you got a big ego

I didn’t want to check in tonight before I went to bed. But it’s the first of December and I keep waking up on the first of every month and saying: I can’t believe it’s _________! I couldn’t believe it was november. Just like I couldn’t believe it was october, or september, or august for that matter. And here we are, heading into the last month of this crazy year and I can hardly believe it’s happening.

Here’s the thing: this morning, I woke up at 7:30 to go to work. And to get to work I take the G train all the way to court square and I get in a van filled with some of my favorite people in the world. I throw my things in and run across the street to get coffee, and then we barrel down or up or across one or many highways in a rattling 15-passenger tin box to get to someone’s house where we make a t.v. show and a really big mess. I take pictures. It’s what I do.

And I am so happy. After work I run home and take a nap, and as soon as my alarm goes off for my second job of the day, Misty my roommate also tells me she is doing acupuncture in the living room for some of her lovely friends. So i tip toe around them as I try to get ready and then I go to work, which is an event in a hip place in the West Village and everyone is wearing suits and trying to impress one another. I am there for two hours. I leave.

As I am leaving I desperately try to light a cigarette before I meet my boss to discuss my life plans and what the hell is wrong with me. I have it half lit and am walking so as to evade all the people I was harassing all night to let me take their picture. It is like fleeing the scene of a crime. As I round the corner I see my boss, who thinks that smoking is the last thing I would ever do, so I have a minor panic attack. I immediately stub out my cigarette on a lamppost and throw it into the street. He hasn’t seen me yet because I cut all my hair off and he walked past me like I was a stranger.

The thing with smoking is that I know it is bad for me. I know it is bad for everyone. I know that we should all just start cutting holes in our throats so we can breathe out of them already because god knows in twenty years we won’t be able to, with all the shit we suck into our lungs. And I don’t even like it. But I want one. I want one because I know I’m going to die someday, and why not throw a penny in the hat, why should I pretend like it’s not all going to end someday? And I want to see my breath actualized in mid-air, i want to watch it float away from me. It is all my existential anxiety in a neat little roll of tobacco. And I can’t explain why, but sometimes, it’s comforting. It feels like you’re doing something. It helps to qualm that nagging nervousness that creeps up from idle hands. So, I do it sometimes. I talk like this cause I can back it up.

It’s strange to go from an event where no one knows who you are or why you’re really there to a meeting with one person who knows exactly (or tries to anyway) what you’re all about and what you’re trying to do without ever saying you’re trying to do it. Should I say it?
I’m trying to save the world.
And the world is a very big place and I am very small, and this, I know, rationally, is not possible. But why can’t it be possible? Why can’t we make tiny, tiny changes, so small you could hardly see them, that eventually add up to a monumental accomplishment? I think after college I found that many people have a very skewed idea of accomplishment. I don’t know how to quantify success because I feel like I’ve never achieved it. It remains some kind of distant ideal, like the horizon, that only exists if you remain far away from it. Dave tries to get all this out of me. WHAT DO YOU WANT SANDY? DEFINE YOURSELF. REALLY. Don’t you think it’s important? He asked me. and I do. But the issue here is I don’t think that I am very important. I don’t think that I am important at all. And I can’t distinguish between myself and the things that I want to do without thinking that, well, I’m getting a very big head about them.

I went home this weekend and it reminded me why I moved away. And then I started re-reading East of Eden and remembered why i love that book so much. It lends credence to the pursuit of big ideas. If you are not going to pursue the big idea then why bother? You can’t stomach it. You might as well just lay down and die. There are the kinds of people who don’t want anything to do with anything new, or anything “fancy” or anything strange or excessive or bold. These people keep us grounded sometimes. And I don’t deny that, that I sometimes need someone to remind me of the ground beneath my feet, but I think there are too many of these people and they can’t all keep telling us what to do. If it were up to them, we would never have invented anything. And the world would be a colorless, un-fascinating place.

So, Dave and I sat in the weird cozy haven of the Tavern on Jane Street hashed all this out for a long time and when it came down to it, my issues were mostly with my sister. And being at home. I think I have this very rigid idea of what my home-life should be like: i want it to be cozy and warm and open, I want it to invite strangers in and make a fire, and I want to just tell everyone everything that’s been happening since it’s been so long and there’s never enough time. But then I go home and it’s not like this at all. It’s cold and dark in my house, and my brother only watches television, and my sister only gets mad, and I am mostly just bored. And it’s sad to me. It’s sad to me also that my sister is the one person in the world I think I should be closest to, and still we remain so far apart. But what can you do? We’ve been through all these difficult things together, but we’ll never talk about them, we are mostly scared. I think that’s all anyone ever is when they’re mad, they’re just scared and misunderstanding, and it’s easy to get mad at everyone, to take everything defensively, but who do you become that way? I think you just become a monster. But you could also become someone like me, who believes almost anything, so you walk around half the time thinking you’re a sweetheart and a genius and then the other half of the time you think you’re the most awful person in the world, selfish and dumb and immature and horrible. And it doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t get me anywhere. I need some middle ground, which is my ground, which is the part where I say: I’m really not all that bad, I think I’m kind of smart sometimes, and if I just set my mind to it, I think I could do something really amazing and maybe even help someone. Somewhere. Somehow.

So after all of this, Dave and I finish our meal with a really disgusting version of Bananas Foster which was really just bananas covered in caramel and ice cream. It was yummy in a gross, I-shouldn’t-be-eating-this kind of way. He walks me to the subway, where I miss the F by about four seconds, and I stand there bopping to beyonce until another train comes to take me home. I rise above ground. I light a cigarette against all odds with a single match on a breezy night and walk home. When i get home, I pry my stiff shoes off my frozen bleeding feet. I wash my face. I get in bed.

I’m ready for tomorrow.