Month: December 2009

Categories
personal

2000-2009

It’s been a wild decade

So this guy, his wife, and his son, go to the big city for the first time. They walk into the first big building they see. While the wife goes off to look at something, the man and son stare at an elevator. Never saw one before.

The two watch this old, weary woman make her way into one. They see the elevator doors close, bells and lights go off, and then the doors open and a beautiful woman steps out. The father’s mouth drops open and he turns quickly to his son and goes: Boy, go find you mama, right quick.

Old joke. But made me think that I came inna 2000 one way, came out a whole other. Kinda.

1999 – become a lawyer.
2000 – leave the only job I ever had to change the world. Enter girl.
2001 – sit in a room with a red brick wall and saw buildings come down. Exit girl.
2002 – enter girl.
2003 – start one of several companies.
2004 – buy my pad. Exit room with a red brick wall.
2005 – exit companies.
2006 – take a temp gig that lasts for three years. CashCab. Exit girl. Start blog.
2007 – 72Canal: good. Lose life savings; get in a car accident: bad.
2008 – grandmother passes. Never get to say goodbye. Enter Heartgirl.
2009 – still a lawyer. Move back to a room with a red brick wall. Heartgirl’s come with.

 

In Orange Sky, Alexi Murdoch says,

Yes, I had a dream
I stood beneath an orange sky
With my brother and my sister standing by

 

I make light of my insomnia – and all of the things that bring it about – a lot.

But if I were truly honest with you, there were times that I thought that I couldn’t bear the thought of another sleepless night. Could not bear it.

And if not my brother and sister, wouldn’tve. Not sleeping for 48 hours’ll make you think of all sortsa crazy. Life’s hard enough without your people.

So I wish for your 2010-2019 that, if you’ve not found your person, you’ve at least found your people. They’re your mirrors and help you find see yourself. And, looking close, you see just how small your problems are in the big schema things.

Dunno what 2010-2019’s gonna be like – probably nuthin like I expect it. But it’s ok, got my people and my person.

See you in the next decade!

Ah, that joke never gets old, yeah?

Location: a room with red-brick walls
Mood: so very grateful
Music: but sister, you know I’m so weary

Categories
personal

Phillip

Snow on the 72nd Street Pier in NYC
Me: (CRASH!)
Her: (sighing) Why are you always tripping, dropping or breaking something?
Me: (turning to answer and accidentally knocking over a glass) I’m not sure.

 

Got hit with a lotta snow. Was supposed to go to my buddy’s housewarming Saturday but it was canceled. So we stayed in and watched a marathon of poor cinematic choices rounded off with carols at church.

Quiet weekend – not so good for the blogging but great for the mental health.

Speaking of mental health, onea my favorite writer’s Phillip K. Dick. He’s probably onea yours too, but y’don’t know it – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Screamer, Impostors, Paycheck, Next and a buncha others.

His stories all had to do what altered reality – what people thought were real versus what really was real. Like Total Recall where he wondered, if y’could replace all your memories with someone else’s, were y’still you?

My insomnia was the worst from 15 to 25. And what I did when I couldn’t sleep was read. Like piles and pilesa stuff. The byproduct of which’s that I have memories I know’re false but they’re real to me. Someone else’s memories rattl’n around my noggin.

Then again, sometimes false memories’re better when the real ones you’re not so proud of. Isn’t it the secret dream of every human heart to get a do-over? Another chance to do things right this time around, if given the chance.

Guess wishes’re what the holidays are all about.

On a (much) brighter and related note, it’s Xmas on Thursday. If you celebrate, hope it’s quiet. And if you don’t, still hope the same thing.

See you next week.

Location: United States, New York, New York
Mood: cold
Music: memories come rushing up to greet me now

Categories
business dating personal

Frogs and Oceans

There are oceans out there that I want to see

 

George Bailey: Oh, now Pop, I couldn’t. I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office. (remorseful) Oh, I’m sorry Pop, I didn’t mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe. (resigned) I’d go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.

Almost exactly two years ago, told you about the saying, A frog in a well knows nothing of the ocean.

Was thinking about that for three reasons:

  1. Introduced two of my successful business friends whom I trust completely to each other. Both have been screwed blue by other people but neither – cause I know ’em – would screw the other. Problem’s that, while I know it, they don’t. Annoying. S’like setting two teenagers up on a date.
  2. Been thinking of traveling moving again. Always dream of it, never do. Gonna end up like George.
  3. Another friend’s convinced that all men are scum. Convinced. Problem’s that the one common denominator in all her (truly) abysmal dating history’s is…her. She won’t change her map, though, nor herself, though, which is sad cause the holidays are a crap time to be alone with a reality you don’t want. I should know.

Man, there are oceans out there I wanna see.

Pa Bailey: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important.

Location: my pad, having a PB&J;
Mood: anxious
Music: let’s get rich and build our house on a mountain

Categories
personal

Speaking of “Eat-What-You-Kill”

View of an NYC entryway

Turning from my last post, once wrote about this mouse in my house. Bugger wouldn’t die. Just disappeared one day so figured some poison or cat got him.

Fast forward to last week, when I left my pad decked out in a full suit. Forgot something so I turned around and ended up face-to-face with a mouse. We stared at each other for a second, all high noon-like, before it turned and zipped into my pad.

Ran after it, dropping my briefcase. It flew into the bathroom so I did the same, slamming the door behind me to trap us both. Grabbing the metal wastebin in there, brought it down on it over and over again, missing each time. Neighbors musta thought I was clear starkers.

Fast buggers, they are.

Finally thought I got it but turns out the dents in the can gave it a second chance; when I lifted it, expecting to find the past-perfect form of mouse, it sprang away.

So did I, leaping four feet back like a ten-year old girl doing double-dutch. Course, my bathroom’s only three feet wide so ended up smashing in my cabinet door.

Deep breath, flipped the can around and slammed it down one last time. Poor bastard, the last thing it ever saw was some crazed Asian-dude in a brown suit bringing down a dented silver metal can on it.

To say that it was a bloody mess is not taking any literary license, lemme tell you.

Dunno how people – like farmers – regularly kill things. Then again, they’re probably not wearing a sweat-soaked three-piece using a dustbin. Maybe they are; what do I know?

Sorry little guy, didn’t wanna, but had to.

Her: (noticing the missing can later) What happened to the trash can here? (surprised) And what happened to the cabinet door!?
Me: (sighing) You don’t wanna know.
Her: (shaking head) I don’t want to know.

In other news: my bathroom floor’s spotless, I’ve decided I wouldn’t last in the wild; and I still hate AT&T;.

Location: still in front of computer screens
Mood: fulla fiber
Music: Early in the evenin’ just about supper time

Categories
business personal

Shutting down

Location: surrounded by computers and papers. Help me.
Mood: caffeinated!
Music: you wonder why they haven’t called when they said they’d call

Running Windows on a Mac
Me: I’m shutting down for the night.
Her: You just said that you’re shutting down for the night.
Him: I didn’t. (pause) Did I? (sighing) I gotta stop hanging out with computers.

Lately, my financial life’s been eat-what-you-kill. The problem’s that, after a long period of nuthin, y’grab everything that you can that might lead to scratch, even if most don’t ultimately pan out.

‘cept divorce. Won’t touch divorces. Cause, even though it’s not usually the case, one party’s got it in their head that, Who the #$@#$ are y’to tell me I’m not good enough?

No, won’t do divorces.

Y’wanna turn 10 craptastic apartments that share three bathrooms into four? Get the dude you love into the country legally? Register a trademark and sue someone? Raise $3 million in six weeks? Dual boot Windows on your mac so y’can save your Windows star ratings into iTunes and vice versa?

Yeah, I can do that for you.

Can work cheap, fast, or through – but y’can only pick two outta three.

YASYCTAI: Get back to finishing up that thesis/big project. (weeks/2 pts)

Categories
personal

Got Lucky

Location: surrounded by computer bits
Mood: hungry
Music: I’m just gonna sit on the dock of the bay

Him: How can you think like that, you’re…
Me: What? Chinese-American? A minority? It’s not like we all get together on Tuesdays and decide to all think a certain way.
Him: But you’re obviously wrong. Just look around, look at the popular opinion.
Me: Popular opinion once said that the world is flat. Popular opinion in Germany once said that Jews weren’t people. Popular opinion once said that the life of a black man is worth that of a cow. Since when’s popular opinion the voice of reason?
Him: It’s wrong. We shouldn’t be fighting a war that doesn’t concern us.
Me: Maybe. But that’s my issue: who’s this us you’re referring to? People or people that look like you?
Him: (rolling his eyes) Americans, man…you know I mean Americans. Like us.
Me: Like us? I’m only an American cause I got lucky. You too. Don’t y’ever forget that dumb luck put y’here and not Somalia or North Korea. That’s the only goddamn difference between us and them. There’s only ever the lucky and the screwed.

YASYCTAI: Be grateful for your dumb luck. (5 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Juggling

Location: 23:00 yest, an orange chair
Mood: tired
Music: I don’t have a simple answer

Have y’noticed the disturbing trend in commercials and movies where people’re in a car and then another car comes outta nowhere and just smashes them up? I can relate.

S’for the shock value, yeah. But it does illustrate a point: y’never can tell what’s gonna happen, good or bad.

Finally got some significant scratch from a gig I did ages ago. Cannot tell you how excited I was about that.

But then another, unpleasant, thing popped up unexpectedly from a different area of my life. And I’m back to square one.

Juggling your health, wealth and relationships‘s never easy.

Sorry this post’s late, been busy. Juggling, y’see…

YASYCTAI: Get a prioritization system. (45 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Don’t really know

What’s the point of it all?

Cloudy day in NYC

Her: What was that sound!?
Me: Was working on something and the live power cable hit the fan.
Her: Logan! You’re going to kill yourself some day. (laughing) And your fly’s open.
Me: (slowly) Yes.

If something did happen to me, someone’d find that I’m 20% peanut butter (by weight, not volume). The remainder being rum.

Did y’have a nice Turkey Day? This year was different. Paul and WM hung up their club shoes to play board games by mine. Very Waltons.

The Professor wasn’t in town but I did see Johnny. With the exception of the Devil, he’s the onea the most dangerous men I know. That says a lot. And he brought his daughter over.

Her: I like you. You’re funny.
Me: I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen, keep your dad from punching me. He scares me.
Her: He scares me too!

This 25 year-old kid named Luis Armando Pena Soltren hijacked this plane from NY to Puerto Rico on 19681124 and went to Cuba where he spent the next 40 years in working as a day labourer.

At some point, he musta thought, What the #$@# did I do with my life?

So he came back an old man and’s sitting at some jail cell knowing that he’s thrown his life away on yet another thing that had the air of truth to it, but no real truth to it.

Him: 10 Million.
Me: Just this year?
Him: Yeah. (pause) Woulda made more if it wasn’t for this economy. Gotta fly back to China in three weeks.
Me: Why dontcha just sell it all? The factories, the buildings, all of it? Y’can spend time with your family, hang out with me. Start up that school y’always say you wanna do.
Him: (shakes head)
Me: Why not? You make more money than the pope but you’re miserable. What’s the pointa all that green if y’don’t get to see your family and I’m the only person in the world y’trust?
Him: Don’t really know.


Nietzxche was right, your convictions’re dangerous things. The choices remain the same: Change your map; Change your reality; or Keep crying.

Better work out. Next year, doubt I’ll have his daughter there to protect me.

Location: a grey, half-sofa
Mood: cheerful
Music: come with me we’ll travel to infinity
YASYCTAI: Have you considered fencing? (90 mins/2 pts)