Perspective

I've never really wanted a lot, like in the sense of really yearned for a lot. I remember really wanting my dad to get through his surgery safe and sound. I remember really wanting my mom to always be as happy as she was during the period when I was a newborn to about four years of age. Of course, I also really wanted Joshua Jackson to be my one true love, and I really wanted to own this Hello Kitty pocket mirror and comb set, but those were poignant, short-lived yearnings; I eventually outgrew my crush at 17, after nine years, and Hello Kitty is just so 1989 for the '90s kid in me. The truly serious things in life, I've never really felt a deep yearning for. I've never felt like I needed to get into Harvard, or else. I've never felt like I must have this car, or that house, or those shoes, or any other piece of material possession. In retrospect, my childhood was not a wealthy one, but I had thought so, because I had everything I needed: great spaces to call my own (a reading cave with a contraband reading lamp, a big boulder in the woods of Lawrenceville where I wandered and napped), my own custom-made desk, a computer when I asked for one, an ergonomic chair because my dad was just that worried about my posture, all the money I wanted for books, great food, concern and support from parents...I never learned how to want, because I never felt a need to.

For awhile, I didn't really know how to deal with wanting stuff. When I came across something I wanted, and it was always something I wanted badly, it became my whole world, and failure to get it would have meant devastation. I've really wanted great friendships with some people, and cool sounding gigs, so these things became larger than life. They loomed so ominously over everything else I should have been concentrating on, I put so much weight on them, they ultimately disappointed. I lost perspective, and only after the fact, after everything had fallen, and I've calmed the fuck down, did I realize that wanting stuff so much made me ignorant and shortsighted.

I've learned a lot about perspective from Ian. Every time I dwell and obsess over something I consider out-of-this-world, one-of-a-kind extraordinary, it helps to have him remind me that there are plenty of other things out there just as extraordinary. And he is usually right. All the nerves wracked over wanting something, it's so much to ask of a person. So much energy is expended over worrying and coveting and second guessing; in the end, it feels like an ill-lived life. Ironically, Ian is one of the last things I remember really wanting. Not just his person, but I remember really wanting something great to come out of our time together, and I remember really wanting it be more lasting than just a few months. That was one of the few times when I had enough perspective to realize wanting something like that so much might actually ruin any possibility of a future, and so we just went with the flow, made logical decisions based on our limitations, and waited to see how things would work out.

I have a couple of things I really want right now. I'm working towards accomplishing them, and I've envisioned a future with and without them. It's not so bad in either scenario.

Sick, So Expect Randomness

"I am very excited to apply for this position, because OMG, it’s AWESOME!" Ugh, kill myself. How does one express enthusiasm in eloquent terms? Enthusiasm is defined as a burst of excitement, of gladness for something that is personally moving, and so should not be reined in, or tamped. The writing in cover letters is generally dry and controlled, so any statement of excitement is taken as unprofessional, and the writer as some ditz who can't express herself "professionally". Looking back, I wonder if I would have taken a cover letter seriously, if I had come across one with such unbridled enthusiasm in it. I honestly don't know. I would write down my bones with every cover letter, if I didn’t feel like my bones were so silly.

Illness did not strike me for the first eight months I was in San Francisco, and now suddenly, I am having two bouts of super-sick within a month. There's really not much I can do, since I can't operate heavy machinery on the meds, so I peruse. I read through all the articles I missed, or dismissed perfunctorily in the past, then I stream some videos, go through my half-finished books, start to knit or draw, get dizzy from that, and then just collapse in a leaky pile on the sofa waiting for energy to come back to me. I have never done this before. All the previous times I have been sick (in adulthood), I've had to attend class, or be at work. I know it's a luxury to be able to spend a few days focusing on just the recovery, but damn, it is boring. How do perfectly healthy people spend their lives not working? Pack the days as densely as a cup of brown sugar: that's how it's done.

A booked jumped out at me at the library: All Over Coffee, by Paul Madonna. It's a collection of line drawings with ink washes of San Francisco, veritable love letters from the way they were drawn. I take it for granted that any artist who has a published collection, or has an exhibition, regardless of how small, "has it made". I mean, I know that before whatever art of theirs I first see, they must have struggled with self-doubt, and painful moments when nothing they create seems meaningful enough, or beautiful enough. But now they have it made! All those previous thoughts were silly, and in vain, and thankfully untrue. Reading the afterword in the book though, reading through all those years of worrying about money, about taking jobs that didn't quite fit, knowing only what you don't want to do, but not knowing how to make a living out of something you do want to do, these struggles are not confined to artists, and the doubts don't just end once you get a little exposure. It was reassuring to read that his drawings improved over time, and that he didn't start at some prodigious level, because that's what I tend to think about artists whose works are available for public viewing. It has always seemed to me that they just pick the best ones, but their body of work is pretty much on the same level. Patently untrue, of course, because no one is automatically great at what they choose to do, except perhaps da Vinci.

The first piece I ever knitted was a lace scarf; the first stroke I learned was the breaststroke, and I swam 1000 meters the same day I learned it; the first poem I wrote, I wrote in iambic pentameter, with rhyming; the first time I used chocolate in cooking, I made a soufflé. I have never been comfortable with baby steps. It is painful for me to go through the first steps of anything, because most of it seems so obvious, and anyone with common sense should be able to figure it out. I find that I give up on things, because I aim too high in the beginning, and when the result isn't as perfect as I want it to be, I take it as an utterly failed endeavor. That has been the case with drawing. I found old sketchbooks from grade school in some old boxes I never unpacked from my childhood home. At 11, 12, 13, I churned out stuff like an ink drawing of a Fire Island sunset, a bunch of lilies from memory, a reproduction of a still life painting by Luis Melendez in graphite, a laughably childish copy of Hokusai's Great Wave Off Kanagawa in pastels (the grace of ukiyo-e, raped by crayons, essentially), and many more. And none of it was good enough. And since drawing was just the basic first step to painting, no way was I going to be a painter. So I gave up, but I went back to it year after year, and then a couple of years after a couple of years, and each time I tried to take it up again, the fear of not perfecting even that first little step made me stop trying. If I could have done all those things when I was just a child, if I had kept up with it, I could have been painting for years now. None of the drawing books I've desperately looked through in the interim have made much sense; of course it starts with perspective and simple shapes and values. How do you go from that to actually drawing something that looks like it came from an artist? I finally found a book that approaches drawing in a different way: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Dr. Betty Edwards. It wasn't a question of how precise I was when I was drawing; I was thinking and going about it in a completely unnatural way. If I had ever thought about drawing in a right-brain sort of way, that ability had long rusted, and I know now that I will need to train myself to see things anew in order to put anything on paper that I am happy with. Perfection is no longer the goal. To be extremely trite, nothing is ever perfect, and it is the imperfections that make for interesting subjects. Being from New York, I generally don't like to look people in the face. I've been looking recently, and (god, this is going to be treacly, and I blame the medicine) faces are beautiful. Every wrinkle, pock, and blemish are just as they should be. Which just made me think about how different Heidi Montag looks with all her alterations, and that is a direction I do not want to take this session of rambling.

"Chi po dir com'egli arde, e 'n picciol foco."

And now, onward!

Work

"You take the pieces of the dreams that you have
Because you don't like the way they seem to be going.
You cut them up and spread them out on the floor
You're full of hope as you being rearranging."

Recently, I reread an entry in my journal that I wrote a year and a half ago. I was so unhappy, I had to leave work early, and the only place I found solace was on the second floor of the now closed Donnell Library. I remember blindly walking there, taking out my journal, and writing out all that I could not say (at least without being reprimanded or fired) about how I felt regarding the whole operation. I no longer remember what made me so upset, because all those niggling details were, at the end of the day, extremely petty and not worth the turbulent emotions they elicited. Perspective is always sharper in the backward glance. Well, I reread that journal entry when I was sitting in my quiet little studio 3,500 miles away, right after I had finished printing my first job in San Francisco. The distance, physical and emotional, that has been traversed since was breathtaking. All I could do was feel happy for what has happened, and for what I've accomplished since leaving an undesirable situation.

"And so I tread the only road
The only road I know."

There have been idle days since leaving my old job. Those days were never truly leisurely, though. My mother never believed in idleness, and did her best to instill that belief in me. At the end of life, the only thing that remains is one's life's work. So beyond paying the bills, and gaining material possessions, the one fundamental lesson I learned wholeheartedly from unhappy work experiences is that I must feel that what I do is creative. I need something to be made by me. I can't live doing work that's all about money-pushing, sector-analyzing, meeting-attending, people-managing. I remember having to approach a colleague to question some pittance he charged for hand lotion somewhere in Asia, because it might or might not have been part of our expense policy. And while I know that that's not what most jobs are about, some singular moment of focus on an insignificant detail, that conversation summed up how utterly stupid my job was. I could not give an iota of a shit at that point, and looking back now, I am surprised at how composed I was dealing with a situation that was such a huge waste of life.

I definitely think about my work more now. And not in the paranoid "Did I fuck something up, even though I've triple-checked everything?" kind of way. Mostly, it's about how far I can take a pun in the form of a drawing, or how I can make image registration more precise, or how I can be more efficient using certain applications. Creative, utterly self-serving details, and boy does it feel fantastic! I don't ever want this to end, and funnily, I would do my old job again, if I knew that it would bring me back to this point.

Coming Home

"Cold like some magnificent skyline,
Out of my reach but always in my eye line."

I went home to New York for Thanksgiving, and arrived at dawn in the city. Michelle picked me up from JFK after my redeye from San Francisco, and we embarked on four days of ritual and quality time together. We shopped in the Union Square Farmers' Market for veggies and herbs, in Whole Foods for the remaining ingredients, and then headed to our favorite neighborhood Chinese place Baby Buddha for a farewell lunch (they're closing after however many tens of years). Michelle had brined a 12-pound turkey for three days, spatchcocked it, and then grilled it. That's right. Grilled.



On Thanksgiving, I took advantage of the cloudy weather, and the lack of people on the West Side Highway – oh sorry, now it's the Chelsea Waterside Park ::eyeroll:: – to get in a run before the gorging.



After Junior High, I stopped running competitively, and completely. Even when I used to run, I was a sprinter, and rarely ran any race longer than the 200m. I started running again in San Francisco early one Sunday morning, just because I wanted to breathe in more of the city. At that time, the streets were still quiet, and empty: perfect for my loud wheezing, and lumbering pace. From that first run, I realized that 1) my boobs have grown since Junior High 2) the rest of my body is also very different from my prepubescent body, proportionally and 3) running is damn hard to take up again after a 15-year hiatus. I labored through three miles, walking when I couldn't stand the cramp near my right Achilles, and trundled home beat, but exhilarated. The next run felt easier, and slowly, I've built up my strength again.

Running on the West Side Highway's bike path was really nice. There's landscaping along the path now, and I ran up a platform to the tall grasses; I felt transported out of the city to some boardwalk above the sand dunes on Fire Island. Running downtown, I looked towards Stuyvesant and Battery Park City. There was construction for more park space, but it was out of the way of the path, and I only had shrubbery, river, sky, and skyline to focus on. Two tracks from Keane played on repeat, and I switched between pushing myself harder during the faster song, and gentler jogging to the slower song. There are some songs that are just so perfect to run to. When I used to jog on the treadmill at MIT's Zesiger Center during those Boston summers, I would run and run and run to songs I associated with certain people, and any confusing feelings about them would be forced out of my system. Running back uptown, I saw SoHo, the Meatpacking District, and Chelsea in all their sparkling glory. Luxury condos, luxury hotels, luxeluxeluxe shoved down my gasping throat, and yet, it was still beautiful, because I don't wish it to have stayed shitty and dangerous. I am just still shocked over the rapid change in these areas, and I miss my childhood when these neighborhoods were not overrun with chicks breaking their ankles in high heels walking on cobblestones, and with dudes drowning in eau de douche. Alas, money brought them here, and money also brought this beautiful path I was running on. It's a twisted feeling, this feeling about money.

I am glad I left. The past several months in San Francisco forced me to live a braver life, one where I had to relearn some basic skills that I had lost over the years mired in a demanding job. I wanted to spend a good chunk of my visit by myself, so I can traipse at my leisure through old stomping grounds. Even when I was alone, I found myself reaching out to strangers to chat, or to exchange random pleasantries. And I was comfortable with it. It was even easier in restaurants and bars to start chatting with the people around me. I remember when I used to think that that was one of the most difficult things to do, because it was always awkward for me, or because it always had felt unnatural. Now, poof! I also biked around Brooklyn with Michelle. She took me biking in traffic for the first time a couple of months before I moved, and it was a nerve-wracking experience. This time, I sped ahead, handled body and machine with aplomb, felt no fear, and reveled in the feeling of freedom on a bicycle speeding through the brownstoned streets of Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. I saw Brooklyn and New York through different eyes, and it would not have happened without my move to San Francisco. My old home has become even richer because of the experiences I had elsewhere.

After leaving my old job, I was averse to looking back at it. I looked it fully in the face today when I went back to visit old coworkers and old managers. After lunch and coffee with some old colleagues, I walked around the floors, saw some new spaces that were not part of the company before, and caught up briefly with people whose memories I had pushed out of my head for over a year. Going back into that building where so many strong feelings had coursed through me, I only remembered the positive ones. I know that I had cried, had yelled, had cursed there. I know that I had felt helpless, and angry there. Now, there's only gladness that I can sit down with the people who are still there, and laugh over past experiences. The past year has not been kind, and it shows in a lot of my old coworkers' faces. We still hugged, felt happy for a moment, and had good wishes for one another upon our farewells. Despite 70-hour work weeks there for two years, I had forgotten what floor my group is on. Riding the elevator all the way to the top, I only thought about all that I wanted to tell old friends of my new adventures, of my new life, outside of that little world we all used to inhabit.

I fly back to SF in a few hours...to my new home, and to this:



<3<3

Ramblings from San Francisco

It takes a lot to know a city, to REALLY know it. During a late night beer with friends outside the neighborhood laundromat/café/bar, I felt no closer to San Francisco after a month of living here. Too soon. I imagined myself sitting in Union Square on a late spring evening, and the thought alone transported me back to a home I know and love. I would close my eyes, and send little feelers to all parts of the city, and know it, understand it. The sound of traffic would blend into these thoughts, flow with these little feelers, and travel to all the places I've ever been in New York to grab a piece of the memory for when I'm sitting outside the laundromat/café/bar listening to a live band play unfamiliar music in an unfamiliar city.

The move was uneventful. It rained early that morning we left New York, and I rode the car to the airport mostly in silence. The big moments never hit me as much as I expect them to. They never have as much of an impact as the movies, television, or the media tell me they should. When my dad first told me my grandmother had passed away when I was eight, I immediately burst into tears, not because I was overcome with grief and surprise, but because I thought that that would be the most appropriate response. With age, I realize that big occurrences don't elicit an explosion of emotion from me; they are more like a slow burn that finally becomes unbearable, so I let it out one way or another. Watching the neighborhood fly by in the rain, I only felt like I was going to come back someday. The tender memories of all the good times didn't flood (until now), and letting go at that moment seemed easy.

I recently read an article on solitary confinement that elucidated its effects and the amount of time it takes for these effects to manifest. People need social contact, a quality I did not appreciate or believe when I was young. At one point, I wanted to live in an oceanside cabin in Maine with cats, and books, by myself for the rest of my life as an ideal retirement scenario. I thought that that would be enough. Though I won't be confined, I wonder how long it would have taken me to become psychotic with just cats, trees, literature, and the ocean to keep me company. I find myself craving interaction here. On quiet days when the dog is just not enough of an eloquent companion, there is a palpable need to reach out and make contact with someone. Not that just anybody will do, no no. I'm a beggar, and yet, I'm still a chooser. I often crave communication with my old friends, old bosom friends who have remained bosomy, who provide manifold dimensions to their conversations, not just gossip and trivial shit. The time difference is a wrinkle I haven't yet ironed out, so for most of the days, I pine after friends I miss who aren't even available.

A good friend of mine suggested poetry during times when I'm lacking inspiration, and it's worked. A few years back, I would periodically take down The Treasury of English Poetry, or any collection of T. S. Eliot's, and go to the game room where there was the largest window, so I could sit looking out onto Massachusetts Avenue and read verses that I could never write. There was a calmness in the cadences, and even though I only whispered them, I felt a kinship with the words coming from my mouth, like with prayer (I don't pray), or meditation. There is beauty in feeling lost, and there is value in looking backwards, though I have been taught that those two things are fruitless and futile. It is precisely the ability to feel a wealth of emotions that produces art, and without that sensitivity to all the different facets of life, there would be no great art. Sometimes, it seems like a bad joke to be one who feels so keenly everything that passes through one's life, but other times, it seems like a blessing to be able to glean significant moments out of the pile of mundanities that keep on coming, day after day, month after month, year after year.

With a tome of sad verses (what good poetry is happy?) in my hands, I give myself full permission to indulge in a period of mourning. I mourn the life I left behind in New York: the crisp mornings, the lovely neighborhoods, the people whose distinct flavor and jadedness I miss terribly, the friendships, the apartment, my block, the trees, the parks, the subways, the life that could have been, the supermarkets, the restaurants, the sidewalks, the memories from all the nooks of benches once sat upon, and from all the crannies of places, people, and things that made up who I am. And I am here now, meeting generic people, because I giving away only my generic self. "Hello, how are you? Doing well, enjoying the weather." I mourn the friends whom I've known better elsewhere, but who are here now. The spectre of a better friendship, long dead, gives me hope at the same time it keeps me down. Wishing to resurrect a time in our lives that has already passed us all by is also futile, but the yearning is still in me. The changes that have come over us during the years apart, I am not ready to face theirs, or to reveal my own. This sudden reintroduction leaves me still trying to reconcile that things are different, not just on hiatus. I don't think I was ever done mourning what I had lost, so this second round of mourning is a lot. The poetry helps, though.