And mark the dark-eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep

Four days away from the office. There must and shall be sleep.

And writing. I have a new, terrifying project.

There was a mouse under my desk at work yesterday. It trotted by my feet with minimal timidity. My office is on the 22nd floor. Afterwards, I was out in the fire exit stairwell (my hiding place) and I just thought about that for a minute and was pretty impressed with the mouse.

It is looking increasingly likely that I'll be spending the two weeks before Christmas in Dubai for work. I'll be sad to miss the Christmas build-up in NYC, and astonished that 2008 is done, but excited about visiting the Middle East for the first time. I will probably have to go to Paris immediately after the break, on my way back here, which is agreeable because Paris is my favorite city after the one I live in. Combined with California, that's a lot of carbon in the space of a month or so. I should plant some trees.

I feel oddly peppy. I have no idea why. I dislike it; I am suspicious of myself. I think it's because I'm too busy to think straight. This is what I said to Nick, anyway. Nick's new novel, Midnight Picnic, is available for pre-order now. You should buy it; it is very good. I know this because I got to read it early, for I am special.

...spells on the winds of the dead his winter's tale

The cold has arrived.

I slept most of the weekend, and bought some Christmas presents. Buying presents for people you love makes you happier. I dyed my hair red(der) and thought about where I'll go next, when I decide to leave New York.

Read this article on Pakistan. Try not to have nightmares (I did):

One new cabinet member, Israr Ullah Zehri, defended the torture-murder of five women and girls who were buried alive (three girls wanted to choose their own husbands, and two women tried to protect them). “These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” Mr. Zehri said of the practice of burying independent-minded girls alive.

I might stay here

for the weekend and hide from everything back home and sit next to the ocean. This would involve moving my flight, though, and I think it's too late.


If you are half as geeky as me, you'll like this website. It stretches and squashes the world's landmasses based on different criteria. Here's the Muslim population:


Here's HIV prevalence, with Africa looking like a tumor:

Here's books published. HOLY CHRIST LOOK AT THE UK:

In San Diego

There are palm trees.

There are a thousand

balms, anaesthetics and poisons that will numb it, there are lists of people to call and things that will offer a distraction, but sometimes there's nothing left to do but just feel it.

Bleurgh

What a fucking monstrous week. I was in the office until midnight every night except Monday, when I argued with someone, and last night, when I got back from a meeting in New Jersey at 9, missed a hair appointment, had 3 glasses of whiskey and passed out. Every night I've fallen asleep immediately and had ridiculous stress dreams and woken up exhausted and terrified. In one, I was being forced to lie on the floor while small crocodiles crawled all over me. One started biting me and the pain was so vivid, I woke up screaming, which is pretty embarrassing when your apartment has paper thin walls. This morning I went for the re-arranged hair appointment - my hair looks insane now - got rained on, came home to do the five loads of laundry that have built up since I returned from Ohio, and discovered the washing machine is broken. I have to work for the rest of the day and most of tomorrow because I have many meetings next week in California and I don't want to look like an idiot. I rarely get stressed about work, or have any kind of feelings about it at all, really. I am stressed now because I have too much to do but I have to be good at my job because my job = my visa = living in America. I have so much to do, it's encroaching on my real life, so I can't see the people I want to, and worse, I can't spend time aimlessly alone, which is for my sanity what coffee is for my body. It's my turn to clean the apartment and I'd rather gnaw my own arm off than mop today. It's Charlie's christening tomorrow, and of course, like all of my family, Charlie lives in England, thus I will not be there and will not be his godmother. Oh also when I woke up this morning I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and noticed that one of my eyes was swollen almost shut. It hasn't improved that much yet. I've been obsessed with Thom Yorke since prepubescence but I'm not sure I want to look like this:




I fully appreciate there are people waking up in jails and refugee camps and war-torn lands today and I should shut the hell up, but ALL I WANT TO DO IS WRITE. I AM ANGRY.

Update: Small victory. Washing machine now working. I was giving it a good, irritable talking to when someone from the neighboring apartment popped in, pulled the dial out a notch, and - whirrrrr - off we go.

Fat tax

If you are so fat that you take up more than one seat on the subway, you should stand your ass up, or at least sit there with a bagful of treats on your lap so you can compensate the people who are having to stand for you. I also think that airlines should calculate the healthy weight for a man/woman, add a reasonable amount of baggage (let's say 50 kg), add 10% for the sake of kindness, and give that as the total allotted weight. Then, at check-in, you should be forced to stand on a scale with your baggage and if the total mass is over this amount, you pay excess. I say this because I have been charged for excess baggage multiple times while people 3 times my weight waddle past me. And it would be good for obese people - what better incentive for weight loss than public humiliation and expense?

I'm in a bad mood today.

Throwing off poison

“A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.” (Henry Miller)

Foggy

Recollections of the weekend are shrouded in mist: Jess was here. Horrible comedown today; thought I was getting depressed but gradually returning to okay-ness, suggesting it was just the recovery from poisoning my body for 3 days. Left work early so I could work at home without endless interruptions. I am emailed too much; it is annoying and soon I will have to tell colleagues to stop emailing me with pointless stuff I don't care about and they'll be offended.

I haven't written for two weeks what with Ohio and Jess and late-night teleconferences with Korea. This must change.

Was just in Whole Foods and saw a guy I dated briefly. We pretended not to see each other; it was a bit awkward.

Saw this pic on Ian's blog. Sent it to Jonathan because it seemed like the kind of thing he'd like. Turns out his friend did it. Weird.

Tonight is your answer

Forgive me, for this will be unabashedly sentimental. I held off writing a post about the election until I had slept and regained enough composure that I wouldn't write something so mawkish that my English readers would feel nauseous, because really, I got pretty emotional back there. Over the last week I walked many miles and knocked on many doors and had conversations along the lines of:

Me: Will you be voting for Senator Obama on Tuesday, sir?
Man: No, and can I be honest with you?
Me: Please.
Man: I think he'll give rights to the colored man.

But there were many, many more moments of affirmation and sheer brilliance with the good people of Ohio, Obama supporters and otherwise.

Watching MSNBC as Ohio came up blue, surrounded by people who'd worked on the so-narrowly-lost Kerry campaign 4 years ago, was elating.

Then there was the confirmation of victory, and the speech. There are just a few moments in my life I remember watching unfold on television with that the-world-stopped-spinning feeling that this was already history. Sitting as a child with no real understanding as people broke off pieces of the Berlin wall on the BBC. The news flash that interrupted an afternoon epic movie to announce the Good Friday Agreement. Halting my sister in law's birthday tea to watch the twin towers go up in flames. Obama's speech, particularly the section towards the end about the elderly voter and what she'd seen in her lifetime, joined the list on Tuesday night.

I think the power of America isn't that it never gets it wrong, because God knows it gets it very wrong, often. It's that it manages, miraculously and energetically and with a determination and, well, sort of purity, to try again to get it right, to fix it, to keep moving. Whenever people ask me why I chose to move here, the first thing I say is there's this magical optimism in the air. That's why the "yes we can" message resonates so strongly here. Who knows how things will be looking this time next year. It hardly feels like it matters at the moment.

But to prove I haven't become a hideously earnest yank just yet, my favorite exchange of the evening came as Michelle and Barack walked off stage hand in hand. "Those two are going to have amazing sex tonight," I said. "'Who's your President? Who's your President?' It's going to be brutal and authoritative," announced Frank.

Happy