Doodle I

I sometimes have a lot of time on my hands. I doodle.  This doodle is the result.  This took me about three weeks to doodle, adding a bit here and there while I was sitting on hold on the phone at work, watching TV at my apartment, reading books on tape (I still consider that reading.  It's reading through my ears) or just daydreaming.

Spring Fever

As April is wrapping up – I’m not sure how, as it seems to have only just begun – one part of life in New York that I’ve come to appreciate considerably better here than I did in California is the relief that comes with Spring.

On Life and LOST

I may be nearly a year behind, but a few weeks ago, I finally finished watching LOST.  I’ll admit it, I teared up at the end (during the final episode, appropriately titled, “The End”) as I realized that my 121-episode journey with these characters was coming to a close.

I don't have to mention that it's not just a superb, even groundbreaking, television series – though that is certainly true – but it's also a particularly apt show for this point in my life.  At its most basic, LOST features a collection of broken men and women who, by stumbling onto (some might say “careening uncontrollably into”) the island, must confront their flaws – the broken psyche whose repair they’ve ignored amidst the drudgery of everyday life.  The island is the place that they go to become better, more complete people.  The island is where they might realize more fully their potential.

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.

Homesickness

With only a few days before I left New York to celebrate Christmas in California, homesickness hit me quite suddenly. It's a disconcerting feeling, and I can’t exactly explain where I’m homesick for: I haven’t lived with my family in the Bay Area since I graduated high school, and, despite living in Los Angeles for the last five years, I never really considered it “home”.

I have an odd connection with the places I’ve lived. In high school, I wanted nothing more than to move as far away from the Bay Area as I could after I graduated. I couldn't really think of a reason why, except that I wanted something new, something exciting. And, in a stroke of self-delusion that even Bill O'Reilly would envy, I convinced myself of something that I knew to be very much untrue: that I disliked the Bay Area. So for college, I settled on Los Angeles as being a sufficient distance from home.

The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent

There's a saying attributed to Mark Twain, although that's very likely apocryphal, that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. I've been to San Francisco in the summer, and it gets cold. Really cold. Sometimes it even reaches 50°. But I've just acquired new evidence, and let me be the first to say: Mark Twain was a liar and a whore.