense of humor. His flight left Newark not long before American Airlines Flight 77, which would soon take its fiery place in infamy amid the wreckage at the Pentagon. When his plane stopped for a brief layover in Charlotte, he heard the news of the attacks. The flight was grounded indefinitely. He and three coworkers rented a van and began their hasty return to Newark. It was well into the night before they made it back to the airport, where military blockades prevented anyone from coming or going. One of his companions, a former Marine, was able to help them skirt security, and after collecting their cars from the short-term lot, they were led by police escort to a toll booth, where the clerk collected from each of them and sent them on their way. Some time around two in the morning, with thick plumes of smoke barreling over lower Manhattan, Wayne made his way over the New Jersey Turnpike, onto 17 North and back to his home in Rockland County. My cousin Jim, meanwhile, watched the drama unfold like most others on TV. A native New Yorker, he had spent the past thirty years in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, public school system. He is battle-hardened, a veteran of the wars of street gangs and bureaucrats; he is, to more than a few reformed thugs, a hero. After close to three decades on the front lines and in the trenches teaching history, he wanted to see it for himself; so the next day, having shipped off the others with their leftover bounty, thus restoring our own precarious places in the pantheon of obscure relations, we took him to Ground Zero. It was the closest I had been to the scene since that Friday – September 14 – when I had volunteered with friends to bring food, water, medical supplies and morale to men and women who had already been toiling for four days straight. What struck me most that night was the enormity of it – not just the wreckage, but the scale of the rescue effort (there was still hope for survivors, then): block after block of burly rescue workers who seemed to be hewn from rock and earth, thankful as I handed them Krispy Kremes with my small, writer’s hands. We breathed the same acrid air and tried to talk baseball or other diversions. One man asked me if I knew the area well; he came down with some EMTs in a van from Ohio and couldn’t remember where they parked. While the size and scope of the clean-up effort is still dazzling to see, it is the spectacle, now, that is even more impressive. The ferry from Staten Island was packed not with the usual holiday shoppers, but with a melange of foreign tongues and mid-West accents (“No, honey, no one actually lives on Staten Island.”), all coming to bear witness and stake their own small claims to history. We descended on the city on the same purposeful pilgrimage, while the odd New Yorker who, like myself, was leading a band of out-of-towners, recounted his own brush with destiny that day. I didn’t have the heart for stories, for the guilty embellishments to improve upon my personal tale so lacking in drama. I didn’t want to admit with shame that late that afternoon, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with a towel to my face, I looked over my shoulder at the sunset pouring through my smoldering city and thought I’d never seen anything so beautiful. We wound through lower Manhattan in single file, where the streets still resemble an excavation site and the restaurants, desperate for business, spraypaint ad hoc billboards on sheets of plywood: Still open! Still here! About four blocks south of the wreckage on Greenwich, we got word that you couldn’t get any closer up ahead. We turned back, frustrated, considered alternate routes. A long line of camera-laden tourists streamed from Washington Street; they knew something we didn’t. We retraced their steps, but no one could get close enough; we all had to get closer. The police barricades were firm in their resolve, though; we joined fifty or sixty others and stood, looking. Some shook their heads, some wept quietly to themselves. When two pairs of stray, wandering eyes met, it was with the same bond of kinship that New Yorkers shared in the days following September 11. Part disbelief, part sorrow, part love. Jim bummed a cigarette from my brother Mike, the first he had smoked in years; he said he preferred it to the smell of the burning. We walked along West Street, there were hundreds of us, walking. Camera shutters clicked and whirred at the burnt shell of building, the dust-caked police cars, the sunken faces. Camcorders slowly panned across the landscape, as if every inch of this new pilgrimage should be recorded and preserved. We stopped beside the World Financial Center, another preferred gathering point with a clear line of sight to the ruins. One father had two young sons by his side; as he hoisted one atop his shoulders to get a better view, the other would anxiously tug at his pants, stomp his little feet. Even at that age, desperate to see as much as his eyes would allow. Nearby, a mother explained to her red-faced six-year-old, hoping to cover every corner of the island with his tiny feet, that the Financial Center was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. “No, it’s because of the World Trade Center,” he huffed angrily. “Why can’t you see that?” Years ago, my mother stood in her wool cap and mittens as the Thanksgiving parade streamed down Broadway, a long glittering avenue of pomp and spectacle. (Mercifully, she was spared the sight of the pilgrim Willard Scott.) She added her voice to the loud chorus of tradition, just as a generation of toddlers will remember some day how their parents lifted them high over the surrounding crowds, not to get a better look at Snoopy or the marching bands, but to see with their own growing eyes the tragic scars that September 11 has left behind. Already these children understand the grieving; it will become a part of their legacy. That night, we went to Radio City to see the famous Christmas show, steeped in 75 years of robust, New York tradition. Santa Ho-Ho-Hoed with all the typical cheer; we greeted him with the appropriate laughter and applause. The Rockettes kicked their historic legs; you thought those seventy-two legs, combined, could stretch all the way down 6th Avenue, down to Battery Park. All the familiar scenes endured by those before us were greeted with fond approval, longing: the famous chorus line, the clockwork precision. This New York was still candy canes and magic, Fats Waller, the windows at Macy’s and stockings hung with care. There were token tips of the hat to technology and progress – Santa reading a list he received by e-mail, Mrs. Claus answering her cell phone – but it wasn’t our modern world we joined there to embrace. We needed the fantasy, as timeless and unchanging as those wooden soldiers and their stiff-legged march – the history that didn’t cling to our sleeves, writing itself as we go along. On our way back from Ground Zero that afternoon, we passed the Holocaust Museum, deserted, closed for the holiday. I thought of something Robert Pinsky wrote after a trip to the site of a concentration camp in Krakow: “I don’t feel changed, or even informed – in that, it’s like any other historical monument.” This may be true for the staid landmarks we construct in our hunger for remembrance, for the memorial that will some day grace the hallowed earth of Ground Zero, where our children’s children will perhaps preserve the new American traditions of mourning and giving thanks with their own ambivalence. But now, while the wounds are still fresh and the fires still burn, there is an energy that surrounds this place with a sacred glow, that changes and informs those who visit as sure as those crumbling towers transformed this city. Stupid with grief and their own blessed lives, my family was mostly quiet on the ferry ride home. The sky was a perfect New York blue, the waves crackled with brilliant sunlight. The city, though changed, still stood. There were leftovers waiting for us at home, my father laughed at the same jokes we had shared the year before. We trudge along, sometimes kicking up the same dusty earth, but moving forward with a tentative step – with our cautious eyes looking forward and back. The Dead of September 11 Some have God's words; others have songs of comfort for the bereaved. If I can pluck courage here, I would like to speak directly to the dead - the September dead. Those children of ancestors born in every continent on the planet: Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas...; born of ancestors who wore kilts, obis, saris, geles, wide straw hats, yarmulkes, goatskin, wooden shoes, feathers and cloths to cover their hair. But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed and ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil - wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of hyperbole; of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them; calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind. Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. Because the dead are free, absolute; they cannot be seduced by blitz. To speak to you, the dead of September, I must not claim false intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed just in time for a camera. I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say - no words stronger than the steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become. And I have nothing to give either - except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot of its box of flesh to understand, as you have done, the wit of eternity: its gift of unhinged release tearing through the darkness of its knell. -Toni Morrison September 13, 2001 AS IMPORTANT AS IT GETS if anyone reads this page, please, click on this link, sign the petition, and forward it to everyone you know. maybe it won't help a thing, but at this point in the crisis, we have so little to lose. i suppose i should... say something. i've been supposing that all week. i never imagined so many contradictory feelings could squeeze themselves into one little noggin all at once -- wanting to be alone in everybody's arms, wanting to bare every inch of my soul with nothing to say. i keep waking up from the same nightmare to find myself in the same nightmare. i never thought the world, my world, could seem so trivial. all of it. i'm trying so hard to be grateful that i'm alive right now, but god help me, i'm so numb. still. i can't find a reason to do anything, i can't find meaning in anything. after the shock and the horror and the sadness and god only knows how much fear -- there's nothing now, no overwhelming emotion, nothing at all. sometimes i just sit staring off into space, and when i snap out of it i tell myself i have to do something to keep my mind occupied. then i hold my head in my hands, i look around at things, blinking. i can't think of anyone to call, because everyone's either too close or too far away, and i've said so much already, and there's so much more if i can find it but i don't have the strength to look. i've never lost so many hours in my life. it's been five days already. everything's changed. call me mr. heartache ugh! ugggghhh!!! enough already!!!!!! is there anything worse than the waiting? yes, there are paper cuts and mosquito bites and telemarketers and burnt mouth roofs. but oh, this tedium is especially sadistic. why is it that no matter how good a first date can go, you're still left waiting for you've got mail monday morning? and many more... oh glorious day!!! dear friends, today we celebrate a very special anniversary, as my humble pita has received its 2000th visitor. to the bold spirit who stumbled upon this, my inner dialogue, my hopes and dreams and -- yes! -- loves, i thank you especially. more than the 1999 who came before you, my dear visitor from jacksonville.net, i feel a special kinship for you. or to you. or with you. though my grammar is suspect, my love for you is not. and let us look back then, at what a wild ride it's been. one might even compare it to a rollercoaster perhaps, for i, too, have known my share of ups and downs and queasy stomachs and dead analogies. and while there have been times when my entries have been sporadic at best, or i've been mired deep in that murky moat of melodrama, still i have risen like the phoenix from the ashes, yea my friends, to bring you this simple message: live! live! and from such humble beginnings! remember when i shared with you my fabled past, when i unlocked the door of that secret history to show you: the swarthy immigrant, my father, who stood in the face of insufferable suffering and suffered so, that noble heart, that good greek guy, that fiddler, that tinsmith, that poet, that champion of democracy and the socratic method and mmmmmmmm...souvlaki; yes, my precious stereotype, my moustache, my laboring english, sum of my soul!!! and love, what of love! need i regale you with more tales of my sordid past: the shocking rendezvous in a hot air balloon; the doting leper who loved so true; the smooth touch of my hand; the ribald fantasies -- yes, i am that young dilettante who so plagued the continent, the scourge of the nectar of tender loins, the fiery phallus. all these things and more i have made up wholly for your pleasure, and partially my own. silly boy, silly goose. glad to have ya. a thought there is -- and perhaps it's too early for this -- a dry snot that's been crusted to the wall in one of the bathroom stalls for months now. MONTHS. and every time i see it, i've been tempted to take a little bit of tp and put it out of its misery. but then i got to thinking: how long has it actually been there? if i can recognize it, can it, too, recognize me? was i the one who, perhaps, put it there to begin with? or was that timeless booger there before i? since these musings, i've decided to stand firm in my convictions to let the booger be. after all, a few months from now -- when i'm back on the dole -- i can look back and say, aol? shit, even the SNOT there lasted longer than i did. i must admit... "photo inside asshole"? that's a new one. hope you, um, find what you're looking for. a rose, by any other name... i haven't seriously started to consider my impending name change, but here's a good place to start for inspiration, i think. ok, as good as the post can be, but still. (thanks to betsy for the link.) because really now, just because your parents saddled you with an uninspired name at birth, doesn't mean you should be stuck with it. scary thought: i'm being very serious here. as a writer, i look for names that can provide some insight into who i expect that character to be; why shouldn't i expect the same from myself? (for great examples of meaningful monikers, check out the onion. some of their names are just brilliant.) if life is just an enduring battle of self-expression in the face of an overwhelming, homogenous majority, what better place to start than: what's in a name? paid in full or, why i won't listen to hot 97. sad, sad day. remind me to tell you next time about her feelings on henry miller. file under "words to live by": "For all serious daring starts from within." the snake eats its tail one of the more frightening facts about american society: "We are, it seems, a nation of bored, ill-educated, vacuous, voyeuristic, attention-craving chuckleheads, and how we got that way is a million-dollar question I'd need to use all my lifelines to answer." even more frightening: networks (go figure) refuse culpability for the dumbing down of our sorry nation, since they are, in effect, giving the chuckleheads what they want. even at my idealistic best (which, believe me, is pretty bright-eyed), i have a hard time believing in the myth of democracy. (worst of all, though, is the sad fate of those noble corporate heads at nbc, cbs, et al, who surely have the best intentions when it comes to network programming, and must throw their hands up in an exasperated show of defeat whenever the next "freaks and geeks" gets tanked.) is it poetry? or it is this poetry? thank you to vixgirl for this stunning site, a poignant reminder of how fickle this thing called language is. external effect inside for the part! (translated: knock yourself out.) a (frightening) thought i've forged, it seems, a tentative agreement with my body, at best: this is what i will give you, this is what i would like from you. last night, for example, after the gym, i went to esperanto on macdougal, and rather than my usual iced coffee i went for an iced chai latte. thinking, erroneously it seems, that there was some sort of caffeine kick or other to be found in said drink. there was not. and i found that, despite my best efforts, i couldn't think clearly enough to read (thomas pynchon is not -- repeat -- a light read) or even write. during the day, coffee not only keeps me awake, but keeps my appetite down, my, um, bowels productive. and so on. (incidentally: sat myself over a coffee at cafe borgia ii shortly thereafter, and oh, did the poetry flow.) signs, symbols: the question remains there's something to be said for the past few weeks. every day now -- mind you, every day, without fail -- for the past two weeks, give or take, i've had a chance encounter: a friend from school, a former co-worker, a radcliffe alum. mind you, i'm not a wildly popular guy, although yes, i've got my fair share of friends. but why are they all turning up, now of all times? eerie coincidences: twice in the past three nights, i've commented on how i haven't bumped into anyone i knew all day, only to cross paths with someone minutes later. and then: i bumped into a former co-worker on thursday night, finding that she now works at a large, respected publishing house where an old college friend was rumored to be. i asked if she knew the girl -- she didn't, she just recently started -- and said if she happened to hear anything, to send me an email. friday night now, after an evening in the guggenheim, on the steps of the met, crossing the park, i found myself walking up columbus -- only to bump into that very same friend i'd been asking about the night before. what is this telling me? last night, in the cab home, the driver hit on me -- not long after i complained to a friend that the only chance i had of getting lucky was if i brought the cabbie home with me. we talked for most of the ride: he asked if i had a girlfriend, i lamented poor luck, the search. i asked about his own fortunes: it was a sad story broken by sighs. "i missed you," he said to me, after we'd spent some minutes in silence. maybe it wasn't me he was really talking to -- maybe just some vision of the past that he heard in my voice. but then he asked me, inconceivable: "when can i see you again?" tonight, in park slope, on a bench outside a cafe, i fell into conversation with a man named gabriel. his stories were, i'm sure, part confessional, part fairy tale. but when he spoke, teary-eyed, trembling -- it was gayle, his dead wife, who was his audience; it wasn't me at all. who, exactly, am i? what have i stirred in the world? this all comes back to the novel, i'm sure. my eyes, my ears, my heart: i'm wide open. don't sigh for me We sat together at one summer's end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, "A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather; For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world." ________________________________And thereupon That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, "To be born woman is to know -- Although they do not talk of it at school -- That we must labour to be beautiful." I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring. There have been lovers who thought love should be So much compounded of high courtesy That they would sigh and quote with learned looks precedents out of beautiful old books; Yet now it seems an idle trade enough." We sat grown quiet at the name of love; We saw the last embers of daylight die, And in the trembling blue-green of the sky A moon, worn as if it had been a shell Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell About the stars and broke in days and years. I had a thought for no one's but your ears: That you were beautiful, and that I strove To love you in the old high way of love; That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown As weary-hearted as that hollow moon. "Adam's Curse," W.B. Yeats neither here nor there nor anywhere in between. maybe on the outside? what do you make of it? imagine the luck! to think, two unique visitors today, both in search of that peculiar charm that only "anal intrusion" can deliver. to be honest, it doesn't quite rank with "anal destruction" or "women shitting outdoors" in my book, and even "fuzzy navel pictures" will always be remembered fondly. (perhaps he meant "naval"? was some poor wandering soul desperately seeking grainy photographs of our armed forces in action? a budding conspiracy theorist?) curious, i think, to have so much smut-related traffic directed toward my modest pita. and to think, by uttering such phrases as "man worshiping women's feet" or "man-boy love" or even "pictures of catholic hierarchy small boys in compromising positions candle wax lemming," i will lure even more wayward perverts of the night to my doorstep. ah, google, how i love thee. talk is talk so it goes, my humdrum conundrum. not prone to sighs: i prefer yawns. he the wanderer he of the dry earth, the dusty plains of the sand dunes of the rotten timber, the scorched sky he of the unruly heart his predicament, his unseemly life, the first terrors: protect protect him toto in a heap toto sifted through his past, first on the living room floor in piles of pictures and paper scraps, then in the garbage can: leftover lo mein, eggshells, a squeezed box of OJ (he made a mental note to recycle). nothing, there was nothing - nothing would come of it. certain things, he decided, could never be found. either they would elude the looking, or were never there to begin with, or -- enough, he thought, enough. he sat on the checkerboard tiles of his kitchen floor; the soles of his feet were filthy. through the half-drawn curtain, a last gasp of daylight. the faint face of the moon was visible over the neighbor's rooftops. the air was steeped in magic. he would begin again, he thought. he could always start from the beginning. he had an image of himself, later: sitting cross-legged in the kitchen, an upheaval of trash around him, sighing. the pale, worn moon in the sky like a thumbprint. touch, touch sad-faced sandy with her puffy cheeks, poor holly with crow's feet and memories; captive, if only for a while, for a little. (left to his own devices, he thought better, or should've - experience was a sorry teacher.) the air seemed so light, then; it had been humid 'til the rain came. now the night was unraveling, but retained something of its cracked brilliance. he pulled the pieces together: the bleachers repeated in shadow, the sluggish ice cream, his clap that seemed so loud, she said. this is how he would remember: vaguely, obscurely, with hope. how we live, too, he thought. an arm is an arm is an arm, he thought. but whose? dear lord why today is the best day ever. a bit of culture, hold the pickles this review makes the retrospective sound positively mouthwatering. unlike the gursky exhibition that i missed at moma, i SWEAR i will make it to this. (a friend told me she was moved to tears by it.) ESSENTIAL there are few people who can so passionately articulate the purpose of and need for literature in our society. llosa's arguments should be studied by schoolchildren for years to come. sadly, most people would hardly scratch their cro-mag noggins over this one - especially if, say, the latest smackdown were on. que lastima. read on, read on dear sir or madam, this is me. at times it is bitter and cranky, because so am i; at times it is witty and incisive, because so am i. relevant social commentary, a keen eye for goings-on in the world around us, a sense of urgency, a purpose -- these you will not find here. but please: nibble, nibble. prayer for the self after the day, after this night, i want to remember: i want to believe this in the morning: i would give up everything. haphazardly, or happily or throwing caution to the proverbial wind. drifting: street flotsam, reckless jetsam. note to self - this is your life. having my usual escapist fantasies today: the spontaneous ticket from YOU ARE HERE to POINTS UNKNOWN, USA. held back by the usual reservations: where would i find a dry cleaner in the wild? how would i clean my contacts? would bally give me a full or partial refund? can i live w/o casual conversations on a subway platform? or furtive smiles on the street? or women with dainty painted toes in marvelous mules, spine-wrenching stilettoes? can i live without this city? i believe the story of our lives is a struggle for freedom, at every turn in the road. freedom first from what others expect of us; freedom ultimately from what we expect of ourselves. go head, surprise me. i dare. CONGRATS my dearest, humblest apologies to the poor soul in search of "iron fist in manly asshole free gallery." though i can understand your craving for a good, steely, anal intrusion, i'm sure you can see from my poor pita that this is not the place to find it. however. since you are, or were, officially, my 1,500th customer served (pause for applause), i will soon be updating my site to include multiple free galleries including ALL OF YOUR FAVORITE iron fist in manly asshole pics. because i care, dear sweet reader, i do. and forgive us our trespasses... goodness, if these holy weeks don't take a lot out of my righteous, god-fearing soul! between the late-night masses day after day, the endless fasting -- and communion, communion, communion. it's enough to make me go heathen! peculiar musings last night - further proof that my moments of inspiration need to be approached with extreme caution: coming home tonight: what the alcoholic would call a "moment of clarity." (forgive the term.) lost in my own thoughts, somewhere, felt fierce and magnificent. must have left my problems/insecurities at broadway-lafayette. a woman holding a bunched up kleenex - for snot? for tears? it seemed so ridiculous, the idea of crying, the idea that we feel, smile, hurt. a man sitting next to me, nodding to my songs. the girl with the smile. everything was going through me now: the comfort of a good night's sleep, your new mascara (what on that label could hold your attention for so long?), our simple, stupid joys - ineffable pleasures. suddenly the train felt like a parable: strangers on a journey to unknown fates, each of us with our own station, it's the ride that prevails. the streets were blanketed by mist; it seemed appropriate. everything was burdened with significance: kids playing in the window, the woman stooped over the counter at the little cucina - do we have the same foolish dreams? - headlights devoured by the fog. outside the café, what looked like a scuffle; then smiles all around, a happy ending - my dear angel. a fitful finish: night's apotheosis. here today, here tomorrow to the dear readers who have perused my poor pita in search of a way to "write [their] partner[s] an erotic letter," i give this sage advice: treat the letter in much the same way you would treat your partner: lend your pen those tender graces that have so smitten your beloved, the wooing words, the careful caresses. be quick of tongue but slow in intention. rinse thoroughly and repeat. avoid words like "pulsing" and "throbbing" and "stabbing" and "heaving" - they're gross, so grow up! adverbs, as a rule, should be rued and eschewed; and though such oral offenses and other faux pas can be forgiven, use the fatal adverbs carefully, sparingly, rarely. be sincere of heart and deed. love her as an extension of yourself. you just won't go away, will i? i want to tear apart the day, i want to find you hiding in its hours. lamentable. excusable, please, these things. sigh. just when i thought something was missing from my life, my love-starved life, i found a tender reminder that in all its majesty, yea, in all that grandeur of which the poets so poetically spaketh with their honey-coated tongues, the ardent fire of their hearts, oh yes, those soul-scorched words that might move mountains, yes, if mountains could be moved with glorious words, and glory be to their greatness - yes, that precious thing to which i allude, dear hopeless love, which can reduce the most well-intentioned of us into quivering idiots. funny as it seems, or seemed. so it goes. it bothers me, at times, when i read some of the stuff below -- not so much, perhaps, as things i wrote during those tumultuous times as a frustrated adolescent (think "perfumed flesh," "lying prostrate," etc, etc), but bothers me nonetheless. sometimes, i just take myself too damn seriously. i am a serious guy, don't get me wrong. i read with a furrowed brow, i bemoan the ills of the world, i clip my toenails with gravity. these things are, of course, important. writing is, to me, important. but. i read some of this stuff and think, who is that? or, what has he got up his bottom? chris, man, lighten up. dear readers, dear pita eaters, this is almost a crisis. i am bright, sweet and funny, i swear. ... today i clean the dusty attic of my heart, cast out the ghosts, find a quiet place to rest my head. and as for us... i want to share something with you, yes, you. don't worry; it's only me, still me. carry these words with you, please, in the same way that you carry your favorite nursery rhyme or riddle, an erotic couplet, the ingredients on the side of your cheerios. words like this matter; they have to matter. do you understand? do you understand why i would say that? For my life, give me all lives, give me all the sorrow of all the world and I will transform it into hope. Give me all the joys, even the most secret, for if not, how will they be known? I must tell of them, give me the daily struggle, because these things are my song, and so we will go together, shoulder to shoulder, all men, my song unites them: the song of the invisible man who sings with all men. - From "The Invisible Man," by Pablo Neruda my frustration swells, collapses, lives and breathes again, dies. here, now, listen: for us to hope and live, these things around us must carry meaning, everything is a sign or a symbol, points to harmony, is a song. listen: if history comes and goes in waves, if every thought has been thought, if every word has been spoken, then what's holding it all together? if each of us, all of us, if we each repeat the past -- our past or someone else's -- and make the same mistakes and learn the same lessons to be ignored to make the same mistakes to learn from again...nothing we can do or say can bear our little trademark, our fading signature. but that's wrong; i don't believe that myself. insert asterisks here, there are exceptions to that flimsy rule, many: e.g., splitting the atom, planck's constant, the garden claw, or countless other innovations. what remains is: each of us marvels at the world, alludes to despair, loves, etc. there's nothing new in how or what we feel, only we find different ways to express them. but if we move beyond the world of art, if we look for this expression in something other than poetry, painting, movies, songs, so on and on, then we find the symbols, we decode body language and actions and get to the heart of it, which is everything, we find the things that make us -- all of us -- whole, not each as each, but each as all together. which is to say: we find the harmony that allows the breadmaker, the panhandler, the fisherman and the poet to all exist on equal ground, as simple fools, people. i am dwelling on two images in particular: the homeless man dropping rose petals on the avenue; the reflection of a storefront in a rearview mirror, a tiny encapsulated world, perfect. a gripe: if i were the type to complain, i would wonder why friends would commit themselves to plans they couldn't really keep. repeatedly. say, hypothetically speaking, on valentine's day. among other times, of course. or not at all. since i'm not the type to complain about real friends or real plans. strictly hypothetical. just thinking out loud/why aren't you listening? thoughts on a night: who am i and how did i get here? it's funny to look at yourself now and then through someone else's eyes. i see myself as someone with his act together, strong-willed and confident and smiling infectiously because the world can do him no wrong. in my head i'm many ages at once; all of me co-exists. there i was for too long a moment lost again, a little boy looking for a hand to hold. all the insecurities came back, the frights, the impossible largeness and strangeness of the world. i was in high school again, when nobody noticed. or worse, was afraid to be. is that something i'll ever grow out of? will i be sitting with my son on my lap some day, scared, hoping he'll read me a bedtime story? leave the light on in the hall. crack the door so i can hear you breathe. today i woke up with a thousand scruffy cats stuffed down my throat. the world drifted into view. or else, i drifted into the world. it's been there all along. it lives and moves without me. that's something to remember. that's how you'll never be afraid. brooding; he broods there, mid-way down the page - a simple slip of an editor's eye, the word-saturated proofreader sunk by a storm of grammar and syntax. most readers would hardly notice, he thought. but it felt wrong to him; it was less a mistake than a betrayal. he gave his trust, he put his faith on that page. suddenly, things came undone. now the whole book was unbound, now it was lost. what if words were lost, sentences, whole passages? maybe this wasn't the book he had started. maybe he wasn't reading at all. thoughts there's little in life i crave so much as honesty and mischief. and then... 6:19. he knew the time like he knew his mother's face. 'half way there,' he said. he looked at her, smiled. the train surged from the station with an ancient groan. soon the city and even the towns were behind them, just endless sky and track. the car was mostly empty. in the rear, a man snored. 'i'm bored,' she said, like she always said. but how she said it, too. like a challenge. 'read something,' he told her. she took a newspaper from the seat in front of her and thumbed through the pages with great deliberation. she sighed momentously. she could be such a child. 'here,' he said, taking a deck of cards from his bag. 'take one.' 'which?' she said. 'any one you want,' he said. 'i can guess it in less than three.' she took a card and held it in the palm of her tiny hand, scrunched her face up as if reading it were an act of great concentration. she slipped it back into the deck and he shuffled. 'what do i get if you're wrong?' she asked. 'nothing.' 'well then what's the point?' she said, 'why play a game if you've got nothing to lose?' he took a card from the deck and handed it to her. she shook her head. he shuffled through and pulled out another. she smiled, shook. 'last chance,' she said. he pulled one out and held it up with a smile. she looked at it and considered. 'no,' she said, 'that's not it. not even close.' he took the cards and shuffled them together. he played solitaire until they reached the station. today: the end of an error my dear, dear readers, i'm so sorry to mislead you. i know, trust me i know what google tells you, but, there are no women shitting images here, nor are there women fuzzy navel images, either. pardon my offenses. i know not what i do wrong. wednesday, november 29 4:22 pm hey there, stranger. been a while, huh? i felt somewhat obliged to drop a little howdoyoudo in here, since i've (shockingly) noticed that my page is actually getting some mild traffic. so... for the gentle reader searching for "women shitting outdoors," i'm glad google (somehow) managed to bring you to my site, and that you spent a quarter of an hour here. yes, it was probably a frustrating quarter of an hour at that, with no good, solid (pardon the pun) women-shitting-outdoors references; but i hope you found at least something to tickle your fancy. perhaps i can retell my well-known tale of saks fifth avenue and the one-ply toilet tissue fiasco? for anyone who actually meant to come here, hello, dear friends, i miss you. to briefly update: since (yes, italics, for a cozy dream-like feel) i was laid off almost two months ago, i've gone through a series of ups and downs. i won't bore you or depress myself with the details, but rest assured that the past three weeks or so have been one long, healthy up. i've been working out fanatically (i believe the word "hot" will do, thank you very much), hooking up (surprise, surprise) fairly frequently, feeling absolutely wonderful about my place in the world, and - most importantly - started writing fiction again. that is, i believe, the greatest cause for applause in this paragraph. between stephen king's wonderful memoir, on writing, and a long talk i had with an ex-professor, i've made some very important conclusions about who i am and who i want to be. more importantly, who i need to be. let's face it: if god or whoever gave you something that could, with no great deal of overestimation, be considered a talent, why the hell would you want to do anything but rush to it with open arms? end fuzzy dream-like sequence, please. as thoreau once said, sort of: "live the life you've imagined." yes, i saw it in a bank commercial, but still. wednesday, october 4 4:28 pm what do you get when you cross an expendable employee with a struggling e-commerce site? give up? today ennui, and the ensuing panic it engenders, continues to settle on my noggin. life has taken a distinct turn towards the ho-hum. i've been working out obsessively, my body hates me for it. i drink, i schmooze. occasionally i write. i apply for jobs and don't hear back, *sigh*, oh life. do i miss you, dear pita? sadly, honestly, no. let's face it: you are finicky, you demand constant attention, my little tulip. i don't have the time for you, sometimes i don't even have the water. there's plenty of sunlight in the city today, so i thought i'd take you out to share. but you're too hungry and too thirsty, and sometimes i can be so damn selfish. tuesday, welcome back!, september 19 2:41 pm hey there. me again. just thought i'd say hello. part of me wants to tell you all about my week off, my musings, my current state of mind and so forth. but here's the thing: it's time i started writing. i mean, really writing. that was a big part of last week, and that's gonna be a big part every week, with any luck. let's face it, there's only one integral part of being a writer: yes, that would be writing. (funny how that works, huh?) as much as i love this pita thing, i know that given the course of an average work day for me, there's only so much time and--more importantly--so much creative energy for me to work with. if i spend a morning (my best writing time) working on the pita, that's a morning i can't spend on the novel, whatever it may or may not become. it's fun to post my words here and know that i'll have the immediate gratification of friends, strangers or whoever reading and sharing if they choose; but that's not what writing is. it takes a lot of time and patience and--god help me--discipline to do what i wanna do. i'd like to stop thinking of the future as something i'm moving towards, rather than something i'm moving with. my dreams are only gonna stay dreams if i don't work my ass off to realize them. so there it is, that's my big news. the pita will still exist, i will update when i can. but i'm shifting the focus in my life, and i don't think i'll regret it. friday, september 8 5:12 pm thought this was cute and worth sharing. two intrepid (lucky) reporters from maxim go to scores with a fistful of maxim's dollars. here's their rundown: Where Does The Money Go? Maxim’s reporter finds out exactly how long 0 lasts in NYC’s most famous strip club. At 9:30 on a fall night just before Halloween, my friend Jose and I arrive at Scores. Magilla Gorilla greets us at the door and tells us to tuck in our shirts. We pony up each for admission and tip a guy in a tuxedo to seat us on a couch up front. Onstage is a silicone-stacked woman dressed like a nurse; behind us, a sea of topless women gyrates. A waitress brings us two beers (), and then Sasha, dressed like a devil, gives me a lap dance (). We’ve been here six minutes, and already we’re in the hole for…sweet Jesus!…2! 9:37 Jose makes up for years of being ignored by the opposite sex by paying two Russian girls to dance for him. That’s . Add two shots of vodka at a pop. 9:42 A tall blonde dressed as a nun asks me if I’d like a lap dance. Yes I would. As she takes off her top, she whispers, “I learned this in Catholic school.” Here’s for the collection, sister. 9:46 Jose gets a dance. Into the garter goes . 9:54 Two beers, . 9:59 The nurse gives me a dance (); Jose gives me shit for not coming up with a witty nurse joke. 10:08 On stage, a naughty biker girl is really working it. Jose gives her instead of the usual to “send a signal” to the other dancers. (During the next hour, we spend about this way.) 10:14 Anita dances for Jose, . 10:18 We come to the realization that we’re out of control. 10:30 The D.J. announces a Scores special: two lap dances and a T-shirt for —hard to pass up that bargain. Add another to the Strippers’ Retirement Fund. 10:38 Mia shakes her crotch in Jose’s face. That’s . All worked up, he says, “We’re overexposed sitting by the stage. We’ve got to get out of the kill zone!” We don’t. 10:44 Teri dances for me, then asks me to buy her a beer. “Is this a regular beer or an beer?” I ask. She swears it’s not a scam; out comes the credit card, out come three beers, out goes . 10:52 Beers, dances: . 11:05 Amanda dances for Jose, but I have no recollection of what she looks like, . 11:07 We tally the tab and realize, to our horror, that in 90 minutes we’ve not only spent 0 of Maxim’s money but of our own. Outta here. oh, the lengths to which we go for the sake of a paycheck! thankfully, iparty hasn't asked me to submit to such insufferable torture. vacation is less than an hour away. looking for a big week of getting in touch with the inner me. lotsa writing to be done, i hope, lotsa decisions to be made. yea, i shall enter the crucible of my heart and get smashed to bits and pieces. or something to that effect. i'll try to update a few times next week though. missing you already!!! hugs and chrisses, me. friday, september 8 10:30 am apropos of below: just got a bunch of heart-shaped "i love you" balloons from "your secred office admirers." wondering which of my grammatically-challenged co-workers is responsible. a sweet gesture, nonetheless. friday, september 8 9:55 am the past few days have been a bit troubling or troublesome or some such nonsense. haven't been in the best of moods--heartsick, you know the drill. so i've taken to my favorite forms of therapy: first, of course, shameless crying and self-doubt; second, shameful poetry. yes, my friends, i bet you didn't think i had it in me. and boy, were you right for thinking it. but since you're here, you might as well keep going, or else close this window quick(!) before it's too late. please don't try to scan this. i'm not a poet, it's choppy i know. just wanted to get some things off my chest. so there. Ode Schmode: Freakin' Love! Who could possibly dream up something stupid as love? Think about it: What can love ever really do? You can't eat it, you can't wrap it around your shoulders when you're cold. If you're drowning, love won't save you. No one ever said from a boat, Quick! Someone! Throw him love! That's stupid. Love won't clear your arteries, it will never learn to administer the Heimlich maneuver. If your boss just asked you to clean out your desk, what good is love then? Try to buy a sandwich with love, or even coffee, a bag of chips. In the end, it's just a big bother. Here's the funny thing though: Picture your favorite sunny place, a nice breeze, the greenest grass you'll ever see; picture a Christmas wreath with soft downy snow along the edges; picture your father whistling that same old song, the memory of your mother when she held you. Picture these things, their sweet tender selves, and I can bet you: I bet when you take them out of time, tear them from your memory; pull them from their pedestals, these cherished things, drag them through the gutter, these great things; I bet when all is done in the world and bodies drift to sleep, I bet love is what unites them. We're dumb with love, all of us. We're crazy about someone, we're madly in love. We all fall in love some day, but who among us looks before he leaps? Even the words we use to describe it, think: All the Shakespeare, all the Milton, the Keats; Yeats, Neruda, Hughes and Plath, Virgil, Ovid, any one of a number of Greeks; all the words they took and the great pains to take them: Take them all, burn them-- burn them all for these three stupid words. An expression as old and stale as your grandfather's armchair, the smell from his fingers. The dust of centuries and loves both real and imagined--blow it away, tear the skin back from the bones, bleed a noble death, dried, suck the blood dry and the marrow. In the heart of it, the root, at the root of these things, three simple words mean most. It is our greatest hope and our greatest failure, to love, to be loved. Forgive these thoughts and these words; we say such foolish things. thursday, september 7 11:59 am i've resolved to give up on actual "work" till after lunch. very liberating. better than getting anxious and frustrated trying to write something that just refuses to be written right now. give me a few fresh breaths and all will be well. that is a favorite motto of mine. for all my city leanings--and let's not even pretend, i am an utter city boy--i am very much a fan of the outdoors. maybe not the great outdoors, but certainly the out-my-window outdoors. well, if i had a window at least. thus my plans for next week. i've decided it's vacation time, first because i'll hopefully have a new job pretty soon and would feel awfully foolish if i didn't take any v-days; second, in the unfortunate event that i don't find a new job, these days have to be used by january. might as well take a week to collect myself now, and if i'm still around, maybe one in november. thus my plans for next week. cross your fingers for beautiful weather please, cause my (very) loose "plan" is to wake up early, hop on the train with my computer in tow, spend the morning hours (my favorites) writing, then kill the afternoon in useless wanderings around the city. this successful formula for bliss gave me my happiest weeks of the past few years last fall, and i'm hoping for a repeat performance this time around. need some time to myself i think. i'll either end the week feeling very good about myself, or desperately alone. thursday, september 7 9:45 am back to school for kids across the city today. tiny glum faces and beaming moms everywhere you look. you can feel the newness in everything. fall is still like a beginning for me. guess it's only been a year plus since i graduated. hard to get out of the school routine though--why else does summer have its magic? even years after we've moved on in life, there's always a little schoolboy or schoolgirl inside looking for mischief. the first cold air of september gives me hope for a fresh start, makes me think about new friends and loves and dreams. here's to a new school year guys, and new beginnings. salute. wednesday, september 6 2:24 pm **AND THE READERS STRIKE BACK** seems like a few of my fellow midd-kids are fairly up in arms about our school's slip in the polls. here are some of the responses i've gotten so far today. (you kids are just so dang cute and defensive!) Amherst - No ROTC for [our good friend and combat-ready] Justin Swarthmore - I'd rather not be driven to commit suicide thankyouverymuch Williams - need I say more??? Wellesley - Um, getting a sex change is not on my 101 fun things to do list. [fair enough] Pomona - I'd never want to go to school in Hell-A Bowdoin - No Snow Bowl![yes, we have our own ski slope; doesn't everyone?] Carleton - Anybody heard of a night life in the Twin Cities??? Haverford - I think I'll just keep the Quaker in my oats. also: if you forwarded that list to the people behind the polling, i bet we'd hit number one in a matter of minutes... but do we really want the assholes who pay attention to those polls to start applying to middlebury? seems to me there were enough of them there already... huzzah for number six! and: in my experience, few people have even heard of middlebury. and those who HAVE heard of it know it for the prestigious, pseudo-ivy league preppy breeding ground that it is. besides, if you say "six" in german, it sounds like "sex." which makes us cool. then: Tied for sixth? Not so bad. As the Otters might say: "6!It's one number one with it's head shoved up it's own ass... and finally, cryptically: and on the sixth day of the ninth month a sign came unto the children of midd, cast thine eyes skyward and bath in the heavenly light that shine down upon thee, gather one and all around the gravity foundation rock and await ye for the blessings forthcoming... this messages has been brought to you by the number six. thank you all for your support. wednesday, september 6 2:08 pm been feeling all dried up of late--thus the bland pita. don't know what's wrong with me, just not feeling very inspired by things. the closest i've come to passionate in the past few days was sunday night, working on "the novel" in the pink pony. i think that was caffeine more than anything though. and it only lasted for about an hour. for anyone who cares, u.s. news issued its annual "this-is-where-you-oughta-send-your-kids-to-school" report recently. after a solid year at number five, my alma mater slipped into a four-way tie for sixth. a few years from now, that diploma will be all but worthless. i guess linnea's happy though; she's officially brilliant. (i kinda suspected it all along.) since i've been feeling less than eloquent of late, i'll leave you with this, by margaret atwood. special thank you to the poetry in motion series as brought to you by the mta, which is currently whisking the final stanza all about our fair city. Variations on the Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary. tuesday, september 2 4:19 pm no, my dear, i didn't forget you. busy day around the office--actual deadlines to be met and such. my apologies. i hope to be better tomorrow. feels like fall today. something chilly in the bones. saturday, september 2 the times they are a-changin' today is hot and the air is heavy. i'm camped out in the basement with the ac on full blast and my cozy little pc here to keep me company. thoughts are a bit dry right now. lots i want to do with little desire to do it. instead i've taken off my shirt, i'm picking at my belly button. i find this terribly amusing. i'm not happy with my body hair situation. steps must be taken, this i have decided. my chest hair i can describe as pleasantly virile, nothing too bushy but enough to prompt the casual onlooker, i believe, to want to run their fingers through it. as we head due south from the nipples, however, we hit a bit of a waste land, with only a thin line of hair running from chest to navel. there's a bit of action around the belly button, but for the most part, it seems i have the blossoming manhood of a 17-year old boy to come to terms with. the problem areas, however, are elsewhere. for example, since i started working out in january, i've been spending a good deal more time in front of the mirror. not admiration, i assure you; simply mapping out the terrain, trying to decide where i should focus my routines. poking, prodding, pulling. very funny stuff, let me tell you. but while i've been doing this, i've noticed a few sprouts scattered across my back and shoulders. at first i thought it was some trick of the lighting, but since, i've been forced to reconsider. i've grabbed and plucked and thus found irrefutable evidence that there are indeed hairs growing on my back. frightening advances have been made on my hands and around my knuckles. my toes look almost silly. sigh. and yet why, oh why, can i not grow side burns? cruel world, i say this and only this: at times i have been dealt an unfair hand, this we both know. the sweat thing is something you really need to work on, as it has made even a mild summer such as this one intolerable. while i would like to thank you for a good, full head of hair courtesy of my mother's genes, we both know that my head is a bit mis-shapen in the back. thank you for excellent nails and very soft skin, but also my butt has been a hell of a challenge. thank you for kind and flattering words, but how bout the courage to use them? thank you for giving me the willingness to love, if not the person to share it with. i have faith in you world, i believe even my ridiculous back hair has a purpose. friday, september 1 10:03 am here we are, a new day, a new month. a new era, if you will, in my life. in our life. or lives. whichever. in any event, dear friends, the page has turned, and now we're faced with...another page. shit, there's another one after this one. fuck, and another. damnit, this is just one big freakin book we got on our hands. this could take a while. since we're flipping our calendars today, i've decided it's time to archive. no, my foolish friends, i haven't done it just yet; that's why there's all this crap below what you're reading right now. but rest assured at some point within the next few days, you'll be looking at my very naked pita. control yourself, please. i'm very excited by the changes september should bring to my humble site. plans are in the works for a new intro featuring flash 5.0, so make sure your browsers are equipped to handle it. i've also been looking to make the site more interactive, so look for special scratch 'n' sniff sections throughout the pita. most ambitious, i think, is the photo gallery i've spent the better part of the past two weeks working on. expect to see quite a few pictures of yours truly in...compromising positions. all that, plus the world's LARGEST HAIKU, should make my little smallworld a place worth bookmarking in weeks to come. thank you for all your help, all of you. great is the path that leads to greatness, and only with great friends and by taking great strides can we end our days feeling just great. love, me. thursday, august 31 3:48 pm welcome to my private place. this is my warm fuzzy world. it will make you cry and giggle. it is special to me the way i am special to me the way i will be special to you. mon lecteur, mon frere. adore. i adore you. wednesday, august 30 11:36 am if there is a sweeter song than the temptations' "just my imagination," i dare you to find it. that is my challenge for the day. ***NEWS FLASH*** Waters recede around the Jones Beach area. Residents claim to uncover something fishy. for those of you outside the cheerio-loop that is my life, last night found me on a company trip to jones beach for a night of revelry care of mr. margaritaville himself, jimmy buffett. i wholly encourage those of you unfamiliar with the "parrot head" phenomenon to adhere to a strict don't ask, don't tell policy. but since my innocence is now forever lost, i feel obliged to report... tuesday, august 29 4:00 pm if i could pick a word to describe today, it would be unintelligible. unintelligible is not the word i would use; it is a description of the word. something like "grafklaw" or "munnnngga". those are two of the feelings i'm having right now. i like the second one especially. munnnnnnngga. say it, dwell on the nnnnn part, let it linger. you can feel it vibrating in the back of your mouth and inside your nose. muunnnnnnnnnnnngga. i have to remember that. today has found me awfully discontent, if in fact i have been found. i suspect i haven't really though, something tells me i'm as lost as the day i started looking. right now i'm bursting inside myself, right now i want to tear at my skin. maybe it's too much caffeine, although i haven't had any. i can't sit still and my head is being squeezed way too hard. i'm afraid my phone is killing me. just the other night i was on it for over an hour. that can't be healthy. i have tumors. i have angry cells multiplying vindictively in my gray matter. my brain is swollen. someone get the ice. and while you're at it, fix me a fuckin drink. tuesday, august 29 12:11 pm busy day of sorts. i've been pretending to keep busy. haven't felt much inspiration though, divine or otherwise. have a job interview tomorrow--i'll keep you posted on that. here's the place it's at. beats the hell out of iparty. more later, i think. love, me. monday, august 28 History of my heart: Part the second, part the sea in which a young man is lost...and found! then lost again, all in the hopes of someday finding that which he had misplaced, finding in the end he had it within him all along. our young immigrant carried his worries heavily across his brow, and on a day when the clouds hung thick over the earth like so much sauce atop a gyro, he found his answer in a most unlikely place. yes, by zeus, our friend found that only by looking deep within himself could he find peace. why toil at earthly labors in a fruitless search for the truth--hadn't he learned so much from his childhood readings of sisyphus, always forging ahead only to find himself back where he started? would he, too, be plagued as ixion was before him, forever bound to time's wheel and her endless repetitions? or like poor tantalus, always grasping at the grapes that eluded him? would he never be satisfied? much like the narrator of this tale, he needed to re-focus. what was my point again? this was supposed to be a personal history of sorts, if my memory hasn't completely abandoned me. no, that wasn't my story you were reading--but i'm sure you figured that out on your own. gentle reader, couldn't that story bear more than just a passing resemblance to that of my father, the great journeyman, the poet-philosopher? kind reader, no it couldn't. i mean, not even a little bit, except maybe the head lice. that was, in fact, the tale of the great stavros vasilithodorousopolos, the pioneering son of village simpletons who single-handedly took control of our nation's diner community into his great hellenic hands.... friday, august 25 timeless Here is a continued introduction to the endearing boy behind this page: in the spring of his nineteenth year (you may recall from below), a fresh-faced greek immigrant took his first hopeful steps into the new world. wide-eyed and true, he carried in his pocket a handful of drachmas, a time-worn photograph of his aging mother, and the name of a polish doctor scribbled hastily across a tattered scrap of paper--a doctor his father once befriended on the front lines of WW II. on his proud, swarthy shoulders, he carried the dreams of his family, his village--indeed, the dreams of his nation. the day was a day like any other, he thought, pleasant, a warm breeze pushing in off the atlantic. yes, just your average day, with of course the one exception of being uprooted from his homeland and thrust into a strange environment of men with many hats and few sheep. but these things were, of course, to be expected. after all, who among us can really say in the morning where the evening will find us? or even late afternoon, for that matter? as he sifted through these ponderous reflections, the young immigrant stumbled upon what, years later, he would refer to as a "spell of the good luck." it just so happened that the plucky lad had come down with a dose of head lice while aboard the ship. now the health inspector--a hard-nosed irish bloke with fierce eyes and a gentle spirit--took the boy under his wing, giving him first the necessary medical attention, then the essential love he needed. it was a grand heart-warming scene that should sound terribly familiar. with this surrogate father in his life, our young immigrant quickly forgot the genuine, authentic, 100% pure grade family he had back home. in fact, despite his promises to "keep them in his prayers"--or the rough greek equivalent--he had actually stopped praying altogether, turning instead to the drink, the revels, and the women of loose pants and looser morals. heavy is the heart that sinks heavily with heaviness, and his was a heavy heart, yea, 'twas.... thursday, august 24 almost quittin' time one last bit to munch on before i go. this guy has way too much time on his hands--he's written dozens of abridged movie scripts. some are pretty funny. it's worth a look. thursday, august 24 12:45 pm Here is a brief and not-so-startling introduction to myself, meaning me: i've been checking my site meter quite often of late in a desperate attempt to validate my life. it's been mildly reassuring, which i guess is really all we can hope for some times. it looks like my little pita, although not yet the cultural phenomenon it will soon be, is getting quite a few nibbles each day. yesterday, for example, i received 27 hits. hard to believe, isn't it? almost even hard to comprehend. let this example illustrate just what that might mean: susie q. is checking the member pages at pitas.com to see what other people are up to. she happens to notice smallwordz and figures hey, lemme see what he/she is doing these days. she clicks on smallwordz to find my pita. she reads it, is perhaps entertained by it, and decides to bookmark it. an hour or so later, she comes back. hmmmm, no update. that's ok though, she decides, scrolling down to take the gay poll and read various odds and ends. ten minutes later, she checks again--maybe i just missed him last time, she figures. but nothing. she's a bit worried. five minutes go by and she checks again. still nothing. is he ok? susie q. is getting frantic. smallwordz is dying and no one will help him!! she checks again, and again, and again. nothing. she checks 26 times in all and is desperate to save him--desperate to save herself. it is half past eleven in a quiet chicago suburb and the moon hangs heavy in the air like a too-ripe fruit. somewhere, a dog barks. susie checks one last time. to her relief, to her delight, to her chagrin, she sees all is well, she sees smallwordz whom she now thinks of as her one and only chris is a-ok, is well, is still writing. she sighs, rests her weary finger. she sleeps a peaceful sleep. OR the same, only susie--upon checking the site for the 26th frantic time--flings herself desperate and alone from the bedroom window. an hour later, her mother comes in to say goodnight, sees the room empty but the computer on. going over to shut it, she notices a link that looks intriguing, clicks on it, sits down to read. "please stand clear of..." OR the same, only susie reads the site once, gets bored quickly, forwards it to 26 friends. each sits down to their computer later that night to see for themselves, also gets quickly bored, and resolves never to return. OR a small group of dedicated friends return often to keep me feeling good about myself. to gain a bit of perspective on this impressive figure, let us compare it to the number of hits i received on day one, being none. the resulting comparison might look something like this: Day One = 0 Yesterday = 27 or, to illustrate it graphically, consider this: Yesterday -- Day One 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 whatever the case may be, it's obvious that someone is, in fact, reading my site. it's even quite possible that someone new is reading these words, wondering about the face behind the fingers (weird image), the off-the-wall somewhat gay boy who is frustrated but otherwise pleasing. well let me share a brief history with you. in the spring of his nineteenth year, a fresh-faced greek immigrant took his first hopeful steps into the new world. wide-eyed and true, he carried on his proud, swarthy shoulders the dreams of his family, his village--indeed, the dreams of his nation.... thursday, august 24 11:49 am I live in mid-air between the bait and the catch, the space between what's implied and what's revealed. I'm the Scooby-Doo villain in the sheriff's hands, the clues all pointing to me, the breathless moment before the unmasking. If I could be anything I'd be hope, the dream of possibility without the terror of succeeding. wednesday, august 23 pm, dragging You might've heard this one before: two men are sitting in a bar. It's late, it's after four by now, the place is empty except for these two guys at the bar and the bartender. One of them turns to the other and says, You look awful familiar. The guy says to him, Yeah, you too. They both take a pull on their drinks. The first says, You're from around here, right? Yeah, yeah, the second says, just up the block. The first says to him, I've been living here my whole life, right under the same roof my father built. When I move out, I'm gonna tear the damn place down behind me, burn down the block. He raises his glass to toast himself. Why's that? the second guy asks. Can't see another man living in your skin? And the first guy says to him, Nah, just for a goof. He says, Something different, you know? wednesday, august 23 2:57 pm special thank you to celia the poet for pointing me in the direction of this fantastic site. i might have to throw this one up on the side there. have some thoughts i'd like to share, but goodness if it's not 3 o'clock and i still haven't done jack shit today. (ok, that's a lie, i managed to write about a page of my "novel" fetus over lunch. i don't think that's what they're paying me for, but then again fuck'em if i can get away with it.) wednesday, august 23 2:30 pm another quick break courtesy of the onion. yes, there is a job for me out there somewhere...somewhere in wisconsin, apparently, which the onion calls home. sigh. guess you can't have everything in life. for example, love. wednesday, august 23 12:36 pm for those of you who still aren't reading the onion on a weekly basis, here's another brief hint at what you're sadly missing. Millions Participate In Cuban Version Of Survivor HAVANA, CUBA--Inspired by the hit CBS show Survivor, Cuba's 11 million citizens are participating in their own version of the popular island-survival game. "I hope very much to make it to next week," said contestant Livan Ordonez, eating a rat as part of a "Starvation-Immunity Challenge" during last Wednesday's episode. "If I do not survive, who will provide for the Ordonez Tribe?" Under the somewhat altered rules for Cuban Survivor, contestants who fail to remain on the island are declared the winners. wednesday, august 23 9:49 am with the weekend rapidly approaching (re: anything after tuesday is close to "weekend"), i thought this piece would be a welcome reminder that you're not the only one who can't seem to get a drink these days. yes, my friends, manhattan has swollen to a bursting point, and no one wants to be dry when it finally goes pop. reminder to self: don't be one of those people who refers to manhattan as if it were the sun around which the rest of the country revolves. even if you know it to be true. and yes, my friends, just as all good things must come to an end, so too, must all things in general. this week, we bid a timely farewell to the biggest thing to happen to pop culture since regis philbin. who will be the big winner in tonight's survivor grand finale? share your thoughts! More important than the Census! Who will be tonight's biggest winner? The fascist scheming corporate guy The gritty ex-Navy Seal The cute young one The butch truck driver CBS View Results the first ten of you to respond will be entered into a random drawing to receive a FREE personal email from yours truly, thanking you for all your support. hell, if ten people vote, i'll write to all of you. promise. tuesday, august 22 5:37 pm for those of you who haven't checked out unknown news, you'll want to add it to your list--brian, this one's especially for you. lots of great links to stories from newspapers and web sites around the country, usually dealing with controversial issues and opinions highlighting evil corporations, government hypocrisy and other fun stuff. while i'm feeling all counter-culture, check out A Reader's Guide to the Underground Press. ok, ok, i can't lie--i haven't read through it myself just yet. but it looks pretty interesting, and i've come to place nothing but my complete and utter confidence in the people at the aforementioned unknown news site. and for a chuckle: rarely do you find a piece of writing that not only uses the word tomfoolery without the slightest hint of irony, but also goes so far as to compare a wanton scene of lust and deprivation as "closely resembling the old Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello movie 'Beach Blanket Bingo'." you have to wonder how these mormons ever learned to procreate. tuesday, august 22 1:22 pm in which our intrepid hero, sick of it all, sighs, wrings his hands in futility, cries, resigns, whines, sighs, dries the tears, picks himself up by his preposterous butt, winks in the mirror and resolves to do wondrous things. i am currently open to any and all employment options. this is not a joke. today the straws were dropping, and my back is awfully weak. i would like to be gone in a month. (i will, however, be taking a week's vacation before then. haha fuck you iparty.) please send any advice or info to me c/o the li'l link up at the top. thank you and good day. monday, august 21 5:54 pm sadly, this here represents the coolest stuff i've done at iparty. scroll down to biker for my personal favorite. monday, august 21 5:44 pm Walking down the block you're bound to see the same tired faces, the same old sighs and moans. Guys with their sleeves rolled up watching cars pass by, old men who fan themselves with yesterday's scores. Women who pace the block on varicose-veined legs, pushing strollers for kids who won't get the chance to grow up any better. On a good summer day, the neighborhood is moving in circles, or else it's not moving at all. The same old women wave from their windows, the same kids running in and out of hydrants. We're extras in someone else's movie. This is where you stand; this is what you do. Touch your hand to your head once, brush back a stray hair. Sigh. Cry. Repeat. One day this whole place is going to burn. One day someone will come in here and strike a match and light it from the bottom up, from the top down, burn the place inside out. One day the best of us will dance on our own burning houses, the houses our grandparents built, the attics where we kept our secrets. I'd like to think we're ready for it now, we pray in the churches and light the candles and hope the candles might fall, hope the floor will catch and then the church will burn, the pews, the altar, burn the crosses. Burn the corner stores, the pizzerias, the good-for-nothing schools. Take this whole place down, burn our stupid lives, give someone else a chance to start over where we couldn't get it right. monday, august 21 10:07 am there are some rare moments in my life when i am truly lost for words. i struggle, oh i try, to find just the right turn of phrase to capture something special, but whether it's because i'm moved so much or moved too little, i come up grasping, gasping, empty-handed. here is such a moment. without spoiling too much of the fun for you, i feel compelled to at least quote the following: The youth Mass and an overnight vigil before it closed a six-day World Youth festival timed to coincide with a Roman Catholic Holy Year, a gathering that the Italian press dubbed "The Catholic Woodstock" -- a teeming love-in without the sex, drugs or rock 'n' roll, but with much of the same enthusiasm and abandon. One overwrought young girl burst through security lines on Saturday night and hurled herself into the frail pope's arms as if he were a pop star, and he gently patted her head as she wept on his shoulder. one plucky youngster who attended an earlier assembly in st. peter's square--a gathering which drew over 300,000 zany zealots--claimed the event was like a big mosh pit, except "nobody was wielding chains." can't you just feel the love from here? incidentally, for those of you who've tried voting in my "how gay am i?" poll, i apologize for technical difficulties that have been on-going since friday morning. i just sent the info people a desperate email, so we'll see how things end up. also, i apologize for certain ambiguities in the phrasing of your choices. the intention was to feel the flames cooling, as it were, as you moved down from liberace to marshmallows to misunderstanding. but after conferring with friends, i must shamefully admit that i failed to clearly define each choice. in effect, they're all pretty flaming. maybe i'm subconsciously trying to tell myself something. meanwhile, over at salon, one can't help but wonder just what carina chocano was expecting from vanity fair, that fine purveyor of all things rich and pretty and fabulous. as much as i, too, am intrigued by the countless tales of heiresses gone awry, you'd have to think awfully hard to recall the last piece vf ran on, say, welfare reform or genital mutilation in uganda. don't think too hard, though; that ruffled, thoughtful brow is so proletariat. friday, august 18 12:20 pm after a nearly heroic burst of inspiration yesterday, looks like i've fallen a bit flat today. think i'm just jumpy with the weekend practically in my lap and all. for those of you--ie, all of you--who have not yet voted in my "how gay am i?" poll, i'd appreciate your input. i'm heading off to a wedding this afternoon, and well...i just don't know if i should be chasing the best man or the maid of honor. who else would let you decide their sexual orientation? don't ever doubt that i love you. thursday, august 17 4:11 pm quick break from all my dating woes for the following: thank you to yell for this link--it lets you figure out the hex code (i think that's what it's called) for any color you can come up with so you can use it on your site. cool beans yell!! thursday, august 17 1:53 pm Just Because I Have A Dick Doesn't Mean I Am One this is a continuation of what may turn out to be a very long on-going series on why guys get a bad rap from girls. oh yeah, guys = me in particular. 2. are you ready yet? vs. you're not wearing...that? as a blissfully high-maintenance man, i have long been suffering through the age-old controversy that is the grooming ritual. tired of false accusations, it's time i set the record straight (see the gay thing below). but before i do that, i have to make one small admission: the following does not, in fact, apply to the average guy. let's be honest here folks, certain stereotypes exist for a reason--there's at least a small element of truth to them. i mean, my father is a greek man who was raised in a small mountain village; there are just some things about his past i'd rather not know. but i digress. yes, chances are most guys apply the sniff test to various elements of their wardrobe before deciding what to wear. their idea of getting "all dressed up" involves picking out their cleanest hat--one which may or may not include their frat letters. they may have a cow lick. they are afraid to admit that they cry and refuse to show emotions and for some stupid, stupid reason, can't say i love you over the phone if "the guys" are around. they wear faded polo shirts and refuse to iron. so. that being said. there is, meanwhile, a precious small minority, a select few dedicated souls for whom coordination does not involve a bat and ball. for whom shoes are more than just two slabs of leather on your feet. yes, virginia, men who aren't afraid to cry if they're having a bad hair day and do crunches every night to fit in a nice, flattering, form-fitting shirt. men who iron with passion, who linger outside store windows during sales and who will let a woman know if they like her shoes. say it loud and say it proud: I LOVE FASHION! yes, i've come out and said it. don't be afraid, it's still the same old me. nothing's changed between us. i will admit to relentlessly checking myself out in various mirrors (different lighting effects, you know) before leaving the house. i often spend a good fifteen minutes on hair that i don't really have too much of. my outfits are carefully pressed, most of my clothes need to be dry cleaned. i'm worried if these pants are making my butt look big. ditto for the shirt and my love handles. i work out often, obsessively. i have had many fantasies that involve nothing more than what i'm wearing. yes, i am high-maintenance. i enjoy it. i revel in it. but that leads me to... 3. the gay thing. call this one the myth of the sensitive man. i actually had a date tell me she was "confused" about my orientation--mind you, not when we had met a few days before, but during the course of the date itself. apparently, i was standing with my hands on my hips at one point, and that was very suspicious. also: i love to shop. i do. i'll admit it. i have a problem. i love clothing (see above), i love looking at window displays to see what outfits have been thrown together. i check out people on the street from head to toe with a judgmental--one might even say "catty"--eye. i compliment others on what they're wearing. i often enjoy the ads more than the magazines themselves. i am nice. you'd be surprised how often this one throws off the ol' "gaydar". apparently, guys are supposed to have lotsa rough edges. gruff = manly. that is something i've learned from many guys who are far more practiced in guyness than i. softness is best left for girls, puppies, flower petals and babies (most of which i love, incidentally). this thing i do with my hands. i guess someone once decided that gay men are more animated when they talk than straight men. consequently, when my hands are fluttering about, if you will, as i speak, therein lies a great sign of gay. i cry. sorry mom and pop--looks like this one's shaping up to be a queer! yeah, i'll admit it, i cry--sometimes i cry a lot. i cry when i'm lonely or afraid, i cry when my heart's been broken, i cry when i'm having a bad day or week, once or twice i've cried from being happy. i love to cry--i need to. how some guys manage to get by without it is beyond me. your body needs some sorta catharsis every now and then, and my god crying is a great release. but wait, there's more: poetry. long a sign of fruithood, the act of reading poetry is a wonderfully effective mode of social castration. read it over a latte for added poignance! i am affectionate. forgive me, but i've never believed an awkward wrap around and pat on the back maneuver to be an adequate hug. this applies to both men and women. i am very emotional and i like to show it. how a person hugs me speaks volumes about the warmth they give off. i need warmth--the world can be too cold too often. the way i dress. like i said, i'm a fashion fiend. i can't help it. one might call me "stylish" if one so chose. i like nice clothing--nice in a chelsea or west village way, admittedly, but nice nonetheless. i wear short pants ("men's capris") and fitted shirts. (shit, for the amount of time i spend in the gym, i want people to notice.) in effect, i catch the eyes of as many men as women, really. so that is the evidence as i see it. what do you think? Queer is here...or over there? From flaming to tepid--you decide! How gay am I? Liberace would want to know where I get my nails done. Yikes! Don't shake my hand without asbestos gloves. What was that song Buster Poindexter did? You can roast a marshmallow on my bottom. "Are you sure you didn't drop that soap on purpose?" "I dunno," you say, "maybe he's just misunderstood." View Results cast your votes and make the decision i clearly haven't made clear--am i just a misunderstood, sensitive guy, or is that what i'm looking for? thursday, august 17 11:16 am well, first things first, if you haven't already been over to linnea's place to see her ultra-sleak new pita design, rush over there now. don't worry, i'll wait for you. good job sweetie!! you make me feel like such a slacker. and since i'm in the mood to give guidance on this awfully-fair thursday morning, i would like to now point you in the direction of the ever-intriguing he said/she said debate over at ironminds. today's installment asks your average joes and janes what it is they envy about the opposite sex. the answers, as you can imagine, are both witty and insightful, hopelessly comedic with more than just a hint of the truth below the surface hijinx. now, as a male--sometimes even a "guy"--i, of course, have my own beer-swilling, stand-up-peeing opinion to opine. so the following is a brief list of my gripes on why the fairer sex isn't giving us a fair rap. Just Because I Have A Dick Doesn't Mean I Am One 1. the whole money thing. much has been made about the great american wage disparity, and i can say--with all honesty--that i believe it. i believe it, i believe sexual harassment in the work place is probably more rampant than we admit, and women are more likely to be judged by their appearance on an interview. ("is this dress a little too short?") but. i am not rich by anyone's standards. i'm in ok shape as far as salary goes, but i also have a pretty tight budget, and i do try to stick to it. if i meet a girl these days, chances are she's in no worse shape than me: making a bit more than an entry level salary, ambitious i should hope, moving up whatever ladders she's climbing. let's face it: there are plenty of girls out there making money. the idea that a guy has to be the one who is "taking out" the girl leaves me more than just a little bit peeved. and in all honesty, despite what anyone will try to tell you, that is still the situation in the dating game today. a guy is expected to pay for dinner, pay for drinks--if he's really unimaginative he'll show up with flowers. for a guy who's making six figures and taking out a teacher, that's all well and good. but if i'm on a date with a girl who makes more than me, at least make the effort to reach for your wallet when the bill comes. why? let the following example illustrate: chris is a handsome, charming, funny twenty-something who makes far less than he deserves. oh yeah, he's also very talented, and well-dressed. we'll pretend--since this is make-believe--that he actually has a date. we'll call her, i dunno, britney. both chris and britney are a year or so out of college, say they're both making in the low 30s. chris gives himself a 0 budget for the week; britney, because she's a bit more frugal, has 0 at her disposal. chris, being a hopelessly cliched romantic--or, at least, knowing britney is--shows up with a couple of flowers he picked up at the corner store. nothing impressive--we're just looking for effort here, guys. let's say it sets him back . they meet, exchange pleasantries, go for dinner. the place is nothing spectacular, but slightly more than functional--the kinda place you can go on a first date while still pretending to have a little bit of class. this is the economics of romance. appetizers are bought, a bottle of wine (quick, look at the prices, don't pick the cheapest but something very close to it), dinner is served, maybe even coffee and dessert. when the bill comes, let's call it close to --not at all unrealistic. chris happens to be an extravagant tipper, but let's say he's not; he gives and feels it comfortably rewards the waiter for his fine service and pleasant disposition. at this point, chris is hurting. he has spent half his week's allowance and it is only 9:30. britney is probably not drunk enough to actually give a good-night kiss just yet, so he suggests a nice bar near-by with comfortable couches, warm mood lighting, and plenty of chances to allow for casual contact. they sit, they chat, they have a few drinks--two amstel lights for him, because despite what girls tend to think many guys are fairly obsessed with their appearance; two cosmos for her, because she saw them on sex and the city. the bar tab comes out to another or so, and it is late, and britney is yawning, and chris is broke. they leave the bar, they walk hand-in-hand to where chris can flag down a cab, they share a nice good-night kiss before she gets in the cab to leave. he does not offer to pay for the cab, for fear that she actually might think it's sweet and take him up on the offer. they say good-bye and he promises to call tomorrow. he thinks about how much money he's spent and foolishly thinks it was worth it. to sum up: Chris' Night: Flowers - Dinner - Drinks - Total - 1 Britney's Night: Flowers - {$d_entry} Dinner - {$d_entry} Drinks - {$d_entry} Total - {$d_entry} now, returning to their allotted allowances for the week, we see chris with 0-1= left to get by with, and poor britney--who, as we've already established, is far more frugal and careful in her spending--with 0-{$d_entry}=0 to somehow make due for the remainder of the week. if chris does not call britney the following day, it is because he can't afford to see her again. now here's my thing: if i've never met you before, i don't owe you a thing. you did not make me smile when my hamster died; you did not buy me a drink on my birthday; you did not hug me when my heart was broken; you did not ask me to write something just for you; you have never held my hand. i don't even know you--in fact, that's the point of the date, for us to get to know each other. what have i learned? that you're looking in the wrong place if you want to enjoy my company. my wallet is quite empty these days; my heart isn't. i have nothing to prove to a girl by spending money on her i don't have; i'm not big on false impressions. prove to me that you're worth it and i will take you out every chance i get. i like to treat the people i care about; make me care about you. the idea that the guy is the one who treats is too much of an echo of bullshit chivalric values i don't believe in. they're based on the presumption that the male is the stronger sex and is therefore responsible for taking care of his mate. this goes back to the days when men scribbled on cave walls and everyone had bad teeth. then came the wheel and fire and everyone burned their bras so where does that leave us now? you have a job; take me out to dinner. wednesday, august 16 5:45 pm as far as remarkable, noteworthy days go, this has not been one. looking back, i've already forgotten all about it. if a memorable day were john, today was clearly ringo. just thought i'd check in and let ya know. tuesday, august 15 10:55 am so i thought bill looked very impressive during his pre-speech strut through the halls in the bowels of the staples center. it was a scene oddly reminiscent of the pre-match build-up in the wwf. i'd like to know where they were hiding all the bikini-clad beauties, personally. i guess the clinton-gore admininistration doesn't want us to draw any more conclusions. besides, they did a good enough job parading hillary around for all to see. i was kind of let-down, though, by the distinct lack of fireworks as big bubba burst onto the stage. and halfway through the speech, when i finally realized there would be no one breaking a chair over the president's back...well, i was certainly a bit disheartened. even moreso when hillary failed to end up in a piledriver. and you kinda hoped that big bill would can all the insinuation and just shout outright: "GEORGE W--IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING! AND THIS NOVEMBER, YOU'RE GONNA PAY!!!! the crowd was admittedly more raucous than your usual wrestling mob, and their relentless need to chant anything resembling a catch-phrase ("YES! WE! ARE!") just goes to show you that white trash and political sheep are at worst kissing cousins, if not incestuous bedmates. incidentally, a moral back-patting from bill clinton sure means a lot to the american people. maybe he should've stuck to policy, rather than forcing us to wonder what it meant to be a good man in the president's eyes. even as he triumphantly reminded us of the republicans' failed prophecies of economic ruin seven years ago--"Time has not been kind to their predictions"--well, from the way he wagged that finger at the crowd, you couldn't help but wonder where it had been. tuesday, august 15 10:20 am with so much to be said--well, by other people at least, i'm sure--about last night's big bubba hub-bub, i'd love to just dive right in and give my thoughts on the convention. but alas, work calls, and when you don't show up till close to ten, it's amazing how much shorter one's day can be. so until i can take a break and catch my breath later today, have a few laughs over the "tyranny of the positive attitude", an actual, yes real, study. science can be so goofy sometimes. monday, august 14 3:26 pm for those of you looking for a pleasant afternoon diversion, check out this online archive of readings, often by the original authors. after listening to t.s. eliot trying to pass a grapefruit out of his asshole (listen to him read and you'll see what i mean), i might just end up spending the rest of the day there. monday, august 14 12:02 pm i will be the first to admit to my vast political ignorance, as well as my mild attempts to actually educate myself as much as possible, especially with this rumor floating around about elections and such. that being said, i found this little morsel about the democratic vp-to-be to be, well, rather foul tasting. maybe it's old news to everyone else but hey, like i said, i'm trying, ok? along the same lines, a somewhat-biased but still fairly righteous arianna huffington points out how deeply ironic it is that the democrats will be preaching their message of prosperity from los angeles, of all places. with just a few months to go, it looks like i've got some thinkin' to do! on a lighter note, here's one woman's harrowing account of just how hard it is for guys to be callous, emotionally detached and phallocentric. bout time we got some credit, damn it! monday *yawn*, august 14 10:37 am sleepy-faced chris had a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning. after a yum-yummy dinner in scenic hoboken, i once again enjoyed the fruits of a late-night commute. pardon me if i yawn--it has nothing to do with the company, i promise. haven't even had time to peruse the morning papers, what with all the talk of the big convention and all. which reminds me of the time i went to vegas and there was a big porn convention in town, but that's another story altogether. how's this for odd: got an email forwarded by my company's customer service people from an old friend in manchester (u.k., that is). haven't spoken to him in about a year. he writes: insert british accent here I saw that one of your articles was written by Chris name withheld for security and stuff, I am trying to get in touch with someone of the same name who spent a year studying in Manchester. Can this message please be pforwarded to him if he stills works with you, or can you let me know if he has a new email ad. i don't know what shocks me more: the fact that i'm finally hearing from him again, or the fact that people actually read our bullshit website in england. and finally: considering i like to fashion myself something of a writer, it's a shame how often i take so little care with my choice of words. if you're in my heart, you know you are, and don't take these little slip-ups personally. if i adore you, then i do. no matter how i sometimes make it sound. *smooch* friday, august 11 5:39 pm surfing around, munching on various pitas, found a few places worth resting your weary fingers. thank you to the good people at daddy's car for pointing me towards stay free, a very cool looking and intelligent magazine that picks the societal gunk from between its teeth to get to all sorts of fun and juicy tidbits on our culture. haven't had too much time to look through it, but the article i read on advertising in new york was enough to make me bookmark it. thought i had more to share than that, but looking at the clock, i see it's time for me to be off it. so a fond and fair weekend to all, i'll be back on monday if not before with all sorts of scandalous tales. love peace and hair grease. ah, yes. before you go: i am a die-hard fan of hip-hop, i really am, but in spite of that--or maybe because of it--i found this site to be damn hilarious. if you have time, check out the infomercial; it's ten minutes long, but mostly worth it. friday, august 11 3:33 pm counting down till the end of another less-than-stellar work week. monday, i renew my commitment to finding a job that will be artistically fulfilling and financially satisfying. monday afternoon i give up and look for anything but this. so what have we learned this week? honestly, i don't care. not really in the mood for some mr. rogers bullshit right now. let's just say after an almost desperate start to the week (see entries for monday and tuesday if your mind needs refreshing), things took a very positive turn, and--job issues aside--i've spent the better part of the last few days feeling pretty dang good. that's right: dang good. (this is for the benefit of any friends of mine who actually read this regularly and care about my well-being.) hugs for the week: tuesday pauls for intense emotional dialog, who more than anyone else helped me find some sanity this week; the colorado boys for their continued support; linnea for showing that when she's not scolding me to get my shit together, she can actually be sympathetic; nikki for continuing her emotional support for me, in light of her own problems which i never seem to help. wednesday my baby doll christina for her dramatic help in introducing me to many, many cute friends, and ensuring that there will be some new blood on my social horizons; liz for being so damn drunk; marcy for feeling my chest and making me feel pretty damn good-looking; camille for being so damn cute. thursday pete for commiserating--trust me bro, these clouds are platinum-lined; myself--yay me!--for sitting down and writing on a thursday night, alone, and feeling good about it. friday my sweetie pie jen, who finally gets her damn mention on my page, for not hating me, even when i don't call or write; erin for making me smile and for everything she's going through, BIG HUG for you cutie. love and jelly beans for all of you. thank you for helping me through a very tough week. friday, august 11 11:05 am first things first, yes, i now include the time of each entry so that armchair psychiatrists can chart and evaluate my emotional progress or regression throughout the course of the day. also. killing time at work today, i decided to check out a few other pitas. yummy. stopped by louise's place for a while and decided to check out the four dimensions of sexual style test to find out exactly what kind of lover/partner i am/would be. the results, i assure you, were every bit as revealing and soul-satisfyingly enriching as one can expect from a quiz that polarizes its answers, obviously, to fit into said "four sexual styles." for example: 4. What kind of love relationship is the most satisfying for you personally? ( )A long-lasting one is definitely the best. ( )One that helps me progress in my life goals. ( )One that teaches me new things about relationships. ( )Intensely passionate. that being said, here is what i discovered about myself: You scored 58% Romantic or Sensual type of love. Romantic or Sensual type of love is characteristic of a romantic type of love and a strong physical attraction toward your partner. Upside: Every relationship needs a spark. Downside: Flameout-even intense lovers eventually have to talk to each other. You scored 25% Other-Directed or a Thou-Focused type of love. Other-Directed or a Thou-Focused type of love is a love that is centered on your partner's happiness and the ability to endure and overcome obstacles in a relationship. Upside: Every relationship needs respect. Downside: Watch out for clingy dependence. You scored 8% Logical or Sensible type of love. Logical or Sensible type of love has to do with a logical or practical approach to the person you love and how you express your love. Upside: Every relationship needs common goals and commitments. Downside: In the long run, love is neither logical nor sensible. You scored 8% Friendship or Best Friends type of love. Friendship or Best Friends type of love means that you put emphasis on friendship in a loving relationship and would probably find your lover to also be your closest friend. Upside: Every relationship needs moments of deep personal sharing. Downside: Even the best of friends have to keep the passion alive. of course, since i subconsciously/overtly steered my answers along the path i preferred, i guess it renders the carefully calculated conclusions moot. not to mention that said conclusions are pretty much poop anyway. oh well. any prospective applicants can send their inquiries, along with resumes and tawdry jpg images, to the email address up top. tgifriday, august 11 after last night's mildly productive writing session greatly depressed my hopes of penning the great american novel any time soon, salon's laura miller comes along and reminds those of us who either forgot or didn't already know that it's a pretty pointless enterprise. (not to mention, a great chance for salon to pat their backs on the new book.) let's face it, two people can't get their relationship sorted, three people can't pick a movie worth seeing, and four people can't find the right spot for dinner; find me a book that tries to speak to and for all of them and i'll show you an author consumed by their own monumental hubris. feeling self-righteous, i can now return to my own humble hopes. thursday, august 10 for those of you trapped inside the same dot-com bubble as i, it's always refreshing to know you're not alone. maybe some day, when someone puts a great big pin to the fucker, it will happily burst and out we'll all come, spinning and falling down to earth, back to solid concrete earth with real people and language that actually makes sense, titles that weren't blatantly invented for the sake of bloating an already bloated sense of self-importance, making you ask, but what exactly do you do? am i bitter about the new i-world? damn skippy! anyone who's ever been to a dot-com mixer will know exactly what i mean. the greatest mistake you can make at such a function is assuming you're there as yourself, rather than as an extension of whatever corporate entity it is you're representing. but on to other things. such as: anyone who's long suspected that the war on drugs has failed will be glad to know that some politicians are finally starting to wipe the crunk out of their eyes and agree. as representative tom campbell put it: "The street price of heroin and cocaine is less than one-fourth of what it was in 1981. The purity of heroin available on the street has increased more than fourfold since 1981. Incarceration for drug arrests has risen tenfold since 1981. The number of drug-overdose deaths has increased more than fivefold since 1981. The proportion of high school seniors reporting that drugs are readily available has doubled since 1981. This is not victory. This is failure." any clear-thinking politician should be able to see that if we're building more prisons as you read these words, the problem isn't getting any better. for every joe black getting 15+ for non-violent drug offenses, there is a joe blue and a joe green just waiting for that same patch of street corner. supply will not be cut off, ever. educate children, rehabilitate addicts and destroy the demand. and while you're at it, end the fuckin hypocrisy inherent in our justice system when dealing with drug offenders. give blacks and latinos a reason to have faith in the system. there is no reason why the predominantly-white offenders who are busted on cocaine charges should face milder sentences across the board than their predominantly-black, crack-dealing counterparts. this is an obvious bias. if prisons in california are being built by private enterprises, multi-billion dollar corporations who actively lobby the state government, they will lobby for more imprisonments and stiffer penalties. this is simply good business for them. sometimes, i really do love my country. sometimes. sigh. while i'm at it, i should warn you: it might be time to blow the dust off those stamps and envelopes and practice your cursive. who's that peeking in my email? big brother is watching... wednesday, august 9 so today's lunch isn't sitting in my stomach especially well. considering certain general rules i have about deli food--ie, avoid anything mayo-based--i guess i'm just getting what i rightfully deserve. wednesday, august 9 lacking motivation, feeling a bit uninspired, i did what any good man, woman, child, etc. would do in this wild Information Age to find that which he/she lacks: yes, i turned to the good people at yahoo, typed "inspiration" into the search engine, and waited for said inspiration to occur. here is what i found. rather, what i found out. about life. about love. about liberty, the pursuit of happiness. about these precious things which we hold to be self-evident...that all men are created equal, amen. if that's not frightening enough, this one's for all you little jesus freaks. god bless us, everyone. wednesday, august 9, minutes later incidentally, this interview with raekwon is an interesting little read. thank you to catherine and her pita for showing me the way. as they say in time: she's my n----! word. wednesday, august 9 so. here again. miss me? be honest, please. i hate being lied to. soul-searching yesterday was not quite so dramatic, but certainly productive, at least in a temporary way. we'll see how long this lasts, or if maybe just maybe i have made some small progress in my life. it is always helpful to have wonderful friends in your life, i have learned. thank you to mine, for paradoxically showing me that i don't need them as much as i need myself, whoever that may be. actually had a genuinely good time alone for a few hours last night; then the wine kicked in and i failed miserably at striking up a conversation with the cute girl next to me. it's ok though, it has to be. the lesson i learned yesterday was this: when i come to terms with myself, when i'm happy with who i am and can live in a cardboard box for forty days and forty nights with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, and the voices, yes, the voices; then, and only then, or hopefully a little bit before then, will everything else fall into place. writing will make sense, love, all of it. i believe that, i do. now let's see how to get there. tuesday, august 8 chris is out in search of himself. it might take a while. we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, but chances are it's a lot harder on him. we hope he finds what he is looking for, and is not afraid of what he finds, and will soon be back to his bright and cheery self. monday, august 7 bear with me as i work through this one. these are the thoughts that floated (forgive what will soon be revealed as a bad pun) through my head as i was taking a shit just minutes ago. again, bear with me. now, i have what can certainly be considered healthy bowels. perhaps excessively so. for example: if, on a given day, i were to take a shit no less than four (4) times, it would not shock me; three (3) is pretty much all in a day's work; two (2) is perhaps odd, with anything less being seen as vaguely criminal by my insides. that's a whole lotta shittin! this strikes me as odd--as it quite possibly strikes my coworkers. so as i was on the proverbial pooper just minutes ago, i thought to myself: is this a little bit too much shitting for a normal, healthy adult? i couldn't tell--i had no frame of reference with which to work. this is life as i know it. i wondered: maybe i should write to some health expert, enlist the aid of a trained professional to see if maybe my intestines need testin. as i thought this, and shit, i began to form a letter in my head, cleverly worded to ask in the most trained and hushed tones if there was something wrong with my excessive bowel movements--phrased as delicately as a one-ply roll of toilet paper. but then i paused--that is, my thinking. and here's what i asked myself: if this letter were being written, would i really refer to it as a "bowel movement"? couldn't i just call it "taking a shit"? i considered. "bowel movement" brings with it a definite air of formality, of propriety--in conversation with lords and ladies, one would refer to that morning's fine bowel movement, not that whoppin fuckin shit one dropped. it is at best removed from the truth of the matter, the pungence, if you will, the vulgarity. yes, vulgarity; but not in the sense of something rude, and offensive. i say vulgarity with the intent of describing something profane, and worldly. something of the body. the body is vulgar. it farts and shits, pisses, sweats, fucks, jerks off--some more than others--and, some day, wrinkles, dries up, dies. though we love and think and write fluffy love poems and say prayers for our dead hamster peanut, our body is just the dirty carriage that transports the soul. when you talk about the body, you talk about what touches and tastes, feels when it's rubbed against, bleeds when it's cut, vomits, coughs, sags. the body, even in its beauty, is immediate, present. the body is now without removal, without distance. unveiled, ugly, pure. i love my body. love yours. just be sure to check your zipper when you're done. monday, august 7 5 or more things i am learning about myself: 1. i am not careful enough with how i use some words, such as "she is very beautiful" or "i love you." 2. i have a short attention span for many many things, including puppies, dinner and flirting. 3. i am very bad at lying, except to myself. 4. i take many things for granted, including but not limited to: health, grandparents, clothing, sunshine, friends, hope. 5. i have only just started to learn even a little about emotions. also. i don't know how to trust. also. i don't understand desire. also. i am hurt very easily, despite my best efforts. also. i want to be in love. and. i want to be loved. then. i don't know how. (to be applied to most, if not all, of the above.) monday, august 7 apparently, this is what it's like to have your wisdom teeth grow in. or at least, wisdom tooth. (bottom left, for those of you keeping score at home.) either that or i've got some kinda mouth infection. which would probably explain all the pus. and the bleeding gums. maybe i should pay ol' dr. rothenberg a visit. incidentally, it must be good to be the president. one stupid joke about raunchy valentines is enough to get the man a headline. hi, i've been sending raunchy mother's day cards for half my life--where's my write-up, salon? so i was musing on the train today. yes, i muse. part of it was inspired by the excellent the hours, a literary tour de force, if you will, by the great michael cunningham. perhaps more importantly, i forgot my walkman at home, leaving me with no better way to occupy my lonely soul than the rhythmic beating of my head against the subway door. (this is often accompanied by a soft whisper of why thud why thud why thud, or alternatively, why thud me thud why thud me thud.) and so i mused. i mused on life, on love; on pain, on sorrow; on dasher, on dancer; yay, i mused on all those sacred things of which the poets have so often spoke, or spake, or speaked. here's the old man with his face curled tight, as if in a fist; here the girl whose face is long and narrow, drawn out like an exclamation point--eyes and mouth wide in awe or shock or horror. sighs and sighs, men who fan themselves with yesterday's scores, women lost in the arms of some passionate, bodice-ripping hulk, the simple stare of a baby. and in those expressions that show too much or too little, the poker-faced man who recognizes it all, the girl half-amazed at the newness and rawness of each morning...where do we find ourselves in all of it? when does the day become familiar for us all, when does the simple act of walking under a clear summer sky become anything less than an act of discovery? sigh. sometimes i lose faith in the world. usually each morning during rush hour. monday, blech, august 7 so. welcome to monday. sigh. time to channel all the wonderful positive energy of the weekend into a fresh, new, blah, long work week. as weekends go, this was one of the more enjoyable, pleasant, eventful ones i've had in a while. where to begin? the beginning? nah, too logical. how bout this: chris met a girl!!! shocking, huh? i "gave her my card"; let's see if she uses it. cross fingers here. very cute, very cool girl--open and energetic, and hello, a hip-hop dj!! insert shock here. here's this little blond girl from the upper west side who went to horace mann and now amherst, and she's telling me how much she loves to spin. we in the business refer to that as "cool beans." i'd also like to take a moment to thank my wonderful cock-blocking friends who couldn't buy one more friggin round so i could talk a bit longer. mind you, this girl was there with about half a dozen good-looking friends--if you're out to talk to girls, fellas, here's a good chance. but noooOOOOOooooo, we just had to leave, didn't we? then i bump into a friend on my way out the door, another pretty girl who i haven't seen in close to a year and who was there with two beautiful friends, but i guess the god of lonely car rides home was watching over me. what's the word of the day kids? "sigh." saturday, august 5 everybooodddy's wooorrkin'for the weeeeekkkeeeeennndddd... so i made it to the weekend in one relatively stable piece. who said life was hard? busy day so far, more business--busy-ness--to come. got my hair cut, went to the gym...feelin' delicious, i am i am. remind me on monday to tell you about last night's poetry slam. hopefully i'll have some good stories after tonight. otherwise i'll have to make 'em up. ciao. late friday, finally, weekend soon, august 4 well, if anyone's out there tuning in, you'll be happy to know my spirits have taken quite an upward swing. thank you especially to erik and alex, for their support across the fruited plains of our fair nation, and to nikki for just being herself. my acute little angle. also to my agent and the people at harper collins and my editor and publicist and jesus h. christ. so what does chris do when he's feeling good??? for one thing, he likes to start trouble. mischiefy me, yes, i get quite a kick out of pulling the proverbial leg, yank yank tug tug. so here's my story: went on a date two weeks back with the friend of the sister of a friend (re: the aforementioned nikki). this girl, who we'll call "monique" because it's "her actual name," spent quite a pleasant afternoon--i thought--with me in the park. we said our goodbyes after a marathon six-hour session of personal anecdotes and light-hearted quips, and i said i'd call her that week. i did. i called her that monday and left a message with a co-worker. i told her to call when she could. she didn't. so. i can be very bitter, very quickly. i am very proud, hell, stubbornly so. i was not going to call again. she got the message at work i was sure; also, i mentioned that i called in an email to her friend. she knew. oh, she knew. so. feeling mischievous, i decided to bridge the gap that had grown between us, that unfathomable chasm that was tearing our relationship apart. here is the email i sent to her (subject: hey sweetie). feel free to cut, paste and amend where appropriate to suit your own needs. *smooch* how are u honey bunch?? haven't heard from u in a while. did u get my message?? i feel bad about not calling again. i was so worried that u got it and just didn't call back...that i was too scared to try again. but then i realized that u probably just didn't get it, cause we had such a good time on saturday so i was probably just overreacting. i had SUCH a good time with u on saturday. i was gonna send u a flower or something that week, but all my friends said that was TOO cheesy and whatever, so i figured they were probably right. plus they said i might scare u off if i was too overbearing, and i think they were right about that too, because that always happens to me when i meet a really cool girl and i'm so into her and wanna see her again, so i end up calling over and over and leaving messages and stuff. so when can i see u again? all my friends that i've told about u agree that that was about as good as a first date can go (although THEY think i should've tried to kiss u, and maybe they were right?). plus some of them are really into swing dancing, so they thought that was cool too, and maybe we can get together some time and do that?? or i know i owe u a sushi dinner, so we can do that instead? or do u wanna just go to the park again and hang out like last time? i dunno angel, it's up to u. but call me soon and let me know, ok?? can't wait to see u again! call me!! *smooch* chris note: i will not be accepting phone calls at the present time. i am waiting for my angel to call. friday. august. 4. as far as days go, this has been of the one of those variety. i don't even have the energy/will/desire to surf the web right now. i have nothing to give you, i'm sorry. i have no motivation, i can't work, i can't write. no fun links. boredom. dreadful, tedious, boredom. i want to lay my head down, i want to rest, i want to sleep. i want to cry, i think. don't have the strength. what's my fuckin problem? everything is. bad day, bad week. this is childish. this is a third grade diary right now. dear diary, i am lone ly today. i am a big baby today, i am. apologies. i need something new in my life. not just someone, although i need that to. i need to start over, all of it, need to tear down the walls and kick through the floor. punch a hole in the ceiling, i need air, please, sunshine, please. help me breathe. help me see. what's that thing i wrote? I'm waiting for someone to find me. God knows I can't find myself. I've tried it before, but where do you even start when every place looks the same, when there are signs pointing in every direction but none of them point to places you know, even the language itself is foreign. And what it is you're looking for you couldn't say, you'd never recognize it, it might be standing in front of you right now with a cigarette in one hand and a limp dick in the other. i can't write, i can't think right now. i'm turning into everything i've always been afraid of, i'm those sorry fucks on the train who stare at the same spot on the wall for a forty-minute commute. where's my heart, where's my strength? two months ago my eyes would've cut right through you, they would've left a burnt-out hole in your chest. look at me now, look at me. i can't keep them open. sigh. tough day. will this friday never end, august 4 boy, am i having a bad day. feeling awfully nauseous right now, been shivering for the better part of half an hour. i need to get a grip on things, i really do. i need to get my head out of the clouds and my feet back on the ground. i do. still friday, still august, still 4 *whew* so now that's off my chest. now the beans are spilled. now the bag is empty, there goes the cat, no, over there, behind you, scratching at the leg of your very expensive armchair. for those (2) of you reading, no i am not miserable, no i am not depressed, no i am not suicidal. well, maybe i am, but that has more to do with my job than anything else. that was the part of me that needs to vent, and so vented i am, vented i feel. a little lonely yes, but aren't we all at times? i've gone through many highs and many lows over the past year or so. i'm used to it. i almost kinda like it that way. well, no, that's a blatant lie actually. but clouds have silver linings and silver linings have clouds, so we cope and we live. some day it'll all make sense. there will be many more fun and cool things for me to share with the world, i promise. but i probably need to do some work right now. friday, yes, august 4 anyone looking to avoid any "painful personal anecdotes" or soppy emotional stories should maybe scroll down a bit. this is better off ignored. i'm doing this for me. quickly, quickly, quickly. i want to get this off my chest as quickly as i can. yesterday, last night, i went out with my "ex" and a mutual friend. i call her my "ex" because we were never officially "together." i wanted to be with her when she didn't want to be with me; then we kinda plodded along because nothing or no one else came up; then she wanted to be with me when i couldn't return her feelings. all the while we had incredible sex. there's no word for that in any language i know, so i call her my "ex" for the sake of convenience. so. i broke up with her. i decided i didn't want to be with her. i came to her a pitiful, lonely mess, a 21-year old virgin who didn't believe in love or himself or the possibility of anyone being happy, ever. she had a boyfriend and i was in love with her. i wrote her things and told her things i honestly believed. i wanted her to believe them. maybe she did. she left her boyfriend. i thought it was for me but it was really for herself. i will not bore you with details of the next few months, six, or seven, or eight. i'm not even sure. we were never "together," so how long were we actually anything? can't help you with that. the short version is: she made me feel good about myself when no one else could, she made me feel desirable, and once she gave me confidence i wanted to "explore other options." i don't know if that's how i put it, exactly, but it's probably pretty damn close. i broke her heart so i could find other places to put my dick. i can't deny that. here's my thing. i didn't hate her, i didn't stop caring about her, i wasn't any less attracted to her. i'd never been with anyone before her and now i wanted to be with everyone, i didn't wanna jerk her around while i did that. or tried. i wasn't gonna share her with anyone, i didn't want her to share me. i said i'd had enough when i hadn't. i am not a noble person, i've done some terrible things. but i thought i was doing what was best for her, or, what would hurt her least. i hope some day she'll believe that. now i miss her. i think. i can't really tell. i'm not a genius, but i'm a pretty smart kid. i know enough to know that i wouldn't miss her this much if single life were nearly as glamorous as i'd expected. still. i miss her. not just sex, although i miss that too. i miss being with her, waking up with her, making breakfast with her. i'm a pretty smart kid. i know enough to know what i can't have, what neither of us even want. i told her this last night, all of it. she's probably reading it right now. she's probably the only one reading it. i am an honest person, perpetually honest, painfully honest. criminally honest. i can't hold things in for long, i need to share. so i shared. i told her everything, about how i'm feeling, how i've been feeling. how i felt when i found out she was seeing someone else. i'm sure you all remember what it's like when the first person you loved has moved on. most of you were lucky enough to deal with it when you were 16. it's no fun. even now that they're broken up, i spent most of last night hearing how much she misses him. she misses him. she doesn't miss me anymore. i'm trying to be happy for her, or supportive, or whatever i have to be right now. i adore her. she's my best friend, close to it. i wanted her to be over me. i made her get over me. i wish i made myself get over her. i will give myself some credit, though; i didn't ask for her to take me back, i didn't cry or beg because that isn't what i want, and we both know it. when she asked me what i want from her i told her i didn't know, and that is honest and true, i don't know. i know i want her to be happy and i want me to be happy and i would very much like to find out how to do that. thursday, august 3 so you don't even know me, do you? these things will come with time. for now: those of you with an ear tuned to the streets are well aware of this week's HOT release from the late big l. for those of you more T-R-L than R-A-P--that is to say, those who live on roads, not streets--l is the latest in a sadly long line of rappers who met their ends far too soon. pause for reflection. it was on my mind the other day as i listened to the album, his second. i mean, the kid had talent, he had the sorta charisma in his voice that politicians dream of. he was a witty sonuvabitch and sharp, so sharp. (hit up napster before it's too late to find his underground classic, "ebonics," for an amazing crash course in rap vocab.) so this is what i was thinking the other day, thinking of l and the late biggie and tupac, scott la rock and others--names that resonate in the hip-hop world the way a jfk does around washington. thoughts were being thunk, words were turning into sentences...this was something i had to address. well, someone beat me to it. and on a site that sees far more hits than this one. and from people who actually care enough to read about hip-hop. oh well. for anyone interested in this sorta stuff, it's an interesting read. overwritten at times (many times), and with far too much attention being paid to sounding really, really smart. probably coulda spent more time analyzing the problem, rather than just retelling stories of how biggie and pac didn't really hate each other, how big pun's excess (weight) was too much for him to carry. his conclusions are pretty basic: white people reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks, blacks destroy themselves from within. come to think of it, i'm not sure why you should read the damn thing. oh well. your choice. r.i.p. l thursday, august 3 seems that them there queers are stirring up trouble again. numerous members of the republican party continue to show their patience with america's gay problem. scroll down a bit for some delightful food for thought by gop delegates expressing their, um, tolerance. my personal favorite: "I admire the Cheneys. I had no idea they had a lesbian daughter. I would hate to have homosexuals come into the schools and teach homosexuality, but if she chooses to be a lesbian, that's her business. If she would go into schools and try to tell my grandchildren or sanction it," that wouldn't be acceptable. for those of you who aren't quite sure if we'd made it into the new millennium, you can at least take heart in the boldness of voters in kansas. (although the fact that this measure was even there to be overturned is awfully frightening.) and for you manhattanites who don't have the time to leave the office for lunch or even look through your take-out menus, let these guys do the looking for you. fast and easy, although not nearly as fun as shouting orders into the phone. thursday, still, august 2 let's talk about sex, then. where should we begin? how bout here, at this bar, in this room, in this impossibly lonely city? looks are exchanged, drinks bought, numbers. frantic seconds before the phone call, trying to patch together odd facial features tucked away in your memory, realizing you only just met, the lighting was poor, and how were her teeth anyway? you trust your instincts: i thought she was cute then, it was only my second drink. you call. dinner then, although you don't like to dance. you suggest a movie and the two of you walk instead. harmless stories are exchanged, you bump arms and apologize, can't find it in you to take her hand. consider a flower, something romantic. you give a bum some change to sing "lean on me." she smiles and you smile too. you ask about her apartment and is it cozy. she asks if you'd like to see it. what am i trying to say? i miss sex. dearly. i am in heat right now, i am downright ravenous. it is the summer and i am an aries and from what i've heard it makes perfect sense that there are times i can hardly think straight. if i were willingly encouraging this condition...shit, i'd be impressed. i'm not. it sucks. it does. but also: i miss romance. whether it be in the ways in which we're all well-versed (see above) or something stupid and simple as a card from blue mountain, it's what used to get me through my days. how sad and/or wonderful is that? lord knows work doesn't do it for me. i miss having someone other than myself. i'm so fuckin vain, why do i have to love myself? thursday, august 3 today's horoscope reads: This could be a very effective time for you. Use this day to introduce anything that will reach distances or masses of people. Make sure your motivation is for the welfare of everyone. apparently, this little pita you're chewing on was fated by the stars. go figure. i don't know about the masses of people, but reaching distances i can handle, assuming anyone anywhere is reading this. guess i'll have to start thinking about the welfare of everyone and shit, so here's my good deed for the day: check out the hunger site if you haven't already, bookmark it, visit it everyday please. (ok, i tend to forget myself, but i do try to remember.) it's totally legit from all i know, and very worth your 15 seconds. still trying to work my way through last night's dreams. maybe y'all can help: (notice the italics to emphasize the fact that we are now dreaming.) ok, so honestly i'm gonna be pretty bad at this, since i really don't remember what happened in most of the dream. the essentials that i do remember involved me, my father (SYMBOLISM!!) and some other random people smoking cigars and going into a tunnel and then flying out the other end. no, no, that's not it. we were doing some gardening of sorts, planting trees actually. (VERY SYMBOLIC!!!) only here was the problem: well, first of all, why the hell is my father helping me plant my seed. but more importantly, everyone else seemed to be getting these beautiful, tall lush trees, and here's the sad bastard chris with all this dead wood, so to speak. (you can make that connection yourself.) the problems is that the land i was t