You get to know your body out here.  New York in the summer isn’t the place you’d want to go if you didn’t want to wear your bathing suit around your new friends all the time.  Without air conditioning we sit around in our towels chatting.

Went to the beach on Long Island yesterday.  It was lovely, but crowded.  The sand was practically white and the water was warm and choppy and very green.  We sat on the beach and admired the good-looking young people.  At one point, someone’s friend’s girlfriend, a recent RISD grad, joined us.  She was sort of mesmerizing, because she was beautiful and because her knowledge of this fact forced her to keep doing these self-conscious dance moves.   We were dying of laughter, naively thinking she wasn’t noticing, when of course the reason she was doing the damn thing was because she noticed everything.  Finely tuned to watching, and assuming the watching even when it wasn’t happening.  Exhausting I’m sure.  But we noticed anyway, even though it was expected.  And we laughed because it was funny and because we were so relieved that her personality kind of sucked.  If she’d been cool, we would have all been sunk.

R and her boyfriend and I went in the water and bobbed there as the waves rolled in and the baby jellyfish floated by like tapioca balls in the great bubble tea of life.  The waves were “breaking thick” as R said.  Meaning they were arriving in tight sets, so that you were constantly caught between a trough and a crest trying to get your bearings.

We left finally, tired and hungry, and stopped at a bar/restaurant in our neighborhood for dinner.  The waitress was grouchy at having to serve us, and we were grouchy at not getting what we wanted when we wanted it.  It got dark and the fireflies came out, and a cat crawled under the fence and ate some cheese from R’s salad, and then we walked home very sleepy and vaguely content, or at least that’s how I felt.

Most people hate only children on sight, after sight, and usually before sight too.  This is a legitimate hatred, since only children are the worst people in the world, except of course in their own and their parents’ eyes, where they are the best people in the world.  Honestly, how could we have expected these children to be normal, when we insist on saddling them with the title of Only Child? Because this moniker doesn’t change to Only Teen, Only Adult, and then Only Old Person as the wretched Only grows, it’s no wonder these Only Children continue to act as their title suggests, like the Only Children in The Known Universe.

Of course, there may be some Whiny-Narcissistic-Won’t Share Swedish Fish recessive gene in people who only want one perfectly formed child.  When two of these recessives come together and mate, their “human baby” (it has not been observationally proven that Only Children are human) can’t help but to be an only child in the clinical and also literal definition of the word.  This is especially true if the couple has no more children, although you don’t have to be the only child to be an Only Child if you know what I mean.  We’re speaking here about children who have exceptionally long legs, exceptionally blonde hair, or whose closest sibling is 8-20 years older.  The last having the added distinction of being an Accidental Child.

If anyone has ever sat around on the couch on a Sunday and wondered what might happen if people start feeling too good about themselves they need look no further than the neighborhood Only Child for their answer.

Typically, you can find the Only engaged in some highly fantasy based solitary activity.  Like pretending the cupboard under the sink is the apartment they share with their husband Rick.  When they are not playing house with Rick, they can be seen practicing acceptance speeches for any number of awards, threatening that they are going to leave the sleepover if they have to sleep by the door, and daydreaming about a deadly pandemic killing everyone on earth except for Mommy, Daddy, Rick, and themselves.  These traits will remain fairly stable through adulthood.  They will be the kind of person who, when staying on a friend’s couch, will ask the friend’s roommates to please leave the living room because they are getting a bit sleepy.  They are the kind of people who think they are doing you a favor by sleeping on your couch and letting you keep your bed.  They make terrible roommates.  Because they consider your things to be an extension of their own, and have been taught to explore and be curious, leading them to explore and be curious right into the sock drawer where you keep your York peppermint patties.  They will, over the course of a week, eat all of these patties, and not feel bad about it in the least, so that when you say, “Did you eat my peppermint patties?” they will say “Yes.” And that will be the end of it.  When you ask them not to eat the plums in the icebox because you are saving them for breakfast, they will eat the plums in the icebox as soon as you leave the room.  Then they will write a poem about taking what they want when they want it, and their parents will put it on the fridge in your apartment the next time they come visit, which will be shortly.

And yes, William Carlos Williams was an only child.

It’s weird when you realize you’re actually doing okay.  Living your life, everyday, not visibly breaking down, or even invisibly breaking down more than once a week.  You’re not perfect.  And I don’t mean not perfect in that faux self-deprecating way of people who didn’t make the frosting from scratch.  You’re really not perfect. You’ve made some mistakes, and there was that one time.  But you’re moving past that now, and by moving I mean time is moving by without any help from you whatsoever.  There’s nothing you have to do to make your life go by, because that’s what it does.  Go by.  You’re still thinking about your ex more than is probably healthy, but mostly in a vaguely contemplative fashion, that could really be extrapolated to all of life – this particular ex just one example of the infinite strangeness of people you love moving in and out of the space in front of your face.  And you feel good basically, which is no small feat, but feels pretty small when you’re feeling good and realizing you need to get another hobby besides making yourself feel good.  It’s like finally landing a paying job, and immediately feeling guilty because you think you should start giving back.  To whom?  I have a few ideas, all are included in the Best Original Screenplay speech I practice on the treadmill.  For this (the treadmill, those people, this day) I am as grateful as Oprah in an AA meeting, which would be very grateful indeed.

This is a story about the time my roommate drugged me. I was sitting in my room when J slumped gracefully against the doorframe and extended a Tupperware full of cookies toward me, “Would you like a cookie?” she asked. Now it might say enough about J to tell you that this was the first time she had ever offered me a cookie. I mean, I’m not sure she had never offered me a cookie before, the point is I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t. So I took it, because it was a goddamn cookie. I ate it and it was good, Snickerdoodle I think. Then we left the apartment to go meet her boyfriend and his out of town friends at his place so we could all take a taxi across the Bay Bridge of Death to the music festival, Treasure Island (or T.I. Not The Rapper).

Upon arrival at the apartment someone suggested we should smoke a bowl. I’m not a good smoker, but for some reason I keep aspiring to be. I’ve just never gotten it down and always end up embarrassing everyone, and thinking I’m about to die. “You are not going to die,” they always say, and I nod, but in my head I’m thinking, “No, I’m pretty sure I am.” People always tell you you’re not going to die whether you are or not. I learned that on Grey’s Anatomy. That way, if you don’t die they’re all good, and if you do they’re all good too. That’s just how it goes.

So we smoked the bowl even though I knew it would probably make me feel like I was going to die. And this time was only an exception to that rule in the sense that I felt way more like I was going to die than I ever had before, and this is because I went blind. We smoked the bowl and went out to Haight Street to wait for the taxi. I went into a store to get water, and when I got in there I couldn’t see anything. There were only white and black splotches where the Pellegrino should have been! I seriously could not see anything, and it was broad daylight. So this is what it’s like to be blind, I thought. You feel betrayed but also pretty fucking high at the same time.

I was freaking out, but since I was high I was mainly paranoid that someone else would notice I had gone blind and think less of me. I felt my way out of the store found J (okay I could see a little tiny bit) pulled her aside and said, “Something is really wrong. I can’t see anything.” J is pretty much the best person to be with in this situation, so I’m lucky that she was the one who drugged me. I’m not talking about drugged in the sense that she suggested we smoke a bowl and I did. I’m talking about drugged in the sense that we sat down on the curb so she could rub my back and she said, “That “snickerdoodle” I gave you at the apartment? Well, it was a cat.” No she didn’t say that, but she did say it was a highly potent weapons grade Burning Man weed cookie. And there you have it. We sat on the curb for about 15 minutes while the guys sort of milled around behind us and (I assume) wondered if they should be worried that this girl had just lost the use of her eyes.

By the time we got to the festival I was seeing pretty well again. It was a cold cloudy day and the place was teeming with 16-year-olds on acid.

Yesterday, on twitter Mat Honan (@mat) posted a link to an article he’d written in response to Bill Keller’s (@nytkeller) New York Times article about how Twitter, Facebook, Internet, and modernity, are making us stupid finger puppets who can’t memorize entire books or engage in meaningful relationships. Honan pointed out that not only is this the same argument that Socrates used to deride written language, but it is also overly simplistic to conflate the medium with the message. It’s like when people say they hate TV. There are bad TV shows and good ones, but the medium itself is just that: a medium. Are things stupid because you saw them on TV? No. Stupid things are stupid on TV because they’re stupid. Twitter is the same. Yes, it can be pithy, snarky, maddening, and stupid, but only if you use it at the shallowest level. Which made me realize that that’s how I use social networking: shallowly.

Not only do I not post to people’s walls, I don’t even post to my own wall. I don’t think I’ve ever engaged in a conversation on Facebook or made a friend who I didn’t already know in person. I’m a little better on Twitter in the way that I actually tweet, but I rarely (never) respond to replies or reply to others’ interesting observations. Maybe this is why some people (me, Bill Keller) tend to think we are somehow better than the internet. As though we possess some ineffable quality that makes us unable to find fun where others have already found it. This is often expressed in a sort of #humblebrag that I’ve heard many times, “I don’t understand Twitter.” Which is not an invitation toward explanation, but a way of saying you’re better than people (simpletons) who do understand (get pleasure from using) Twitter/Facebook/foursquare/Words With Friends.

I used to feel this way about small talk. I went backpacking in Europe with my best friend C after graduating from high school. We mainly had a great time until it got dark. Then she would force me to “go out” to bars and discotheques, and piazzas and socialize with people. We spent a lot of time together during that month (full disclosure: we shared a toothbrush and a towel) but the only thing we fought about was me not wanting to go out because “you have the same pointless conversation – where are you from? – over and over with people you will never see again.” To which C replied, as she still does vehemently and often to my more inane statements, “Sometimes you say things that are so stupid I don’t even know how to respond to them.” And she was right. I’ve gotten over my deep loathing of small talk and discovered that the talking is it’s own reward. As with a good poem, there’s no secret meaning, no hidden reward but the pleasure of the thing engaged in as you’re engaged in it.

People who hold themselves back from these “pointless” interactions, whether they be at a discotheque or online, do themselves a disservice. It is as though we fear somehow diluting our personalities by sharing our views willy nilly. Someone, probably Bill Keller, might think we’re stupid. And so we keep quiet, saving our opinions, ourselves, for a special occasion. Now that really is stupid.

I have a friend who used to use the word “annoying” to describe every single thing in the known universe. Red mini vans were annoying, corduroy pants were annoying, and fog was definitely annoying. We used to make fun of her and be like, “M, fog can’t be annoying. It’s just fog.” This is the kind of non-argument my dad uses all the time, “You can’t hate hiking. It’s just hiking.” It’s not a real argument to say what the thing that you’re arguing about is, but whatever.

The point is that she was on to something. Fog is annoying. In fact bad weather of any kind is annoying. I realized this just last week when I arrived home in Seattle and experienced one day of sunny weather (not even warm, mind you, just sunny) and then everyday since has been some combination of cloudy, rainy, windy and bullshit. It’s really starting to make me mad. I would argue with M and say that wind is actually the most annoying kind of weather, and I think people in Alabama would agree. Wind can take what would otherwise be a perfectly pleasant cloudy, rainy day in the Pacific Northwest, and turn it into the most annoying thing in the world. A buffeting wind, and really that is the worst kind, the kind that seems to be making a shit-ton of trips to the salad bar, reminds me a lot of when I’m sitting with my arm on an armrest and my dad punches my elbow just hard enough so that my arm slips off the arm rest and my whole body goes lurching to one side like. In other words, it makes me want to cut someone’s face off with a Skil Saw.

It’s so pointless to hate weather like this, because there is little to nothing (closer to nothing) you can do about it except stare inquisitively out windows and ask anyone who will listen, “Is it nice out? I can’t tell.”

I arrived home on Tuesday to find my cat Max in bad shape. His once robust body has turned bony and his formerly thick coat is ragged and oily. He’s always been a sweet kitty, although prone to the sort of dull expression that would be suggestive of perennial pot smoking in a human. In other words, he was the James Franco of cats.

We decided to take our 15-year-old cat to the vet for the first time since his kittenhood shots. We located the cat carrier in the shed, lined it with a towel, and brought it into the living room. Then we busied ourselves with other things sure that the ensuing struggle to get him into it would be just that: a struggle. When the moment drew near we tried to entice him with some yogurt on a saucer. A boring treat to be sure, but all we could manage on such short notice. We were surprised when he actually crept into the carrier after it. But as soon as we closed the door he knew something was wrong, and started mewing pitifully. We drove to the vet feeling really bad about the whole thing.

In the exam room the assistant let him out, and he immediately began slinking around the room, eyes wide. She took his temperature (rectally, and completely without warning to him or me) and asked questions about his habits – non-smoker, indoor/outdoor.
“Has there been any vomiting?” she asked.
“Actually, he’s stopped throwing up lately,” my mom answered.
“Probably because he’s stopped eating,” I said, Max being such a lifelong upchucker that the absence of vomit was more alarming than the presence of it.

She weighed him – 9 pounds, he should have been 12. And then she went to get the vet. We waited. Max prowled. He was calmer than I would have expected, and I was sadder. I’ve lost several cats – coyotes, feline leukemia, and mysterious disappearances (coyotes). But this was the first time that I felt really sad at the prospect.

The vet came in, and remarked, “What a handsome boy.” It made me feel proud, that even now, even sick, he was a beautiful cat. Later, I thought that probably the vet knew this. Probably she compliments every cat who comes in. It was almost better if that was the case. If the reverence wasn’t for Max, but for this weird thing we do, which is bring animals into our homes, our lives, even though we know there will be money and heartbreak, scratching, and vomit, and dead bunnies. Even though the way a cat looks at you when it’s mad at you is the same way it looks at you when it’s not mad at you – like it’s mad at you. Even though cats probably don’t have the capacity to get mad at you.

Doctors get all the glory, but at least their patients don’t usually bite. Vets are fucking rugged. With one hand she held Max down and with the other started on her examination. He flipped out – hissing, scratching, horrible keening. So she expertly wrapped him up “like a burrito” in a large towel so that only his head was exposed. He immediately calmed down, and actually started purring. “They like to be confined,” she said.

She checked his teeth (lots of plaque), thyroid (normal), and heartbeat. Then she went to draw blood. While she was gone my mom and I wondered where they take the blood from. We figured a limb, when the assistant came back we asked her, “I take it from the jugular,” she said. Like I said, vets are rugged. Then she showed us how she does it. She pushed Max gently but firmly against the wall and forced his head back, so that his furry white throat was exposed, then she pantomimed the needle to the jugular. She said it was a one-person job. I would need 5 people, and a priest to do that.

She coaxed some de-worming liquid down his throat, put him back in his carrier, and told us she’d call us in the morning to tell us what the blood tests had revealed. We drove home, the late spring sun dappling the road, Max quiet in the backseat.

“I don’t feel that I’m enjoying my unemployment enough,” Cathy remarked. She was almost certainly right. It seems like it would be almost impossible to enjoy unemployment enough. It’s like a vacation that you worry might go on forever, which is, of course, not a vacation at all, but more like purgatory. You’re not employed but you’re not dead either. So being unemployed is like being a ghost. I’m mixing my similes here, but you get the picture. You’re here, but your life seems to operate in a parallel universe.

Which is quantum mechanics stuff. Quantum mechanics of course being the sort of physics we like: the one in which you’ve already written that book in some other universe. I was reading this article on quantum computers, which is to say I was feeling very inspired and very stupid at the same time.

They were talking about that Schrodinger cat in a box bit. Until you open the box the cat is not dead or alive but dead and alive. Superposition allows both states to exist at once, until the moment of observation when the cat must either live or die. But then the writer does this neat thing. She compares superposition to Freud’s description of ambivalence which he posits is not about feeling unsure but about feeling “opposing extremes of conviction at once.” So, just as ambivalence holds more information than any one emotion, so does superposition allow for a quantum computer to hold more information than a regular computer. What I loved was not just the content of the analogy, but the fact that it existed at all. What does Freud have to do with quantum computers, and how did the writer know to ask?

So that’s what I got from the article, the definition of ambivalence, the importance of unnecessary analogies and this: If you avoid your phone while waiting to hear from a guy you like you already understand quantum mechanics. He has both called and not called until you look at the screen and kill the cat.

Article: “Dream Machine,” by Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, May 2, 2011

Was just talking to C on the phone. C hasn’t made much of an appearance on this blog lately, even though she was a regular during the first year – my favorite foil. I was talking to her and she was walking around San Francisco. Which is just so like C. To take advantage of a beautiful day even if everyone else is busy or hungover or running marathons. Getting out there – and enjoying it goddamnit – with the steely determination that is in everything she does. I swear I could see her sitting in a park, as I’ve seen her so many times before. She would be wearing shorts and some kind of j.crew sleeveless top and those cheap aviator sunglasses she started wearing instead of her fancy Chanel ones. She would be looking characteristically Californian, which is to say beautiful. It wasn’t so long ago that we lived together, less than two years, but it seems ages ago now. You think nothing in your life will ever change, but the truth is that everything will be different next year.

Public transportation teaches us how to be bored and keyed up at the same time.  This is especially true when you live in a new city where you don’t understand the geography or how to move around it and your phone is dead.  This is what happened to me when I was on my way to Bed-Stuy yesterday to see an apartment. I wait at the bust stop alone, suddenly doubting that it is a bus stop.  I see a bus, not my bus, but it makes me feel good to have confirmation that buses still exist.  Soon, there is a woman standing behind me talking to herself, and I feel even better because it is confirmation that this is a place where people stand and talk to themselves.  In other words, this is a bus stop.

When you take public transportation the journey really does become the destination, mainly because you may never actually get where you’re going.  So that when you arrive at the interview or the open house you are dumbfounded to be asked questions that have nothing to do with how amazing it is that you made it there at all.  When you don’t get the job or the apartment turns out to be a hovel where the living room is a “crashpad for anyone who wants to stay” (but who would?) – you are only vaguely disappointed.  At least you made it to the place where the job or apartment was located, actually getting it would have been gravy: fattening and unnecessary if the potatoes are cooked right.