Month: September 2008

On Perry and Bleecker right now.  I thought this was a fake new store, for a movie set, but now I’m thinking it might be a real store.  Which I won’t be able to afford to shop at.

Meanwhile, even though I was not motivated, I made myself work on the two things I needed to yesterday, so yay me!  Then I got two rejection-type things in email, so not-yay me!  THEN, today, when I weighed myself I weighed the exact same as last month (I only weigh myself once a month). This was after increasing the number of times I go to the gym every week, and the intensity of my workout. So, wtf??  Since killing myself didn’t work, this month I will try an easier, but longer workout.  If that doesn’t work, then I’m going to accept that this is my weight now and only do this for health reasons, which will probably change which things I decide to keep doing.

I said pinhole before, but in that category I include pictures taken with plastic toy cameras like the Diana or the Holga.  This one is called “The End of the World” and it’s by Emil Schildt.  It brings to mind a quote I was considering using in both The Restless Sleep and Unbelievable.  It’s from a book by Mark Helprin called A Winter’s Tale. I’ve read that Helprin is embarrassed about A Winter’s Tale now. Maybe there’s some things in it worth cringing about, but there’s a lot to admire and love as well. Anyway, here’s the quote:  

“Remember, what we are trying to do in this life is to shatter time and bring back the dead.”  

The tile I posted earlier, in better days.

WOAH.  Just looked at the Time’s current headline. Ugh.  At the same time I got spam from Barneys, advertising Prada bags. I’m not a “bags” girl, and a Prada bag is just so far out of my field of interest – even if I had a trillion dollars I wouldn’t buy one.  I love their clothes though. I still remember a Prada ski jacket I couldn’t afford to buy.

Anyway, when I started this post the Thomas Dolby song Europa and the Pirate Twins had just come up on my ipod, and I was going to say something about it, the wistfulness of it, but the moment has passed. Goodbye moment.  It was nice while it lasted.  We will never meet again.

Sob.

I just can’t get motivated.  I don’t want to do anything beyond read, watch tv, or go to the movies.  I don’t want to work.  But I’ve got some substantial items on my to-do list.  Oh, and now Buddy is crying.  What does he want?  Hey dude.  Okay, focus.  Pick one thing, just one thing.  Okay, I just picked two.  They are the things that are the most important to accomplish but, not surprisingly, they are the things I would most like to avoid.

This is a sadly neglected mosaic at the Chambers Street subway stop.  Once it was bright and shiny and new.  The pride and joy of whoever made it.

I wish there had been more than one woman’s signature at the bottom of the letter I posted a link to earlier. At least there was you, Linda B. Buck. According to Wikipedia, “She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors.” That’s Richard on the left.

Isn’t that interesting that her work has to do with the sense of smell. It’s a curious, and important sense, isn’t it?  I read two books around the same time that opened my eyes (haha) about our sense of smell:  A Natural History of the Senses, (the chapter about smell is just astounding) and the novel Perfume.

Since then I’ve had a healthy respect for the power of scent.  Every day, before I leave the house, I spritz myself with a cologne that smells exactly like lemons.  It’s not sweet, it really smells like lemons, and for whatever reason this makes me happy.  The smell disappears in about a minute, but going off into my day with a whiff of lemons is like starting the day with an aromatic pep talk.