oh, and before i forget...

happy new year, everyone. may the champagne flow freely, the object of your desire be within arm's reach for a good snogging and the next 366 days (don't forget, 2004 is a leap year!) be full of bright, shiny loveliness.

what are you doing new year's, new year's eeeeeeeve?

hello, kids! it's that time of year again, time to shout 'out with the old and in with the new!' time to symbolically start again. and you know what that means...resolutions!
i have spent many years making those big traditional resolutions--you know, quit smoking, go to the gym, give up...whatever. and i've never really been able to adhere to them. so this year, i'm taking a different approach. on the advice of a good friend, i'm regarding my resolutions more as a to do list, full of things that i would really help make the year a better one. so, here they are, in all their glory:

1. drink a glass of cranberry juice every morning.


2. listen to more al green.


3. leave the city at least once every six weeks, even if this just means taking the metro north commuter rail to some little hamlet in westchester county.


4. worry less, or at least try and keep things in perspective.


5. make another attempt to plow through 'gravity's rainbow'

and that's what's on the table at the moment. suggestions for additions, augmentations and substitutions are welcomed.


what's on your to-do list?

home again, home again

i wanted to write something incisive and brilliant about how nice it is to be home (which it really is), about how excited i am to see everyone and how good it feels to be back in my nice cozy apartment...but that will have to wait. for now let's just say this: getting picked up at the airport is the best thing in the world, particularly when the one waiting at the end of the arrival chute looks at you as though christmas has finally arrived, in your big red suitcase and four days late. 

gun control

so, while i've learned my lesson about making idle boasts (note to self: never agree to enter tournaments built on random fluke victories), i am pleased to note that from time to time, i seem to be able to wield a shotgun with a decent amount of acuity.
which, of course, means i hit two clay pigeons the whole morning. little buggers didn't stand a chance.

family reunion

yesterday was this family's equivalent of a reunion, with three of the five aunties in one place, several uncles, plenty of long lost cousins and even some of their children. having not seen any of them in quite a few years, it was wild. the thing is, despite the fact that we all looked a little different, and that most of the assembled company had eight million questions about my life in new york (i got to tell my september 11 story about six times), it was much the same as i remembered it. card tournaments, sherry trifle, free-flowing beer, racing pigeons, christmas crackers...really, the only major changes were that i was suddenly the tallest person in the room, but not the youngest.
refreshing.

and to all a good...

joan is a family friend, and she is eighty if she is a day. here is an example of why i absolutely adore her:
joan: may you have a happy, healthy and loved christmas. and new year. with lots of sex.

having a GI-raffe, my old china!

apparently, i am even more dismal at pool than i previously thought. and let me tell you, that's pretty impressive! though, apparently i can twirl a cue like nobody's business, with plenty of menace and resolve.


but that is no matter, because despite all the hype of the infamous tournament, that wasn't really the point of the evening at all, was it? no no no. the point of the evening, at least as far as i was concerned, was that i got to meet this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one in the flesh, and see my darling girlies again for the first time in ages. there was whisky and chattering and giggling and of course plenty of tramping around camden town. and, of course, i have photos. i will post them as soon as i figure out how to extract them from the dratted camera (including, yes, some stellar photos of stuart wearing my cap at a jaunty angle).


the only thing missing, of course, was the lovely third member of the troika, who we missed very much, particularly during our 2am ritual feeding down on old compton street, where we cackled madly about accents and changed the subject very smoothly (look, i've got water!), even as the good mark tried vainly to teach us some cockney rhyming slang. though there was absolute fiesta of fierce fabulous femaleness about that table (with which mark coped gracefully), we missed our owlet. of course, the prevailing theory is that if she'd managed to actually be there with us, the sheer power of the troika plus two would have caused the planets to realign, the heavens to turn themselves inside out, and basically the end of the world as we know it.


that's right. we can do that, when you put us all together. make no mistake.


anyway. i'm not doing the scene any justice really, but suffice it to say that it was a smashup good time, and though by the end of it my throat was sore and i was pretty much exhausted, i can't wait to do it all over again. for real.

saucy tartan.

we interrupt this morning to inform you that there are bagpipers in the field next to my bedroom window.
bagpipers.
apparently, they tend to swarm this time of year.

sing, carolers.

last night, i accompanied the fam to a carol service at the local church. as stuart said, 'hm. they're really giving you a  proper rural british christmas, aren't they?'


to which i affect my finest plummy accent and say: 'damn skippy.'

let's get this party started.

let me start by saying i was absolutely right, that the whole notion of sleeping in a room that is both silent as the tomb and dark as agent cooper's coffee is both disorienting and self-indulgent. after retiring at the shy hour of eleven last night, i slept through till about 12:30 out here, wrapped in feather bed and darkness.
of course, that could have something to do with the fact that i'd been awake for about two days prior to my lovely sleep.
yes, ladies and gentlemen, i have arrived on british soil. the journey was an adventure, though hardly one worthy of an adventure novel. i left my house in a made frantic dash, having frittered the day away with d., doing not much of anything at all. i packed in about five minutes and hurled myself out the door just as the taxi arrived; i am still wondering if i left the coffee pot on, or if my house is an inferno as i type.
arriving at the airport, i was met by the typical jfk scene--a line for check in that stretched somewhere to the middle of the departures lounge. utter chaos. but, i survived without mangling anyone (an actual danger, considering i hate both flying and crowds; they tend to make me testy), and made my way to the departures lounge, somewhere in the next terminal.
once i'd arrived and armed myself with the requisite trashy magazine, i was called to the desk, whereupon i was informed that i had been miraculously bumped up to business class.
this, naturally, led me to believe that i was going to die a horrible fiery death in return. i even had to call the biscuit to get him to convince me otherwise. you see, i had had a Very Good Few Days. so good, in fact, that i was certain that retribution would have to be had (i'm not very good at accepting large swathes of goodness; it's a balance thing)--i was on my way to england to see many people i love and do many fun things; i'd had a lovely little soiree the previous night; my occasional ability to avoid doing something stupid or be a complete jackass has kept me in good company; work can kiss my ass for ten days; and now, i'm suddenly confronted with the fact that i was going to have edible food and leg room on a transatlantic flight. terrifying.
but, i arrived in tact and on time, simply Blew through immigration and customs, and now i'm here, in our family's tiny tudor cottage, engaging in conversations about who is going to be redoing the thatching and the fact that the front door now looks like something out of a medieval torture chamber and smashing my head on the rafters. planning the inevitable christmas day trivial pursuit tournament (british edition circa the 1970's; hardly fair) and tomorrow's pool-to-the-death extravaganza.
see? my apartment simply HAS to be burning. 
and now, if you'll excuse me, i have some horlick's to drink and a fireplace to drape myself in front of.
bwa ha ha haaaa!

i'm heeeeeeerre!

let the games begin.

browzing

they say that you can read someone's past in their face, if you know how to read between the lines. i'm inclined to agree, though i think that if you want to read my history, you don't need to go much further than the eyebrows.

i was once told that i can be described in the point of my chin and the angle of my brow, and it's true. my left eyebrow is slightly higher than my right, the result of years of cocking it jauntily, in disbelief and incredulity, to express surprise and make a point. the lopsided brows (unlike my lopsided ears) show that i am an expressive girl, an animated girl who has had a lot of experiences worth cocking a brow over.

my eyebrows are also telling of more carefully hidden mental sensations. i had my eyebrows waxed on monday, and the aesthetician (waxer) was aghast at the state of them: sparse, fine, full of patchy holes. she asked me what i had been doing to my poor defenseless brows to bring them to such a state of destruction. to which i said: nothing but years of abuse can create that kind of lasting impression.

the story goes like this: at the ripe old age of sixteen, it came to my attention that my eyebrows took up as much facial real estate as groucho marx's did his. i'm not kidding. ask ross. he's seen my driver's license. anyway. at the time, having fallen victim to the ugly duckling syndrome and all the low self esteem that entails, i decided to take matters into my own hands and tame the savage beasts above my eyes. which i did. and they looked great. until i started getting a little extreme. i soon became obsessive about pruning the brows, to the point where it became a nervous habit. this is why i had only half of a right eyebrow during college. while i have calmed down some (resigned myself to a life of letting the professionals do it-- i will permit myself this luxury), the damage has been done. there are holes in my brows where nothing will grow anymore. these scraggly bits are almost like battle scars, proof that i have settled some scores with a few of my demons. i'm still crazy, but it's a different brand of crazy. and proud of it.

it probably sounds silly to you, that i consider my grooming habits to be telling signs of my own emotional fortitude, points in which i can take pride. but, when you consider the fact that many of the other ways i tried to destroy myself back in the day didn't leave any marks...i mean, a girl's got to be able to point to something when she talks about surviving herself. for some girls, it's a slash scar on the wrist. for me, it's my eyebrows.

shivery's guide to new york #6: the chip shop

in honor of my impending voyage to old blighty, this installment features park slope's own little slice of greasy british heaven, the chip shop. smack on the corner of 6th street and 5th ave, brooklyn's answer to the local chippy is heaven for (and fully staffed by) displaced british and the british at heart. i was first made aware of the chip shop because the biscuit used to live a block away from it, and dragged me there in horror the instant i revealed that i'd not been in. since then, it's been a perennial favorite for me--the top choice on those late summer nights at the gate, when we've been drinking for hours but don't want to move, as well as a great place for birthdays and first dates. the menu features what you'd expect--cod and chips, steak and kidney pie, meaty mac--all done up simply but perfectly. the desserts are where this place really shines though: if you are of the temperament that believes that everything is made better by deep frying, then you're in luck. because this is the home of the deep fried twinkie, the deep fried mars bar, the deep fried peanut butter cup and deep fried anything else you can think of.



for the more health conscious (who should really know better than to come here), all fishy things are available baked or steamed, and potatoes are also available mashed or boiled. additionally, for those missing a proper english curry, the folks at the chip shop have annexed their own dining room and turned it into the park slope curry shop, where you can get some killer korma, some mad fab masala and some thrilling tandoori, all served with your choice of naan or rice.


also, they do killer hangover brunch.



the decor is pure swinging london meets down home brooklyn--pressed tin ceiling, creamy yellow walls (on one side; spicy red on the side of the curry shop) with british pop memorabilia tacked up all over the place. if ever you were missing your old bunty book or blue peter poster, this is the place to go for a small sigh of nostalgia over a proper english beer.



call (718)CHIPSHOP to make an order, for more information, or just to get a fix on hearing that delicious accent. which, let's face it, you know you're seriously a sucker for.


personal favorites: chicken and mushroom pie. cod and chips (obviously). deep fried mars bar (only to share, unless you're really gunning for that coronary). scotch eggs. salmon and cream cheese omelet. chicken tikka masala. plus, they have IRN BRU and young's double chocolate stout! and very cute quasi-mod staff.

at work.

in the command room, we are bracing ourselves for war. ostensibly, next week is the week that bosslady deigns to grace us with her presence and deliver the annual reviews. how she plans to do this remains a mystery, as she's been missing for the four months she would ostensibly be reviewing, but prepare ourselves we do, nonetheless. and we don't fight cleanly aroudn here, no matter what the stories say.

in a way, i feel almost bad for bosslady, in as much as i can feel bad for someone who clearly has no conscience. when she walked in last week, 45 minutes late, to sit in on our meeting, the temperature dropped palpably. she knows we're not happy, with her, with this office, with anything. our conjecture is that she's going to adhere to the 'best defense is a good offense' school of thought; we're preparing ourselves to be mightily attacked. because she knows we're going to come right back with it.

so it's going to be an interesting time. i wonder who is going to come out the wiser; we've certainly got an advantage, three paeons against one overprivileged and underprepared quasi-manager. hardly a fair fight, really. but that's what we've been reduced to.

this isn't work, it's war.

on porn.

i have a confession to make.

i find hard-core pornography unsettling.

i don't know why this is; as a liberated young woman of the twenty-first century, i feel as though i should be embracing porn with open arms, as though i should have my own collection. i'm certainly okay with it conceptually. i don't have a problem with people, en-relationship or otherwise, having collections. i don't have a problem with people appreciating or working in porn. i don't have a problem with buying it or selling it (or, at least i'd imagine i'd have no problem selling it; i've never tried). but there is something...

i've got to be honest. walking into XXX dvd and video on 8th ave today (office field trip, best not to ask), i just felt out of my depth. walls upon walls of video cases, each featuring a cleverly punned title and a pneumatic actor/actress, smiling or pouting in an approximation of seduction. an army of coiffed exhibitionists daring me to watch in awe as they shake their collective groove thangs.

really, though, i think what it is is that hardcore porn makes me feel like i'm fifteen again (kindly refrain from boorish comments, thanks), lost and bewildered in the jungle of human sexuality and jumping at all the shadows of lust. things lurk behind those cases that i can only imagine, that i can barely fathom, and that i am nowhere near bendy enough to accomplish. i know there are some who find innocence of that sort beguiling, but i don't relish going back there. and while i'm no longer quite an innocent in the world of sex, i am certainly an innocent in the world of porn; and having fought damn hard to be the jaded prat that i am, i am unsettled when reminded of how much there is left for me to learn, should i choose to learn it.

dreaming, dreaming is free

it's amazing the power a dream can wield over the person who conjures it in the night. the right dream can wake you with a smile or a laugh, while the wrong one can leave you nervous and jumpy all day.

i dreamt last night that i accidentally detonated a nuclear bomb in my friend's parents' basement. i have no idea how i obtained said warhead; all i know is that i set it off. i believe it involved putting it in the washing machine. anyway. this is after surviving a horrible fight with another girl, one which involved chains to jaws and broken windows (and me mysteriously developing serious kung fu powers). the explosion was a small one, fortunately for us in the dream, who were all bound by that mysterious sleep ailment of not being able to run in the dreamstate. as such, we couldn't get far. though the actual structural damage was minimal, i woke up wondering just how much radiation we had just released, and what it was going to do to us all.

of course, it's an improvement on my typical anxiety dreams, which are a recurring miasma of losing my teeth and crashing airplanes. this one at least had some serious cinematic value.

the mysterious bedside box.

some unidentified benefactor just sent our office an erotic toolkit.

that's an EROTIC toolkit. not an erotic TOOLKIT. abandon all fantasies of penis-shaped wrenches right now.

it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular, and we have no idea who it's from. it contained:

tattoo you

i was told the other night that i seemed like the kind of girl that should have tattoos, that it was surprising that i hadn't yet gotten one. i'm not going to refute this; i also think im' the kind of girl who should have a tattoo, and i plan to get one as soon as it's feasible. but, as for why the moment of feasibility has not yet arrived? well, i have my reasons, the first of which is the most obvious: tattoos, at least GOOD tattoos are expensive. and every time i save up the cash to get a respectable job done, some sort of catastrophe befalls, such as a three hundred dollar gas bill, and i have to squander my savings on practicalities, instead of indulging my frivolities. alas.


second: tattoos, from what i understand, are rather SEETHINGLY PAINFUL. especially if you're getting it done on the small of your back, just over the spine, as i plan to. so it's taken a little bit of psyching up, as well as the development of some pain circumvention plans (which right now involve some combination of chocolate and gin, but i'm still exploring my options).


third: tattoos are, as far as i'm concerned, forever. while they can technically be removed, it doesn't sound like a fun process and as such i'd like to avoid it. no, i prefer to do it right the first time. which means i've been terribly picky about the design i've chosen to transcribe to my skin. what i have settled on is a roos original, that he designed specifically for me. a printout of it has been hanging on my bedroom wall, placed strategically placed so that i had no choice but to stare it down every morning. so i could determine if i was going to one day regret being emblazoned by it.

idiom savant.

i have it on good authority that hearing british idiom falling comfortably from american lips is a disconcerting experience.

can i get corroborations or refutations on that?

the birdhouse in my soul

there are times (not many, i'll grant you) when i adore barnes and noble. largely because the great corporate evil, while devouring such venues as my beloved 7th ave books for breakfast, makes a great celebrity petting zoo. it is where i once met neil gaiman, and where, last night, the biscuit and i managed to come face to face with everyones favorite john and john, the boys of they might be giants. they were there to promote their new children's book and cd, "bed bed bed," which naturally entailed a short performance on the 4th floor at union square, complete with wicked trumpet man (whose entire head turned scarlet when he hit the high notes), a trombonist and a tuba player, and a drummer whose kit included a slide whistle and a giant bongo drum.

suffice it to say, it was awesome. we sat about five rows back on house left, and so were about twenty feet away from the johns as they shook and shimmied their way through 'dr. worm,' 'metal detector,' 'birdhouse in your soul,' 'particle man' (which is apparently the TMBG national anthem) and a whole bunch more. i'm fairly certain that my head did not stop bobbing the entire time, as i danced in my seat.

the spectacle attracted a very diverse crowd, from the mistunderstood 15-year-olds discussing james dean behind us to the bistros and babycarriages crowd populating tmbg's own park slope (that's right. one of 'em lives in our neighborhood!). there was also a healthy smattering of NYU students and uber-geeks...in short, a healthy cross-section of my people.

afterwards, we all queued up for the meet and greet; biscuit and i realized early on that we had failed to bring anything useful for the johns to sign--somehow, the prospect of them signing stuff had eluded us, and we had failed to bring any tmbg paraphernalia. so, being the resourceful little critters that we are, we just had them sign what we were carrying around in our bags: edith hamilton's mythology (biscuit) and harry potter 5, british edition (me).

never let it be said that we're not delightfully obtuse at every possible opportunity.

turning into our addled deco alter ego

it's hardly uncommon knowledge that gotham city is just a nickname for new york, though you don't always catch the resemblance between gotham's eternal darkness and the mercurial sway between seething brightness and slinking shadow that is the living new york. but sometimes, sometimes you really see it. and looking out my window right now, they may as well be twins. the clouds are heavy and purple, like a forming bruise, but not so heavy that they lose their distinct contours. the wind is high and causing them to slink across the sky, occasionally scraping their underbellies on the buildings. the sun will be set any second, but now it still illuminates the windows with an ethereal glitter, only a short hop from the brilliant shades of crimson and salmon they wore only moments ago.

...in the time i've spent writing this, the sky has turned to slate and the lights are slowly popping up piecemeal. it's summer evening light filtered through a charcoal lens, through an icy breath, through a canopy. it's shadows and angles and voluptuous shades...

the buildings are not so much standing as lurking. just as gotham should.

festivity slinks in slowly

there is something strange in the office today. i'm not sure exactly what to call it, but i believe that it's closest in scope and size to...holiday cheer. early afternoon hennessey and cokes have left us a little giggly, and soon we will be huddling in the warm glow of the aussie's laptop to watch the british phenomenon known as 'the office.' it's really almost...it's the way school would feel about three days before class let out.

of course, despite all this festivity, i am distracted. because i am leaving this godforsaken hole for blightier climes in less than a week, to catch up with this one, and this one, and this one, and maybe even this one and i'm literally keeling over with excitement.

keeling

over.

par avion, par excellence

one of the adornments on my cigarette case, the prized chinese air mail stamp, fell off last night.

i am terribly, terribly saddened.

if only we could blame BOB, or perhaps the one-armed man. or the log.

in other news, how the mighty have fallen.

living learning

they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. then it's just a question of figuring out just what the aim of the lesson plan is.

for a few minutes, i wasn't certain which one was the teacher, and which was the student, or what i was supposed to be learning, and i'll confess i found that perplexing.

but i think i've figured it out.

and so for the first time in many weeks, i can honestly say that i'm not angry anymore.

at least, not at you.

maybe a little bit at myself.

the mistletoe mafia strikes again!

turf wars

brrr.

it's
very
cold.

let the holiday season begin!

shivery's guide to new york #5: 7th avenue books

it seems that i have an expensive habit (beyond the smokin' and the boozin' and the whorin'): books. in a world where i spend a minimum of two hours a day in passive transit, books have become a necessity. like many new yorkers, i devour a minimum of one book a week. now, given that literature has become exorbitantly expensive, the habit adds up ($15 a week x 52 weeks=more money than i want to think about in the christmas season), thereby putting a bit of a damper on the whims of this underpaid young professional. given that i'm not going to stop reading on the subway, i am essentially left with two options: ransack my friends' prodigious lending libraries or go used. still being essentially a cheapskate, i try and stick with the former option as much as i can. but, sometimes i covet a volume that i can't source in the library network. and when that happens, i go to 7th ave. books. located (appropriately) at 300 7th avenue in the heart of park slope, 7th ave books is housed in what used to be a video store; the mystery paperbacks live where the pornos used to go. it's a veritable treasure trove of secondhand wonders--well-preserved books from private collections, reviewer's copies, discounted first-run books and more. it's inexpensive (i have yet to see a paperback clock in at more than $7, and most are $5 or less), friendly and full of esoterica you won't find anywhere else. two blocks from the F, i recommend it highly to any impoverished commuter who doesn't look forward to opening a vein for barnes and noble. check back often--they're constantly getting in new shipments of fabulosity.


be sure to check out... the "just in" trolleys; the pantheon of brooklyn-themed literature near the till; the bulletin board behind the door; its sister store, 7th ave kids, just down the block; the new releases shelf, in case you JUST CAN"T WAIT for the used paperback to touch down.

scenes from purgatory's bathroom

my long-misplaced boss of infinite evil (she of the maternity leave) is returning next week to sit in on our 'weekly meeting,' so that she might prepare herself to give an accurate assessment of our job performance in the last three months. while she's been on maternity leave. suffice it to say, while we are all sharpening our claws and preparing ourselves to reveal to her in the most tactful way possible exactly where she can stick her annual reviews, we are also secretly dashing about in a mad frenzy so that we might satisfy her more arbitrary whims, the ones we've been assiduously ignoring in her absence in favor of projects that are actually relevant. because, naturally, the arbitrary ones are going to be the ones she rails on us about. they always are.

thus, the flavor of my day is going to be heavily perfumed with a detailed trawl through our company websites, finding places to put more pictures and pull quotes. for the sake of having more pictures. not because we have such glorious points that they require the thousand-word thunderbolt of an image to appropriately convey their gravity, but because the brass said -- and i quote -- "we want more pictures. all that text is boring."

all that text is boring.

all that text is boring.

while i'm not disputing that fact, i still feel rather emasculated (so to speak) that my job of late has been reduced to finding holes where i can paste irrelevant pictures because my employers have grown bored with their own product. well, that and writing about swaziland. but mostly cutting and pasting.

in other, news the troika is once again complete! after a month-long eternity, the glorious kate is back among us! WOO-HA!

everyone's your friend in new york city.

before i moved to new york city, i was under the indelible impression that it was a huge, faceless place, where the sea of faces constantly changed like the water in the river and all were doomed to fade into obscurity and eventual consumption by the legendary subway rats, or possibly the mole people. i was utterly convinced that i was doomed to be lonely in the great faceless metropolis.

tragic, tragic lies, kids.

for those of you who have a fascination with new york but are laboring under the same mistaken impression i have detailed above, let me tell you a little secret: if you want new york to roll over and expose its underbelly to you, you have to stop thinking about it as one giant, seething entity, when what it really is is a collection of microcommunities, gathered round the warmth of a world-famous name. life in new york is all about neighborhoods. because neighborhoods are far friendlier than cities. cities want to eat you; neighborhoods want you to have a beer and put your feet up.

the neighborhoods in new york each have their own distinct flavor; people flock to them because they want to find the other people in the city who will understand them. they want to forge a community with like-minded people, so they don't feel so alone in this wide, wide jungle. the hipsters go to williamsburg (along with my derision). the beautiful people go to soho. the bohemians and the rock stars go to the village. the muscle boys go to chelsea. once people figure out where to go to find echoes of themselves walking the streets, they're halfway to feeling comfortable in this city's skin; once they have a destination, it's only a matter of time before they insinuate themselves, and eventually feel comfortable as a part of a part of the city.

in my neighborhood, i see the same people on the subway on a regular basis. i see the same guy with frizzy red hair every time i go to the tea lounge. i am recognized by the bartenders at all my favorite haunts and my optometrist will pop out of his shop when i walk by to say hi. many of my friends live within walking distance, and the guys in the bodega downstairs always tell me it's been too long since i've been by. the teenagers working the till at the local polish grocery have a special scowl reserved just for me. in a nameless, faceless city, i have carved myself a life that i am an actual participant in, as opposed to an observer. i am that redheaded girl on the subway. i'm the one who is always wearing that stupid scarf. i'm the girl who always orders the spicy tuna. i like knowing that i'm someone's vague reference point, as many others are mine, that i am an interactive member of my community. of my city.

and that's how we all do it. that's how we survive; we plant a flag in one small part of the metropolis, and that's what allows us to hang on to the rest of the city for the wild, wild ride.

go find your neighborhood and claim it.

but seriously.

my stepmother always used to tease me that i appeared to be getting younger as i got older; the first few times she said this to me, it made me crazy. "i'm not getting immature in my old age," i would say. "i am a mature and poised human being." of course, after a while, my retort started to make me dissolve into paroxysms of laughter, because it's utterly absurd, and she was absolutely right.
when i was a child, i was so blindingly serious about everything. i'm not sure if it's because i'm the youngest daughter, or a child of a divorce or what, but until...well...a couple of years ago, i really had something to prove, though for the life of me i can't imagine what it was. everything was a question of accomplishing the task at hand, and doing it better than anyone else. get the best grades, speak at graduation, get the roles in the local theater, get into the best college, be the best best best! it was all very strange, because it was never my parents pushing me; it was just my own pathological desire to live up to my own absurdly high expectations.

as such, i found myself having trouble relating to my peer group. in high school, i was lucky, because i had an extraordinary group of friends who just accepted my insanity, even loved me for it. then i got to college, where i was looked upon as an alien being. i didn't drink. i didn't do many drugs. after a while, i didn't eat. i didn't have indiscriminate sex. as far as the other students were concerned, i had no business being there in their world. and so i became even more serious. i got internships. i threw myself into my work. i traveled abroad and started dating a man ten years my senior. i dedicated my life to getting through college and settled into the next leg of my life, the next defined target.

and then i got there. and i realized i'd run out of finite targets. the track i'd been on had suddenly stopped. the life i'd catapulted into was a wide playing field with no top and no real rules.

so, once i'd gotten over the shock, i decided to start having fun. 'fun,' of course, being a relative term as viewed through the eyes of someone who didn't know much about the actual meaning of the word. the 'fun' started with dumping the older boyfriend and falling rapturously in love with someone who could not have cared less. whizz-bang.

but then i figured it out, this 'fun' thing. i got friends, i got my music thing going, i got a life. i started eating for the first time in about three years. i started drinking (socially. i did not become an alcoholic, thanks). i started engaging in normal social activities. i started doing the things that i should have been doing in college--forging friendships, having fun, living my life. all the things i'd been far too serious to do.

and what did it get me? some broken hearts. a few extra pounds. some stunning headaches. a pack of friends i'd lie down in traffic for. a loud, ringing, melodic laugh that i'd never known i possessed. a certain amount of peace with my appearance (particularly the belly). some sleepless nights and some wonderful stories.

all that is hardly befitting a properly serious and studious young lady. so i decided to become less serious about certain things. i still smoke a lot. and i do worry more about my finances. and my health. but i'm not afraid of my life anymore. i don't feel a need to spend two and a half hours at the gym every day. i don't need to punish myself for being interested in frivolity, or being more interested in my social life than in my job, or being myself. i don't need to be smarter, or better than everyone around me anymore. i don't have to date men in a different age bracket so that i can prove i'm an adult.

i just have to be me.

and interestingly, it turns out that i'm kind of fun to be around when i'm just being me. actual, silly, goofy, loyal, ridiculous, crazy, sensitive, non-absurdly-serious me.

winter has arrived.

it's snowing. it looks as though the sky is reaching down, trying to absorb the very city. i hope i get to see it before it turns to sludge.

so very monday.

so, to explain.

i'm having one of those days where everything just feels wrong. the subways were working against me, i was out of rhythm with the pedestrian ballet and as such was nearly knocked into the street a few times this morning. everything i say is falling like an anvil to the floor, and my patience with the world at large is nearing an end. i'm snappish and having difficulty carrying on conversations.

today, this body, this persona do not fit into this life. and to be perfectly honest, it's irritating the living hell out of me.

again, stay tuned. perhaps this mood will burn off with the wind.

hide and seek

i am in such a vile temper this morning, there aren't really even words to describe it.

please stand by while shivery stops loathing everything on the face of this planet.

we will return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly.

on passports.

jason: I STILL need to apply for my new one
shivery: yeah, wouldn't be a bad idea.
shivery: it's always a good idea to have one on hand
shivery: you never know when you're going to need to bust away from the fuzz
jason: right. best to have six or seven of em
shivery: totally.
shivery: including one with a non-western alphabet.
shivery: i favor ukranian.
shivery: no cold war commie stigma, still totally incomprehensible
jason: yes, just to confuse people
shivery: gotta cover your tracks, man.
shivery: the stuff we get up to?
shivery: for sure.
jason: no rest for the wicked. Only asylum.