Ordinary Days

To set the scene: I am in my apartment in New York City and it is almost 9 pm.  Music I do not recognize is playing on the radio – a violin. Schubert maybe? My apartment smells like cigarette smoke, my dining table is clear of paper and pens and could actually function as a dining table rather than a desk.

I’m brooding.

This afternoon, I went to Brooklyn to meet a friend to see Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. I wish I’d seen it alone—there was hardly anyone in the theater and it was the kind of movie where other’s people’s opinions are best unheard.  Devastating is not too harsh of a word.  And I mean that in every sense of good and bad.

Supposedly the original miniseries that was shown in Sweden includes an abortion.  If that had been included in the cut I saw today, I don’t know if I would have been able to stand it.

“I love you in my own imperfect and selfish way…and I know you love me in your own pestering way.” –Johan to Marianne

Tomorrow I am going to see Figaro – I’ve realized that I do like company at the opera. And so I’m going with a friend. A comedy will be good after today’s entertainment.

A few minutes ago, I came across this blog: http://limagequotidienne.blogspot.com/

One portrait of one person every day for one year. Pretty awesome.

I need to some lightheartedness in my life.  But the thing is, I don’t enjoy light as much as I enjoy the kind of shit that keeps me awake at night. Call it masochism. I’ve always been drawn to a kind of sadness.  Not the poverty-stricken, hopeless, drug-addicted, hungry kind of sadness (I think that is unbearable); it is the emotional struggle of people that sucks me in.  The trouble we get ourselves into knowingly, as if we do not have a choice.  And really, do we?

I remember a conversation I had with CC about A.  I was aware of the flaws of character, his as well my own, but I said to CC, “what am I not going to do it?”  And I think I said the same thing to her about some other event in her life. 

Do you turn down newness out of fear?  Does that make you a smarter person when a year or two later, you are unscathed? Or does that make you a coward who has shut herself/himself into your world, which needed a little shake up anyway?

Four years ago, I was well on my way to being a permanent supporting actor in my own life.  It seemed to me that everything was happening to everyone except me.  I was the listener and the supporter, the one to provide the snarky one-liners—the Rosie O’Donnell/Carrie Fisher to the Meg Ryans of the world.

I hope I am not on my way there again – it might seem like a strange thing to say because when I think of my life, I realize it’s someone’s idea of interesting. I have a friend who would even go so far as to say it’s a sophisticated life, vaguely intellectual, something to be desired. I could go out every night of the week if I wanted and I would have the appropriate clothes to wear for each occasion. I even have a stalker.  (Well, HAD.  I sent the email asking him to go away.  More on that later.) And I feel myself getting smarter and better.  Is that a crazy thing to say about oneself?

But I’m locked inside myself, I have chosen to be quite visible but no one is really allowed to see me. I don’t talk on the phone, I don’t talk to A. I’m on retreat even as I move forward.  My life feels a bit like a game of pretend – I enjoy it, but I realize its limitations, its artificiality and I know that it can’t go on forever.

Am I going to have to make a conscious decision to end this way that I’m living at the moment or will I find my way out without my even knowing?

I’m reading Lark and Termite. But tonight I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere with it.

This has been quite an ordinary day and while I’m not in crisis mode or anything quite so dramatic, I am restless.

Book Love

One of the first books I ever stole was The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin.  I still own that book (my old flame AL called it my trophy, this before I told him that I used to be a book thief which I think amused and then put him off). I still haven't read it. But just now I finished Toibin's newest novel Brooklyn and was fairly wowed.  I wonder if I will pick up the other book(s) now? I mean to buy since I don't steal anything anymore.

Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous.  I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.

The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn.  The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.

The reading A.D.D. has passed I think.  Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading.  Purchases in the last month:

• The Museum of Innocence
• Lark and Termite
• Brooklyn*
• Love Begins in Winter*
• Generosity
• Gourmet Rhaphsody
• Prelude
• The opera reference book
  

*read so far

I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head.  This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.

When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte.  But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.

Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books.  I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.

Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in.  But those first few months were rough.  I did everything half asleep.  I read a lot of books and remember none of them.

It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort.  Or maybe it's not books so much as words.  When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library.  All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.

Good deal for a few bucks.

Sleeping with Mahler

I lie awake late into the night and fall asleep only after I find Mahler on my iPod.  Sleep is getting closer, I know, when suddenly I notice that the music is too loud. So I turn the volume down gradually, lower and lower still until finally, the iPod is powered off. This is  not a bad way to be an insomniac.

There is nothing to report about Thanksgiving.  It was not a joyous occasion or a disaster--I had feared both.

I am reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, trying to read slowly because I hate for these things to end. It's actually quite a lovely book.

Christmas promises to be a big soiree this year.  My mother tells me that my Aunt Lydia's youngest daughter and her family will be there.  So will Aunt Lydia's son but he and my mom have always had a freakishly close relationship (and I do not mean of the incestuous sort).

So these cousins are actually also aunts and uncle.  I have been thinking about that a lot since I had that conversation with my sister.

I sent Professor Dick the go away email today and he responded quite graciously. I hope this means he will not contact me anymore.

JV called this afternoon to discuss her love life.  She slept with her ex and her current in the same day. Two women and she loves them both, she said.  I don't know what she's talking about -- I think loving one person is hard enough. 

JV and I did not communicate with each other for at least 8 years and now it is as if no time at all has passed. She has always been my one Filipino friend even though I think there were times when we've hated each other for reasons neither of us will remember now.  

Her brother killed himself in January.   Last week, I thought about that again and again and I could not sleep.  If JV were to read this, she might be angry with me but it should be clear that no one knows this address.   I wanted to say that maybe this desire for sex has something to do with death.  

That happened to me after the abortion.  I wanted to have sex even though I couldn't feel much of anything. Will yourself back to life, little girl is what I seemed to be begging of myself. Life will keep on going. Maybe that is what JV is doing. 

This weekend, I'm going to Brooklyn to see Scenes from a Marriage.  Hopefully this Bergman flick does not cause my mental health to deteriorate. Tonight, I hope to sleep long and to sleep well.  I think I'm a little sad.

Thanksgiving, Part I

The streets of Morningside Heights are deserted, and I hear the sound of a ball bouncing from somewhere. I imagine it is some kid banished from some mother's kitchen, ordered to find something to do so the mother can bake and saute and braise all afternoon. 

My Ghanaian Thanksgiving didn't pan out and so I am off to CC's house in the suburbs. It will be a happy holiday.  I am not saying that to convince myself.  I feel it in my bones.  

I miss my mother but I am glad I am not with her today. Or with any family.  I dread Christmas. But today will be fine.

Professor Dick called again. JESUS. I will send the go-away email tomorrow.

Back in a few hours with updates. I'm going to wear my Bollywood scarf and have a picture taken. I don't know why I want to do this.

Happy Turkey Day.

Glance Backwards

Instead of working, I have been reading myself all morning. If M were to read that, he would laugh and give me that odd little look. Read is now a code word for something altogether different.  We get each other's stupid jokes.

It is almost the end of the month with a major holiday approaching. I have quite a bit of work. But I started thinking about the A word as soon as I woke up -- the medical procedure, not the man.

I read through most of my posts from the summer and I am looking back at myself with more sympathy than before. It is a strange feeling to revisit your sad self when the sad is so palpable that even the biggest bullshitter would not have the wherewithal to find another interpretation for what has been said.

Professor Dick called again today and I am now on Draft 2 of my go away email. Go away, please.

Candles are stupid but I'll write more about that later.

That's all for tonight.

From the Looks of Things

One of these nights I will sleep well again. Until then, I will write to you.

If someone stumbles upon this blog looking for more abortion posts, they will be disappointed since the last few entries make little mention of that. I think I will be writing more about aborted fetuses though. I can feel it coming and I am hoping this time it won't be so bad.

It is a possibility that I will be spending Thanksgiving alone after all.  I should be working on wangling another invitation or taking up one of the ones that came my way. But if this first plan doesn't work out, I have decided to brave it.  So maybe Thursday will be weepy, feel-sorry-for-myself day. Or maybe not.

The Book and My Inferiority Complex About Writing

Mai and Ricardo -- these two don't always make themselves available to my blogging or novelistic wiles. I don't know how to structure the novel. How do you go about writing 30 years of a person's life? Beginnings are nice though. Easy enough.

My novel is a fucking great idea for a book. But how do I do it?  Who cares if it's a good idea if it doesn't get written?

I was thinking this morning that the Ricardo character is turning into my alter ego. Not the woman, the man. Will this be true a few months from now?

I also wonder what will happen to the my blogging when and if the more maudlin events that have preoccupied me all year fade a bit more. Will even care to read about the crap that goes on in my mind?

Work and My Beautiful Shoes

At work I am making friends with a huge man named Doug. He makes fun of my smallness because he is 6'5. I make fun of how he is always cold and wrapped in down. I can tell he is half surprised by everything I say. A few of the women seem to like me well enough but they all just want to talk about shoes. They notice what I am wearing and want to know where things came from -- I do not like to discuss where I shop.

Clothing and shoes are my secret vice. Very few people know how much money has been spent on my shoes or the scarves. I will drop $500 on a pair of boots without a second thought. This embarrasses me because it turns me into a stereotype of your basic New York single woman. Or the Imelda Marcos Filipino thing (everyone mentions this as if they thought it up themselves). I choose my clothes for their plainness so it always surprises me when people notice.

Kindness

People are generally nice to me. I've mentioned this before. But lately it is quite obvious and it is to the point where I am a little freaked out. People are nicer to me than they are to other people.  I bring something out in people.

What is it?

At work, there is an Asian lady who slips me packets of green tea and leaves me mints and chocolates on my desk. She wants to know about my family and where I've been.

There is Professor Dick who I am about to ask to leave me alone.  HOW do I do this? I feel so ungrateful but I want him to leave me alone.

I think about kindness and this IT thing often because people often suffocate me.  But probably the bigger issue is that I am afraid that whatever this thing is that makes people nice to me will desert me one day and I will be lost. It's much like the beauty of some people.  What happens when the lines come in, when breasts begin to sag, when the woman loses that sexy thing?

What do *I* have to fear losing? Will I someday act or say the inappropriate things that I say now, fully expecting to get away with it only to realize that I have lost that thing that made my borderline behavior acceptable?

Is it because I refuse most things people offer me?

My Parents

It just occurred to me that I could be describing both of my parents.  They haven't lost their charm yet.  My father is as charismatic as ever. When we lived in Kuwait, my mother used to hate walking with my dad because all the Filipinos knew him.  It was like being with a celebrity.

And my father, I think, has always been proud of being the one to have married my beautiful mother.

In case you doubt me, reader, here is photographic evidence:

That's it for tonight.  This blogger has a date to keep with Colm Toibin.

First Star of the Night

On West 23rd Street in Chelsea, there is a strange little house/performance space called The Cell Theater.  I went there early this evening to listen to my friend W read.  Simon Van Booy and another writer whose name escapes me at the moment were also there to read.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I thought Van Booy's book, Love Begins in Winter, was too sentimental.  It is.  But it is good.  What is it about certain stories and certain words that make me, the rather jaded and overcritical reader, eat my words? And he is an excellent reader.  He was sitting on an old loveseat, legs crossed.  His voice was mesmerizing, his Irish accent not bad.  He signed my book: "To Z----, the first star of the night." He'd asked me what my name meant and so I told him.

After the reading, W and I, along with a few other people, ogled the arrival of movie stars for the premiere of the movie Brothers.  A man in a black suit approached us and handed us tickets to the screening.  So off we went.

The movie was good though not one I would choose if I had to pay.  

On Friday night (and this afternoon), I saw the Maelstrom sculpture and the Vermeers at the Met.  Then M called and he picked me up on the bike. We rode in the cold down to the Lower East Side.  M and I are friends again, I guess.  I am probably too nice by tolerating his weirdness. But he is what he is and sometimes what he is is stupid.  

Here is Maelstrom in the late afternoon:

I expected to spend the whole weekend alone, save for the Sunday dinner with W.  But it turned out that the last couple of days have been all about finding people. I may never see any of them again, but there is something good in knowing that there is still a whole world out there and that I am not incapable of seeing it and taking from it and hopefully, in my way, giving to it. 

Anhedonia is not one of my problems. Whatever weeping I do and wherever I may choose to give in to it, I am still present.

My friend JV is back in my life.  I don't know how long she will stay. But no matter.  More on her later. Professor Dick is back.  Maybe he never left. One of these days, I hope he will just leave me or not write me notes about missing me. Whatever his intentions, he creeps me out.

The Problem with Ricardo

I have been avoiding working on the novel. Ricardo is a character in it.

There are quite a bit of things to add, writing I've done over the last week that should be added to the first two chapters.  For some reason, I can't get myself to sit still long enough.

Writers block is no excuse because the writing is coming.  I'm afraid of progress. And I'm annoyed that I can feeling this way.

Why not find out what this writing is made of and finish something of significant length and give it an honest chance for success or failure? I've been writing short stories for the last few years even though I don't think I'm that good at it.  I'm really too long-winded. An old writing friend of mine used to tell me, "it wants to be a novel, not a short story."

The other reader of this blog, besides myself, wrote me to say that I should keep blogging.  That I am hitting upon something here.  Could he have been referring to my family?

When I was 23, I started a novel about this crazy family.  Florid prose, plotless descriptions of all things ethnic.  I shudder when I think of it now.  Somewhere in my files, there are copies of this work in progress.  I was too young to tackle it at 23.  And then I convinced myself that we weren't that interesting.  And the truth is, I think the story of my family is more pathetic than interesting.

That family is also an interesting psychological study. Maybe someday I will get back to them.

Writing-wise, for now, I am involved in my very own Vietnamese/Filipino/Texas quagmire.

Tomorrow I'm going back to work.  All I've done today is sneeze and eat scones and porridge. I am well enough to work.

Digging around the family tree

Feels like a mighty long time since I last wrote anything.  But two days is not long.

Again, I feel my interest in blogging wane. This means I am doing fine mental health-wise.

My body, on the other hand, not so great.  I am sick sick sick.  Well, actually I am not that sick.  But I am not a good patient.  I get cranky, self-pitying and gluttonous.

For the last seven years or so, my friend W and I have had a standing date on Sundays.  We take walks, we sit in the park, we eat dinner, we do whatever.  But we always see each other on Sunday. There was a period of two years where we met at five in the afternoon and ate at the same restaurant and each ordered the same dish. We joke that we are two old women trapped in our youngish bodies.

Yesterday we went to a crappy Chinese restaurant in the Upper West Side and laughed so hard I felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head. If I were to retell what made us both lose it, it wouldn't be funny so I won't even try. I just wanted to say that I laughed so hard that it felt like my eyeballs were going to fall out.

My big week:  my funny friend Larry and his friend, the guy Larry described as the one with a radioactive pellet up his ass (prostate cancer). Another A man, only this one is young and gay who sometimes surprises me with his mature insight and then flattens me with his youthful arrogance. I think that's all that's happening.

A link about abortion: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/11/23/091123taco_talk_toobin

There is a lot of talk about abortion lately.  I sometimes want to join in, just among my acquaintances. But I stop myself. I steer the conversations toward other things. Not that my view has changed on the matter but now I understand the ramifications.  I see it as something more than a political issue and lately I have become a firm believer that emotions should be left out of these debates. Tears somehow lighten the gravity of a situation.  Is that the wrong thing to say?

Turn on Oprah, Barbara Walters (is she even on the air anymore?), watch chicks cry. No one takes that seriously.  I don't take it all that seriously because it seems exploitive and calculated. Even though when I'm doing the crying, I take myself pretty fucking seriously.

A and I paid for my abortion. I don't know why I felt the need to say that. But we did.  We split it down the middle. Maybe the one time in our relationship we went dutch.

Ironic, no?

I believe that is the right way to use the word.  But if anyone is reading this and recognizes that I made an error, speak up and correct me.

My sister and I talked over the weekend.  She told me more family stories, some new and some just confirmed:

• our mother's father is the husband of Aunt Lydia (this means granny had an affair with her son-in-law)
• the big old house my mother grew up in was lost to a gambling debt -- an uncle used the house as collateral
• someone molested my mom, that is why she seems to think it's okay when it happens to anyone else
• Aunt Lydia's companion Ellie told my sister that their relationship was platonic -- this makes me doubt everything Ellie has said, but maybe she doesn't want anyone to think Lydia was a lesbo
• gay people should have spousal rights everywhere -- poor Ellie deserves some acknowledgement as a widow
• Granny arranged the marriage between son-in-law and Aunt Lydia while already having an affair with him (my mother had already been born)
• there is one living relative named Milagros who knows most of these stories and I will never meet her

I used to think my family was so dysfunctional that those of us of child-bearing age should all be sterilized. But who am I to judge?  Seriously though, what is wrong with us? Was my grandmother evil? How did she meet the Muslim (my father's father, who she eventually "married")? 

How can so much fucked up-ness exist in one family, generation after generation?  I still want to have a baby someday. Someday. But I don't want to do it alone, I don't want to do it with someone who doesn't really want to be there.

This family history is one of the reasons I couldn't have the baby with A -- he didn't want it. The way I saw it, my forcing a baby on him would increase the chances that we would be raising a child in strife, be it emotional or financial.  A's reluctance to be a father also increased the chances that our relationship would not last when the baby arrived. And while there are no guarantees in life, I want/wanted to bring a life into the world with as much in the right place as possible, where everything is not so fraught with compromise and angst.

Well, that's all I have energy for now. 

I will say, even though my love life is not exactly filled with promise of romance at the moment, I am pretty certain that if I were to have a child, I would be a good mother. 

Where the Wind Blows

If I were to write the story of my life so far, what would be the thing that drives the action?

This is what comes to mind:

1973 - Manila, Philippines
1974 - Kotakinabalu, Malaysia
1975 - Tehran, Iran
1980 - Manila, Philippines
1985 - Salwa, Kuwait
1988 - San Francisco, CA
1989 - Carson, CA
1990 - San Pedro/Santa Monica/Torrance, CA
1995 - Berkeley, CA
2001 - New York, NY

When you've lived in this many places, which do you miss the most?

Foreign Films and Dead Composers

Last Saturday I was at Film Forum for a screening of La Danse and while waiting to get into the theater, L and I were talking. Well, I was talking about my old roommate, the gay German lawyer with Poland Syndrome who also happens to be one of the funniest, smartest, most maddening, most self destructive people I know. And for whom I also happen to have a deep strange love. He has a way of getting what he wants, fucking it up, and then starting over.

T and I met in 2004, I think.  Love at first sight in a fringe neighborhood Brooklyn brownstone. He drove me insane when we lived together.

Anyway, the short of this story is that I was describing this crazy man in detail and a woman behind us was listening to me the entire time. At first she was embarrassed and tried to conceal her amusement. And then she abandoned all pretense and laughed gaily at my stories.  And I performed for her.

As we were getting seated, this woman told me that I should write a book. I think people meet me and expect me to be funny all the time when the truth is that I'm not very funny when I write.

Nice compliment anyway.  I'm not knocking it.

And also got me thinking about being a fame whore.  There is something of the performer in me.

So far -- no A and no M. I miss them both but not nearly as much as I would thought.  I'm mostly talking about A.  I don't miss him that much.

I have to admit that earlier today, I wrote something about how when one insists to vehemently on something, it means they are lying.  So maybe I'm lying.  But right now it doesn't feel that way.

Last night I got a bought a book about the opera. Just a reference guide to the more popular ones.  I'm pretty obsessed with music lately -- I wake up in the middle of the night and fall asleep listening to Mahler.

This morning, my last memory was of listening to a piece called Blue by Michael Galasso from In the Mood for Love (by Wong Kar Wai). I hate his movies -- there is something flat about them, too stylized, interminable. But they are always the most beautiful things to look at and listen to.

My favorite WKW movie is Comrades. I liked everything about it. God, that was a long time ago.  What a strange memory.

The writing is going well lately.  I write for work, I write for this, I write for the novel. If I were to do a word count, the number might be pretty impressive. But I'm writing for three discrete areas so it doesn't add up to much.  Still I'm rather proud of myself.

I worry about money a lot lately. When I was not working, I hardly thought of money at all. But now,  I do mental calculations (poorly) all the time.

The Monthly Nervous Breakdown

November 4
The crazy is back. To be fair, I may as well have summoned her back into my life this morning. At about 10 a.m., I started flipping back the calendar the way I do this time every month.  If I manage to skip this ritual, would I also be able to dodge my monthly nervous breakdown?

A critical event in this monthly occurrence is the crisis moment about A. The event would not be complete otherwise. I didn't call him as I had promised the day before. But then I remembered about the abortion anniversary and got it into my head that I should see A this week. So I insisted that we see each other.  Then I changed my mind. And then he flirted with me and I felt awful.

A would flirt with anything that breathes.

I called him that night and insisted that we stop talking for a little while. A lot of tears leaked out of my eyes. And I don't know when we might talk again.

But nervous breakdown or not, aborted fetus, broken heart, lost boyfriend, you're going to be alone forever or whatever the fuck it is that kills me at the beginning of every month -- I have to get myself out of this.

A and I are getting ugly and a bit sadomasochistic. I can't even make a joke of it anymore. We are nice to each other all the time, but boy do we like to hurt each other with kind words. He would never admit that.  I told him that the other night, that he hurts me and means to hurt me.  He said if he does, he doesn't mean to.

I wish I could blame only him, but I do it too. Only I am more naked in my meanness.

Jesusfuckingchrist, somewhere out there in the world, there must be something for me. Or maybe there's nothing. But nothing might be better than this strange mean clingy going nowhere thing that A and I have together.

So here's to hoping I can stick to this no talk rule. It doesn't have to be forever, just long enough so that the next time we talk, I don't feel dirty and guilty and sad.

November 6
It's Friday night. Other people are out having a grand old time, aren't they? Me, not so much. I'm on the tail end of my nervous breakdown.  I had a nice day, a horrible afternoon, a teary early evening and now I'm more or less okay.

I'm reading a book called Love Begins in Winter.  It's a bit sentimental but it is fitting -- it's cold and I'm sad. The love that happens to the people in this book seem like minor miracles because the characters are so closed in on themselves.  I am annoyed by this book even though I like it. It's a bit too sentimental. If I ever fall in love again, I hope it doesn't require a minor miracle.   I hope that I am not a hopeless case.

I may be wallowing in bitterness these last few days (actually, MAY is a wimpy word -- I am wallowing in bitterness) but it doesn't mean I have lost all hope about love.  In fact, even at my angriest, there is always some part of me that is thinking, CHOOSE ME! I never know who I am secretly saying that to or maybe I want love to choose me (the good, mutual, has-a-future, fun kind of love, not the unrequited stalk-y sort).

M ignored me on Tuesday night. I was expecting it, but I was shocked when he didn't even say goodbye. We saw each other at a work event. My shrink thinks he likes me and there's part of me that agrees, but the other night, he looked at me with what I read to be disgust.  Ouch.  I don't get it. Maybe I screwed up more than I thought that night of the conversation.  I wish someone had heard that exchange and would tell me what wrong.

My big plan tonight was to go to the MET to look at the Vermeers. But then I pictured myself freaking out in front of those paintings and I decided to wait it out. Maybe next week.

There was a cocktail party option. And again, I said no.

So here I am.

The Opposite of IT

This morning I was frantically trying to find the right necklace to wear with my black dress. I gave up, grabbed the thing that was closest to me.  It turned out to be the perfect thing.  

Why am I writing about this?

So A is back. He managed to keep out for a week. First a random email late in the afternoon about some lecture he thought I would want to listen to.  Then an email an hour later. Then a phone call soon after that.  I admit that I am amused.  And unsurprised. I understand this all very clearly in some ways and then I don't understand it at all.  I don't feel like talking at all.

It makes me wonder what he's thinking. I don't think he's thinking. And I am tired.

My evening with M went well and then not well.  He and I are like a bad romantic comedy -- the same peccadilloes, the same likes, the same brittleness, the same awkwardness, the same it's-never-going-to-happen-between-usness.  And that may not be a bad thing.  There is something that repels us from one another.  What is it?  It is the opposite of IT.

Aida was wonderful. More and more I love the opera.  In the midst of my misery last spring, I found the energy to get myself to Lincoln Center. I would be happy just to be able to watch the chandelier cables retracting.  I would be happy to listen to that Aida song over and over again.  

In my rush to leave this morning, I left my book at home.  All day, I had to fight the urge to go to a bookstore and find something.  I missed the weight of a book in my hand.  

Going to see my shrink in a few days.  It's a been a long time.  I keep thinking I can quit her now. But really, that is just hubris. She is my insurance policy. One of these days, I will be fighting tears in the subway again.  I need to have someone on retainer when those days come because really, I realize that I am incapable of full disclosure with anyone.  Even with my shrink I do not say everything.  But it's close enough.

On Writing (or not writing)

I reread bits of the novel that I work on sporadically.  It is not bad. Not the novel itself -- that remains to be seen and I have to write a lot more in order for me or anyone to make an assessment.  Just the writing.  I am liking the way I write lately.

So why don't I do more of it?

Halloween and I am home.  I was out all day, first at the bookstore where I volunteer and then at an Indian restaurant and then at another restaurant.

I've been meeting quite a few black women lately.  And I am always curious at the way they react to me.  First the reaction is guarded. And then I seem to find the right thing to say and I am somehow allowed into a club I am happy to visit but have no intention of ever staying in.

One of the women I met was Caroline. She was lovely in her sequined turquoise shawl. She is a med student at Ann Arbor and originally from Nigeria. She wouldn't look at me at first and whenever I said anything, she seemed to tense up.  Then I shared the story from high school -- how three African American girls threatened to beat me up and how I unwittingly made things worse by acting, well, like myself.  She couldn't stop laughing.  But apparently she went through the same thing when she moved to the States.  She went to the high school close to where I went to school.  By the end of the evening, she was leaning towards me and engaging me in conversation.

Is that the secret to being liked? Find the right anecdote that will resonate with someone and suddenly they deem you worthy of their company?

I'm not complaining.  I completely accept that there are certain things that draw people to each other, rules we must all follow even though we might not understand them.

But what is the thing that wins people over?  It's more than an anecdote.  It is an "IT," like sex appeal. Similar but only to certain point.

That is something my parents used to say.  They called sexiness IT. Someone had strong IT.  It doesn't translate well to English.

I have IT in the friendship department.  I discuss this with my shrink endlessly. People are drawn to me -- men women children. Even if at first they don't like me, something will happen and they will inevitably fall in (friend) love with me. This doesn't apply to romantic relationships. There I need help.

I worry when I discuss this that I sound conceited.  Maybe that is so.  But really, I'm puzzled.  What the fuck is IT? Why do I have it?  Why doesn't my sister?

And in all honesty, it is sometimes suffocating and lonely.  I don't like too many people.  I can tolerate just about anyone, but after an hour, I want to go home.

Well, I've annoyed myself now.  But hopefully you are not annoyed with me, reader (me?).