i received a travel hoop in the mail today. my coworkers came in and hovered around my desk while i unwrapped it and played with it. then some of us went to have coffee. on the way there and back we talked about real things... your identity as it relates to where you live, among other topics.

sometimes i feel animosity toward (or alienation from) this land of burners and activists and coffeeshops and geek jobs. other times it seems like the gentle promised land it truly is. like when you wake up later than most of the workforce with your kittens and your boyfriend and you know it's ok that day. and when your workplace "secret santa" gift is the 2006 pocket astrologer.

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don't forget to check /days/. oliver wrote me a script so i can email pictures from my camera phone there, and i add new photos often.

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when we were in big sur, oliver was so soothed by being near water. he was so passionate when he said that he needed to be near water. i think he meant that living near a huge body of water, seeing it, and being with it, was the only thing that made him feel normal and real. i felt a bit concerned for myself when he spoke this way, because while i love oceans and lakes, i don't feel that i need them like a heartbeat or air to breath. i wondered what, if anything, i did need that badly. i left it as an open question of sorts.. i often have a few open questions rattling around in my head at any given time.

there is something perfect and gentle and oceanic that i need to feel real and normal. i found out what it was this week. it's something like sex, but sex only in the most scorpionic way you could envision it. it's my ocean.

woke up mostly naked in nice sheets after a really deep enveloping sleep. last night i had a bath and read some joyce carol oats short stories. yesterday i was all around town and it was strangely annoying though also satisfying. i got some cute new birkenstocks for our upcoming trip to vieques island over christmas.

i made myself insane by looking at thousands of swimsuits online last night, also for the same trip, even though it's such a bad idea to get a swimsuit online that i probably wouldn't do it. but for some reason i couldn't stop looking at them all and feeling insane even when i was at 2500 out of 4800 results on amazon.

anyway we woke up and it's raining and oliver thinks he is getting sick. yoko layed with us and has been into biting us lately because she forgets we're not the kitten. and now it's already 1pm. i am happy to just not do much or care about much today, just have food and coffee and maybe read more short stories and be thankful for a lack of stress, self imposed or otherwise.

it's gloomy and dark and rainy and i want galoshes meh!!!!! meh!!! grrrmmmbll.

the world is an a-ok place. i was grumpy when we woke up and oliver told me a long story about the habits of the fierce grumpasaurus rex.

here i am on pete's couch. safe gentle brooklyn, how i love you. i am comforted by being here, because it's safe and familiar but it's on the edge of a huge world of NYC that is still so foreign and exciting. new york feels like opportunity. i am so happy to be here. i feel awake (it is 3am) and alive and comforted and ready to just be here, the week off work, no worries, no obligations but fun things. seeing people and eating food and poking around. maybe museums, brunch, parties. i went all out and packed a bunch of cute clothes, overfilling my dad's old green duffel, just to be sure i'd be ready to dress up.

i journaled for a while on the plane. the plane ride was kind of ridiculous. god, i dislike American Airlines. it costs a shitload more than anywhere else for short flights, the seats suck and are tiny, they make you pay for food, and when they show the movie they make you pay for headsets. the flight attendants are often grumpy (today, i got yelled at to get back in my seat during turbulence, even though i had to pee so bad and was trying to head to the bathroom). your fellow travelers are inevitably business people who hate you for not moving along with their quickness and not responding to their impatience.

being on AA reminds me of when i was a young green haired raver and i just wanted to beam love at grumpy people, and hug them, and show them whatever cute stuffed toy i was carrying with me. i totally thought i would change the world. those people need it, man. i saw a kid with a mohawk as we touched down and was so thankful.

two nice things about AA and my flight, though: once on AA, oliver and i got amazing seats given to us at the last minute on a long flight, when we were already really really exhausted. it was heaven.* and, today, i was seated next to an adorable short stout mexican woman who hadn't flown maybe ever, and didn't know how to work any of the tv stuff in her seat, or understand any of the rules about the plane, like the seatbelt sign. she was really awesome. she had insane cleopatra eye makeup too. i loaned her my headset, so she could watch Elf, and fed her tangerines.

*AA is oliver's airline because they fly to chicago, i think. when i fly AA with him it's always so awesome, because he has all the special perks of having flown with them for a while. he works their system like only oliver can work a system. but this only illustrates the problem with huge airlines like that - they're only good for people who fly business or first, people who can get into the 'admirals club,' or people who are awesome at working the system. it's an annoying comment on class. i like jetblue's egalitarian ways so much better.

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so, i finished exile (note: god, it gets bad reviews on amazon, guess i have terrible taste EH?). i read most of it on the plane and finished it just now here on the couch. i really enjoyed it. it went fast. it was kind of sad but not gut wrenching. it reminded me a lot of bret easton ellis, whose work i love dearly despite the fact that his name incites sneers any time i mention him. i find a strange sort of beauty in tales of desperate fading hipsters, hollow people who do hollow things but hurt inside, i don't know. there are lots of good descriptions of different kinds of women, and different kinds of towns, in it. and some nature, too. i appreciated that.

the main character is a poet, and as such, the book includes some poems. the one below is the source of the book's name and seems like it could have even been something the author (blake nelson) wrote before he wrote the rest of the book. it stands alone:

God 
It'll be
Easy to go
Easy to leave
This city
Wish I could
Hurt you more
Get at that
Haircut
Those shoes
That sway in your
Shoulders
Wish I had
Money
Something the world
Wanted something
You need
Wish I could
Do more than
Stay away
Not come to
Bed walk these
Streets in 
Permanent
Exile