Here it comes

(I'm quite blog-happy today.)

So I resolve:
-Go upstate!
-Finish the tale of Nick & Pete. Actually, I have no choice in this matter.
-Graduate in May '10.
-Avoid subsequent "What the hell do I do now?" breakdown.
-Get published afresh.
-To PhD or not to PhD? And other quandaries, grand and small, that I'd like to get under control. Gotta man up. Hopefully.
-Oh, and run the ten miles I never quite got around to this year...

Salud!

There it goes

The finest New Year celebrations have taken place within the last five years or so:

In no rank order:

-Gathering at Joy's house when Joy and Mike had just started dating, 2004: The rest of us spent much of the night freaking out about witnessing their midnight kiss.
-We all survived.
-Gatherings in Kim's apartment, the intermediate years: good people, good food, good times!
-Cuernavaca, 2007: Sitting outdoors at a restaurant (oh, hey, 70 degrees!), sharing tremendous/delicious beverages and life stories, and watching the fireworks burst into the sky from across the street at midnight.
-Wisdom teeth, 2008: A nap and a painkiller took away all my crankiness/bleeding. Snowy roads meant no one could drive. So I watched Pride and Prejudice, turned on the TV for the obligatory ball-dropping, and overall, found it to be a successful holiday.

Bad romance

Instead of the polite, restrained way, in dreams I step forward and put my hand on your face in greeting. We both understand.

come, all ye faithful

I'm fairly calm these days. More like the Sound than ocean: waves whipped in frenzy, but well-contained. And that's all very nice...

Some nights I want to stalk over cold ground in black boots, raise your eyes, stake my claim.

muscle fibres

"I don't think I know the difference between having needs and being needy."

"We've been on-again, off-again, but now we're back on again."
"For how long?"
"A week and a half." -- oh, mature adult relationships!

"They broke up, and he has now dated all of Long Island."

--

Tonight I am collected against the cold. Three pairs of lights glow green. Go. Go. Go.

So much silliness.

I'd like to announce it right here:

I AM CRANKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah. Relief. :-)

--

I think music therapy is my calling. Minus the part where I cheated on my violin practice sheet in third grade, wanted to shoot myself when playing flute, and didn't join chorus in middle school because it required waking up earlier for school.

But I can make a damn good mix CD.

--

Beth to a boy she likes: "Do you think I'm too ridiculous to date?"

--

You'll find me here two days a week, teaching playwriting. Word on the street is that there's an aquarium under the floor and you can't wear shoes...?

2009-like journeys

-Albany with a still-swollen mouth from wisdom teeth removal. No better way to kick off the year!
-Miscellaneous warehouses on Long Island in the name of gymnastics meets.
-Most notably New Image, which involved the GPS, actual directions, and texts from Mark as I went the wrong direction on the LIE. It was an accident, though. Really.
-Manhattan each Saturday.
-Cortland and its magical spring floor. <3
-Greenport gelato, carousel, and missing camera.
-Wading River beach, gnats at sunset.
-Dublin ("Can I get your mobile?")
-cross-country bus
-County Kerry (Tralee and Uncle Jimmy, Killarney for castles)
-LONDON! Bike rides to work, the Globe, Jude Law.
-Owego, Vestal, Candor, jamocha bliss!
-Southampton all day, every day.
-Wainscott, van driver of middle-aged women.
-Stony Brook, one half-asleep day per week.
-Pomona, New Jersey, for an escape.
-Greenport tea! <3
-And on its glorious return: Tidewater (Step Up 4: Wings Bowl Champions).

From the depths of the Stop & Shop parking lot

HI, MISS KIM!

::waves::

Welcome to the adventures. ;-)

"You'd need to read him his rights first."

Yay for planning New Years in Buffalo, walking into the bar to see my brother, and then receiving the text from him: "Don't talk to any guys."

If I drown tonight, bring me back to life

Maybe this has been the year of second chances.

The renewal of Nick & Pete. Returning to my youth as the caretaker of (eight) fish (horoscope today: "You may feel that you hold the reins of eight reindeer on a sleigh"). Five miles on Thanksgiving Day once again. Dusting off that Al Hambra. Another competition season. Another round at SBS. Teaching again! And after a multitude of flings, a second chance at actual romance.

And how do we take these chances?

I told them in Spanish. How much clearer could I have been?!

Winter blasts on us the day after my birthday. Soft but quick flakes as I leave the gym, more in the King Kullen parking lot, to the climax of screeching air against our cheeks as we dodge the snow from building to building. I start to panic a bit, thinking of The Shining, thinking of how easily I feel trapped.

But we make ourselves warm. Killian's on windowsills and the opening chords to "Free Falling." Sunset burns over white hills. Orange pink yellow against tree silhouette and silver windmill lining.

Today the roads are snow rifts and I remember drifting through Cortland parking lots and roads, through upstate 81 to go north because only a whiteout would take me off that road. I was determined. Maybe I still am. It needs to be in the right way, though, whatever that means.

I lie on my bed briefly, eyes and mind bouncing, and see my name on the door sign. I look at the tight curls of a-n-a in that festive font and think that they ought to be looser, ought to be more like a river dancing.

Roaring Twenties

"My jacket and my shoes match! What other guy does that?" - Peter (many times over)

Hovering over my Cape Cod at the Tide with a bottle of vodka:
Flo: "I'm adding a little fun."

"We think he might be Bret Michaels." - Jenni

"You thought he was Bret Michaels, so you let him write on your boob. He was the 2007 Wings Bowl Champion." - protecting the innocent here! (I was not involved!)

"His picture is right here!" - Jason pointing to the wall

"We have an awesome beer pong mix with Lady Gaga. Like that 'Alejandro' song!" - Fernando, who gets a shout in "that 'Alejandro' song"

"Tony, if you were single, I'd date Diana." - Flo

Jeff: "I'm thinking about us in a threesome."
Diana: "I'm gonna go..."
Jeff: "Wait! I was going to focus on Tony!"

Lauren enters the kitchen eating from a box of Italian-seasoned croutons.
Tony: "Why are you eating those?"
Lauren: "Fernando gave them to me."

Diana: "Where are you?"
Lauren: "In an upstairs room."
Diana enters upstairs room to see that five girls are on a bed eating croutons.
Lauren: "We don't know whose room this is."
Diana looks around and realizes thats she doesn't know, either.

In the midst of a Dustin-Deana-Diana sandwich:
Deana: "I think I've died and gone to heaven!"

"I like your non-denominational holiday hat." - Flo

"I can't believe you talked to him!" - Francesca, laughing for about a half hour afterwards

"I'm a disgrace to the state of Texas." - Flo

"I'm trying to cure her hiccups!" - Sean, wrapped in blue blanket

Diana: "There better not be stains on my bed!"
Lauren: "I'm smarter than that!"

Good luck in fours?

1.) Found a paycheck in a bag I haven't used in awhile.
2.) Discovered the chocolate chip cokies I bought for Dom last Friday!
3.) http://eclecticflash.com/authors.html
4.) Possible gig teaching playwriting in high schools next semester.

Good. Things. :-)

It happens when you pay attention

Last night: pizza, parties in a bag, "Peter, please answer:". Tonight: thick waves of rain cleansing ocean sky clear. Falling stars over lifeguard chairs and white water spray. Alive and well and watching.

"Similarly? More like equally."

It's 28 degrees in Stony Brook and blisteringly clear. I'd like adventure and laughter in cold air and swaying legs, but Transiberian Orchestra puts me in the right spirits.

--

Besides the portfolio and final grades, I've finished teaching for the semester. I survived. So did they. I stuttered plenty, had the overhead fail on observation day, encountered much silence any time grammar or story discussion (or, God forbid, poetry!) came up. But then there was "write a 160-character text message about what really happened," freewrite on food, Nutella ads, "Tsunami Tsurfers," Donnie Darko, six-word memoirs, Donald the WRT 101 student, the definition of "facetious," freetext, class walks, map your place, and, of course, El Nino.

And hopefully this leads to other blackboards, other faux finals on the board, other laughs. And maybe a bit of learning.

--

The other night, I watched my hair fall softly in the mirror. The natural waves from a father with thick hair and years of tight ponytails. Dark hair on top, lighter hair to the finish. I have thought often of dying it all back to dark, or straightening it, or asking Lauren to trim the bangs that can almost be tucked behind my ears--

No. Tonight, it falls just right.

"You can be our prosecutor."

Once again: Google stalking for the win!

"My life is complete."

Is it strange that I'm excited by small unexciting things such as bronchitis inhalers, stories with xylophones, everyone laughing when I say something funny, a well-organized conclusion to fall?

And by the bigger things, like riding in the backseat of Officer Burns' patrol car to Amagansett?

;-)

homo erectus

But I compare a dance step from the Level 5 routine to the evolution chart of ape to present-day man and Kaylee laughs heartily, I have no idea what I'm going to teach tomorrow and suspect that class won't be longer than, say, thirty minutes due to my MIA voice, and everything moves as it should. The lights shine the proper way over the desk and I can take this, more of this.

I can see it in your eyes

This winter might be longer than I thought. But I dreamt that I was done, and that was good.

I want to make it better but I seem to always tread in these same circles.

No matter where I am,
I can't help feeling I'm just a day away
from where I want to be.

Better than four?

One step forward, two steps down.

Discobiscuits, Genesis, and Birthdays

These rainy days wash me well.

--

When you walk up the path at just the right time -- say, 11 am -- you look down the hill and see deep gray-blue clouds above the water, water that glimmers bright as ice. Under what sun? No matter. It shines so brightly that the strip of land dividing bay from ocean falls into silhouette. These are the sort of scenes I take from this place.

--

I half-sleep and your toes half-nudge mine. In your sleep state and my half-sleep state, I don't know if you wished to find my foot there or had rather run through. On to the next dream. All the same, I slide my foot aside. Just in case.

--

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAUREN! And happy birthday yesterday to Rob, my perpetual twin!
:-)

el primer dia de diciembre

IT'S DECEMBER.

My favorite month.

And my birthday, as Francesca noted.

I'd be intelligent, but my mind's about to fall down.