texts from last night

or rather texts and emails from this morning. Between me and two (female) friends. We have a tradition of 'New York Wednesdays' - going out mid-week with disregard for the two remaining days of work - but decided to ramp it up last night.

J: Ummmmm. Wow.
E: Yeah that was pretty classy.
E: M, tell me you're alive. When I dropped you off outside your apartment, you demanded to know where you were.
M (10.28am): Fuck, just woke up.
M (10.32am): I had someone's tits in my mouth last night.
M (10.36am): Technically we were prostitutes last night.
E: We were no better than the strippers, just worse paid.
M: New York Mondays are banned.
E: Anyone else feel horribly dirty?
M: I had to call in sick. It hurts too bad.
E: I wish I had. I’ve been sitting in my office in the dark all day. I’m incapable of doing anything other than mentally replaying the events of the evening. I like how I pointed out the exact moment we were going to look back on today as when it all went downhill, and I was totally right.
J: Dirty is an understatement and I’m sorry for my role in the events replaying in your head. We should’ve listened to you and RUN at that point.
E: The abiding memory for me is the moment when a stripper, wearing M’s top and my hat, was rubbing her ass in your face while a different stripper sucked your boob. And that, ladies, is a New York Monday.
J: Dirty dirty dirty.

Dance dance dance dance dance to the radio

In the dusty days of yore when I was an Olive Oil-shaped teenager staring from the back of the classroom at a world that would, like, never understand her, the only way to find new music was to listen to the radio or read NME. Imagine that kids! Things are a bit different these days, as you've probably noticed. For one thing, I grew hips and now do my world-hating from the corner of the subway carriage/office/bar. And there's that Internet thing. One point of continuity, though is BBC Radio 1. It used to be really good: John Peel, the Evening Session. It's utter, utter shit now, but one thing I do approve of is their Live Lounge feature, wherein they get visiting musicians to do unexpected, often significantly re-hashed covers. You'll get a rock band covering something Britney Spears-esque, a punk group doing a rap song, and so on. If you're British you're of course aware of this because it's been going on for years, but I'm doing this for the benefit of any passing yanks. A few of my favorites:

Bloc Party doing 'Call the Shots' by Girls Aloud. (I have an indefinite relationship with Bloc Party: one of those bands who don't really seem to have a set sound, jumping from clashy, brash jangle to melodic perfection, plus I find the London-ness of Okereke's voice, and his total inability to manage his breathing, a bit irritating. But this is great, and 'This Modern Love' is a beautiful song.)

Editors doing 'Feel Good Inc.' by Gorillaz. (I have to skip to about 20 seconds in every time I listen to this to avoid the UNBEARABLE Joe Whiley's interruption. Ghastly woman. But this is an ideal example of Live Lounge at its best; it simply becomes an entirely different song from the original. I also love that he bleeds the lyrics into 'Munich' - their best-known song and very high in my iTunes most-played in 2005 - at the end.)

Leona Lewis doing 'Run' by Snow Patrol. (I'm not much a Snow Patrol person, and god knows me and Leona don't get on, but I'm not ashamed - she nails it.)

terrible blogger

Since I moved house - in fact, since I decided to move house - I haven't blogged much. I was thinking about this today and I reckon it's because I now have my much-longed-for solitude, so don't feel such a compulsion to maintain this virtual space.

It may also be because I don't have much to say. Work has been unrelentingly brutal; I'm simply exhausted all the time. I go to bed and fall asleep within half an hour which is, over the whole course of my life since I was a tiny child, unheard of. I wake up very early - my bedroom is flooded with sunlight - and get up and get languorously ready. I even eat breakfast, sometimes. I make coffee. I get to work late and stay late or come home and work. Every met demand is merely supplanted with another, rudely requested, one. I got so angry with a client this week that my boss had to call me from Seoul to calm me down, and I'm generally someone who exudes work-related insouciance.

The overwhelming concern I have is that I'm not getting much done, despite being frenetically busy. And not just at work: I was twitchy and went for a walk tonight, and was feeling vague guilt that I haven't been doing anything before I realized that for the last two weeks I've seen friends every single day. After ten minutes outside being a bit mopey, I finally felt the scribbling urge, and came back and wrote a couple of chapters, one about a humpback and one about how the need for solitude can destroy relationships, of prisoners who fear not that the cell door will be locked, their arms stretched pleadingly between the bars, but that it will be left open, or that other arms will grope in.

Other stuff - I bought a little netbook, an HP Mini, which is pretty lovely and ridiculously small and light. Whenever I have it with me in a cafe, people come over to ask me about it; it's the technological equivalent of a dog or baby.

Ally and I have finally chosen a holiday destination and, after considering everywhere - and I do mean everywhere - from Ibiza to Iceland, we are going to Ireland for a week in July. Hiring a car, learning to surf on the West coast, drinking a great deal I imagine.

I bought a large, ancient steamer trunk to use as a coffee table and, well, a trunk, and when it arrived today it was locked and the keys hadn't been sent and it weighed SO MUCH. Much more than I remember the seller stating. Which begs the question: what's inside? It's a weird feeling, having such a sizable container in my home with no idea whether it's empty or not.

"three snakes motionless and parallel as underscoring"

Reading If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (or The Wild Palms). It's a testament to Faulkner's writing that even the lesser-known novels, the ones that don't necessarily grip or haunt with their narratives, are still so compelling on a word-by-word, sentence-by-thick-sentence, page-by-groaning-page level that if someone were to hand you a highlighting pen and ask you to indicate which parts you wish you could have written, you'd give the book back colored in yellow.

The Boss

I triumphed over PetCo. Hey there, Bruce.

Sweet

Home.

Out of shot: piles and piles of books and CDs and cardboard boxes. This weekend is going to be fun.




My tiny kitchen makes me happy. Yes, I do keep banging my head on that utensil rack, but there's nowhere else to put it, given that the roughly 3 square inches of countertop space is already taken.


It's weird having an entire apartment to myself. I love it. Most of all, it's very, very still. I'm trying to find things that will inject some gentle movement into the place. The hanging lanterns help.

When I was little I had a mobile made of glass butterflies hanging over my bed. I couldn't find one like it, so I bought some dinky viking ships instead.

Of course, ideally I'd buy a fish, but after the tragic failure of my last attempt, I'm a little scared.

Urban squirrels

I decided to go for a walk at 5.45am. I've been so delighted and relieved about getting into my new place, I hadn't thought much about how I'll feel to not live here any more. I think there are elements I'm looking forward to leaving behind; the daily visual reminders of last year and the sadness it brought are wearying. I remember talking to Marla about this a while ago after she took a photograph of what was, for her, a meaningful puddle; it was an idea for a project we had, to go round and photograph all the places of significance from a particular period in your life that are now empty and lonely and apparently inconsequential, writing poems or short, connected stories about what happened there, the conversations or silences or walks or kisses.

But I will miss it. I'll miss the ugliness. The terrifying Verizon building a block from my apartment. Seriously, WHAT'S GOING ON IN THERE? The only windows are on about the 4th floor, there are always limos waiting outside, always, but I've never seen anyone come in or out. It's the perfect setting for a hideously creepy horror story: I wish I could write it.

The neighborhood seems to have more than its fair share of silly signs, too, including my all-time favorite, a handwritten effort propped against a tree outside an apartment block that reads, "If I catch you putting your dog here to take a shit, I will call the cops." That's in my book. In fairness, this one below isn't silly, it just amused me because I misread it and thought it said 'blog' and I was standing there just now processing it for a moment before I clicked what it said, and really, it's sort of frightening that I'd think it said blog. I mean, I'm not making great claims about the scintillation value of this blog, but one about Graham Medical Dental?

(On a related note, I went to write my nephew's name - Brad - the other day and automatically wrote 'brand' instead. I need to make serious steps towards a career change.)

I will miss walking around here. There are no green spaces, no views, just pavements and roads and barber shops and delis, but there's comfort and calm in that.