Late to the Party (Or Haven’t You Noticed?)

On Saturday EG and I had a late brunch at Boerum Hill Food Company, which is perhaps the only place I’ll miss in our now-old neighborhood, high Bugaboo traffic notwithstanding.  We were both seriously dawdling, reluctant to get on with the day and the numerous, onerous, moving-related tasks it held in store.  I got a refill on my iced coffee and we stared at the stroller-bound baby gurgling a few feet away, which was stuck in the happiest possible cycle of indecision :  should I chew on this plastic buckle, or should I try to put my foot in my mouth?  Repeat!

“I wish I could be a baby,” EG said.  “Imagine being entertained for hours by a part of your own body.”

I couldn’t resist.

“You know, people say that about you,” I said.

EG laughed — not a, “Hmmpph!”, but a shoulder-shaking, open-mouthed, from-the-gut guffaw.

This is one of the many reasons why all the asshat haters should just STFU.

 

The “Washing the Bowl” Playlist

In no particular order:

Tonight I Have to Leave It (Shout Out Louds)

Amazing (Aerosmith)

23 (Blonde Redhead)

Looking Down the Barrel of A Gun (Beastie Boys)

Dark Center of the Universe (Modest Mouse)

You Are Dreaming (Shout Out Louds)

Loud Pipes (Ratatat)

Not Ready to Make Nice (The Dixie Chicks — hate on, haters)

The Remainder (Sleater-Kinney)

Pour Me Another (Atmosphere)

How’s It Going to Be (Third Eye Blind – mmm, yeah.)

Little Dawn (Ted Leo and the Pharmacists)

Apologize (Timbaland/One Republic)

Seventeen Years (Ratatat)

You Were Right (Built To Spill)

Gotta Get Thru This (Daniel Bedingfield)

Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Dylan, live, Before the Flood)

Sky Blue Sky (Wilco)

 

I ain’t got no plan . . .

At last, this has become the kind of blog that reprints song lyrics. It was inevitable, really.

This song has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks, for reasons I assume are obvious.

Ice age heat wave, can’t complain.
If the world’s at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan.
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand.
I move on to another day, to a whole new town with a whole new way.
Went to the porch to have a thought.
Got to the door and again, I couldn’t stop.
You don’t know where and you don’t know when.
But you still got your words and you got your friends.
Walk along to another day, work a little harder, work another way.

Well uh-uh baby I ain’t got no plan.
We’ll float on maybe would you understand?
Gonna float on maybe would you understand?
Well I’ll float on maybe would you understand?

The days get shorter and the nights get cold.
I like the autumn but this place is getting old.
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast.
It might not be a lot but I feel like I’m making the most.
The days get longer and the nights smell green.
I guess it’s not surprising but it’s spring and I should leave.

I like songs about drifters, books about the same.
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane.
Walked on off to another spot.
I still haven’t got anywhere that I want.
Did I want love? Did I need to know?
Why does it always feel like I’m caught in an undertow?

The moths beat themselves to death against the lights.
Adding their breeze to the summer nights.
Outside, water like air was great.
I didn’t know what I had that day.
Walk a little farther to another plan.
You said that you did, but you didn’t understand.

I know that starting over is not what life’s all about.
But my thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud.

 

Protected: Things of Which I Have Had Enough

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Continued Coverage of 1 Year In Blogging

Much like the only child that celebrates not just a birthday, but a birthday week and a birthday month (Guess what’s in six weeks!), I’m still commemorating one year of NY/NZ. Today, some items of note related to one year of online diary-keeping:

1. My (conservative Christian) father recently found my blog. As luck would have it, this discovery almost perfectly coincided with my first and only use of the term “hate f*ck” on this site. Yay for making my parents proud! As I’ve been distant geographically and otherwise from my folks for about eight years now, my father’s outing as a NY/NZ reader was more troubling for me than, I think, for other participants in this tired online rite-of-passage. Regardless, welcome, Dad, to a corner of my head you probably aren’t too familiar with. I think you’ll find it more profane, opinionated, and ill-tempered than the parts of me you know well, but I hope you will accept–even like — it nonetheless.

2. A meme — I have been waiting for ONE YEAR (Guess what’s in six weeks?) for someone to tag me with a meme, since like most bloggers, I need little no excuse to natter away about myself. Alas, I’m still waiting. Perhaps this is because SOME PEOPLE think memes are only marginally less annoying and junior high-esque than chain letters. Anyway, junior high wasn’t all bad (OK, it totally was) but I took matters into my own hands and created my own meme, with which I am tagging Cordelia and Clinton, despite his stated problem with “being told what to do”.

The name of my meme is the Oprah-friendly Things I Know By Heart.

Two novels/plays/poems you know by heart: “The Second Coming” (Yeats) and “In an Artist’s Studio” (Christina Rossetti)
Two films/television shows you can quote from extensively: the only two movies I own, Annie Hall and The Big Lebowski
Two songs to which you know every word: “Turn It On” (Sleater-Kinney) and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (Dylan). Committed to memory simultaneously under circumstances which are probably easily guessed. The version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” that plays in my mental jukebox is always, always the live Before the Flood version.
Two dishes you can make without a recipe: I am a very recipe-reliant cook, but I can improvise lasagna and rice pudding if pressed.
Two cities you can navigate without a map: Manhattan, NY and Decatur, IL

What do you know by heart? Tell me in the comments.
Cordelia
Clinton

 

Protected: The NYC/SF Trip of 2007, or, In Which I Get All Bridget Jones on You

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NY/NZ

About a year ago, I began NY/NZ to deal with the aftermath of leaving just about everything that was important to me behind and moving halfway around the world. I figured I could either start an online diary or go into therapy, and I think we can all agree I made the right call. So, yay! Fittingly, as I sit here writing this I am packed up for a trip to New York, making the past year’s journey a full circle. Ourabouros! In my end is my beginning! Quod me netrit me destruit!

Sorry, enough with the bad Angelina Jolie tattoos, and also, I am coming back to New Zealand. This trip is all about spending time with the people I’ve missed so much over the past nine months, good friends all, the people who have seen me cry and vomit and drunkenly hit on strangers and drive my car into non-moving objects. However, I imagine I won’t be posting a lot here in between re-living all those great moments and doing a couch tour of the finest neighborhoods in San Francisco and Brooklyn.

In the meantime, the sidebar is here for your entertainment. Also, over the last few months it’s come to my attention that a few other folks besides the above-mentioned witnesses of crying, vomiting, bad flirting, and worse driving are reading this blog. The below is for you, a sort of “Best of” the last year of NY/NZ. All your burning questions about me — answered! And congratulate yourself for your discerning taste, as you are part of a very select, very hush-hush group of sixty or so folk that read this blog when you have nothing better to do.

• Where are you from?
• New York City sounds awesome! Why did you decide to move to New Zealand?
• Why is there a label that says “Activity Fridays”?
• Oh, ok. Which one was the best?
• I thought you didn’t particularly like the outdoors. Was it fun to start hiking and climbing and all that?
• Didn’t I see your blog on Gawker once?
• What do you think about office small talk?
• How many jobs have you had, anyway?
• Chick lit: good or bad?
• Don’t you ever have second thoughts about leaving your career and moving so far away for a guy?
• Ok. . . what do you think about all that now?

All that’s missing is a meme. . . and I’m working on that.