everythinggoodisgone.com

30.9.02

i spent more time sober this weekend than i have in a long time... at least over a "weekend." it was healthy, but not particularly interesting. i guess i'm trying to figure out exactly what it is i want out of this city. though going out and getting blotto is certainly amusing, it tends to get old after a while... and there's got to be other things to do in this place than just bar hop. then again... i did once tell myself that if i was going to be young & stupid, i might as well move to new york & do it with a whole mess of other young & stupid people.

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after spending the evening with my sister and some photographers, i feel even weirder than i did before. not because they’re bad people, or because they made me feel awkward – perhaps because i made myself feel awkward…one of them has a dog, & is adorable, of course [the dog, i mean]. a totally squeezable giant Doberman who likes to play & knows the difference b/t holding my arm & eating it… who likes to snuggle & drools a little but mostly is just asking for love & attention.


maybe i should just date a dog. in fact, there’s a shelter near me that offers the enticing possibility of signing up to walk a dog every once in a while – you simply sign a waiver, and there you are signing out “fred,” taking him for a walk along the waterfront or playing or whatever for a couple of hours – after which you take him back to the shelter & go home to think about why the fuck you don’t just bring him with you. ideal, really… take him out and if you hate him, worst thing that happens is he goes home, gets a chew toy & a nice kibble, and forgets about you. wow.


i dunno. at times i wish i was 20 lbs. lighter. then i get over it… because once upon a time i was, and i swear it didn’t make me a better or a happier person.


so then i wait for the fucking L train [there’s a wonderful Mike Doughty song called “thank you for sending me the F train” but i think it should be called “thank you for sending me the L train”], and i’m riding home like a sardine @ 11:59pm [at least the new trains make it easy to see how long it’s taking you to get under the east river] when i see a lanky kid in a sport jacket reading roland barthes. and not just any barthes, but “the world of wrestling” from Mythologies. now, i was forced to read this when i was a sophomore. it marks a significant moment in my life when i began to think about things in a very difference way. but to read it on the L – that’s taking it to a whole other level… barthes was basically waxing poetic regarding the very concept of spectacle – and i’m looking at this guy…who’s trying so hard to look like he’s not trying at all [like most of the young bougie kids who live in Brooklyn], and i’m thinking to myself:


- what is he trying to prove? the only time i read intellectual bullshit on the train i was thinking people would read over my shoulder & be impressed that i was reading fucking Chomsky.


- has he never read this before? not that it makes me special or anything but i swear, post-structuralism is hardly “new.”


- how could anyone focus enough to read anything in this weird environment, standing up, unless it was John Grisham? the barthes requires attention. otherwise it’s nothing other than an account of a wrestling match. not WWF, either. we’re talking men in weird singlets sliding around on a floor as amateurs in france… then being escorted out by their wives. [_this_ is what i remember after four years. jesus.]


- is this all my education has amounted to…being able to identify obscure literary & otherwise texts over the shoulders of scrawny boys who need haircuts? oye vey.


- perhaps this is in and of itself a form of spectacle.


so i’m getting all excited about all of the above when we get to my stop & i think, “gee i hope he gets off so i can have an interesting conversation or at least an exchange,” but then he stands there like a fucking ROCK while i push past to get off & walk home in the rain. ca va… at least i had something funny to write about. or, rather, at least it was funny to me - & who the fuck cares about all you nonexistent readers to begin with? mwahahahahahahahah.

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sitting in my sisters' fabulous studio in the west village, drinking red wine and thinking about my day. this is an important thing to do, i think - to muse regarding the passage of time, what you have [& haven't] accomplished in the last few hours... especially on a rainy day like today when leaving any space is just, well, not high on the list of priorities.

first day went well. i like that i get along easily with people as long as i don't try too hard - it becomes a study in dorkiness & it's general amiability... i spent many many years trying desperately to "fit in" and be "cool" in the classic sense, which of course people generally saw as the act it was & derided me accordingly... now that i live in a neighborhood where everyone is a study in hipness, in a city where things are decidely interesting and calculatedly "cutting-edge," i am determined to do nothing beyond embracing my own ridiculousness. rather than caring about what people think when i leave my house in the morning, i know there is no way in hell i can compete with these people so i just don't give a shit.

so - tangent over - i had a good time & went over well with all three other people in the office - yay. first impressions are critical for building long-term & lasting relationships, no matter how many second chances you get.

time to go eat sushi. god bless new york and the proximity of restaurants of 10 different ethnicities to any location...

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day 1 of bogus unpaid internship. well, not bogus. but unpaid. excitement last night has faded to anxiety which means, well, i didn't sleep so well, and then the silly backhoe was out there again clanging at rocks at 6:45am so i didn't really get to sleep late. instead i had lots of really vivid dreams involving being affectionate with various people from my past in vague yet public circumstances. i've been having a lot of intense & non-narrative dreams recently - perhaps because i'm drinking less... but it means that i don't feel exactly "rested" when i wake up in the morning, having somehow done all this brain "work" without really meaning it. even when i took a sleeping pill the other night i found myself in a very strange and circular environment of images drawn almost exclusively from the last four years of my life...


i used to joke about how i don't remember my childhood - but it's weird in the context of dreams... i would expect that the years from 3-13 might pop in every once in a while, say hello don't you remember this tragic event, and leave it at that. instead, it's exclusively from 13-23 that i have feelings, experiences, and images which play a role in my nocturnal meanderings...

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also having an interview that could perhaps lead to something or other. the necessary nebulosity of it actually appeals to me, because as little as i know what exactly i want to do, having someone tell me they can use me in one capacity or the other means that i don't have to decide. hooray.

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feeling good today. went to a screening of a friends' film at the New York Independent Film & Video Festival which would have been fun if the festival hadn't fucked it up. I wonder about this, because my old job involved avoiding these kinds of snafus, and there is someone responsible for the whole damn technical ball of wax who should be checking the tapes before the screening, rather than during it. saves them the embarrasment of having to refund money to film-goers after the box office is closed... and saves them the embarassment of having to pass the buck [no matter how ineffectively] to some poor office schmuck who just didn't get it right in front of the filmmaker, who just so happens to be in from London for his screening. *sigh* good thing there's decent bars around there so you can go get drunk to forget about how they muffed up your film. or something.

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definitely more anxious now that “boy” is gone... when we lived together & he was my best friend & lover, he took very good care of me, both practically [by reminding me to pay my phone bill which i have now been carrying around in my bag for two days because i keep forgetting to put it in a mailbox] & seductively [telling me i’m beautiful & sexy no matter what i look like at any given moment because of who i am – an essentially good person who sometimes lets her priorities, goals, & methodologies get a bit marred by frustration, confusion & an utter lack of focus .]


for this & many other reasons, it was interesting to have him here & involved a bit in my “new” life. to share my escapades, apartment, favorite bars & restaurants with one whom i find such a simple comfort. i forgot how nice it is to go to bed with someone & know their body, their idiosyncrasies. he is one of the few people with whom i have found it easy to be naked. thusly, having him here was a bit retroactive, a bit reductive, a bit frustrating at times…but never bad.


now i have to re-focus myself on the daily quest. find a job, find a purpose, find something fun to do tonight that won’t cost me a shitload of money. find friends & lovers who challenge me without driving me insane. stop dating boys who already have girlfriends. spend more time reading, less time drinking, more time writing. it’s all so [in]tangible.


without painting myself as an incredible naïf, i really did think i’d find a job fairly quickly in New York. i’ve got a suitable amount of experience, i’m intelligent & interesting, & i have an ivy league degree. instead i’ve found myself being treated like some sort of grade-A beef, shuffled from temp agency to temp agency & pumped full of false promises about my qualifications, which result in my losing almost all hope of being qualified to do anything but get shuffled around from agency to agency. i’ve begun to wonder how long one has to spend at a particular coffee shop to be considered a “regular.” i’m anticipating my favorite season with a sort of dread, knowing that by most accounts if i don’t have a job by mid-October i’ll have to wait until the post-holiday hirings, & i just don’t think my savings will hold out that long.


i don’t like being a “downer,” boring & depressed. i like having other things to talk about aside from my finances & my general state of being… & i suppose again this is a thing about Joshua that is, well, good. because he made me laugh, out loud, at myself, at the world, at the ridiculousness of it all, all the time. without that laughter, i would have self-destructed a long time ago - & with it i can keep my head on my shoulders – separate the wheat from the chaff of my own self-conscious crap & maintain the confidence necessary to say fuck the bullshit and get it all done - & thus part of the re-focus is a bit of a shift – as is to be expected, you get so comfortable with someone & then you have to let them go, learn to do the things yourself they used to do with you & for you – so as much as he needs to learn to make himself dinner, i need to learn to take care of myself – to pay my bills, get myself off, feel good about who & what i am no matter what, & for all accounts let myself laugh on a regular basis, for fucks sake.


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after spending hours trying to find/modify to create the perfect template, i am officially using one i've seen before & enjoyed reading from. does that make me boring or un-unique? god forbid.

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just beginning... life in new york means that somehow, vomiting on the subway platform is alright as long as you do it discretely... after stumbling up avenue b not even trying to walk in a straight line, i made it to the train and a lovely girl sitting next to me gave me a bottle of water. there are, in fact, good people in new york. really.

i've spent the last week going to fashion shows in which my sister is modeling. its a strange thing, really. because somehow we always knew she would be a model. It wasn’t just the “discovery” at some New York restaurant when she was 15. I think it may have been that time when someone asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, to which she responded, “I want to divorce well.” Then again having two photographers for parents, we all reacted in our own way. I still hate having my picture taken, because I felt like without a pose, it wasn’t going to look right. Our older sister managed to find her “angle” and without fail holds her head that way absolutely every time anyone points a camera in her direction. And the little one…who is now the tallest of the bunch…was always playing. There was a communication there, between her and the lens. A rapor that I envy still, but appreciate as some sort of skill much like my ability to write a four sentence paragraph or use editing symbols.

There are few things about modeling as an industry that make “sense” in a traditional way. The continual emphasis on “image” is something of which we as a post-post modern society are painfully aware. In that lovely double-bind kind of way, we are just as wrapped up in the presentation of those images as we are indebted to, and enraptured with, them.

But in spite of my desire to deconstruct every photograph she’s in, my younger sister is beautiful and I like seeing her successful and happy…even if it’s doing something the value of which I find dubious at best. Because for her…it is “work.” And it is, truly, “good work,” and “hard work.” For which I respect her sense of self, which is the cornerstone of any accomplished person. She wants it so bad she can taste it, drives herself hard by being satisfied by nothing less than excellence. It is these things, that more than anything else makes me proud when I say, “my sister is a model.”


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