Wednesday, December 24, 2008

but you're still the one pool where i'd happily drown

i think maybe a year ago, if i'd found this song, it would have hit every nerve on my body. yet i'm glad i didn't find it until i'd fallen in love with new york and then left it to have an affair with australia.

and i love the title. "new york i love you but you're bringing me down," by lcd soundsystem. don't worry, jay, this isn't another music post, i know how you love to skip them, but i am entirely in love with this song, and the handful of "video tours around midtown" clips on youtube that accompany it, like this one:



it reminds me of the truth, that yes, of course, i do love new york, but like any good marriage, there are days where i don't know how we ended up together. it's not a good relationship if you wonder, "how did we ever become so unhappy in each other's company?" but it's something more entirely to know that, even if you are questioning the entire sociopolitical practice of monogamy, you're in this one together. i think that's what new york and i have together.

i miss the old girl, even if i've never been fond of her times square tourism, or the wet garbage on the subway tracks (why should i care? except that i have to stare at it when waiting for a c train to finally come), or the teeming douchebaggery of the meatpacking district or bleecker st on a friday night. it is what it is, because there's always cedar hill, unlimited mimosas at brunch, the ray's pizza on 8th, and a new issue of "time out" in the mail every wednesday. we have fights, but we never go to bed angry.

back in august, i questioned leaving my good marriage with new york for the one who that wouldn't go away, australia. and as i've started talking about coming back, hopscotching around ideas like, "why did i come to australia?" or "should i have just stayed in new york?" the resounding response from an assortment of supportive friends has been the same, essentially: i came here to find out what could happen.

for the record, despite the life crises that have met me along the way--and maybe this is a speech i should be saving for some post at the end of this chronicle, but it's christmas and it's a time to be grateful--i absolutely had to come to australia. i'm writing this play right now--would i have done this if i stayed in new york? maybe not--and there's this resounding theme of just "sitting with it." i found a lot of ways to avoid my pain in new york, and then i figured out a plan to flush out my pain. but i always had somewhere to go, something to do, some way to tend to whatever wounds.

in australia, with little to no work to distract me, not a whole lot of people to run off with, and a lot less noise to block out the silence, i finally learned how to just sit with everything. to sit in my life and do absolutely nothing about it but let it be.

in australia, i stopped running.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

how can i catch up when i don't want to?

in lorrie moore's brilliant collection, "birds of america", a series of stories all about people whose lives have somehow veered off the road, she's got a story called "real estate," about a woman who, regarding the mess she's in, recognizes somehow how funny it is too. maybe i'm not remembering it correctly, i don't have the book with me and can't quote it words for word, except that for the next two and a half pages, she can't help but just laugh. i mean "ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!" over and over, until it looks less like lines of a story and more a brick wall of hysteria. maybe that's the point.

i certainly get it.

now i think i've indulged myself enough in past posts with the dire dramatics, so we're gonna try to not hunker down and sniffle and cry about this. maybe it's the yoga, but i'm not that fussed anymore. you see, for the past few weeks, i was banking on a job that, by all intents and purposes, was perfect. and i had, it seemed, a really good chance of getting it. i put all my energy towards the belief that i could get it, that it was coming my way, that the job was, essentially, mine. these would be the tried and supposedly true tricks of some of those self-help books, once they get around to ideas like "the power of positive thinking" or "the law of attraction." yes, i sort of believe in all that stuff, because it doesn't hurt not to.

i also recently read this book called "the wishing year," only because it vaguely resembled "eat, pray, love." it was, ostensibly, nonfiction chick lit, but that hasn't stopped me in the past. the short of it is this woman decides to turn to wishing and, to whatever extent, greater forces outside of herself, to draw things into her life that had, in the last few years, fallen away or never appeared, for one reason or another. for the most part, i just liked the idea of this working, i liked the possibility of it. i can't entirely shake my skepticism, but "the artist's way" had some basis in these ideas as well, so i had some experience in giving it a go anyway.

lest we forget my petition, which was answered, so i also have some experience in it working.

anyway, one of the points the author made, which sticks with me particularly now as, much of what i, let's say, "wished for," has not really come true, is that when our wishes are not granted, it is often illuminating of what we really want in life. apparently, i didn't really want this job. i hardly wanted to believe that. of course i wanted this job! i wanted the money, so i could take classes and see theatre and travel and...and...

well, so i could stay. so i could make australia "work." (put in quotes because who knows what the hell that means.)

i'd also decided that if i did not get this job, then it was a sign. i do fully believe in getting signs. maybe i'm less of a skeptic than i claim. maybe i just don't want to sound like a total kook. before you know it, i'm running away with a rogue group of crystal therapy practitioners i met at the "mind, body, spirit" festival, to play the triangle in their new age jam band, "amethyst dawn."

i guess i consider these signs to be something of a comfort. no one wants to feel totally untethered in life. that seems to be a great appeal of religion. i totally get that. it's nice to feel like someone's got the map, even if you don't.

i didn't want to show my cards too early about this, because you never know when the universe is going to throw you a bone, and i suppose there are still a few employment leads out there, but the point is, i've thrown in the towel when it comes to actively pursuing a job any better than sumo salad. if some of these other opportunities come through, fantastic. i'll gladly take them. but not for classes, not for traveling, not for much else other than saving.

my heart's not here. it hasn't been for a while. the truth of it is, it really is funny how little has gone according to plan. then again, i never had a plan. i never wanted a plan. i just wanted to figure it out as i go. i think i needed to have that untethered feeling for a while. i remember saying the very first day i got here, "no one's looking for me here. no one has any expectations. i could do anything i want." that freaked me out, and the next few months i spent learning how to live with so few borders.

so that decision i mentioned in the last post is put on slight hold till i find out what's happening with these other opportunities, but if nothing comes of them, i'm buying a plane ticket home. it means i'd be back in the states sometime in early february. this gives ivy (flatmate of dreams) a chance to find a replacement, and me a chance to do a few last things there. it gives me a chance to make peace, much in the way that i did before coming here, so i return home with as little baggage as possible.

it gives me a chance to say goodbye.

so it'll be interesting to see where we go from here. i could come back in a few days with great news, and hopes of returning to new york with a sizable financial shield against the awful job market, or i could come back with a return date and dusted hands.

i'd sigh myself to sleep if it wasn't so fucking funny...

Friday, December 12, 2008

baby, you're sailing away

my body is coated in a sweat like some sort of subhuman slime, dripping into my eyes and hitting my feet with a sort of cartoonish plop. i reach my arms up high over my head, my biceps aching, my triceps tearing, and bend down slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae, watching myself in the mirror until i have no choice but to look down and just keep breathing.

i haven't been this peaceful since some balmy new york night in july, when it seemed everything finally made sense.

ladies and gentleman, meet bikram yoga.

no, this is not something else i signed my life away to at the "mind, body, spirit" festival a few weeks ago. i've actually flirted with the idea for a few years now, romanced by the idea of all that sweating and stretching and finding zen in the third ring of hell. i remember thinking, sometime in ithaca, probably during the nate-fueled nervous breakdown of senior year, that it might be a nice christmas present. that was two years ago, about this time.

now i'm here, and while i won't deny that i was a legitimate mess after nate, i also knew that that was just practice from some greater life crisis, an assembling of tools of tricks and experiences for when it really felt like i was circling the drain.

ladies and gentleman, meet australia.

but this time, i did the yoga. i signed up for an introductory ten days of unlimited use for $19, which i could have easily just spent on a couple vodkas back when drinking seemed like a good idea. i think my ten days end sometime next week, and then i'll probably fork over (on credit, considering my current cash flow situation) another couple hundred for twenty more classes.

i need this class. i need that feeling, after ninety minutes in a room that teeters just barely on becoming unacceptably hot, pushing my body and my mind way past both their respective comfort zones (a theme, really, of my time in australia), of absolute peace, immobilizing calm. by the end of every class, i'm laying down on my towel and mat, drenched through with sweat, staring up at the ceiling, feeling somehow at peace with the heat, with my job situation, with my entire life. last night, i was laying there, thinking, "i could just stay here, and none of it would matter."

but i was really fucking thirsty, so i got up after like five minutes.

i need this kind of, well, therapy, to be honest, because somewhere in the next few days, depending on certain factors, i'm making a pretty big decision. i'm not getting into it here yet, except to say that it's time. once i know, i'll post something about it.

so a few things until then:

tassie was good. of course, i've come to realize that i hate having to tell people about my vacations. jay astutely noticed this when i went to thailand in '06, and admits he still doesn't acually know how it was, because my response was always a weary "oh god, it was fine, i don't feel like talking about it." so tassie: it was fine, the weather was nice, the scenery was pretty, the people were fun, i'm happy to be back in civilization. i know, i'd make the worst travel writer, which isn't good, because i plan on stretching the truth when i return to new york with possibly no relevant job experience since july '08 and say that i've been working on some travel writing project while in australia. (read: i wrote a blog every week about how insane i was going.)

but i promised pictures, so i'll put up a picture or two. or maybe not.

also, i will still be writing up a fine review of that "mind, body, spirit" festival at some point in the near future. i promise to limit the number of references to crying in public to a minimum, only because i didn't.

that might be all i have in me right now. i have to dash to work soon--for two hours. don't even get me started, i'm stressed about it enough as it is and i don't know if my body can handle another night in a row of yoga.

who am i kidding? i'll totally be there.