Life as a pot of tea

This week has proven itself more exhausting than usual.
Perhaps it's the manic nature of the weather, perhaps it's the daunting responsibility of financial planning for a new life, or perhaps it's simply me experiencing a tiny burnout.

The lovely thing about living in a city so full of ceaseless movement is that one is totally aware of their potential for resilience.
In being an active person with a will to live fully, and even to excess, I look in the mirror at a face outlined with determination. There is no other jaw set so concretely as mine, no other brow furrowed as cautiously as mine, no other eyes narrowed as crisply as mine, and thus shall I ensure my successes be not only constant but comprehensive.

This is the time of my life where everything must have its value leached out as a tea bag has its flavors steeped from it.
And I shall toss aside the disappointments like silk sachets full of water-logged herbs, looking to come upon the next most flavorful venture.

A motherless mothers day

Sundays bring their own sort of happy sorrow to many people for many reasons:
It's the last free day before the work week grind revs back into action; It's a reminder to church-goers that they're still not quite blameless; It's a the football game that always seems to rocket newlyweds from romantic love to real life.

And this Sunday is that annual jab in the ribs to any and all who live too far from their mothers for a genuine hug.

Mothers day brings to mind images of red roses, dark chocolates, and tablefuls of bickering siblings hellbent on declaring themselves as the favorite child. These things may be all well and good but they are just images after all. Imagined ideas that comfort without quite satisfying. The same way that thinking about a breeze doesn't actually quit the swelter of a blistering summer day.

Today I miss my mother.
Not any more than usual. The only thing I feel at a slight increase is a pestering guilt.
Guilt at being remiss in calling as often as I ought, at not writing as many letters as might make her sure she's on my mind.
And it's nothing of a Catholic guilt by any means, simply a tiny sliver of unrest in the space behind my eyes.

In observance of this most hallowed holiday I took it upon myself to celebrate sans matriarch.
Jason and I planned a meal, invited a fellow mother-missing friend, and prepared ourselves an orphan's brunch.
One would think that such behavior might inevitably drive the three of us to talk about our childhoods, reminiscing about the best of times and most comical of incidents involving our mothers, but in actuality the conversation hovered over such topics as sex education and performance art.

I will be the first to express my strongest feelings of defense on all of our behalves in that our mother's would be proud, one and all, at the three of our genuine concerns for both contemporary awareness and intentional culture.

In a roundabout way I guess what I'm trying to say is that our mothers must have done something right. We're all happy, healthy, and ambitious. And on top of that, we all know we're loved without reservation.

Frankly, if left up to me to describe, I'd say that is what mothers day is actually all about.

Revue Review

Each weekend carries a certain sense of adventure.
Especially now that I have a marvelous comrade of conquest, one Mr. Jason Alan Knight.

Mr. Knight and Mr. Buck enterprises have made it a strong point to be highly involved in the arts community in New York as mutual scheduling permits. As such, weekend adventures frequently involve some sort of performance: musical, dramatic, artistic, etc.

This most recent weekend saw Misters Knight and Buck visit Theatre of the New City for the final performance of Denial: Time to Face the Musical.

The show can be summated in a single word: travesty.

Not to say that the concept was uncreative, it was simply tired, washed up, and poorly executed.
Mr. Buck felt it unkind and lacking in class to comment to this point however his staid behavior is completely counter-intuitive and he has thus opted to put off his politeness in an effort at fully explaining the horror that was a musical about a black girl who thought she was white.

You did not misread the last line.

Filled with catchy tempos and passable instrumentations the show's lyrics and dialogue fell to the wayside...

...as in I couldn't hear hardly any of them.

Blame it on the acoustics of the basement being passed off as a performance space, or perhaps the fact that the actors had little to no perceivable talent.

The lead was a poor excuse for a diva with a disproportionally large head and an even larger unawareness of her musical pitch (or lack thereof). This came as no surprise: the girl's bio contained the words "grateful to be making my New York debut in a brilliant musical I wrote myself". Some people would go so far as to call that assuming.
I would take it to the level of misguided insanity.

Either way, the first half was bearable enough: a sort of pleasant romp not unlike watching Cher dancing in a Chuck E. Cheese ballpit.
The second act caused me to begin contemplating methods for taking my own life.
There was the moment of revelation where the (clearly) black lead discovers that she is not, in fact, white and I'm pretty sure the entire audience was just about as uncomfortable as they would have been in a screening for Gigli 2. Only the show had less character.

I feel that I lost something during that show (and I am not merely speaking of my dignity) and I'm relatively sure it was approximately two hours of my life I would have rather spent reading Twilight.

Alright, alright, that's terribly dramatic. Unlike the show.

Where I run

Here I sit in Marc's apartment with nothing but my stories prompting me to make another keystroke.
I don't have a 5 year plan, I don't have a 401k, and I don't have my dreamjob.

But the long and the short of it sounds something like this: I don't need them.

What I do have is far more valuable to me than any of those would-be essentials: I have a belief in the potential for anything.
Sure, I now live in the city known for housing some of the most unhappy, unfulfilled, and never-quite-good-enough people in the world and yet I can't help but chuckle to myself as I realize that I have it within me to decide all on my own never to be one of them.

And I have decided, flat out, that I will not only shy away from those lacklove outlooks, but I will break into a dead run in the opposite direction.

Wherever I end up, out of breath, covered in perspiration, at least I know I'll be all the further from gray malaise that is an unhopeful life.

Mountain to mountain

Rain kills my drive.
It's as if my whipped topping has been pelted by so much pea-gravel.
And it's not pretty.

Not to say that I'm in any way less determined, it's more that I feel like every step takes three times as much energy, focus, and strength as it might if there were blue skies and yellow rays instead of this gritty drip drop.

The dry skin around my fingernails reminds me that the precipitation is only temporary.
Brighter days really are just around the corner.
And what's more I'm not completely without light, happiness, joy.
There are so many, many things for which I am undyingly grateful:

-I'm working
-I'm writing
-I'm seeing & hearing
-I'm peaceful
-I'm not lonely

Whenever the clouds roll in and the city goes back to being an ashy cave I want to roll over in bed and go back to being asleep and inert.
But this cannot (and will not) be.
There is too much I am finally understanding, finally accepting to run from it in light of the weather.
No more shall Phaeton's presence (or absence) dictate my actions.
I've gone too many days, weeks, years living on a leash fastened to that golden chariot.
It's high time that I cut myself free and run amongst the horizons choosing my own.

The plan that is no plan

Today I realized the beauty of being a willing wanderer.

There are far too many beautiful places I've come across in life as a result of simply meandering through various streets and byways to allow for any dissuasion from the value of such aimlessness.

On foot for the better part of the day, I walked through Brooklyn with no agenda and finished the day with a full list of experiences.
I found a typewriter in the annals of a densely packed antiques shoppe. I met a nanny and her two talkative trusts in a miniature organic frozen yogurt parlor. I saw a movie about which I knew next to nothing...and ended up loving it. And finally, I was introduced to a new route home filled to the brim with block after block of ornate and signature brownstones.
I couldn't have been happier with the day.

And now I'm permitted to relax in the comfort of a safe space.
I'm preparing to whip up a batch of my world-renowned scones.
And the night sky beckons me to the bed where a set of long arms will wrap around me and press my warm skin into my slender bones.

I love the plan that is no plan.

On Mornings

If the the clatter and smash of kitchen sundries falling from a fourth floor window are my wake up call
I know I'm in the city.

If I can tell exactly who is filling their coffee pot by the variation in temperature of my shower
I know I'm in the city.

If walking the dog means dodging buses
I know I'm in the city.

If I wake up happy and stay that way
I know I'm in the city.