Do they even make railroad spikes anymore?

A lovely fall day. Sunday, always Sunday. The only day I can manage to have the apartment to myself. My roommates are all out in the world, being active, being social. I, however, am sitting with a cup of coffee that I keep topping off and a bowl of cantaloupe chunks that I'm slowly picking at. So I need this alone time, I don't mind that I'm only experiencing the breeze through an open window.

This weather is very much reminding me of Portland, that life I had for a few months a couple of years ago. Two years have passed since then. That feels totally unbelievable. Why does fall always feel so, I don't know, sad? The winding down, I guess. The old memories tucked away in my insides of starting school again. Suddenly the city feels smaller, closed in around me somehow, though nothing has changed except the month. I feel anxious, too, that all of the other things I could be doing with my life are out there, flying by, only I'm not fast enough to grab them.

Listening to the same songs over and over again. The story of my life. Conversations being repeated for the probably 80th time, then specters in my dreams. Self-defeating thoughts, and then a new week starts, hopefully this one will blot out my weekend and propel me forward. For once and for all, out of the nonsense I submit to willingly and continually. Someday I will grow out of all of this. I should get a dog, so I can wake up early and focus on something other than my own, mid-20s-but-somehow-very-adolescent nonsense. Maybe a happy, Phineas Gage-esque accident. maybe a railroad spike through some personality-producing piece of my brain meat. And then everything will change in one quick instant, and I could be someone new.

Bird on a Wire

Reading an article from the New York Times book blog (“Paper Cuts”, naturally, eye-rollingly). A brief piece, highlighting an author‘s new book, new website, whatever. And it’s 1:06 AM on a Sunday, for crying out loud. I should be asleep, readying myself for a day of investigating tomorrow. So this article is about Jennifer Egan’s website, newly redesigned to represent the concept of her new novel, space and time, blah blah. Interesting, I’m sure, but the rum and coke(s) working through my system throw me into skimming mode. Anyways, one sentence in a pull quote stopped me. It was about how she came to New York in 1987 at the age of 24. One little fact of biography. So I’m one of many. Lying here in my bed, up too late, a few drinks too many deep, at least for a Sunday. Many before, many after. Whatever I’m feeling has been felt before, many times over. So I’m anonymous. Old news. A wrinkle in an endless bolt. I wish the summer would end already, if only to feel like something can change.

I stole this sweater from the costume shop

Holy shit, a whole year since the last time I wrote here. Almost unbelievable, and somehow totally believable at the same time.

Sitting on my couch. Drinking coffee in the afternoon, browsing for jobs and casually applying for one or two. It's like being Portland again, but instead of the pleasant autumn-y sounds of leaves crunching under bike wheels I'm listening to some jackass outside on my street laying on his horn in an effort to convince a double parked truck to move on. Oddly enough, it's not working.

My birthday is a week and a half away. It coincides with the wedding of a friend of mine, which I will be attending. Of course weddings are the best, but I think this one will throw my own paltry existence, my extended adolescence, intro gross relief. My friend will be getting married to an older man. She will be a step mother. And this is not to say that I wish any of these things for my own life - but how can my life be so drastically dissimilar from hers?

I've been going a little crazy lately. Maybe it's the rain clouds that keep gathering over the city but rolling on before they release any rain. The trees bend for a few minutes and day becomes evening, but then a few minutes later the light returns. A heavy rain, maybe, is what I need. Maybe it's just being young, maybe it's this crazy city. One week you get passed over for a promotion and nothing feels right anymore, when just the week before that you marveled at your own life and how well the pieces were moving. One week you're the double parked truck, driverless and immobile, when just the week before you were the line of taxis behind it, anxious and ready to move ahead and see what was at the next intersection.