I took note, and here I am

Work was medium-rare for the first half. It was simply not well done.
I was in a new position in the theatre. High stress, lots of mistakes. I thought deeply about what I was doing and made choices based on information provided in training.

I understand work now. We have basic rules and functions explained and then we work, trying to make the best of the exceptions to the rules. One shouldn't be reprimanded for dealing poorly with problems for which one has not been prepared. I mean, what's poor if there is no point of reference?

The second half is great, though.
I know people eventually tire of my humor, but this is fresh. I am appreciated in this new environment. I'm an unshaven newbie and it's great.

College kids get into Hide and Seek.

I need to work on being condescending. I need to work on being passive-aggresive. In an hours-long game of monopoly with one of my suitemates, seven yelling matches occured and we were both angry for half of the game, blitheringly. I lost, too. That was the worst part. I had hotels on the purples, and nothing else. My opponent had a couple of houses on the reds and nothing else. He had no money and I had a fat wad, I'm talking $5,000, here. One of my other suitemates, that loathesome Jhonathan brokered a deal that led me to have hotels on the first three sets, and him to unmortgage and own the other half of the board. Eventual, but thorough loss.

I was left with nothing. I was seven dollars off from the $1,100 I owed. I was close, but even then, I had no spending cash. I couldn't visit Ventnor on a rainy day.

Probably, also, I should say my peace and then be done.

To a Crawdad, we are God

Isn't it funny that we think there are only five important senses in the whole world?
We're human. We are the epitomy.

"But what about Echolocation?"
Shut up, nay-sayer, that's just sight and sound mixed together. Silly.

But to sightless, soundless creatures, wouldn't our presence be like that of God? Present, but indescribably so. Nearly incomprehensible.

Also,
We waste our minds like litter in the gutter
(That was going to be the title, if I hadn't remember the Crawdad bit).
We take advantage of the fact that we can time-travel with our memory and our imagination.
"Time-travelling? But you can't change anything?"
Right. You can't change anything in your past, or the fabric of your existence will shift, correct.
You can, however, pretend something hard enough that it becomes real to you.
So you can reimagine your past and that will dictate your future.

So we can time-travel, essentially, but this feature comes standards in most models of human, so we forget about it like a dialpad.
It's just there.

Well isn't that a care package? (Thank you, Amelia)

Today is a big day.
It's a Tuesday. That means really one thing worldwide, Tie-dye.
It hardly has any bearing here, but that's the unenlightened for you.
They'll jump on the hippest of band wagons soon enough.

It's just a Tuesday.
I have my Culture class and my Archive class on this day.
I usually read articles for the class and write and read striking dystopian novels in my spare Tuesday moments.

Today, though, wasn't just Tuesday,
Today was part of my life.

No, I didn't try Coke for the first time.
I'd like to think that would mean less than my actuality of Tuesday, today.

I met her. She's some great figure in my life.
I didn't meet her through some squashed orientation where we only knew each other's names because they were on tags beneath our lapels, we met in a building. It was a school building, sort of zapping the destiny, but... regardless!

We smiled at each other, I printed something, stuffed in the disorganization of my backpack, and she smiled at me. That's two. I wasn't counting then, I just have a vivid memory of this moment. I felt light-headed. I probably hadn't eaten enough. I have food; I need to remember to eat.
She smiled at me and took an obliging step towards me and then recoiled. I thought nothing of this cat and dog play. I spoke in Spanish about the elevator. She responded in English.

Why does this seem so serendipitous?
The elevator ride down was trying not to make eye-contact. They are very small, the elevators. We were on the ground floor, again enveloped in silence, but this will change. I was focused on making conversation with this girl.

I walk West and South, altogether the wrong directions for going back to the apartment, but there I head, because that's where she's going. Two, three fluid moments of nothing.
I was somewhere else watching me. I approved.

She looks at me, smiles and we talk about so little. I know her name is Justine, she's from Oakland, lives at Loeb Hall, and it's her second year at Lang.
We were at the main building in no time, she followed her classmate inside, announcing to me that she didn't remember where her class was.
I'll talk to her again.
I have a purpose.

She's either my future girlfriend, or a forward conversationalist that will be one of my best friends. I know this going in. I knew that when we left the elevator.

It's funny that we place importance on these pieces of circumstance.
I was probably too light-headed from not eating enough breakfast to really comprehend the interaction, but I've eaten now, and it bears the same.

A part of my life happened today.

(After reading, I hope you'll understand my frame of mind. This was quick to write, though it'd been on my mind for an hour. I was listening to to

Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life
Arcade Fire - (Antichrist Television Blues)
Audrye Sessions - The Crows Came in
- (Early in the Morning)
Thrice - The Sky is Falling
Radiohead - Knives Out
Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky
some ancient Death Cab, some City and Colour, Amiina and Minus the Bear

This was not mood-altering, but mood-enhancing)

Where have my friends and allies gone?

I made a joke today in Spanish.
Nos Hemos descubierto la clima (We described the weather).
My classmates were making small jokes about it being cold in the city or being very hot in the mountains, their tone as the punchline. I, not knowing this was the regular comedic sense, described the Apocalypse. The room was silent.
La profesora felt awkward, too.

I'm usually pretty funny. I have high regards for myself, and there I was, letting the joke die.

When did the Apocalypse stop being funny? Never.
I am lost in an analog sea.

My friends are gone. My old friends, geographically. I have to continue making impressions and live like that, probably unendingly.
Home is such an easy place. I can make this place home, maybe! I don't know.
It'll be a fight.

I'm a big fan of stereotypes,

But that's common knowledge.

I should be sleeping. Isn't that a Beatles lyric?
No one can be original with John and Paul in the mix.

I heard that this city was full of assholes.
That's true. I was assaulted, mildly, in my first fortnight here. The guy shoved into me in midday. I didn't know from where it came. It was an elbow from left field and I was scared. I bellowed, "I didn't do ANYthing," as I passed.
In that moment, though, I was bellowing to some guy I met on the street. We were discoursing on perspective. He said it's wasteful to not smile, to not laugh, to love the only life we've been given. He's damn right.

I was shoved in an ephemeral moment that I shared with a stranger. We spoke about how this city was full of assholes and he agreed. He's from here.

Portland is full of assholes, too.
They work in coffee shops and they care more about image than substance.
I mean, they work other places, but this is a statement about stereo(and mon0)typing.

There are the same people everywhere. And I think that's the thing about this place, the humbling effect of the city.
This place is the best Congress. There are representatives from every culture looking for everything.
This place is everything to everyone.

The word on the street are that the city's dirty and capitalistic. The people were mean, vengeful, and crime-hardened. The kids grow up with smoke in their face and go to college with white in their nose.

And that's true.
It's also not true, though.

That's just a overrepresentation of a small group that fills this place, and with that, New York is the world. We see the world as dirty and the people as mean and the kids as victims.
Have you read about the Nacirema?

An assignmet for the French speakers.

How Lang Will Fit into My Life
I was nervous. The haze scaled the modern architecture and the clouds covered the moon roughly like crayon on paper, the moon still visible but its brilliance obscured. The cold humidity of the night air smelled of piss and death at too young an age. I was comfortably nervous. It was hours before l’heure bleue, the wind lifting compostables from the gutter and carrying them like ghosts through the town. Doors were shut, streetlights dim, voices (where there were voices) low.
I had mere blocks before home. Most ghettos are shady, but the innercity of this Parisian suburb made Brooklyn look and feel like Chelsea or Burnside out West.
I tried to smile to every roaming couple or transient I passed, no matter how sordid their character seemed, my humble hometown American sensibilities still glimmering under my bearded, burly physique. A crowd of gentleman spoke quietly, but confidently, sounding garbled from yards away. I passed the men, each adorned with dark clothing and looking as if their ambitions matched their dress, and as I passed they spoke to me, all in French, roughly translated as:
“Chic, my man,” the ringleader of this motley gang said.
“Merci,” said I, praying for compliment, anticipating distress. I let not my pace quicken as to alert the men of my fear. My acceleration stagnated with uneasy glances and grins at the men. Quickly, one of the dark men was in front of me, coup d’etating me backwards. I tripped with heavy awkward steps, spilling my café au blanche. One man brushed my coat and helped me up, only to join his compatriots in shoving me to an alley eclipsed by tall piles of garbage and stolen electronics.
I shouted “Aidez-moi!” for help but the wind ignored my calls for help and instead investigating the old, yellow newspapers left on the ground. One of the men of the gang answered, “They m'en fous about you!” I froze.
I was left standing on facing the twilight of streetlight. Behind me was brick and neo-classical tapestry. They shoved me to the ground and gawked with laughing wide sneers. “Give us your goods, you sheep.”
“But I’ve nothing to give,” I said with blood falling through my rust beard and onto my fitted plaid corduroy shirt.
The leader glanced to his friends in disbelief. “He must joke.” They laughed together in thick, annoying chortles. The leader rushed towards me with the gait of a speed-walker. His fist flew like one over a cuckoo’s nest and landed straight on my nose. Tendrils of snot and blood shot onto my Marc Jacob’s t-shirt á la mode. The young suburbans chortled as the French do and the leader, joined by his aide-de-camp, continued to pummel me as was the couture.
I wept and vomited on my side with my arm shielding my face from the beating until suddenly there were no blows and the air was froideur.
“Is your shirt from the most recent collection?” asked the concierge of the group.
“Yes, yes, yes it is,” I managed to stutter through the mouthful of blood.
“It’s very nice,” the leader said. “Yes, it goes well with the pants,” said the scruffiest of the bunch. He nodded his head and smiled.
“When did you start buying Jacobs’ clothing?” one of them asked. I couldn’t tell who was who in the daze of the beating. I felt as if I had papier over my whole body.
I rubbed my eyes and glanced around. The men suddenly looked like adolescents, apologetic, looking at the ground meekly and wringing their hands.
“We’re sorry, sir. We didn’t realize you were wearing nice clothes. We’ll give you all of our money and leave.” And there they did. All was comme il faut.

Lesson I learned at The New School: Dress well. It pays off.
Lesson I didn’t learn at the New School: How to speak French.

Because Sometimes Things Are Just That Simple

I forget that I have an emotional connection to a public option. I don’t pretend to have a new political view on the subject. I don’t want to make false impressions about my idealism. I am a pragmatist, but I’m also a humanitarian. At rare times do complex puzzles slip into simplicity, like a key into a lock. I have this clarity.
When I was a child, I knew a woman that did not have health insurance until her mid-to-late twenties. Because of her lack of coverage, she did not have symptoms checked when she felt ill. This story is common, I know. “She could have risked it,” they say, but in all honesty, she couldn’t have covered the co-pay.
She would have been cheering on President Barack Obama’s speech tonight, had she not died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma after a long battle. She was diagnosed late, spent sad, sickening years on chemotherapy, and finally gave up, the cure killing her as much as the cancer. I remember this well because she was my sister.
The pieces didn’t really click until this year that, had she been covered, she would have been diagnosed and she would be alive.
A friend told me, after watching the speech on healthcare reform, she contended with one of the points of the speech’s topsoil because she has an emotional connection with the issue. The President stated, or implied, that there will be a move for everyone to have health insurance, regardless, in the same fashion as the states that already require auto insurance coverage for licensure. Her parents are of such poor health that they can neither receive coverage nor afford health insurance. I felt for her cynicism because I too would certainly feel as she does. Affordability is the critical point of contention because of her experience, and she won’t support the plan, accordingly.
I declared sympathy and assured her that there was a solution somewhere. I thought hard, though, about sharing my experience with coverage. I relented, but thought harder. This issue, between us, is not a battle for worst story, it is simplicity in stories. The plainness of coverage lies in the terrible ends that have befallen our families. My friend’s family falls in and out of debt and an elementary school student had to attend the wake of a sibling because of something changeable, malleable: health insurance.
Both are terrible stories. I wouldn’t wish either of them on enemies of the state, but simply put, what is worse, debt or death?

I wasn't hungry, but if I don't eat, I'll waste away

There is a all-purpose van in my way. Between gyros, muffins, and hot dogs, I pick the latter.
“Do you guys have hot dogs, already?” I meant to say still. They run out at midday.
He nods and turns around. This white van is run by two tanned, baseball cap businessmen. A loud, tall man, gawking and thinning, walks next to me and yells at the men. “What do you got for 75 cents?!”
Scanning, “Coffee or tea is 75 cents, man,” I say meekly.
“Yo! Whattaya got for 75 cent?!” “A bagel or a roll,” adding few decibels.
“Thanks, man,” he says. A couple levels beneath a yell now, “I want a bagel!”
“Cream cheese?” one of the businessmen asks.
“Yeah, cream cheese.” He’s eyeing the situation wildly. The other owner of the van is arranging my hot dog.”
“That’ll be $1.25,” the vendor says to the agitated man.
“What?! This guy said it was 75 cents!” I’m in this now.
“It says 75 cents on the menu,” I argue.
“That’s plain. With cream cheese it’s $1.25.”
“Shit, man,” downtrodden. He turns to me, “can you spare some, man?”
I stopped giving a couple weeks ago. I have a budget and I scrounged for cereal last month. “I can’t give now,” I say.

He’s disappointed in me. He’s disappointed in everyone who doesn’t give. “Nah, man.”
“It’s on me, says the vendor. “What kind do you want? Raisin? Plain? Cheese?”
“Raisin, man.”
I pay for my hot dog and pick up to leave. The man looking for some change says, “I thought you were a brother for a brother for a brother.”
What can I say to this? What can anyone say to this axe-wound? “I just can’t give today.”

“Nah, man,” he says, dropping his cents in the hand of the vendor and ambling away with wild eyes still facing me. He speaks slowly, “I thought you were a Brother for a Brother… for a brother.”