People seem really eager to dismiss my idiosyncratic behaviors- specifically, those that differ drastically from their own behaviors- as merely symptoms or "excuses" for underlying neuroses and character defects.

Many of these encounters are disguised as general concern and a desire to understand, so they are difficult to point out on a one-on-one basis. The ones that are brazenly obvious, the not-so-disguised, cause me to look back and see the parallels to other, more insidious (and often not conscious) misguided misattributions.

It might come from a need to categorize (well, dichotomize) behaviors as either good or bad, normal or abnormal, active or reactive. It might come from the inability to see any hint of an existence outside the norm (their own) as anything other than wrong in some way- even if the behavior itself isn't "wrong", it's the deviation from socialization that's seen as "wrong", and so the underlying cause must be "wrong". It might be the inability to understand complexities within people other than oneself, particularly if those complexities challenge one's idea of the finiteness of complexity.

It might actually come from the desire to understand, and when faced with not being able to understand, one negates as a way to maintain sanity and self-concept. (My personal favorite: "Everyone else I know who does this..." as though similar[ly-appearing] behaviors necessarily stem from similar sources.)

Whatever the reason, it's really fucking getting on my nerves. Just stop it, all right? It's perfectly natural to have such thoughts, but if you're willing to validate them to yourself when forming your concept of me, at least have the decency to express humility and encourage dialogue by using "I" statements, rather than just telling me about myself as though you had some sort of authority. I'll try to watch myself, too. Social psychology-for-laypeople is all well and good, but if you don't have any concept of the fundamental attribution error, then it might behoove you to acknowledge and embrace your ignorance.

On the way there

We're in traffic right now so watching the scenery pass to The Decemberists is not a very inspirational prospect. We're driving to Knox College in Illinois for the Love Your Body Conference (hosted by SASS- Students Against Sexism in Society). We = me, Anat, Rachel, and Julie.

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I have a round head. I have a pretty decent scar.



Explanation of the scar (pending confirmation from Mom): I was 3, and fell off a bed, onto a radiator. 2 big holes. Really nasty. Doctor found one, stitched it up, somehow managed to miss the second. This second one thus had to heal on its own, bloody and scabby for months.

I've felt the dent on my head my whole life, thought it was just a dent in my head.

Explanation of the cut: I'm graduating college in April; this may very well be the last time I'm able to do something like this; I just wanted to have done it. You know?

I have since Friday been recovering from surgery: 4 wisdom teeth- 2 impacted- removed. The surgery itself went very well- better than I'd expected. As I sat alone, waiting to be injected with whatever's in that so-called "general anesthesia", I said to myself: "Whatever happens, remember feeling like this: normal. This was a normal and there will be again.

I was injected and was out and back in like blinking. Only foggier. The nurse, when telling my escort, Kathy from the Dean Of Students office (apparently it's their job, this sort of thing, amazing), about "post-extraction care", told me not to worry too much about listening, because "you won't remember any of this later". Ha-ha, fooled you. Though after she said that I did stop trying to focus. I was lucid, though dazed- like trying to stay awake at night when you're a kid, I didn't realize how much I was trying till I stopped, and faded away into drugged comfort.

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Pierre sometimes works for the theatre and doesn't have a phone or email. Dylan's theory of getting hold of him: "Go to the center of town and yell his name." John laughed patronizingly: "He lives above the hardware store, you only have to yell his name from in front of the hardware store, stop exaggerating." Dylan and I retorted: "The hardware store is in the center of town! It's the epicenter!"

I haven't actually seen it, but I can well imagine; the image of someone standing in the middle of Xenia Ave yelling "PIERRE!": priceless.

New photos over at my Flickr site... some of me, some of random things that were in the room. Thanks to Bali for the lend of her digital camera!

In the display window at the Emporium, the display window which separates me in my infamous window seat from the street, is a sculpture on a mechanically-rotating lazy susan. It is of a nude model and a group of artists painting her.

Walking by is a girl of about 3, with very blonde hair and long, dark, Sullivanesque eyelashes. The sculpture stops here and she watches it, fascinated. Her finger taps the glass each time a new sculpted person rotates in front of her. She seems to be talking to it. The grown-up she is with tries to get her to continue walking- but not too strenuously, and she ignores him, fixated, and he leans against the building and waits for this fancy to pass.

Another small child, a boy of about 5, and his grown-up approach. The boy has light brown hair and the same eyelashes as the girl. He watches the sculpture with the same intent, only without all the movement. He places his forehead against the glass and is still.

But he is invading the girl’s space. She pushes him away and yells. Unphased, his eyes never leaving the sculpture, he returns to the window. The sculpture is in the corner of the display, where two windows meet at not-quite-a-90-degree angle. The girl shoves the boy again, to the other window, where he takes his place.

With peace now declared the children continue to study the sculpture while their grown-ups talk amongst themselves.

The boy loses interest first, but not before asking, “Mommy, what’s that little brown spot?” The girl eventually loses interest herself and, in exploring the rest of the display, discovers me watching her through the window. She smiles widely but shyly and looks away quickly. We exchange the same look a couple more times, then they are gone.

They return but then I am across the street, and the girl and I play a round of peek-a-boo, her hiding behind a tree and a rubbish bin, me hiding behind my friend Rachel.

I was at the Barnes & Noble Cafe and bought a Jones bottled drink. The woman at the counter said, "Is that for here or to go?"

Later I went up to buy a cookie for Rachel and me. The woman at the counter said, "Would you like a fork for that?"

People bother me sometimes.

I was watching my Henry Rollins Live At Luna Park DVD, and he said:
“Who’s that?”
“Henry Rollins.”
“Oh?... The neck.”
“...Yea.”
“He does stand-up?”
“Spoken word.”
“It looks like stand-up.”
I didn’t respond. He watched in silence for maybe 3 seconds.
“He should have stuck with Black Flag,” all flippant and sarcastic.

I really wanted to bitch him out. I mean dude, what the fuck. Give the guy a chance.

But mostly it was this defensiveness I get about certain artists/entertainers I really admire. Because, when someone doesn’t like them, it’s kind of a personal insult to me.

For example, the kid I knew who whenever I mentioned the Kids In The Hall, he’d say, “I HATE the Kids In The Hall” with such passion. And then he said the same thing about the Upright Citizens Brigade. Aside from this I really like the guy, but there’s something about that that I can never get over (particularly about the UCB, who I know personally). I don’t think I’d feel different if someone told me they hated a certain part of my personality or something.

I really love sitting high up in one of the window seats here. But also, I love sitting on the couch, which is on the other side of the coffeeshop.

That bloody couch is the last thing that Dino's had over the Emporium (except maybe the stamp cards- buy 10 cups get 1 free). The day I first saw the couch here, I remember it well. I went "ooh!" and sat in it. After I'd been there a while, a woman who works here said whilst walking by, "You're the first person to sit there! We just got it today. You should sign the wall behind it or something." "Vee was here- FIRST!"

But now, since that boy lay down on the sidewalk, I've discovered the grandness of the window seat (unless I have to do work or something, because I am so easily distracted by passing landscape).

But the seat's not even remotely comfortable. I might have to start bringing a pillow.

I wish I could put the couch on a raised platform in front of the window, with a little stepladder to get up on it.

*

I left the theatre building after class, it was about 8pm, and saw the most amazing fog I'd ever seen. It hovered thick over the golf course, and seemed to glow. On the other side of the field, I saw another student run into it and vanish.

Sitting in a window seat at the Emporium. I just saw, on the sidewalk, a small boy, 3 or 4 years old, following a man, presumably his dad, stop dead in his tracks, get on his hands and knees, and lay down on the concrete, still wet from last night's storm, stomach down, arms by his side, cheek to the ground.

My first reaction was: How dirty, he's gonna get sick. My second reaction was: It's amazing that kids just do whatever they want most of the time, no social inhibitions, only ever holding back because of scolding parents. My third reaction was: What was that impulse?

He got up almost immediately, just as he'd lay down: back up on his hands and knees, then to standing. He did this just as his dad was turning around to meet him- whether or not his dad said something to get him up I don't know. I didn't look at the man's face until after the boy arose- he did not look angry or embarrassed, he didn't say anything. My first reaction to that was: Did this boy do this regularly? My second reaction was: This man seems like a good father- he didn't scold his son in public, but rather gathered him up and they continued their walk.

My last days in New York were spent as such:



Taken by kissmolnar- thank you for fulfilling this particular fantasy!

"Do you know what time it is!?" was what woke me up my first morning in Providence. I jolted up and saw Lauren standing over me.

"No, what time is it?"

"12:30!"

Usually that shit bothers me. I remember one time in Boston Leonor woke me up by running a finger along the inside of my exposed bicep. I, ticklish and jumpy in my sleep, did not appreciate that.

But now somehow, incoherent and on the verge of heart failure, still trying to get out of my dream, whatever it was, I didn't mind.

I hadn't meant to sleep that late. But I'd been up for a few hours in the very early morning, probably not used to a lack of air conditioning and no lack of natural sunlight streaming in through the windows. I'm so spoiled in Queens. (Except, of course, for having to sleep on a couch in my mom's living room.) It's no wonder I never go out anymore.

But on this particular morning- or rather, afternoon- that of Sunday, August 14, 2005- I was itching to go. And find me some air conditioning.

After lauren made me coffee and we talked about how she's thinking of moving down south and I'm thinking of moving back to providence (part 10,000 of that conversation), she left for work and I took a cold shower.

I walked, from her flat on Broadway all the way to the Cable Car on South Main. Heat is one thing, but finagling Rhode Island buses on a Sunday is quite another.

It was a nice walk anyway, through downtown, across the river. I am assaulted with such a plethora of memories no where else. And certainly nothing close to the span of time.

Look, there's the lot where me and Erin used to go hang out with that guy who worked there when it was a gas station, circa 1997. And the fire station, where we took the middle school kids to on a tour, in 2001 or 2002. And harc!, Trinity theatre, where I interned in 1998-99, and the Brewhouse on the back, still with that brilliant sign: Beer Pool Beer Pinball Beer.

And then the RISD auditorium, where I spent a lot of time that week I volunteered for the film festival in 2000. And alas, here we are at the Cable Car, my favorite cinema in the world, where I saw Jyothi for the last time, my last week in town, August 2002. Where I saw "Ghost World". And "Far From Heaven". The newest version of "The Importance Of Being Earnest". And where I will now see "The Baxter", the Michael Showalter film, as part of the 2005 Rhode Island International Film Festival.

After the film I got another coffee and talked to a couple after the man got on my case for chewing my nails. He hit me on the head with his umbrella whenever I'd even look at my nails or stick the umbrella in my face between my mouth and hands. It was so bizarre, so unlike anything anyone would even consider doing in New York. It made me love Providence even more.

If you have no idea what this is all about, you should really watch "The Dead Zone".
Or, a picture if you must.

There was no such thing as a fair fight in my high school. Arguments preceding physical fights almost always involved threats of large groups of people backing up one party in case of the need of assistance. Common examples were complete neighborhoods ("I'll get Federal Hill after you") and even whole cities ("All of Pawtucket's got my back").

I don't recall there ever being a full scale fued between the neighborhoods, towns, and cities of the Providence Metropolitan Area that started as a two-teenager scuffle, but still, these threats frequently thwarted actual fights. Because, you never knew when someone's talk would become more than just hot air...

That's kinda what this whole IRA thing feels like.