Dear New York, my thanks, and my rants

Dear Overnight guy at Duke Cafe in Soho,

You're rad. Thank you for always just charging me only my $6 voucher from work, even though we both know the things I buy go over $6. You should put out a tip jar. I would tip you.

Dear Bike-shop guy on Lafayette between Prince and Spring,

Calm down. I'm glad you feel that you are too good to help me because the child's bike that I brought from work, just to put air it its tires, was not good enough for your time. I'm also glad that your time was good enough to tell me that you wouldn't help me because of the bike I had, and I should never bring it to your shop again because you will still not work on it next time, in your "I'm too good for this" way. But thank you for letting me put air in the tires myself. I hope you found all the adapters your slightly nicer, barely, co-worker gave me out in the street where I left them, so I wouldn't have to deal with your snotty mid life "I still work in a bike shop with my long gray ponytail" crisis.

Dear Ramon's Dry Cleaning lady,

Thank you for the lollipop. It was really good. And after my Bike-shop experience just 10 minutes before, having someone be so nice and helpful was refreshing.

Dear guy at the pizza shop near Penn Station,

Calm down. You're right, we are not friends. But your wrong, I was not all over your food. You see, you were standing right in front of my drinks. So in a sense, you were all over my drinks. So calm down, when I told you it wasn't a problem when you freaked out at me for being "all over your food" and told you not to worry about it, I was serious. Lighten up, it will make life a little better.

Dear Gimme! Coffee,

Thanks. You fuel my addiction to your delicious beverage with you masterfully roasted beans of coffee. I can't get enough of it. Each new roast I try is incredible in it's own way, you have even managed to break my hatred to regional and organic coffees. Thanks for always talking with me, except that one time, about what each roast is like so I can try to pick a new one. And thank you for the free stickers. I know they were free anyway, but still.

Travel to the edge of the Earth

So I was talking with a friend the other night, or morning. We were having what turned out to be on of those "life conversations." We both spoke of our need to either travel, or move. She did me the favor of telling me exactly what I think I needed to hear. I've put it all together into the sort of fantasy of what I want to do.

I recently got worn out with where I was living, and seeking change, moved to New York. This is great, great city, great friends, the works. But now I think the need to get out of Maine was more than I originally thought. What I thought was just a need to move, I now think is need to travel. Nothing too soon, I just got here, but I really want to really experience my whole country. I want to just kind of pack up and leave, and see where things take me. I am in New York for at least another year, but I'm thinking maybe after that just leave. I guess I would just have to drop everything and do it. I could try to work things out with work, and roommates and what not, but it would be easier to just leave it all behind. What my mind has created for me is basically the money in my pocket, and a backpack containing some necessary items: change of clothes, tooth brush, soap, flipflop, water bottle. Just the basics. Probably a camera too. Thats it really, I just want to backpack across the country.

What I would be looking for is experience. Meeting all kinds of people. Seeing all kinds of places. Just doing whatever I can to get a place to sleep and a ride to my next city. I know this is all outrageous. The journey would be grueling, sometimes dangerous, loads of fun, and unlike anything most people would ever dream of going through. Knowing what I do of myself, I know that I could do this, but I think that, at least at times, I would need someone to do it with me.

That, I think, will be the biggest problem. This would be a HUGE commitment. Dropping everything for 2 months, maybe longer, to take some wild journey. I know the idea sounds sort of like a dream, most everyone I tell this to says how awesome they think it would be. The trouble will of course be finding someone who would do it. For real. The girl this all started with told me she'd go. I have trouble not believing her. We'll see in a year or so I guess.

Don't waste time.

I haven't had a really good nights sleep in a while.

I'm going to be really bored soon.

Erin came to visit on Tuesday, all the way from Chicago. She leaves tomorrow, Sunday. I have to say I was worried about what on Earth we we're going to do when she was here. The thing is, Sean, Furman, and I don't ever really go that often. So showing someone fun things to do in the city seemed like it was going to be harder than one would think. It wasn't though.

Here's a quick, boring overview:
It has been pretty rad having her here. A lot has been done. We've done shopping, of course. Hitting up Soho, two days in a row, was fun but no one bought anything. Either day. She, Sean and I went out to eat at "Sea" in Brooklyn. Awesome. There was basically lots of stuff like that, cruising around the city just doing things.

Now for the actually interesting, even if you weren't there, stuff:
Yesterday Sean and I both called out of work to find an uninviting rainy day. None of us were prepared to let that ruin our plans though. Erin had caught an ad on the Subway for the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn museum.



It was incredible.

On Thursday, backtracking for the REALLY cool part, we got tattoos. We had all briefly talked about getting matching tattoos, but didn't get much further than they couldn't be lame, and had to be well done. During our walk around Soho Erin and I stopped in to Kid Robot and I just said, "Let's get zombie tattoos." It obviously went over well with everyone, and Sean added a a little zazz by suggesting that we put the words "Eat meat" under the picture. It was a bit of a struggle, spending the better part of a day or two on the phone and interweb trying to track down good artists that had time to do them. Finally, walking to get coffee in BillyBurg after dinner at Sea on Thursday night we walked past Flyrite tattoo shop. Sean had called to ask them about the weekend, and they were full, I then pointed out that Thursday was not the weekend. We hurried back to ask, and a few of the artists agreed to stay late (2AM) to get them done. This is the aftermath.





And now, for perhaps my favorite part, just the company. Honestly, I couldn't remember what it was like to hang out with someone my own age. Not having to ask, "Will they card me?" every time I left the house was a nice change. It was really nice having someone to just sit around and drink coffee with in the morning, and also in the afternoon, and through the night back into the morning. Yes, we drank a lot of coffee. Day one we had plans to get out and do things, which has almost ruined by sitting around for hours just drinking coffee and catching up. We did a lot of that, sometimes it looked like this.



Basically, this past week has been a blast. Tiring, very, but loads of fun and memories. And now instead of worrying about finding time to meet people my age between work and my existing friends, I can be happy just hassling Erin until she sucks it up and moves here.

What did you do tonight?

Not to brag, but I'm pretty sure what I did was better. I saw Tegan and Sara. That's right. I went with Sean and Jessica, and Furman was there too, although we never saw him.

It would have seemed as if Brooklyn didn't want us to make it to the show. The L train took us to Bedford, and then said, fuck you I'm not going any further. PANIC! at the L train. Quick solutions, call the car service for a ride! Uh-oh, they are out of available cars. What? Does that ever happen? It took us a few tries but we eventually caught a cab and ended up spending another 6 bucks each, on top of the ticket prices, to get to the show. Totally worth it.

FanFuckingTastic show. We got there literally a minute before Tegan and Sara went on. By the time we made it to the crowd everyone was already cheering as the girls walked out on stage. Perfect timing, all that running we did from from our second train stop was clearly needed. The show was full of all my favorite songs, which I didn't realize before how many there are. They played for about and hour and 20 minutes and there were only like three songs that I wasn't completely psyched to hear. And that was only because they were off the album that I'm not too familiar with. Although Jessica worried me by telling me that their live DVD was not too impressive, I was pleasantly surprised by their performance. Lets face it, they have sort of awkward voices. Don't get me wrong, it works very well, I was just worried that it wouldn't be so great live. Not true. Their live voices were great, just as awkward as I'm used to. It was good. They were really good in between songs too, funny stories, and good sisterly banter.

All in all, just awesome, be jealous you weren't there. Unless you were. In which case, kudos to you.

Today in racism and pigeons:

Funny things that happened bright and early on this Sunday morning.

I was walking from work to the local news shop to pick up some news papers that did not get delivered this morning. I noticed 4 or so mostly white pigeons picking at something on the ground. The funny thing was, waiting eagerly behind these pigeons were 4 or so more pigeons almost totally black. Not just humans are racist.

Again, on way home from work I was walking from Union Square to the third ave stop on the L to kill some time on my long wait for a train. I was still in my work uniform, black shoes, black pants, nearly black sweater. There was a homeless black man walking around talking to who ever would listen, in between sips of his glass bottle of, wild guess, booze. No joke, you've all seen it. His eyes fall to me, and he starts to talk. "Look at this N-WORD!" he said the real thing, of course, "All black! Aint' he white? Something funny is going on."

True stories from the always interesting life of James, the observer.

Last night was for REAL.

It appears that I've beaten to this post twice already, by Sean and Jessica. I don't have any awesome pictures or anything to show you, just my words of excitement.

Last night I'm standing in line at the Grocery store and decide to check my phone in case I missed anything over the noise. It's about five past 8, I see I have not one, but THREE new text messages from Sean. At first, I assume that he's just texting to rub it in my face that he got a free ticket to see Motion City Soundtrack. But no, my phone holds messages explaining Jesse left TWO tickets and that I better get my ass in gear before I miss their show. I debated dropping all my groceries in the line and just running out. But I was next, and really did need to buy food. I then ran all the way home groceries in hand, threw what needed to be kept cold in the fridge, threw on a clean shirt and put my feet to pavement. I ran every second that I was not on a train, making it there around 9ish, I think a little before. I went to the desk to ask for my ticket and they were reluctant to give it to me since it was under Sean's name. I had to do some serious name dropping, like "The guy in the band playing RIGHT NOW left it for me." But I got it, got in, and saw about half of their set.

Then we watched Panic! and left for food and drinks with a huge gaggle of people. We got to some Hawaiian themed place, basically just and excuse to dress all their girls in bathing suits. We bought food and drinks like it was our job, receiving a shocking bill. Haha. Things got a little crazy afterwards at some other place when Erica and friends took charge of the Juke Box and Sean Adam and I totally played air guitar and sang our brains off through some Weezer, and even some Natalie Imbruglia. It was pretty awesome. Sean slept at work. I got some pizza to prepare myself for my very long subway journey home. It was for real.

Holy shit, this is just incredible.

Did anyone catch my myspace bulletin a couple weeks ago about wanting a cat? I had talked about how I wanted a really badass cat, one that was maybe part bear. Just a really tough cat, one that could kick ass, take names, and open beers. Well, I was thinking about it a few minutes ago, and figured there might be some funny pictures of "bear cat" drawings online. Enter: GOOGLE! I type in "bear cat" expecting a bunch of either crap, or funny pictures. But instead Google asks if I meant "Bearcat." I say, "Maybe?" obviously intrigued about what I may have found. Well, ladies and gents, I clicked the fuck out of that "Did you mean Bearcat?" link, and along with old aircrafts, some picture of a strange black dude, a brand of wood-chippers, and a fuck ton of school football teams, the bearcat is also REAL!



Enter Wiki:

The Binturong (Arctictis binturong), also known as the Asian Bearcat, the Palawan Bearcat, or simply the Bearcat, is a species of the family Viverridae, which includes the civets and genets. It is neither a bear nor a cat, and the real meaning of the original name is lost, as the local language that gave it is extinct^[3]. Its natural habitat is in trees of forest canopy in rainforest of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Palawan Island.

It is nocturnal and sleeps on branches. It eats primarily fruit, but also has been known to eat eggs, shoots, leaves and small animals, such as rodents or birds. Deforestation has greatly reduced its numbers. When cornered, the Binturong can be vicious. The Binturong can make chuckling sounds when it seems to be happy and utter a high-pitched wail if annoyed. The Binturong can live over 20 years in captivity; one is recorded to have lived almost 26 years.

It's story time in blogsville.

Ok, I begin with an edit. My brother just told me what he though, "I liked it more as an outline than a poem." I guess I didn't make it that clear the first time through. This really isn't a poem. Really. It's just kind of structured as if it were. It's my own personal combination of outline and lines I would actually like to use in the story itself. I say again, really not a poem, I just wrote an outline and in my sleepiness it came out structured, with a little bit of flow. So when reading, I guess just look at it as more of an outline, with a little zazz.



So I've been tossing this idea around in my head for a while, some what based off the music of the Gaslight Anthem, and the Song "Brothers" by Brand New. Not so much the music, more so the themes, and the feelings they give me. They inspire a sort of "that was then this is now." 50's kind of Socs and Greasers feel for me.I wrote this down the other night intending to do a summary of what I wanted my story to become and instead wrote a slightly structured poem. This is still basically a summary of what I want to write about, just in a different form.

Shine Your Shoes With Revenge

The summer sun has set
Behind some sinners dark eyes
Now the cold air comes in
Climbs through their bones

As a lover she leans over
To wipe the blood from his jaw
Sorrow fills her lungs
Anger tugs at her soul

The events of this hollow night
Should never be told
Their lies will hide like lost lovers
From forgotten legends

He shakes the blood from his hands
She wipes the tears from her eyes
His knife runs like a crowd
Horror struck from the theater

No applause fills his ears
Just the ringing of his fears
Tonight they call it justice
For a friendship now fallen

His body aches with the thoughts
Of the man it's become
Her sad eyes tell the story
Of the hero she's lost

So yeah. I think it flows pretty well for what it is. I wrote it down the other night, and changed a few things when I put it in here. I think it's a good start for something awesome, and pretty good on its own too. To me it screams seasons, and coming of age(in a dark way), its got fear, faith and love. Tell me your thoughts, what did you get from it? Like it? Hate it? Why?

Don't say a single word.

I guess my blog has been lacking. I went on a roll when I first started. And I liked some of them. Well, one of them, and another that I wrote for my previous blog. And now I'm sort of over it and really only want to post something if I have something worth saying. I've half posted a few things in the last few days. Writing them down, and then just deciding they weren't really worth it. Simple things, minor complaints, random things I like, blah blah blah. Of course, this lack of anything to say is giving me things to say right now.

It's not that I'm uninspired, I've got lots of ideas. Mostly ideas for stories, and those take me a long time, I have to stew over them for a while before I write anything down. Lots of things happen to me everyday that are in a sense blog worthy: Subway encounters, weird people on the street at work, a strange want for Jamba Juice today. It's just I don't really like any of these things as something to write about.

I feel like I rushed, or even forced the last post. Over all it just kind of sucks. I was peer pressured into writing more, and what came out was just dribble. Talking about things I didn't really WANT to talk about, it was really just a filler post.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the past, not something I typically do, but I've started talking with a friend from school again and I guess old friends and the past just kind of go together. Most of my conversations with her and made up of "remember when"s. A good deal of memories of times spent together, but an equally good deal of just things we used to do. I remember giving her all kinds of new music to listen to, I remember her constantly wearing my favorite shirt, I remember long walks, and conversations that would last until one of us fell asleep. This is where it gets tricky. This may sound like me running on about missing a girl, but aside from the obvious, I'm trying to point out something else. Most of these memories involve me sharing things with her, my time, my music, my thoughts, whatever. Compare that to now when I struggle to put my thoughts on a screen. I feel like I used to have a lot more to share, a lot more I wanted to share. This could be a good or a bad thing. I really do feel like I want to share less now, which is bad for my writing because lets face it, I write less. But I think it's good in a maturing kind of way, I don't just share whatever the hell jumps into my head, I'm waiting until I feel like I have something worth sharing. This girl, we'll call her Sara to make her seem a little more real and because thats her name, is obviously just an example to demonstrate the change my sharing has gone through. I just don't feel the same need, or want to talk about a whole lot lately. And holy waste of time Batman, I believe I solved the mystery. I need to find a topic that I feel strongly about. I hope it comes soon, I really do like having a blog.

Tristessa.

I'm reading The Fall of Hyperion, by Dam Simmons right now. I just read Hyperion. I loved Hyperion, I flew through it. The Fall though just isn't grabbing me. I'm not sure why, I really like it, it's just that when I finish a chapter I instantly feel like I want to put it down instead of carrying on chapter after chapter the way I did with the first book. It's really starting to bug me. I want to finish it, mainly because I don't really feel like reading it anymore but I'm not letting myself just give up on it. I decided to read these books to take a break from reading A Song of Ice and Fire, by George RR Martin. These epic books took over my reading ability for a long time. 1000+ pages for each book, 4 books so far, and more to come. I've read three, and decided to take a break so that when I read the 4th it would be fresher in my head when the fifth comes out this fall. Reading these books was sort of like having a needy girlfriend that you just didn't mind giving all your time too. Giving into them was so comforting. But I've still got plenty of time to read the 4th book, and I still have plenty of other books I want to read before I dive back into the relationship that is A Song of Ice and Fire. Mainly I want to read Maggie Cassidy by Kerouac. I've only read one of his books before, Tristessa. A friend of mine gave it to me to read, it probably wasn't the best of his work to start me out on, but I loved it. The book has little to no punctuation, run on after run on. It's a very emotionally violent love story full of drugs prostitutes and depression. It was honestly one of the most depressing things I've ever read, but it was really good.

I think the purpose of this blog was to talk out a solution with myself. If you were wondering, it did not work. Sean and Furman keep urging me to finish The Fall of Hyperion, "Oh man, the end of that book is crazy. Shit goes down." Maybe true. The rest of the book, great writing, but a lot of somewhat boring sci-fi talk. Even when the exciting things happen with the Shrike and what not, aside from one character, they aren't that exciting. I'm going to push through, it may get really good, it may stay just like this. I want to read something else.