mix:
1 caltrain ride from sf to palo alto
1 ipod playing the mighty dub katz's 'magic carpet ride' (c'mon, fatboy slim before he was fbs)
1 friday afternoon
1 can of sapporo
1 realization that it isn't a richmond balcony with a megaphone (but then what is?)

mix heavily.

enjoy as a clear moment of utter contentment.

riding home today, there was a girl across the aisle crying. and crying.

i felt so awful. i couldn't think of a single thing to do or say. the only thing i could daydream about was writing her a note saying something like 'you are loved'. but that's not the kind of thing you want from a stranger on a bus while you are having a breakdown, even if they mean well. so i stared out the window, looking away from her, which seemed so mean.

then she got off.

so roxy and i went to see the stanton warriors last night at 1015 folsom. the ticketing turned into a small mess — i bought tickets but also ended up on the guest list. no big whoop, but it meant we had to stand by the ticket window and sell our extras before we went in.

i'm not a crazy clubber and i've certainly become less of one as i have gotten older. dancing every couple of months has dwindled down to two or three times a year. i went to buzz in washington dc with some frequency in college; i went out with chris and andru in nyc in the years after; i went dancing 3 or 4 times in la and now i live outside of san francisco. so even if i'm not an expert, i've hit most of the hot spots in the country.

and it was fun last night to do a compare and contrast. the club itself was ok — nick had told me it was nice. i, in turn, have to disagree. it holds nothing on almost any other major club ive been to — nation? twilo? circus? avalon hollywood? now you're talking. 1015 just doesn't compare.

but that's ok, because it isn't about the lights or the walls or even whether or not the floor is a concrete slab (it is). it's about the music. and the crowd. and the crowd, last night, was fun. we got there early to sell the tickets — we showed up around 10.45. stanton warriors played from 1 to 3. i had made roxy promise from the beginning that we would stay to the end. (we did, crawling into bed at 4.18am)

we watched people pour in. the biggest difference from anywhere else? the costumes. the burning man kids — people with painted faces, homemade costumes (look — i'm an arabian pirate!), girls with hula-hoops (which, we both admitted had amazing bodies, which i chalk up to the hooping). a guy with platform boots, a velvet cloak and a masquerade ball mask on his face. it was quite a show.

and i thought about the hula-hoops and realized if anyone ever walked into twilo with one, they wouldn't be allowed in. here, it got passed around among 5 or 6 people. everyone had fun.

i told r that i am glad i didn't move to the city at a younger age — back in 2000, i considered it briefly. i could have easily gotten sucked in burning man and the dirty techno hippie lifestyle. r asked if i liked la or sf better — my answer was that i like nyc the best. i think it fits in right between the two — a sense of style, with a little bit of dirt. not too dirty, not too fake. just right.

which is why, when i'm out there in may, we have to go dancing, mr. chris.

oh, and aside from a weak middle of the set (seriously, he played a breaks 'remix' of 'peanut butter and jelly time'. i shit you not; i almost wanted to walk out i was so insulted), they (he) kicked some major ass. very nice to hear the current hits (he closed with 'pop ya virus') on a nice loud sound system. my ears arent even ringing this morning. maybe im not too old for this yet.

winter wonderlands meet sunny afternoons. black labs meet yappy dogs. hamburgers meet late-night thai and spaghetti dinners meet scorching woodstoves. iced steps, broken-down cars, biggie smalls. dreams of exes meet dreams of dads. sun-drenched mornings meet empty coffee shops and high-speed interstates meet random playlists. left brain meets right brain and cartwheels meet skipping. you meet me and life goes on.

[i wrote this last night, on the train on the way home. with little sleep last night, i woke up feeling not quite different but not quite the same either. perhaps, sometimes, it is efficient to purge.]

and this and this and this is what i have come down to. typing, trying to find a path between the curvatures of letters, the spaces between words. it's easier than talking. one more thing i don't understand. i don't understand how this can be, even for me, introverted and confused.

walking to the train station tonight, i saw the man i sometimes pass; he owns a barber shop in potrero. i have not passed him in several weeks, but tonight we said hello. i found that comforting somehow.

i saw an older man back his car into the back of a delivery truck, hard enough to make it jump. and i smiled when two men got out of the truck, wondering what had happened. i walked the next block almost backwards, trying to tell what happened with the altercation.

as i walked down the hill, the smiths 'this charming man' came onto my ipod. most of my doubt was swept away by morrissey. i am not sure this my my best foot forward, but whatever works, i suppose.

i've spent the day, through various conversations, speaking about life. life and the future. ideas about marriage and sex and emotions. i've been having these a lot and i find them tiring.

i'm unsure if this weariness comes from the topic, or the energy i expend worrying about it. i recall my age; i recall watching 'american beauty' the first time; i recall that i am slowly and surely settling into what might be the rest of my life. it terrifies me in many ways. (i also recall re-watching 'american beauty' in grad school and being seriously unimpressed. it has not aged well.)

this fear isn't unique; i believe there is a specific set of character traits that enable this unsettled fear, this destructive desire to challenge everything you can about your self, about your notion of your self.

mine tends to come in waves, separated by months or weeks and sometimes days. i'm riding one now, after a few weeks of not. i look at my life and i can't ask for more. i can barely envision a life, a realistic life, that is more perfectly bullet-pointed.

a great job, a great woman who shares my bed, a great set of friends. a few weeks ago, someone was talking about their sister turning 30. (kurt, was this you? my mind is blanking.) and about how she seemed stressed by the idea, even though her life is completely in order, completely on track.

i keep coming back to this. and i keep wondering 'where is my track?' it is frightening to me that i might be living a life that i feel expected to live. that i have somehow trapped myself into a set of expectations for myself that don't fulfill me.

i feel panicked slightly just typing that out. i don't know if the panic is from the admission or the reality.

there are things i want in life, want to experience. some are easy. some aren't. some i will not put into words. some, frankly, are difficult to work out within a relationship. perhaps i am, in some ways, stunted. i never did allow myself a period of insanity. i never let myself go. there are days where i truly believe i am paying for it. today is no exception.

there is an easy joke to make at points with people about running away to somewhere, leaving everything you possibly can behind. there are variations to this as well, but the basic idea generally revolves around the 'my day is terrible, let's run away to an island.' i remember that susan otis used to tell me she didn't want an island. she wanted a farm in sweden. i think to make goat cheese on. of course, this was the girl who microwaved barbies and slept on the her marble kitchen counters and who forgot to take her socks off before she got into the shower. these were some of reasons i found her so endearing. i digress.

today the joke was about the idea of marriage in vegas. more specifically, the idea of marriage to a stranger in vegas. it is a shocking, dangerous proposal. i can't imagine it in reality. even if you were assured the most attractive, most stimulating, most amazing partner you could imagine, the very thought of fleeing (in my case) many hours to marry, to commit, to a stranger is insane. dangerous. and yet, i believe because of this, i find it romantic.

there is a sense of passion and purpose there that perhaps i push aside in my day-to-day life. i think that it is easy to push it aside, easy to forget it exists.

i was also told today that 'the grass is always greener, but just as difficult to mow.' i ducked it with a sexual innuendo, but the point is extremely valid. it's not that i doubt the point. i don't even believe i forget it. where i stumble, what kills me, is that i have trouble reconciling these two. my life, my daily life does not involve risks. the challenges i overcome are satisfying. but they also take shape in conversations like 'can some please explain why, in this case, variables inside the conditional are parsed before the conditional?' (the answer, it turns out is that the template system i am currently working with has a very strange order of operations. the nicest word i can find for this, however, is stupid.) it is difficult to think the rest of my life could be like this, could be a routine similar and unyielding. one that churns out houses and babies and work. i don't want to treat myself to that. not in any way but my own.

today, we went somewhere new for lunch. a very pretty blond woman took my order and, though i could be wrong, flirted with me. i do know she winked at me as i finished ordering. i went to type out the conversation we had and typed the first sentence out and realized that she was flirting with me. it made most of my day.

there are days where i am waiting for some magic puzzle piece to fall from the sky, the piece that ties everything together in a very satisfying snap. it has not yet arrived.

also, i got my hair cut on tuesday. i am shorn like a sheep. ill post a picture soon for your amusement. and how is that for an absurd way to end a serious post?

hi kids. im really going to make an effort to be a better poster. i dont know if that will happen because frankly, im just not getting the sense of relief or release that i used to get from posting. a lot of that is due to the fact that my father reads this and refuses to stop, and because most of my friends know that i keep this blog and thus i cant discuss difficult situations (generally, relationships) on this site anymore. the things i gain from journal-keeping are not always meant for every person in my life to read, which is what im making available when i post to the web. im not as open or non-chalant as tripp is; i dont feel that my personal life should be an open door to the world. however, i do gain from reading others' blogs and thus feel that perhaps someone could gain something from reading mine…if nothing else, friends gain the ability to know what is going on with my life in general.

i dropped off the face of the earth this summer and i am not sure when i will resurface. it began last semester when i became completely consumed with school. school merged into a month of drinking, packing my apartment and studio, saying good-bye to graduating second years, and visiting tripp in mountain view, along with colleen's wedding. colleen's wedding merged into me staying in san francisco for the summer, which was a series of its own challenges: finding two jobs, living in two apartments, navigating a new city, and beginning a relationship with someone for whom i came to care a great deal. weekends were filled with brunches, visits with my brother, world cup, tahoe, yosemite, and runs by the marina and crissy field. before i began working, i was running five days a week. after i got a job, i became less active. then i dislocated my shoulder in tahoe and became a vegetable. by the time i went to yosemite, i was well enough to go running and life weights at the gym, thought bench press was difficult. this week i did my first push-ups since tahoe. my shoulder still hurts, but it i think i have my full range of motion back.

because of how much has filled my life since january, i have had less time to be in touch with friends. whereas i used to feel like i was the one emailing people to catch-up and say hello, i have become the passive friend. i am hoping the next semester will provide some clarity to my life, my priorities, and my energy and ability to keep in touch with those close to my heart but far from my home. i dont want to be mia.

i am not looking forward to school, which seems to be a general trend among the second years. the last year of graduate study in design at yale is the most difficult and perhaps the most fulfilling, but it is surely the year that provides the least motivation to do well. sure, we all want a great thesis, but we also want to get on with our lives and live wherever we'll live and be with significant others and make money for a change. not just that, but im sure we're all a bit tired of seeing the same 30 people 24hrs/day. three years of that has its benefits — these are surely the best years of my life so far — but it is hard to return to a place where no one is excited to be and where everyone wants to get out of asap.

i do have to remind myself that i am embarking on the most challenging and rewarding year of grad school. i will work with advisors who are well-respected and well-known in the design community and their guidance will uundoubtedly be invaluable. at yale, it seems we all bitch a lot about what is wrong with the program and our professors… yet we're some of the luckiest designers in the country: we pay a shitload of money (perhaps quite a bit too much), but we get to work with some of the best designers in the world. i can easily say that greer allen and karl martens have enriched my world not just through their design knowledge but their personal kindness as well. it's an honor to have karl sit at my desk and help me fight my own demons. it's a blessing to ride in a car with greer and talk with him about virginia and uva and charlottesville and paper-making and his life with books. perhaps i prefer that talking on steady ground (greer was a crazy driver), but regardless, im lucky. it's of course also amazing to work with linda and armand and paul and tobias and matthew. dan michaelson has encouraged me to create forms that i never would've considered possible without his help. these are things i will look back on and cherish… it really is pretty incredible to feel comfortable calling these designers by their first name and to learn from them.

with that said, i can only say that this year will be a challenge. i do not know where i will live when i graduate and i am obsessing over that thought at the moment. i just feel so torn. it is a blessing to have freedom to choose a place to live but it is also a lot of pressure to choose well, since there will be no one to blame but myself if i pick wrong.

earlier this summer, i sat in the jetblue terminal at jfk writing this post. i was sad when i went to california because i was leaving my boys at school and i knew they wouldnt be back in the fall. then, leaving california i was sad to leave one boy in particular. i flew into the same jetblue terminal at 6am and was quite sad to be back on the east coast. even worse, i came home to an apartment destroyed by my subletter (that's another story altogether), and i was terribly frustrated to be in my apartment. now, im leaving virginia to return to CT, sitting in another jetblue terminal, and im sad to be leaving here, sad to be going back to CT, sad to be at an indecisive moment in my life. but these are the things of growth… change has to come if anything can grow or become better or more fulfilling. chin up, per usual. i should recognize this moment in my life as a blessing and not a curse.

it seems none of us are posting anymore. what's happened? it's been nearly a month since i last wrote and i think it's just that i havent been spending much time at my computer at home that is the cause of my silence. though i must admit that i also have not wanted to post about a lot that ive been seeing and doing here in san fran because i wonder who is reading this.

i am a bit homesick. i am currently sitting in the living room of my friend carter's apartment (yes, another carter), and im watching a television show about virginia farming. he gets satellite tv here and i was flipping through the guide to see what i could watch, and saw something with the word virginia and figured even if i werent interested in the subject, id at least get to hear the accents. and i was right. not just that, but i am also pretty interested in what they have to say about organic farming, dairy farming, and real estate values in virginia. judging from this public access show (which of course is half information half marketing), virginia land is worth a lot compared to the rest of the country. regardless of whatever im learning, it's great to see pictures of home. god i miss that place.

on the other side of the country, all is well. this summer has been productive for me in so many ways. work, relationships, general life knowledge, an understanding of another city and a better sense of where i want to live in the future. im tired. and im pretty ready to come home. but im doing well.