browser doesn't support rich text - sorry - damn i wanted to post pictures!!!
Right. So I'm never on my laptop cause we don't have internet. I only used the internet at my office, but now I don't have an office, so I'm going to coffee shops with wireless or using internet at friend's apts (like now), etc. So much has happened as far as nightlife and debauchery and social group drama, etc. I still haven't heard about the job. Sorry, dudes, I have not been reading LJ very much. I felt too uneasy and anxious to read or write.
I go back and forth from being proud of myself for finally handling situations with some strength and dignity (new for me) and just falling apart. More and more, I feel completely in-control and confident, which is cool. I'm growing up. I don't get upset like I used to.
I saw Joey last night (remember him?). He looked a bit like a deer in headlights, so I bolted to try to run into another room but missed and hit a wall AND a person. I felt okay though. I didn't try to speak to him. I didn't cause a scene. I didn't scratch. I went to order a beer and the dude I tried to scratch (Joey's roommate - the other one...) was standing next to me. First, we started laughing. Then I apologized. He thanked me (genuinely) for the apology and then apologized for "acting like such a dick". Wow. It made me happy.
After all this insane partying and scenester-ing, it's time for a break. I'm going home tomorrow. My sister's ex-boyfriend went grocery, weed and wine shopping for us for tomorrow night and then we're going to the Glen Onoco waterfalls on Saturday. Glen Onoco is so gorgeous and such a strenuous hike that it even impresses people who live out West (that's really difficult to do). I'm so stoked.
Oh and I just found Stephen Merritt's journal that I had to transcribe at BlackBook. It's dated and I think fairly disappointing considering the potential, but what the hell? Anything to stop barfing on about myself!!!
American Airlines, Flight 181 from JFK to LAX
5 p.m., February 29, 2004
Just sitting on the runway, eyeing my stash of nicotine lozenges, I’m trying not to eavesdrop on the obnoxious woman behind me shouting baby talk into her cell phone to a child who evidently isn’t paying attention. A stack of manuscripts on my lap represents the enormous workload I’ve brought for this flight: I need to arrange all 24 songs for my opera, Peach Blossom Fan, by tomorrow afternoon’s rehearsal, and I’ve only arranged nine. We are still at the gate as I extricate Lozenge Aaron from his foil grid. Having brought only ten lozenges, I can get no further than Lozenge Karen before baggage claim.
Will we ever leave the gate?
The ambient video dimly flickering on the in-flight movie screen…uh-oh. Plane moving. Already nauseated, and we only moved fifty feet. From my window seat (26A) I can see the grayed-out New York sunset. Capt. Brian Duchene advises us we will cruise at an altitude of 35,000 feet, and we are shown a video about fastening seatbelts, in English and barely audible Spanish. Apparently “some evacuation slides can be used as rafts”. Taxiing, we see dozens of other planes, but I never saw the outside of this one. It could display the Jolly Roger on the tail for all I know.
Seat 26A overlooks the port wing, on which has been stenciled: NO STEP. (Runway zoom! Liftoff! Suden view of apartment buildings in middle of marsh, slate-colored water in harbor under easter-egg-colored sky.
Recently reading Paradise Lost, I noticed that God creates our universe by separating two bodies of water: one below, which gets turned into solid land, and one above, which means that over our firmament-the starry sky-it’s water; so later when God floods everything, killing almost everyone, he does this by opening the windows of Heaven, through which the water gushes. Isn’t Christianity hilarious?
Now we’re hurtling through luminous clouds. Nothing to report. Time to start arranging my first song for the day: “The Menu”. Unfortunately, one of the characters named in the song has been written out of the play (a chorus member left the production), but no one has told me which character. Hmm. I can’t call the stage manager to find out because I’m 35,000 feet in the air. Another song first, then.
Tea arrives as we fly over Harrisburg, PA, home of the famous Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant. I will now arrange my song, “Gender Relations in the Ming Dynasty” (the play is adapted from a 17th-century Chinese opera) for two quartets (one per gender), marimba, double bass, steel pan drums, and yang ching (a traditional Chinese hammer dulcimer). I will accomplish this feat while flying through the air at 35,000 feet even though I’m squeezed into a space so small I can’t open my…
The first pencil drops, and vanishes. Three to go.
Just as I contemplate writing the first note of music, food service begins. From all over the plane I hear twitters of “chicken”, until I am served barbecue chicken strips with string beans and miniature potatoes, saladlet, a roll the texture of wet yarn, and a square of quite nice lemon cake with white frosting. Having brought my own teabag I follow dinner with Good Earth green tea. For decades, I thought my mother was being silly carrying around her own teabags; now I wonder what else she’s right about (reincarnation? Cranio-sacral therapy? Killer salt?). Any moment now I will begin arranging “Gender Relations in the Ming Dynasty”. But first: Lozenge Babs.
Another pencil gone, and a good excuse to pop Lozenge Calvin, I have done two thirds of this one arrangement, and it’s 6:27 on the watch I set to West Coast time a while ago. So, four-and-a-half hours into the flight already. The flight attendants are serving beverages. This means I have to decide between the nicotine in my mouth and sustenance. At the end of a tiny bag of pretzels I regret my choice. The other passengers laugh aloud, heartily, at jokes in their headphones, as I get back to work on my marimba line.
“Everybody Loves Raymond”, a sitcom whose set is identical to the of “All in the Family” and possibly “Married with Children”, is interrupted by Capt. Duchene informing us of there being only 20 minutes to descent (which he pronounces with accent on first-syllable, with a secondary accent on the second so it doesn’t sound like “decent”) and that the temperature in L.A. is 53 degrees, I sharpen my pencil for the fortieth time or so.
Descending, my right ear won’t pop. The plane occasionally shaking a bit puts an end to my fevered orchestrating. Announcements and Lozenge Duchene occupy me until I glance out my window and see the Lite-Brite landscape of suburban L.A. at night. It reminds me: tonight is the Academy Awards ceremony, so I may well be trapped in Parking Lot Hollywood till dawn or so.
The great thing about flying is imagining that life will be different on touchdown: I’ll quit smoking, get over my ex-boyfriend, move to L.A. (he’s moving to San Diego anyway)…We’re here. 7:38 p.m. Cell phone use is now permitted. Uh-oh.
At the Standard Hotel my room is an op-art fantasy lacking the three items I need right away: bathtub, pillows I’m not allergic to, and a VCR (I haven’t had time to watch my friend Duncan’s documentary on Mexican wrestling, and I’m likely to see him tomorrow!), so I eat a bag of popcorn and…buy cigarettes, in a daze, literally forgetting I’d quit smoking eight hours ago. I would throw them out, but….
There’s also no way to boil water for tea, so I order room service for morning. Tomorrow I’ll buy an electric tea kettle, since I’ll be in town on and off for six weeks, and I’ve brought big bags of two expensive exotic teas-not green buy white-from McNulty’s on Christopher Street. My director, Chen Shi-Zheng, is a tea connoisseur who might descend on me at any moment, so I’d better be prepared.
Now that I’ve received the required pillows I will fall asleep reading Li Yu’s 1657 eroticomic novel, The Carnal Prayer Mat. Good night, diary, whoever you are.
No wonder I’ve been sweltering all day: I was wearing thermal...
Stephen Merritt