dreams expose area man's New York City lifestyle-based concerns

Ari convinces me to visit the gourmet grocery near my house. I am bowled over by their selection--fresh neem leaves! fresh lemon thyme off the branch!--at prices that are well below those of the regular supermarket, also near my house. This visit somehow meshes with one I am taking with Joel, Amber and one other. Amber and I connect when we realize we are both singing along under our breaths to Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On, playing over the PA system. From here we head to an acquaintance's new digs in Bed Stuy. It's a houseful of seven women, one of whom is Seung. The house is enormous and modern. We are first agog at its size and the claim that it is cheap (quick mental math in my head says $700 a head), and then bowled over by the presence of a) a hot tub; and b) a full-sized swimming pool. I cannot believe this much sprawling real estate exists in Bed Stuy. From here, my hosts turn into Jodie and her husband, who lead me toward the next door neighbor's house. Someone feeds me a treat as a clue to the neighbor's identity. I correctly guess that he is the heir of the Skor chocolate bar empire. His digs are also lavish, and he and his twin brother are goofy guys who make some sort of movies about their lives. Later, Ari and I go to an cocktail event at a dinner club and are persuaded to stay at least through the cake. Naomi joins us as we sit on the large balcony and dig in. It is the best cake I have ever eaten. Creamy, not too sweet. Naomi is equally impressed. We were going to get dinner elsewhere, but now I want to eat there. I check out the menu: each dish is at least $58. We cannot stay. I wonder how they made this cake.

Later still, my roommates and some jobless, maybe homeless folks are being picked up by a bus to head to an event. Karen has spent the morning in the bathroom while I have had to make small talk with a boring planner person who wonders aloud why the Simpsons have never done a plotline about waterfront redevelopment. I have seven minutes in which to get ready, and entering the bathroom, realize that Karen has scrubbed the floor aggressively, and there is beautiful chartreuse detailing in the tile that I've never seen before. It is a revelation.

like the ice cream truck song

I have played "Banjo in the Hollow" approximately one bajillion times now. It is now my interior monologue, voice of reason, serenity mantra and private theme song, having edged all other aural matter out of my consciousness. It's too bad it sounds just as bad replaying over and over in my head as it does when my fingers trip over it during practice. Can't wait to diversify with "Cripple Creek."

On a related note: Look ma, I'm folksy!

busy morning inside my head

A good friend just wrote to tell me she's engaged. To some degree, it always stings when my close friends couple up for good, because it means there will be less attention for me, but I'm getting used to that as I get older. Somehow, this particular friend's news feels more like a punch in the stomach. Part of it is that her fiance is someone I don't know and am not sure I would be friends with--because we're similar in some ways and dissimilar in some bigger ways, and I am an envious prick. And I think part of it is also that I liked having the ability to occasionally entertain the fantasy of getting together with this friend; over the ten years we've known each other, there has always been some mutual attraction that made our friendship slightly titillating. Never an actionable attraction, at least on my side, but always present and buoying. And now it won't feel that way when I'm around her, because she'll have committed to someone else, and there won't be the same sort of vague potential to swim around in.

That lost potential makes me panicky. As I spent my fourth consecutive Friday night at home watching Internet TV last night--in the case of this particular Friday night, to eat garlic, sleep early and stave off a cold--I wondered if I was on the path to becoming my roommate, the doughy, solitary 34 year-old who rolls around in her desk chair above me, swallows most of our internet bandwith downloading movies and leaves the house only to fetch more frozen meals. I feel like my life might be escaping me.

In less existential news, I had a dream that I played an accordian-like instrument whose keys-side was connected to the base by ten lengths of magnetic tape--like audio cassette tape, but wider. The instrument was adjustable to your armspan by turning a dial to wind in the tape, and I had unwound it too far, and one of the lengths of tape had fallen out of its wheel, and I struggled and struggled to reconnect it with the hole (under which there was affixed a picture of the lead singer from Yo La Tengo), but was unable to. I felt sad but hopeful that someone would soon help me. Cool instrument, though--like a mixture of an accordian and a typewriter.

Now, more garlic. Vampires, stand clear.

we are all babies

A friend told me that when her husband is in a bad mood, she asks him to check and see if he: a) is hungry; b) is tired; or c) has to go to the bathroom. Now that she has small children, these are questions she ponders all the time. It occurs to me that I don't think about them enough. Right now, I'm tired enough to lie in bed and fall asleep within moments--but here I am, awake, resisting sleep. And thinking that maybe I want a snack (though I have recently eaten a pile of risotto the size of my head). I'm so bad at intuiting my actual needs and serving them! Or maybe I just have a limited number of means to satisfy my dissatisfaction, and a hierarchy of preference in employing those means: food; media; sex; sleep. These are unfortunately often insufficient tools to satisfying simple needs like that for physical exercise, or more complex needs like identity validation or connection to others. But they are accessible! I guess this is why I eat so much at work.

Anyway, I'm amazed that I've never really gotten good at identifying what's making me dissatisfied and acting to resolve it. It's so easy to go to bed! Stupid will power.