Be Brave Project, Day 43: Tune in Later, Please

Elusive D. is doing her eponymous thang. . .moving! Be back on Wednesday, October 1.

Be Brave Project, Day 42; Bookending

I think I've broken the back of this moving job, but then I keep thinking that. . .and discovering how wrong I am. This time, however, as I sit here looking at a denuded bookcase on my left, the eight boxes behind me, the front room filled with more boxes, a shadeless lamp, the confused and increasingly complaining cat--I think I'm right on the ball here.

We shall see.

But it's always a funny thing, moving. Last night I was hauling books from bookshelf #1, when I found a few interesting objects:

-My DayRunner from 1999. With no days in it, torn back, old addresses and drunken notes scrawled on pastel colored paper in the back. Why did I keep this? What sentimental purpose could there have been? No Idea.

-A series of books on the Greatest Crime Films Ever. Bound in stiff cardboard that could snap like a matchstick, written in greasy cheap ink. And I don't like crime films. Why keep. . .?

-One excellent book (John Fowles' The Collector), a psychologically astute and deeply creepy story by a first rate writer--with the cover removed and the pages so loose that you can't turn them or they'll fall like a shower of confetti. Why keep a book you can't read?

Everytime you move--and this is my 6th move since 2000--you are sorting and tossing out a variation of you, the person you were when living in this space. The person you wanted to be, or hoped to be, or couldn't escape somehow. If you skip the sorting process and simply place everything in a box you miss the (only) educative and enjoyable melancholy aspect of moving--what has and hasn't happened since you lived here.

This is the only time in life you're actually going to spend a few minutes looking at that French book from 10th grade, or the yearbook you've carefully saved and occasionally used as a bug-killer.

It is interesting. As I said, it's a bit sad for some reason. Tempus fugit and all of that. . .but most important is to keep my eyes on the prize. Monday Night: Vietnamese food. And a lovely lovely bubble bath in my new apartment. . . Worth it.

Be Brave Project, Day 41; Try Not to Shout at The Children

Oh dear. Well, I always sort of assumed that spinsterhood beckoned. Smelling of lavender, filled with nervous laughter, and brimming with baking projects. Two of my aunts never married--one moved here to NYC, got herself a job working for the City (I believe Ike Turner wrote a song about her. . .), bought a condo downtown and a house in the countryside.

My other aunt moved to upstate Michigan and likes to sleep with enormous egg-shaped crystals. She teaches tai-chi and is a righteous unappealing guilt-trip on legs: Has the tendency to ask you if you will give her one of your possessions, and when you say no she sighs, "I forgot what it's like to be with people who are so materialistic."

I always think, "And I forgot how intense my urge is to kick your ass." I don't really get hippies--exposure to them has taught me that they are much more about guilt trips and passive aggression than peace & love; In my family they turned not working into an art form, and I early on noted that people who are secretly ashamed of themselves are very, very difficult to be with.

So a hippie I shall never be, but a spinster? Different story altogether. As I say, I've always had a worrying bent in that direction: I like reading, knitting, and cats far too much. I absolutely adore travelling alone--when I've travelled with boyfriends I kept wanting to send them off on errands so I could investigate places on my own, and talk to the natives. I get offended very easily, as spinsters do in 30's films. And, as I believe I demonstrated yesterday, I am a complete doofus around attractive men. (I didn't used to be that way; that's an annoying new sobriety thing. I used to be confident to the point of cockiness, and they'd always call. Now I don't even give out the number.)

But yesterday, at 3:00 in the afternoon, I discovered another symptom of incipient Spinsteritis: A tendency to roll the eyes and mutter, "kids today. . ." when confronted by the young generation. I was, as usual, on the bus--v. spinsterish mode of transport, by the way--carrying stuff down to the new apartment. I had a duffel bag filled with trousers and hangers, and an arm laden with dry-cleaning. At 110th and Amsterdam the bus-driver, who had been regaling us with her theories on medical care and the pharmaceutical companies, suddenly announced in tones dark with dread, "The school children are coming. Watch out."

The bus pulled to the right, and the doors swung open. And about 25 children rushed into the bus as if they were escaping a gun-man. Each of them, for some reason, had a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake in hand. And all of them shouted, all at once.

Do parents not tell their kids that one of the reasons Americans are hated abroad is because we SHOUT ALL THE TIME? And that not only does it make whatever you say sound quite stupid, but it's also a form of social bullying? The bus passengers cowered in their seats--more than one lady had their hands clapped to their ears--as the children shouted and fell all over the place. They swung from poles and told stories of Miss Harket being the BEST teacher. Blobs of chocolate cake seemed to smear themselves on the floor and windows and seats. One boy, who had Elizabeth Arden skin and Sideshow Bob hair, kept shouting "They don't have buses like this in Africa!" in very sarcastic tones.

It was the longest 15 minutes of my life. I would literally rather have another periodontal scaling than go through that again. On 89th Street, I pushed my way through the chocolate-caked crowd and through the back door, and stood slumped on the corner. My dry cleaning bag was torn, my duffel grey with foot-prints, and my hair looked as if I'd been dragged by a horse.

But Oh! I was so happy that I get to spend every night living alone. Just me and my cat and my Volkswagen-sized bowls of pasta. . .now that's my American Dream.

BBP: I am applying for a new credit card, in the hopes of creating a better credit portfolio (and so I can stick it to Capital One). Not the best time to apply for credit, but I haven't applied for a new card this year and I want to go for it--diversify and up my limit. We Shall See.

Be Brave Project, Day 40; Recovering Doofus

Most people know this (and I am sure that my very few but gem-like readers know all), but it is very much frowned upon for people to date for the first year they are in A.A. Dating seems to kick up the worst of our character flaws, accentuate our weaknesses, and bring on the jones to pick up.

This rule against dating has been used by rehab storytellers and memoirists as a 21st Century form of creating Romeo + Juliet style forbidden loves: Augusten Burroughs in Dry falls hard for a Mel Gibson-esue meth user who turns him on to the drug before disappearing beneath the steam rising from NY streets; Sandra Bullock in 28 Days is cooped up with Viggo Mortenson but nobly refrains from showing him how congenial she really can be; and of course old slab-faced James Frey, in A Million Little Pieces, wrote about re-claiming the soul and trust of an abused girl, and saving her from a crack den (by literally dragging her from the crotch of an old man who was providing the drug for her). Lily loved James with strength and intensity but couldn't, oh she couldn't bear life without him--so within 24 hours of his release from jail she hanged herself.

Of course, now it's come out that Lily probably never existed, and there is no record of a girl of "Lily's" age found dead by hanging in Chicago at that time.

And James Frey never did go to jail.

So perhaps ex-drunks and addicts should be forbidden to date OR to write, for a decade (or more!) after quitting. Just to give us some time to get used to telling the truth and bearing the consequences without a tumbler of vodka. Between paying off our old debts and internet games/netflix/gossip sites (whichever is your choice)--there's plenty to do.

But, no matter what you might think about the fact that a dry drunk has been running this country into the ground over the last few years (I in all honesty think that recovering addicts and lushes should not be qualified for the presidency, but that's another day's topic), drunks are people too. They get crushes. They sometimes find themselves dressing a little more carefully than might be strictly necessary. . .perhaps they have an incredibly nice pair of open-toed spectator pumps made in Italy they're dying to flash around town with a crinkly-eyed male in tow. Yes. Perhaps they do.

All of this is leading up to a rather interesting development on Sunday. As usual I had hauled 2 shopping bags down to the new apartment, and then was planning to go to a meeting near Central Park West. Rather a tony location for someone in dust-creased cargo trousers and flip-flops, but what the hell. Who cares, right? I've never regarded meetings as my personal dating pool, never jokingly referred to my early time as "90 outfits in 90 days", never been at all receptive to the occasional man who suddenly swans up after a meeting with a business card in hand.

I walked into the school basement where the meeting's held, and there was only one damn seat available. In the back row, and next to a man I haven't seen since I was counting days. Jon, a sculptor. And I'd always really liked him, and his crinkly eyes. And curly hair. He's not my usual type--he's not very tall, and he's not younger than I am. But I just always liked what he said in meetings and what he looked like saying it.

Desperately I looked for another chair that was available. There was none. I thought about dodging out and going home. But he'd already turned around and smiled, which was SO like the scene in Pride and Prejudice where Jane sees Bingley at the Bennet's dinner party, that I had to sit down.

And it was a long hour. I sat back, to look relaxed, but it was very uncomfortable. I sat forward, but felt I looked as if I had to use the bathroom. I crossed my right leg over my left, and noticed he was doing the same--didn't want to send a message of mimicry. I finally just tucked a foot up on the chair and wrapped an arm around it. Unless he'd been doing yoga, he couldn't achieve that pose.

Every time he brushed his hands down his jeans, the sound reverberated as if it was miked.

He'd laugh at sometime funny and look over at me, which was very nice but unnerving.

At the break we exchanged swift "How are you doing's?", but the real horror was after the meeting when we stood and chatted for a bit. . .or, in my case, yammered.

Am I making this up, or was I talking about waffles and the Korean influence on Bryant Park this year? Oh my dear God.

Finally, a woman came up who wanted to talk to the poor man, and I made my escape--probably yammering in half-sentences until I got out the door. Thank God for that woman: I would like to buy her a spa-day and a fruit basket. She did a sister a favor.

And perhaps someday I'll see that man again and behave like someone who hasn't had 37 coffees and a recent lobotomy. . .but I doubt that'll be happening anytime in the near future.

Being Brave Project, Day 39; Mocked by my Email

My email is revving up for the holiday season, a fact I find both rude and distressing due to the fact that I am most definitely not, and will not be, doing any revving up at all, party-wise. But the party girl past still lingers, along with the fact that I was apparently incapable, when drunk, of NOT signing a mailing list. Here's a sample invitation received recently:

The Bond Ball New Years Eve

Be lavish, be outrageous, be daring and have fun! Try something new this New Years Eve--The original party in a Hotel, now in its 8th year! Admission + hotel room and after parties £99.95

Reserve your place today. See in ‘009 with 007, along with a host of Moneypennys, Dr Nos and Pussy Galores. For New Year 2008 an entire London Hotel will be booked out to Bond guests. Fancy dress events are always a hoot and this is a fantastic theme – true Bond fans will recognise every outfit while casual guests can enjoy the outlandish costumes, in-house casino and copious vodka martinis.

Gamble your way into the New Year, swap glances with impeccably groomed baddies at the bar, or take to the dance floor with Baron Samedi, Q and Bond himself at this classy theme night. Get dressed up so that you feel and look like a million dollars, a character straight out of a James Bond movie (Blofeld, Goldfinger, Miss Moneypenny, Bond girls from the 60's 70's 80's and 90's and of course Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang himself) and join 1000 other alluring bright young things for this years superlative Bond Ball event which will be held in a 4* London Hotel.

Sigh. Well, that's not going to happen--I've enjoyed my share of vodka martinis and am now leaving their 'copious' consumption to others. In this case they'll be wearing rented tuxes or drinking these martinis while freezing in white bikinis (which just doesn't seem as if it will end well or prettily).

But for reasons of sheer contrariness, I want to go.

I don't think I've sat through a single one of those adolescent fantasies known as Bond Films --though I would have if they'd chosen Clive Owen as the new Bond, oh how I'd have been rapturously entranced!--yet somehow I want to go to this party very much.

But then I think of the 'alluring bright young things' I would generally see at fancy dress parties in London, 3x more drunk than would be acceptable in NYC; I remember an acquaintance named Mellon crawling on the floor until he collapsed and lay there sprawled like a swastika as his friends stood over him cheering at his drunken paralysis. I remember Oliver, a drunken French Count, pissing himself in the back of a black cab as he kept repeating in a child's voice, "But I want to wee. . .but I want to wee. . ."

What I don't remember is the end of any party I went to when I was living in London. I lived there because they drank like me, and I left there because drinking like me was going to kill me.

But, of course, there are parties in New York:

Nestled beneath the fabled Chelsea Hotel, at the Star Lounge you can meet and mingle in this ‘intimate haven for night time revelry’. The venue is comprised of three distinctive areas subtly suggestive of a 1920's speakeasy. A modern, seamless style combined with a space's organic lighting elements give the Star Lounge a feel that is chic and exclusive yet warm & inviting.

Oooh! A 1920's speakeasy! Chic and exclusive and warm and inviting! Damn, this sounds pretty good as well, and has the advantage of not making me dress up like Judi Dench after she's attended a Womyn's Wicca Man-hating Convention. Plus, it's in my current home town. . .and on this Thursday night.

But what the hell is an organic lighting element, and does it smell of butternut squash when activated?

But No. No no. No putting on my party dress, or my sophisticated shoes. No wandering through the three rooms of the 1920's speakeasy, breathing in the glamorous scent of roasting squash as I show the Star Lounge how it's done. . .I'll be home, packing boxes and watching The Office season premiere. Dammit.

Re. the apartment: I have paid the security and rent. The Super has been bribed. 20 bags have been moved in, and more stuff's going in every day. Have at least 12 big boxes in here, and know where to get more more more of them (Beneath Columbia University's Business School, where new computers are delivered every day. . .to the future CEO's of places like Lehman Brothers.)

How upstanding am I nowadays? How changed, and streamlined, and NON White bikini-wearing speakeasy-roaming?

I just filled out my IRS Change of Address form # 8822.

Jesus. Talk about on the up-and-up.

Be Brave Project, Day 38; Van Gogh-ing Around Town with Dishes

Every day, on the M11 bus, I haul 2 filled plastic grocery bags over to the new apartment. The theory was that I would move the breakable objects over, so the movers couldn't break them. . .but now it's become a bit of an obsession: How Much of my Kitchen Can I Carry?

Answer: Pretty Damn Much. I've moved a lot. Crystal tumblers and vases and pink Wedgwood dessert plates with pheasants on 'em. Crystal Highballs and casserole dishes, wooden salad bowls and 10 white and gold Limoges plates (bought at a house sale in Chicago). Silver trays and bowls and candlesticks, teapots and big bowls and pottery bowls, enormous soup tureens and small plates with pictures of Elvis. Utensils and pots and immersion blenders, coffee makers and saucepans. Paper thin crystal red wine glasses--I only ever drank red wine if nothing--and I do mean nothing--else was available. They're over sized and immensely fragile and, quite frankly, a pain in my ass--but they belonged to my grandmother so they remain.

I keep telling myself to drink diet soda from them, but their intense fragility makes that an unattractive option. I think you have to be drunk to deal with these very, very fine glasses and their twig-like stems.

Now I'm pretty much down to bare basics for my kitchen. And it's interesting what The Essentials turn out to be:

-4 Ginori Italian Fruit salad plates. They're just so damn pretty and girly, and they make food look lovely.

-4 William Sonoma pasta bowls. That I don't eat pasta out of, but I use for everything else. Great size for a big salad, very good for eating messy stir fries. Excellent to shove in the fridge with rinsed fruit on, or for soup.

-Ikea leftover bowls with lids: They stack, you can mix eggs in them for scrambled eggs (scrammie eggs with some grapes on the side is my new favorite post work-out meal). They're no breakable and they take up little room.

-1 old Lechter's saucepan. For everything, from boiling pasta to poaching chicken breasts.

-1 small Corning Ware saucepan with lid; for re-heating my tea in the a.m.

Today I am making one of my last kitchen trips--Last night I began packing up my bathroom! All the 2nd Tier toiletries are bagged and ready to go. 2nd Tier toiletries are those that you don't really use that often, or which you don't particularly like, but you put them under the sink in the hopes that one day you'll need them and discover that their purchase prices was actually money well spent. What generally actually happens is they get sort of gummy from that under sink life, and you toss them when you move. These haven't had time to get gummy, so naturally I am taking them to the new place to finish marinating in time and sink-hood.

Today's trip will be made on my way down to Lincoln Plaza for a press screening of a new French Imax Film, called The Genius of Van Gogh. I got on the press list last spring, when I was doing a piece on some film screenings in the East Village that ended up not going to publication in the end. But I like Van Gogh--who the hell doesn't?--and thought maybe I could figure out a place to sell a piece on this film.

So over to see it, and to scribble some notes in the dark on it--then to research places where it will be distributed and see if I can pitch a piece to them.

BTW, still haven't heard from Self about essay. Not good. When they like something, you tend to hear within a day or two. I wish they'd be courteous enough to reply equally quickly when the answer's "no".

Be Brave Project, Day 38: Get Down To IT, but How?

There really is one big thing I have to do with the Be Brave Project to complete my original list from nine weeks ago--work on that novel.

I have an incomplete manuscript that sit in my desk drawer. This manuscript won me a fellowship and a grant, and was my thesis project for graduate school. It is however, at this point, impossible to complete due to the fact that there is no coherent plot. It's all voice, 2 opposing voice driven first person narratives. So what I need to do before I get my ass out on the street and find a full time job so I can pay off those student loans and perhaps start eating meat again, is figure out A PLOT.

But I just don't know what to do about it--recently took a few books out of the library on plot, and they gave me some different styles of plot (For the Revenge story, for the Epic, for the Search story. . .). That gave me some ideas but isn't concrete enough. I want some very solid plot to sort of pin my story to, stretch out its fabric and show the light through the words, give all that narrative structure. In the way that satire is pinned to the skeleton of a previous text (Shamela to Richardson's Pamela, Swift's Modest Proposal to political and religious tracts of the time), I want to use an established form to make a comment.

I just don't know how to find a plot. That's the thing--I don't know how to find a plot right now and I cannot figure out where to start.

So I'll just have to take the BBP and shake it down a bit, cut the chunks into smaller bits and move forward from there. By next week at this time I want to:

-Have one P written that is a synopsis of a classic FILM plot I really like.

-Have a synopsis written that is a classic HARD BOILED MYSTERY (novel) that I like.

It's tough when moving to keep these other irons in the fire, plus family keeps coming to town as people do in Autumn. BTW the essay I wrote has now been turned down by the Times' "Modern Love" column, and by Marie Claire magazine. It's with Self now, and is destined to be sent to Psychology Today next. I really would like to sell this puppy--must think of English Publications to send it to.

The Be Brave Project, Day 37; Old Women Better Than New Women.

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I shuffled out of my apartment building carrying two shopping bags filled with: One green and orange Vietnamese pottery bowl, One English glazed Octagonal Bowl, one very large English Tea-pot, one smallish sized plate featuring a picture of young-ish Elvis Presley wearing black leather, one glass vase shaped like an alien's egg or a pod of some sort, 2 needle pointed Paris coasters, and a beaded mat with my grandmother's initials on it.

I rounded the corner just as the M11 bus was coming, and banged down the street using careful fast mini-steps--caught the bus down to the UWS, my new building. Hauled the bags up to the 16th floor (as usual, the door people ignored me, which I love; cannot imagine anything weirder/more off-putting than someone noting your every coming and going) and came dashing back down to catch the M4 to 59th and 7th. Saw the M4 coming and ran full throttle 2 blocks to catch it.

I was going to see the Screen Actor's Guild screening of The Women. Written and directed by Diane English, starring Meg Ryan and Annette Bening.

Oh, How I wish I'd stayed in my new apartment and grouted the tile!

In the New Yorker review, Anthony Lane (who I adore in a sort of girlish fluttery way) said that in the screening he saw, the audience laughed during the opening credits, when Mick Jagger's name came up as a producer for the film. And that, for the next 1 hour 50 minutes, was the last laugh heard.

I sort of wish that had been the case when I saw it. I felt like some kind of foreigner in my home land, as the audience jovially chuckled to lines as stellar as, "What do you think she sells, Chanel Number Shit?" Oh how my sides ached from--oh, actually they didn't. The film covers every tedious sitcom convention from the late 80's on; Seinfeld references ("The Vault"), Gratuitous "women are built to shop" jokes, "oh those chicks and their circular arguing" scenes, and of course, the kicker of them all, the most fabulously life-affirming and original way to end a movie. . .the Childbirth scene.

Because childbirth is--get this, it's pretty damn funny!--painful!

Surprising, yes?

No.
No no no.

No one wants to see it, the knees book-ending the ears, the red-faced screams, the bystanders (do they really allow 3 people to mill about a woman while she's giving birth?) I've always said that if I get knocked up, there's nothing more important to have in the delivery room than a magazine editor.

The elegance and ferocity of the original film has been carefully milked out of this piece of tripe. Where Crawford and Goddard were jungle cats from the street, dangerous and sleek, the other characters managed to unsheath their claws fairly regularly despite their society upbringings. The 2008 film is toothess, moorless, and at heart utterly unsympathetic to its characters.

Ironic that The Women doesn't even bother to let its characters be recognizably human, witty or intelligent. I'd have settled for one out of three. What is peculiar is that it seems almost intentionally cruel to its actresses: The film is often lit like an interrogation room--Bening has never been shot worse--and it seems at times as if English gave up on providing us with wit, plot, and action. She simply gave the audience what she believe they want, Meg Ryan's odd new face viewed from awkward, searching angles.

All I can hope is that this somehow whets the world's appetite for some true bitchery, down in the dirt girl-fighting, and cynicism: Watch the original 1939 MGM film directed by George Cukor, starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and the astonishing Rosalind Russell in a seminal female comedic performance.

Be Brave Project, Day 36; Wall Street Drowning

Well, I certainly picked the wrong day to take a stand with Wall Street. Amazing; you'd think that perhaps my Arts Degree and study of the 18th Century Epistolary novel somehow hadn't prepared me for wrestling with the big boys.

However, I do know that there is sweet fuck-all I can do about it at this point, and at least I stopped the hemorrhage of money from my portfolio--though it took a blood bath to end the daily drip, drip, drip. . .

Yesterday I went to the Tribeca Cinema to see a screening of a film, Transcendence, written and directed by an old friend of mine. It was a short film, so not much commitment of time apart from hauling myself down 150 blocks or so. A very New York crowd was milling about the lobby: the hipsters in their girl jeans; the lean grizzled older guys who look as if they miss wearing tinted glasses; slender chic women with anxious laughs; a couple of guys with slick hair and suits to match; a few Connecticut matrons with cotton sweaters tied around their necks; and a lot of loud outgoing restaurant workers/actors. I felt a bit like a fly on the wall. Was wearing cargo pants, t-shirt and flip flops--usually when I go downtown, I like to get my groove on. But I was tired and anxious and just didn't bother.

The film was beautifully shot with excellent dialogue, and I love love love to see people in films who don't appear in the Hollywood variety--in this case, two sick women in late middle-age. The close, calmly searching camera made the bones in their face, the fatigue in their eyes, beautiful. Afterwards the crowd filed out towards the cash bar, but after congratulating my friend Courtney on a beautiful film, I got the hell out of there. Didn't feel like having red wine waved in my face, looking like the blood of Wall Street and smelling like Christ's last temptation.

Every day since Friday I've been hauling bags over to the new apartment--glassware and silver and all pottery. Turns out I've got a lot of pottery. When the hell did that happen? I don't wear shawls, radiate smug calmness (or calmness of any variety, really), and never make vegetarian casseroles.

So yesterday my BBP act was to pull my money out of the stock market. Not such a good move, perhaps. Or maybe a very good one. But it was a move, it was a decision and an act--not simply a continuation of waiting and feeling anxious and ignorant and trapped by decisions the financial 'gurus' have been making for the last decade. Adults make decisions, children wait for decisions to be made. So I made a decision, and perhaps the next time I do it it will turn out a little less. . .painfully instructive.

Tonight I am going to a SAG screening of the purportedly ferociously bad film, The Women. Excellent-- that anyone thinks they can out-do MGM's 1939 version is another sign of lunatic, over-weening arrogance.

And today we continue in our waiting game, as anxiety begins to shroud this city.

The Be Brave Project, Day 35; Wrestling with Wall Street

Well, the market opens in 9 minutes and from what I hear (my main source of news in the world is a Gay gossip/political site that can be disconcertingly prescient) it's going to kick off on Wall Street. Of course, that's been all over the place--unprecedented weekend meetings, Lehman Brothers losing its bailout, Merril bought by BOA, WaMu and Wachovia teetering. . .

But today, after months of watching my money dwindle and feeling hopeless about it--I followed the precepts of the Be Brave Project. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, I went in fighting. I called the Darget brothers who have my account at Smith Barney Chicago, and asked to speak to John. He wouldn't be in until 8.30, the posh-sounding male secretary said. But I could leave a message in voice mail. By 8.30 the market would already be open.

A year ago I would have said, "Oh. Oh, okay."

Today I said, "I do hope you're kidding me. I want to speak with one of those brothers before the market opens." And all of a sudden I was through to Andy, who could tell I was Pissed. Pissed with the lack of communication from them, pissed at that secretary. And within 30 seconds my order was given: Liquidate, except for 15% in Spider (SPY). It must be admitted I was acting on the advice of my aunt, who had a seat on the CBOE for decades.

Now I'm wishing I did this a few weeks back, when I could have better eaten the taxes, but it feels pretty goddamn good to have stopped that spiral. God only knows what's going to happen. Only thing I'd change about it is the use of the phrase, "I do hope. . ." That sounds like a 1930's matron making sure someone used the right recipe for cheese straws. But otherwise I feel quite proud.

And what if the market goes up? And I've just sold out, literally?

I sort of don't think that's going to happen. And if it does, I've learned a valuable lesson about steering your own damn ship. V. important.

Oddly enough, on Saturday night before I heard the rumblings about quiet weekend meetings on Wall Street and the Lehman deal collapsing, I was feeling pretty good about myself, financially--I'd just found out my credit rating went up 41 points.

No idea why, but it did.

Be Brave Project, Day 34: Moving and Reflecting

Well, I've booked the movers: Even better, I've moved from the usual yen for stasis to a sort of brisk multi-tasking efficiency. Still hauling those boxes in. Called the cable company to make sure I could get cable/internet/phone installed within 24 hours of the move. I've started lists and lists--post office moving packets and voter registration + magazine, IRS, and banking related change of addresses and what furniture I'm giving away.

It's beginning to feel very, very real.

There's something really wonderful about how this all happened. I complain in an AA meeting about being yanked around by my landlords and feeling like "the Universe's bitch." At that time I was, as usual, upset about my mother's advanced cirrhosis and her continuation to drink. I was filled with sorrow and disappointment at my father's latest threat of violence in July. (My brothers and I threw him a birthday party at his request, and he declared that the "execution sucked" and that we had been disrespectful to him and his wife: then he threatened to "beat the shit" out of my older brother, whose own children weren't 6 feet away. A decade of good behavior was thereby erased, and a lonely old age guaranteed. Very sad.)

So I was reeling, towards the end of the summer when I received the lease offer from my landlords. The offer that would raise my rent by a total of 66% in three years--in this economic climate! And I was resentful at all of the bullshit I was supposed to say smelled of Chanel. I'd been trained to ignore ugly realities and to keep my mouth shut in regards to the family inheritance of lunacy--so I went to an AA meeting and bitched simply for the relief of having people come up to me and confirm. "Yes, that's insane behavior. No, you don't need to cover it up or compensate for it."

I listened to them, and also followed the Be Brave Project: I wrote the landlords a scorching letter that resulted in them reducing the proposed rent increase by hundreds per month. . .

But then, via AA, the offer on this new place came in--a duplex with a dishwasher, within one block of Central Park. And now I feel grateful & like the luckiest person in the City.

Re. the BBP: Today I send in my voter's registration form--with the new address on it! I haven't voted in a long, long time. And I doubt that my vote will make a big difference--but dammit I'm doing it: This country is like another crazy ass parent to me right now; producing a lot of worry and shame. Yesterday sent in 2006 taxes, and today will return my older brother's call about the family situation. This is the stuff that used to send me to the sofa with a vase of Pinot Grigiot, but instead tonight I will be making these, and pouring milk into the vase to accompany them.

Today to library to work on plotting.

Yesterday sent an essay to Marie Claire.

Be Brave Project, Day 33: A Busy Day for Liquor Stores

It's impossible not to add to the 9/11 media onslaught: Last year the anniversary seemed to glide ghostlike by me, I felt only lightly brushed by tatters of fear and nervousness and memory. Twelve months ago I was less than a month sober and consequently a bit stunned; plus, I am fortunate enough not to have known anyone who had died that day. I'm sure people talked about it in the rooms of AA, but I simply do not remember.

This week the anniversary has loomed large, and it's been both interesting and unsurprising to hear the alcoholic's take on the day. One woman, Alice, has commemorated each year by holing up in her apartment and getting drunk while the name roll call has taken place--Alice is dark haired, smoky voiced, and from the outer boroughs, where many of the restaurants' employees and building operators and staff worked. She knows many people who died that morning. This is Alice's first year sober, and she went down to the liquor store on the ground floor of the building last week to talk to the owner, a guy who sold her a lot of booze over the last 15 years. "I quit, Tom. I'm in AA. And I'm scared about next Thursday, so please don't sell me anything." He hugged her, and said he wouldn't ever again, he was happy for her--and that he wanted to quit smoking but couldn't do it. Could she help?

Alice is still scared about this anniversary today, but as she keeps saying, "The people I know wouldn't like the fact that I was commemorating them by taking the day off to drink."

Christine was in the WTC that day. Christine is ash blonde with white skin that's so unwrinkled it's almost egglike; to me she looks more like an Upper East Sider, but she attends West Side meetings so I give her the benefit of the doubt. She was shaking as she spoke at the Women's meeting yesterday, she was shaking with rage. "All of my security in life was taken that day. I'd worked so hard to put it together, and in one day it was gone." She fought her way back uptown and, of course, into a liquor store. She bought a bottle of vodka and, with grim humor, a bottle of champagne. The clerk told her that she was mixing drinks, but she shoved them in her bag and went home to her high-rise studio, where she could see plumes of smoke rising from the south.

That night is when Christine turned to alcohol full-time. For the next three years she went back to that liquor store daily (unusual, because lushes usually will walk miles to get to a store where people don't know them). She drank, literally, until her bones began to soften and her teeth to loosen. She was attacking her own infrastructure.

Right now it is 9.17 in the morning, on another sunny early-autumn day. Wall Street is already reeling, Columbia University is on a deceptively casual alert, mid-town is as usual bluffing it out and pretending things are business as usual--but every siren is a moment for pause. Inwood's retreating to a safe pretense of suburbia, Dumbo's hipsters, who were still in high-school, look across the East River at a city that--to them--looks normal.

Be Brave Project, Day 32: Mmm. . .Is that A Cardboard Box I See Before Me?

Hanging out with someone who's moving is a lot like spending time with someone who's in love; they just won't shut up about it. Everything is related to the object of obsession.

Once I was walking down Avenue A with a friend of mine, an educated woman and usually a humorous one. She had just met a man named Ryan the week before. Coming towards us was a hipster wearing an expression of rebellion and discontent. He glowered at a police car that went by, he sneered at the people carrying coffee and briefcases. His haircut was one of those expensive English rocker ones that make someone's hair look as if it died while crawling down their forehead in search of escape--but this wasn't why I laughed at him. What made me laugh was the fact that he was walking five fat dachshunds, who were clearly his own pets, and the ones in charge.

Five dogs means that you have an absolutely enoooormous apartment--not a cheap thing in the East Village, where enormous apartments generally mean buying several (previously tenement) units and reconstructing them with cathedral ceilings and bedrooms for your hot and cold running waitstaff. . .Five fat dogs means that you spend your nights shinnying around your home on your knees, offering pastry bits in return for a few scratches and a waft of bad breath. There's nothing wrong with living large--if that's your definition of it--but it just struck me as hilarious that the hipster wanted his public persona to be all disenchanted and sneering: There's a reason Marlon Brando didn't carry dachshunds in The Wild One. It might be nice, but it ain't cool.

So I smiled towards the hipster and he sneered at me Elvis-style as a dog threw up a little bit on his shoe, which made me smile more. I turned to look at my friend. She was gazing dreamily at the hipster's mid-section. "You know what?" she said, "Ryan would look so great in that belt. . ."

Sigh. But I'm that way now. Walking down the street I'll suddenly stop in my tracks and stare intently at a box that's been left on a corner. Is it strong enough? Does it smell? Does it have a convenient handle? (Believe me, I've dated men where I wish I'd asked these questions first.) I go to Staples and lurk in the back section, fingering various packets of tape. Every person I meet I interrogate: Who do you use for cable? For electricity? Who helped you move?

Yesterday I had an early and nerve-wracking meeting: My crucial first encounter with Rebecca's husband Markham. He owns the condo, he's the one who's nervous about renting it. . .he knows she met me in AA. I couldn't sleep the night before, and in the morning couldn't eat. Dressed in the most respectable & innocuous outfit I could think of (jeans, white cotton pressed shirt, heels). Put together financials. We met on the corner of 80th and Broadway at 8.30. Markham was dark haired, with kind hooded eyes and a slightly nervous manner. As he was talking about the condo in a kind and settled manner (as if it's all a fait-accompli!) I heard a sort of rush in my ears--uh oh. A few moments later my stomach lurched, and I realized I was going to be very, very sick. Quite soon.

After several eons passed, with me swallowing hard and schvitzing like a roasting piglet, we shook hands in what I hope was mutual satisfaction, and parted.

I almost immediately threw up in a grate on the street, came home and went back to bed, where I remained for 26 hours. With a plastic bucket comfortingly nearby.

Still feeling less than great--with an odd urge for macaroni and cheese mixed with peas--but the move looks like a go!

Be Brave Project, Day 30: Hanging Meat and Mailing Letters

Last week I wandered into my building's front hallway, and found two "City Pass" booklets propped up on top of the mailboxes. Looking through them I saw that they contained what seemed to be free tickets to The Guggenheim, The Empire State Building, and The State of Liberty + Ellis Island. Hmmm. The books were half-used, and due to expire in 4 days.

So a friend and I went to the Guggenheim yesterday. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never been there before; every time I have tried to become a fan of modern art art I end up with the frustrated feeling that either someone's onto a really good con game, or they're taking the piss. An example: A few years back an ex and I went to the Tate Modern in London. Absolutely lovely building, but once I looked at an art installation that consisted of a pile of bricks, and another that was a film of a naked German man jumping up and down, I felt I'd got the point.

Was I simply an irretrievable philistine, or was someone laughing at me? Annoying, when you don't quite get the joke. So, I approached the Gugg with trepidation. CityPass turns out to be brilliant--we didn't have to wait in line and just swanned in. Got our free audio phones, put the earphones on, and pressed 1. As we stood on the ground floor near a 10 foot sculpture of a spider, we looked up the spiraling ramps towards Frank Lloyd Wright's famous ceiling (in the picture above). It conveniently resembles nothing so much as a large crystalline web from which the bronze arachnid has dropped, fully formed.

The exhibit on now is of Louise Bourgeois' work, and the spider represents her mother, a tapestry weaver. To Bourgeois the spider is a symbol of industry, ingenuity, and frailty. We walked up the ramps, looking at early art work of women who are becoming houses, their hair in flames and their arms flailing out of the windows. The "New York in the 40's" exhibit was vaguely disappointing (though there was a Picardie painting), but the Thannhauser collection absolutely thrilled--Cezanne, Manet, Picasso, Pissaro.

I was sighingly dragged out of the Thannhauser rooms back up the ramps, to more Bourgeois works. Sculptures of slender wooden planks huddled together; enormous pods and what look like piles of shit. Here was where I realized, --Oh, this is about rage! I get rage, and can channel it in my girlish way, so we were off to the races. Bourgeois' father had abandoned his family when she was young, and then returned to allow his wife to support him. At the same time, he moved in an "English Tutor" for his daughters--namely, his mistress. One of Bourgeois' most famous pieces was of a dinner table with glowing red seats--everything in the room is glowing red with rage and vengeance. On the dining room table there are dismembered bits of the father that will be gnawed to the bone as a meal.

But the most interesting piece in terms of the reactions it got, where my friend and I mooned around for ages (so did a lot of guards), was one of her later works--I cannot remember the title, so I'll just call it what it is: Penis on a Meathook. Holy Crow! You round the corner and there it is, hanging. The reactions of various museum visitors varied from the studiedly intellectual to the sniggeringly embarrassed. My definite favorite falls to the middle-aged woman who was wearing yellow hair, yellow trousers, and shiny yellow shoes. She walked right up to it, studied the dangling object at a very close range, then turned around to shout to her friend. "Come here, Sean--take a look at this ham!"

I liked the Guggenheim.

Today I am doing a very brave thing indeed; launching into the unknown. I have done this before but never when I was sober, and never when I had so many possessions (a sofa! 2 coffee tables! 2 bookcases, a bed!) and a cat to look after. . .today I am mailing in my notice to vacate this apartment. I am scared of ending up homeless, but if I don't jump at this opportunity I would be kicking myself next summer, when the price goes up again on this place and I am again looking in Inwood. . .it's a risk, so I need to take a deep breath and leap.

Be Brave Project, Day 29: The End of The Beginning

Today was supposed to mark the end of the Project for me; 6 weeks ago today I did my first Brave Thing, by contacting an ex boyfriend in Paris with whom I needed to sort some things out.

That bit o' bravery took me all of 12 minutes, he couldn't have been nicer about it all (well, it was mostly me apologizing--but as I'm sure you know people can occasionally take apologies as an opportunity to recite your faults, and he did not).

12 minutes that I've barely thought about since, because once the phone call was made and apologies accepted, my monkey mind stopped torturing me with it all and just settled down. The next day I called the Dream Accountant on the impulse of a moment--and left him a message. Second brave thing done. . .I'd begun nervously circling the tax issues that had been bothering me so, and was profoundly tired of waiting for some terrifying notice to come through the mail, and wondering why on earth nothing ever arrived.

By the end of the week I'd:

-Visited hell, in the form of the "Speedy Renewal" branch of the New York Dep't of Motor Vehicles.

-Spoken with the Dream Accountant and already received good information. Put together tax packet for him & shipped it off.

-Taken cat to the vet for delayed dental surgery/cleaning that I was worried would kill her.

-Given an Enormous diabetic cat 2 shots of insulin, needle-phobic though I am.

And I'd realized that the BBP isn't a 6 week project; that most things considered brave in my daily life, (where there's remarkably little hand-to-hand combat or embedded land mines, apart from the emotional variety) are simply acts of self-care and determination to have a better life. You can avoid dealing with your taxes, if you want to behave like a child and feel like a deadbeat. You can live without health insurance simply to protest the antediluvian gruesomeness of this wealthiest country providing none for its citizens--but who does that hurt? Who does that keep up at night? Certainly not our President.

The BBP is like going to the gym, really. You use those muscles or they get weak, and flabby, and they worry you and age you.

What I've learned is this: You've got to ACT to be motivated.

It isn't the other way around. The Be Brave Project is, I have realized, about the long haul.

Next phase of the BBP: Moving and getting that book done! I have an agent who wants to see it!

Day 27, Be Brave Project: Hello, My Parqueted Darling.

Absolutely exhausted today. How people function on very little sleep has always been beyond me; in my drinking days it took me a solid 12 hours of recovery time + then a torpid roll in the sack with those devilish twins, diet coke and Big Mac, before I could face the world with any kind of decisiveness.

And I had very little sleep last night.

Yesterday I walked up Columbus Avenue at around 1.30, on my way to meet Rebecca at the Columbus Cafe on 87th street. Columbus Avenue is. . .oh, it's fine. Loads of lovely restaurants with awnings and a single rose on each table; boutique shops whose windows dance with 'back to school' sales; elegant stationary shops and very, very serious organic drycleaners. Yummy mummies shout into cell phones as they one-handedly push expensive strollers up the street, the infants within bald and serious as Churchill in his War Rooms. Shopgirls with piercings beneath lace tops. Shouting tourists heading towards the NYC Historical Society are quickly subdued by reproachful glances from the older ladies of the Upper West Side.

Rebecca was at the cafe already, and within minutes we were at The Building. As she opened the front door, R. unnervingly said, "That's Angie at the desk--she's mean." A moment later she was giving Angie a picture drawn by Maggie, Rebecca's 8 year old child; within the folded drawing there was also a $20 bill. "That's from Maggie's own wallet," R. says . . ."So be sure to have fun spending it!" Angie takes the picture and says she'll put it up on her "Turin Baby" cork board. I am introduced as Rebecca's cousin, and we are in.

Do children tip concierges in NYC? I didn't have the cojones to ask.

The building is modern, built in 1972 after someone decided to raze some beautiful brownstones: It's 18 stories high, and all of the apartments within are duplexes. In the 80's these condos were sold as middle-income housing, with the understanding that they cannot be re-sold until 2012. After 9/11, in some form of anti-terrorism paranoia, it became forbidden to rent the condos. Consequently a very NY situation was born: Condo owners whose families have expanded cannot sell, but also cannot afford not to rent. A loophole is therefore created, in which the building supers and doormen get a lot of $20 bills thrown their way, for turning a blind eye when 'cousins' move into the building.

We took the elevator to the 16th floor, walk down a darkish hallway, and R. opens the apartment door. My first thought was, "Hello Darling!" Parquet floors! A Japanese style room separator between kitchen and living area. The kitchen is small but clean (dishwasher!) The main room downstairs is well-shaped, and has a small marble table and cast-iron chairs. "We can move that, if you like." The windows look North, towards the jagged skyline of Morningside Heights.

But oh my Stars--I fell in love with the bathrooms and the closet spaces. 1 and 1/2 baths, looking like proper clean modern rooms, not worrying damp seep-holes. A full sized bath! Immaculate looking medicine cabinets, and towel racks and hooks and lovely clean clean white tile floor without the cracks and chips mine has. And 4 closets. 4 closets, big bold lovely closets, about which I cannot write with sufficient reverence and enthusiasm.

So. Semi-legal tenancy. In a clean, safe unit. With utilities included. I would save $4300 in a year's rent. And leave my beloved ground-floor tenement style housing with the un-lockable front door: But I'll have to leave here next summer anyway.

I think it's a no-brainer. I'm moving.

And, sadly, I did nothing Brave yesterday--just walked around in a daze.

Day 27, Be Brave Project; Past Perfect Syndrome

To a person afflicted with a particular turn of mind, nothing--nothing--on this planet is quite as attractive as something you're about to lose. Ever. And the things you have lost? Absolutely devastating in their attractiveness. I'm sure the Germans have a word for this emotional state (if they don't, no one will), but I will simply refer to it as "Past Perfect Syndrome".

PPS has happened to me time and again with boyfriends, of course. The way he chews and those flannel shorts he wears--the approximate color and shape of wilted lettuce--turn from being disgusting indicators of future mental cruelty to being endearing hallmarks of quirkiness. A tendency to talk incessantly while viewing dvds is less an incitement to decapitation than a rather sweet boyish yen for conversation.

This is obviously an unfortunate character trait, one which has caused me very real unhappiness over the years. I no longer believe it to be sweetly melancholy, or sign of an artistic temperament: I think PPS is an indulgent and unnecessary pain in the ass.

And now I'm a New Yorker. So I am suffering from PPS in regards to my apartment.

Which has never, ever looked so good to me.

Never mind that when I moved in, my aunt and brother were close to speechless over the state of the place. That I put in hour after hour of scrubbing and thought into this weirdly designed apartment, which has a large kitchen but few counters, a bathtub that occasionally likes to burp tan bark up the drain, really weird rectangular moldings on the walls, and two long picture windows that alert the neighbors to my shamefully indulgent tv habits. Now all is beauty and delight to me; honey colored wooden floors and oh, look there! That's where Gigi Colette hid on her first day here with me. Directly next to it is the spot where she first vomited. That's the mirror I put up the first night I had cable and was watching one of those Jack Nicholson films with exchangeable titles (As Good As It Gets or As Low As It Goes or Something's Gotta Give).

What a night that was! I think I ate pasta.

Everywhere I look this place is filled with charm, from the deeply overstuffed bookshelves to the tarnishing silver, from the coffee table that attacks my shins to that damned kitchen carpet that just won't stay clean.

It's not too tough to figure out why I feel like a business man who's having breakfast with his lovely wife, knowing he's going to schtup another woman during lunch hour. Today, at 1.45, I am going to view the UWS Duplex apartment. And from what I hear, she's built. . .

Be Brave Project Yesterday: FINALLY finished the essay, and think it's quite good. A lot of excess trimmed and a much less overwrought ending to it. Also found myself a General Practitioner near Columbus Circle, and sent the form in to Oxford. Also sent form in to Smith Barney about being a little more moderate with investment goals. Rec'd credit card application at low percentage rate, but am going to hold off applying until I see if anything better comes down the pike or I get a sudden brave-wave of financial acumen. But I'm going to get one more card before 2008 is over; lower my utilization rate and diversify.

Now I have to get dressed for my duplexitous lunchtime activities. Ooh I can't wait to see the place but equally Oof! I don't want to lose this one.

Be Brave Project, Day 26: Word On The Street

There are plenty of lonely and unbalanced people in New York, and many of the arguments I overhear seem to be about dogs: I just heard a man shout to a woman outside, "Why aren't you admiring my fuckin' dog?" Why not indeed. Her response was a shower of shrieked abuse which came so fast and so high pitched that, I suspect, only the poor dog could hear it. This couple lives on my block, and while they seem to live much of their lives publicly in what downtowners might interpret as exhaustive performance pieces, I suspect that their home life consists of few moments of artistic reflection. They are tiring, and certainly could be viewed as a bit depressing, but I'm used to them and they're as much of a background in my life as BBC's Radio 4 is when I'm cooking. I like to know what's going on, big picture and small.

There is also a man in my building who involves himself in a lot of arguments--with his dog. He's a man who speaks in sharp, forceful tones that ring with despair over this uncontrollable beast. "Pee Wee!" The voice cries out with the harsh anguish of a man in love, "Pee Wee, COME HERE!" I've learned to recognize the jingling of Pee Wee's collar as he trots down the hallway, blithely ignoring his owner. My cat will always move swiftly to the door in a low crouching run, to exchange sniffs with the dog. She's double his size, and I suspect has nine times his native intelligence, but lacks Pee Wee's capacity for drama. At four in the morning I hear the man outside, shouting pleas in attempts to control this wild wild creature who holds his heart, but is dancing dementedly in the street. Frankly, I admire Pee Wee's blithe insouciance.

NYC is famous for its street crazies. Of course, the current take on them is riddled with nostalgia: The crazies nowadays (we are told) are not as full of character and richness as they were in the 'good old days' when the subways were covered in graffiti, Times Square riddled with those poor women in the unrestricted sex clubs, and you got an 8 ball of cocaine free with every box of fig cookies bought in a bodego. This sentiment is even more ludicrous than nostalgia usually is: Grime infested, crime infested New York City seems to have been lively, but also gruesomely depressing in its teeming and trapped underclass--something that Dickens and Gogol could have created after a hard night spent together, smoking crystal meth with neighborhood prostitutes. A quick view at how the city was (thanks to Rich at FourFour), quickly dissipates nostalgia.

Nowadays, you can walk up Broadway for miles without hearing from a single crazy on the street. It's quite relaxing in its way, though yesterday I was relieved to see a small dirty red-headed man darting up the street with his fists clenched, yowling the age old question, "Who Put My Buick up their Big Fat Ass?!"

Today I will finish and submit that damn Self essay, which I've finally trimmed to under 2000 words. Shall also call a doctor on West 58th Street to see if she'd agree to become my primary care physician, so I can send this health insurance stuff back & get the doctor's visits started. . .haven't had a thorough check-up in so long that this is seriously scary stuff. As I head to the doctor's office I will welcome/pay for any distraction the streets of this city have to offer.