RANT!!!

sorry to unleash this on all (2 of) yall, but WTF IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD THAT NO ONE CAN DO THEIR JOB AND/OR TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR SUCKING AT WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO? i think i am officially an old bitter bastard, because i swear my aunts and uncles bitched this very same thing when i was a kid. i'm just going nuts. today's installment: The company who owes you $20k declares bankruptcy and says "sorry" for being unable to pay outstanding debts, and, relatedly, the county clerk lost the affidavit you hand-fucking-carried to them a month ago, proving you served a summons to said shithead now-bankrupting company.

like, if your only damn job is to stamp an affidavit when someone hands it to you and file it in a g.d. drawer, why are they paying you a salary when you DIDN'T FILE IT IN A DRAWER? and why do you have ZERO REMORSE about it? honestly, i am flummoxed. i feel like the world doesn't make any sense when shit like this happens. it's akin, in my mind, to someone just randomly driving on the lefthand side of the road, or cutting in front of you in line and being like "yep, i did." no excuses, no logic, no nothing. i feel like saying "GO LIVE ON MARS, WEIRDO." but don't keep working at the fucking clerk's office.

and i'm done. thank you. eff!

in other news, life is very very decent. I'm as-yet jobless, but getting to focus, in the meantime, on cool stuff like trying-to-become-a-calmer-person (meditation) and at-long-last-uncovering-my-creative-medium (writing). i'm totally committed to these two things, right now. i have a ton of ideas about the first of these two endeavors - and i'm hoping to communicate them via the second. boulderhomecook made a good point, after my last post: namely, that PRACTICE is really the key (and i'm carrying this truth into my two new "commitments" mentioned above) and that - right - writing is also about saying something that might not necessarily have a place for expression in your own, normal, day-to-day world. it's a place to go a little poetic and soft and adventurous, rather than the standard hard-edged, goal-driven approach that dominates most of life and its writing.

i'm hoping my blog turns into something that has a distinctive perspective. i'm sort of just ranting and journalling on here so far. sharing experiences. which, honestly, isn't terribly interesting, i think. i've at least determined that, AS A WRITER (he-hem! i am trying out calling myself that), i am, at least now, more of a non-fiction kinda writer. i love reading fiction, but i really want to talk about ideas and philosophy and life/reality when i write. maybe this just means i'm less well-adjusted than fiction writers and i'm desperately trying to make sense of all of this. which is totally true, who am i kidding - i find life to be a totally bizarre and nonsensical experience.

et voila.
xo

snow. discipline. chickpeas.

hi. both of you. it snowed like hell in ny yesterday — it was a dream. literally, i felt like i was in a dream, walking through the park while it blizzarded. there's something about snowstorms that make me feel like i'm 8. maybe it's the oversized clothing, the massive mittens/unusable hands, the impermeability/flop-on-down-ability. i dunno, but i like it.  i felt like i was in a painting, or in the best scene from the best, most hopeful, subtle movie ever. yeah - there's something weirdly hopeful for me about when it snows, how it changes the landscape you know and take for granted, how everything suddenly falls into shades of white, grey, and brown - sometimes a little orange; how the world you are so familiar with suddenly surprises you and feels like WHO KNEW we could have THIS EXPERIENCE here? i was walking through silent WOODS (in brooklyn!) where the snow stacked up on all the branches, leaving the undersides dark brown, and one side of every trunk was puffed with 6" of snow or so.  the lake in the park had frozen almost entirely and was green-grey, in contrast to all this white/brownness. this doesn't make for a very interesting story, methinks. but i was so crazily MOVED by this long walk i took in the snow. it was so QUIET. so thought-provoking. i was elated. i notice i feel similarly when it rains / pours. [do you guys experience this love-of-precipitation?] i like how a natural phenomenon just stops everyone in their tracks and brings us all to the same wide-eyed experience.  cool.  [wow - and incidentally, Loudon Wainright just sang a song on FressshhhAiirrrr with Terri Gross called "Grey in LA" - which is all about how the best days in california are grey, cuz there's just too much damn sun there -- WHICH echoes my main complaint about that state / and my main love affair with this one: seasons and the moody awesomeness of a landscape and sky that has more than one happy-go-lucky mood.] rant!

in other news. i've been thinking a lot about writing lately. i've been writing since i was 7 or something, keeping dumb journals (not unlike this one!) and i just remembered, i used to write POEMS in elementary school and even "performed" one (lengthily!) on-stage when i was 11. i thought rhyming was the coolest. anyway - i got to asking myself questions like What is the point of writing? Why write? What do i have to say? and while i (clearly!) don't know what i have to say, i realized the urge to write is really at the crux of things -- like, you could ask any painter, photographer, sculptor, musician "Why do your thing?" and i think the answer would be something along the lines of "i just feel like i want to" or "i can't help it." and then the message or experience for the end-user is secondary? i always struggle with this question of what-to-say, and i asked a writer-friend (a pro) how she knows what to write about, and she said "it's not a question of knowing what to write about. it's about writing everyday, and following what is going in an interesting direction." i felt so dumb after she said it. like i had just learned the alphabet yesterday and been given my first pencil. so obvious. any artist i've ever talked to says discipline - a daily ritual - is the place where inspiration is born. i tend to get a lot of inspiration and never apply any discipline to it, and i think i've been going about things backward. in any case.

i just ate chickpeas (cooked with fennel seed!), mixed with garlic-mayo and hot-peppers-in-oil. so damn good. it's always good eating around here when i can't seem to get to the store for any fresh stuff and i have to start getting creative with the LEGUMES that sleep in the cupboard for months on end.

bye!