xtcian

5/30/02 We're back up in

5/30/02

We're back up in Columbia County tonight, which meant a windy post-midnight drive and an exhausted arrival. I just realized that there's no way in English to say "windy" - when meaning a "road that winds around a lot" - without confusing everybody. Whatever; I'm sure the wind was blowing too.

In my growing fascination with other people's blogs, I've surfed around on various subway lines on nycbloggers and came up with something I've known for some time: there are a shitload of knitters out there, and they all keep a diary. I suppose it has something to do with the natural storytelling element of early American quilting bees and klatches and the like, but fuck - those girls sure like to write about knitting. It's so alien to me that I find it fascinating, and what's weirder, they're all single and knitting baby clothes.

I found two blogs, one by Marney and the other by Theresa, and they came up with questions for people to answer on their knitting blogs, so I'm deciding to play along, even though I couldn't knit so much as a tea cosy if my life depended on it.

1. Where did you attend school as a child, and what do you remember about the playground?

Grant Wood Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, IA. The main thing I remember is that the most popular girl in class led me to a hole in the staircase and told me to look in, and when I did, the boys on the other side blew sawdust into my eye. I went to the nurse and then I was told I was in trouble.

2. Do you remember your favorite activity?

Staring up at the timeline of Presidents of the U.S. during Social Science class, and memorizing them all, something I can still do today (except for Franklin Pierce - I always forget that bastard).

3. What sort of lunch box did you have, and what was in it?

A Peanuts lunchpail with a baloney sandwich in it, and a thermos full of strawberry Quik and glass shards from when it fell off my bike.

4. Describe yourself as an elementary school student.

Prey.

I dunno, maybe I'm not doing these questions like the knitting girls would have liked.

me trying to lift Sean, circa 1971

5/29/02 Spent a blissful day

5/29/02

Spent a blissful day not going into the city, which is always a treat for us. I'd spend every day screwing around Brooklyn if I could - part of my anxiety wants us only to visit Manhattan after working hours, which is basically when the only fun stuff happens anyway.

After seeing a blurb in Slate about a map of bloggers typing away in New York, I went to the site and promptly cast my lot as one of the fine bloggers at the Grand Army Plaza subway stop vicinity. The nycbloggers.com site is really cool; you can find fellow online diary exhibitionists just by perusing the subway map. It's one of those "unconscious brotherhood" things that always gives me a cerebral hard-on. I was the first at my stop; by 5pm there were three of us. Looking at the map of Manhattan, you can see where the hipsters live: no blogs at the 96th St. stop on the Upper East Side, but 12 already at Astor Place (by the time any of you read this, I'm sure there will be tons more).

Even more incredible, the site was conceived and built yesterday. The digital age is truly amazing, and has made lighting work of urban legends and cultural memes, so much so that two underemployed coders/bloggers can meet on the street yesterday, have a good idea, write the code, be in Slate the next day (how it got there I have no idea) and then get hundreds of thousands of hits by today.

The site has an incredible feature on it: the entries of bloggers writing on 9/11, one of whom worked two floors above me at the Woolworth Building. I put our family's diaries on there as well, because I think the writing in some of those is quite lyrical.

One's own experience of the WTC towers is always subjective, but I thought the buildings were so unbelievably beautiful. My floor at the Woolworth Building had the stunning vantage point of being up in the air with them, giving us the true sense of their vastness. I'd eat lunch and just stare at them. I even put them in the first part of a novel I'd started there:

"I watched the sun set between the twin towers. I used to think the towers were like the headstones at Stonehenge, you know, vast, druidical markers from the mists of the past, but here I was too close: they were more bars, solid awful steel, offering only a glimpse of something so beautiful behind them."

And with all of my relentless archivism, you'd think I had a hundred pictures of the World Trade Center, but in all my ferreting through stacks of pics, I only found one:

It's my old roommate Josh Pate and me, on a fall break trip from Carolina in 1990, both of us probably drunk. We were on a boat going to the Statue of Liberty, about to go up into her torso - something you can't do anymore.

5/28/02 Out of the frying

5/28/02

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, I suppose: we went straight from the bucolic, verdant greenery of Columbia County to the sinus-closing congestion of LaGuardia Airport to drop off Chip, then across the Queensboro Bridge (which I find quite dramatic) to the City. At Asset, we met with Peter Coleman and another illustrator from Morocco who was actually quite brilliant - and whose name I won't reproduce here because I'll get it wrong. Like Dumas in "The Three Musketeers," I'll just call him "Monsieur T_______."

Later tonight, Stasia Droze came to Brooklyn with her boyfriend Jim, and she interviewed me for a documentary she's been making since about 1996. It's a study of several different people in the entertainment industry, and she checks in on them every year or so to see where they are, both career-wise and emotionally. I've been a subject of the film since the beginning, and I think it might run a little like this:

1997: trepidation, unsure of Los Angeles
1998: depression, deep mistrust of Los Angeles
1999: rage-filled, violent loathing of Los Angeles
2000: relief at having finally made it to New York
2002: trepidation, unsure of anything

What Stasia's little doc has forced me to do is take stock of my situation, especially as the biorhythms yaw and flutter in opposing angles; the last time I was interviewed, I had a ton of money in the bank, but my back hurt so bad I could barely speak - this time, I'm on unemployment, but I'm engaged to the greatest chick on earth, and we have stunning places in which to live.

Oh, and I'd made a movie. Just thinking about the interview she made with Peeler and I at the Game Show Network in '98 riddles me with Stupid Feeling. I know I've whined about this until friends and family daydream of restraining orders, but O! the unreturned phone calls, the wasted time going out to "network," the failed and dopey screenplay ideas, the humiliation, the humiliation of being in that place.

Strange, then, that I want to visit LA again. Perhaps I just needed my pool table back in New York, and now I can approach Los Angeles without feeling like a primal piece of my liver was being held hostage there.

Anyway, I felt like tonight's interviewed lacked the verve and fire of my previous endeavors, most likely because I'm tired. Or was it

The Celextant, May 28, 2002

Thank god I have the foresight to keep shoving the pills into my wallet, since I seem to be hellbent on leaving my dopt kit everywhere I'm not. On the emotional front, I feel like I'm still ingesting a lot of anxiety and obsession, even if it is toned down about two notches. The problem is, I'm not sure if I want to go on a higher dose. I'm just getting my sexual innuendo back, and I don't feel like being a zombie. I mean, I went to "About a Boy" yesterday, and I wanted Hugh Grant to fall in love, something that would have never happened on Prozac. I also wonder about the "lack of intensity" thing. What am I if I'm not a fireball of zany idiocy? Happier?

5/27/02 I went to sleep

5/27/02

I went to sleep last night with a farmhouse filled with people; I woke up at 1pm today and we were just about the only ones left. Thankfully, to relieve the post-partum depression imparted on us by one of the greatest weekends in recent memory, Todd Walker and Chip Chapman stayed around. We all felt hungover, even though none of us had been drinking last night. After watching "About a Boy" in Great Barrington, we came back to the farm, Todd took some pictures, Chip walked around the grounds, Tessa gardened, and we all had a major decompression.

Tonight Tessa and I gossiped about the various goings-on and personality disorders among our friends, and how much we loved everybody. I also remarked than we learned a lot about the farm this weekend; namely, that it can handle the collective urine of 50 over-educated iconoclasts caroming into their early 30s - and that the carriage house is indeed soundproof, because we didn't hear the screams when Joy and Julianne were attacked by bats. I think the farm also acts as advertisement for the area, which is fine by me, because I'd like to drag every last guest up here to grow incontinent with us.

Jamie and I survey the grounds like we know what we're doing

5/26/02 Not to be overly

5/26/02

Not to be overly hyperbolic or anything, but today was one of my best birthdays ever, and I got to share it with some of my favorite folks in the world. Tessa got me a bike (which I haven't had in 12 years) and everyone pitched in for a great party. I'm way too exhausted right now to go into details, but suffice to say the farm was really alive with some incredible people. We played sports all day (thwacked golf balls into the fields and then had some intense basketball games) while Rick cut hair all day long.

the collective hair of 15 of my best friends

Tonight we had a banquet in the newly-transformed-into-Valhalla 2nd floor of the barn, complete with candle chandelier, Salem's tenderloin, and a talent show.

overhead view of the table, about 60 ft. long

People came and go, and I wished Jamie Block had crossed paths with Lindsay, but everyone did amazingly well, given all their other commitments. And my sweet Tessa gave me one of the best, choked-up, sweet engagement toasts in history. I was so blown away, that I forgot to give her one in return. I suppose that is something that needs rectifying, and will plan so accordingly.

Lawrence Lucier lines up 25 of the ~40 guests for proof we did it

5/25/02 Tonight things are just

5/25/02

Tonight things are just how I would like it: I am lying in bed, having just turned 35 years old, and my entire house is filled with people. Every room, including the carriage house and parts of the barn, has a human sleeping in it. Only Chopes and I are awake right now.

overhead view of one of the three dinner tables

I haven't got any big insights for turning 35 just yet, but my senses have been dulled by fatigue, three small snifters of expensive scotch, and the desire just to exist with all of my friends in one place right now. Before we went to bed, the last thing Kendall asked me was "how did you begin all these relationships with people?" Which to me was a much more interesting question than "How do you maintain all these relationships with people?" The answer is the same for both, anyway: I simply put forth a modicum of effort.

Tessa sure looked beautiful while gardening today. And I really pegged her with a football, too (accidentally). She is such a good sport, I tell y'what. I'm quite fond of the girl.

seven toothbrushes lie in wait on the upstairs bathroom sink

5/24/02 This was, as Todd

5/24/02

This was, as Todd and I described it at the end, a "manly day." He installed chicken wire all around the cupola of the barn to keep the birds from turning the place into a scatological aviary dump, and I spent hours scrubbing bird shit off the basketball floor. We mended windows, dragged mattresses across town, finished the floor in the dining room and traded up our dining room table. I was too tired to fully enjoy Salem when he finally showed up (eight hours on the New Jersey Turnpike with a newborn - god, the horror) but by the time we all started playing pool, I was really glad to think of all my old friends gathering together.

Now Sean, Jordana, Salem, Elizabeth, their nanny Bethany, the baby, Sandy and us are here and the hordes show up tomorrow. And we caught another nice sunset tonight - it's like a great TV show that rarely disappoints.

we look west at 8:21pm; Michelle looks east

5/23/02 Spent this afternoon at

5/23/02

Spent this afternoon at Jonathan Bloch's place undergoing my bi-weekly psychotherapy, which has so far produced some abatement of my "condition" but (if you've been reading this blog) obviously I'm still not very healthy. Perhaps if the news organizations currently surrounding me could go one week without mentioning fucking nuclear terrorism, I'd be able to digest food properly. I mean, come the fuck ON already. I even got angry at myself yesterday and vowed to just press on and approach my anxiety with fury and frustration (something Jonathan endorsed) and start my writing career again. And still the fantasies exist ("fantasy" always seems to be a word that denotes good things, but I'm not quite sure what else to call them—daymares?). Anyway, I can't imagine not printing these stories, when it could potentially the worst thing to happen to civilization since the last plague—but then again, what good does it do? How are we supposed to act when it happens? Assuming we survive, where should we have put our money? Will we have to walk to Columbia County?

Fuck it. I really can't stand it anymore. I wonder when my body and brain will say "enough."

Speaking of walking to Columbia County, Todd Walker and I drove up today and it took us damn near four hours, unheard of in these parts. Note to self: do not take I-87 off the Triboro Bridge, even during the Apocalypse.

When we arrived, the fields had been cut, and it was seventy degrees. Lord, please let the weather hold and let us frolic at night under the delight of the full flower moon. Okay?

western part of the Columbia County farm, about to become a softball field

5/22/02 After wandering through the

5/22/02

After wandering through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens all day, I wasn't particularly psyched to go to the Brooklyn Museum of Art - it was about to close, and the Star Wars exhibit required an extra ticket. But when Tessa and her mother stopped at the fifth floor to search for the noted Sargent paintings, I was awestruck by something I saw on the wall.

A TV monitor was on a loop, playing a movie by Thomas Edison, filmed in 1899, with the title "New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge." It is simply a camera mounted on the front of a train, starting in Brooklyn and ending in Manhattan. People in bowler hats and top hats with petticoats pass by on the left, and carriages amble by on the right. The towers of the bridge, which was only 16 years old at the time, pass over the top of frame in gothic wonder. When you pull into New York, you don't recognize a thing; even the venerable Woolworth Building was 14 years away from construction. The camera jostles, then fades to white.

So simple, this trip from Brooklyn to Manhattan, delicate lines on a slow train track, people hoofing to work, just like we do, every day, across the same stretch of water. And I couldn't take my eyes off the movie. I watched it four times until Tessa and Sandy took me away.

still from the 1899 Edison movie of the Brooklyn Bridge. Click here to watch.

5/21/02 I think the time

5/21/02

I think the time has come to take a "fearless inventory" of the problem plaguing me, and I suppose this place is as good as any. The fact is this: I'm not doing so well living in an age of heightened terrorism. Something about the situation in the world right now, and the threats to the town in which I live and work, is unearthing severely painful feelings in the base of my gut, and the combination of therapy and medicine is, so far, only quelling the beast.

In the days immediately following 9/11, I thought I'd never leave New York. There was something so beautiful in those moments, scary yet teeming with a spiritus mundi that was excellently rhapsodized in our first-hand accounts of living in lower Manhattan in those days. The whole city shut down and our brownstone on 8th Ave. could only be entered with proper identification, but I didn't feel scared, only hopped up on the sense of history and the tangible feeling that we were really helping people in need. My sister Michelle really shone in those precious moments after the attack, unleashing an epiphany that still glows in her today (she just finished her training and is now officially an EMT).

But as the weather turned gray, cold and ugly - and the war on Afghanistan started - more supposed details about the terrorists bubbled to the surface, and I began to get genuinely freaked out. People were contracting anthrax, the efficacy of our smallpox vaccine was called into question, and the rhetoric started to flow from bin Laden and his cohorts: suddenly my shoebox apartment in the East Village, where I slept about six inches from the ceiling, stopped seeming "cute" and became almost sarcophagan.

By December, I was spending much of my day thinking about the threat of nuclear terrorism; by January, I stopped eating more than a few bites a day. I lost seven pounds, wrote desperate emails to my family, begging them to move out of the city, and in a coup, managed to move Tessa and I to Brooklyn. We picked Park Slope not just because Tessa had always loved it, but also because I looked on a map, and it was at least three miles from downtown Manhattan.

Since then, I have been getting better, but I've been stuck in a holding pattern. Part of the problem is that I thought researching the news of terrorism would make me feel better; instead, most news sources, anxious for ratings, lavish the public with only the worst warnings imaginable. Each time I feel a panic attack coming on, I seem to find a newspaper article or magazine blurb talking about suitcase nukes; even my friend Colin and his Newsweek pal Mike told stories about the destruction that could await New York; "I wouldn't be on the five-year plan," one of the government spooks had told them.

And it leaves me here in May, about to turn 35, with a new fiancee and the possibility of a life ahead of us - and I can't even think about the wedding next year, because to be frank, next year sounds like an excruciatingly dangerous place. I'm having a birthday celebration up in Columbia County for Memorial Day, but I feel like the whole thing is some Control Freak Fantasy of mine to get everyone in one place where I know they won't be hurt.

Obviously, this line of reasoning goes nowhere. The only path to happiness is letting go of the weariness of control (what the Buddhists call "somsara") and trying to find solace in the realm of impermanence. But there something about the Empire State Building, which now makes my stomach hurt every time I see it peeking from behind a tree or over the river, that makes me long for something permanent. I don't like having my family in New York City; I don't like having Sean on 35th Street and Michelle on 11th. It seems clear that our country will be sorely tested at some point in the near future, and I don't want my family fucked with.

I want to move Asset Pictures to a place in Brooklyn, accessible by all subways, but off the island. I want my family to look at Manhattan the same way I'd like to: a place to have fun, ingest art and soak in nightlife - but not a place to be during working hours. And I know that's largely impossible, so I feel stuck. Unbelievably, irreparably stuck. It's a terrible analogy to contemplate, but sometimes I feel like we're Jews living in 1935 Berlin, and ghostly voices are calling from the future, "get the fuck out of there!"

Tonight there's another vague yet sweeping warning to the residents of New York that "city landmarks" are targeted for attack. In a way, I'm almost heartened by the specificity of them, because the thing I'm truly worried about is a radiological bomb taking out lower Manhattan and radiating over the boroughs. I have two scenarios, actually: a bomb that is designed to take out the financial district, or one that will take out Midtown and the Empire State Building. I go through the scenarios in my head all the time: is Michelle close enough to be hurt by a downtown bomb? Would a midtown bomb get all of us at Asset and Sean? It's so exhausting that the thoughts themselves have taken on character, so that I no longer even have to be reminded of the specifics, just the vague sense of doom.

In essence, the terrorists have accomplished a victory over me. They've forced me to abandon normal waking thoughts, driven me to the therapist, and shoved milligrams of Celexa down my throat. I'm still functioning, and I'm back to eating normally, but this heightened state of alert, where the sympathetic "fight or flight" hormones rage through me with the regularity of desert prey, sits awfully with my psyche.

Perhaps my greatest fear is that I've always considered myself a lucky product of the late twentieth century; there's simply no other time when I would have survived. If a six-week premature birth didn't get me, the appendicitis, croup or various other childhood afflictions would. There would be no laser surgery for my eyes, no allopurinol for gout, no neurontin for a slipped disc. I am an artist, a writer, and no matter what Hollywood - or Arts & Leisure writers for the New York Times - tries to tell you, artists are not going to be very useful in the apocalypse. I want to believe in a world where the dork has a chance to survive and thrive, where sensitivity and intellect are valued. A world full of terror brings all dorks, including me, back to the pavement-pounding trauma of third grade, and I'm having a very hard time going through that again.

I'll try to end on a positive note: that the future is an ever-changing realm where truly anything can happen, and among the things that can happen is absolutely nothing. All I know is what I read from news sources that have been filtered by corporations and our own government to suit their needs, no matter how subtle. The future is also notoriously tricky for predictions; the truth usually ends up being more interesting. And despite my overweening belief that the next attacks will again be in New York, this is a big fucking country and there are plenty of other places they can go. Besides, destroying part of New York would not only kill thousands of Muslims, but why flatten the only beautiful things in America? I mean, why can't they bomb shit like this:

one more strip mall cleared out of an ancient forest somewhere in Wherever, VA

5/20/02 downtown NYC as viewed

5/20/02

downtown NYC as viewed on the Manhattan Bridge at sunset, 40 mph

5/19/02 Some of my anxiety

5/19/02

Some of my anxiety issues have been blossoming out of control again, despite the therapy and Celexa, and tonight I had just sort of "had it" with the whole thing. It's really quite boring - and worst of all, exhausting - to keep dealing with the same problem for months on end. Perhaps it's the ADD in me, but after about two or three weeks of a problem, I need a new one to keep me interested.

Sean called his knee injury "boring" and I thought exactly the same thing about my back. You just get so sick of hearing the internal dialogue, and yet the pain forces you to confront it all fucking day. That's the analogous experience I'm having with this anxiety, and it doesn't help that I read the news all the time, feeding the beast within. Tessa and I lay on the bed and talked from 11:30 to 1am about all this - and she's had many of the same things in her life, except that her control issues led mainly to anorexia and bulimia. I told her that I dont have any healthy outlets like that.

Either way, we talked about the steps she took in AA, and I tried to see if I could, in any way, shape them to fit my experience. We got through three:

Step one: We admitted we were powerless over X - that our lives had become unmanageable.

Well, that's easy enough. I can't seem to control my anxiety, fears, and obsessions (hereafter known as AFO). And while I think my life is barely manageable, Tessa's definition of a healthy psyche didn't allow for it. So yes, I'm in on the first step.

Step two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

This one is as hard as it looks, because it forces you to confront the necessity of a spiritual life. And getting one of those (especially as a rabid dork intellectual) is pretty hard to accomplish unless you've aged a bit and seen that all other roads ultimately went nowhere. I've always been perfectly willing to accept that there exists a Power greater than me, but have needed convincing that the Power can restore sanity. After working with Buddhism (in the cursory, dilettante-esque way that I have) I think I've sensed a palpable freedom in their ways of thought, so without getting into the 400K download of heavy philosophical lifting, I'll say that I can imagine a world where a Greater Power can provide relief from pain.

Step three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

This was always the step that had me convinced that AA was simply a way for Christians to get their wily hooks into more man-meat while they were drinking shots of bourbon, but Tessa has convinced me otherwise. It is an excruciatingly difficult step either way, because very few people raised in our country have the sense of perspective - and flexibility of ego - to accept the mercurial ways of "god." The serenity prayer is probably a much better way to go here, with emphasis on the "grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change" part. Which is inherent in Buddhism, too; true happiness comes from accepting and loving impermanence. And Americans hate impermanence; it's why they invented freezers.

I don't know if any of this works for me or not, but I feel better just talking about it. I even told Tessa some of my obsessive-compulsive tricks, silly little things I do to keep myself from dying, things I'm not quite self-actualized enough to write here. She talked about shining the light on the dark spots and letting them shrivel up and disappear. Perhaps this is why the placebo effect works so well on depressed patients; getting the drug means someone is paying attention.

The Celextant, May 19, 2002

I had pretty awful dreams last night, full of little zaps and mild fits. I largely suspect it's my brain thinking I'm coming off the Celexa, since I've missed 3 out of the last 6 days. I've really got to be more present of mind and TAKE THESE DAMN THINGS or else I'll never know if it's working!

5/18/02 I know it's excruciatingly

5/18/02

I know it's excruciatingly boring to complain about the weather, but come ON already! It's May 18, it's been "Spring" for two fucking months, and it SNOWED this morning. Not the small, dinky stuff either it was the crap that collects on hillsides and makes trucks fall into ravines. It has now officially been Colder Than Shit for eight months. I know the Buddhist/AA mantra is to accept the things you cannot change, but fucking fuck!

We spent the day with Dad driving back and forth from Great Barrington, MA in order to get supplies for our new table saw (yay!) and golf balls we can hit into the pasture at the cows (well, we won't aim for them, but whatever). Then the farmhouse ran out of heating oil for the second time in as many days, which meant I had to get a plastic five gallon tank, take three trips to the gas station and fill the damn heating vessel up with diesel fuel.

First off, who knew that the house ran on diesel? There's a pipe on the side of the house where you stick the fuel, giving you the feeling of gassing up the biggest motor home on earth. It reminded me of the Steven Wright stand-up sketch when he talks about accidentally putting his car key into his house deadbolt, starting his house, and driving it down the freeway. Anyway, I doused myself with diesel (those plastic gas cans always suck) and since I had no time to change, I still reeked of gas hours later when Dana and Lindsay came over and we went to John Andrew's Restaurant in Egremont for a swanky dinner.

Did you know that you can run a diesel car on kerosene? I mean, it will run crappy, but you can do it. During my tenure with the '84 white diesel VW Rabbit, I was always comforted by that thought.

The Celextant, May 18, 2002

I forgot to take the pill again today am I just being passive-aggressive with myself or something? Is than even possible? Anyway, I had a orange-infused vodka and soda water at dinner, and I swear I got drunk in about 4.3 seconds. Maybe Celexa amplifies intoxification, although that seems like a pretty mean-spirited side effect if you're taking the drug for addiction issues. Thank God for my lack of addiction to all things except Kit-Kats. Tessa has taught me how blessed I am to be free of those genes. Obviously I have other problems.

5/17/02 My search for a

5/17/02

My search for a Mac-based Napster-esque application finally came to a close yesterday; I'm not sure why it took me so long to find Limewire, but now I'm back in the swing of things again. The user interface isn't half as easy as Napster (you can't play the tunes within the application) but it does allow you to search for movies and other objet de porn. It's what Morpheus always promised to be for PCs, but alas, never for the Mac.

Of course, this rediscovery of instant access to all the music of my childhood has reminded me of That Internet Job, where I spent the better part of a year downloading Kajagoogoo songs on a T3 connection. I mean, it was their fault for hiring a Senior Editor before they even had a business plan that wouldn't make investors shriek with derisive laughter. I think about that job a lot, as I see my old office window almost every day while crossing the Manhattan Bridge. What a different era, so not-so-long ago.

my office at the Woolworth Building, marked with red arrow

Anyway, Limewire came through on a number of occasions, given our stampede towards the first rough cut deadline, allowing several songs like "Mr. Sandman" and "Break My Stride" to sneak their way into the movie (we intend to buy the rights to many of these songs, making the electronic theft issue easier to swallow). Putting songs into a movie is fascinating: it's like setting your best friend up with another best friend. It's all about chemistry, and you're right as often as you're wrong. But here's a few things I've learned:

1. Music makes funny things more funny.
2. Music makes slow shots seem quicker.
3. Music with any words at all will destroy your scene.
4. Slow, beautiful classical music especially Impressionistic pieces � makes you look like a better filmmaker than you probably are.

Since I didn't want to use any crap from John Williams or Horner or anyone else currently writing movie scores, I used the people they ripped off: Ravel, Respighi, Vaughan-Williams and Holst. I mean, you might as well go to the source.

The rest of the soundtrack has XTC, Supreme Beings of Leisure, Ivy, Komeda, the Kings of Convenience and a host of really smart, groovy pop. Dare to dream, right?

The Celextant, May 17, 2002

Either this drug really has something to it, or else the placebo effect is really going into overdrive I forgot to take my pill two days in a row, then took it today. And I feel much better, getting a bit of the nice haziness back to blanket my anxiety. I'm not sure if it's full-scale dementia or the Celexa, but I seem to have the clutch pushed in, memory-wise. I forget shit every time I go anywhere. Ironically, this trip to Columbia County, I forgot the Celexa. Fortunately, my friend Ian from 3 days ago (someone who continuously saves my ass) thought ahead in time and shoved some Celexa in my wallet. Thanks, 3-day past self! You showed some real spunk!

5/16/02 Want to know why

5/16/02

Want to know why I'm in therapy?

me in third grade (from wallet-sized sheet of school pictures) thinking of ways of not to get my ass kicked that afternoon

5/15/02 The countdown to the

5/15/02

The countdown to the First Showing of the Pink House Movie has left me in a state of ragged sleeplessness not because I'm nervous or anything, but because there's no forkin' music in this thing, and I've got to stay up until 4am every night trying to slug it in. This is the "dream soundtrack" we're using for friends and festivals, which means we have about 0% chance of getting these songs for real (unless we get bought by someone who can plunk down $300,000 so that I can get all the XTC and Smiths a boy could want).

Today, we were going through the last scenes of the movie, all of them filmed indoors because a typhoon was raging outside, washing away our set. That was probably our best on-the-fly directing, recanting entire scenes indoors so that we could make the wrap and have something to show for it. Todd left the camera on while they were setting up the penultimate shot, and it shows me trying to teach Tessa how to play poker. A quiet, exhausted moment at the end of what felt like the hardest thing we'd ever done. Strange to get a glimpse of yourself in that way, being a voyeur to one of your own raw emotional states.

near the end of the shoot, Sean (w/glasses) at poker table with me at far right
(pic taken 8/9/01)

5/14/02 We saw the very

5/14/02

We saw the very first cut of The Pink House yesterday, and today we set forth to fix all the little nagging things that slow the movie down. Yesterday I was a little trepidatious about this beast, since it seemed like such a awkward flick but you have to remember how reliant comedies are on music and timing. Just a few tweaks this morning brought the entire beginning of the movie to life; the whole thing is like waxing skis. You have to reduce the drag in anyway possible, bring the coefficient of friction as close to zero as possible. We're still on the bunny slopes, but by next week, we should be venturing into the double diamond territory.

It's one of the most overused clichs on Planet Earth, but in comedies, less really is more. There are certain scenes that I slaved over, that I nearly lost friends trying to shoot, scenes we slogged through the rain and mud to get – and with a flick of the wrist, they were proven to be utterly irrelevant. Four of the best edited movies in history are some of my favorite comedies: Raising Arizona, Overboard, Animal House, and My Favorite Year - watch any of them, and you realize that not a single frame is wasted.

5/13/02 Even though I had

5/13/02

Even though I had the kind of headache that would have driven lesser men to flagellate themselves, I tried to rally for the 52nd Street Project Benefit dinner, which has traditionally been more fun than you think it's going to be. Poor Tessa has been battling something in the liminal between a cold and the flu, so after two conversations, she could barely talk. Which forced me into small talk with people I only 1/9th-know, but these exercises are good when you go into automatic pilot as often as I do.

The theme this year was "disco," and naturally, only about 15% of the guests arrived in costume. You can add me and Tessa to that 15% however:

This picture, for those of you playing the home game, doesn't do my chest hair justice. My dad must have been psyched to be a hairy-chested man in 1976 I don't think he wore a shirt during Jimmy Carter's entire presidency.

The 52nd Street Project does a lot of great work for kids in Hell's Kitchen, teaching at-risk youths about drama, and it is supported by such absentee luminaries as Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. Tessa and I ended up having a blast and catching up with old friends: Zandy Hartig, Billy Crudup, Lorraine and Alex Tobias, Jace Alexander, and a lot of other talented people. Like someone said in the crowd, "it's the kind of event none of the bad people show up to." Which is the opposite of most of my parties, but to each his own, I guess.

The proud UNC alums: Zandy Hartig, me, Tessa, Billy Crudup. I look like I just got off the short bus, and Billy looks like he's going to barf.

The Celextant, May 13, 2002
Man, if Celexa is what gave me the headache today, I have to wonder whether being happy is worth all the pain it's causing. My anxiety levels are definitely less acute in the city, although I still have those stupid daymares and re-enactments clouding my brain. I have to keep telling myself that the future is usually weirder and more interesting than any of my fears.

5/12/02 Obviously, some consultant/customer relations

5/12/02

Obviously, some consultant/customer relations guru got his hooks into Verizon online, because they started offering free stuff to people who signed up for their unresponsively restrictive DSL service. My option was to go for the "free digital camera," which arrived, or should I say limped, to my door tonight. It's a Logitech EasyCam 310, and it makes an Easy-Bake Oven look like the cockpit to a Boeing 767. And the pictures god, the pictures. I really have to post one to give you an example of its dynamic range:

That's Tessa, by the way, and she was centered in the viewfinder.

I mean, why the fuck did they bother? Of course, the images and movies on this thing are so bad that Tessa and I have taken to fetishizing it; I've half a mind to shoot a movie using nothing but the Logitech EasyCam 310, because it has the grainy post-surrealistic LSD haze of a Fisher-Price Pixel Vision camera.

Speaking of a grainy haze, we drove 4 hours home from Cambridge today in a never-ending rainstorm that sapped me of almost all of my emotional strength. Driving through a storm is fine, but driving lengthways through a pounding rain all day long just makes you feel like sticking a fork in your brain. By the time we got to Manhattan, Sean didn't feel like going out for his birthday (he was sunburned don't exactly know how that happened, unless he got all 1978 and bought a sunlamp) so we got back to Park Slope early and watched Yassar Arafat's interview with Wolf Blitzer. I don't know which was more upsetting: Arafat's obvious dementia, or Wolf Blitzer's junior-high-school-video-project screen charisma.

The Celextant, May 12, 2002

My psyche feels coated in a clear, gelatinous substance. Or maybe that's just snot; it's hard to tell these days. One thing that Prozac rather fascinatingly, I might add – robbed from me, was the ability to commiserate with the protagonists of any books or movies. I just didn't care what happened to them, and it filled me with such sadness that I wish I could have felt sadness, which didn't work either. Suffice to say that hasn't happened on Celexa at all, at least not yet. I cried when I read a one-page story written by a sixth-grader on the wall of the Cambridge Friends School. Which is another problem altogether, I suppose.

5/11/02 I don't know if

5/11/02

I don't know if they give out awards to the Dowdiest City in America, but Cambridge would definitely be in the run-off. All the middle-aged women here wear sackcloth browns and grays, loose baggy linen pants, and they all walk around with a humorless earnestness. I mean, I know Harvard is here and all, but it really made me long for the dumbasses in Chapel Hill. I judge a city by two things: the amount of rednecks wearing colorful stirrup pants, and the number of disaffected youths breaking their coccyxii while skateboarding down a stairwell.

Today we walked around Harvard Square, which is about as focus-group tested as a public space gets. There are four coffee places, two corporate record store chains, an Urban Outfitters, a Gap and 45 places to get American bar food. The difference is that all these businesses are crammed into buildings erected in 1673, giving the town the perfect melange of Class and 21st-century convenience. Americans love to consume things that don't surprise them, part of the "ubiquitopia" experience, but they really love thinking they're getting some historical perspective at the same time.

I know the first New World settlers tried out St. Augustine, FL and Roanoke Island, NC first but why did all the permanent settlements take root in places like Boston, where they were guaranteed to freeze their asses off seven months of the year? Was it the mosquitoes or something?

Later in the day, Sam and I went to the local hoops court to give the natives a little what-fer. I think they were a bit chagrined to see an 11-year-old boy walk on the court with only one arm (watching people's first reaction to Sam is fascinating), not knowing whether they should try not to look, or play a little softer, or try not to look as though they're trying not to look.

That lasted for all of twenty seconds before Sam and I challenged them all to a game, and a few minutes later they retired defeated. Sam had a sweet give-and-go that he finished with a reverse no-look swish. If he learns to use his "disability" Tessa said to call it "armlessness" – in a special way, he could really be an interesting kind of point guard down in the paint. He just needs to find out how to use his special body in a way that confuses the hell out of everybody. I want him on my team.

Sam at the Friends School giving his report on bone anomalies

5/10/02 One of the hidden

5/10/02

One of the hidden upshots about getting engaged is that you suddenly enter a new hierarchy of respect amongst some of your friends and extended family. It's no secret that Uncle Chris, Aunt Marilyn and Auntie Donna, among the other thousands, have wanted me to get married roughly since there was grass on the field, so to speak. In their case, I think it has something to do with the Celestial Kingdom, but moreover, it gives you a Mark of Approval and the whiff of legitimacy.

Being here in Cambridge where Tessa's sister Michelle lives – I'm reminded that I gain new family as well, and they couldn't be cooler about it. Michelle, who is not known for being flamboyant, is downright buoyant about the prospects of a wedding, and the kids seem pretty psyched about it (Katherine even said, "I'm so happy you're joining our family," which was actually one of the best moments I've had yet).

In that vein, Tessa and I went to Sam's Quaker school today for "Significant Elders Day" (they don't use ageist, ableist, family-firstish words like "grandparents" there) and it was truly a stunning experience. The level of racial and lifestyle sophistication at the Quaker school is nothing short of a miracle: we both welled with tears in front of a poster that asked "Why is there Gay Pride Day?" with the answer "Because that's the day they aren't afraid." Written by a second grader.

The day was not without its hitches: the "silent meeting" took about a half-hour longer than most kids could stomach, and some goofing off was had by some (later, there was a serious, closed-door scolding given to the entire 6th grade for "resisting the natural law of personality growth" that was so stern as to make me feel bad for eavesdropping). But the classrooms were full of respect, and Sam who with one arm, would have been repellent to my 6th grade class in Iowa – is the natural leader of the class. Other kids (who again, would have been pummeled senseless for their sensitivity and intellect) gave great reports on bone and muscle diseases, each cheered on by their classmates.

I'm sure there's some vague underbelly of flaky resentment going on there that we can't see in one afternoon, but I think about all the Celexa and therapy I wouldn't need right now if I had been allowed to go someplace like that. It almost makes me mad.

The Celextant, May 10, 2002

I've decided to write a Celextant entry only when I feel as though something interesting is happening with the drug. The one thing I feel right now is more of that lack of "waking up grogginess" I mean, when I got up at 7:30 this morning, I was UP.

Hm. Maybe that wasn't particularly interesting after all.

sample poster from the 2nd grade class at the Friends School in Cambridge

I propose...

5/9/02

The short version of the story is this: I met a girl in 1987 who I thought was amazing. Fifteen years later, today, I kneeled on the uppermost knoll of a hill we'd bought together, and asked her to marry me. She said yes, and subsequently, we were surrounded by 85 cows.

Many people have taken part in the subterfuge over the last few days, between the dual-functioning surprise party for Tessa and Sean, and the selecting/buying/Fedexing of a ring that seemed elusive until the last minute. I don't know when you decide you want to marry somebody; I think it occurs to you the same way that hiccups disappear - without total consciousness. I had inklings after our Pink House movie shoot that I would think about marriage if she and I managed to survive what I titled the "Electric Larry and the San Frantastic Road Trip," a journey to be taken around the country between the end of production and the beginning of editing. Of course, September 11 and her father's death intervened, and we ended up travelling more, under more somber circumstances, than we imagined.

The prelude to getting the ring was a three-month odyssey in search of a perfect opal necklace for Christmas. After looking in fifteen different states (and finally finding it in the French Quarter) I had a good idea how to get around a jewelry store. The initial queries took place at a custom jewelry shop in the East Village, but ultimately, the rings there were too contemporary for my tastes - they buried the diamond in a "today's active lifestyles" setting that looked a little too Ikea. The antique jewelry store up at Macy's had a gorgeous diamond, but it had dinky diamond brochette thingies on it, and it was really GOLD. I hate to be a snob, but there's something about gold-colored gold that gives me hives. Fortunately an Indian woman waited for me at Fortunoff, who had the perfect white-white-white gold simple diamond. Sean said you'd know when you found the right one, and it was obvious.

Why does anyone get married? It's the wrong question to ask, really; it should be "why do YOU get married?" I had to think very carefully about it, not for the obvious reasons, but because it was a situation I honestly never thought I'd experience. I never had a template for it, never fantasized about it, because I believed it to be unrealistic. I had way too many problems, was filled with too much loathing of myself and the world around me, you know, all the problems of ego and dorkdom wrapped into one. It was during my worst moments back in January, when I lay immovable on a bed, full of the worst sorts of dread, unable to eat for two weeks, in a full nervous breakdown, when Tessa said to me, "I don't care how bad this gets, I'm staying with you." And from then on, like everything else in our relationship, it just seemed as obvious as oxygen.

Many of the weddings we've attended seem engineered solely for their parents' friends. Historically, marriages were mostly a business transaction for dowries, but it did purport one idea that I find meaningful: it's a celebration in front of your community, who is then responsible for helping ensure its longevity. I like the idea of a brain trust consisting of my family, Lindsay, Chip, Scott, Salem, Rick, Ann, Jon, Bud, Kendall - and Tessa's cohorts - who are there to help see you through. As Best Man of Sean's wedding, I remember ushering him through his problems with Tamara, giving him deadlines for her behavior, getting him drunk when she finally took off. The same went for Scott (and hopefully, the upshot will be happier). I love the idea of all of us shaming, cajoling and joking each other back into occasional shape. I want to live the life examined. I want the possibility of having kids. I want to do it with Tessa, who, by all accounts, is pretty much the coolest chick on wheels.

And so the ring went from 54st Street to 26th Street by way of California, Fedexed around the country to avoid taxes. Of course, it ended up being the only Fedex ever to be "unsuccessfully delivered" - causing me, my Mom and Steve to lose valuable millimeters of our stomach lining. After the second try, I got it, and bolted upstate before Tessa got there, determined to hide it in the lone, hollow tree on the farm as a birthday surprise.

Last night, as I drove up the hill to the farm, I saw the tree - which has stood its ground for 50 years, despite being struck by lightning - knocked to the ground! What's worse, the cows had come back to our land, suddenly turning our hill into a messy petting zoo. Tessa was due to arrive in an hour, which is past dark, so she wouldn't see the tree, but how am I supposed to propose to her in the middle of cow poop with our favorite landmark sadly crashed to the ground?

So today, on her birthday, I figured I would do it anyway. I told her there was a surprise for her on the hill, and I brought a newspaper to kneel on. We trod up the grass, and it was then I realized that the tree, by falling, presented the most beautiful bench on earth. She sat, I genuflected, and I asked. The commotion afterwards piqued the interest of the cows, who all came running to see what we were doing. Chopin, being more Border Collie than Labrador, seized his chance for glory and began to herd like he's never herded before. All eighty cows began to run, but since Chopes didn't know where to herd them, he came running back to us, with all the cows after him in a thunderous swell. I'd just proposed to Tessa, and now our dog was going to have us trampled by a mad herd of giant milk cows.

Calmly, we spoke gently and the cows slowed, then quieted. We walked back to the house and called everyone we knew. It wasn't until I heard Tessa screaming with Michelle that I truly knew how great it all was, that I was able to provide the kind of sister that Michelle never had. I understood how important this was to everyone else, not some pained, tortured decision of my own, and despite being such a dork, despite dodgeballs and iceballs, despite some wrenching desire to be perverse and self-sabotaging, despite an egoistic need to be so different and special - the most wonderful girl in the world said yes to me and it was okay, for a day, to be just like everyone else.

Tessa and I, post-proposal, trying to find our way out of the cows

5/8/02 Immediately upon arrival in

5/8/02

Immediately upon arrival in Columbia County this evening I was presented with eighty cows. The dairy farm had let the cows wander back onto our land, and they had congregated right next to the back door of the farm to see what the hell was going on. I made friends with a few of them, feeding them tufts of grass and such, and I gotta say, they're pretty cute. It's like a giant chorus of female dancers backstage at a country production of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."

Chopin, of course, looked at them and immediately the weight of the world was on his shoulders, as if there were some ancient duty lurking in his hindbrain. You know how you have nightmares of being in school, taking tests, years after you graduate? I think the Chopes sees a gaggle of cows in the same light.

It's Tessa's birthday again, and as I have oft said, the limitations of this blog are again apparent.

The Celextant, May 8, 2002

Met with Jonathan Bloch today and we discussed more about antidepressants and the placebo effect. I'd like to know one more thing: does the placebo effect work on a patient when the patient knows the drug has a high placebo effect?

5/7/02 I guess it's just

5/7/02

I guess it's just a case of being 34 and 11/12ths, but I woke up this morning with unbelievable back pain from the two straight days of intense hoops. I used to play three and four days in a row in Chapel Hill, but I was in excellent condition then, not to mention merely 30 years old. This is sucky. I obviously need to start behaving nicely towards my body if I expect it to last until the middle of the century or so.

Not that anyone cares, but my 3-month long odyssey of getting the second phone line installed finally came to fruition this evening. I had to string phone cord through a wall, across the ceiling of a giant room, around four corners and into the back of the apartment. In all, 108 feet of wire, and for some reason, it hadn't worked for weeks. Finally, I replaced a nondescript length of cord and the line sprang to life. Half of me wanted to celebrate, the other half wanted to throw the phone out into the fucking street.

Which reminds me: one night in about 1992, during one of the particularly low biorhythms of the Purple House (which was known for several), Matt and Clay were watching MTV downstairs. About seven bad videos in a row came on, and Matt said that if the next song sucked, he was going to destroy the VCR. Of course, Mariah Carey or some such shit came on, and Matt yanked the VCR out of the wall, took it outside, walked to the middle of McCauley Street, and throttled it on the pavement until there was a crater of electronic parts spread about fifty feet around. He spoke for all of us that night, and got a huge gash on his forearm that bled for days. What was really funny is that it was Clay's VCR.

The Celextant, May 7, 2002

There was a report today that stated what I'd already known since a similar study was done on St. John's Wort: the placebo often works as well or better – than a major anti-depressant. Boy, I believe it, too. What is interesting to me, however, is how long a placebo keeps working. Dr. Gorman intimated that the placebo rates were high for SSRI's, but that they didn't work on the long term.

Regardless, the whole thing causes me to wonder: how much of my little observations here are complete horseshit? It seems unlikely that all of "better feelings" are due to simple psychology, if only because I often forget I'm even taking a pill. Can the placebo effect work on you if you don't really know you're taking it?

5/6/02 When I was talking

5/6/02

When I was talking about the limitations of this blog, I was mostly referring to the events of this evening, when I planned a surprise party for both Sean and Tessa, both of them engineered to think the party was for the other. Tessa was thoroughly stunned to find a congregation of her friends at Phobang in Chinatown, but Sean had suspected something all along, and actually came up with the winning idea. I suppose we think enough alike to make things like that difficult to conceal. That, and Michelle getting into the car with a stack of presents didn't help matters.

Lots of good people were there Jamie and Susan, Nell, Billy Strong, Ned Eisenberg, and of course, Gill brought two 19-year-old hotties from somewhere deep in Long Island. One has to appreciate Gill for his consistency, if nothing else. The man just knows how to have a good time.

All of Sean's NYC posse were there as well, representing themselves well. Everything about the evening was cool, except for the bill, of which I paid $60 (but it could have been much worse I think I paid $120 extra for our reading at Jeollado). We took Matt Dawson and Jen Albano home to Cobble Hill, and played with their terrier puppy Henry, who has the never-flagging entertainment value of running around the yard like a baby kangaroo on steroids. We decided to let Chopin play with Henry, but instead the Chopes tried to disembowel the little fella. Our dog is really getting hard to explain to guests.

Oh yeah, this morning I played five games of one-on-one with a dude at Chelsea Piers who is clearly one of the better players. I played him close each game, then won the last game in the stretch. I felt really good about that, even if my back isn't.

The Celextant, May 6, 2002

I'd like to say that my days have become largely free of anxiety, but today has made it hard to muster. I still have the same old ever-conscious fears, and they exhaust me. It seem like every time I have a little spark of paranoia and anxiety, three things come along to make it 100 times worse. I'll go into the whole thing once I feel like writing about it, but for now, it continues to fill me with sickness. Dr. Bloch says such worrying makes a man brittle, and I'm feeling it. It is time for a new way of thinking about these things, but I'm having an awful time letting go.

5/5/02 It's Cinco de Mayo

5/5/02

It's Cinco de Mayo today, a date that figures prominently in the Pink House film, because it's the actual day the movie is supposed to take place. They say research cures writer's block, and though I've never been terribly afflicted with the latter, the former has taught me that Napoleon III the one you never hear about – is the major antagonist behind Mexico's day of glory. I like holidays that are set on actual days, like the Fourth of July or Christmas. Labor Day, Easter, Thanksgiving and Mother's Day slither around the calendar far too much for my liking.

I played basketball in Astoria for the first time in months this morning, and actually did pretty well. Probably something to do with confidence (the guys at Mulberry St. can be rather judgmental) and the fact that I'd just played on Thursday. Finished some pretty freaky shots that I was glad to see back in the arsenal.

That didn't stop me from hurting the rest of the day, but it was the good kind of hurt that tells you you're getting somewhere. Later, Sean, Jordana, Dani and I saw Spiderman, which was really fun but a little lazy with the scriptwriting. Not as lazy as Woody Allen's decidedly limp Hollywood Ending, but it feels like nobody west of Interstate 15 has a sharp eye and a red pen. Of course, "The Pink House" will be called a mess too, but at least it'll be an inspired one.

The limitations of this blog have never been so obvious as right now. Save it for later.

The Celextant, May 5, 2002

Okay, so the "take the pill at 3am" idea wasn't one of my best. I spent half the night in a sort of half-dreaming haze, sleeping the half-sleep of a cat, my dreams melding quite confusingly with plain old morning thought. There used to be a delineation between the dreamworld and the waking one, but that border has been photoshopped into a blur. Actually woke up from a nightmare the other night, but I was due for one of those anyway.

5/4/02 After walking a long,

5/4/02

After walking a long, circuitous route around Prospect Park today, Tessa took off on a run, and I found myself at the little flea market that springs up every Saturday on 7th Avenue around Carroll Street. On one of the tables I found a notebook full of stamped, used postcards from about 1898 to 1919. One such postcard from 1909 had a woman sitting on a man's lap, neither of them up to much good, and underneath it said, "Just a spoon, my dear! A spoon is no overdose!" Superimposed above them was a silver spoon hanging in the ether.

I'd love to know what the hell they were abusing, perhaps one of Freud's seven-per-cent solutions, or some kind of absinthe drip, or even the still-used version of cooking heroin. Fuck, it might even be molasses for all I know. On the back of the card was written (with the florid fountain penmanship of the time): "Dearest Ernest: Is this how you did it back in the old days?"

The "old days" to the writer of this card probably meant the 1870s. Other ancient artifacts were on the next table, an entire box brimming with pictures of the now-dead, expensive collars on fresh laundered shirts in 1921, babies born in 1897, a team of some indeterminate sport in 1918. The sheer volume of these pictures is staggering, each of them so long gone, even the person remembering them dead for years. I imagined a line stretching along 7th Avenue for miles, all the people who were in the pictures, or those who knew of them, in their uniforms and hats and hoop skirts, all there to explain each picture to me, who they were, and why it was important to them.

I think about my own box of pictures in Columbia County and understand that the same fate may befall all of them. I think about this paragraph I write, stuck on a server somewhere in a distant place where I do not live. I'm overwhelmed by the impermanence of it all, and yet I keep typing.

The Celextant, May 4, 2002

I just took my pill. Is it obvious?

5/3/02 Tessa had a bit

5/3/02

Tessa had a bit of a meltdown today over finances, and as much as I want to help her, I feel like this is one area in which I can offer naught but a friendly shoulder to rest on thank god that's usually enough. I have several solutions about getting out of debt, but they involve changes that we may not necessarily want to make. Besides, one thing I've noticed in my 34 and 11/12ths years knocking around on the planet: sure, "life is short" and all that, but life as you live it tends to be rather long, and things work themselves out in ways you never could have predicted (or perhaps could have predicted, but would have subsequently been accused of bad storytelling). One thing that therapy is teaching me is that denial can be a really healthy thing – my problem is that I like to push myself to see how anxious and/or depressed I can get. It's sick, perverse, macabre and joyless, but that never stopped me before.

We're supposed to be at the farm tonight, but at the last second I planted the idea in Tessa's head that maybe we should stay in town. The movers never called back about the pool table - which is the main reason we were going up - and if I stayed, I could really get my act together in Brooklyn. After stewing on that for a while, Tessa also agreed it was the best thing for her as well. I looked at the weather report upstate and it said 71 and sunny for Sunday, which lends credence to my hunch that we're deliberately trying to miss all the good weather at the farm.

More people keep falling into line for Memorial Day weekend, speaking of which, so I'm going to have to get creative with living spaces. I can put two of the single beds in the carriage house, and I can build a day bed for the living room, bringing the total number of people who can sleep in the house to 15, which ain't bad. Throw down some air mattresses and the futon, and you've got around 20, except that you might step on human flesh on your 3am trip to the bathroom.

I'm suddenly reminded of the place on Freret St. in New Orleans where we all stayed for Mardi Gras '92 ("The Best Mardi Gras Ever"). As I recall, every single inch of floor space was taken up, and that includes hallways and one of the staircases. There must have been 35 of us packed into that shotgun house. And worst of all, I slept on the floor between the two twinjuns, and during the night, the keg leaked into the carpet, traveled by transference up into our sleeping bags, and we woke up sopping with awful beer. Auch, the humanity.

Did you know that the first air conditioner was built into the White House so that James Garfield could recover from an assassination attempt? They blew air over 5000 tons of ice so he wouldn't expire from the humid, putrescent Washington weather, and it reduced the room's temperature by 20 degrees. He died anyway, of course.

The Celextant, May 3, 2002

The fatigue waned a bit today, as did the headaches. I don't think I took any aspirin today at all, strangely enough. Still capable of an incredible amount of rage (like when I left Tessa's bag across town) and depression (everyone's bleak financial situation engendered a powerful hopelessness). So I wanna know: when do I start skipping down the street singing songs from "Carousel"?

5/2/02 So, I went to

5/2/02

So, I went to the Tapehouse screening of our footage today and felt sluggish. Then had a therapy session and battled fatigue. Then played hoops for two hours tonight and could barely keep my eyes open afterwards. Could it be

The Celextant, May 2, 2002 ?

Because I recall feeling like I was hit by a truck after a few days on the half-pill of Celexa, and now the same thing has happened after a few days on the full dosage. One might say it is tired-making, or even somnambulantic. All I know is I can't go back on the Red Bull this better be temporary.

"This better be temporary" why does that seem like a punchline to a really bad joke?

5/1/02 I read this today:

5/1/02

I read this today: basically, two burglars, unhappy with the contents of a Starbucks safe, went ahead and worked there for a half an hour and pocketed the proceeds. Police say as many as 18 Starbucks patrons were serviced by the crooks before they fled.

Obviously if you do the math, they couldn't have made more than $100 off the customers, even with a couple of grande lattes and mocha frappucinos thrown in. But what's more interesting is that the burglars knew enough about the place to keep it running. It's more evidence of what Andrew Wood at San Jose State calls "omnitopia," which are workplaces of "ubiquitous, ever-present environments" - we've all seen people make the same damn coffee drinks in about 4000 locations all over the country.

I mean, I know where McDonald's keeps the Hot Mustard sauce at their location on the corner of Sunset and Highland in LA, and on Hwy 90 outside Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. I've seen so many tall lattes made over the past five years, I could do it in my sleep. Tessa mentioned that the espresso machine might be a little tough, but maybe the burglars fudged that one. It makes sense that crooks have a home in Omnitopia: find one safe, and you've found them all.

On the way to sushi tonight, we ran into Bridget R____, now Bridget L____, except that she isn't L____ anymore either. It was amazing to see her in this environment, or really, see her at all I think I haven't laid eyes on her since 1997. She and M__ got divorced, and she's about to start a photography class up in Montana for the summer. I'll give her one thing, the girl's a survivor. I wonder what her marriage was like, but that's the sort of thing you can never know.

The Celextant, May 1, 2002

I got my prescription filled today to the delightful little health-care-insured tune of $25. It was so much less than expected that I splurged on discount nose-strips. God, the things I find myself saying. Anyway, for those shopping for nose strips, I think you should go ahead and get the Breathe-Right strips, because the other ones feel like a Band-Aid.