The Mesmer Project #1

The first posting of The Mesmer Project is up! Take a look to see who we've nominated as one of the most fascinating people in the world--who speaks English.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Frankly, it feels too soon for me to know exactly what I've gotten out of this Quixotic quest of mine. Perhaps in a few months I’ll be able to see it, but right now I’m just relieved to be done. For, while I definitely believe in the invigorating power of trying something new, I would never recommend committing to it daily. I find it ironic that I began this project because I was in a rut and the sheer routine has become a rut unto itself.

Likewise, I don't have enough distance from the mid-life crisis that inspired the whole thing in the first place. I think Dante put it best when he wrote, “Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in a dark woods, the right road lost. To tell about those woods is hard - so tangled and rough..." Like Dante, I’ve descended in order to ascend, but I still feel like I’m on an uphill climb.

Part of the problem is that this project was born in part out of the recession. Long before Wall Street reacted to the subprime mortgage crisis, I watched my savings disappear into a sinkhole of a real estate investment. The financial conditions that constrained me in the first place are worse than before, so I still don't have the financial freedom I'd like. (I know, who does?) I’m still lucky enough to make my living as a writer, but it’s not enough to live it up.

Yet.

As a result, I’ve strived for cheap thrills, managing to spend roughly $725 total on this project, an average of $2 a day. But that, too, was part of the point—to prove I could find adventure within limited means. Anyone can splurge on an expensive trip or toy or react to a midlife crisis with a scorched earth approach to your life. But my goal has been to change my life without exchanging it.

I'm happy to report that trying something new each day has provided temporary relief to my ennui, enough so that I’ve decided to continue on this journey by committing to one new thing a week, which I will post each Friday.

I'll post two other days, as well:

Each Monday I will continue to motivate myself to persevere (and hopefully you, as well) by ruminating on a Thought for the Week. (see below)

Then, on Wednesday, I'll post a link to my and Floyd's new blog adventure for 2009: The Mesmer Project.

The German physician Franz Anton Mesmer introduced "mesmerism" in 1774. His ideas and practices led to the development of hypnosis. One who mesmerizes is one who keeps us spellbound with their stories and ideas. These people captivate our imaginations and propel us in new directions.

Therefore, this Wednesday we'll ask the first of the five most fascinating people we know five questions in order to understand what makes them tick. Subsequently, we'll also ask each of those people who is the most fascinating person they know. Which will lead us on a journey to find the most fascinating people in the world--who speak English.

Much in the way I sought adventure here at home when I couldn't go finding it elsewhere, we've decided to bring the most fascinating people to us. And to you.

So check back on Wednesday to meet our first mesmerizing person. In the meantime, I'll be pondering this Thought for the Week, the one that informed both the project I've completed and the one I'm about to begin:

"IF YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF IT, GET INTO IT."

New Day #367 -- The Finale

People have been asking me all month how I’m going to finish my year of New Things, encouraging me to do something that would top everything else. But I’ve resisted the grand gesture. One of the points of this project has been to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. I wanted something quieter and more reflective.

So I thought it would be appropriate to end this phase of the project by going to a service at a Quaker Friends Meeting House, using it as an opportunity to meditate on the past year.

After all, who’s more quiet and reflective than the Quakers?

I chose the meeting closest to my house, which I was amazed to discover sits across from my godchildren’s school. I must’ve passed it hundreds of times without noticing it. I’ve even parked in the church lot when I’ve picked them up. As with so many other experiences this year, I suddenly saw something that’s been hiding in plain sight for years. And, as I arrived, I saw myself differently, someone I’ve never been before—a skinny blond guy with mascara left over from last night’s party. I like being that guy.

I suppose I should have done some research as it turned out that this is a relatively noisy Quaker congregation. Not only do they only do about 15 minutes of the open silent worship but, due to the storm, the meeting had missed two Sundays, as well as Christmas Eve. Which meant we ended up lighting advent candles, singing numerous hymns with that distinctly Caucasian sense of rhythm practiced by all Protestants, and watching an original Christmas pageant based on the Nutcracker called the Nutquaker, featuring themes of non-violence and conflict resolution yet still ending with a nativity scene which featured the only Virgin Mary I’ve ever seen wearing rubber snow boots.

I loved it. And I loved that my plans didn’t work out. What better way to end a year of surprises?

As much as I reveled in the wonder of letting go of an expectation (and here I was worried about how I was going to handle all that silence), I returned home to a situation that allowed me to do the opposite by taking control. Now that the snow storm is over, Floyd and I tried removing the chains from my car, but managed to get one set stuck on an axel. My usual response would’ve been to call either AAA or one of my straight husbands, but instead we got out the manual and—get this—actually removed a tire. It’s true, Floyd and I have a combined age of almost 93, yet neither of us have ever dared to jack up the car and remove a tire.

The lug nuts were so tight I had to stand on the wrench to loosen them.


But we were victorious, which left us feeling strong and capable and ready for anything.


Which is the best kind of New Thing.

As for reflecting more on the project, check out Margie Boule’s profile on it in Sunday’s Oregonian, then come back tomorrow for my own wrap-up, as well as my announcement of my project for 2009.

New Day #366

One New Thing I've steadfastly avoided this year was getting a tattoo. It just seemed so unoriginal, so mid-life crisisey. Y'know, 'cuz it is. But now that I've managed to go a year without one, it seemed a fitting way to acknowledge the project on its penultimate day.

So I went to my friend (and fellow Jersey boy) Sage to ink me a simple message for which he's ridiculously overqualified.


When Sage started on the top side of my wrist, the prickling sensation confirmed my guess that I would be one of those people who actually liked the feeling of getting tattooed. That is, until he flipped my arm over and started working on the thin skin on the inside of my wrist. Suffice it to say I now understand why it's the place the suicidal choose to slit.

As for the design, we chose a typewriter font--appropriate for a writer--and a message I thought I'd want to see every day for the rest of my life:

hope dream




It'll take a couple of weeks to heal before it looks right, but this gives you the idea.

There are few things I'd consider grafting onto my body, but I can never be reminded too much to hope and dream. I think Steve Rathje, one of the child actors in my play, put it best in the essay that won him the title of the Most Philosophical Fourth Grader in America. (That's right--in all of America.) The contestants were asked which is stronger--fear or hope. Out of the winners from grades 1-12, Steve was the only one who chose hope.

He wrote: "...hope is like running with the wind at your back."

If my wrists were bigger, I would have tattooed that instead.

New Day #365

Contrary to the number of the post, this is not the last day of this project because a) 2008 was a leap year and b) I miscounted last January, thus screwing up the whole numbering system. The last day will be Sunday with #367, followed by a wrap-up on Monday and an announcement of my next project.

In the meantime, I must admit that I still regret the day five months ago that I failed to do anything new. It's not like I didn't have the opportunity; I could have removed a security tag from clothes, but I failed to seize the moment.

The memory haunts me still.

But today I was in Macy's for some post-Christmas shopping (where I found a truly magnificent hoodie for twenty bucks, btw). So I went to the counter...

...and got to remove a security tag!

Truly, there are no words. It was just as satisfying as I thought it would be. It even made a little ka-chung sound.

Naturally, I didn't have my camera because I left my coat in the car so I wouldn't have to schlep it around the store. Because that's the kind of serious post-Christmas shopper I am.

But here's a photo of another New Thing, which I'm including here to even up the score. Floyd and I were immortalized in clay for the first time when we received this custom ornament from a reader (Joholidayd@aol.com):


I've always wanted to be considered ornamental.

New Day #364

At the suggestion of a reader (I totally forget who, but thank you mystery reader), Floyd and I took advantage of our White Christmas by making snow cream.

It's super easy--cream, vanilla, sugar, cocoa powder and snow.

Remember back in the 70s when ice milk came out as a healthier alternative to ice cream?

Remember how it sucked?

Yeah, so does snow cream.

New Day #363

There’s a scene in the musical Mame when Auntie Mame and her nephew Patrick hop onto a fire engine for a ride while the chorus sings:

Open a new window, open a new door,
Travel a new highway that’s never been tried before…

When I was a child, this was my vision of what kind of adult I wanted to be, a madcap free spirit whose life is a constant adventure.

So I’m especially pleased that I got to go for a spin in a snowplow.


I was shoveling the driveway talking with Cool Neighbor Brooke and her husband David, who she loans to me periodically when I have heterosexual needs involving tools, when along came the snowplow. When the driver saw me, he leaned out the window to ask me if there was a ditch in front of the house. I walked up to the truck and realized that we knew each other. Moments later I was in the cab and off for a tour of the ‘hood. Luckily, David was there to take the picture.

I’ll be honest—I haven’t really planned much how I was going to end this project. But I couldn’t have asked for a better experience for the last week. Not because riding in a snowplow is so special (though I was very impressed watching that sucker up), but because it confirmed to me that I was living the life I always dreamed of living, the sort of life I was afraid I was losing when I began this year. For not only am I the kind of person who leaps into snowplows, I’m also the kind who knows the driver.

I’d like to think Auntie Mame would have been proud.

New Day #362

After risking my life to record a holiday commentary for NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, I realized this morning I'd sent out an announcement to my mailing list without asking readers to click "recommend" or leave a comment, also known as "job security." A writer's career lives or dies by these kinds of numbers.

I could have shrugged it off as a missed opportunity, but, as I once wrote at Powells.com, my publicity role model is the tirelessly self-promoting though profoundly untalented Jacqueline Susann. Some people ask themselves, "What would Jesus do?" I ask myself "What would Jackie do?" Well, she'd make damn sure she got her readers to click "recommend" and leave a comment.

So I risked irritating my mailing list with a second e-mail, which indeed did prompt some people to opt out, though I figrued if they're that touchy they probably weren't fans, anyway.

More importantly, it totally worked. For the first time, my commentary was the Most Recommended on the NPR website by a ridiculous margin, four times more than the next contender. And it made #7 on the Most Commented list.


Lesson learned: heaven helps those who help themselves.

Thank you all for your support in this endeavor and always. In the current economy, continuing a writing career is an uphill climb and I need all the sherpas I can get.

New Day #361

Even when Floyd and I didn't work from home, our response to foul weather has been to simply hole up and wait out the storm. Particularly during "Arctic Blast 2008," the worst winter storm to hit the northwest in forty years. Check out the frozen snowdrift hanging off my roof:

But when the call came from NPR to do another commentary, we decided it was worth it to risk life, limb and property to serve the radio-listening public. Not to mention my overweening ambition.

Which meant coping with six inches of snow, covered with a quarter inch of ice, layered with yet another six inches of snow.



Braving the roads made us both feel intrepid. And just a little reckless. Particularly when we nearly slid off the road into a fence.

You can listen to the result of my toil here. Please click "recommend" if you like it. Or just like me.

New Day #360

Twice a year, when the earth has tilted away from the sun as far as it can, it actually pauses before it rights itself, like it’s resting up for the next half of its trip. If you look at the mid-day sun during the week of a solstice, you’ll see that it’s at the same height in the sky each day. That’s what the word solstice means—the "sun stands still"—even though it’s actually the earth that stands still.

Like so much of the country, the northwest has definitely paused as we're literally frozen under blankets of freezing ice and snow. I went to the neigbhor's for dinner and returned to discover my footprints had disappeared, leaving just an everywhere of silver.

In honor of these natural phenomena, I decided to unplug from all communication devices. I'm sure I've gone a day without a computer and phone before, but I can't remember the last time I did. Truly, it's been years.

I refuse to be one of those people who romanticizes the past, carping about how things used to be better, but I do think it's worth examining what we've lost and what's worth preserving. And one of the consequences of electric technology is that insulates us from the rhythm of the earth.

So to pause myself while the earth did the same provided a welcome break. All was calm. All was bright.

New Day #358

So there I was, hanging around backstage at Live Wire Radio with some of the other guests like NPR's Ari Shapiro, who is entirely too good looking for radio. Someone asked me to hand them a beer (it's that kind of show) but I couldn't find an opener.

Luckily, there were plenty of musicians around, from the sublime indie bands Blind Pilot and Blue Giant, all of whom seemed to know how to open a beer using a plastic water bottle for leverage.

The constipated expression on my face demonstrates just how difficult I found the task.

New Day #357

Years ago I saw a high school art project in which the students drew on their jeans. As a compulsive doodler, the idea appealed to me, but, given that it seemed too time consuming to do well, I filed it away in the Someday File.

Well, one of the benefits of this project is that it's given me permission to indulge my whims, so Someday finally arrived. That said, I didn't have the time to lay out a design, so I just experimented with scrawling some of my favorite poems by Langston Hughes, ee cummings, Dorothy Parker, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Shel Silverstein.


And, no, it didn't occur to me until I tried them on that I wrote "i carry your heart in my heart" and "Put Something In" on my ass.

New Day #356

As I close in on the final twelve days of this project (but who's counting), I feel like I'm supposed to amp it up for some final kick-ass adventures. Y'know, really knock it out of the park. But the truth is I'm staggering to the finish line, still feeling that nagging anxiety of whether I'll come up with enough interesting ideas.

Then I remind myself that one of the points of this year was to not only invigorate my life with extraordinary moments, but also to invest in the ordinary. To pay closer attention. To fall in love with my life.

Like today's New Thing wherein I learned the simple act of how to flip onions in a pan. I must confess that flipping anything in a pan (like omelettes or crepes) had somehow passed from Something I Don't Know How to Do to Something I Was Sure I Couldn't Do. Yet, as with learning to throw a frisbee, it's all a matter of learning the proper technique. In this case, from my culinarily gifted friend BoBo.


Look how hard I'm concentrating. You'd think I was splitting atoms. But see how the onions are flying up out of the pan?

New Day #355

With the sartorial assistance of Young Noah, Floyd and I spent the afternoon getting a Closet Edit. Noah also gave us lots of fashion advice along the way, crafting new outfits out of old clothes:


We eliminated two full garbage bags worth, leaving us with very little to wear:


The purge was so worth it, though. Every item in our closet is now intentional, which feels both liberating and empowering.
And I'm very excited to supplement with some bargain hunting.

New Day #354

One of the more confrontative aspects of this project has been the realization that I can be shockingly incompetent.

Exhibit A: my scanner. It sits by Floyd's computer and, since he's more adept at these matters, years have flown by without my ever learning how to use it. And the more time passes, the more daunting the task seems to be. So much so that I couldn't teach myself when I tried to put together a slide show for Floyd's surprise party, and had to delegate the task to Oregonian columnist Margie Boule'.

You know your life is out of balance when you have to rely on one of Portland's most beloved celebrities to do your clerical work.

So I finally got Floyd to show me how the damn thing worked. The part of the process I was neglecting? Plugging it into the computer.

I worry about myself sometimes.

I chose to digitize the following photo because I'm old enough that my childhood pictures are yellowing and fading. I'm probably six or seven and am allegedly entertaining the family at Christmas.

New Day #353

I learned how to do a magic trick. Which is not the same as actually being able to do it. With my pudgy peasant hands, it's gonna take some practice.

Until I do, here's the kid who taught me, Colton Lasater, the 16-year-old actor who plays one of the homeless youth in HOLIDAZED. As if I weren't already impressed enough with his moving performance, this illusion is the real deal. No trick photography here.

And I'm psyched that I totally know how it's done.

New Day #352

I'll be honest, this project has me worn out. As inconsequential as some of these new things have been, having to do one a day often feels like some kind of fairy-tale punishment: the unsatisfied writer wishes for something new every day and then is trapped by his desire. Careful what you wish for and all that.

Moreover, the weather here in Portland could charitably be described as Wuthering Heights.

So I woke up feeling blue and wondering why there was a mixup in the cosmic paperwork and I didn't end up with the life where "winter" is a verb, not a noun. As in "We winter on Catalina Island." In the last few days I've encountered people just back from, on the way to, or currently enjoying travels in warm climates, having adventures like swinging on zip lines in Costa Rica. Leaving me to ponder whether I'm somehow organizing my life wrong, the industrious ant constantly preparing for winter while the grasshoppers galivant about.

Still, while I'm prone to self-pity, I'm also self-motivated, so I cheered myself up by running my errands wearing a Santa hat on the entirely correct theory you can't be in a bad mood while wearing a Santa hat.

This is hardly aberrant behavior for me (as well as the sum total of my holiday spirit), so I continued scouting around for something new. And, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I found it in my own backyard. Or my neighbor's yard, to be precise. Inspired by his own trip to Costa Rica, Sam installed a zip line.

It's aptly named, for I did feel more zip after I sailed across his backyard. As well as a commitment to do the same off the Bridge of the Gods in Columbia Gorge this spring.

Because, fear not, I'll continue doing new things next year, but only once a week, which hopefully will free me up to be more adventuresome. Plus a new project to be unveiled in the new year.

In the meantime, just two weeks left of the fairy-tale curse.

New Day #351

Well, Time magazine just published its List Issue and I'm sorry to report I did not make the Top Ten of anything. Maybe I'm 11th at something.

Number Ten on the Oddball Stories of the year was Ian Usher, who became an Internet sensation when he attempted to sell his life on eBay. Ian is now traveling the world, looking to achieve 100 goals in 100 weeks, which I find infinitely more sensible than doing something new every friggin' day.

This is my kind of guy.

So I was especially psyched when my friend David Sloan told me he was hosting Ian as he came through Portland. In the interest of doing Something New, we all visited the Shanghai Tunnels, which I feared would suck yet turned out to be fascinating.

Here's David descending below the street in Old Town, where reprobates unlucky enough to get drunk or stoned would find themselves locked up on a boat heading to Shanghai. Hence the term "shanghaied."


Apparently, Portland was the shanghaiing capitol of the country. Between 1850 and 1941, an average 1,500 people a year were kidnapped into servitude, enabled by a vast labyrinth of subterranean tunnels specifically constructed to accommodate human trafficking.

Here's me and Ian outside an actual opium den:


Please note that smoking opium isn't on either of our lists.

New Day #350

Geek alert: have concluded yet another adventure that only seems adventuresome to those of us who loved school. This time it wasn't the Hat Museum or the Emily Dickinson Sing-a-Long, but a personal tour of the Rare Book Room at Powells.

What makes a book rare? Well, there are the limited editions--fancy art books with poster-sized color reproductions--and then there the old books, which are the most fun.

Things like this hand-colored Godey's Lady's Book from the 19th century, which interested me in particular because it was edited by Sara Jospeha Hale, who is one of my personal obsessions. A widow who raised five children alone, Hale published over fifty volumes of work (including the best known nursery rhyme in the English language, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”), and still she found time to write over a thousand letters to Abraham Lincoln urging him to turn Thanksgiving into a federal holiday.

Friggin' overachiever. I’m sure Lincoln got so sick of her, he said, “Someone just shoot me.”

Or "Association copies," which are books owned by famous people who did not write them. Like this collection of Keats poems stolen from the Navy by Jack Kerouac, a one-of-a-kind find that costs $12,000:


Or this $14,000 copy of The House of Seven Gables, hand-bound by Virginia Woolf, who did it as a hobby to cheer herself up.

Yeah, that didn't work out too well.

New Day #349

Went to the intimidatingly titled Fierce Fitness for kickboxing, which is not to be confused with letterboxing and is way better than shadow boxing. I mean, in shadow boxing you box your shadow. In kickboxing you get to kick and box a punching bag. It's a very satisfying way to work out aggression.

That said, I'm not very aggressive. Twenty minutes of pounding and I felt complete. In the words of the Kinks, I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Okay, some would say a wuss.

New Day #348

As you're undoubtedly aware, today is Emily Dickinson's 178th birthday. Because she could not stop for death he kindly stopped for her.

Perhaps you're not aware that you can sing many of Dickinson's poems to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," which is just one of the many random pieces of information that clog my brain and prevent me from remembering where I parked my car.

So, in honor of her birthday, I gathered some of the friends who helped plan Floyd's birthday party to feast on leftovers and have a foot stompin' Belle of Amherst Hootenanny.

Here's our hillbilly version of "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain." I've included the words if you'd care to sing along and mostly because you can hardly understand a thing we say:



I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And being, but an ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then –

(Repeat) I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

Can't get enough? Here's a list of some others, which I compiled myself as a service to poetry lovers and hillbillies everywhere.

Hope is the thing with feathers...
God gave a loaf to every bird...
Success is counted sweetest...
I measure every grief I meet...
He ate and drank the precious words...
I taste a liquor never brewed...
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died...
The soul should always stand ajar...
You left me, sweet, two legacies...
There is no frigate like a book...
My life closed twice before it closed...
Because I could not stop for death...
The dying need but little, dear...
This is my letter to the world...

Sidenote: In the course of my research, I discovered that the yellow rose in "The Yellow Rose of Texas" refers to a real-life slave named Emily West Morgan, who was captured by Mexican troops, forced to be the mistress of the commander and eventually spied for American soldiers, who rewarded her with her freedom. The nickname came from her being of mixed race, what used to be called "high yellow." Like "Oh Susannah," which is about an escaped slave, the song is a chipper tribute to the cruelties of slavery.

Which are just more facts to keep me from ever remembering where I parked.

New Day #347

You know when you get a piece of gristle in steak and you discretely spit it into your napkin?

Yeah, that's what alligator tastes like.

New Day #346

I was so excited to receive a dollar from the "Where's George?" project , which tracks the travels of individual bills. I'd gotten one a while back and mistakenly passed it on without looking it up, which really disappointed me. I'm a big fan of random acts of weirdness, as witnessed by this blog.

So there I was, all psyched to discover the fascinating adventure of this dollar, imagining it being used to snort cocaine, or stuffed into a male stripper's g-string, only to see that no one else had bothered registering it.

And that's the end of my story. I tried something new and it was a bust.

Sorry, folks. Just 'cuz it's new doesn't necessarily make it interesting.

New Day #345

I have surefire way to tell if someone is right-brained (creative) or left-brained (analytical). Simply ask them which they are. If they can't remember the difference, they're right-brained.

I'm one of those people. As such, I've learned to avoid certain tasks that make me feel like my head will explode. Like project management.

But the Long Suffering Floyd wanted a surprise party for his 50th (yes, it can still be a surprise even if you know you're having one), which meant I had to suck it up and produce a night to remember.

As a result, I dealt with a lot of New Things: hiring a caterer, working with a party planner, organizing, organizing, organizing. Most of the time I was totally out of my comfort zone, but the result--Floyd being so surprised and moved he practically had a seizure--was worth it.

That said, I informed him this was the only surprise party he was getting, partly because I don't want to do another one but mostly because there's no way anything could top being serenaded by Storm Large. While simultaneously getting a lap dance:

New Day #344

After 22 years, Floyd and I tried switching sides of the bed. What amazes me is that we've been in the habit of me being on the left and him on the right for so long despite the fact that when either of us writes in bed our arms block the bedside lamps because I'm right-handed and he's left. It makes me feel profoundly stupid that we've never noticed.

Intriguingly, the dog switched, too. The result: for the last two nights we've all slept soundly without waking, which is unusual. Between the three of us, we typically manage to keep a 24 hour watch.

Guess we were overdue for a change.

New Day #343

Picked up friends late tonight at the airport, so I took advantage of the empty terminal by walking up the down escalator. I can't believe I've never done it before. I like to think of myself as a wacky, madcap iconoclast but, seriously, how wacky, madcap and iconoclastic can you be if you've never walked up a down escalator?

(Actually, you have to run up inelegantly to make it work.)

In my defense, I am a habitual banister-slider, which has got to count for somethin'.

Hair Update

For those of you who care, my dark roots are coming in, so I've finally got some texture going:

New Day #342

Here's another one for the "who knew?" category: while I was letterboxing I learned that one can carve a rubber stamp out of an pink eraser. Y'know, the big kind, not the one on the end of the pencil.

This got me disproportionately excited. One of the deep dark secrets I've discovered about myself this year is that I really love crafts. I find the act of physically making something to be a welcome break from the restless eddy that is my mind.

But what kind of stamp to carve? Wisely, I opted for something simple, drawing inspiration from my writing group, the Big Brain Trust. Whenever we encounter a line that needs works, we often write "CDB" in the margin, for "could do better." Why not save time by making a rubber stamp?



Cute, huh? It reminds me of the soap from Fight Club:



However, it turns out I got too much of a break from my big brain. Here's the result:



Talk about CDB.

New Day #341

I got real snakeskin shoes, which I photographed in the mirror all arty and whatnot.



I scored them for free because a friend of a friend works at Nike and they didn't fit him. I've talked about the disproportionate amount of pride I take in having easy-to-fit sample size feet, but I've never thought of myself as someone who loves shoes.

Yet slipping these on makes me inordinately happy, as do many of my shoes. Likewise for hats and scarves. Perhaps it's because the moments of feeling at home in the rest of my body have been so fleeting over the course of my life.

Yeah, still working on that one.

New Day #340

You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Well, I decided to actually pay attention to what I sing to myself--the ultimate playlist. Over the course of a few days, I figured it'd reveal something hitherto unknown about my psychological makeup.

Yeah, not so much.

For the most part, I could trace exactly why I started singing a particular song, usually because it was associated with what I was thinking about in an obvious, literal way or, worse, because I'd just heard it.

Occasionally I surprised myself. Like when a friend called in need and I responded with the theme from Mighty Mouse:



Or when my friend Tim announced he was moving to LA and I found myself singing this Handel aria:



Frankly, I'm pleased to learn that I'd react so magnanimously, when in fact I'm both bummed he's leaving and jealous he's off on an adventure, the like of which I have not had in a while.

Hence this blog.