Astronaut applications

This is something I wrote for a scholarship application while I was just finishing up film school (we got scholarships for after we matriculated.  I know, it didn't make much sense to me then, either).  Anyway, I found this on my computer, and it's something that helps to remind me that, no matter how difficult the path may be or how discouraging it might get, there is only one thing that I can imagine myself doing for the rest of my life.

Multiple Personality

One day during my high school senior English class, my classmates and I had been assigned to groups for some kind of class project.  I was paired with one of my good friends and a couple of acquaintances (I went to a rather small school, so none of my classmates were strangers).  I was constantly joking around, as I am wont to do.  It's a carefully developed defense mechanism, a way of deflecting attention away from my insecurities and uncertainties, of which, I admit, I have many.

As we had finished the project, one of my group members, a girl I'll call Ellie, turned to me and said, "You know, before this project, I didn't think you had a personality."

Furry Pretty Things

I have decided that the unbearable cold of the Northeast makes you wear things that anywhere else, you wouldn’t be caught dead in. Only weather that drops into the single digits several times a month can cause you to look at a fox or a rabbit gallivanting through Central Park and think, “That’s cute, but you know what would be even better? If I were wearing it as a coat.”

On the F

Now that I’ve moved to New York, I go to bookstores a lot — they’re like libraries, but without all the poor people. I go to bookstores a lot because, in New York, when you’re riding on the subway or walking down the street or taking the elevator up to your office, you’re not supposed to talk to people. Why? Because, I can only assume, then the terrorists win. There are a few exceptions, like a time when I was on the 6 train and a disheveled man walked into the car and, after the doors had closed and we were shuttling on our way, started to pace up and down the train and explain, quite loudly, how he was going to kill all of us.

None of my fellow passengers batted an eye.  Apparently, this was a rather common occurrence.