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.