an optimistic walk through the Park

Yesterday, I was taking my usual walk across Central Park towards the 'A' subway line and, ultimately home, when I found myself overcome by a sensation so foreign, I had nearly forgotten what it felt like - optimism. I was seized with a mystical calm as I made my way around The Pond. The sunset was casting an orange tint on the side of the buildings that rose above the trees along Central Park West. The setting sun rendered the skyline into an Edward Hopper painting with fiery highlights and deep, blue shadows. It gave a vivid, magical quality to the air. My strides shortened and breeze against my face slackened as I looked around me.

It felt like the first time I visited New York City. I no longer felt the burden of experience that I had come to resent- the infestation of corporate culture, the moneyed gentrification of dynamic neighborhoods, the crippling cost of daily living. For a few minutes, New York was a land where Woody Allen's Manhattan might still live. I felt that I was at the center of a bustling humanity- 13 miles of innumerable possibilities. The weight of the Now fell from my shoulders and I was anytime I wanted to be. I could race along the great arm of history and imagine myself on a stroll through the City of Ziegfeld or Scorsese or Warhol or Dylan or LaGuardia or The Ramones or Duke Ellington or the myriad of people who found greatness and contributed to this great quilt of community. I loved that I was here and that I was participant who cared what this city Was and Is and I want to make something for it.

I crossed 6th Avenue, ahead of a horse-drawn carriage and the furrowed path carved into the pavement. Past toy dogs and double-wide baby carriages with ivory infants and Caribbean women at the helm, I held my soft buzz of optimism beneath my jacket and skirted the cliches and disappointments. My pace quickened until I discovered that I had taken the wrong path and now I was out of the park and on the corner of 59th and 7th Avenue. I frantically weaved between Japanese, punk tourists and a young, smug hipster as he fruitlessly tried to hail a taxi. It felt that if I could just get home or maybe even into the subway or Somewhere, then I might be able to preserve this feeling and not lose it.

I ducked down a shallow path that allowed me a few yards between me and Now but it was already too late. By the time I reached the bustle of Columbus Circle, the Optimism had bled through my jacket and evaporated into the cold, night air. The sunset was fading into the glow of marquees and streetlights. The sky would be black by the time I reached home. I descended the subways steps and trudged back to the cave.

digging for my Bliss

I've been running jangly for the last few weeks. I can't get a grip on anything. I destroyed my 4-month-old iPod Nano/birthday gift last week. What should have been a smooth, 'Pick up item/put item in pocket' maneuver turned into 'pick up item/try to get better grip on item/launch item across the room and under the dresser'. Last night, I lost all motor skills and got waxed in a game of Madden 2005. I became so irate, I had to stand on the fire escape in 30 degree (F) temperatures and 20 m.p.h. winds to calm myself. That took a good 15 minutes to get over a computer game.

Defeatism is in full bloom and the stench would fell a Pollyanna. I can stand outside myself and observe the irrational behavior, yet still be utterly unable to control it. My focus goes off in brilliant, red and blue fireworks as thoughts shimmer and crackle with insipiration then instantly dissolve into blackness. Mania is swinging the pendulum wide and for the first time ever, I've actually entertained the notion that, perhaps, I might need some form of medication... now, all I need is health insurance.

Of course, the City has done little to improve my mood, either. I've noticed that many of my friends have been feeling the same, anxious irritation. New York City is feeling unaffordable even for the full-timers. Many people have glanced up after a few years of earnest, nose-to-the-grindstone effort and can't figure out why they chose to move here in the first place... or why they should stay. Rents have continued to skyrocket, even in the few years I've lived here. Moving to New York has felt like drilling a well. As I start digging deeper and deeper, I fret about whether I chose the right spot and whether I should try another place. A little deeper, I start to think that if I did stop, then I'd be wasting all the time/money I've put into it. So, I throw myself into it all-the-harder, thinking that I'm just being a chicken-shit and losing my nerve. Nowadays, I'm starting to wonder whether I've just dug myself a really expensive hole to Nowhere.

For our honeymoon, Kat and I are going to roadtrip America. We've wanted to do it for years, just as an adventure. Now, it's starting to look like chance to find if there's somewhere in this country where an artist might find a way to both live and work on his art. My parents are so desperate to get us out of the City, they've eagerly offered to lend us a car and help pay for the trip. We're planning on visiting friends and relatives in Nebraska and South Dakota, then check out Colorado, Washington, California, the Southwest and who knows where else before returning the car. Kat and I were both born in Colorado so there's a part of us that thinks Colorado might be the place we'll end up, but who knows? Maybe we'll stay a bit longer and finally strike water in NYC so we can start building.

But the hole keeps getting deeper.

a New paint job

It's the end of the year and the habits are performing their familiar, high-arching return. Lately, the act of Living has felt like a perpetual battle to break free from the rip-tides of habit. As the road signs of my twenties slowly dissolve into the horizon of my rearview mirror, I am struggling to keep my eyes on the Road. Manic depression has begun to swing me further and further onto the gravely shoulders of the road. The Fear grows that one bad winter could send me into the ditch or wrapped around cement-anchored, telephone pole in the median. It's apparent that preemptive action Must be taken.

Last week, a new gym membership was secured with plastic promises to my debtors. The next step is the purchase of another Thing to add to my collection - a laptop. The dream of a quiet office space will have to be saved for the next Move, either from the Big City or to another tier of wealth alien to my existence. It is time to recognize that my cave is no kind of place to write and the only Hope lies in cafes and bars of Manhattan.

So, after scouring the pages of lenovo.com, toshiba.com, fujitsu.com, dell.com, mobilityguru.com, apple.com, notebookreview.com, laptoplogic.com and numerous forums, I've come the the conclusion that everything is Too Expensive and Utterly Baffling. Whoever is in charge of the numbering scheme for Intel laptop processors should be shot. Years ago, a laptop purchase was made from Dell by yours truly and from that Incident I have learned the two things that I MUST have in this new machine: 1) A decently-sized keyboard, 2) a weight that will NOT render the idea of Portability to a joking quip.

It appears that a Lenovo Thinkpad will be the way to go. A Z60T or T42, perhaps. It certainly isn't the cheapest model on the market today, but it looks like a workhorse. I'm praying that there are some New Year deals to be had in the next week so I don't have to make too many more promises I can't keep.

Then, let the Magic begin...

fixing a hole

I feel that I have lost track of an old friend. I have gone nowhere, yet I've become lost in the sea of my Twitch. Such are the lands I travel when winter approaches and I feel the tightening grip of shorter days around my neck. I have a half-dozen projects at my fingertips- none of them close to completion.

Must get back into the thick of things... human contact so I can get it Out.

I am so Totally over Her

I know. I suck. Logically, it goes against my most-fundamental beliefs as an artist. But there I am, doing it virtually every Monday. ***Big Breath Here*** I read the Top 10 List of Box Office performers from the weekend.

There! I said it. I finally admitted it. That's the first step towards recovery, you know. I'm practically cured. I don't need those numbers. I was able to kick smoking, movie collecting, and fast food. Surely I can... quit... if I wanted to...

In my defense - I don't, in any way, believe that these statistics reflect the quality of a particular film. I would never ascribe to the hideous belief of many Americans that a high-score at the box office means that a movie is any better or worse than any other. I do it because I am always waiting for Big Failure of the Enemy. When a crap-ass movie like XXX: State of the Union opens with a multi-million dollar campaign push, I'm just begging for it to fail. It's like watching NASCAR. You don't want the entire race to fail, but there's a part of you that can't wait for a really good wipeout.

This year has made for a very satisfying track of the box office. Ticket costs are up, advertisements in theaters are pissing people off, mainstream movies are flooding the multiplexes and revenue is DOWN. Even the obnoxious success of the Star Wars prequel has not succeeded in reviving the box office. And now, they're hoping that The Longest Yard and Madagasgar are going to save things over the Memorial Day weekend?! Oh yeah! This is gonna be good. This is the year that Hollywood goes down! I can't wait until -

...

I'm doing it again. I'm skidding off the road and into the realm of stupid. I have become one of those friends who keep saying, "I'm totally over her. God, it's such a relief to be free of her. Really! If she hadn't broke up with me, I'd have done it first. So what did you see her doing? Really? Well I don't care. Why the fuck should I care? I'm totally over her."

Bad breakups die hard and this one really has to die. Like, now.

The Bermuda Triangle of Manhattan (thru May 1st)

I can't remember names for-shit. I recognize faces. I can usually remember where/when/how I met them, but not the name. I also have a terrible habit of swapping first and last names when I’m talking about art,sports, film or music with people. I’ll keep saying Reggie Jackson when I’m meaning Reggie White or, out loud I will be in the midst of a baffling (to others) diatribe about Buddy Guy while I can clearly see that I'm pontificating about Buddy Holly... in my mind’s eye. The thing that really pisses me off about my memory, however, is my habit of repeating stupid mistakes that I’ve already learned the hard way. Let’s take, for example, ohhhh I don’t know… how about the film industry? After receiving my film degree at Undergrad USA, I moved to Los Angeles with screenplays under my arm, a wealth of film knowledge in my brain and a dream in my heart that I'd be the next Martin Scorsese, David Lynch or (at least) Steven Spielberg. For the next 2½ years, I learned what sort of culturally-rich Synergy bubbles forth when you combine drug-heightened egos, millions of dollars of dispensable wealth and the façade that Studio Executives are conducting ‘business’. The subsequent depression induced by this lesson required a year of rural seclusion (involving far too much alcohol and pinball), $25,000 of grad school (shiny new degree, same result), years of girlfriend therapy and a move to New York City before I could feel a little better about human nature. So, now I’m 8 years removed from my South Cali Exodus... which is just about long enough for my selective memory to kick in. Having forgotten how much I loathe the big-studio industry, I obliviously sauntered down the darkened alley of the TriBeCa Film Festival and signed up as a volunteer.

It must have seemed a good idea at the time. Perhaps I thought that I’d meet a few film lovers like myself (always in my quest for community), see some artsy films that were too edgy or foreign to find distribution, and, maybe, slip into a cool, festival party with an open bar. The TriBeCa Film Festival started in 2002 and has quickly become a plausible mid-Spring excuse for distribution reps to visit New York in between their vacations to Park City, Colorado (Sundance) and Cannes, France. My introductory meeting for the eager volunteers involved a cute, frazzled coordinator who read a hand-out to us which threatened instant expulsion from The Cool Club if we were to shove our scripts in any celebrity’s face or stalk anybody. A week later, I received a re-worded Riot Act in a tiny hotel ‘suite’ (labeled VOLUNTEER PLANET in a typical display of hyperbole), which I had to sign. In addition to granting the staff to flog me and remove my badge for any violation of said Act, I also handed away all my rights to talk about any part of my life that might bear witness to the habits of Robert DeNiro/Corporate Sponsors/the Business while exercising the Privilege of volunteering at this Ostentatious Display of Fame. Of course, I had ZERO chance of learning anything juicy about anything while breaking down sponsor ads and standing outside shindigs with a cameraman's bag, but it must have been comforting to know that They could act the fool in front of the help and not worry that it'd come back to bite them.

Already, I could feel the familiar, unsavory taste in my mouth. I was handed my ‘uniform’- a black T-shirt with a shoe store advertisement larger than the festival logo. I also received a super-cheapie “backpack” that I could fill with Lower Manhattan shopping ads, LUNA Nutrition Bars for Women (only 1, please) and Sucralose-flavored, sugar-free Altoids®. I’m not saying that I was expecting a TriBeCa Film Festival Gucci bag or a bottle of Absolut, but considering the fact that 2,000 volunteers were putting thousands of man hours into a festival that generated $65,000,000 for Lower Manhattan last year (according to Access Hollywood), I’d think that they could offer a better deal than a free glass of wine at a restaurant so expensive, I couldn't afford a side salad.

For those of you who don't know Manhattan, TriBeCa stands for 'Triangle Below Canal" Street. At one time, it might have vaguely resembled a triangle, but real estate salesman have slowly expanded the neighborhood boundaries until now it's more of an inverted trapezoid. Roughly speaking, TriBeCa's borders are: North - Canal Street, East - Church Street (flexible), West - West End Highway and South - Vesey St (WTC area). It was warehouse district until fairly recently. TriBeCa is now a cloistered community of aged celebrities, galleries and middle-aged men in black leather jackets. There’s still a bit of old-city feel stuck between the cracks of the cobblestone streets and it's nice to walk down streets called 'Debrosses' instead of 'East 57th'. As I sat in one of the volunteer offices, I could still smell a faint odor of oiled machinery and textiles. I find myself getting really sad and nostalgic when I spend too much time in these spaces. It feels like there's some residue from all the life and kinetic energy that filled those spaces and now it's just bouncing against the drywall and computers that occupy them now.

I don’t want to linger too much on my experiences at the festival. My experiences were, for the most part, dull and far less interesting than any other kind of volunteering I would have found in the City. Of course, not everyone sucked. There were a number of really cool people who’d done short films and New York City-based films. They are, easily, the most important contributors to the festival, though they were considered to be along the periphery of the festival's focus. The only real community I got to know lived amongst the volunteers and staff. The bond was mostly of the sort you’d find in a hostage situation or amongst those who just love to talk about Who they Saw. I’d also forgotten that people who work events rarely get to enjoy them. I didn’t get to see a single movie. I did, however, meet 3 wonderful people at the festival, got into my open-bar party and met enough jackasses to provide me another 8-year reminder of why I despise the Hollywood Scene. At one point, I was witness to a red-carpet premiere that underscored what an Ostentatious Display of Nothing the whole machine really is. I have never been much for celebrity and the few people I’ve wanted to meet in my life have been under whelming experiences. One thing I have retained since my L.A. days is that if you want to kill your idols, just meet them. Trust me, they’re people – eating, sleeping and shitting like the rest of us.

Now, if I can just retain the other lessons...

aging - American Style!

Growing older is not going the way I'd imagined. It's difficult to see that I am, in fact, a man approaching his mid-30's. My dad didn't look this way when he was in his mid-30's, did he? It's strange to observe that movies, music and historical events that you experienced have become historical. It's horrifying to watch contemporary culture try to sell this history back to you as nostalgia (also known as 'comfort food'). Apparently, my generation is supposed to have more disposable income than I currently possess. Many of the heroes of my youth have fallen from the lofty perch I built for them. They have dismissed, mocked, parodied or simply forgotten the sacred cows they had given to me. Was Chevy Chase ever funny? Was Dustin Hoffman of Meet the Fockers fame the same actor who challenged and inspired me in his portrayals of Lenny Bruce, Rizzo the Rat and Benjamin Braddock? What in Christ happened to George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert DeNiro? I can barely recognize anything I once loved about them. Bob Dylan shills for Victoria's secret while John Lydon continues to methodically destroy any ounce of credibility he once commanded among the punk culture.

I am a part of one of the most visually-documented generations in the history of mankind and it's disturbing to watch what is being edited and forgotten. It is bizarre to live during the Cold Warm the 70's gas crunch, disco, grunge, and the advent of cable television only to have politicians and fundamentalists reshape history in their image. I was STANDING 3 blocks from the World Trade Center when the first tower fell, but I can't tell you the number of Europeans and Midwesterners who try to tell me what it was like. With so much live coverage of the news and filmic approximations of life, it's easy to mistake your emotional experience with the experience itself. Maybe that's why I'm taking the devaluing of my music and film so personally. I want to believe that I have some ownership of those things because I felt something when I experienced them.

The older I get, the more I realize that there is no such as a thing as 'the good old days'. I sure-as-shit wish there were. The future is unknown and the present is rife with unexpected twists and turns. The past, however, is comforting because I've done it. I've completed it. I can look back on it and understand it better with each passing year. Eventually, I find myself feeling like it must have been better because I can finally GET IT. I can see the consequences as they rippled out from those haggard, impulsive choices. I find myself comforted by that wisdom and I want to be able to use it in-the-now. I want to know whether it's a good or bad thing that Americans don't read as much anymore or that we appear to be re-learning things taught in my lifetime or that we've become visual-oriented society or how downloading will affect my future as an artist. So that feeling becomes a yearning - for the past to be the present where the rules and outcomes have already been laid out.

A few years ago, a friend of mine came to visit me in the City. She and I had always been great fans of indie music but in the 4 years since I'd last seen her, I had gone off to grad school in a rural town and found myself immersed in the world of theater. After moving to NYC, I tried listening to the local radio stations, but I couldn't stand the remixes and bubblegum pap that they were churning out. I was living in the biggest city in America and it felt like there was nothing worth hearing. So, I bemoaned the Death of Rock and Roll to my friend. She patiently listened until she couldn't stand it any longer. She told me to shut up and start looking harder. She told me that there was better stuff out there than ever before. She pointed me to Seattle's KEXP http://www.kexp.org/ and left me to find out for myself how stupid I was sounding.

The rules of finding new music had changed but I hadn't. Rather than push myself to explore a little more, I chose the easier route - blame the changing world and wish for the good old days. Getting older is REALLY easy. All you have to do is sit around. The hardest thing about growing older is keeping an open mind to new things.

a little Credit in the straight world

This is the last week of my unemployment. I don't have a job but I have finally succumbed to the grey, listless world of Temping. The day that I left my old job, I vowed that I would never return to the cubicle-and-fluorescent habitat of Administrative Assisted Hell... well, at least not in a non-arts business. I've really had it with temping. I have done it far to long. That 8 A.M. phone call from the agency, followed by the shuffling search for the street then office then supervisor then lackey-who-needs-help which takes you to the dirty looks as you check your e-mail in between mind-numbing re-ordering of files or answering telephones and talking to angry people because you're not the one they wanted to talk you then the awkward begging for lunch then more of the same then the mousy knock on the supervisor's door to get your timesheet signed so you can dial '9', pound the agency's number in the keypad and send off an official notice of where you wasted your existence for the last 8 hours. The aching in my right hand has risen to a slow growl... Damned that numeric keypad!

New York City is a unique world for the job-searcher. It seems as if every interesting job suffers from one of three ailments - nepotism, unionization or favoritism. Businesses can, and often do, suffer from all three ailments but at least one is present. Multiple family members work ticketing offices in the City. Nobody, not even the snob-arts up at Lincoln Center can avoid it. I know the value of unions. They're critical when you are dealing with corrupt and/or impersonal corporate interests. There are some places and some positions that have been saved from unions. New York, however, has taken many unions and turned them into art forms. Look, when some art grad grabs a job at Pearl Paint, the largest art supply store in the city, he/she isn't expecting to earn a fortune, but when the pay is $8/hour AND you have to plug in union dues, then somebody's earning something and it sure-as-shit ain't the clerks. Favoritism is an old acquaintance of mine. We go way back. I've stood on the outside looking in and I've even gotten a few gigs in L.A. based on the same criteria. For the entertainment industry, it's a way for a film/TV crew to get help that isn't gonna bitch and moan when they're pulling 16 hour workdays or getting screamed at by a spoiled producer. In New York City, it is often a way for semi-competent people to rise through the ranks of various professions without ever really getting any better at what they do. When you get into upper management, this is one of the best way to move around, especially if you can piece together good severance packages along the way.

I find it interesting how American culture treats the arts in such a dismissive manner, yet there is no shortage of people desperate to work in it. Finding any job in the arts requires extensive experience In The Field, significant salary sacrifices (which are exponentially-worsened in NYC) and a time-immersive availability that only an twenty-something, trust-fund single could ever hope to meet. Otherwise, how could a person really be fluent in Mandarin and Spanish, have at least 7 years of gallery experience and afford a $12-15 an hour job in Manhattan (don't forget that you need to be available nights and weekends :)). I've seen people working gallery jobs in SOHO and the Meatpacking District. They're not THAT skilled. All you have to do is sit in front of an iMac, look pretty and ignore anybody who doesn't look money enough to afford anything in the shop. My three years of film production experience, combined with my summer theater management experience, along with my 3 years of marketing analysis, and my playwriting skills pretty much add up to Jack-over-Shit. I guess that being a Renaissance Man only worked during the Renaissance... and only when there was affordable housing.

Bitch bitch bitch

Moan moan moan

...have I covered everything?... oh yeah-

Whine whine whine

As my girlfriend said, so effortlessly destroying the extended rationale of my last post, "Maybe you'll feel better about others when you feel like you are accomplishing something in your life."

fallen from the grace of Hoops

The NBA All-Star game was on last night. For the first time in years, I sat in front of a television and watched a basketball game... well, the first half. Sports watching is a rarity for me these days. Last year I watched bits and pieces of the NBA finals so I'd have something to talk about at the office the next day. It's difficult to picture myself 11 years ago as the raving basketball enthusiast I was. I was in my final year of college at the University of Iowa and I had the best basketball seats that 5 years of student-ticket priority could purchase. I would skip evening classes if the Hawkeyes were playing and after a home game, I would be hoarse from the whooping and screaming. I entered every tournament pool and would read strategy books on offensive and defensive philosophies so I could spot the difference between a 2-3 zone and a box-and-one. I knew coach and player tendencies - I would have made a hell of a oddsmaker if I had been a gambling man. When the NBA draft approached, I'd scout out rookies and try to anticipate Jerry West's every pick and trade (I was a HUGE Lakers fan). What happened to that person? How could that same individual shut off the TV at half time and go read a book?

The natural answer is to blame the basketball culture. Nobody calls travelling in basketball anymore. It's no longer exciting to watch basketball players dunk when virtually every player on the court can do the same, plus 99% of them are considerably taller than me and even I could do it (albeit, no longer). The basketball skills shown by the Lakers, Sixers and Celtics of the 80's has completely disappeared from today's game. Athletes and owners fixate upon raw talent and not at all on skill. Athletes have become fixated upon the narissism of their highlight reels and 7-figure salaries. The endless pump to sell shoes and beer becomes irritating once you get old enough to realize that your identity doesn't hang upon your footwear and major-label American beer, for the most part, tastes like crap.

This argument is great for casual conversation and it's the tactic I take from the bar stool, but it's really just bullshit. The dunk was banned in the NBA when towering, 7-foot tall players started showing everybody up in the 60's, while Earl "The Pearl" Monroe shocked basketball in the 70's with his gliding style, causing fans to scream "showboat". Basketball, like all things, must evolve to survive. If it doesn't, it dies. The special quality of seeing a high-flying dunk diminishes over time simply due to repetition. I've spent years watching Dominique Wilkins, Michael Jordan, etc. perform stunning dunking maneuvers. Let's be honest, there's only so many ways a human being can stuff a ball through a hole. These dunks are new for younger fans (also known as the fanBASE). There are still great, skilled, basketball teams, like the Detroit Pistons of last year who shoved the ego-driven, pickup gameplaying of the Lakers back down their throats. The narcissism and money-making of athletes is simply a ripple in the wave of today's American culture. I see the same behavior in music, film and every 'reality' show on television. Marketing is marketing. Mars Blackman- I mean, Spike Lee, shilled for Nike and Jordan while Magic Johnson/Larry Bird hawked Converse. For a kid trying to get drunk, Coors might take like hamster vomit but if it gets the job done and affordable...

The truth to my lost love might lie in how I watched the Super Bowl last month. It was the middle of the third quarter and the announcers were driving me crazy with their lazy banter. None of them acted like they had any insight and had instead decided to rely upon their sparkling personalities to fill every second of airtime. When the announcers weren't gabbing away, we were being treated to highlights of the SAME GAME that I had been watching for the last hour. Hey, I might have a little problem with keeping my attention focused on a task, but I remember the touchdown I saw only 10 minutes ago. Unable to take it any longer, I shut off the sound and spent the rest of the quarter watching a silent pantomime of a football game. I had become my father.

Dad was a great sports fan back in the day. Boxing and football were his meat-and-potatoes. He would set a small wicker basket of mixed nuts on the table next to his La-Z-Boy then, with a nut pick balanced at the end of the armrest, he would crack nuts, dump the shells in the a soup bowl that lay between his legs and pop nuts in his mouth. He loved the ritual of watching football games, but gradually, a malice crepted into the comments that rose over the cracking of the filberts and almonds. Frustration and disillusionment touched his voice as he lamented the smarmy hype-machine of Don King and the big-money fights where Cassius Clay (NEVER Ali in my household) and Larry Holmes, my dad's Idols, were paraded out long past their prime and pummelled for national television and the promotion of a Bright, Shiny, New fighter. Non-Madden sports announcers made his blood boil to the point that I spent hours begging him to turn the sound back on so that I could listen to the game. Finally, the wicker basket found a permanent home on a kitchen counter and my dad spent his hours in the garden or out in the tool shed.

At some point in my life, I had discovered that there was something more to doing than watching. The emotional investment I weaved into the accomplishments of my team felt like a waste of energy. There would always be another year and another championship to win and the fact was that they were never MY team. Their accomplishments weren't my own, no matter how emotionally-invested I was. No one is going to remember my role in the glorious upset of the Lakers over the Portland Trailblazers. Granted, going to a game has the activity of effort and being THERE for the event, but the endless afternoons/evenings spent in front of the television were just a waste. I sat through the first half of the All-Star game telling my girlfriend one statistic after another about the older players that I had watched years ago. Grant Hill gliding through the air at Duke before blowing out his knee in Detroit, Shaquille O'Neal looking like a man among children at LSU and always waiting to move on to the NBA, Magic Johnson hitting the last second shot to beat the Celtics, Larry Bird... and I suddenly realized how much time I had spent and how much I knew and exactly how much it Totally Didn't Matter. I was reliving moments that were other people's lives. I could recollect the highlights of their lives nearly as well as my own. What about my life?

Suddenly, I realized that I didn't miss sports... and I had something else I'd rather be doing.

but i wanted to watch oprah

Maintaining a blog is much like starting an exercise routine. Motivation arises from an intense discontent. My first entry was energizing and euporic. I had never written or posted to the net and within a few minutes, I had a blog and web design posted to the World Wide Web. I tried out the weight machines of pre-fab templates, text coloring and boldface, then I even tested the free weights of html coding on the fly to fix a formatting problem. Holy shit! There I was, doing it. The thrill of having actually 'done it' more than made up for any exhaustion of effort.

The next few entries were encouraging. I worked to fit a disciplined routine into my manic life. The intense discontent fed my writing as I earnestly attempted to communicate thoughtful ideas in a well-formed manner. A total stranger posted a comment on one of my posts and I regained that initial thrill of posting, like the day you walk by the mirror after a shower and discover that you can see a little more definition in your shoulder than you had before. Progress was being made! People were hearing me! After years of quiet brooding on the subway or within the depths of my cave, my voice had carried beyond my self.

After about a week or so, it became that the Impulse was fading. I had been heard. I had done it. I had exercised my brain and diatribed. Now, blogging was going to start taking a little more effort. My belief in the blog was going to soon be expected to prompt me to continue... well, that and the guilt that I was thinking of quitting something that felt so imperative only weeks before. The routine became forced and uncomfortable. As I began to learn the skills to write concisely, it became evident that there was a little craft to be learned here and that I won't be picking the whole thing up overnight. Every topic felt like the whinings of a spoiled child who should know better. Then came that first day where I got sloppy. I wrote the first thing that came to my mind and ran out of the gym. The feeling of accomplishment had been sabotaged and all I could think was, 'It's out there.' People are reading that lazy piece of crap and clicking away before reading that really cool post I did about fallen cathedrals. Or worse, they're clicking away, deleting their browser history and vowing to themselves to never return to my blog.

First thing the next morning, I went online and deleted the offending entry. Then, I tried to explain myself in a follow up entry, like those friends that keep explaining to you why that exercise routine they were going to do didn't work out because they have this-and-that taking up their lives and the gym is just not very accomodating in it's hours and besides the only time that they can work out is the busiest time of day and all the exercise bikes are being used at that time anyway.

So here I am, taking the big breath to chill myself the fuck out and regain a little focus. Well, at least I didn't have to buy the 1 year membership to join the gym.

on the road to Ithaca

Since I moved to New York City three years ago, I have become increasingly agitated with life. Now, the City is good at breeding a certain amount of guilt and compulsiveness as the have nots rub shoulders with the have-a-lots. There has been a particular itch that has been festering in my mind for a long time and now it has grown to tumor-size- ageism. I first beheld the warning signs of this impending storm many years ago. When I reached 26, I realized that I was now the exact age of Orson Welles, but I unlike him, I was not going to be directing my Citizen Kane that year. In addition, I was never going to be an NBA point guard or the next 'young phenom' of Hollywood - Steven Spielberg. As the years passed, I found myself measuring my progress through life relative to others. Having nothing in common with these people except my age, I decided to use that as the yardstick. In addition, this was a very natural progression because L.A., where I was living at the time, is perhaps the most age-ist city on the planet. My parents had me when they were in their mid-to-late 20s. George Lucas directed Star Wars at the 'ancient' age of 32. Now, the the only perceivable reference points I have in my future appear to be Robert Altman (M*A*S*H at age 44) and Grandma Moses (began painting at age 75).

Of course, there's always the dream of being a creater of "outsider art" which, according to CBS Sunday Morning, is all the rage in the art world. I could be one of those people with no training, no concept of the exploitation being performed by gallery owners at their expense, and (for street cred) a history of mental illness. I watched this show and I cannot communicate how depressing it is to feel that the $25,000 I currently owe in student loans, for the SOLE purpose of learning craft, has no value in the New York art world. Hey, I'm not wholly-ignorant about how the arts work in America, but DAMN... I didn't need to see that.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that it isn't age or the lack of a propogative drive or the nauseating trends in film, television and art that's really led to this depressed wreck of a man - it's my goal-oriented, guilt mentality. I have ceased to enjoy my journey and now the goal is the "thing" and all my actions are hot-wired into them. I am always focused on reaching Ithaca - a distant land where I hope all my happiness will lie. I have ceased to enjoy the journey. I have become a person fixated upon some abstract idea of success and any enjoyment along the way is considered to be a distraction from the goal. My measurement relative to others has become absolutely poisonous to me. There's something very American about how I have to compare myself to winners and never consider myself to be one until I've clearly won.

the Fall of my cathedral

A couple of months ago, my girlfriend and I went to Thailand. I was 2 months into my unemployment and about to crawl out of my skin. My cave was looking darker than usual. It felt as if the earth was slowly pinching me off from the rest of the world and then suddenly, one day, I might wake up and realize that I had been cut off from all reality and forever lost in a world of depression and paranoia. I stopped working on things and began to stall for time. I had to get out. Only days before a national election I couldn't avoid and a Halloween that would once-again find me without a costume or party, I got on a plane, lost 12 hours worth of time zones, then stepped off a plane in Bangkok.

In Thailand, anyone who even remotely looks like a tourist has to expect a little hassle. There is always someone willing to take your money if you are sucker enough to part with it. Tuk-tuk drivers (the motor-scootery mosquitos of SE Asian transportation) regularly stand within a block of every tourist destination so they can tell you that the Palace/post office/train station/holy shrine is closed (Buddhist holiday) and offer transportation to the opposite end of the city. As a 6' 3" white male, I was not only a target, but one that could be easily spotted a block away. My blonde girlfriend only served to underscore our intense need to be hustled. The only place (for the most part) where a tourist could catch a break was in a wat. A wat is a Buddhist, temple complex. They are beautiful, quiet and mercifully-free of tuk-tuk drivers... inside the gates. As an added bonus, like a Starbucks in urban America, there are wats EVERYWHERE. They quickly became effective bunkers where I could take a drink of water, pull out my Nancy Chandler map and plan my assault on the next tourist attraction in the city, without the chaos of traffic jams and smiley glad-handers interrupting me every 30 seconds to ask me where I was going.

About a week into the trip, I was sitting in a Wat Suan Dok, in the northern city of Chiang Mai, when I realized that these wats were more than simply escapes where I was 'tagging up' before jumping into the fray of aggressive tourism - it was a place where I was settling my mind and re-centering myself. I was a first-time visitor to Thailand who was being hustled endlessly and who spoke very little of the language. My escapes were tangible and my escape route clear, but this escape was taking on a deeper aspect. The rules that govern wats are universal - wear modest clothing that covers your shoulders and legs, take off your shoes when you enter a bot (ceremonial building), sit on the floor, be quiet, and don't point your feet at the Buddha. By this time, I was watching others and becoming more thorough in my behavior. I burned candles and nodded in respect before the Buddhas before standing and leaving a bot. I am not Buddhist, but there was a respect and reverence that I found myself admiring in those spaces. For the first time, I was beginning to recognize that these rituals weren't simply perfunctory motions to be followed, but actions that contributed to these spaces through the respect they gave. In all my summers of Bible Camp, Sunday school and endless sermons of my youth, I had never understood the importance of ritual, and especially that ritual was an opportunity for me to take responsibility for my actions and contribute to these spiritual spaces. It was at this moment that I reached an epiphany - my cathedral in Mahhattan had fallen.

In northern Manhattan, there are very few places where one can escape the car alarms, beeping horns, and bellowing speak of the community. My experiences with christianity have not been the most affirming moments in my life. I have a significant amount of personalized baggage with churches, so those spiritual spaces offer little respite. The park, however, was such a place. Inwood Hill Park is the most beautiful park in New York. Prospect Park has beautiful lawns and wooden gazeebos and Central Park has... well, it's Central Park. Inwood's park, however, doesn't have the man-made feel of other city parks. The forest (or what is left of it) is old. The trees aren't simply look old - it FEELS old. The park's caves (unlike my own) are nestled against a beautiful horseshoe-shaped rim that gazes into the midst of a solemn mass of trees. There it is. My cathedral. I would walk into that nestled dell, sit down and gaze up into those stunning pillars of living wood and feel that I was living on another world. Even the distant rumble of a Metro North train heading to Poughkeepsie or a jet that just left La Guardia only added to the transporting feeling of sitting among those trees. Without ever consciously realizing it, I was sitting in my spiritual space. My silence, my respect and even the shoes I chose to wear whenever I visit that park, were all part of a reverence I offered to my cathedral.

Then, there was Sarah Fox. Last summer, a Julliard student was jogging through the park when she was abducted and murdered. To date, the murder hasn't been solved. The occassional poster dots the 207th St. subway station and bulletin boards, but there is still no indictment. For weeks after the murder, I didn't return to the park. I didn't think of why except that it had disappeared from my plans, like a spot of white-out on a page of 'Things to Do'. Later, I would take short walks along the remote paths with friends, firing off a dark stare upon every man we saw. I wouldn't walk alone anymore, unless it was along the outer rim, to peek into the dog park or sit along the salt marsh. I didn't fear for my safety, but my mind restlessly wandered with discomfort to the desecration of my cathedral. It was gone. It had a history that could be neither undone nor unforgotten . Other fell deeds have certainly been performed beneath the canopy of my spiritual santuary, but they were never a part of my experiences and this event weighs endlessly upon my mind... and it was at the feet of a Buddha in Wat Suan Dok, in a northern city in Thailand, 13 hours of flight time from my cave and my fallen cathedral where I could finally see what I had, what I'd lost and perhaps a glimpse of the road I'd been blindly travelling.

baby steps to the street

I left the cave yesterday. I didn't want to go. I had, in fact, spent the better part of the morning telling myself that I didn't need to go out. I had promised myself that I would get out of the cave every day this week. The cave had begun to take the shape of an very large bell jar and I didn't want two straight weeks of the same old thing.

Last week, I suffered another one of my occupational whiteouts where panic attacks tag-team with gutteral depression to render me essentially inoperable. These incidents usually begin with food cravings. After one or two days, I realize that my comfort foodsare not fulfilling their namesake. As the storm advances on my position, I become disgruntled with my career and where it is headed. I sit down and make sweeping plans for my future as well as all the important modifications that must be made to my personality/body image/personal finances in order for these plans to be realized. With renewed vigor (as well as some Clash or Nirvana for theme music), I sit down and begin to write the first few descriptions of a screenplay that will be sold this summer on my way to winning the Tribeca Film Festival two years from now. Of course, I hate everything I write because I'm not writing like Hemingway or Steinbeck so I jump to my stacks of unpublished poetry and my 2004 Edition of Poet's Market and begin to hammer out where and when I will be sending my poems so that I can win some festivals, gain literary credibility, then get an advance on my first novel that will be written and published in the next year. After 2 hours of editing my poetry and raging about how it has all the depth of the love songs I wrote in 9th grade, I quickly switch gears, squeeze out a little vermillion and yellow ochre, then settle down with the still life oil painting that I've been working on for 2 weeks. After mixing paint for 30 minutes in the fruitless attempt to match the color on my pallette knife with the beer bottle in my composition, I wash my brushes, change out of my turpentine-flavored clothes, and dive into the obtuse life of an Irish Catholic lad in James Joyce's Ulysses. Hmmm... maybe I'll just put that down for a sec and read the "Fables & Reflections" book of the Sandman graphic novels I've got on my shelf. An hour later, I am strumming my accoustic guitar and working on getting that smooth transition from the 'A' chord to the 'D' chord so I can master that David Bowie song, then compose an album that will revolutionize the music world and bring alternative rock back into the mainstream.

Some people might call this a Renaissance Man lifestyle. I think a therapist back in college called it manic-depression.

So, I got out of the cave yesterday. Just when I'd talked myself into playing 4 straight hours of Civilization 3 or Madden 2005, my girlfriend had to call me up and bully me into leaving the apartment. Well, to be fair, all she did was asking me when I was going out and I couldn't think of any of the great rationalizations I'd put together in my head. So, in the end, I took the 'A' train cave to Pearl Paints, bought a few items for my manic needs, took a swing by the East Village to thumb through a few LPs and cruised on over to Avenue A for a few happy hour libations. Ahh! Nothing like alcohol to cure depression, huh? It's good to be cruising along the old career track.

I need a day job.