"And there were, of course, some whose sense of dislocation didn't even involve the rest of the world: the rift had been so deeply absorbed that they were rendered foreigners in their own country, reading Jane Austen to feel cosy."

"...I began the process of considering that one's place in the world might be merely incidental, just a matter of perspective. Perhaps the centre was not firm at all... Even the past – home of sorts to all of us – wasn't fixed. History is only someone's story."

Kiran Desai

I've been going through the worst streak of bad luck over the past couple of months.

First, the summer ended and all the frolicking and merriment came to a screeching halt.

Literally.

I totaled my car and got into a ton of legal beef that I am still trying to figure out.

God.

Worst possible scenario. I can't even talk about it. It's making me call my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) into question . I feel like I'd unwittingly upset the moral balance of life and now have to pay for it.

THEN, I took this fake "promotion" at the office which ended up being twice as much work and not nearly as much pay.

Plus they're doing some serious lay-offs (even my prez got the axe. yikes.) so I am constantly nervous about losing my miserable job. Which prompted me to clear my already bare cubicle leaving only the basic necessities - I'm talking coffee mug and a pack of gum - so if that day comes, I can just pack up and leave in less than five minutes. Avoid a long awkward exit like the one my poor president had.

Life is hard.

And now I don't have my Jon Hamm shrine in the top drawer to get me through it.

I've also bummed out really bad in the romance dept. Complete catastrophe.

For whatever reason (I am thinking my qi probably just got out of whack with everything else that's been going on), things got incredibly uncomfortable with The Summer Boy and that had to end. Which sucks cause he had the BEST shampoo.

There was a little glimmer of hope with a couple of prospective Winter Snugglers but that was soon extinguished when one turned out to be a father (no judgement, but there's just something too real about hanging out with a man that has actually impregnated a woman. I was constantly terrified that his ambitious gametes were out to get me. And I already had too much to be paranoid about. I mean, really) and the other a 34-yr old man which was a deal breaker for me cause I'm trying so hard to cling to my fading youth and couldn't bear the thought that I might actually be old enough to date someone that far removed from it.

And of course there are the regular day-to-day agonies of living in Atlanta that I just can't go into for the sake of my sanity.

To stave off the depression, I've been eating out a lot... which has its good & bad sides. I've gained about 5000 pounds thanks to Top Flr - the DJ/owner is cute enough to warrant the spelling. Seriously cute. Go now and see for yourself.

Where was I... right, their fat-drenched (but so worth it) duck confit gnocchi.

This and all the other indulgences at my favorite Atlanta eateries gave me reason to start working out again. Or at least consider it.

My mother keeps reminding me of her sister -- skinny through most of her early twenties and then just suddenly blew up when she hit 26. So I know it's in my genes. Voy a explotar. It's just too much.

But I guess it's not all been too bad... I've had more time to catch up on my reading / film watching. So that's something to be glad about.

I read something (it may have been in O magazine... desperate times) about winter hardships reaping greater benefits in the long run. I think they were talking about horticulture but I'm taking whatever I can get.

Pillow Talk

I once knew a boy who bought me tons of beer and took me to hip-hop concerts. He had a freudian obsession with Freud & kept a copy of Crime and Punishment under his mattress. I met him in my Shakespeare class where we talked mostly about bowls & dub. He showed me his Jarmusch films & I made him tacos for dinner. Sometimes, I'd let him tell me about his plans for getting us a loft in Philly.

What Does it Take? [via GvsB]

Past Lives

Q belonged to Q.&A.,

to questions, and to foursomes, and fractions,

it belonged to the Queen, to Quakers, to quintets-

HP is 27 and lives in a high-rise condo he bought about three years ago in midtown Atlanta. It is sparse and perched on the 19th floor, right near the very top of the building. He has a midsize kitchen, in which he most likely uses just the fridge, the dishwasher and the microwave. Yet he insists that he makes "a mean curry." He's told me this time and time again, and even though I don't quite think it's an invitation to dinner, I can tell it's meant to impress me.

The living area is sort of small, with one end of the L-shaped room designated as a dining area that seats four. The table's glass top rests on slender steel legs, as do the chairs, mere vinyl straps tautly stretched over the shiny tubes. A huge floor-to-ceiling window takes up one wall and through it I can see a neon-lit skyline with jutting spires here, conspicuous gaps there - a growing city, Atlanta still has some time to go before it's all filled out. Below, a maze of shadowed streets cross over each other in oblique angles.

I recognize the Bank of America Plaza from an article I had read on pomo architecture. Something about it being a pastiche of the art-deco greats, the Chrysler building, the Empire State. HP sees my eyes rest on the skyscraper and walks towards the window to point at it. "My friends and I call that the blunt building," he says, his finger rolling up and down the tower's length. "See how it's smoldering at the top," he explains and I am a little surprised, computer engineers aren't supposed to say things like that.

Behind us there is a wall covered in mirrors which is a little comical and I catch a glimpse of myself holding back a laugh in it. It would've been an uncomfortable space were it not for the luxurious persian rug beneath us. From the right angle, it looks almost as if the spindly furniture is floating atop this carpet, high up in the sky, tetherless.

The other end of the room is his tv lounge. Even more surprises here. The leather couch and wide screen TV are ordinary, even expected, but then there is a turn table, hooked up to what looks like an extensive sound system, and next to it, three or four carts of records. I drop to my knees to look through the labels, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, The Coasters, and so many other soul/funk records I don't recognize. HP gets giddy and flops down next to me to show off his favorites, some of which are as pristine as they were on their debut dates decades ago, gelled and permed coifs tucked away in protective nylon sleeves. He tells me how they came into his possesion, the hours he spent poring through collections at nondesript record stores in Valdosta where he grew up. I think of his parents, Indian immigrants whose tastes are probably more inclined towards Asha Bhonsle than Aretha Franklin. And I think of my parents, my dad's rock records, my mother's funk collection.

So he has some Sly on and we are on his red leather couch, our feet stretched out before us on an ottoman, and I feel like I am 12 again. His toes brush against mine and he winces, "you're cold," he says. I shrug and before I say anything, explain that I have bad circulation, he rubs each one between his hands. I am a little embarrassed by this gesture, and I try to change the subject.

"Does your plant need a lot of attention?" I ask, and he falls back in his seat, understanding my question as a cue to stop.

"No, I water it every few days and I have to clean the leaves but that's it really," he explains and I nod, but something in me wants to be argumentative so I press on.

"It must be a hassle when you go out of town," I say, not sure where I am going with this. It is a rather large plant, lush and green and almost out of place in this modern apartment.

He flinches and then almost immediately smiles, "I have my brother come by and make sure everything is ok but I don't think he minds." It obviously takes a lot more effort to get under his skin.

"But it's a chore, a responsibility," I say. He sighs and moves closer, he has his own ways of changing the subject.

I've seen HP a few times since then. Most memorably on June 25, when Michael Jackson's death was announced - I remember because HP is a big fan and kept his records playing through out the night. And then again just last night.

I suppose we should be comfortable with our arrangement at this point. And I suppose we are to a certain extent: not only did he snore for most of the night, but he also did not waste any time on the polite exchanges we usually participate in to distract ourselves from the fact that our relationship is turning out to be a purely carnal one.

Both of these things were something of a turn off for me but then there is also the good side to this easiness we seem to have adopted: on his trip to the grocery store earlier in the day, without any prompting from me, he had picked up some contact solution since I had complained about having to keep my contacts on all night. And later in the night, when I went to get a glass of water, I saw a bottle of my favorite wine in his fridge - a dry Spanish white I had introduced him to a few weeks ago.

Yet there is still nothing concrete between us. I read somewhere that once you sleep with a person, you ought to make plans for your next meeting right then & there. This is not the case with HP & I. Meetings are usually scheduled just hours or even minutes before they actually happen and this is done mostly via text messaging. When I left his place this morning, it was in such a rush and I had barely said a couple of words to him before I was out the door. And when I think about it, I know I don't want anything serious/long-term - just the other day I cut a date short with some kid when he started talking about meeting his mother for lunch.

I mentioned this to my bartender at lunch today (No judgement. First off, I am on vacation, so frequenting a watering hole at all hours of the day/night is perfectly acceptable. Also, since I stopped going to therapy, my bartender is all I've got. That or developing some self-injurious habit which would not be good). He seems to think that this instability comes from my being 23. I took some comfort in this opinion, it offers the possibility of outgrowing this insanity/inanity. Or at least it did until said bartender told me about his wife and five year old son - keep in mind that he is only 3 years older than I am.

"Don't worry about it," he said when he saw my face fall. "I still don't watch the 10 o'clock news."

Simon was adept at not answering questions, but actually he rarely needed to, because I never asked them. The extent to which I never asked him questions is astonishing in retrospect - I blame Albert Camus. My normal instinct was to bombard people with questions, to ask about every detail of their lives. But just around the time I met Simon I became an existentialist, and one of the rules of existentialism as practised by me and my disciples at Lady Eleanor Holles School was that you never asked questions. Asking questions showed that you were naïve and bourgeois; not asking questions showed that you were sophisticated and French. I badly wanted to be sophisticated. And, as it happened, this suited Simon fine. My role in the relationship was to be the schoolgirl ice maiden, implacable, ungrateful, unresponsive to everything he said or did. To ask questions would have shown that I was interested in him, even that I cared, and neither of us really wanted that.

So sometimes I like to make up stories and pass them off as real life experiences. I first started doing this because my real life was kinda crazy and hard to explain to other people and the never-ending questions got annoying and/or embarrassing and sometimes (sob) sad, so it was just easier to make fun little fibs that tied everything up in neat little packages. Then as time went on, I started to enjoy these stories I was making up and it even came naturally to me. The best part is that they were never really extraordinary tales, never anything insanely over the top, but very rational narratives, so I never had to feel guilty for over-embellishing my life to the wonderful people who cared to listen.

In any case, this weekend on the 4th, I spent the day with a couple I have recently become friendly with - the Qs. They are the most adorable people I have met in Atlanta and they own a little house in one of those Midtown "transition" neighborhoods, where I was a guest of theirs for the festivities - bbq, some fireworks. The gathering was doubly significant as they had recently adopted a new pup and were celebrating his arrival. All in all, it was a very American occasion indeed.

Mrs. Q is an Ivy-leaguer turned retail manager and Mr. Q is a chef at a local university. They met while traveling across the world on separate trips and were so enamored by each other that they quickly changed their itineraries once their paths crossed and ended up completing the rest of their travels together.

"Get out there," Mrs. Q often tells me.

"See the world," she advises, "you never know what you will find."

Their near-fairy-tale romance is so enviable that I almost forget that what I want is the very opposite. I've seen enough of the world, thank you very much, I want to say to her but then the little fibber in me pops out and I make something up about always having wanted to join the Peace Corps.

Symbols & Signs

I've been thinking a lot about what I should be doing with my life and as if the world is in some sort of conspiracy to make this harder, I got a promotion at the job that I am not so crazy about. Given the current economic reality, I suppose the last thing I should be doing is pursuing abstract and all too untenable dreams, but I applied to a writing program a few months ago and just got my acceptance email... off the waitlist, and not with the scholarship I had hoped for, but it is a spot that many aspiring writers can only wish for.

So what do I do?

I am not too certain that I can afford to go to this conference without the financial aid, and really, if they only accepted me off the waitlist, is my writing ready for this kind of exposure? But do I have the luxury to be this picky? What's to say that I will even get in next time I apply.

To make things even more complicated, because the promotion is for a newly created position in my company, with responsibilites that need my attention right away, I don't think I would be able to take a vacation at the time the conference runs, which means I would have to forfeit one for the other.

With these questions on my mind, it's almost too much that the New Yorker should have something to say about it all. And no, I don't think the magazine's editors tailor their material specifically to my life, but I'm jes seyin...

FOB

lennon.

Also, somewhat related... I recently signed up for a Netflix membership which was possibly the best thing I've done in a while. Where else would I find Sembene/Godard/Fellini/Bunuel imports for less than $10 a month? It really is incredible. 

Finally, I have made several excursions into the city and have much to report. That, along with equally intriguing findings on the suburbs. 

O and before I forget, it seems like the apocalypse is on everyone's mind. 

The Mexican Suitcase

"In a Warholian way that seems only to increase his contemporary allure, he also more or less invented himself. Born Endre Friedmann in Hungary, he and Taro, whom he met in Paris, cooked up the persona of Robert Capa — they billed him as “a famous American photographer” — to help them get assignments. He then proceeded to embody the fiction and make it true."