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.

At that point

when you recognize you may as well just stop trying to sleep. I don't know if it's the usual anxiety, excitement for the move tomorrow (or today, more accurately: the movers get here in 3 hours), or fallout from the fact I medicated myself into 10 hours of sleep on the flight back from Korea and it's knocked me off kilter.

My work email has been hit with a ridiculous amount of spam recently. Most of it is the usual drugs-peddling nonsense, but I do love the occasional weird ones that pop up, presumably made by randomly selecting and combining sentences to form what appears to be a story so the email makes it through the security filter. I got this - entitled, 'the same boat? Yes, and jolly sea-sick' - yesterday:

...of having strayed into a new world. As a fact, he had bought bad cigars. "Mind you, I'm not what you'd call susceptible. I'm not soft. I got Syme telegraphed. It is quite extraordinary." "If we are calm," replied the policeman, "It is the calm of organised." He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river, the moon, huge and swollen with gold, set behind the wooded hills, and the man's leather-blackened palm of mutual suicide. "Have we the courage of our own faith?" "We might wake up to-morrow and . . ." Carrying a stretcher between them, walking with the slow, meticulous steps.
"The Hun was a nice little chap, couldn't 'a' been more than eighteen." "You spoke of a second question," snapped Gregory. "I think it is time we began," he said, "The steam-tug is waiting.""Confound you, can't you answer?" called out Syme, in a sudden anger. "No," said the policeman sadly, "I never had any of those advantages."
Wanna slim down for summer? Go to America Takes it Off to find out how.

Watching the smog rise over Seoul

and unable to sleep, I worked out that, once I return to NYC on Friday, I will have flown 73,547 miles since the start of 2009.

"The safety of children was not a priority at any time"

Since it's a beautiful day on a holiday weekend, why not read an investigation into systematic child abuse that will make you sick?

The full report or executive summary from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, also known as the Ryan Report, can be downloaded here.

The wiki entry is a good, concise overview. Try not to punch your screen when you get the part about the Christian Brothers and their bewilderingly successful suit to keep the names of the abusers in their own ranks hidden.

John Banville's opinion piece for the NYT today is a little short and doesn't really offer an answer to the 'why?' set up in the byline, but how could it? The article opens with the obvious question: How could it happen? And he rightly points out that tolerance, silence in the face of appalling behavior - the sort of behavior we all like to think we'd go screaming into the streets about - is a feature of our common human history from century to century and sea to sea:

"Amid all the reaction to these terrible revelations, I have heard no one address the question of what it means, in this context, to know. Human beings — human beings everywhere, not just in Ireland — have a remarkable ability to entertain simultaneously any number of contradictory propositions. Perfectly decent people can know a thing and at the same time not know it. Think of Turkey and the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century, think of Germany and the Jews in the 1940s, think of Bosnia and Rwanda in our own time."

Hollywood regency

I believe that's the style of my new apartment, seeing as I just bought a pink French armchair. Got the keys last night, lay on the bare floor, sat in the window, felt good about the place. I just looked at the list of stuff I need to buy, thinking I'd bought a ton of it, but really I haven't. I haven't bought anything of practical use, like an ironing board or a mop. I do have a fat green kettle and some amazing towels. For now, though, it's empty.

I should start to move stuff this weekend because I'm back on the Seoul train most of next week. I have absolutely nothing to say about that.

This weekend became miserable, and that's distressing because the last couple of months have swooshed by in a state of general mental ease. It happens, I suppose. Things began well, with 'one beer' on Saturday that morphed into a night that ended, as far too many do, in a photo booth.

I like that it looks like we're cut off and bleeding black blood there. Sunday my jaw started locking up with anxiety, my appetite disappeared, I got whacked with shocking insomnia, work was shitty on Monday, I got upset by things that I shouldn't have taken personally, felt vulnerable for the first time in a while and should be glad of it but instead freaked out, and on we go. I do own a pink armchair, though.

the baffling variety of their lives

"It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by cues we don’t even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and decision-making in ways we can’t even fathom. The man who is careful and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another context."

David Brooks is my favorite journalist, the only one whose columns I absolutely cannot miss. Take two minutes to read the full article about this study: I defy anyone to find this less than fascinating. My mother is part of a similar study in the UK, which tracks the lives of all the people who shared her birthday in 1958. I remember a woman coming to our house to test me and my younger brother when we were little. She gets a birthday card from them every year.

Monday = unexpected tea in the garden

Never fly with Continental. There are many reasons. The annoyingly smug on-board introductory video from the CEO. The unsurpassed rudeness of the staff (remember when a stewardess suggested I pick the chicken out of the hot chicken and cheese sandwich she'd just handed me when I told her I was vegetarian?). And, as of yesterday, their decision the night before a flight to move the departure time forward THREE HOURS meaning I could no longer catch it, then their refusal to book me a flight with another airline the same day.

The upshot is I'm stuck in the UK for an extra day, drinking tea in my pyjamas in my parents' garden. It is sunny, the windchimes are chiming, it's lovely. Still, bloody Continental.

This past week has been another good one. I read Siddhartha, hung out with delightful people, saw my family, bounced on a trampoline with my nephew who giggled the whole time, went for a walk in the woods, sneered at some pikeys with my brother and his wife, and attended the wedding of one of my dearest friends. I would rather make another cup of tea and go back to the garden than write about these in detail at the moment. Plus the relevant photographs are on Craig's camera. More later.

Brooklyn-Queens

I saw this painting in a gallery near my house last weekend. It's Ian Curtis, by Allison Edge, and I want it very much. There was another of Curtis. I love his voice, of course, but also the physicality of his singing, the lack of control, the spasms and trances and the way his lips were all over the microphone. Also like the light in this one of Bernard Sumner. The gallery assistant told us it's virtually glow-in-the-dark.

Today I went back to P.S.1 for the first time this year. Pretty disappointing. Tedious political statement pieces: an upside-down portrait of the 43rd President, a holographic image of a blown-up head. The only installation that really held my attention was Yael Bartana's video Trembling Time. A camera that seems to be positioned on an overpass watches the traffic below come to a standstill. Simultaneously, the passengers of the vehicles get out and stand in the road near their cars. Then they turn, again simultaneously, and begin to get back in, but the film cuts slowly to the cars now with no one beside them, so they seem to disappear, like ghosts. Then all the cars start up again and move on. Spooky soundtrack, of course.

In fact, the whole place is spooky. Long, tiled, greenish corridors and clanging stairwells.

Some writing these past few days, but need to hit my rhythm again. Picked up some books in a junk store, and a little bronze ant-eater.

Moving

I just signed away my entire bank balance for a new apartment, based almost wholly on the fact that it has window sills deep enough to be made into window seats, and a chandelier in the living room. And very shiny dark parquet floors. The only downside to this situation is I now have about $60 to live on until my next pay cheque, which would be fine if I didn't need to buy a hat for Rachel's wedding. I wonder if my Mets baseball cap will go with my dress?

It's been a good week. Good people, good times. Marcus and Christie held their leaving dinner last night and it was an outstanding evening, a perfect summation of my friendship with them: lasagne, political chatter and hilarity, champagne, dancing, and some pretty emotional karaoke renditions of Take That songs. As I said - or probably didn't say, at least lucidly - in a toast last night, it was Marcus who encouraged and supported my move to NYC more than anyone else, and he has been my guy here. I have a lovely bunch of friends and acquaintances, but few whose advice I really want to hear, and fewer still who will respond to almost any contact with, "Whiskey in five minutes?" Marcus and Christie will be badly, sadly missed.