it's cool

i checked the blog today for the first time in a long time. i had forgotten about it, isn't that weird? i had kind of forgot that i set up this little, quotidian system of yelling, complaining or reflecting into the void. i guess it is work. real work now, that made me forget.

the new work is very interesting because i know very little about it. the new work is hard because it requires a certain level of expertise of which i have very little. the work is boring sometimes because it requires a lot of waiting. but it is good and true for the moment. and i like that. i will continue and overcome my itch for something new (already) and try to master something that will serve me well. we will see. it's a crap-shoot with these things.

i have become less reflective, therefore, because i spend my energy thinking about how to make work more interesting and important and pertinent. i have strange dreams where i solve an unsolvable problem (usually through a missed detail or obvious, elegant loophole) and then i wake up and it all dissolves the second i do. i can't recall even the nature of the problem, let alone the solution. i feel like i had a glimpse into a magnificent secret, one that will set the world right and make everyone happy. but it eludes me every time. perhaps it is because it is a dream, that these things remain elusive, or i am too obtuse to grasp them.

in other news, i feel i have mastered the stick-shift. even V., who was terrified to get in the car with my after my fear-full accounts of stalling repeatedly and grinding and lurching to work while people honked at me and i broke into sweat, said that i did a good job. my father was less impressed when he came down to visit, and held on tight to the handle above the door, telling me that in his day, in nebraska, you were considered totally uncool if you made a blunder with the gears or revved the engine while shifting. then he promised me he would teach me how to shift without the clutch, which sounds both totally impossible and totally bad-ass.

the other thing that has been on my mind is missing new york. i keep asking myself why. i figured out that part of the reason is the lack of polish and professionalism (at least that is the way i see it) that i encounter down here. at work it is constant mistakes. small ones, like missed cc's on emails or simple spelling errors that set people back and look foolish. but it is everywhere. the strangest thing to me is a kind of professional cattiness... people are very very protective of their work, even relating to the recovery, about which there is an infinite amount to be done. i find this unproductive and painful in the context of new orleans, especially. i imagine this is true all over the place, i just have noticed it more here.

V. always told me "everyone only cares about themselves". i refused to believe that, because i was raised in a culture, tradition and religion that told me to think of others. however, i had to think long and hard about this. of course people do, and if you can use that approach, not to be angry and think that the world is a selfish place, but to understand each individual's motivation for self preservation, you can weave and negotiate through a lot of things. maybe that is just a good political tactic, i am not sure, and still kind of wary of the blanket statement approach, but there is something to it. it is not sophisticated, but there is something to be learned in the brutality of it all.

new york taught me, among other things, (how to get laid, hustle for a job, get free drinks, look for an apartment and survive on $5 a day) that there can be a high level of achievement and also a high level of personality at the same time. some of the people i met there had power and influence, style and class, money and fabulous apartments, and they were generous, open visionaries who believed in sharing all of that. they believed there was enough to go around, and you could feel it. i miss that, in this small suffering town sometimes. i believe in it, i want to go forward in this small new orleans, but i am amazed at the lack of collective vision, and the bizarre competition for ownership.

it is more like Accra than anywhere else i have been in the first world (if that makes sense). not necessarily in the sense that it looks like Accra (which it does with its banana trees, cottages and horrible roads) but that the scarcity of resources makes people crazy. and desperate and tired. and i think most want the same thing i do, but we can't have a vision and the magic that comes with that unless we actually believe that we aren't just in it for ourselves.

the deadly silence of preoccupation

i know it has been awhile, but only two weeks. the new job and the fellowship have really been sucking the life out of me. i can't dare a creative thought or the evils of practicality will come swooping in and crush them. i have no time to write. strike that. i don't dare to write because of my preoccupations, my feelings of change and therefore hourly mood-swings. paranoia about inadequacies, yadda yadda. oh change, how can you be the same and so different each time? i know change when i see it, but then it smacks of newness. no it is supposed to be the same change all the time. right?

basically. i don;t know if i am on the right path. with my job, with my love, with my life. then again, the path is the goal, as the buddhists say. what is all of this, this changing and loving and aspiring and frustration?

i bought a new car, a stick-shift. i couldn't drive it when i bought it.... so i had the man who sold it to me park it in front of my house. K. spent two hours with me in city park lurching and stalling until i could actually drive it home. i still don;t feel comfortable, but i can get from a to b. i wish i never heard that driving a stick was hard. i wish no one ever told me that new orleans was scary and dangerous. i wish i never had to hear negative or prohibative messages about things that just have to be done. it takes a lot of energy to forget what the world tells you and to just get on with things.

that is all for now. more to come. ugh. somebody told me to be careful what you put online, since 'someone' can 'google' you and 'ruin' your 'reputation'. please tell me how to make heads or tails of that, gentle readers. but hence the paranoid and circuitousness. i am too shy and afraid to say what i want, sad that i can't be bold and bizarre and paranoid enough to be afraid. there.

herbert muschamp ( i miss artistry)

Herbert Muschamp died today. Read the article in the NYT if you feel so inclined.

I had the opportunity to have dinner with him once. I wasn't alone, anyway he was gay and wouldn't have had interest in a one on one with me... it was a dinner meeting with the board of my organization and they invited him. he was fabulous. astute, cynical, articulate, sensual, interesting. knew good food, could make a joke. I loved it! I knew how lucky I was to meet him. he talked about the built environment in the way that I experienced it. it was personal and reminiscent. not clinical and power-driven. it was never about who had built what, but about who had to live in it.

After that dinner/board meeting Barbaralee Diamonstien-Speilvogel asked us to buy him a present. An out of print book about Palladio ( I think) from the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan. I called the general line and after dropping BLDS's name, I spoke directly with Fred Bass the owner of the Strand, and had the book put on hold for me to pick up and then messenger to BLDS's house so she could write a personal note and then on to HM. I took the subway across town, was ushered into the rare books section, and a huge tome, out of print, rare, in excellent condition was put in my hands. all i knew was that the book was worth a lot and that it was for a rather miraculous person who would not only appreciate the content, but the ephemeral nature of the object itself.

i am really sad that he was considered brilliant, emotional and abstract, and that that was the exception, rather than the rule. he was my kind of people: gentle, visionary, artistic and never wed to conventions or the pressures of capitalism, even though he worked within them. at least i aspired to that.

have a great re-birth, Mr. Herbert! Love you and miss you.