Thursday, May 29, 2008

Quote of the Day

File this under WTF...

The scene: an open house to greet potential roommates. A boy sits, a half mullet cresting, his Kanye West sunglasses atop his head, his oh-so-distressed T-shirt with the oh-so-accidental holes. He asks the following, in front of 15 other potential people vying for the apartment.

Boy: "What's the policy on smoking pot?"

Girl: "Oh, um, ha. Yes, well, if you're going to do that we'd like you to do it outside since we don't really smoke in this house."

Other Girl: "Yeah our drug of choice in this apartment is pretty much red wine!"

15 people laugh nervously.

Girl: "We're pretty fine with things for the most part, but if you want to do 10 lines of cocaine a day, maybe this isn't the place for you..."

Boy, extremely pissed off and twitchy: "Well, SCREW THIS!"

Boy LEAPS over couch, nearly knocking over a bystander. Runs upstairs. Nearly runs down three new girls coming into the apartment to look. They stare at him. He stares at them before saying.

"Well, THEY REFUSE TO DO COKE HERE SO BE CAREFUL!"

Whaaaaa?

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Remembering: Feel, Again

Thank you blog, I do believe you just showed me the ending of my novel...

I feel them. Those little creepers of sunshine piercing through Wednesday. They still exist. Ladybugs marching, small centipede feet. It’s on my throat and in my stomach. It’s the back of my head. These are hands out the window, feet in the water touches. There is no winter, only the prospect of spring. Bare shoulders and toes and warm rain cannot be so far away.

I feel them more and more, especially when I sleep, sound but in fits, lips parted, across the length of the bed. My blanket is chronically askew, backwards and jumbled. I create the folds in swift movements imperceptible to me, by no true fault of my own. Now no one’s here to tell me it’s wrong and it’s bad and it needs to be smoothed. Throat tight, eyes shut, feet to the wind…I’ve done it all but no more, not today.

No one can tell me that it’s impossible, that I’m impossible. I’m all I’ve got, so it doesn’t suit my soul to hate myself. To disbelieve my hopes and dreams is just that. I want to nap at one in the afternoon twice a week. I want strong coffee with milk at three in the morning, on a park bench, with or without someone else. I want the only lying to be on grass, I want to use my dog as a footrest when he’s sleeping and him to use my arm as a pillow when I am. I want to build a fort, I want to touch linen on my cheek, I want an outdoor shower, a homemade aquarium for sea snails, green apples in a bowl, wooden furniture. I want a well-tended garden that someone else weeds, to walk on weathered stones, to inhale lavender, to shut off my cell phone. I want the ribbon to hold fast in my hair and flowers in my fists before glass jars. I want to be good to the world. I want the world to be good to me.

Everything is within reach. Naysayers keep on; the gleam of the brass ring doesn’t fade. True, my eyes were on the floor for a while. I was averted all the way. Never again will I doubt myself knowingly and willingly. There is no one to fight for me; there is no one to fight with me but me.

Negativity breeds and then it’s screaming in your living room. It swells in your ears; you’re bad, you’re not worth it, you never were. You’ll never be good enough.

But who wasn’t good enough? You or that voice? The one that purported to know you and then cut you down. That bad man on your shoulder. The weight on your chest in the morning. The sleep in your eyes at all hours.

And you may ask yourself who will fight for you, with you, but you?

I feel the newness of liking again, the weightlessness of it all. Things are not as important as they seem, and then they are so much more than we could ever realize. Life in moments, in consciousness, in being kind and knowing when to contribute and when to fall away without hate in your heart.

Breathing deep is beautiful, the crushing burden of pain is bliss when it stops. It’s calm and flows, fingertip to fingertip. I spread my hands out to the city and let it radiate out. I give it to anyone who will have it in return. I give it to you but not to your little voice and not to mine. They don’t get to rule us anymore.


In return, they’ll let us stop spinning as long as we want, they smile back as they shrink, they’ll let us twist the blanket and they won’t say a thing...

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Grow like Trees

The leaves are changing and they are mine.

In a little less than a month, I will have new stories to tell, not the old of banana farms, scratched forearms and pale morning light above soy fields. Not of who I’ve lost and who I’ve found. Not of silly work stories or music recommendations or punchy quotes that pass the time, fashion, thin walls or this fleeting thought and that hollow laugh.

It will be the stuff of legends, beaches, loneliness, heartache, growth like birch trees up and up and even more so, far away. Sand forever in my shoes, dirt under my fingernails, the chicken bus, the malaria pills, the unspoiled wilderness and the spoiled beaches, all the yelling, all the quiet. All the togetherness and all the silent nights, slapping at mosquitoes, the deafening silence of my own thoughts, or lack thereof.

I’m going away for 6 weeks; it’s all set and done. Down the Yucatan, into Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. I will have a backpack and I will not have a computer.

There is that of course. There is also the novel, which, if all goes well, I will have a first draft and one I am proud of, by the time I get onto the plane. I’m handing over a part of me; the best part maybe, and letting it go, not knowing what will arrive in its place. I want to write; I want to be better, this time more about travel and discovery and less about the search for self. I want a great deal and that is good, it reminds me I’m alive, that we’re never stuck where we thought we’d be, that there is always an option, always a new day and always a way to go further even if you think that you’ve come as far as you ever even dreamed…

Monday, May 19, 2008

Writer's Bio

Today at work I was compiling writer bios for a new magazine I'm working on. Then I had a brilliant little flash idea--what if someone had asked me for my bio (this has yet to occur)? What, pray tell, would I put into it? My heart? My soul? The truth. Yes! All three!

I got a little excited. If I wrote it, it could read the following:

Kay is a writer who has contributed to {REDACTED FOOD MAGAZINE} , {REDACTED NEW YORK CENTRIC MAGAZINE}, and {REDACTED HIPSTER-HIP HOP-CULTURE MAGAZINE} and many others, most of which you have never heard of {REDACTED LUXURY NICHE MAGAZINE WHERE SHE DROPPED A SNEAKER REFERENCE FOR NO REASON}, {REDACTED SNARKY GOSSIP SITE WHICH NEARLY GOT HER FIRED} and the bathroom wall at work where she wrote that her editor hearts...{insert obscene act}. She is the proud owner of insane mullet-cum-shag hair that is often, if not always, completely inappropriate for work and too many T-shirts with gold lettering.

She enjoys long walks through her garbage-infested neighborhood, muttering "you dirty bastard" under her breath when meeting strangers, then accusing those who make direct eye contact as "stealing her cinnamon", cleaning the microwave at four in the morning, slipping in the shower, and most varieties of cheese. She lives at home with her stuff. And roommates. And her sweet, sweet ipod party mixes, the first of which born last summer.

She is currently working on her first novel, which was set to be titled "The Holy Bible" until it was found out that the title had already been taken by some book no one ever heard of. She is planning a trip to Central America this summer. If she returns, please contact her for work, as she will need it, mostly to show you her great tan, which you better be jealous of, or else the trip wasn't worth it at all, no matter how many cultures she saw and how expanded her mind became.

Yeah, that doesn't sound too bad. Not bad at all...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Cut Copy Love

I started a mix called "Bronze Pony". It refers to something hilarious only to me, but I can't stop laughing about it. And it is my nickname for my dance partner.

Now if only we could get away with shattering the windows of all apartments in a five block radius...

Cut Copy* "Far Away"

Mystery Jets "Diamonds in the Dark"

Foals "Balloons"

Van She "Kelly"

Hot 8 Brass Band "Sexual Healing"

Camp Lo "Luchini"

MIA "20 Dollar"

Spank Rock "Tell Me What It Look Like"

The Kills "U.R.A. Fever"

Free Blood "The Royal Family"

Yak Ballz "YBTV"








Any more suggestions to add?

*I couldn't be sadder that I'm missing this concert tonight. I love these guys so so much.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

How to Break Up in 10 Seconds

Girl: "I'm just likely to get too wrapped up in us and have it become a destructive force in my life. We're too different."

Guy: "I understand that I'm not what you're used to, but you can swim in my water without having to live there."

Girl: "But your water is black. And there's a dead body floating in it."

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The Best Song You've Ever Heard

There are no words.

Thank you, BT, for sending this in. Now you're responsible for fifteen people peeing themselves at work and twenty being fired.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Nevermind the Bullocks

Vicious.

Was punk rock all about image? Maybe so, at least at the end? beginning? but with music videos like these, does anyone really care? This might be the funniest clip in rock history.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Muzak Roundup

Hey, everyone says he's too late to a party that's already over (they do say that about Kavinsky too, those Pitchfork kids hate the hyperbole fun don't they? How can you hate a man who interviews like this?), but I still adore Calvin Harris. Shout out to my friend(s) who have heard his album and sent it my way.*

He answers what is sweetness almost as much as Spank Rock on the other end of the spectrum**

Monday night at Bowery I caught Calvin in all his earnestness, asking over and over "What's up New York? Jump up New York!" So his stage banter could use some work, but he was so excited to be here and have a few errant East Coasters saluting him (the rest of the crowd was a weirdish mix of cliche interpretations of Eurotrash, a grandmother in sequins, and one of the guys from We Are Scientists) that it really didn't matter. Now if only I could be doing the same tomorrow, but Spank Rock got sick and now it's all off. Boo. At least I got those Radiohead tickets in the summer...and I'm listening to a lot of Fleet Foxes and Mystery Jets these days.

Who has a music recommendation to share? Let's hear it!

*Note to all of you, I'm SO COOL that I've had it since last year. No need to ask how I heard it first. No, it was not at a Forever 21 which completely negates all coolness associated with it. Okay, yes it was. Yes, your greatest fears are true: I am lame. Lamer than you ever imagined.

**--who, by the way, I ended up walking behind after the Crystal Castles/Health show a few months ago, and he put a huge traffic cone on his head as a hat and started shouting, "Where the party at?" which I misheard as "Where the party hat?" to which we responded, "On your head!" and then HE started saying "Where the party hat?" and like the Pied Piper led a parade of girls into the depths of Brooklyn and now every time I come into a party I say, "Where the party hat?" Moving o
n.