and so it goes/the moral to this tale/as tortoise catches snail/a strong heart will prevail

it's really weird how you can get constant reminders from the world around you. like when there's something that you've been thinking about and wanting so much not to think about... only to see a photo or hear a song that takes you right back to the place you're avoiding. i've been thinking a lot lately about lessons i thought i'd learned and how just when i think i've gotten to some sort of place of acceptance, God sends me a message to say- yeah, you still don't fucking get it, do you? i was thinking about this kind of stuff on the train yesterday after writing that ginormous blog- which is STILL long even after being majorly edited- probably halved. it's tough to try and blog and be completely honest- especially when you know that some of the people involved in your life are reading these thoughts. you can make things better or worse or just fuck them up completely, so it's better to keep some stuff to yourself. so i've been starting to write a journal of my own that's a lot more detailed and even more full of self examination than this thing. anyway, thinking about some deep things on the train, as one does... I got off a stop early, at Washington Square, to have a bit of a walk before work. I like to get off the train, figure out where I am and then go off course a bit. Yesterday I found myself walking up Broadway towards Union Square and was really surprised to see this:


That's Grace Church. Pretty beautiful, really. It just made me wake up a bit, snap out of all the contemplating and remember that I'm in this amazing city. I keep feeling that I'm missing out on things- it was one of the things I feel like last weekend taught me- not to spend all my time examining or looking deeper into every situation, but to simply enjoy things while they're happening. Otherwise, I'm just navel gazing while the world speeds by around me.
Last night I bonded with The Leggy Redhead at work. It was really cool because despite the fact that she gave me the tour when I started & I thought she was really cool, I spent the first month there thinking she probably didn't like me much. It didn't last long, but last night we had this great conversation about being in sort of similar situations. I was telling her about how monumental it is for me not to feel like a fat ugly loser for the first time in forever and actually start gaining more confidence, because I was always just the chubby ugly one & she totally got me. We spent like 45 minutes sitting in the knitting section talking and it was just really great. So yeah, she's awesome.
Today was meant to be a day at the park with X+J, but... we got kinda... distracted. Okay, CATWOMAN was on HBO. It's funny, because Crazyhead and I were talking about really bad movies that we love and at first I was like, "I HAVE to e-mail him about this one!" It was just hysterically bad. But then it got really truly PAINFULLY bad. It's the worst movie... ever. I Mean, maybe not as bad as STRANGELAND, but pretty fucking awful. We were all wondering what was going on with the people who made it... Like, did they not understand that the project they were working on was ridiculously laughable?? I'm not a huge Halle Berry fan, but oh my GOD woman what were you thinking? I felt bad for Frances Conroy & Alex Borstein the most, though. Wow. So, kids- you might THINK that you should rent CATWOMAN and have a drinking game kinda SHOWGIRLS kind of party... but it will only end in really uncomfortable tears. It made my stomach hurt. I seriously have to nap now. And of course... it's like far too late to go to the park now so CATWOMAN wasn't just bad, it killed our Sunday completely. Because we all just want to sit around and take part in some secret eating (because cutting is SO last year).
I finished SPECIMEN DAYS last night. I was reading it on the train and when we pulled into my stop, I had like 3 pages left, so I just sat in the train station and finished it. Really good book. The second story, "The Children's Crusade," is my favorite of the three. It really stuck with me and in fact ended up giving me a nightmare in which a bomb went off when I was in the park for lunch. Disturbing.
-rick
listening to/signature line: Badly Drawn Boy: "Pissing in the Wind" from THE HOUR OF BEWILDERBEEST