I read some poems I wrote last year.  I think I might have recounted these attempts.  I remember very well the Herculean effort it took to even try, and it reminds me of the strange sense of having to be forced to confess an emotion, any emotion.  Reading these over, it’s hard to believe that such scraps could have taken so much wincing and hemming and hawing!  But I also remember writing them down and feeling like I could actually see as I wrote how much space was opening up or closing between the writing and the actual feeling.  In hindsight, I guess because the emotion is gone, it seems like an great evocation; but at the time it seemed second-rate, a shadow of the experience.

Poetry actually was a part of my “work” today.  I’ll do a round-up.

• editing a memoir/business how-to by a nonprofit ceo
• judging a haiku contest for Fresh Kills Park (really cool)
• I’m auctioning off a manuscript review–here .  Well I’m not doing it.  It’s for a good cause, diabetes research, and is organized by author Brenda Novak.  No one does organization like the romance community!  Seriously, there is definitely an essay in there about the subcultures of different genre authors.  The vibes are really different.

I’m glad to be going into BC tomorrow because I think I’m kind of cafeed out.  I got some stuff done at one but basically eavesdropped on what-do-you-call-it corporate cutthroat kind of things–espionage.  Also, I went to the Starbucks where the guy gave me the rice krispies treat for free and was like “Did you give me the extra rice krispy treat?”  He said, ‘Yes.  Do you want another?”  I said no.  He doesn’t really smile and is a cool “customer” so to speak.  After that I sat next to this girl and he grandmother.  I think they were French-speaking.  The girl was fiddling with her smartphone and the grandmother was looking on in a mild, benevolent way, attempting to be interested every once in awhile.  I smiled at them and maybe even laughed, and they didn’t understand why.  I explained which usually amounts to repeating the situation, “It’s funny, she’s on the phone, and you’re watching,” and then I realized these cafes are beginning to resemble my “real” life a bit too closely.  Like soon will I need an “oasis” from the cafes?  I guess it’s good I can’t talk to the birds in those parks…”It’s funny, you just swam this way, than that.”

So cute, I just stumbled upon an entry I wrote in 2006 (for lj but in a Word document).  I had an ipod back then.  The entry mentioned having lunch with an editor who knew Jorge Luis, alluded to, I think,the fact that I was about to land Alison (or potentially Bethany) as a client and also discussed my attempts to cook rather than eat out.  I also talked a lot about walking.  I am definitely not as critical of people walking as I used to be.  The longer I live in my neighborhood, the less I am aware of my movements of it.  I have joined with Neighborhood as one mind mass.

I had also just read Rachel Cusk’s book In the Fold:

I just finished reading In the fold by Rachel Cusk.  I liked it, but it was a painful, sad  ending.  The protagonist’s marriage falls apart.  I think the whole time I was holding my breath, waiting for the wife and husband to have it out, but they never did…they were beyond having conversations about their difficulties.  It was really sad.  I couldn’t really identify with the circumstances of the woman’s life (crazy parents led her to want to have a perfect, normal life) but I did feel very strongly her mid-thirties crisis where she felt she had always been ‘good” and just wanted to be “bad.”  This is a mild fear of mine.  I’m not really living it up and I never had, and sometimes I feel like it is a ticking bomb, and one day I’ll just wreck my whole life because I’ve been so repressed.

Yesterday was tiring.  I went to BC.  I switched things up and stopped going to Starbucks in the mornings on the days I got to BC.  Ostensibly this is because I don’t have enough time, but I think the more pressing reason was that when I’m at Starbucks I have coffee and generally when I go to BC, I have a coffee on the looooong train ride.  However, if I go to Starbucks before, I don’t really want to have a second coffee on the BC train.  But having coffee and reading on the train to BC is definitely the highlight of those days.  So I decided to cut out the Starbucks coffee and hence, Starbuck.

I ended up deactivating my Facebook account.  I think it’s temporary.  I mean I have no plans for it to be permanent.  I think the problem with FB was it was sparking off too many thoughts.  I have enough thoughts right now between the book and my freelance work.

What happened yesterday:  Not much.  I went to the Amish Market and the tomato soup bucket? Cistern?  Anyway whatever that container is, it was almost empty.  Nevertheless I perservered and ladeled out the last of the coup.  I mean, soup.  My paper container was not full, but I didn’t care.  I got home and downed that soup, then stared blankly at the computer, equally drawn to going to sleep and going to Starbucks.  I tweeted something and Michelle retweeted it which I took as a sign that I should go to Starbucks and work on my book.

So I did the night shift at Starbucks.  I got a hot chocolate and behind me was a girl in her early twenties sobbing on the phone to her mother about some problem with  her lease.  There were also three really young French boys in line ahead of me who kept their money in a bank envelope.  A lady with a Columbia shirt on was studying.  Oh also behind me a tiring conversation about retirement account was being had.  I don’t think I could ever be a salesperson.  Often it seems like a very painful performance.

Overheard Starbucks convo:
“One got fired.”
“What she’d do?”
“Well, she fell asleep. A lot.”

You know, I found my 2006 entry so compelling,that I am now competing against it.  So the conversation I’m basically listening into right now, it’s two guys, one who wants to leave his job.  It’s a like, networking thing. One is white, businesslike, one is black, artsylike.  Businesslike is kind of a baby American psycho.  He keeps trying to sound cool and in control.  His foot keeps moving.  I’m on the fence about him.  They are almost speaking two different languages, although they have a lot in common.  I don’t know, I think these are like guys in their late twenties who went to school together.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“I mean, whatever you can.”

“If you put up with the crazy bullshit you can stay there forever.”

“Sounds like a fucking psychopath.”

“There are ways you can hack your sleep schedule.”

This is my first post not done at a cafe in awhile.  It was a strange weekend:  first a gorgeous day yesterday, then decidedly rainy today.

• Hot dog in Central Park.  Yum.
• New encounters with the friendly “mayor of the street,” a smiley older gentleman who I often see on this block and who seems to know many others who live here.
• Line on my face.  Frown. Which only makes it more distinct!
• Hot chocolate and a chai, my cup overfloweth.
• Single male ducks prevalent in the pond.
• Eyebrow waxing and croissants at Amish market are up in price.

Whenever I go into Brooklyn College, my eating is confused.  Last week, the cafeteria was closed so I had to find a new food source.  I went to the bookstore, which has excellent prices.  I was eating pistachios and pop chips, and then I eventually succumbed and had some hot tamales (the candy).  This week, the cafeteria had reopened.  I was determined to get a salad, but I think I got pop chips and pistachios again and then today I got sushi.  What I did not get is the free ice cream.

Also there’s a lot of free food circulating in the office.

I’m at Caffe Bene, and I have to say this woman is kind of annoying me with her two friends.  I think they’re all Korean and the woman insists on busting out various phrases in English periodically.  At first it was kind of funny because she seems to have a perfect English accent,but I’m over it.  She raises her voice every time she says something in English.  So far she’s sang bits from “My Way,” the Marilyn Monroe “Happy Birthday” to JFK and then other spoke things that escape my mind.

I’m also being hit bigtime by this mosquito.  This happened last night, too.  I used to wake up and slay this mosquito but switched to just spraying myself [she just said “crazy”].  Now I can’t find the insectiside, so I just switched positions on the bed.  That seemed to work, too.  [She just said “favorite…love  me  if you dare”—ellipses indicate Korean.]

Continued, the morning after.

I had a crazy dream last night, but it’s pretty much gone.  I woke up at six, and it was light out.  I’m in Starbucks again.  I don’t know who chooses the playlist here, but it’s fantastic.

I still have to buy my tickets for a trip I’m taking in the fall to visit my friend Maya in Paris.  I’m sooooo excited.  David is coming, too, and it’s going to be great.  Last time we watched True Blood and danced to Single Ladies, and I got some great journals.  I was also reading this out-of-control Thomas Hardy book, Far from the Maddening Crowd.  I really only remember the sheep falling into the chalk pit and feeling like I was watching this guy’s heart get pulverized.

Oh, I overheard an interesting conversation on 49th and 8th.  Guy on the phone.

Guy:  How long have you been selling your p—y?  How many months have you been selling your p—y?
Pause. Pause.
Girl on other end: How many months?

They’re playing this really gorgeous version of “Over the Rainbow” in Starbucks.  I have been unable to figure out who the artist is.

I feel like I haven’t written a post about random people lately, but I’ve had encounters with many of them.  Is it a coincidence I went to the diner yesterday?   Here are the randoms of the week:

I sat across from  these two girls in the diner.  One had this kind of face I’ve always liked, really soft brown eyes and kind of squishy.   I know there are famous people with this face, but I can’t think of it them now.  Renee Zellwegger is the blonde of this type.  Also the hair is always the same sort of soft brown.  She was wearing a white (fashion) scarf and a striped skirt.  I guess I associate this kind of look with a lot of monied (in my eyes) girls now, like flamboyantly patterned and stiff/crisp skirts, with minimal accessorization.  Across from her was a blonde girl, shorter and plumper who was cast in the role of “listener” in this conversation.  The brunette, who was also taller and older, had spent some time abroad and was informing the blonde about Irish men and France and British food.  They both got great looking breakfasts, the blonde’s was french toast with eggs and bacon on top and the brunette had waffles.

On the corner of 28^th and 10^th, a corner which I’m very familiar with, because I used to walk down 28^th on my way home from work—this is where the big food stand is that all the taxi drivers go to and across the street, where lots of rats are.  Anyway walking up 10^th late at night, there is alays a lot of spillover fro these clubs out there.  But on the west side of the street there was like a rumble of young men, about seven, who I never actually saw fight but were yelling and running, switching directions like schools of fish occasionally.

I sat by the Hudson River yesterday, and it was not the oasis I’m used to.  First of all on my way there, I ran into many people walking away from a make-up convention.  A lot of those people were in the park.  It was hot out, and this park is most notable for having barely any shade when the trees have leave, so now when they do not, there is barely any barely.  I sat on the benches that have the best shade and a drunk man walked by accosting me and the person on the near by bench in Spanish.  I kept my eyes trained on my book, and then he took the bench next to us.  He also had a radio on, a beard, and just seemed generally unkempt.  I picked my stuff up and went to a bench directly across from the river.  I opened up my snapple apple and wrote in my journal and read my book.

Eveline shared an article she read on Twitter about Facebook contributing to people’s loneliness, and I had another attack of “I should quit Facebook.”  I don’t feel lonely when I read Facebook, and I’m  more used to my negative reactions to being more along the lines of , Wow, this person must be kind of lonely/needy if they’re posting this on Facebook than Their life is so much better than mine, and I’m sad. Actually I feel FB has been a great equalizer of life accomplishments as I realize that no matter what heights people attain, they seem to question its value until they have validations by others.   I also really enjoy looking at people’s pictures and piecing together life narratives.  Anyway, it’s a total time suck, though.  I feel like  whenever I think of leaving the thought that makes me stay is the party invites.  To the point where I was considering like emailing Alexis and being like, I’m not on FB, but please remember to invite me to your parties.  Then I thought of other people and was, like, it’s all too much.  Though actually this would almost be the ideal time because I’m trying to really not do much socialwise while I finish up these revisions.