Had to Post the Minute I Read it

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/honesty0707?x

I Think You're Fat

This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don't really care.)
This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don't really care.)

Here's the truth about why I'm writing this article:

I want to fulfill my contract with my boss. I want to avoid getting fired. I want all the attractive women I knew in high school and college to read it. I want them to be amazed and impressed and feel a vague regret over their decision not to have sex with me, and maybe if I get divorced or become a widower, I can have sex with them someday at a reunion. I want Hollywood to buy my article and turn it into a movie, even though they kind of already made the movie ten years ago with Jim Carrey. I want to get congratulatory e-mails and job offers that I can politely decline. Or accept if they're really good. Then get a generous counteroffer from my boss.

To be totally honest, I was sorry I mentioned this idea to my boss about three seconds after I opened my mouth. Because I knew the article would be a pain in the ass to pull off. Dammit. I should have let my colleague Tom Chiarella write it. But I didn't want to seem lazy.

What I mentioned to my boss was this: a movement called Radical Honesty.

The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough -- a world without fibs -- but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you're having fantasies about your wife's sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

Yes. I know. One of the most idiotic ideas ever, right up there with Vanilla Coke and giving Phil Spector a gun permit. Deceit makes our world go round. Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.

And yet...maybe there's something to it. Especially for me. I have a lying problem. Mine aren't big lies. They aren't lies like "I cannot recall that crucial meeting from two months ago, Senator." Mine are little lies. White lies. Half-truths. The kind we all tell. But I tell dozens of them every day. "Yes, let's definitely get together soon." "I'd love to, but I have a touch of the stomach flu." "No, we can't buy a toy today -- the toy store is closed." It's bad. Maybe a couple of weeks of truth-immersion therapy would do me good.

I e-mail Blanton to ask if I can come down to Virginia and get some pointers before embarking on my Radical Honesty experiment. He writes back: "I appreciate you for apparently having a real interest and hope you're not just doing a cutesy little superficial dipshit job like most journalists."

I'm already nervous. I better start off with a clean slate. I confess I lied to him in my first e-mail -- that I haven't ordered all his books on Amazon yet. I was just trying to impress upon him that I was serious about his work. He writes back: "Thanks for your honesty in attempting to guess what your manipulative and self-protective motive must have been."

Blanton lives in a house he built himself, perched on a hill in the town of Stanley, Virginia, population 1,331. We're sitting on white chairs in a room with enormous windows and a crackling fireplace. He's swirling a glass of Maker's Mark bourbon and water and telling me why it's important to live with no lies.

"You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole fucking life. It's a better life."

"Do you think it's ever okay to lie?" I ask.

"I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie....I lie to any government official." (Blanton's politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky's.) "I lie to the IRS. I always take more deductions than are justified. I lie in golf. And in poker."

Blanton adjusts his crotch. I expected him to be a bully. Or maybe a new-age huckster with a bead necklace who sits cross-legged on the floor. He's neither. He's a former Texan with a big belly and a big laugh and a big voice. He's got a bushy head of gray hair and a twang that makes his bye sound like bah. He calls himself "white trash with a Ph.D." If you mixed DNA from Lyndon Johnson, Ken Kesey, and threw in the nonannoying parts of Dr. Phil, you might get Blanton.

He ran for Congress twice, with the novel promise that he'd be an honest politician. In 2004, he got a surprising 25 percent of the vote in his Virginia district as an independent. In 2006, the Democrats considered endorsing him but got skittish about his weeklong workshops, which involve a day of total nudity. They also weren't crazy that he's been married five times (currently to a Swedish flight attendant twenty-six years his junior). He ran again but withdrew when it became clear he was going to be crushed.

My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I've had in fifteen years as a journalist. Usually, there's a fair amount of ass kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that terrible, terrible rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I'd be insulting his life's work. It's my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it's liberating, exhilarating.

When Blanton rambles on about President Bush, I say, "You know, I stopped listening about a minute ago."

"Thanks for telling me," he says.

I tell him, "You look older than you do in the author photo for your book," and when he veers too far into therapyspeak, I say, "That just sounds like gobbledygook."

"Thanks," he replies." Or, "That's fine."

Blanton has a temper -- he threatened to "beat the shit" out of a newspaper editor during the campaign -- but it hasn't flared tonight. The closest he comes to attacking me is when he says I am self-indulgent and Esquire is pretentious. Both true.

Blanton pours himself another bourbon and water. He's got a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, and when he spits into the fireplace, the flames crackle louder.

"My boss says you sound like a dick," I say.

"Tell your boss he's a dick," he says.

"I'm glad you picked your nose just now," I say. "Because it was funny and disgusting, and it'll make a good detail for the article."

"That's fine. I'll pick my ass in a minute." Then he unleashes his deep Texan laugh: heh, heh, heh. (He also burps and farts throughout our conversation; he believes the one-cheek sneak is "a little deceitful.")

No topic is off-limits. "I've slept with more than five hundred women and about a half dozen men," he tells me. "I've had a whole bunch of threesomes" -- one of which involved a hermaphrodite prostitute equipped with dual organs.

What about animals?

Blanton thinks for a minute. "I let my dog lick my dick once."

If he hadn't devoted his life to Radical Honesty, I'd say he was, to use his own phrase, as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. But I don't think he is. I believe he's telling the truth. Which is a startling thing for a journalist to confront. Generally, I'm devoting 30 percent of my mental energy to figuring out what a source is lying about or hiding from me. Another 20 percent goes into scheming about how to unearth that buried truth. No need for that today.

"I was disappointed when I visited your office," I tell Blanton. (Earlier he had shown me a small, cluttered single-room office that serves as the Radical Honesty headquarters.) "I'm impressed by exteriors, so I would have been impressed by an office building in some city, not a room in Butt Fuck, Virginia. For my article, I want this to be a legitimate movement, not a fringe movement."

"What about a legitimate fringe movement?" asks Blanton, who has, by this time, had three bourbons.

Blanton's legitimate fringe movement is sizable but not huge. He's sold 175,000 books in eleven languages and has twenty-five trainers assisting in workshops and running practice groups around the country.

Now, my editor thinks I'm overreaching here and trying too hard to justify this article's existence, but I think society is speeding toward its own version of Radical Honesty. The truth of our lives is increasingly being exposed, both voluntarily (MySpace pages, transparent business transactions) and involuntarily. (See Gonzales and Google, or ask Alec Baldwin.) For better or worse, we may all soon be Brad Blantons. I need to be prepared. [Such bullshit. -- Ed.]

I return to New York and immediately set about delaying my experiment. When you're with Blanton, you think, Yes, I can do this! The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. But when I get back to bosses and fragile friendships, I continue my lying ways.

"How's Radical Honesty going?" my boss asks.

"It's okay," I lie. "A little slow."

A couple of weeks later, I finally get some inspiration from my friend's five-year-old daughter, Alison. We are in Central Park for a play date. Out of nowhere, Alison looks at me evenly and says, "Your teeth are yellow because you drink coffee all day."

Damn. Now that's some radical honesty for you. Maybe I should be more like a five-year-old. An hour later, she shows me her new pet bug -- a beetle of some sort that she has in her cupped hands.

"It's napping," she whispers.

I nudge the insect with my finger. It doesn't move. Should I play along? No. I should tell her the truth, like she told me about my teeth.

"It's not napping."

She looks confused.

"It's dead."

Alison runs to her father, dismayed. "Daddy, he just said a bad word."

I feel like an asshole. I frightened a five-year-old, probably out of revenge for an insult about my oral hygiene. I postpone again -- for a few more weeks. And then my boss tells me he needs the article for the July issue.

I start in again at dinner with my friend Brian. We are talking about his new living situation, and I decide to tell him the truth.

"You know, I forget your fiancée's name."

This is highly unacceptable -- they've been together for years; I've met her several times.

"It's Jenny."

In his book, Blanton talks about the thrill of total candor, the Space Mountain-worthy adrenaline rush you get from breaking taboos. As he writes, "You learn to like the excitement of mild, ongoing risk taking." This I felt.

Luckily, Brian doesn't seem too pissed. So I decide to push my luck. "Yes, that's right. Jenny. Well, I resent you for not inviting me to you and Jenny's wedding. I don't want to go, since it's in Vermont, but I wanted to be invited."

"Well, I resent you for not being invited to your wedding."

"You weren't invited? Really? I thought I had."

"Nope."

"Sorry, man. That was a mistake."

A breakthrough! We are communicating! Blanton is right. Brian and I crushed some eggshells. We are not stoic, emotionless men. I'm enjoying this. A little bracing honesty can be a mood booster.

The next day, we get a visit from my wife's dad and stepmom.

"Did you get the birthday gift I sent you?" asks her stepmom.

"Uh-huh," I say.

She sent me a gift certificate to Saks Fifth Avenue.

"And? Did you like it?"

"Not really. I don't like gift certificates. It's like you're giving me an errand to run."

"Well, uh . . ."

Once again, I felt the thrill of inappropriate candor. And I felt something else, too. The paradoxical joy of being free from choice. I had no choice but to tell the truth. I didn't have to rack my brain figuring out how to hedge it, spin it, massage it.

"Just being honest," I shrug. Nice touch, I decide; helps take the edge off. She's got a thick skin. She'll be okay. And I'll tell you this: I'll never get a damn gift certificate from her again.

I still tell plenty of lies every day, but by the end of the week I've slashed the total by at least 40 percent. Still, the giddiness is wearing off. A life of radical honesty is filled with a hundred confrontations every day. Small, but they're relentless.

"Yes, I'll come to your office, but I resent you for making me travel."

"My boss said I should invite you to this meeting, although it wouldn't have occurred to me to do so."

"I have nothing else to say to you. I have run out of conversation."

My wife tells me a story about switching operating systems on her computer. In the middle, I have to go help our son with something, then forget to come back.

"Do you want to hear the end of the story or not?" she asks.

"Well...is there a payoff?"

"Fuck you."

It would have been a lot easier to have kept my mouth closed and listened to her. It reminds me of an issue I raised with Blanton: Why make waves? "Ninety percent of the time I love my wife," I told him. "And 10 percent of the time I hate her. Why should I hurt her feelings that 10 percent of the time? Why not just wait until that phase passes and I return to the true feeling, which is that I love her?"

Blanton's response: "Because you're a manipulative, lying son of a bitch."

Okay, he's right. It's manipulative and patronizing to shut up and listen. But it's exhausting not to.

One other thing is also becoming apparent: There's a fine line between radical honesty and creepiness. Or actually no line at all. It's simple logic: Men think about sex every three minutes, as the scientists at Redbook remind us. If you speak whatever's on your mind, you'll be talking about sex every three minutes.

I have a business breakfast with an editor from Rachael Ray's magazine. As we're sitting together, I tell her that I remember what she wore the first time we met -- a black shirt that revealed her shoulders in a provocative way. I say that I'd try to sleep with her if I were single. I confess to her that I just attempted (unsuccessfully) to look down her shirt during breakfast.

She smiles. Though I do notice she leans back farther in her seat.

The thing is, the separate cubbyholes of my personality are merging. Usually, there's a professional self, a home self, a friend self, a with-the-guys self. Now, it's one big improper mess. This woman and I have either taken a step forward in our relationship, or she'll never return my calls again.

When I get home, I keep the momentum going. I call a friend to say that I fantasize about his wife. (He says he likes my wife, too, and suggests a key party.)

I inform our twenty-seven-year-old nanny that "if my wife left me, I would ask you out on a date, because I think you are stunning."

She laughs. Nervously.

"I think that makes you uncomfortable, so I won't mention it again. It was just on my mind."

Now I've made my own skin crawl. I feel like I should just buy a trench coat and start lurking around subway platforms. Blanton says he doesn't believe sex talk in the workplace counts as sexual harassment -- it's tight-assed society's fault if people can't handle the truth -- but my nanny confession just feels like pure abuse of power.

All this lasciviousness might be more palatable if I were a single man. In fact, I have a theory: I think Blanton devised Radical Honesty partly as a way to pick up women. It's a brilliant strategy. The antithesis of mind games. Transparent mating.

And according to Blanton, it's effective. He tells me about a woman he once met on a Paris subway and asked out for tea. When they sat down, he said, "I didn't really want any tea; I was just trying to figure out a way to delay you so I could talk to you for a while, because I want to go to bed with you." They went to bed together. Or another seduction technique of his: "Wanna fuck?"

"That works?" I asked.

"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's the creation of possibility."

I lied today. A retired man from New Hampshire -- a friend of a friend -- wrote some poems and sent them to me. His wife just died, and he's taken up poetry. He just wanted someone in publishing to read his work. A professional opinion.

I read them. I didn't like them much, but I wrote to him that I thought they were very good.

So I e-mail Blanton for the first time since our meeting and confess what I did. I write, "His wife just died, he doesn't have friends. He's kind of pathetic. I read his stuff, or skimmed it actually. I didn't like it. I thought it was boring and badly written. So I e-mailed a lie. I said I really like the poems and hope they get published. He wrote me back so excited and how it made his week and how he was about to give up on them but my e-mail gave him the stamina to keep trying."

I ask Blanton whether I made a mistake.

He responds curtly. I need to come to his eight-day workshop to "even begin to get what [Radical Honesty] is about." He says we need to meet in person.

Meet in person? Did he toss down so many bourbons I vanished from his memory? I tell him we did meet.

Blanton writes back testily that he remembers. But I still need to take a workshop (price tag: $2,800). His only advice on my quandary: "Send the man the e-mail you sent me about lying to him and ask him to call you when he gets it...and see what you learn."

Show him the e-mail? Are you kidding? What a hardcore bastard.

In his book, Radical Honesty, Blanton advises us to start sentences with the words "I resent you for" or "I appreciate you for." So I write him back.

"I resent you for being so different in these e-mails than you were when we met. You were friendly and engaging and encouraging when we met. Now you seem to have turned judgmental and tough. I resent you for giving me the advice to break that old man's heart by telling him that his poems suck."

Blanton responds quickly. First, he doesn't like that I expressed my resentment by e-mail. I should have come to see him. "What you don't seem to get yet, A.J., is that the reason for expressing resentment directly and in person is so that you can experience in your body the sensations that occur when you express the resentment, while at the same time being in the presence of the person you resent, and so you can stay with them until the sensations arise and recede and then get back to neutral -- which is what forgiveness is."

Second, he tells me that telling the old man the truth would be compassionate, showing the "authentic caring underneath your usual intellectual bullshit and overvaluing of your critical judgment. Your lie is not useful to him. In fact, it is simply avoiding your responsibility as one human being to another. That's okay. It happens all the time. It is not a mortal sin. But don't bullshit yourself about it being kind."

He ends with this: "I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining things to you for your cute little project of playing with telling the truth if you don't have the balls to try it."

Condescending prick.

I know my e-mail to the old man was wrong. I shouldn't have been so rah-rah effusive. But here, I've hit the outer limit of Radical Honesty, a hard wall. I can't trash the old man.

I try to understand Blanton's point about compassion. To most of us, honesty often means cruelty.

But to Blanton, honesty and compassion are the ones in sync. It's an intriguing way to look at the world, but I just don't buy it in the case of the widower poet. Screw Blanton. (By the way: I broke Radical Honesty and changed the identifying details of the old-man story so as not to humiliate him. Also, I've messed a bit with the timeline of events to simplify things. Sorry.)

To compensate for my wimpiness, I decide to toughen up. Which is probably the exact wrong thing to do. Today, I'm getting a haircut, and my barber is telling me he doesn't want his wife to get pregnant because she'll get too fat (a bit of radical honesty of his own), and I say, "You know, I'm tired. I have a cold. I don't want to talk anymore. I want to read."

"Okay," he says, wielding his scissors, "go ahead and read."

Later, I do the same thing with my in-laws when they're yapping on about preschools. "I'm bored," I announce. "I'll be back later." And with that, I leave the living room.

I tell Blanton, hoping for his approval. Did anything come of it? he asks. Any discussions and insights? Hmmm.

He's right. If you're going to be a schmuck, at least you should find some redeeming quality in it. Blanton's a master of this. One of his tricks is to say things with such glee and enthusiasm, it's hard to get too pissed. "You may be a petty asshole," he says, "but at least you're not a secret petty asshole." Then he'll laugh.

I have yet to learn that trick myself. Consider how I handled this scene at a diner a couple of blocks from my apartment.

"Everything okay?" asked our server, an Asian man with tattoos.

"Yeah, except for the coffee. I always have to order espresso here, because the espresso tastes like regular coffee. The regular coffee here is terrible. Can't you guys make stronger coffee?"

The waiter said no and walked away. My friend looked at me. "I'm embarrassed for you," he said. "And I'm embarrassed to be around you."

"I know. Me, too." I felt like a Hollywood producer who parks in handicapped spots. I ask Blanton what I should have done.

"You should have said, 'This coffee tastes like shit!' " he says, cackling.

I will say this: One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I'm saving a whole lot of time. It's a cut-to-the-chase way to live. At work, I've been waiting for my boss to reply to a memo for ten days. So I write him: "I'm annoyed that you didn't respond to our memo earlier. But at the same time, I'm relieved, because then if we don't nail one of the things you want, we can blame any delays on your lack of response."

Pressing send makes me nervous -- but the e-mail works. My boss responds: "I will endeavor to respond by tomorrow. Been gone from N.Y. for two weeks." It is borderline apologetic. I can push my power with my boss further than I thought.

Later, a friend of a friend wants to meet for a meal. I tell him I don't like leaving my house. "I agree to meet some people for lunch because I fear hurting their feelings if I don't. And in this terrifying age where everyone has a blog, I don't want to offend people, because then they'd write on their blogs what an asshole I am, and it would turn up in every Google search for the rest of my life."

He writes back: "Normally, I don't really like meeting editors anyway. Makes me ill to think about it, because I'm afraid of coming off like the idiot that, deep down, I suspect I am."

That's one thing I've noticed: When I am radically honest, people become radically honest themselves. I feel my resentment fade away. I like this guy. We have a good meeting.

In fact, all my relationships can take a whole lot more truth than I expected. Consider this one: For years, I've had a chronic problem where I refer to my wife, Julie, by my sister's name, Beryl. I always catch myself midway through and pretend it didn't happen. I've never confessed to Julie. Why should I? It either means that I'm sexually attracted to my sister, which is not good. Or that I think of my wife as my sister, also not good.

But today, in the kitchen, when I have my standard mental sister-wife mix-up, I decide to tell Julie about it.

"That's strange," she says.

We talk about it. I feel unburdened, closer to my wife now that we share this quirky, slightly disturbing knowledge. I realize that by keeping it secret, I had given it way too much weight. I hope she feels the same way.

I call up Blanton one last time, to get his honest opinion about how I've done.

"I'm finishing my experiment," I say.

"You going to start lying again?" he asks.

"Hell yeah."

"Oh, shit. It didn't work."

"But I'm going to lie less than I did before."

I tell him about my confession to Julie that I sometimes want to call her Beryl. "No big deal," says Blanton. "People in other cultures have sex with their sisters all the time."

I bring up the episode about telling the editor from Rachael Ray's magazine that I tried to look down her shirt, but he sounds disappointed. "Did you tell your wife?" he asks. "That's the good part."

Finally, I describe to him how I told Julie that I didn't care to hear the end of her story about fixing her computer. Blanton asks how she responded.

"She said, 'Fuck you.' "

"That's good!" Blanton says. "I like that. That's communicating."

Find this article at: http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707

Angst, Mush and Music

Where does the angst come from? It's still here at times and it still manifests just behind the shoulder and the back of my neck, taught and tense, threatening to break out.

Is it from wanting everything to be perfect while grappling with the idea that most things are not under my control?
Or perhaps from struggling with the fact that every point is to do with another point in the future, with the niggling fear that that point may never come. It's happened before.

Does that mean being happy now? How when everything I want won't come until I am installed in another city?
This is a wonderful City, but it's incomplete and I've always felt incongruous. So where do I sleep at night?

Perhaps the cause is wanting to be everything I want to and knowing that I can but it'll take time. I suppose patience keeps it under check.

I know I am very happy with who I am. But there's so much more I can do, so much I want to.
----------------

I think I also figured what it means to be in an adult relationship. It's none of that mindfucking and watching every step that I used to have. It's not having to think of the "right" thing to say. It just is. It is right?
:o)
So we do fight and as much as she wishes we didn't, we do. And I suppose that's what it has taken for me to reach the conclusion up there (no pun intended).
I haven't really known anyone as feisty as her. And it does make me laugh in an affectionate way. Right too mushy? Well consider the fact that this is more for me than anyone else. Right and also, I havent really trumpeted why I like her here nor have I waxed mushy so be thankful for that. I am as capable of being overtly dramatic about the woes as I am the good stuff. But will spare you the details. Though I think she'd like to know what I'd write here about her if I did write about her here (how much wood could a woodchuck chuck....?)

The idea of moving scared the bloody day lights out of me. New city, new job, new relationship. Whatever happened to old being gold or not changing horses midstream (or counter with variety is the spice of life dear god when did I swallow a thesaurus of pithy?)

I havent met anyone who has gotten under my skin as fast as she has. It has been disconcerting and I haven't made it easy for her. But I'm dying to lie on a couch with her, watching movies, watching her watch movies (oh dear god, I"m getting sappier by the day...gaaah...right, all that I need now is the Westchester wardrobe and I will fit into a catalogue)

---------------

I need to learn to destress and soon. It's really going to wreak havoc otherwise. I shouldn't need someone to whack me on the forehead with a brick at times and I'm sorry that she has to but I'm so glad she does.

Now, go listen to:
* Mistaken for strangers by The National
* Crane Wife 3 by The Decemberists
* Yankee Bayonet by The Decemberists

Also, the guitar in Given in to me by Michael Jackson (dear lord, people used to call him Whacko Jacko (shudder).
It still amazes me

Girl Doublespeak

“Why can’t you be honest and be nice at the same time?”

…

I don’t mean to be sexist but only a woman could say that. Right so me, I seem to be vacillating between two different approaches. The past dictated that well, I be a bit sensitive and notice when she got her hair done and just generally be enthused about new clothes and I guess, avoid making her face fall (and it really used to, way down until here to poor girl) if I didn’t like the same stuff. So unfortunately I suffer from blowback.

Now, the ShortOne (I’m bored with this moniker but more tired than bored to actually change it right now) prefers if I am honest.

…

Guys just want a woman’s opinion, for better or for worse. Now, I mean if you buy something new and in style and I think its hideous, well, can I say as much? Okay, all women who have asked for an opinion, heard something contrary to what they hold and felt bad about it, stand up and admit it. Then admit to the fact that you confuse me.

“Do you like this?”

“No, I don’t”

“Okay”

Brilliant!!

So okay and admit it, when you have a new boy friend, you want your friends opinions on him but at the same time you want them to like him.

…

Well then well… I mean…(words wont cut it so all I have to say is)

?!!

------------------------

There seem to be grey clouds (would the clichéd Chinese accent read ‘crowds’?...I’m tired, I have ADD) brewing in lovers land. At least for me, dunno about the rest of you.

I figure long distance is hard (duhhhhhhhh)

The thing is, it’s hard to really get under someones skin when well, their hide is a couple of thousand miles away. You don’t realize how much of a difference it makes to have the person around, to come home tired and rather than wait to make the phone call you wait for and realize nothing of any consequence has happened and narrate absolutely nothing, silence seems to grow larger when both of you are on the phone.

Okay, I should have thought that through before spouting truisms.

When in person, I can *be* with her. I can drape myself on her person and just vegetate and think and make off color sounds.

But take the flip side of that, come home tired and sit and just hang out, no calling card bills, no holding on to the phone as you walk about the house trying to fill the silence in it with the tinny on the phone… it ain’t the same.

And I effing hate it.

Work in Progress. Both, the Author and the Post

Right
(lick the end of the pencil)
(stick tongue out)
(adopt thinking position, not to be confused with constipated look even though visually may be the same)

I am in a job that requires ADD. C calls for me while R is emailing me with work while I listen to a conference call while keeping an eye on Bloomberg.
Have you seen ‘Coupling’? Specifically the episode where Patrick keeps trying to go home after canoodling with his girlfriend and refers to a woman who want to snuggle after squelching as a ‘hairy sex octopus with hair and limbs everywhere’?
Right, so this is what is demanded of me. Without the sex bit.
But I am a sexy beast y’know (just throwing out another movie reference, 10 points if you get it)

Another thing I don’t understand is with you i-bankers, how come your models never seem to add up. There’s always one wise ass who has something funky in historicals.

Work had been butchering me over the course of the past three weeks including putting in 12 hours over a weekend when the parental units were in town. Any how, pictures to follow later…

But I think my company does owe me two new shirts. Mine have frayed at the elbows. I’ve never heard of anything like this but it’s ridiculous. Does this in any way tie in to ‘elbow grease’?

Right, so that’s that on the work front. I am trying desperately to get back to India so if any one knows of any openings in private equity or hedge fund, you have a willing grunt here, ready to sacrifice much sleep, sweat and tears to make you money. Yes, I am a sell out and damn proud of it. Now, if they would just give me a t-shirt that says the same (looks around for t-shirt…or cookie)

-----------

I skyped with the Ex a few days ago. We made small talk until she blurted out, “I got engaged”
Much appropriate felicitations were given (I can’t stop talking like this, I don’t know why).
While she said she picked out the ring, she expressed a concern that some people may think it too small.
I am always polite but I draw the line at making her feel better about the size of the ring that chappie gave her.
And last weekend she said she would be moving to San Diego (oh come, what the hell do you do in San Diego for petes sake…and who is pete?! Goddamnit, I’m rather floopy today, but I’m back baby!)
Right, so she asked if I would visit her and her fiancé in San Diego:
“You want me, to visit you, at his apartment?”
“Actually, we are staying with his parents”
…..
Right

Anyway, as much as I loved the girl, ‘twas what ‘twas, and never more it shall be.

Though I have to say, the age difference between her and me (if you don’t know what it is, ask…just to ping y’all and see who is curious) was thrown sharply into relief. Look, I will grow up when I have to. I’m still this age and I still want to have fun. Unlike two years ago, I can think about getting married but it still is some point in the future.
She’s going to get engaged engaged in November, move to the US in October…I think we are different levels and it’s a disconnect I can’t fathom

-----------

I was in need of a well deserved holiday so I did just that. I took the camera and set off to the Met.
My new favorite artist is Paul Signac.
At least I think it is. Or okay, it’s whoever did this piece:

For the bloody life of me, I can’t figure out who did it. If you know, the please tell me and you can have my first born (though I get all rights to call you Rumpelstiltskin forevermore)

Ah yes, then had a rather interesting red wine with cheese at the Met while the pianist played and I looked down on the people with a beatific smile albeit on a large table much to myself.

There’s a lot more to say on the pieces that I loved but will make a separate post on that

-----------

I have been vacillating lately between contentment (see lines above), happiness (under the influence of a rather deep red wine) and an oogy feeling.
I am in need of guilt free guilty indulgences. No Shorty, I don’t mean no-strings sex…(this is where I pause to debate if I wish to elaborate on the topic of bumping uglies and decide against it)
But for instance, I want to get really really pissed without wondering if I will hit on anyone, stumble through the sodden streets of the City, end up worshiping the great Porcelain God (which I havent done in a very long time) or boomed until I can move no mo’
I think it’s the oogy feeling, the restlessness that never left, just abated but washed over me again, inevitable. And I think I may have figured it out.
So you know how the Tolle’s and Dr. Phils say live for the “now” and all that mumbo-jumbo. Right, so what if I have spent every single day for the past 4-5 years trying to get to a point, in fact to such a degree that that point died out a long time ago? So where does that leave me now? And this job-hunt and trying to get back to India, well, I’m doing it again, risking it again for a future that may not even exist.
Oh yes, I totally hear you, but am I going to change that? No, I guess not. I mean it’s hard trying to get there, scrabbling every day and worrying every night. And of course, the inevitable doubt will it be the way I imagined it, as perfect?

Who knows, and what’s more, worrying about it, that isn’t getting me there

But yet, coming back to the first thought, I am in need of excess. As Tom Waits so eloquently put it, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy”

-----------

Go watch Simpsons
It’s brilliant. Everything from Homer’s plaintive, “Homer do good?” to SpiderPig, all of it, brilliant. If you disagree, come back and we can discuss it in a civil way.
Then, I will jump you in the parking alley and bitch slap you and run away while saying “ha ha” Nelson style

-----------

I’m an ass and no woman should date me. Just sleep with me.

Her: i think im snappy because i miss you

me: so you say. Humph. i have reached the conclusion that this is some sort of setup and you are out to trap me. i dunno what your game is, but i see right through it
so there!
i'll give you this, it is a ploy worthy of moriarty but unlike holmes, i do not intend to go over a cliff

hello?

Her: im here
sorry
my sister is watching freaky friday

me: !!
(a bit flustered at having his damning accusation fall on deaf ears)

Her: and i have a headache


Really, I should have come with a warning label stuck to my ass when I came shooting out. I bet I was a wise ass even then and pee’d the doctor who smacked my bottom to get me to cry. Bitch

-----------
Things to look forward to:
1. US Open match tomorrow for free (few few perks of a job that damns me to 14-16 hour days)
2. US Semi-Finals, Mens (not free. Fuck)
3. Four days off this week given it’s Labor Day (ironic given I work at a job that made me sign a waiver giving up my right to a maximum hours per week of work)
4. ….

Come on, add to my list

Things to fear:
1. folks being in town for those four days which means I can’t sulk or be a bitch. It also means giving up the ciggies and maal and no drunken debauchery that would have inevitably resulted thanks to this 4 day vacation
2. finding a job and soon else my head will pop off from the tension
3. cleaning my apartment, to the Mother’s standards
4. going back to the gym after torturing myself yesterday

The *Whiniest* post ever. but i needed this. so. f.u.

Right, so deal with it. This is where I bitch, moan, whine, squeal, say “shit piss fuck”, deal with it, don’t like it? Well go chance the bloody channel then why don’t you.

I’m FRUSTRATED! 16 hour days, a job that is pissing me off, trying to move to India, everyone telling me I have an exciting resume and still no luck there, no personal space coz my folks ( both of whom I love) are visiting, haven’t worked out, am tired and just fucking pissed the hell off so fuck you.

Plus I feel like I’m shit at relationships. I don’t know why the urgency to spill each time I talk, I guess it’s because you never know when the person will leave, when they decide they don’t want you any more thank-you-very-much.

I guess it’s that. At the end of a mini melt down, when all you can do is sit in the shower and hear the water splashing, trying to consciously relax the muscled, deep down, I’m concerned about how I relate to other people. Oh sure I can be all social and amicable, but am I someone heck I’d want to be with? I mean okay fine, call me effing self indulgent right now and


……………

Fine, I know I am being self-indulgent. But there are a few things that honestly scare me. They really do and it makes me nauseous to think about them:
1. I am shit at really opening up
2. I have no short term memory which trust me, is a lot worse than it sounds when you remember the bigger picture but smaller details get lost
3. …..


I cant think!!!
Its like a million other things swirling about in my head…..each effing thought stumbling over the other, I cant stop any of them

I need a smoke.

------------------------

Fine, I love her. I really do. And it’s things like during lunch………….FUCK!
I cant seem to think or stop thinking any more. Where’s the goddamn off switch


Okay. Let me try this one more time.
I’m tense to the point my jaw hurts.
Why am I tense?
1. I have had a horrible two weeks at work with 14 hour days. My folks were in town and I still put in 12 hours over the weekend
2. I hate this job.
3. I am trying to move to India or some place closer. Head hunters seem to love my resume but wont email back. Each time I get a new email, I can barely contain my excitement to see if it’s from one of them
4. I try desperately to make time to talk, to be in touch as much as possible to not repeat my mistakes. But then the quality suffers and im trying to navigate foot traffic with one eye on the clock while trying to order lunch and make sure I get back in time to not get yelled at.

It’s like if I concentrate on one thing, I drop the ball somewhere else. And it’s always trying to juggle so many things at once it makes me grit my effing teeth in my sleep. I need a fucking sock stuffed in my mouth when I sleep.

I’m trying to make something of nothing and it’s so goddamn frustrating and I try and keep cool about it.
And in the end, I wonder if it’s really me. I’m terrified it’s always been me.

I’m sorry to my folks for not spending enough time with them. I’m sorry that I can’t seem to make headway with this job thing. I’m sorry if you didn’t know the girl I love. I’m sorry I don’t have enough time for you. I’m disappointed I didn’t do as well as I should have on that exam. I’m disappointed I can’t speak with you as much as you deserve. It’s this awful lump at not being able to do what I want, to give what I so badly want to because of things that I cant control. But even those, I’m trying, I’m working on, I will give up a lot and I already have for this and I will cuss and fight and scrabble to make it happen and I’m sorry if I drop the ball in another part. It’s this awful tiredness of swimming against the fucking tide. It’s this awful silence when I wonder if there’s something more I can do.

It’s wanting to reach behind and rip the skin off and throw my head back and scream because I am so goddamn frustrated.

What * I * want:
I want to be with her. I want to have a job that challenges me and lets me think. I want to make money so I don’t go wanting again.
Right, so I’m working on all three the best I fucking can. But there are so many other people involved in this.
--------------

Oh lord, that felt good. I feel drained but I let it out at least. I have several flaws as mother dearest pointed out, not each one, just the blanket statement.
I have much to work on. I just hope I don’t hear, “It’s too late” again.


More to write. Much much more to write.

Art 101

In her short film Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase, Joan C. Gratz has managed to map out a century’s worth of art in seven minutes. She uses clay painting, a stop-motion animation technique that she pioneered, to morph fluidly among the works of 35 iconic, modern artists from van Gogh to Picasso to Warhol.

The film, which won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Animated Short, confounds through the ease with which one recognizable piece of art seamlessly dissolves into the next. The implausible is made to look inevitable.

My Stupid Memory

Ah, one phone call and I remember why I don’t want to be bounced around, why I want to go where I want to go and why it’s one worth it.

While I don’t know how it ends, I know I’m doing as much as I can

Of Thunderclouds and Old Songs

It’s a sudden disconnect and I can’t figure out why. It’s the same feeling you get when the headphone cord gets stuck on something and is rudely yanked out and the music stops with a snap, the rude shock of abruptness

It’s this feeling of wanting to stretch your arms up and hang by them, feeling every muscle get pulled.

Or maybe it’s just the weather, just this song.

I think I’m just a bit weary what with this exam in a month, the burgeoning job hunt (which albeit has been going on for three days now but on my mind for what, 7 months?)

The feeling finds manifestation in short shallow breaths, the kind where the cold air doesn’t seem to get past your throat, in restlessness as you try and sleep and wait for the next City sound to come through, when you pick at the strings, sitting on the bed, all the while waiting for the door to open and for something to happen.

It’s the same streets every day, always moving and never changing, always the same shapes and sound every single day.

It’s wanting to throw your head back and scream but not doing that because it will change the street and bring in something extraordinary.

It wanting something different but wanting it to come along without you having to rock the boat.

And then you sit on the rock, the sky gets a grey pall and you get bored of waiting but still sit and mull about it. Of course, this is all wanting to be swept away by events that you have no control over but sweep your life away. So if mistakes are made, it isn’t your fault.

When you proactively change it, you assume responsibility for the end result and in the end, can’t lift a finger against anything or anyone but yourself.

And with taking action on your own comes the weariness of making things happen.

I don’t want to coast along in life (such a delightful use of the word, of Jimmy Dean and ‘dragging Main’, past the ‘dime store’, ‘he was coasting in the Cadillac’)

But it would be nice to cut loose and shoot the moon, go with the breeze, stretch!

The sad part is, I know if I went off to “old Algiers”, the feeling of what next would return, like a slow shadow, playing catch up a few moments later, catching the next train up to me.

It’s time for change and if the wind’s don’t change on their own, well, I’ll find my own way.

As Good As It Gets

The guy in the patent white shirt of Mid-Town swaggers to the counter, carelessly tossing his hair 'product' and with a flourish pulls out the card, his iPod up so loud he can't hear the sullen faced cashier asking him to swipe it.
The blonde in the typical white summer dress fumbles with her half caff (rhyme half with caff to get it right) soy mocchachino and her pocketbook while reaching for the Trident. Of course, it wouldnt occur to her to move everything to one side while collecting her things to make way for the guy in the cheap shirt, the back damp with sweat who is in a hurry. Of course, she does notice when I side step her, a dirty look but I couldn't care less.

The other suit at the subway turnstile, unmindful of the approaching train or the people behind him who want to get on it lest the MTA in its infinite wisdom decides for a 20 minute delay before the next train gets there. Even when they walk down the stairs, it's on the wrong side and with a casual step that puts him in place in the Hamptons, never mind the lady struggling with her groceries looking fervently at the goddamn doors that slide shut leaving her to wait in the heat for another train. Of course, his pulls up soon after.

People stumble in. There's more than enough place toward the middle of the train but instead, you have shoulders pounded by the sliding doors of the fucking train, hands held up high in the Laughing Buddha, trying desperately to press against the roof of the carriage so as to not to fall over. Never mind touching the Brooks Brothers suits or pressing up against the Pierre Cardin ties (Hermes would never be in the subway), people stuck on the subway because others can't lift their heads or realize that a side step could make way for another person, someone who just may be in a tearing hurry to get home or the night shift.

Sullen faces of women with manicured hands grasping the metal pole, almost appropriate if karma had its way, sullen over the fact they can't sit, almost as though the make up on their face and the blond treated locks warrant space, air conditioning and service in the subway to use their TMobile Sidekick.

You get out of the subway and face two sets of stairs. People run down one flight because the train has pulled up and it's the one they need to be on. The rest seem to trudge up, unmindful of the fact they may be on the wrong set of stairs, a flash of irritation if someone else is coming down instead of going their way.

The sense of entitlement, to space, to their way, is stifling, it's as though there is nothing left beyond their bubble. And when you take enough of these bobble headed bubble carrying people, you are always impinging on their apparent illusion of control.

The purposeless life, the motions, the pink shirt and backward baseball cap, the stressed denim jeans and the brown sandals, the well manicured fingers gripping designer bags whose price while may be sky high, is less boggling than the sense of entitlement as those fingers wrap around the straps, the sunglasses worn in the subway, the white wedding, the picket fence, holidays in Vermont and the circle of life repeats itself, all the while the bubble remains, of an individual, of a society.

No wonder Jay Leno can walk down the street with a map and have people pin a label saying "Iraq" on Australia.

For just one moment, to take that sense of entitlement and put in perspective, the blonds down 5th Avenue, going into the Abercrombie and Fitch at 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, knowing they aren't tourists from the disdain and upturned noses of faces sucking on lemons too long and too used table service, to take them and turn their world upside down.

To actually look at the person while thanking them, to smile at someone as you open the door for them instead of remembering mechanically it is what you are supposed to do, to actually offer your seat to someone, to walk a pace faster because a train has pulled up, unmindful if it is yours or not, to thank someone going out of their way for you. It's not that hard.


I suppose this vitriolic stems from a guy I saw while headed to lunch -- he had a sandwich board selling something or the other, face craggy, baseball cap pulled low, trying to get someone to take his flyers, the Blackberries and the Fendis passing him by. And I wondered where he came from, why he was where he was, where was he trying to get to. Would his answers put into perspective those of the white shirts of MidTown?

I run up the stairs to my place, two at a time. I walk in to my room, everything in it is mine, even the empty plate has the remains of a meal, but it is mine. Its and extension.
A quick phone call.
"Hmmm", replies the groggy voice.
And in that instance, all is forgotten and I slip into something I love.

55 Words to Bring Us Back to "Do"

connection intimacy laughter tears insecurity barriers secrets lies arguments fear confusion hesitation trepidation angst frustration joy disappointment a touch a flushed face a quickened breath

A yellow taxi cab. A red light. Silence in the rush hour and throngs

"Will you go out with me then?"
"Yes"

And he was happy. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Of cows, snake skins, laddoos and tulsi plants

it was always exciting to go back to that house. the rickety fiat would pick us up and there would always be an issue fitting the suitcase in with the 'step'nie' amidst various other gizzards of the creaking car.
there would be that dusty ride that went through the main 'chowk' with 'mithaiwallas' and of course, past the white palace where the scindias still live. and i remember the beginning of the end of the ride, what with the gigantic naala, enough to swallow minetta brook and with the fetidness of gallons of waste. but i was always fascinated by the giang pigs that seemed quite unmindful of the trash of others, the piglets, nothing like 'poo mucking about, their skin not quite covered with grey bristles (issey toothbroosh baneinge as the guy delightfully told my mother in Jaipur when she saw the local Municipal fellows taking away an unfortunate porcine)
And we would turn left and go past the kinaray waali dukan, the ubiquitous one selling Nirma, Life Buoy (hai jahaan tanduroosti hai wahaan...life buoy!) but of course, it was the closest supplier of aam papad, the one my grandparents mistakenly assumed was one of my favorite things from gwalior, along with the basin kay laddoo. There was the temple with the awkward pattern of multi colored bathroom tiles to the right, where the pujarin was this ancient creature, not however, as old as my great grandmother. We would turn the right and come to the gate and with a flourish the driver would kill the engine and smile at us, almost triumphant we made it alive as though we would have the temerity to question his driving skills.
The gate was this menacing black and red contraption, with a smaller one built into it with devious springs ready to snap shut on a five year olds fingers and definitely lived up unto their sole purpose.
The courtyard always felt clean even though the plot opposite never had anything built on it and dust seemed to fly over the wall, irreverant of the cleanliness my grandmother was so particular about. But she would be at the doorway, panting from the effort but a huge smile nonetheless, her dentures putting my own gap toothed smile to shame. And there would be much hugging and touching of feet as blessings went all around.
The living room was almost magical to a kid. There were porcelain plates with Buddha on them, a mantle piece with pictures of people, some of whom I recognized, faces with fewer creases, more teeth and thicker hair. But they were sepia toned, faded edges in silver frames meticulously polished. There was a dried up seahorse mounted on the wall, above the deerskin cushion covers. There were books in Hindi, some of them by my grandfather. But of course, the only thing I would look out for was the giant lion skin on the carper, the head stuffed and carefully preserved, yellow glass eyes, you could peer into reflecting make your face, the mouth open in an unspoken roar, the tongue rough and its teeth yellow. And right between the eyes, almost Kipling like was a small hole, no bigger than my little finger, a small hole that led it from the jungle to the living room floor. I never quite got familiar with it, like my sister would later sit on its head holding on to its ears or reclining her head against his. I suppose much of the Jungle Book rubbed off on me and I never wanted to accept that the King of the Jungle would end up so.

The lights in the living room were anemic, yellow, heightened by the gaudy orange lamps, stylized vine leaves. But during the day, the room was dark and light streamed in from the other side, where, if you squinted, could see the main courtyard.

There is a Secret World Concealed Within this One.

There is a Secret World Concealed Within this One.

The lives we lead, and the lives we wish we led.

This world, the so-called “real world,” is just a front. Pull back the curtain and you’ll see the libraries are all filled with runaways writing novels, the highways are humming with escapees and sympathizers, all the receptionists and sensible mothers are straining at the leash for a chance to show how alive they still are. . . and all that talk of practicality and responsibility is just threats and bluffing to keep us from reaching out our hands to find that heaven lies in reach before us.

You can taste it in the shock and roar of a first, unexpected kiss, or in the blood in your mouth that instant after an accident when you realize you’re still alive. It blows in the wind you feel on the rooftops of a really reckless night of adventure. You hear it in the magic of your favorite songs, how they lift and transport you in ways that no science or psychology could ever account for. It might be you’ve seen evidence of it scratched into bathroom walls in a code without a key, or you’ve been able to make out a pale reflection of it in the movies they make to keep us entertained. It’s in between the words when we speak of our desires and aspirations, still lurking somewhere beneath the limitations of being “practical” and “realistic.”

When poets and radicals stay up until sunrise, wracking their brains for the perfect sequence of words or deeds to fill hearts (or cities) with fire, they’re trying to find a hidden entrance to it. When children escape out the window to go wandering late at night, or freedom fighters search for a weakness in government fortifications, they’re trying to sneak into it—for they know better than us where the doors are hidden. When teenagers vandalize a billboard to provoke all-night chases with the police, or anarchists interrupt an orderly demonstration to smash the windows of a corporate chain store, they’re trying to storm its gates.

When you’re making love and you discover a new sensation or region of your lover’s body, and the two of you feel like explorers discovering a new part of the world on a par with a desert oasis or the coast of an unknown continent, as if you are the first ones to reach the north pole or the moon, you are charting its frontiers.

It’s not a safer place than this one—on the contrary, it is the sensation of danger there that brings us back to life: the feeling that for once, for one moment that seems to eclipse the past and future, there is something real at stake.

Maybe you stumbled into it by accident, once, amazed at what you found. The old world splintered behind and inside you, and no physician or metaphysician could put it back together again. Everything before became trivial, irrelevant, ridiculous as the horizons suddenly telescoped out around you and undreamt-of new paths offered themselves. And perhaps you swore that you would never return, that you would live out the rest of your life electrified by that urgency, in the thrill of discovery and transformation—but return you did.

Common sense dictates that this world can only be experienced temporarily, that it is just the shock of transition, and no more; but the myths we share around our fires tell a different story: we hear of women and men who stayed there for weeks, years, who never returned, who lived and died there as heroes. We know, because we feel it in that atavistic chamber of our hearts that holds the memory of freedom from a time before time, that this secret world is near, waiting for us. You can see it in the flash in our eyes, in the abandon of our dances and love affairs, in the protest or party that gets out of hand.

You’re not the only one trying to find it. We’re out here, too . . . some of us are even waiting there for you. And you should know that anything you’ve ever done or considered doing to get there is not crazy, but beautiful, noble, necessary.

Revolution is simply the idea we could enter that secret world and never return; or, better, that we could burn away this one, to reveal the one beneath entirely.

First Attempts

...

It's one of those days that reminds me of the onset of the rains back home. You know how the day feels, it's dusk through the day and yet hot. It tends to be cool here when the day is like that but it was hot. And I don't mean warm, I mean the heavy hotness, it's palpable, rising up from the concrete below you and on every side, from the people, from the frenetic pace, the impatient people in line at the Starbucks playing recycled music of the flavor of the month.
The air is thick with wetness, the kind of air that you don't breathe, the kind that seems thick across your teeth and you bite through it with every stem.
The wetness settles on your upper lip, not the sweat from working out but from the outside, the air leaving a bit more with each step.

I am reading the Reluctant Fundamentalist which does echo what I feel. But it does it eloquently, simply and in the way I like most -- a conversation. It's a single voice that doesn't waver, a story that doesn't require passive description, a voice that reads to you when you were a kid.

It had a line that described not a childhood poverty, but a poverty like longing. I remember sitting in the front of a Maruti Esteem when I was 13, a rare treat. I remember telling my father how much leg room there was in front, trying to speak over the Kenwood music system, but not loud enough for the driver to think that I was unused to it. I don't think he acknowledged what I said but when I said it a third time, he laughed and said that there was indeed a lot of leg room, in a way that made me feel he got my sense of longing which honestly, wasn't there.

I remember some of them laughing about the fact that I wore a t-shirt that was out of style
"Hey! The 80's wants its clothes back"
Of course, these were hand-me-downs from my first set of cousins, there being 7 ahead of me so they had seen a fair share of wear.

I remember being 12 or 13, trying to sleep in the balcony because the power had gone and I had to be up at 5:30am for school, being unable to sleep thanks to the heat, the mosquitoes but the loudest being the sound of the generators everyone else seemed to have.

I remember making friends with the truck driver who made deliveries at 4pm on Wednesday to the store. Then the older stuff gets pulled forward, the new stuff has to be put behind. Then count the total number of each item and keep tally. Then flatten the boxes and walk 20 minutes back and forth to throw them in the recycle bin. Or I remember serving the drunk kids on a Saturday night, praying no one spilled anything because that meant cleaning up after the store shut and getting out at 1am, instead of 12:30pm, waking up at 8:45am the next day to open the store again, carrying my books, hoping everyone would be too hung over to stop me from studying.
True, other kids worked there as well, but I am myopic and that's that.
But yes, I did try and work 20 hours a week so I had more money to spend when I went out.

And yes, I do remember waiting every Wednesday to get my weekly test results all through school to buy a new book or cassette.

So why should one assume that that feeling should have left me now? It manifests as drive which is a polite way of saying hungry.

And it's still there. I don't know why it carries on but it's there. I get more tired days when I do monkey work than today where I was busy but doing something concrete and having something I can sign off as my own.

Any how, the book describes the Upper East Side. While the people with their tiny dogs no longer seem unfamiliar or foreign, they are part of the wood work. And a fast moving piece of scenery it is.

Yes, I recognize this as part nostalgia, part the book, part romanticism but I know I look forward to going home. Apart from the promise of what I hope can be a beautiful relationship, I also want something more real than this City.


Oh and I am crazy about this girl which is the reason why I haven't written in so long. I guess the angst is gone (to her dismay I would suspect). But there is a whole set of new things to know and learn. It isn't just getting used to a new person, but unlearning what you knew. The Ex hates it when I make fun of her, this One uses every opportunity to get my goat (wonder where that expression came from); the Ex had a sense of needing me, this One understands my need for space, makes me laugh, talks to me, and just *is* with me.
Oh dear, I am being vague.
She makes me laugh. I can see her tower over (in a good way, in the independent sense with feet firmly planted) and yet be a girl. I find her sexy, cute, charming, blunt, confident, girlish. Someone interesting.

Now, do I wax eloquent about her and give her a little buzz?

I have fun with her, love her laugh, her pleasure in being a bit *ghat* at times, at how comfortable I feel when she is around me. And I love her.

Right.

Okay fine, I *am* smiling and here, here's a garbage can if you want to puke at this uncharacteristic outburst of mush. And if you do hurl, don't tell me.

Ach, I am writing for an audience. No no, coming back to point, there are things that I have carried forth from the last time -- the fear of the other person bolting, the fear the other person thinking and coming to a decision and informing me, the fear of being misunderstood, the demanding need to be the one with the answers. But yes, it has taken time and a few arguments for me cut through and just be. And I am happy

Lookie What I Got!!

Impending Meltdown

Sometimes it does feel like an implosion. It’s when your jaw clenches and your tongue pushes against your teeth, your brow furrows and sometimes long enough it begins to hurt and your fists clench up and your breathing becomes harder and faster.

There are too many question marks and it drives me nuts sometimes I tells ya! It’s like a tightly wound spring and I’m worried one day I make like Mad Max and yippee kai yae down a bomb.

I mean I feel spread out thin, stretched out, trying to cover too much at once. And I mean…okay so how can I give to something knowing it may just blow up in my face. It’s like facing a fucking bull charging at you and you not knowing weather its going to stop or not.

Oh balls, am I being inarticulate. Right now I’m torn between slapping together some cement and laying on the bricks double time around myself to build the bomb shelter as fast as possible. Of course, if I do that, then I drive her away so it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
If I am to be me, that means giving in to how I feel which means stepping outside, stretching out and lying in the sun with blinkers on and being oblivious to the fact that there may just well be a bomb headed my way.
How on earth am I supposed to give more than I get. At some point I have to go no, that’s not fair? And of course, if I do that, then well, I’m not being me and the outcome is inevitable.

So, either I put myself on the line, or at least my perception of it being a one-way deal or I settle for an unhappy yet knowable ending.

This whole bullshit about taking risks to get what makes you happy, yeah, isn’t that much bull shit!!

Why can’t these things be easy. Don’t give me any Richard Bach mumbo jumbo, shove the crap and cut me some slack goddamnit

….
Fuck this


I wanna go to Peru. I’ll find myself a herd of llamas…bunch? Flock? Gaggle? Whatever, spend my life eating anticuchos and chasing my llamas up n down the country.
I’ve had it with this I swear and you know what, if I want to throw a tantrum then I fucking well will.

I don’t do this shit under pressure. I can make snap decisions on companies, I can literally do three things at once, I can talk on the cell phone while packing and changing, I can sing in the shower while juggling the soap but I will not do this under pressure!
Under pressure I am a smarmy bastard and that’s not the me me. So what the hell?!

Goddamnit, I am trying to find one simple fucking concept, am I going to spend my life pursuing it. To quote the fucking movie, TJ got it right, every fucking person has to right to pursue it, the sad part being he said they would spend their lives chasing it, perhaps he knew it was something that could only be fucking pursued I swear I feel like breaking something or atleast exploding!

Thinking Sabbatical

I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy studying for the GMAT and getting in to work at the ungodly hour of 6:30am. Why? Because shit flows downhill and sometimes, you no choice but to eat shit and how at the moon.

And in all this, I have occupied myself to the extent that I have 30 minutes a day to eat and shower and hit the sack. Needless to say, that has left me with very little time to think.

But today was different, at least this morning was. Put it down to a miserable, drizzly, grey Monday morning. That, combined with the conspicuous absence of catharsis or thought of any kind made it necessary to write something, anything, articulate that ‘blah’ feeling, almost as thick as the air this morning.

The Short One commented on my drive. And it’s not the first time someone has brought it up.
Now I know the genesis, my mother who pushed me pretty hard and every time I did well, I got a new book or a cassette I wanted. But once that influence waned, one would have expected the drive to go down. But it hasn’t. If anything, it seems to be there, as defining as ever.

So again, the infernal question: why

The answer, one way or another, woke me up this morning. It’s one of those infrequent mornings where even after 7 hours sleep, I wake up tired but with some odd sense of clarity, the kind you get without even knowing you were asking a question.
I suppose it’s in quest of a “life less ordinary”. At least those were the words so clearly on loop in my head, like a bad record that you are too lazy to get up and turn off so ineffectually throw things at, continually missing until you can’t take it any more. But the words stick.

At first I wondered if it was out of a desire to not be alone in my head so I threw myself into everything I liked. But even when not alone, the desire was always there. So that couldn’t have been the reason.

But again, until I don’t know my limits, how can I possible define the lines around myself, un-fuzzy my outlines?
And I think this is the first time in my life that I literally can do whatever I want. So I am.

Why? Because I can, because it’s there and that’s all the reason I need.

Most things I just do to get by. But there are a few that I find challenging enough for me to lick my chops, bare my teeth and take head on and get that heady rush of working my ass off, but still being able to stand on top of the garbage heap and feel good.

It’s an unparalleled rush, of having done something, the grimace at the start becomes a smile like non other and I love that.

Of course, now to find the wisdom to temper that so that it doesn’t become self destructive, all consuming and drives me into oblivion of other things that matter just as much

So, here’s to figuring it out.

Say Cheese!...No?

Same Vein

'Heartbreak Hotel'

Yeah, I'll Avoid What He's On

The bees just do what they are supposed to. They move to their soul doppelgangers all the while doing what they are supposed to. They dance with one of these flowers and then move to another, forgetting the one they just met. And they do that on and on, every day because it feels right. But it's just that exactly that creates their world. They just do what they are supposed to and that's alright.

It's bizarre to have a fixation, this little thought burrowing it's one, feeling more prominent than any other. It's an itch to follow with with your finger, indulging it, feeling good about reaching it. I figure that's what an obsession is. It's that reward at a self created thought that is maddening at times.
And it's a bit scary, the thought of an obsession. At some point, it gets to be too overwhelming waiting for the reward, the satisfaction at getting it. So then we create false rewards, imagined rewards to slake it for a while. But that in itself fuels the obsession.
A natural solution, the only inevitable solution seems to break a habit, to starve it until it screams but finally, it does disappear, leaving a scar, hopefully, a temporary one.

Is it better to want something so maddeningly than never know what it means to want? Again, perhaps a state of flux and confusion is the natural state but that in itself would be an aberration of nature where everything moves to order.
So then does that mean in order to feel alive, you shake the natural order, defining what is natural but shaking up the can to make sure that sense of flatlining exists?
That means, rocking your own boat is a way of making sure the boat really is there, the empirical equivalent of knocking on the wood in a dream to see if it sounds the way it should.
If you stop feeling confused, do you flat line and find no meaning in being?

That last line reads like the back of a matchbook cover advertising a crash course in philosophy


I'm fucking exhausted. And I read new music better than I have before. Again, like he said, I was over thinking the note, second guessing myself without allowing myself to just read the damn note, the same one that would always be a B no matter how many times i read it to the point of misreading it and tripping over the notes, not in the good way either. So in over thinking it, I was misreading it....belaboring over it rather than enjoying it and moving at my own pace

It's bizarre how what I want to say is becoming apparent in what I'm watching. Perhaps if I watch the movie years down the line, other things will show up, like patterns in a painting, just held to a different light

It's confusing right now, well, was because there were so many many options. Then to get a fixed idea removes all those other threads, instead of seeing a million of them, all of them with possibilities but too many too experience, that when you get one idea to focus on, everything else, including the confusion melts away
Perhaps that is why people give credence to the idea of the perfect one for them

I'm Tired

Ach, the white screen. I am wont to maximize the text editor on my Mac (which looks really good in the Gelaskin I got) to see the white space take up the entire page. And like the song, Most of the Time, the white spaces speak volumes beyond the written.


I like how the cursor waits patiently for me to write, rather an egotistic flight of fancy that it's an eager ear, not going away any where, waiting for me to speak. Of course, a patient yet mute listener I suppose. But then again, the only other person in this conversation is me. And I can speak volumes.

--Your Love is not Enough, Manic Street Preachers --

Right now I am so tired that I am wide awake and everything seems more conscious than before. I am prone to moods, not the kinds that linger for a few hours but weeks. SB mentioned how I tend to disappear for a while, come back as though I never left. I suppose I need to hit the reset button once in a while. And I am doing it again with this burst of productivity. It's, and after a long time, testing of taut the wire is, how far I can run without crumbling, moaning. The Short One mentioned how I seemed to want to experience everything all the way, work and push myself, the gym until my legs can barely support me, party until the lights come on, music until it can be played, books until there are none left unopened. Fuck, even when I relax, I reeeeeeelaaaaax (cue the song Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood...okay inappropriate if you read the lyrics, I know but it fit so make like OJ's defense and run with it)
But hells bells, so much to do and so many experiences to run through before the time runs out. So much to see and feel and take in and ponder and .... perhaps I need to be.
There are few times I have felt like being, moments of happiness where I stumble upon it and never want to leave that moment, try and prolong it because those moments are so pure, rare and hard to find.

-- Don't Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult --
Seasons don't fear the reaper...ironic if you think about it given the subtext of what I just said

I was effing around with the guitar with Jimmy teaching me and I just ran through the new pieces, my own pace but faultless. And Jimmy and I had spoken about how very tired I was, to the point of being light headed and nauseous. But he said that I was always thinking so much, my eyes skipping to the next note, second guessing the one I just played, gauging how fast I was playing...but Friday was different. It's as though I knew I could play it and I just was. I wasn't worried about mistakes, about the tempo or chords, I just was.
See, it's that, amongst the many things that I am chasing. It's that singular moment when there is no other thought, me not stumbling, trying to articulate everything to myself, just being.
I guess that happens when I am exhausted at the gym, I can just hear my heart thumping, screaming in my head and there are no words, no thoughts, no arguments, nothing. And it's so blissful.

Look, this is coming from someone who goes to bed with an issue plaguing him and wakes up in the morning, eyes red, mentally exhausted but always with an answer. So I think in my sleep, sue me.

Same with booze I suppose, over indulging to silence my head. Phookofying
-- So Happy Together, The Turtles --
is different. It lets all these thoughts swim in but just as easily move right back out.

Music does that too. It goes with my mood and in that moment, I don't have to think, I just am. Those three or four minutes where everything comes together and needs no further articulation, expression or thought. It just Is.



So my mother sent me a message I haven't heard....in years. She said she was missing me. It *is* mother's day and all, I get it. But it's been a while since my Mum and I hanged out. She knows I've grown up far beyond needing her thoughts...but never past the point of wanting to speak with her and tell her how I'm doing, what's new with her, how everything is. Fuck she's the one who made me and I mean that way beyond carrying me for 9 months. Without her, I wouldn't be me. She's where I come form and I am so very thankful for that.

I think I should tell her that.


-- Dreams, The Cranberries --

My father sent me an email. I saw it while scrambling to get to my class. The last line read "Please read her CV and write a marriage proposal"
Meh??!
They are semi serious and have left it open to me but still, it's bizarre! Besides, I have what could be a good thing.
But we'll see, wont we?
;o)
(with a nod to the lady seated past the stage lights, there, first row, center stage)


I'm so very tired, I can't have more than one thought at a time. And right now, would be nice to have her here, I love this song...and sometimes being, like thoughts, is the perfect state of.

I'm tired, and I'd like to sleep now please.
(said the Actor to the Stage Manager, the one in the wings, the hard ass, egging him on...perhaps the Actor for once, knows better)

Ach...come lie with me to this song girl...you put it into my mind, and it's not leaving, not without
-- Daniel, Lior --
Step into a doorway in my mind
This is where you live
It's where you live
I forgot the things that I could find
I have not been in here for years

Oh come now, you must know what I want you to hear.

Goddamnit, comenownownownow....I want to talk to you! I want to tell you everything that drives me crazy and listen to you, watch you watch something, anything, just come here....don't you see how frustrated I get, how angry I get at things that can't even be articulated yet must be blamed, can't you see me listening to the music you want me to hear, the movies you tell me I love, it's not done, it's not complete, come here and talk to me, let me listen to you, let me climb in through that door you still haven't opened to me, l...

(A la comic style, the Stage Manager reached out with a long staff, hooks it around the raving Actors neck and yanks him into the wings)

Be Jealous -- The Killers at MSG

Oh Dear

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Flash Mob 5/11/07

zombienyc.com

The Faceless One

It's not easy getting acquainted with a new relationship. It's not like you just get to know someone. Sometimes, it involves unlearning things, things from previous chapters, the story sometimes seems to linger on and run across other pages.

C'est la vie I suppose. I wish I could accept that. I refused when I was sixteen and I will now.

Perhaps we all need adeep breath once in a while, even if it's to understand what is and what was, and more so, to realize the difference.

The Omission seems to be thrown sharply info relief tonight.

New Category

-- You are right --

Brilliant!

Zaphod Goes To Central Park

Eureka! Eureka I Say!

So this is my jump out of the bath tub and run through Syracuse naked moment. No, really. It hit me in the shower.

I blame the past too much for what I am and all these interpersonal issues. Fuck that shit! I'm freeeeee (see little running clouds a la comic strip behind me, my towel flapping in the wind)

.....

You would have thought this would have occurred to me without the eureka. But it did.

Now it has. I can't say it will make things clearer but it will certainly help me get rid of this stupid invisible boulder I have been dragging around for so long now.

In any event.


------------------------

Zaphod in elevator with three women from the office.
Tiniest one: I saw Tom Cruise the other day.
Middle one: yeah?
Tallest one with poofy hair: I heard he was short
Zaphod (surpressed grin>
Tiniest: Yeah he is.
Middle: I don't think I'd find him that attractive then
Bing! Our floor.
The perfect gentleman, I was for them to exit.
Tallest one: Thank you

I do appreciate polite women. And those with poofy hair!
;o)

Thoughts On The Corner of 56th & 6th

It is rather isolating standing on the corner of 56th and 6th. You can stand at the corner, by the F train stop, smoking a cigarette, reach down and turn the music up. The sky scrapers tower high above, glass reflecting the other. And if you stretch your neck back enough, you can see a orange-tinged blue sky with almost perfect clouds.
It always makes me smile.

I guess it reminds me of the terrace in the new floor back home in Delhi. (yes scout, go make fun of the fact that I miss home but this is more about finding a quiet space!)
This December I had the pleasure of having the whole apartment to myself with a spanking new TV and a shower to die for, but the point is the terrace. It’s not that big. And there’s nothing special about it. Heck, it had a paint spattered ladder against the wall from when the laborers painted it. But it was my space. It was big enough for me to pace up and down, smoking a cigarette. I could look at the green belt behind my house and see kids playing cricket, the odd buffalo, which normally would have been incongruous but hells bells, it is Delhi. I could look over the side and see the neighbors terrace, their laundry still damp and refusing to dry up in the cool winter evening. And it was the same blue sky, tinged orange with a setting sun.

While the quiet was calming after a busy day running around the city, there was an omission, the wanting to share it with someone/her. Or the pleasure I get in being with someone I like, alone, quiet, lost in thought yet knowing I can reach out at any moment and touch their thoughts and pull at the threads.

But it’s the same sky, the same feelings, just another day, place and one more cigarette.



























-------

The more I have tried to hold on, the harder it has been, the more it/they have slipped. But it’s hard to fall backward without reaching out, grasping at something. But then there comes a point of inevitable acceptance of the futility of trying to hold on . But at the same time you hope that you learn to fly before hitting the ground.

-------
I’ve learned mine can’t be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it’s become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I’ve hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I’ve donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.

Better, I know now,
to dress it plain,
to say out loud to *some right person *
*in some right place *
that there’s something not there
in me, something I can’t name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn’t said a word.
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.

But she’s amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won’t let it go.

Stephen Dunn.

Once Upon A Time...

I'd be lying right now if I said the non-head future were clear. It's just that I am so used to losing whatever I get attached to, I am gun shy. The problem with this is that while it keeps me safe, if something good does come along, I tend to take time to unwind. Also, at any hint of flight, real or imagined, thought imagined more often than not, I tend to curl up, don the shining armor and well, instead of slaying the dragon, turn the shield the wrong direction.

Here's hoping she manages to talk some sense into me and instead of me jumping at my own shadow, I drop the shield, lift the visor and feel stupid.

Here's to hoping for a happy ending.

(Work In Progress)

Some people do it in the shower, some on the pot, some in their kitchen and others in the living room.
We all do it somewhere, sometime or the other.
I prefer my bed.

It really is the best place.

.......
To think.
Pervs.



I think the earliest recollection I have is in the house in GK-2. I think i was 12 or 13? No, 10. Fuck, it was my 10th birthday and i rememberr driving somewhere during the day with Dad to the doctors (ENT, not what my Dad does) and saying out aloud that I had lived a decade and had nothing to show for it.
Precocious? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it more as a Calvin from Calvin & Hobbest comment.
Of course my Dad laughed and I couldn't understand why it was funny. I never did speak along those lines to him again but still.
And I remember lying in bed that night and thinking I could be whatever I wanted to be and the problem with that, in a 10 year olds words, what's the right thing for me to be.
Then puberty happened and I just thought about girls...women, chicas, broads, the fairer sex.
Don't think I've really stopped but when I do take a break from my (unfortunately, have to admit, sometimes) carnal musings on women, I do think about other things.


Then there was Jaipur, the second night without my folks. See, the first day they left me in school (and until this point I had been home schooled), I thought I'd see them when I got home. I think it's only that evening that it dawned on me that they had disappeared. Now given my Mum's proclivity for scaring me by saying that they found me in a dumpster and would leave me back in one if I misbehaved, I thought this was their equivalent. So the second night I did write them a letter asking what I did wrong. Sap.
I don't think my grandmother mailed that letter out...


Or the night I got my first rejection from a college in the US. I had to question everything I had to offer...see the problem is that there are more questions than answers. But I think the fun lies in thinking them through.

All in all, there's something comforting lying in bed, the cold wind outside, the warm sheets within, stretched out, looking up at the hazy lights of the City and wondering where I'm headed.

For instance, I remember lying in a strange hotel room, in a new city after meeting this new girl who I liked. Still think about her. But we will see where it goes.

(Work In Progress)

Some people do it in the shower, some on the pot, some in their kitchen and others in the living room.
We all do it somewhere, sometime or the other.
I prefer my bed.

It really is the best place.

.......
To think.
Pervs.



I think the earliest recollection I have is in the house in GK-2. I think i was 12 or 13? No, 10. Fuck, it was my 10th birthday and i rememberr driving somewhere during the day with Dad to the doctors (ENT, not what my Dad does) and saying out aloud that I had lived a decade and had nothing to show for it.
Precocious? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it more as a Calvin from Calvin & Hobbest comment.
Of course my Dad laughed and I couldn't understand why it was funny. I never did speak along those lines to him again but still.
And I remember lying in bed that night and thinking I could be whatever I wanted to be and the problem with that, in a 10 year olds words, what's the right thing for me to be.
Then puberty happened and I just thought about girls...women, chicas, broads, the fairer sex.
Don't think I've really stopped but when I do take a break from my (unfortunately, have to admit, sometimes) carnal musings on women, I do think about other things.


Then there was Jaipur, the second night without my folks. See, the first day they left me in school (and until this point I had been home schooled), I thought I'd see them when I got home. I think it's only that evening that it dawned on me that they had disappeared. Now given my Mum's proclivity for scaring me by saying that they found me in a dumpster and would leave me back in one if Imisbehaved, I thought this was their equivalent. So the second night I did write them a letter asking what I did wrong. Sap.
I don't think my grandmother mailed that letter out...


Or the night I got my first rejection from a college in the US. I had to question everything I had to offer...see the problem is that there are more questions than answers. But I think the fun lies in thinking them throught.

All in all, there's something comforting lying in bed, the cold wind outside, the warm sheets within, stretched out, looking up at the hazy lights of the City and wondering where I'm headed.

For instance, I remember lying in a strange hotel room, in a new city after meeting this new girl who I liked. Still think about her. But we will see where it goes.

To Explain...

Here's the problem or what changed and made me forget.
I was carrying this rather large sack of fear, insecurities, blithering half-thoughts that led to nothing.

It made me bitch, whine, sob, and pretty much mentally fuck myself over twice on Tuesday. I think it took an indirect but rather bitter dose of reality that snapped my neck back, where I did a Three Stooges head shake and go wait a minute, how the fuck did I get here.

So, I stopped, pulled over to the side, let the sack of crap down, proceeded to scratch my head and I had my eureka moment.

The thing with epiphanies is that that they are rather exhilarating and this comes from two effects. One is in a blinding flash every fits in, the Grand Unified Theory of crises. The second is the relief and happiness with the rapidity with which the cracks come together and smoothen out.

And then you take a deep breath, a half smile, watch the smoke curl up and out the window, the way it has always done but you were just too busy to notice, the lazy fingers frantic at first and slowly unwinding and curling and drifting out. Kinda feels like that, dun it?

"Heeeeer's Johnny!!"

Freezin, rests his head on a pillow made of concrete,again
Oh, feelin maybe hell see a little better set a days, ooh yeah
Oh, hand out, faces that he sees time again aint that familiar, ooh yeah
Oh, dark grin, he cant help, when hes happy looks insane, oh yeah

I have forgotten myself. It has been 9 months since I was last stripped. And this has been the longest it has taken me to remember me.
I had forgotten who I am or where I came from and tried to stumble forward. And it's this hedonistic feeling to remember, it's like deja vu except this really happened.
At first I walked the walk, talked the talk, but the one closest to me saw the cracks and it threw me off because it reminded me that I had forgotten. Ironic and a terrible sentence but it makes sense to me.

Kneelin, looking through the paper though he doesnt know to read, ooh yeah
Oh, prayin, now to something that has never showed him anything
Oh, feelin, understands the weather of the winters on its way
Oh, ceilings, few and far between all the legal halls of shame, yeah...

I think part of me didn't want to remember and wanted to wallow and get completely consumed, hit the bottom of the proverbial bottle, dime bag, whatever your escape of choice may be.

While feeble attempts were made to get up again, the were more to go through the motions at an attempt to remember. Fuck that shit, aint no fooling me, least of all when I'm the fuck pulling the strings ya hear!

It feels familiar, the old me I remember, no longer hazy and no more 'I wish I were him'...sad given that the finger was pointed at me all along, just perhaps the me a year ago.

I missed me. It's good to be back. 9 months is way too long to run. And it feels good to stop.

Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies
Oh, he dont know, so he chases them away...
Ooh, someday yet, hell begin his life again, yeah
Oh, whispering hands, gently lead, lead him away...him away...him away...