harder as you age

"kelsey is having a hook-up party.  everyone who goes has to hook-up.  isn't that the same thing as a regular party?" - a high schooler on the subway

snapple: more valuable than water.

"on the go"

just take a look

at the rats calmoring for a piece of discarded pigeon carcas;

the stagnant pools 

of fermenting urine and water;

last nights throw-up

congealed over throw-up from the night before;

and you will understand

why it is gross to eat yogurt on the subway.

--

' sometimes pain is the call of a wound that needs tending, and sometimes it is the sting of its healing. '

--

happy women's history month!!!

transcending the physical

"it is easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends." - joan didion

we love to objectify things

"from a swing state"

why is it so much easier to think in terms of binaries? female/male. success/failure. republican/democrat. chocolate/vanilla. taylor swift enthusiast/cultural illiterate.

on the train this morning, a bundled-up mother was sitting with her bundled-up infant baby-bjorned to her chest, face-to-face.  the mother yawned cavernously, and the child giggled at the close-up view of its mother's distorted expression.  a game emerged out of it--like peek-a-boo but with the mother exposing hidden tonsils instead of a hidden face.  the child was moved to such overwhelming laughter that it eventually threw it's head against its mother's chest in a nonverbal cry of "uncle."  it burrowed its face into the folds of its mother's down parka and tightened the marsupial grip it had around her torso. the mother wrapped her arms around her infant's body and closed her eyes as she rubbed her cheek gently against the delicate hairs on top of the child's grapefruit-sized head.

in the evening, i downloaded grindr and came across a half-naked bathroom selfie of an ex-boyfriend located four hundred and eight feet away--marketing himself as a "clean, sub, bottom twink" looking for "right now."

in between, i ate half of an okay-tasting orange from my home state of florida, which is proof of the existence of a "grey area."

--



happy last day of black history month!

cold hands

domesticated cats share 95.6% of their dna with wild tigers. (featured above, 95.6% of a wild tiger

"we are all made of stars"

sitting on the subway listening to “love on top” by beyonce while the woman next to me is reading the bible.  I’m not sure that those two activities are entirely different. 

sitting in starbucks before my shift amidst a crowd of business people that will I will serve lunch in two hours.  I wonder about the difference between how they perceive me now and how they will perceive me then.

--

happy thursday i broke my fucking iphone screen 

surfbored

"i've looked into it, and i don't think it's a good idea." - my dad, over the phone, when i asked him if i should think about investing my nonexistent savings in medical marijuana

what the fuck is a light bulb?

ok!

"somewhat grey"

there are a couple of key differences between myself and a grizzly bear.

grizzly bears are bears and i am a human. a twenty-three-year-old grizzly bear stands about ten feet tall and weighs eight hundred pounds. after twenty-three years of eating, drinking and pooping, i am five eleven and three quarters and weigh one hundred and sixty-five pounds.

grizzly bears are omnivores; i'm a vegetarian. grizzly bears are covered in thick, waterproof, insulating fur; i had a dream last night that i grew a beard.  grizzly bears have powerful claws and maul several people per year; one time i got into a fight with a co-worker during a shift, but we made up after.

the most significant factor that differentiates me from a grizzly bear is the way we spend our winters.

grizzly bears hibernate. food is scarce during the frozen months, so they binge on grass, berries, squirrels, salmon, and unattended campsite food during the spring, summer, and fall.  then, for six months of winter, they sleep and live off their fat reserves.  grizzly bears burn one million calories when they hibernate, and only wake when their bodies are so closed to starving that anymore sleep would kill them.

i binge during the winter---mostly on ice cream, hummus, and unattended campsite food.  then around march, i remember that soon it will be warm and i start to work out so i will look good in cut-offs and tank tops for the summer. 

other then that, we're pretty much the same.

--

training new people at work makes me feel like a winner.

never tired

"what's nine times seven?" - the eight-year-old that i babysit, asking a question that is clearly biased toward eight-year-olds

pizza?

how many is several??

"divine intervention"

the younger of the two boys that i babysit is six-years-old and in first grade.  the word to describe this kid is "happy."

his older brother, who is equally as special, is in their parents' office doing homework.  the younger one and i twenty feet away, in the living room trying to keep quiet.  he says "i want to play with you!" and i know he means it.  i also know that i can show this kid anything, and there is a good chance it will be the first time he's seen it.  i ask him if he's every played "hot hands."  one's persons hands are held palms up in front of them, the other person places their hands palms down on top.  the person on bottom tries to slap the hands of the person on top--the person on top tries to evade.

i knew when i introduced it that there was a one hundred percent chance that he was going to love it.

a) he had never heard of it before

b) he loves everything

c) it involved hitting

d) i was going to win every time, and he is still young enough to think that is funny and not annoying

first, i'm the slapper.  i do that thing where you twitch your hands a little bit on the bottom, so the slap-ee thinks you are going to move and pulls their hands back to evade.  he never didn't fall for that trick.  it is like he forgot that he was tricked the time before after every successive instance of being tricked.  he later tried to replicate this technique while it was his turn to be the slapper, and did so by keeping his hands in place and sharply jolting his forhead down.

it quickly and expectadely turned into a simpler game.  this one was where he would mumble rapidly "one, two three, go!" and then slap my hands and laugh.  we never changed roles in that game.  

this kid laughed nonstop for fifteen minutes. 

i looked at the clock and it was seven forty five.  these children rarely see past the hour of nine. i told the younger one that i had to stop and went in to check on the older one.  he was done with his homework.  i got them upstairs and into their pajams which has increasingly become a task.  they brushed their teeth.  i accidentally read to the younger one for about twenty minutes too long because the book was about sharks and i was learning a lot.  by eight thirty they were both assumedly sleeping. 

i have no idea what they think i am doing downstairs while they are upstairs falling asleep. 

-- 

i think it's important that we still believe that one day we'll be bigger than beyonce.  i feel like that is what she would want us to be telling ourselves.  in other news, i love her short hair.

i'm not coming.

"enjoy." - the woman behind the register at chipotle, when she handed me my burrito

so many birds are going to eat this raw rice and die!  why isn't anyone cleaning it up?

"some girls dance with women"




there is an acute difference between the feeling of being far away from something that you were once close to, and the feeling of being far from something that you were never close to.

i'm thinking about female orgasms. of all the different kinds of orgasms that there are out there, female orgasms are the ones i know the least about. (i'm sure within the category of "female orgasm," there is a fair amount of variability.  also, why do we logically separate orgasms by gender?)

i'm sitting on the train across from two people who look like nyu freshman based off all of their nyu apparel and still-pubescent faces.  one looks like a boy, the other looks like a girl, and they look like they are dating.  or, based on the amount that they are touching each other, at least very interested in having consensual sex.

i'm looking at this twelve year old boy and this twelve year old girl, and i'm thinking about what my female friends have told me about their orgasms, and i'm remembering so many of them talking about theirs being so elusive, and i'm envisioning the biological complexity of the vagina compared to the penis, and i'm reflecting on my own experiences of having sex with a girl around that age, and i'm understanding that there must be almost no possible way this green little boy is making this green little girl cum.

i've been told that there is no measure by which to tell whether the "male orgasm" or "female orgasm" is stronger.  i don't want to live in a world where the "female orgasm" isn't the strongest.  women's rights are human rights.

--



' we can't legislate into existence a world that doesn't exist. '



--


i am taking this moment in history to announce my official candidacy for the presidential elections of two thousand twenty eight.  what the fuck will we be caring about then?

my my my

"take care of yourself." - my therapist


"on quest for self"



we have ourselves, and we have our internet selves.  our selves are human beings--mammals not reptiles or amphibians.  mammals like primates and also like whales.  we relate to other people because we are programmed to.  we form groups, we work together.  we create systems and hierarchies.  we celebrate things.  we have existed as human beings for last five or ten thousand years.  we are an ancient species like all the other ones who have survived this long.

our internet selves are mostly annoying.  i don't know anyone who, when reflecting on past manifestations of their internet selves, doesn't think"that sounds dumb now."  the internet is important. but we use it in ways that make us all look a little desperate.  it is built into the mechanism. the internet is brand new--it probably won't ever work as well as the way the alligators hatch out of their shells.  our internet selves are the things we wrote on grindr and myspace that don't technically ever "go away." barack obama didn't have too haunting of a "past internet self," but most of us will probably encounter that problem in one way or another.

i know that the self doesn't technically "exist."  but amazon dot com has access to so much individual metadata on you, that we're getting closer to a self existing every single day!

--


"a funny thing"




this weird thing happened today.  i was babysitting these two little boys that i've been sitting for the past almost year.  i was reading to the younger one in bed while the older one was in his adjoining room reading to himself.  the older one came over to the bed, where i was laying next to the younger one in a completely appropriate way.  because i was reclined, the small of my back was showing a little bit, also in a that would make no one uncomfortable.

i own a few pairs of really slutty underwear.  i don't know why.  and i decided to wear one of them today.  again, i don't know why.  but because the small of my back was slightly exposed, the top of my underwear was peaking out.  and, on that particular day, the under wear that i happened to be wearing was the cut closest to "jockstrap" while still technically being marketed as "underwear." so what this kid saw was a flash of the strap of a pair of underwear that must have looked very different than his.

it wasn't a big deal and we related fine after that moment.  but i think what i saw when i saw him see that peculiar underwear was him seeing, for the first time, that i am gay.  i know he knows that word.

--



i want to go to the beach!

so i creep

"it's on a grid.  it's so concrete." - my friend, on new york city

they paved paradise and put up a mediocre vegetarian restaurant that serves weird sounding pudding

who says interesting things don't happen every day?

"i'm hungry!"

when i was in sixth grade, there was only one cool way to do your hair if you "were a boy."  a short, cut, more-or-less combed on all sides, with the front spiked up with gel right at the hairline. teachers said that it looked like the boys smacked their faces against a wall and their hair maintained the verticality.  but they were wrong.  there was nothing sexier than a twelve-year-old boy with a cracking voice and no braces, who was probably on the basketball team and had a frontal crown of sharp, sticky, immovable spiked hair.  i used to want hair like that so badly, but mine was curly and interesting and terrible and impossible.

i pass all these beautiful new york city model-type men on the street.  they are tall with square jaw lines an controlled stubble.  depending on the day, i am either aroused or pissed off by the symmetry of their faces.  they all have the hair.  short on the sides and fading gradually into long thick wavy locks on the tops of their heads.  blondes, browns and auburns tousled effortlessly to one side in a way that floats when it catches the wind as they walk down the street--but never falls into their faces.  the kind of hair you want to run your fingers through. they are frosted cupcakes atop toned skinny bodies.

i wonder what it feels like to have hair like that--hair that looks sexy when you wake up in the morning or that can be fashioned into a top bun when you just can't be bothered.  i wonder if those men are happier, or if they lucked into rent-controlled apartments, or if they love their jobs, or are entirely satisfied with their sex lives, or have perfect relationships with their parents, or are completely over their exes, or have dogs. why shouldn't they?

--

i used to hate going fishing when i was a kid.  you just sit there, and if all "goes well" at the end you have to touch a bleeding fish.

resplendent

"actually it was eighty two degrees and sunny and i went to the beach." - my sister, who lives in florida, when i tried to tell her that her bad mood was probably related to winter

the person in this car was listening to the new beyonce album at a deafening volume with the windows open--but a picture isn't really the best medium by which to capture that.

"two truths and a lie"



my mom taught me that when you are buying eggs, you should open the carton and make sure that none of them are broken before you check out.  she taught me that when you are shopping for clothes and you find an article that you like, take one in your size from the bottom of the pile--because not as many different people have tried it on.  my mom taught me that when you are baking a cake, you can't put it in the freezer for it to cool faster, because this will make the freezer think that it is warmer than it is and compensate by making itself much colder--which it will continue to do once you take the cake out and then everything in the freezer will ice over.

my mom's main piece of advice has always been, "if you have to ask yourself, would dee dee goldhagen do this? and the answer is no, then you probably shouldn't be doing it."  it echoes in my brain from years of repetition.  but upon not very close reflection, it's a pretty unfair standard to hold someone to.

she and i didn't talk much in the car when were driving to the airport to board a plane to new york city and drop me off at my freshman year of college.  about three quarters of the way there, she broke the silence.

"julian, trust me, sex is so much better when you are in love with the person."

this caught me off guard because we weren't previously talking about sex--we weren't even talking.  it also caught me off guard because this was the first time in my entire life that either of my parents even mentioned the word "sex" to me. (my sisters got "the talk" because they all started bleeding once a month and needed to be let in on what was going on--i was not so fortunate).  her advice made me uncomfortable, though we never spoke about it.

and upon not very close reflection, that's also a pretty unfair standard to hold someone to.

--


i think i'm lonely, but it might just be winter.


--


i don't like how ketchup has high fructose corn syrup in it!

cookies cookies cookies

"inside, we're all seventeen with red lips." - roger angell

why is mcdonalds in charge of telling me which country has won the most olympic medals?  

"walking uptown on seventh avenue south"

it's after work, and that little clock inside my heart that rings only when it has been too long since i've talked to my grandma goes off.  i'm walking a few blocks uptown to go to a specialty food store to buy white chocolate chips, which is the ideal time to touch base with my nintey-two-year-old grandmother.

if you ask my grandma who her favorite of her ten grandchildren is, she will vehemntly protest the question and say that she has no favorite.  if you ask her who of her ten grandchilren call her the most, she will reply without hesitation, "my two boys, julian and ben."

i don't know what happens when ben calls my grandmother, but today when i called she seemed happy to hear from me.  someone had told her that i had recently come down with a cold, and she had a lot of questions about it.  she always answers the questions she asks me about my health herself--always with "i hope you're eating nutritionally."  my grandma was very worried about all the snow that's been falling in new york city.  i grew up down the street from her.

the thing i remember most about my grandmother was when i was bringing a boyfriend home for the first time.  i told her about it over the phone before hand, and she said to me "julian, if this is someone that you love, and they make you happy, that is all that matters.  i'll love him."  she likes to remind us about how much she doesn't like republicans.

my grandma likes to talk about getting old.  she talks about it with an acute morbidness she contorls by virtue of the fact that none of us can really relate.  she talks about how her friends have died.  she refers to her walker as "her pal." every so often, she opens the windows of her town house to air it out so that "it doesn't start to smell like old lady."

midway through our phone conversation, my reception starts to get fuzzy.  i'm thinking, fuck, i'm going to lose her, she's going to get really confused, and when i call her back i'm going to have to spend two minutes explaining to her what happened. my grandmother was born in ninteen twenty-two.  she had to make space in her mind for commercial airlines, world war two, moonwalks, vietnam, aids, computers, microwave macaroni, the internet, and beyonce--all in a single life.  it's okay with me that it will take her a second to understand what happened with the poor cell phone reception, but i'd rather spend those two minutes talking to her about something else.

my phone cuts out.  i immediately call her back and get a busy signal.  i hang up and try again.  busy signal.  busy signal.  busy signal.  she is on the other end, doing the exact samet thing to me.  finally i catch her while her phone is hung up.

"julian? what happened?"  she sounds startled, as if i entered  a room with a mild, impermanent facial deformity.  i tell her that i had poor cell phone reception.  i stop talking and wait to see what questions she is going to have about that.  she replies. "awe, poor julian. he has bad cell phone reception."

it's funny because it feels like she's mocking me.

--




this is an actual good idea:  at the beginning of each winter olympics, release six siberian tigers on the top of the olympic mountain.  that way, during the next two weeks, participants run the constant risk of being eaten by a rogue tiger.  i think it would really help raise the stakes of some of the less dangerous events like luge, skeleton, and ski jumping.

oh, the weather outside is all i can think or talk about

"permanent is not; impermanent is not; a self is not; not a self is not--clean is not--not clean is not--happy is not--suffering is not." - a piece of paper taped to the wall of my friend's bathroom

this water could have come from the tops of the himalayas

"but we have opposable thumbs"

i've noticed an inequity.

i watch an above average amount of nature documentaries.  and one thing that i have learned from that is that "animals" only care about eating and having sex.

today i had what felt like an "unproductive day" in the sense that i technically didn't "accomplish" anything.  and yet, i ate a fair amount--so according to natural law my dad was fifty percent successful. how come "animals" are allowed to live a life where they can blindly follow their two most intense bodily urges? how come when i spend "too much" time thinking about eating or having sex (or actually eating or having sex), i feel bad about myself?  truth.

--


i'm so tired of the internet.  but i barely know what that means.

rejazz

"my vacation days are much more valuable now, becuase my salary went up." - a person sitting at the table next to me, to their friend, in what may as well have been a different language.

i hate the empire state buliding.  that's not pretty to me.

"all the small things"

if we believe everything that public restroom signs tell us, all "women" wear dresses and all "men" are naked.  all "men" and "women" are the same height.  all people in wheelchairs are "men," and always sit in pofile.  nobody has hands.  nobody has feet. nobody has a neck.  everyone is one color.  nobody is height/weight disproportionate.  everyone is bald.

it's nice that "restroom" is written in brail unerneath the word "restroom" written in whatever the term for non-brail letters is.   but i hope whatever is written in brail says something different than what is written above.  what i hope is that each brail phrase underneath the word "restroom" on a public bathroom sign is actually a clue to a nation-wide scavanger hunt mystery that only blind people (and people who read brail) can participate in.  what i hope is that sometime around the turn of the century, a wealthy blind benefactor burried her fortune somwwhere at the bottom of the ocean right before she died.  and she knew that she wanted some blind person (or person who reads brail) to find it.  so she called the presidnet and asked him if she could hide clues to the whereabouts of her fortune on public restroom signs--since that would be the easiest way of reaching the largest number of blind people (and people who read brail), without running the risk that any people with sight (or brail illiterates) might find out.

and the president said, yes!  he said that would work perfectly! all the people featured on public restroom signs are blind, becuase none of them have eyes.


--


what is "hot buffalo sauce"? what pecentage of the ingredients of "hot buffalo sauce" are naturally occuring in nature?  where did this flavor come from?

truth.

"if you have a girlfriend, you aren't allowed to be nice to another girl." - my friend, about heterosexual males.

my sense of privelege tells me taht that this is unacceptable!

"nintey-nine problems"

it's just cold.

on the subway, everyone looks defeated. 

a man speaking mostly in gibberish shreiks "good news! jesus is coming," and everyone knows he is wrong. jesus wouldn't come in mid-february.

somewhere below the snow-buried surface of the ground, their are seeds waiting to grow, allegedly.

life feels like the ride home from a water park--you are cold and wet in an inappropriate way. you just ate a lot of processes carbohydrates and are mildly bloated in a way you have become almost immune to. you are tired. It's dark outside. some people around you are sleeping in a way that makes you feel very alone for being awake. your dad is playing oldies that make you nauseous. was it all worth it?

--

hilary clinton may be a little too old to run for president in the next election, huh? that sucks.

it's been a long cold winter

"my uggs are ruined!" - my roommate, about the perils of snowfall

saint pizzatine's day.

"the only constant is"

on february fourteenth, two thousand and twelve, julian goldhagen is told "i love you" by his valentine's date over a bottle of red wine at a cafe on mdcougal street in the west village. he had been seeing this boy for a month.  julian is too taken aback to reciprocate the sentiment, so instead, on the way home buys his new boyfriend a toothbrush to keep at his place.

on february fourteenth, two thousand and thirteen, julian is called on the phone by his boyfriend at one o'clock in the morning and told that their relationship is over.  later that day, julian sends his ex-boyfriend flowers that will never arrive.  after that, julian goes to work waiting tables and refuses to serve any same-sex couples.  

on february fourteenth, two thousand and fourteen, julian is sitting on a couch in a living room next to metal bucket that is collecting drops of melted snow that are leaking from the ceiling.  he is babysitting two little boys who are both upstairs in their separate rooms with the doors closed.  julian is eating a "pearapple," which tastes like stale water wrapped in parchment paper.  he is two bocks away from the last place he saw his "boyfriend" before he became his "ex-boyfriend."  he has a runny nose.

on february fourteenth, two thousand and fifteen, julian is sitting at a desk in a crowded room in a community center in south brooklyn.  he is taking a "mandarin language intensive."  julian is drinking jasmine tea to recover from the first globally mandated "chinese new year" celebration that took place a few nights before--which he and everyone else refer to as "the new year" celebration because china has taken over the world.

on february fourteenth, two thousand and sixteen, the last of the polar ice caps melts, and whales replace humans as the most specialized and intelligent creatures on the planet.  

--

today i stepped in gum with bare feet because i was in my apartment.

consistensea

"it is not our differences that divide us.  it is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences." - audrey lorde

i don't really know where any of my food comes from.

i don't really know where william came from.

"distance makes the heart grow fonder"





something is always happening on the subway.

there is a man who stands everyday on the stairs into the franklin avenue subway station. i pass him on my way down every morning.  he always asks if i can spare any change, which i always can but never do. i wonder a couple of things about this man:

i wonder if anyone gives him any change, because i never do.

i wonder what time  he gets there in the morning, what time he leaves, and how he decides on these starting and ending points.

i wonder why he chooses to stand outside of that particular station, since most of us who live in this neighborhood do so because we don't have a lot of money.

i wonder where he sleeps.

i wonder what he buys himself to eat if comes up with enough.

i wonder if he is happy.

i wonder if he has any family.

i wonder what his childhood was like.

i wonder if he gets tired of repeating himself so many times in a day.

i wonder what he thinks about all the people who walk by without looking at him.

i wonder if he believes in reincarnation, and if he does, what he would like to be reincarnated as in his next life.

by then, i usually make it to the bottom of the stairs and start listening to the new beyonce album or reading 'the new yorker'.



--


i kept running into customers today while they were sitting at their tables.  around the third time this happened, i gave up on my new dream of being an olympic luger--because the main thing you have to be good at for the luge is not running into things.

so, chi.

"turn your wounds into wisdom." - oprah

such stereotypical huney

"what are you going to do?"

i am not the kind of person who is easily convinced that skin-colored ice skates are a good idea.  if i am watching figure skating, i am more than willing to give in to the conceit that they are wearing ice skates. i still think what they are doing is incredible, even if i know that they have to enhance their feet to do it.

--

a girl with kaleidoscope eyes??

love money party

"this trout has a lot of skin, fins, and bones.  it is very hard to eat, just thought you should know." - a customer at my restaurant, who probably shouldn't have ordered fish

ella

ella

ella

eh.

"haile selassie"

this fucked up thing happened when i was in florida for the holidays. 

i'm driving to the mall in my dad's new prius.  my best friend from childhood is in the front seat.  he's cool--he went to school in a city and has a top-bun. we're arriving fashionably late to an annual gathering of our high-school-friend-group that always happens around christmas time at carabbas.  we always used to go to the carrabbas in the nice part of town where our parents live.  but now that the few of them who live where we grew up have their own apartments, we eat out by them;  it is a carrabbas that is not in the nicest part of town.

we learn when we get to the host stand inside that we are not fashionably late, but are the first to arrive. the four women who we are meeting always took longer to get ready than we did, he and i remark.

but something happens before we make it in to the host stand.  i park my dad's prius in the parking lot outside the carrabbas, and we begin to walk up the sidewalk to the front door.  in a classically italian tradition, there are southern-inspired wicker rocking chairs situated next to free-standing ash trays outside the restaurant on a wrap-around porch.  we walk by a middle aged couple who are both rocking a chair and nursing a drink.  one laughs to other and points to my friend. 'look at his hair!'  the other responds with equally joyous disbelief.  they cackle loudly and mockingly ask my friend question my friend as we walk by.  i watched 'dumbo' every day of my young life, and the experience of witnessing my best friend get laughed at by two drunk people outside of a carrabbas that is not in the nicest part of town was was devastating.

we continued walking the ten or so feet into the restaurant.  we sat on a bench inside and collected ourselves.  first we sat, then he got up as if he were going to go out and say something.  but i could tell that wasn't what he wanted to do, so i told him he shouldn't.  he sat down without hesitation.  then i thought about whether or not i should go out and say something.  then i questioned why my response to their behavior while we were still outside was to say 'that is not nice.' then i started to question a lot of things about myself.  then he started to talk and i listened.

then we went up to the host stand and found out that we were the first to arrive.

--

the manager of the small specialty foods store by my house referred to me as 'a regular' and my heart grew three sizes!

i adore you

"what's wrong with you today? you should go home." - a kitchen employee at my restaurant, to me, in what was the first english sentence i ever heard him say

"we are open soon"

good night, crown heights.

united pizza of america

"rules for lovers"

if you are not a person of color and you are living in crown heights, you get honked at a lot by "gypsy cabs" (why do we call them that?).  they are trying to pick you up becuase they assume you want to be somewhere else.

the small specialialty foods store by my house has gotten a lot busier during the hours of four thirty and eight thirty.  today when i was waiting in line to check out (which is a relatively new experience), i noticed that allison was working.  i then realized that part of the reason the line was so long was because there was only one person who was checking peoples' groceries out.  allison was standing behind one of the two register stands, but she was not checking people's groceries out.  she was frantically talking to someone on the phone, presumably a manager, presumably becuase she was encountering a problem with the computer.  she is probably the person left in charge for the evening--practically a manager--so would handle such problems if they arose.

but because allison was taking care of important business (in a way that any of us would do), only one person was checking people's groceries out and so there was a very long line.

i, of course, am hoping that the game of duck duck goose will go as such that i will time my turn in line with the end of allison's phone call so we can talk about nothing and i can feel good about myself.  but it doesn't.  once i realize this, i turn my head in slow motion from allison's register to that of whoever would check out my groveries; in a moment i am visually introduced to a new employee at the small specialty store by my house.

it must have been one of her first days, becuase there is no way i wouldn't have noticed her before.

she had beautiful black skin.  it was the kind of skin that would be chosen to advertise undereye cream. flawless smooth skin.  she was tall but not too tall.  she was wearing an african print head scarf in a way that was indistinguishabley for cultural and not cultural-reappropiative purposes.  she was quiet and efficient and smiled a lot.

i walked over to her check out stand with my basket full of a carton of zero percent greek yogurt, jar of pre-made spaghetti sauce, and containter of honey-seasame glazed cashews.  i immediately wished that my items felt like they were more "me" so that she could get a better idea of who i was.  whatever.  i say hello, she says hello.  she effortlessly swipes my yogurt across the glass panel-with-a-lazar-beam thing, into an expertly placed pre-opened plastic bag.  she pulls out the pre-made pasta sauce.  it's the item i feel most insecure about.  she slides it across the glass and it doesn't scan.  she mutters to herself and seems upset. she begins to manually enter in the barcode information.  i hate that stupid fucking pre-made pasta sauce.

a second goes by and the pasta sauce is in the bag.  she scans the last item, i swipe my card, she tells me my recipt is in the bag, i say 'thank you', and we part ways in more-or-less active ways.

--



i saw a person at my restaurant feed their baby-age child both french fries and breast milk-from-the-breast in the same brunch.  should any baby simultaneously occupy both of those dietary allowances?

the edge of out of control

"is this art or just the basement?" - my friend, as we both tried to use our art degrees in a modern art museum

pie in the freezer, becuase who has time to wait for things to cool?

"slope-style"


i am lying on my back on a couch with my feet on an ottoman in four story brownstone in park slope.  i am in between an eight-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old boy, who are curled on one side facing away from me.  their butts are directly in my face and they are are emmitting gases so noxious that they are somehow permeating the permafrost of mucus i have in my sinuses.  we are watching men's snowboarding semi-finals, and i am realizing that i am never going to be an olympian.

--

i don't have great health insurance because i am a server and a babysitter, but i'm always sick because i'm a server and a babysitter!

sweet dreams are made of these

"i hope you feel better." - my therapist, at the end of our session, presumably about my cold

you can't sit with us.

"dress for the job you want"

one of the problems with not having a definite title to describe your "job" is that sometimes you can get caught in the trap of saying to people that  you are a dancer. this is a particular problem if you don't do anything that would even make you close to being a dancer, and if the person you are misleading is a personal trainer with whom you are about to have your first session.

justin must have been very confused when he told me to run lighter on my feet on the treadmill, and i physiologically couldn't make the attached television stop changing channels with the force gate.  it was probably hard for him to imagine how i am able to perform in front of audiences as a dancer when i couldn't touch my toes. i hope justin doesn't think that all dancers are unable to do thirty crunches or bench press twenty five pounds or count to fifteen without losing track when sweat drips into their eye--i'm sure that most of the other ones can.

people always tell me that I look like a dancer.  people tell me that i look like i'm in great shape. i guess looking like something and actually being something are two different things. pretty hurts.

--


when people give me the stick eye for blowing my nose loudly in public, i want to tell them that i'm enjoying my clogged sinuses a lot less than they are.

grande decaf sugar free vanilla latte

"do you know that outside of new york city, every school has an elevator?" - a parent, to their physically disabled child, who has clearly never been to a school outside new york city.

this is the dawning of the age of aquarius

feels conditional...

time told on a book costs fifty dollars from the brooklyn flea.

"i'm in mourning for my life"

when she wasn't around, everyone at my elementary school referred to the art teacher as "adolf hilftler."  it was a pretty novel historical reappropriation for our time, so was probably thought of by a fifth grader.  i don't remember very much about her class, only that ms. hilft was "mean."  she yelled a lot.  she didn't let kids play their gameboys after class.  (even the girls couldn't play their gameboys).  one time, she "threw a desk at a student" and lots of people knew someone who saw it happen.  the only other teacher as mean as her was mr. lanton, and that's because he had a handlebar mustache.

we only had art class once a week, and it felt like ms. hilft spent the six days that she didn't see us plotting all the ways she would torture us on the one day she did.  looking back, i wonder if she even knew my name.

there was a "right" way to make art in ms. hilft's class, and that was ms. hilft's way.  if your pinch pot flattened out in the kiln, yours didn't match her example and it was wrong.  if you used too much water in your water color, yours didn't match her example and you would be lucky if she allowed it a space on the drying rack. one time in third grade, i drew a cat when we were asked to draw a picture of our best friend, and ms. hilft laughed at me. when i got the tip of my index finger cut off in a yarn-weaving accident in fifth grade, ms. hilft was lethargic in her responsiveness.

ms. hilft's number one rule was "no black." there were no black scented markers in ms. hilft's class.  there was no black playdough or glitter or pipe cleaners or felt; all the boxes of crayons were incomplete. if you absolutely needed to use black while you were painting, ms. hilft might let you mix together brown and blue.  but that would just come out a weird pukey-grey, and ms. hilft would display it as an example of how colors even close to black ruin paintings.

i think ms. hilft must have been sad.  it is always the most closeted person in the room who is spewing homophobia, or the bully that pushes you on the jungle gym who really wants to give you a kiss.  i've never met someone as militant about the exclusion of darkness as ms. hilft, which makes me believe those were the feelings with which she most identified.

still, i absorbed a great deal of negativity due to ms. hilft's repression, and my elementary shool art portfolio suffered because of it.

--

the olympics makes me so xenophobic.

solamente tu

"i'm just scared, that we may fall through-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-oow" - nelly furtado

no one uses pencils anymore.

only one person is home!

"stuck in the idea of what you were when you lived there"

today, i ordered a pizza.

i received a text message that it was supposed to arrive between eight o'clock and eight fifteen.

then i received a text message that it was supposed to arrive between eight twenty and eight thirty.

it arrived at eight forty seven.

today i had coffee with my ex boyfriend after not talking to him for eight months.

the pizza was eaten by nine ten,

and the earth kept revolving.

--

what happens to the love between two people once a relationship dissolves?  this is a relatively cliche thought.  but still, one that no one has offered much of a concrete answer to.  the law of conservation of mass says that matter is neither created nor destroyed.  this too doesn't offer much of a concrete answer. but it makes me think about high school chemistry class, which was a time before i ever endured a broken heart.  'we are all in paradise, only we don't know.' 

--

#yolo. #froyo.  #toto. #gonnatakealifetodragmeawayfromyou

  

a hole in my sock and a canvas bag full of spelt flour

"i remember when there was only one hummus a few years ago..." - a women at a grocery store in crown heights, commenting on the variety of hummus brands now available



"love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing." - leonardo da vinci

point-of-view (human)

point-of-view (caterpillar)

"do you see what i see?"



the last thing i said to my ex-partner before he broke up with me was, "if you want to break up with me after you get out of therapy, i'd rather you just call and do it over the phone than wait until you see me again."  this is the wrong thing to say to someone if you think they will want to break up with you after they get out of therapy, and you don't want to be broken up with.

today at the dry cleaner, the man in front of me was getting into an argument with the woman behind the counter.  she was refusing to accept his tracksuit because she claimed that there were spots that were stained beyond what a dry cleaning could reverse.  the man was protesting that these "stains" were just leftover lint from the last time he got his tracksuit dry cleaned.  at a certain point, the two stopped screaming and the man turned to me and asked, "what do you think? is this a stain or lint?"  i replied, "dude, i don't want to get involved," which is the right thing to say if you don't want to get involved something.

a few nights ago, i had a dream that i was having sex with my therapist.  i could tell in my dream that it was objectively the wrong thing to be doing, but it kind of just kept happening (what, with our having a scheduled time to be alone together for an hour every week).  this is the kind of thing that my therapist would call "low hanging fruit."

--




'lonliness is solitude with a problem.'

--





i think it's great that shakira is still making herself relevant.



--


eating too many oatmeal rasin cookies at one time is a hell from which you cannot quickly relase yourself.