i know this sounds weird; it’s a strange question, but just this moment, sincerely,

i just realized what it’s all about.

All of it.  everything.

(what’s that in your hand?)

a couple of days ago when we were discussing cell phones and functionality and frustration and the like, Jay said: “I want a phone that will make me never eat fast food AGAIN!” at the time i roared at the unconventional pairing. then i got to thinking…

I was lucky yesterday afternoon. In an extended moment of patience, a generally pleasant attitude, datarock and hot chip on the ipod, i was able to maintain my aerobic heart rate for 65 consecutive minutes. obviously i’m not a marathoner. i get bored. i have immediate indulgence road blocks. to give you an idea of my attention span, i usually consider 25-30 minutes “fkking fantastic.” but yesterday, i was able to stick. probably because i got caught up in reading the fallout of the Clinton v. Chris Wallace snarle-down in closed captioning cause that’ll sure make the time fly. but anyhow. on my way home, i realized that i felt so good, i didn’t give a shit about having a glass of wine or finding something savory fantastic saborific to pique my tastebuds with. i didn’t want it; it wasn’t a desire. it was a great thing to learn.

i was imagining up some kind of sweet coffee desire walking the flights of steps up to my office this morning. i was envisioning cream and espresso to begin with. as a reward for the very act of coming in to work. in my head, “to just make this **^!!# day a little better.” you know, because i was physically at work. on the third landing, i thought, you know what i need? it’s not a double espresso latte with cream. its for my brain to rewire and switch-out dopamine receptors and QUIT associating taste with pleasure. what if i thought running stairs was pleasure? what if i couldn’t wait to get to my cube, turn on my computer and open outlook because i’d have a titanic orgasm?   whoaaaaa!

jay’s cell phone idea doesn’t seem so ridiculous now. how sorry the implication for us – that we’d allow and are currently asking for something external, technology in this case, to discipline us.

Fuck Yes. A chair that turns into a cooking range.

gosh, where have i been. i really don’t know where the last month got off to, where it’s been. I don’t know. i can’t remember things. it really does feel like a blur. i don’t know where my voice is or why it leaves me when i try to do something earnest. i feel like i’ve got to hit it, proverbially, repeatedly, until its raw down to the good.

deep, full sigh. hey there. in a soft way. how are you? my god how i miss you.

i love in movies when the characters are well-written and fractured and flawed and very almost to the point of real. i awe at how someone writes dialogue like that. it’s my interesting people fantasy. and i can get lost in there. i love the distraction for awhile into someone intelligent or believeable. I love that in real life too. like their story is another kind of possible; different from mine but not outlandish. i guess it’s like doing what movies do, providing some kind of fantasy, and i guess i love that. certainly i appreciate the distraction of the fantastical King Kong-and-the-like characters, i mean that’s for entertainment, but i really, really love the real-feeling ones. like in magnolia and in little miss sunshine and in half nelson and a gamillion others.

i can’t think of a bar that i like in this town anymore. we tried Rudyards again for something different, but something different from what, you know? i don’t know. i don’t remember. where did we used to enjoy going? where do i want to go anymore? i need to find some place new. and i need to remember it. i’m always looking for something.

and i don’t know how to get into this. it doesn’t come as easy. i just spent the last hour in my head, literally effusive. literally spilling over with expression of some hazy, unfocused, breathy kind. an expression mist settling throughout and on top of some movie-setting mental forest maybe. i miss people. i don’t know. melissa was on the computer and i’m telling you, i paced until she finally said, “lauren? do you need the computer or something?” i stumbled out with an “if you’re done. honestly. I can just check in the morning.” she knows me though. she resigned the seat and made small talk and then left the room to me.

i really like living with her. she’s made this turn in her life and she’s happier and it shows in every moment and in every interaction and its so refreshing. its such an improvement, so plain good to see a person turn a corner and like themselves again. i’m so impressed with her; really interested in who she’ll grow up to be because it could be anybody. she could go so many ways. it’ll be great to witness; i’ve always known that. when i passed her in the kitchen this morning, she pulled one of the sections out of the WSJ that she was reading, standing, the paper underneath a tiny bowl of cereal. she said, “hey. you’ll find this interesting,” and passed me the section as i picked up my keys and left for the door. an acknowledgment and a silent pass, and then the beginning of the rest of both of our days. as in mondays.

i guess i’ve been busy at work. i’m waking up early tomorrow to direct a photo shoot in the lab and lecture hall of a scientist that the place where i work for funds for space research. i’ll begin the day driving a few hours probably, then photo styling. i hope the photographer i hired from a small audit of websites is good. i never exactly know what i’m doing entirely.

in two and half weeks i’ll be spending the week here, for this. no telling what it’ll be like, but an interesting experience to be sure. i’m looking forward to it. at the end of the week, i’ll fly out and land in new york for a two-day workshop and to spend the rest of the week trying to get meetings with magazine editors. as in, i’m supposed to be taking editors and writers to lunch, introducing the place that i work to them, explain what we do and how we can be a resource for specific content areas in research, space medicine and physiology. it’s been years since i’ve done this kind of thing and never in new york. you’d not be surprised how easy it is to get a houston-area writer to lunch; generally. but there, i’m not sure how i’m going to convince them. we’ll see. maybe i can just lie and say i did it. or, maybe it’ll be easier than i think.

we saw Ben Kweller last night and the kid is something else.  laid back, happy, talented.  as if there’s a mix of southern folk and surfer.  a refreshing soul to be around.  half his audience was kids and the other half obvious adults, singing along too.  people who perhaps loved him for reminding them what it felt like – or still feels like – to be an awe-struck and gritty boy figuring out the world.  His performance was awesome and enthusiastic and sweet.  I would bet that the members of his band are all gifted musicians too, multi-talented with a spectrum of instruments.  At one point there were three guitars and a bass rocking at once, at another point, two pianos, a xylophone, shakers, tambourine, all kinds of other sound-making devices.  It was refreshing pop because it was as much about the performers as it was the performance.  This kid is fresh despite his almost ten years of having a record deal.  He’s nice and talkative and not-yet-jaded.  You just don’t see that too often on a stage: a happy, skippy, punk-rock-kicking kid.

during a tangental reading of slate amid my morning work emails, i fell upon this excerpt from Jonathan Franzen’s new novel.  It’s nothing ground-breaking or even great, but he explains something that sounds familiar.  A good articulation of the very thing I experienced above, last night with the rock kid.  A vein resounding in the personalities of so many who i know and feel automatically close to:

“...At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I’ve become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who’s still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments, I run around town in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer commercial cleavage, I define as uncool any group to which I can’t belong, I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I’m never going to die.”

I like this guy’s work.  Something in the technical-ness involved, like how a person can create such aesthetic things out of a process that appears so tedious.  What work; how mind-freeing that must be.

I’m good these days; I’m exhausted and kind of running on fumes but with little productivity to report.  That’s fine though right?  There’s been PLENTY of fun and stories and indulgences and binges and travels to get in the way of my doing anything in the last 2 weeks.  I have one thousand amazing images from the trip I just took with Char.  They’ve both already done well with the posting of their images, but i’m slow and catalogued with mine.  I have a vision though, a project I wish to complete, and upon its conclusion you’ll see my images here without my having to actually post them.  I’ll get on it; I promise.

KO and I spent Labor Day in Chicago and it was lovely and telling and difficult and eye-opening and leveling and really awesome, memorable and thickety thick.  Certainly there are good pictures and even better stories.  I haven’t even relayed them to Char yet.  I’ll just say that the El at 5 am rivals any experience I’ve had on trains, Italy and Spain included.  By the end of it, all i cared about was our safety.  But the neighborhoods and the Bean were two things I needed to know for myself, first hand.  And god were they worth it.

I have four begun-but-unfinished posts here in my drafts folder.    Work to do.  Work i’m looking forward to.  Things i want to remember.  One thing, in particular, is that the last few weeks changed me.  They honestly did.  I actually returned home fresh and clear-headed and level and laid-back and i wasn’t even looking for that.  Things just seemed easier; work seemed clearer, the little voice inside more decisive.  I realized I get into a fog here, at work, in my little life, and it’s completely self-sustained and blinding and silly.  I didn’t realize i had the fog until i no longer had it.  I spent nights before falling asleep thinking of explanations and reasons, observations and apologies, and then i realized that i didn’t have to articulate any of them.  No one was asking me to, regardless of my self-instituted assumptions of obligation.  to anyone.  to everyone.   I can just be.  You don’t really mind; people who love me aren’t asking me for the things i’m giving them.  all my own designs.  how strange! 

anyway, i realized that.  that i can stand to be disliked.  that i can stand to be less reactive.  that i can just do a thing and it be my thing and that’s all it is.  that i can stand to meet and get to know more people.  that i don’t have to explain myself.  that i probably shouldn’t anyway; no one’s asking.  quitting with the bitching.    finally, right?

i think all day, all night long.  i daydream; i fantasize. 
it’s inveterate.
it’s who i am.

then i come home and sit down to this and my thoughts,

and decide i’m not up for it tonight.

i’m not sure what i’m putting off right now, still at the office, not going home.  Called Nikon and their warranty most likely will not cover my camera’s glacier injury; a shock.  resetting it, hopefully, might help.  watching apple trailers and happy to see this one again.  It looks succulent; I’ll see anything Sofia makes regardless of her Virgin Suicides fixation on Kirsten Dunst.  Perhaps though, one of my favorite things about the teaser AND the trailer besides the visual explosion…is the New Order.  Watch it conmigo.  After that, check out the one for Running with Scissors and the Science of Sleep.  Ahh, Gondry; really so good.