truth be told, i'm not sure i like cigarettes so much anymore. a couple of mornings waking without that heavy feeling in my chest was nice, and when i walked to get lunch this afternoon i was aware of smells in the air that i haven't noticed in a while.

when i got home they were gone. there was a trail of pine needles leading up the stairs to the door, and inside the futon was folded up and my roommates were sitting on it surfing the internet.
goals for the weekend:
rembrandt
1940s outfit
meeting on sunday...?
or at least laundry.

lying in bed, my new lovely bed against the back wall now abuts j and s's room so i can hear more clearly the disputes sparked by my careless words. i want to go out into the living room but i don't want my ex and his sunny girl to see my misery. i feel like ron mueck's giant wild man in his chair, surveying all the tiny people wrapped up in personal dramas. i feel massive and awkward when i most want to slip unobserved into dream currents where i can live out and forget my insecurities.

new year's resolution: one cigarette, one blog post. and so on. if i insist on killing myself gradually, i can at least get something out of the process. but no length restrictions. i'm not going to drive myself crazy with that kind of silly shit.
we had a pleasant couple of domestic days with everyone welcoming bridge into the household. she's met the crazy neighbors, been out drinking with sam, seen all of us shitfaced, and witnessed a minor squabble. she takes it all in stride and will soon be posting incriminating pictures of us on her facebook account. i think she'll do just fine here, a relief after my last roommate pick turned out to be totally incompatible. let's hope i do as well picking a new member of my department at ps1. interviews start thursday. the following wednesday will be my last day at ps1. i'm getting pretty severe senioritis or checkingoutism. thank goodness for the holidays for breaking up the week, and san francisco to look forward to. did i mention i haven't been there since i was ten or so? perhaps i was younger, because my memories of that trip are just snapshots. i remember watching them spin the cable car around on a turntable at the end of the line to send it back where they came from, and the buskers down by the docks. we had extraordinary ice cream sundaes at ghirardelli square after we got back from alcatraz. somewhere we spent a day at the beach though it was the wrong time of year for swimming. the sand was littered with a million different kinds of seaweed and i draped it over my body and in my hair.
gute nacht, boys and girls. it's time to smoke my lucky.

and maybe last night i drunk dialled a stranger in an attempt to call my new roommate's mother. maybe i successfully drunk dialled my own mother, drank into a hangover, and hurt the feelings of a dear friend. maybe the night before last i carried someone i've known since i was 13 into a car after he made a wreck of himself in one of my favorite bars then went back inside and kept drinking. maybe i'm still smoking and it's been more than a year since i went to aikido. still there's a rising sense of optimism. at the end of my last day at p.s.1 i'm getting on a plane to go to san francisco for a few days. i'm gonna walk everywhere and see beautiful art and take in new smells. thomas was marking up a map for me with helpful and unhelpful landmarks: "this is where jess used to live. this is where i used to live. stay out of this triangle at night. there are some crazy strip joints down this street." the day after i get back i start my new job in soho. it feels like moving forward. it feels like progress.
happy new year.

i miss maps for us! why does this website no longer exist? the people need random maps. we demand them.

i am sneezing all day, so tomorrow i will probably be sick. it's worth it. and you get to see who really cares. that girl on the subway platform? "bless you!" yeah, she cares. my roommates? fuck them. they don't really love me.

looking at lisa's pictures from europe and i am teh jealz. jealz, i say!

it just doesn't do to read too much perry bible fellowship at once. he's hit right on the disturbing vein using familiar comforting childhood images with dark scary adult humor. way more subtle than something like meet the feebles, where you can brace yourself a bit. charming and horrifying in a creeping-in sort of way.
procrastinating. it's easy to see what i have to do, but i hesitate in completing it because when i write the thing and send it in all the potential ways i could have written it narrow down to one, which will prove to be the right one or one of a thousand possible wrong ones. so i fuss and make myself ill with anxiety and cigarettes.
the air has gone through crispness into downright cold. the next time i go to mike's i will be able to see his neighbor's forest of paper lanterns through the naked apricot tree.

yesterday i had an unexpectedly free afternoon because the state liquor authority closes at 4:30. the sla is way up in harlem, so it was scarcely worth the trouble of going back down to work. i thought about going to one of the neglected museums up there, el museo or the hispanic society, but instead i took the train down to 72nd street and got lost in the park. found myself walking down a deserted avenue in the purpling dusk, elms winding up to the sky. just by was the white white skating rink and smaller pools all filled up with wet leaves. tired carriage horses went by in a line, dragging their horsey smell, and then i burst back out into manhattan with rush hour traffic and all the shop windows done up for christmas.

the cold is here in earnest. i can smell the frost. we were holed up earlier in rebecca's room with all the golden light and i was knitting warm things with wool. there are sunflowers on the kitchen table.
did i mention earlier? for book club this time around we're all reading survival manuals. they come in all shapes and sizes, appealing to all different demographics. the one i'm reading is by a tracker who was taught in his youth by an american indian in the pine barrens. he comes across very sane and sensible, advising you to learn about electrical and plumbing systems in your house. it's a holistic sort of view, that if you're more aware of the systems that surround you you'll live better in general. he recommends keeping six months to a year's worth of food in the house, not only because then you'll have it when you need it, but because you'll save money anyway buying in bulk. it reminds me of the mennonite cookbook i grew up on, which is all about eating simple foods and not wasting anything. why buy bread when it's enjoyable to make it yourself and cheaper anyway? cook with simple ingredients that you can use in many different recipes. share meals with friends and family.
oh, anyway, tom brown, the author of my non-paranoidal survival manual, gives funny comforting metaphors. if you're trapped in your car in a blizzard and feeling claustrophobic, think of the snowshoe rabbit who bundles down in the snow to wait out the storm.
it's good to know how to take care of yourself, and it's good to understand the systems that support us and that they are more fragile than they seem, but this obsession with survival in catastrophic conditions disturbs me. there are sepia-toned ads in the subway, paid for by the city, which advise us to have "go bags," or to be prepared to rescue ourselves, so we don't need to be rescued. vague and alarming, these low-grade warnings have replaced that silly color system. my roommates were discussing what grade of gas mask they should purchase for their go bags. if i were in new york and needed a gas mask, how far could i get even with one? wouldn't we all be fucked, anyway? would i want to live in a place where gas masks are essential to survival? keeping some bags of rice and gallons of water in the kitchen makes sense to me, at least.
and now i'm going to go read about art until i fall asleep.