October 2001 was difficult for me in a lot of ways, and I remember much of it in particular moments; the one when, while striding down Madison Avenue on my way home from the advertising agency, I first floated to my father the idea of moving back in with my family. Not long after that, I sat in the office of the business manager of my department and pegged the 26th as my final day with their firm.

That latter wasn’t difficult, exactly, but certainly occurred with some finality.

Over the following few weeks, I caught up with old friends as a sort of last huzzah before I left the City. And during one of those evenings, I went out with a group of girls in Hell’s Kitchen. I always was lucky to find myself surrounded by beautiful and intelligent women and privy to conversations I was lucky to hear (always cognizant that I was being allowed to hear them, and only allowed to hear what they chose), and that night was no exception; the girls I went out with had worked at the Firehouse up on the Upper West Side, somewhere around Columbus and 84th or Amsterdam and 85th, I can never remember which. Back then, we would meet up there for drinks, then go out to another bar to continue dancing and drinking, and then return to the Firehouse, which would by then be closed. I’m not sure I ever saw the sunrise through its windows, but there were several occasions I think I came pretty close.

That night, we met up in Hell’s Kitchen. Or Gotham. One of the two. At the Cinema cafe? Or bar? Something like that. It was a low-key spot on 9th or 10th avenue up around 47th, or so. This location will become important in a bit. I don’t remember much about that bar, not because we were drinking, but rather because it really was that low-key; I think the most interesting thing about it was that Ethan Hawke showed up at some point.

I remember I wasn’t the only one with plans to leave. One of the girls was returning to Colorado (Denver? Boulder? Something like that), while another was . . . I’m not exactly sure. But I don’t think she was sticking around.

And so we sat and chatted and laughed, until it started getting later and later. Someone might have had to work a brunch or something the following morning.

When we left, the girls were headed back uptown, toward the Firehouse, while I was headed downtown, toward the PATH stop at 33rd Street/Herald Square and all points Jersey, back to my crummy little apartment in Jersey City. It was late by then, but it wasn’t like we were in a bad section of town, exactly, just a couple blocks off Times Square. If the buildings around us hadn’t been so high, we probably would have been able to see the neon. As it stood, we could only feel it.

That feeling got the better of us, headed East from our bar. Someone had some pot, and we decided it would be a fantastic idea to partake of some, and so we found ourselves a random stoop while one girl removed her pouch from her bag and proceeded to prepare the party. We passed it around, and then, and I kid you not, a cop passed by. On a horse.

This was hysterical. I mean, we’d barely started by then. But seriously, just try to stand on, what, 46th(?), something like that, getting high with a group of awesome girls you have just been drinking with, and watch a horsed cop clop down the street. I mean, what’s he going to do? Do horsed cops have a siren? Double-u tee eff, yo.

I don’t know how we kept it together. I don’t know how I kept it together, of that much I am sure. I haven’t used such a substance in many years (and never used it much in the first place, to be candid), since before I left for Hollywood, in fact, but those times I did, when I didn’t bug completely out, I became a giggling simpleton. Giggling simpleton is not an unusual state for me, provided, but I can at least usually function.

Then? Not so much. I’ve been known to fall off benches and giggle on the floor for five minutes, completely unable to stop. Because my life is awesome.

Anyway. The cop passed, and I guess we managed not to be idiots until after both he and his horse were well out of earshot. Who knows? I don’t. I walked the girls to their subway stop, and by then we were all smiles and pupils and giggles and sloppy, tear-filmed goodbye hugs and half-kisses and you-take-care-of-yourselfs and all the while trying to pretend we believed we would see each other again. And I’m sure they probably have, but I know I’ve only remained friends with one since that evening, but then again, she and I were friends right away upon meeting.

So the girls left me there, somewhere around 47th and 9th or wherever. 45th and 8th? I knew where I was, of course (one of the things I love Manhattan is that I always tend to); I had taken the bus from Port Authority south often enough I knew that area decently well, and I figured that was the best way for me to go. So I headed down to 42nd and 8th, where I planned to cut East to Times Square and follow Broadway south to the PATH. It was a journey I had made often enough to be able to follow it nearly automatically, which I figured was a bonus in the altered state I was in, and it’s worth highlighting that it was then around 2 or 3 in the morning, I think.

Thing is, Manhattan doesn’t get dark, mostly. Sinatra is famous for calling it the City that never sleeps, but he’s really only half there; if the City ever goes to bed, it is only because it’s sharing the bed with someone beautiful. If I were allowed to design and market an energy drink from the ground up, it would taste like hot-pink neon bubblegum, and I would call it Manhattan, and I would decorate the cans with Times Square and Gray’s Papaya and Famous Ray’s and Lindy’s and the Garden and time-lapse subways and the two beams of light that memorialize the World Trade Center. “Manhattan: Drink the City. Never Sleep.”

This is especially true for Manhattan up that way, which was, back then, still decorated with porn shops and peep shows and leering, winking displays that leave nothing to the imagination and less to chance. It was not uncommon to see homeless people and prostitutes up that way, and while I can’t remember if I saw any that night, I know I did passing through the same neighborhood just a week or so later.

In that altered state, in fact, I don’t remember much about making my way down to 42nd and 8th, though I know I got there. And this must have been the first thing I saw:

Which would have stopped me, and made me look a little higher, to see this:

If you look closely at those pictures, you can see where I was. That’s B.B. King’s nightclub, there on the left, and look up to see Madame Tussaud’s sign. Which I think is right next door to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

(I generally do. I’ve seen way too many things to be very skeptical, most times, barring a few exceptions)

So I must have seen those things, but this is the very first thing I really remember about that night:

Unfortunately, what I saw doesn’t exactly show up in the picture. I tried to capture it to do it justice, but the thing is this: they ground glass into the concrete sidewalk there, on that block, and it glitters. And you’d think it glitters most during the bright hours of daytime, when the sun shines down on it as people cross to and fro, hither and yon, but it doesn’t. It’s only at night that it spangles like you wouldn’t believe, like diamonds, like a laser-shone discoball. Because, of course, it’s dark but never really. Because it captures the streetlamps and the neon all around it, and there’s no shortage of that.

To really appreciate it, you need to walk it at 2 a.m. Otherwise it’s just a somewhat glittery sidewalk. At 2 a.m., though, it’s fucking magic.

That’s the first thing I remember, then, after the cop on the horse. The first image I really have.

But it’s a killer, because it so grounded me. It made me so completely and totally aware of where I was in the world. At that moment, I was right there, walking that sidewalk. It was 2 a.m., and yes, I knew where I was. I’m not sure I can describe a more intense feeling.

No, wait. Of course I can.

Because that grounding made me look around, and up. That grounding made me so much more aware of the world around me, and this is what was around me:

I think you can even see the Ripley’s sign there. But if you really want to know how magical Manhattan actually is, look:

These are, of course, not pictures I took that night. I didn’t own a camera or cameraphone back then (there are moments I wish I had owned one on September 11th). No, I took these shots the other week, when I returned to Manhattan with one of my dearest friends in the world. These were taken on the night of my interview, in fact, after I had first spoken to my old profs, and then taken the PATH to Ground Zero, from which I walked way the Hell uptown to 20th Street, where I observed a class another of my best friends taught (I’m so lucky to have so many best friends. Radness). That class didn’t end until 1:30, at which point I bought mojitos and told Hannah we were going to Times Square after sucking down a couple.

I took these pictures that night. My math always sucks, but that makes it, what, almost 8 years since that night? And even were those things not there, that neon would be. Barring worse catastrophe, a thought I would rather not consider at too much length. Not after “What I Saw That Day,” thanks very much.

So that was Times Square McDonald’s at, like, 2 in the morning or so. Might’ve been later. I have no idea what time we were there. Mattered?

Not even a little.

And yeah, that’s a limo in front of the Mickey D’s:

Which is kind of awesome enough, isn’t it? Who would think Mickey D’s would be cool, but that’s the thing about Manhattan; it brushes everything open to it, and when you do open to it, it lends you energy like you wouldn’t believe. You can feel the pulse and thrum not just of the City and its inhabitants but of the whole world, all around you.

And it just gets better.

This is a moment that changed my life:

***

One of my favorite CDs in the world is the soundtrack to The Beach. Which is an underrated movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tilda Swinton. The last track on the soundtrack contains a voiceover from the movie itself:

You hope, and you dream. But you never believe that something’s gonna happen for you. Not like it does in the movies. And when it actually does, you want it to feel different, more visceral, more real. I was waiting for it to hit me, but it just wouldn’t happen.

Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay your welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.

And me, I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it’s not some place you can look for, ’cause it’s not where you go. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life when you’re a part of something, and if you find that moment… it lasts forever…

Which I realize seems a digression, but it’s part of what I believe about life. Never refuse an invitation? Keep your mind open?

And that was the moment I discovered all that, which is why that moment, for me, will last forever. Because there I was drunk and high and freshly kissed and walking on a glittery sidewalk, and there I hit the corner of Times Square (which didn’t exactly look like that. In the intervening years, a giant Walgreen’s seems to have replaced the Warner Brothers store), and I realized and felt I was part of something, some giant mosaic, some amazing endeavor I would never understand, but that was okay because, I realized, nobody else ever does, either. We do our best with what we have, and we are born and live and die and curse and fuck (in the beginning), and we live every day and perform some function that hopefully sustains us, whether merely financially or on some deeper, greater level, and then we return to our places most familiar, and we disrobe, and we wash the world from our bodies and return to our beds to do it all over again another day, and so rarely do we wonder what it all means because when we do it’s a question more brilliant and awesome and enormous than we can imagine, and we feel that. Was it Nietzsche who said that when you stare deeply enough into the abyss, the abyss stares back? Maybe Goethe? I think someone German said it, but the thing is that it’s true not just for the abyss but for the hopeful parts, the brilliant parts, the awesome parts, too.

When we stare into honesty, honesty stares back. When we stare into goodness, goodness stares back.

Which makes me think back to my Catholic school days, when we would all chant “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the world and I will be healed,” like we so fully believed it, and it’s one of the saddest thoughts I know because what makes us think that? We stare at our own goodness but disbelieve it. We stare at our own world and our insecurities and doubts and fears mask our own awesome. We blush at every tiny compliment, like we’re embarrassed about how ab-clenchingly, jaw-droppingly amazing we all are.

Because we all are.

***

I have read a couple of people comment disparagingly about the “Awesome is a state of mind” I used as the tagline for this blog, but it’s struck me that perhaps I never did a good enough job explaining its meaning. At least what it means to me.

Because it doesn’t mean that my state of mind is awesome and so I must be. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I mean what I learned during that moment; that the world is so jaw-droppingly awesome it is insane, and that being open to that awesome is what allows you to appreciate and experience it.

I tend to call that moment my last of confidence, because I’ve always felt like something about it rendered confidence moot, to me. Why pretend? Why not open yourself? I mean, I know, opening yourself, fully and widely and completely, can get you hurt sometimes, but so what? If it gets you moments like that, isn’t it worth it? Isn’t exquisite pain as beautiful and pure an experience as delirious pleasure? And if we’re all in this together and nobody really ever knows what we’re doing, why bother pretending we do? Me, I worry constantly about what other people are going to think of me until I remember they’re probably worrying about what other people think of them, and if we’re all always worrying about what other people think, when are we ever doing our own thinking? If I devoted half the mental energy I dedicate to worrying about what people think instead to appreciating how awesome they are, well . . .

Well, that’s what I try to do. Sometimes I’m more successful than others, but that’s the thing about life; some times are always more successful than others.

When I’m lucky, though, and when I’m most successful, I tend to goggle at the people in my life, the people I meet, the world I experience.

I mean, how do you not goggle at this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Lifehouse has a song on their first CD called “Everything”:

“And how can I stand here with you, and not be moved by you?”

Standing there, I felt like I actually could feel not just life and the world and the universe but even the revolution of the Earth through it, because no matter where you are and how still you try to be, we’re all in constant, vibrant, brilliant motion, whether on a planetary scale or one subatomic. How can we stand here and not be moved?

And yes, of course, I realize that’s precisely the sort of stoned-out thought that has become a cliche, but still I don’t know the answer. Still I don’t know any answers, in fact, but that moment taught me that’s okay if only because there is absolutely nothing more awesome than the question.

I am on the bus to Manhattan.

I’m trying to remember the last time I took this bus, made this journey. I can’t. This surprises me; there was a time when Manhattan was a big part of who I was. Or at least I thought it was. I may have been wrong.

Lord knows I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.

The last time I was in Manhattan was definitely before I left for Los Angeles. It was also definitely before that spring, and the previous year I dated a girl for, like, 8 months, during which I’m fairly certain we never made it up there. I started dating her that April. I don’t remember that previous spring, well, but I know I was working at a medical publishing company, and I don’t recall making the trip then, either.

Was it really September of the year previous? It may have been. I was dating a (different) girl, and I took her up to Manhattan as a birthday surprise, though it was as much for me as for her. We’d only been dating a few months at that point, but still I wanted to show her the Manhattan I knew and loved. We packed into the car and headed north. Almost the moment we got on the highway, one of my rear tires blew out, so I changed it there, on the side of the turnpike. In the process, I broke my left ring finger, top-most knuckle, a tiny, stupid fracture that showed up as a slight chip off the edge of the bone. Calling it broken probably gives it too much credit, really.

We stayed at the Hyatt on the Hudson, Jersey City, with its panoramic view of downtown Manhattan’s financial district; if the World Trade Center were still there, the towers would be pretty much all you could see from the lobby. We took the PATH train into the City, and we went to the Cloisters, and we went to Candela, and we met a few of my old friends, and . . .

That’s about the extent of my memory. Or at least of those details I might share publicly.

Which is a digression in the first place. Because what I was talking about was returning. Going back. Can you go home again?

I just got home, actually. If by just we can mean four months. I’ve been taking business classes—and must interject here to smile that I just saw, out the window, a billboard for my old college, Saint Peter’s, where I have a job interview tomorrow—and I finished all of a novel and part of a screenplay.

Mostly, I think, I’ve been recharging. Which I feel silly saying, but I think that’s what it’s been. I went hard in LA; had I those years to do over, I might slow down a bit, take an extra year at USC and complete my degree in three years rather than blowing through it in two, but then again I couldn’t wait to leave LA by the time I was done. I am allergic to the sun, and break out in hives after prolonged exposure, and that was how LA was; it felt like it got under my skin and I couldn’t scratch it away. The air reminded me of September 11th, hazed and thick as it was, full of smoke and fog and exhaust instead of dust and crumbled buildings but no more easy to breathe.

I had always eyed Manhattan again. I had thought I might settle back in Manhattan, ultimately, but the problem there was that I had just turned 30 and didn’t feel ready to settle. I wanted to see more, do more, experience more, and Denver was at the top of my list of cities. It sounded like the right balance between nature and citylife, and there was a girl, too, but several months into my stay in Denver I realized pretty fully neither was right. I can’t call it a bad relationship; I learned a lot, both about myself and about life and the world, and if nothing else, I’m at least grateful that it made me so intent not only on Manhattan but also on myself.

To wit:

A moment. I think I was just about to shower. I know I was in the bathroom, and I remember I was standing. And a feeling came over me that I wanted more. That I wanted different. A realization that I wasn’t happy, for myriad reasons, and that I hadn’t been happy for a while. I had spoken to the girl several times, I had thought, had attempted to find words for things I didn’t like, things I didn’t want, things I needed, but in the end I’m not sure I did it effectively. In the end, I ultimately felt like I had found deaf ears, and I realized, then, I had hit my breaking point. I could try harder, to help things change even though nothing had in several months, or I could choose change, choose myself, choose the life I wanted, choose happiness.

I was thirty years old, and I chose happiness. I chose myself.

Selfish, perhaps, but otherwise what’s the point?

It’s worth noting that I knew, too, the girl I was with wasn’t happy, and it is worth noting here that though we (in general. Not the girl and me) might well be able to cheer each other up, that we might bestow upon each other some small kindness like a smile on an otherwise gloomy day, we cannot make each other happy. We cannot make another person happy. And if another person is not happy, no amount of external influence—with perhaps the exception of psychiatric help/agents—can change that. Something might turn a mood around, some small event might brighten an otherwise dark day, but happiness is more fundamental than that.

I knew I couldn’t make her happy, and I knew I wasn’t happy where I was, and that was when I realized I had to find my own happiness. That had to be my first priority.

I had already been thinking about New York. Since last year’s anniversary of September 11th. It hit me differently last year. I don’t think I’ve ever slept past the moment the first plane hit the first tower in all the years since, but this year . . . this year, Manhattan called to me again.

***

I am not a New Yorker. Even when I worked in Manhattan, I lived in a crummy little apartment in Jersey City, and commuted every day into the most glorious City in the world. I went to the afore-mentioned Saint Peter’s College, spent those four years (blowing through two degrees, one in Bio and one in English; earning degrees in half the time it takes other people is not entirely new to me) in dorms just fifteen minutes from a train I only took a dozen or so times into Manhattan proper, two lines—one to Christopher Street (where one of my roommates freshman year forbade me from going along, saying I was too pretty) and 9th and 14th and 23rd and then 33rd and Herald Square and six blocks to Times Square; and the other to the World Trade Center and downtown/Financial District.

I moved up there when involved with a girl (girls and the sometimes silly things they inspire me to do is not an unfamiliar theme in my life). We were engaged at the time I moved in just a couple weeks after graduating, but she broke it off a month or so later, and by the end of the summer, I was single again. By the end of that summer, I was young and naïve and overeager and overexciteable and ready to piddle over myself at every opportunity I got, and of course, I was where I was, so there were many. I had gotten a job as a temp at an advertising agency, but it was like one of those odd relationships that continues without much reason either party can really enumerate.

But that was okay. I didn’t mind not being a full-time worker. I liked the idea I could pick up and go anytime I pleased (which continues to be something I value in life even if it may in addition be something I don’t actually make use of all that often). I liked my crummy little apartment where pretty much all I did was write and sleep. I liked my friends, and I liked traveling home on alternate weekends to see my buddies I’d grown up with play in dive bars before returning, again, home for work Monday morning, and I liked thinking of both places as “home.”

I liked not being certain of anyone home, because sometimes that makes home everywhere. If home mostly where you’re comfortable, and I think it may be, but you can be comfortable anywhere, the world becomes a more intimate place.

I liked so many things. There were things I didn’t like, of course, but that was just ungracious. It was also not realizing what I had till it was gone.

***

September 11th. I’ve written about that day to great enough length and in great enough detail before, but I can’t help it sometimes. It wasn’t just a moment when I literally experienced all my childhood nightmares made gruesome, terrifying reality; it was also a day something . . . broke.

It may have been my heart. Of that I cannot be certain.

What I know is this; I’d been falling for Manhattan. I’ve fallen for girls before, sometimes easily and sometimes at greater length, sometimes too hard and too fast and other times simply not enough at all, but I never fell for any girl, and I probably never will, the way I fell for Manhattan. I fell for Manhattan like you’re supposed to: in the beginning, the giddy rush of every new text message, the near quantum uncertainty inherent in the romance of handholding and first kisses, giving way later to an extended but sincere courtship you very nearly don’t realize it’s happening until you’ve been doing it so long you can’t imagine other things feeling so right. I held Manhattan’s hand, and I bought Manhattan flowers, and when Manhattan kissed me for the first time, I clicked my heels home. I fell for Manhattan like you always hope to fall.

I was very much in love with Manhattan. I was in love with the way she walked and the way she sounded. I was in love with how she carried herself, because she carried herself every which way she knew how, uptown and downtown and totally around the way; I fell in love with her as the young punk sucking nicotine into her slender, tattooed throat in front of CBGB’s (OMFUG), as the perfumed executive in two-piece and heels and pearls who could buy and sell the street in front of her, as the freshly manicured and pedicured and saloned woman in the Audrey Hepburn dress and the opera glasses at Lincoln Center. No matter whom I wanted, whom I needed, Manhattan was there, and Manhattan was her, in the span of a single block the girl I wanted to bring back to my mother and the girl who was going to steal me away from home.

And in the same way as falling in love with the right girl can bring out the most positive aspects of a man, I felt like Manhattan did the same with me. I felt stronger and faster and smarter and cooler. I felt taller and hotter and sexier, and the most important part of those feelings was that I never once felt like Manhattan made me better; I always felt like Manhattan stripped away everything I never was, all the insecurity and pretension and falsity, and left me with only me, only myself, and that that was enough. I can describe no greater feeling in the world than realizing you just can’t pretend anymore, but that’s okay, because you’re awesome. In Manhattan I bought tattoos of Chinese symbols (just before such body art became “cool”), and leather pants, and an awesome leather jacket that fit me like a cape, and I did those things not because I thought they would make me cool but rather because I loved to and wanted to and I didn’t much care what people thought of it.

In a way, then, September 11th was like a betrayal. It wasn’t like Manhattan broke up with me; it was more subtle than that, more complicated. There is a moment in a story I am working on, a version of which appears as “A Little Heaven” in my collection, in which the narrator, Donovan, makes a point about being in love, and how sometimes romance ends the moment you realize that all the idealistic love in the world simply cannot save a relationship. Watching that first tower crumble down and disappear into dust that day . . . I felt as though it had brought a piece of me down with it. There are so few moments in life when the world changes so literally and so extremely from one moment to the next, and that moment marked one both for the City and for me.

Just like there was suddenly in the skyline a negative space occupied only by dust and hurting, I felt like something in me was gone, too. I think it was that comfort. Not with life and the world, but that comfort being me. I started to wonder what I was doing with my life and fearing whatever it was wasn’t enough.

***

If someone offered me any superpower in the world, my gut and instantaneous response would be to ask if telekinesis would include moving myself, as well as objects, with my mind. Because if it did, of course, that would mean I would be able to fly.

And if it did not, I would only want to fly.

In one of the five books in the Hitchhiker’s trilogy, Douglas Adams writes that the secret to flying is to throw yourself toward the ground and miss. In Peter Pan, the secret is, of course, happy thoughts, while Dumbo has the feather magical only in its ability to make the elephant believe. In each example, I think it is less about happiness than about that moment of misdirection; it’s less about belief or non-belief and more about just not thinking about it anymore. There’s an old story about a man and a bird: the man asks the bird which foot it leaps from to take off, and the little bird stops to think about something it never has before, and it starts to try to figure it out and discovers it can’t fly anymore.

Lately, over the past few months, I’ve thought a lot about a lot of things. I have tried to figure some things out, even if I’m not sure I’ve been entirely certain what “things” are, nor what “figuring them out” means. It seems like a mature and responsible thing to do, this figuring of things out, and I think the inclination came from a lot of factors, personal and professional alike.

***

If this has seemed disjointed, it is because I had to leave it aside. I began it on the bus but could not finish it there. As I neared the Lincoln Tunnel, as I saw for the first time in years the skyline minus those towers, I started to sniffle. Almost cry. Part of it was just because I was writing about having fallen for Manhattan, while another part again was the sudden realization I’d never wondered if I was ready for the emotions that were about to return.

By the time I did, it was too late. By the time I did, I was in the City.

I couldn’t wait to get off the bus, and I felt like a supernova as I stepped out of Port Authority onto 8th Avenue, smiling hard enough I could feel it with my whole body, like I could feel Manhattan in my body again. Walking along 42nd, over the glittery sidewalk, past Madame Tussaud’s and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! I was walking on air, and I never thought I could be so free. I was flyin’ away on a wing and a prayer, and Manhattan caught me up and kissed me like she meant it and every damned thought I had, every worry I chewed on like a dog working on a bone, every uncertainty flew out of my head. I would say I immediately gained a swagger, that I had a spring in my step, but that would imply that my feet ever once touched the pavement, and I’m not entirely certain they did, nor that the smile ever once left my face. And over the course of four-ish days, I talked to old friends and discovered new ones, drank amazing beer and ate street-vendor sausage and fine-cooked chicken, felt proud of the glorious people in my life and lucky as Hell to know them. I was called a genius and a best friend, easy and devastatingly handsome, a hero writer and a pimp. I declined no invitations nor turned down any drinks, rode the carousel and sat in the cemetery, and buzzed through Times Square like mojito-fueled neon at four in the morning. I bought awesome new shoes and upgraded my old hat, and even a book I had wanted to read for a long time, “So Brave, Young, and Handsome,” and was a little surprised the clerk who accepted my payment didn’t confirm I was, in fact, all three. I watched the most talented dancers I have ever seen dance like they meant it, like they felt it, like nobody was watching, but I was and I cried with pride for friends and pure empathy for their passion, and then I laughed like the damned fool I have always been when the mohawked-future-dancers in fishnets and leather like oil fired their confetti-filled boomsticks in a glorious burst of glitter and gold and bubbles.

Most important, I stopped trying to figure things out and just went with it.

In other words, I flew.

Manhattan wasn’t my magic feather, nor even my happy thoughts. It just showed me once and for all I didn’t need either (though I had plenty of the latter), that I can fly on my own. That many years have passed since I lived there, and in many ways I have changed, but still I am me, and still I can soak up life and love and the world.

All of which less rejuvenated me than reset me. I don’t feel refreshed so much as brand spankin’ new again. I want to do things again. I finished one novel a few weeks ago, and now I want to finish another, as well as a screenplay I’m still working on. I may want to start blogging again, but I may want to do it differently; I like that I can micro-update on Twitter, that I can share videos and links via Facebook (so you can follow me on the former and “friend” me on the latter), if only because it frees up this space for some other things I’ve had in mind. Because one thing Manhattan showed me, all over again, was that I have some of the best stories in the world, and I think we all know the best stories in the world are even better when shared.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel like if I throw myself at the ground, I’m going to miss completely.

Mainly, because, this weekend, I felt like Manhattan’s old flame, and was constantly reminded that, when you love something, you let it go. You let it go without condition, without qualification, and most of all without expectation that it will return. And turn that around, now, because I never let Manhattan go; she let me go, let me return home, let me sort some stuff out and do what I needed to do, and when I returned, when I came back to her bed of concrete and asphalt and neon and brownstones, she pulled aside the covers and accepted me all over again without reservation. She told me I had done good, that she was proud of me, that I had changed but still had the same eyes, the same smile, and then she kissed me like she always did and took my breath away.

And when the weekend ended, she watched me shower and pack, and she straightened my collar as we stood at the door, and she kissed me like she meant it and said come back again soon, lover.

She’ll be there when I do. She always is.

Holy Hell it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I didn’t plan on that; if I had, I probably would have said something.

I’ve been otherwise occupied, obviously. For myriad reasons. Thinking less and getting on with things, which is generally a fine way to go about it. This past year was difficult in several ways, including two major moves, the end of a long relationship, and overall a lot of change and flux. I think it culminated a few weeks ago when I didn’t get into NYU; I’d looked forward to going back up to Manhattan to attend school there. There have been false starts and falser hopes, but in the end you live and learn and I’m still, in ways, absorbing some lessons. It is, in ways, like that moment in The Matrix when Neo mainlines kung fu, except for the fact that there’s a steeper learning curve, and more time necessary with new knowledge before the application thereof.

The reason for the actual break from blogging was simple, though: I was getting deep into a project called Meets Girl, which is going really well, lately, and which came alive to me in ways previous drafts didn’t. It’s the first thing I’ve retried since I got my Master’s; I started this new draft not long after I graduated, if I’m not mistaken. Which means it’s taken a long time, but the nature of the story and the telling of it have challenged me in ways I haven’t expected. Which you’ll understand when you read it, and which may come sooner than later.

I didn’t expect it to take so long as it has, but then I had an idea for a screenplay I had to go with. It was one of those 6 a.m. ideas so powerful it leaves you no chance of getting back to sleep, and I wrote the first act in a two-day mad rush of ideas and fun and laughing at myself.

It has since slowed down, but I’m about midway through, now, and it’s going well.

It’s all going well. I can’t complain, I’ve realized. Not in this lifetime.

But that’s not the whole explanation. The whole explanation and the whole reason I haven’t posted is because I suddenly started to feel very ambivalent about blogging. I think I was eleven when I realized I wanted to be a writer, and the only thing I ever wanted to write, growing up, was novels; they’re all I read, besides a handful of short stories. When I started blogging a few years ago, I thought it might be a good way to somehow become a better writer, but, I’ve realized I think that’s rather a bit like trying to become a better golfer by playing pool–sure, there’s a ball and a hole and a stick, but that’s now how you–no, don’t–what’re you–?

That’s not how it works, sir.

That’s not to say there’s no room for a pool table in the golf clubhouse, of course. Just, priorities; nobody’s in the clubhouse for the felt. The felt is an afterthought.

I’ve now arguably belabored the metaphor, and I don’t even like golf.

So I’m finishing a novel and a screenplay. In the meantime, I’ve been doing more on Twitter, which you can see right there in the sidebar. I plan to come back here at some point. I plan to post more. But I plan to use it differently than I was before. Best laid plans etc., but then again, sometimes it’s good to have one if only so there’s something to aim for, even if you finally miss.

Not long ago, I went to a Philly bar called Eulogy with my best friend. This bar is a Belgian sort of pub one feature of which is a private room with a table like a coffin, and this best friend is a guy earning his master’s in literature but who also moonlights as a keyboardist in one band and a lead guitarist in another, which I hope will intimate the overall atmosphere. If only because my buddy and I have the conversation where we discuss Derrida but totally admit to neither ever reading or understanding the guy.

Over the course of (several) fine Belgian beers (Rochefort 10 ftw!), we started talking about Heath Ledger and The Dark Knight. Now, what you have to know, straight off, is that while we’re good buddies, he and I rarely agree on anything related to either music or movies. We both like music in general and good music in particular, but we have very different definitions as to what that exactly means.

So, Heath Ledger. The Dark Knight.

I didn’t love the movie. I’ve read many people claim that the reason it’s so great is because Christopher Nolan, moreso than directing a good superhero movie, managed to make a good movie, overall, but I’m not sure. See, I think that what really happened is that Nolan managed to make a good crime movie out of superhero material, because I can’t agree it was overall a good movie; it’s at least twenty minutes to half an hour too long, the final twenty minutes to half an hour of which seem composed of a philosophical treatise on the nature of good and evil telegraphed through dialog to the audience because Nolan suddenly got scared his audience hadn’t picked up what he was saying. Still, I will admit I originally thought it was badly structured, but I’ve since realized it’s not, that the plot turns when it’s supposed to for the most part (given 3-act structure and 140 minutes, the first plot point should come about 35 minutes in, with another midpoint beat and then a second plot point, each coming 35 minutes after the previous).

Also: when did Two-Face debut? In the comics, I mean. He’s been around at least long enough that Tommy Lee Jones played him nearly a decade ago, but yet he lasts, like, fifteen minutes in this flick? Wtf? I suppose it’s possible Nolan was lolzing us and will bring Two-Face back for The Dark Knight Returns or The Dark Knight Again or The Dark Knight Lightens Up a Bit, Because, Seriously, Why So Serious?, but either way, I think Nolan blows his villain load by using two who merely serve as thematic foils to Batman/Bruce Wayne, rather than any story use.

Because I think that’s the problem I have with the Joker (and with Ledger’s portrayal of him). While he claims to both want chaos and have no plan (and I realize that his claim of the latter probably serves the former), I think that the two villains clash in a way that the Scarecrow and Liam Neeson didn’t in Batman Begins. The first movie was about Batman and how he foiled the plans of Neeson, whose subsidiary was the Scarecrow; this movie is not just about Batman anymore. It’s about Gotham City and heroes and good and evil (as Nolan seems to want so dearly for us to see). It’s almost like Nolan had the exact opposite problem as the brothers Wachowski: while the second two Matrix movies probably should have been combined into a single flick, Nolan probably should have taken his time with this story and let the second installment become two.

(which, too, would have solved the problem Warner Bros. now faces, because, sorry to be callous about it, but who’s going to play the Joker now?)

Can the Joker desire chaos but have no plan? I’m not sure it works both ways, but given a little more fleshing out, Nolan might have proven it can and does. As it stands, though, the problem with the Joker is that he’s merely the foil or the anti-self or the whatever-opposite of Batman. He’s reactionary, really, and I’m trying to come up with great characters who have been solely reactionary but not really succeeding. He wants chaos, but only seems to want chaos because other people have plans he doesn’t like.

(of course, the major argument there is there’s no such thing as order, anyway, given that the natural tendency of all things is toward disorder/entropy. Had the Joker taken any science courses, he might realize that life exists despite chaos, in which case he might file for unemployment by reason of redundance)

Given all that, Ledger arguably did the best job he could with a somewhat otherwise limited role; I’m not sure he’s the only reason The Dark Knight wasn’t a typical superhero movie, but he might have been. That and his premature death are, I think, a large part of the reason his performance has gotten the acclaim it has. Which might seem cynical or even callous, I fear, but the thing is, I keep thinking of his performance in Brokeback Mountain. Now, I didn’t like Brokeback; in fact, I shut it off after fifteen or twenty minutes, because I was bored out of my skull. And I think that The Dark Knight, despite its flaws, is a movie far superior to Brokeback if only because the latter commits the cardinal sin of movies, which is that it’s not at all entertaining, but still, I watch Ledger as Joker and I just don’t think his performance there is nearly as good as he was in Brokeback Mountain. In Brokeback, he wanted something (namely: Gyllenhaal) but yet restrained himself, and in that restraint is all the subtlety and craft that I thought the Joker lacked. The Joker seemed wall-to-wall Id. Creepy thrift-store drugged-out rockstar more likely to front an emo band, sure, and entertaining to at least the degree you expect him to be onstage lamenting about how nothing actually has meaning, but just being crazy-villain guy seems to require little effort. I mean, in some ways, it strikes me that his role was of the just-add-alcohol variety; skip all the inhibitions and the performance executes itself.

Do I think he’ll win (not that you asked)? I don’t know if it’s important, at this point, if only because I think there’s too great a disconnect between good movies and critically acclaimed, award-winning movies. And why do I think that?

Because the one thing my buddy and I could agree on, over those fine Belgian beers, was that Ironman might well have been the best movie all year, and Robert Downey, Jr. has always knocked every performance he’s ever given straight out of the park. I mean, the fact that he doesn’t have an Oscar yet is nearly as big a travesty as that Zodiac went completely ignored last year, and if he got one this year for being “the dude playin’ the dude disguised as another dude,” I wouldn’t argue. I’d say he could then dedicate it to Ledger, but didn’t Daniel Day-Lewis already do that last year?

All that said, I might also just be bitter. I still wish Nolan had cast Christian Bale as the Joker, too, because I think that would have been awesome.

(crossposted to Mightygodking.com)

Tags: brokeback mountain, christopher nolan, genre, heath ledger, iron man, joker, oscars, robert downey jr., the dark knight, two-face, zodiac

When I got my loan disbursement this time around, I took care of all my education-related bills and such, and had a bit left over. Which was a nice relief after having been waiting to receive on so many accounts, and I decided to celebrate. To indulge, in fact, in two things I’d been wanting for a while.

The first was a new pair of headphones. Several years ago, after hearing very positive things about them, I invested in a pair of Grado SR80s. Grado is known among audiophiles as having totally premium cans of the sort that can often run into the thousands of dollars for a single pair of their most high-end product. The SR80s are not; they’re just a step above entry level, but I loved them. They sounded so good. Listening to my music really was different when I used them, as opposed the the earbuds I had been using.

And then they broke. They served well for several years, but the wire frayed and the right-side can sputtered, and I could have fixed them, probably, but it might have cost nearly as much as new cans, anyway. Besides the fact that I had bought a pair of Sennheiser earbuds to use with my iPod, and they were sufficient even if they weren’t quite as spectacular.

I’ve been wanting a pair of headphones since then, though, and so I bought a pair last week. I did some quite extensive shopping around, and noticed some spectacular deals around Christmas, including one particular pair of earbuds that normally retail for $500 but had been discounted by 50%. I admit I almost took that plunge, but I had already decided I wanted real cans again. Big, open, circumnaural cans to go over my head. I mean, mind you, I’m no more an audiophile than I might be an oenophile, but I like my music nearly as much as I like my wine (I prefer the term “lush”), and after having owned those Grados . . . I missed them. They had sounded so good. One thing about them, though, is that Grados are kind of retro in terms of design and really aren’t the most comfortable headphones in the world.

Given that I like my Sennheiser earbuds, I thought I’d give their headphones a shot. They have several series, but I stumbled upon their HD595 model. Nice design. Velvet ear cushions. Good, dynamic driving for all types of music. I consistently read people remark on their versatility. And their price was just about at the most I was willing to spend.

They came today. And ZOMG. Seriously.

Usually, higher-end cans need what audiophiles call “burn-in time.” Apparently, whatever in the cans works needs a while to equalize, or something. Most times, you hear that you want to play some music through them for, like, 24 hours straight before you really listen to them, as they reach some balance in their sound. I’ve heard some people open the package, hook them up, and then put them in a drawer for a week.

Readers of this blog, however, are probably well aware of my admittedly limited patience. Knowing me, does putting them in a drawer sound like something I’d be able to do?

Of course not. Come on, a brief tour of my music collection.

Continue Reading »

Tags: adam richman, belinda carlisle, grado, lili haydn, linkin park, lo fidelity allstars, luka bloom, magnetic fields, miles davis, sennheiser

Apparently, those allergies I battled the other week? Either the prelude to a cold or the set-up for one, which came hard and fast and knocked me right the hell off my feet. It was like a rope-a-dope, or something. Tuesday I started getting cranky and achy, and then Wednesday and Thursday just outright sucked.

So that’s what I did this week.

On the plus side, I got a loan that should carry me a while, and went to my first eye exam in several years. I studied hard and passed with flying colors (ha!).

While sick, I watched the so-criminally-underrated-it-was-canceled-after-eight-episodes Love Monkey, which starred Tom Cavanagh in the titular role and concerns days in the life of an A&R rep for an indie music label. Really, really great show based on an actually decent book with the same name by Kyle Smith. Then again, it was one of the single instances when the adaptation was better than the source material, and those eight episodes became one of the most perfectly executed television series I’ve ever watched. Doesn’t seem to be available on DVD yet, but I’m sure some resourcefulness and good ole’ fashioned Google fu can help.

This is the first part of the first episode:

With February just around the corner, there’s lots to do, but then again, I feel like I’m always saying that, so I think I’m going to stop and just, you know, do them. I fear this blog became a bit too much like a journal and a bit too little like . . . well, something really awesome.

Anyway, more after I can fully clear the glue out of my head. And maybe beer and venison tonight with my best buddy in the world. Sounds therapeutic to me, even if it is, like, two degrees out there.

Tags: love monkey, tom cavanagh

I’ll pretend this ship’s not sinking.

Because, really, it’s not.

As expected, I’ve had Go West in my head for a few days now. As also expected, I haven’t minded much.

So here’s the thing: one of the reasons I came back to Jersey and with the intention of moving back to Manhattan was that I thought I had to figure some things out. It’s a phrase I used several times. I expected some deep self-analysis and introspection, perhaps? I’m not sure, exactly, if only because such phrases have always inspired me to eye-rolls. Like the whole “I need to find myself thing.”

(I thought I had to find myself once. So I started looking, and after not long at all, I did. Find myself, I mean. I was under my bed, and boy was I surprised to see me)

And so I’ve been thinking. As I’ve been writing. I’ve been thinking about MAs and MBAs. I’ve been thinking about NYU and Regis. I’ve been thinking about What I Want to Do With My Life.

As though I hadn’t been already.

It’s been a joke among my friends lately that I’ve become a bit of an academic gypsy, except without the whole eyeliner thing. The word “nomadic” has come up. A few people–including my own mother, in fact–remarked further upon the idea: that I can’t “keep running from” . . . well, I don’t know. People say “things,” but nobody’s exactly specific.

But the thing I’m realizing is that I’ve been doing what I want to do with my life. I’ve been talking about Hollywood and LA to people, and how much I disliked the “city” itself, but I loved USC. I went to Denver because I knew I sought city life but also missed nature; I thought Denver would be a good place, but after only a few months, I started missing home and Manhattan. And I really missed home. I missed my family and friends. And I was thinking of here, of Jersey, as home.

So I came home.

All those things, I wanted to do. I wanted to be here right now, and here I am.

Saturday night, I went out to see my buddies play. This was a common activity when I lived here a few years ago; I would go out to Philly usually at least once a month. I would knock a few back. I would dance. I would smile and hug my friends and laugh.

Which basically describes this past Saturday night. I did all those things.

I was just talking to my sister, telling her I felt anxious. Telling her I didn’t know what I was doing. She asked me how much thought I’d given it, and I told her: “A decent amount.” To which she replied: “Well, then, why don’t you stop? You’ve got too much time on your hands. Get on with it.”

I keep hoping for clarity from confusion, self-knowledge like some beatific epiphany–but if I heard someone say something even remotely like that, my first response would be simple:

“What does that even mean?”

The other night, I dreamt I danced twice, once in practice and then again as performance. The following evening, though, I knocked one back and I smiled and I danced for the simple sake of dancing, because, really, what other reason would one need? Is this anxiety I keep feeling just the universe’s way of telling me to stop trying to control everything and just let life happen?

I don’t know, but I’m not sure I should give it much thought, either.

After all, there’s dancin’ to be done.

Feets don’t fail me now.

Just four days after GM received a $5 billion dollar loan as a bailout from the federal government, the company announced today it would lay off 2,000 workers and slow production across nine plants.

I hate to say that it seems as always that the rich get richer while the poor get laid off, because that’s way more cynical than I generally tend toward, but, well, it really does seem that way, lately.

But I don’t know; you’d think maybe GM would use some of those workers it’s laying off to work on fuel/energy efficiency standards Obama is targeting.

It’s kind of a shame Obama can’t just step in and say, “Guys, we just gave you $5 billion. You’re not slowing production or laying anyone off. What you’re going to do is give free cars to all the customers your banks/dealerships are denying new car loans to.”

Tags: bailout, economy, gm, Obama

No?

How about now?

You should totally read the book before you go see it, and if you can get your hands on the audio version: listen to it. Gaiman reads it himself, and it’s brilliantly creepy and hauntingly charming in all the best ways.

Tags: coraline, neil gaiman

I’ve been battling allergies off and on since . . . well, roughly since I got back to Jersey, I guess. Yesterday, my head felt as though someone had filled it with glue, and today ain’t a long shot better. Last night, I tried to crash early before realizing I hadn’t eaten dinner, but I found a half a cheese steak in the fridge. And it was from the local Pat’s, which makes the only good cheese steaks in town (my favorite overall goes to Jim’s, on South Street, but I’m usually blissfully inebriated when I eat them, so sober mileage may vary).

Anyway, last night . . . I just had the weirdest dreams. Besides the cowl-cloaked quasi-religious rites-chanting people in the mall, of all places, there was the dance exhibition, of which I was, apparently, the lone participant, and at which I busted a groove to, of all things, “King of Wishful Thinking,” which was apparently sourced from a car stereo and blasted through amps. And by “participated,” I mean twice, because first I had to practice-dance for it, and then I had to real dance, and I still couldn’t help mangling the rondes du jambe or the pommes du terre (I jest. No potatoes were mangled in the making of my dream).

And I’ve never even seen Pretty Woman (only parts of it).

At first I misremembered the artist as Mr. Mister, but it was actually Go West, which left me thinking: but I just got back from West. I want East, or more accurately, just North.

So now I’m going to have that song in my head all day long, but then again, there are worse things. I like that song. By all day long, I’m talking about my trip to my optometrist, which I’m actually in a very nerdy way looking forward to, because I haven’t been there in, like, three years. I hope he doesn’t bitch me out (I wear contacts I’m only supposed to use for, like, a month at a time. I’ve been using them for slightly longer than that).

Good news, though, is that otherwise, I’m writing more lately. This makes me happy. I thought I was working on a novella called Meets Girl, but I just started the second act and I’m only up to 24,000 words and it appears there’s way more than 16,000 to go. So for now I’m just going with it. It’s a post-modern literary fantasy in the grand tradition of novels about writers writing novels, so obviously I’m hoping it ends up way more exciting and interesting than it sounds on paper. So far so good, I think. I thought about doing one of those widget-y things to publicly track my word count, if only because it would so totally shame me into writing more, but they seem like more effort than I care to make. I’d really like to finish it soon, though, so that I can then finish the erotic fantasy I first finished a draft of, like, nine years ago.

Man, I’m so slow sometimes.

Anyway, tomorrow night, I’m out to see my buddies’ band play, something I haven’t said in three years or so, so if I’m scarce this weekend, it’s all that. Combined. But for now I’m off to see the wizard, who is actually my optician, but then again, fixing my eyes is pretty damned magical in my book.