kerouac says

oh, man. i can't tell you how much i miss howard dean.

my mom's here. i am feeling bad about feeling sad and anxious while she's here. i am also feeling bad about being disappointed by her aging. her vision is a lot worse and she won't wear glasses, her hearing is a lot worse and she won't get aids, and her sort of general helplessness has increased by lots of folds. the subway system and its accompanying map is a particularly difficult hurdle. i wonder how much of it is that she can't see the map to read it, but whenever i ask her if she knows how to get somewhere, even if i have just explained it and the map is in her hand, she just parrots back some terms she's heard me say before: "i'll get off at herald square* and take this yellow line to a hundred and third***!"

*my subway doesn't stop here.
**she means the broadway line, but she's pointing to the F train.
***the upper east side. except, her finger is pointing to the village.

i love her so very much, with everything i've got, and i could badly use some momming, but the energy is weird and sort of stilted. she's so out of her element. i'm anxiety-riddled and want everything to be okay, and she can't even read the map. it's going to get better. tomorrow we'll have a whole day to do whatever we want. tomorrow i will not see a cruise ship on a commercial and suddenly feel a terror pit deep in my stomach (terror of what? that i will never get it together enough to go on a cruise? who wants to go on a stupid cruise?). tomorrow i will take five deep breaths and count my blessings and maybe we will go see a movie.

i woke up anxious all night. of all things, i think it was about babies.

i don't know what my damage is about babies. i don't want to have one right now, or, really, within the next five years. i do want to have one, though, and i want pretty badly to believe that talking the talk and walking the walk about how my art feeds me doesn't rule me out from the pleasures of a real family life.

funny words, i guess, from someone who left Liveable City to come to Urine Central in hopes that this theatre business could pay the bills. sometimes i have no idea what i'm doing.

and i hate that i'm alone on this one. the monkey doesn't hate babies, and i don't think he's against having one, per se--i asked him about it pretty far back at the beginning--but i think he'd have to be pressured into changing his life in order to have one, and pressuring someone like that is gross. he's always very, very clear about how the acting comes first. and what i hate is that we can't even talk about how we might go about having a more stable life without him putting on his defensive guard jersey, as if i would somehow try to weasel and guilt him into leaving his dream in the ditch and becoming a web-designer.

maybe what i wanted all along was someone who could want a baby, too, so that i could be the one who got to say, gee, i don't know, what will this do to my carefree artist lifestyle? and then i'd be reassured, and someone would tell me that it's possible, if difficult, and that i could hang up my worry because when we both want something, it becomes what the future's about.

i get paid not so much, but i love where i work. if you were wondering why, it's because one boss is my jewish professor, and the other one cracked himself up telling me a knock-knock joke today--laughed so hard he couldn't finish the joke. i love them. twice this week i came in teary and had completely, for all intents and purposes, ameliorated by the time i left. and they want to give me health insurance.

we'll see if i can afford my share, but still.

after he explained the adjustable rates, after he calculated the benefits of reducing the principal, after he emphasized cost benefit, after he ran the numbers and looked at the reports, i asked him, so what do we do now?

he said, now you go shopping.

when the monkey comes home, we hit the streets and we buy us an apartment. we are preapproved and will stop at nothing.

why, yes. yes, there is a robot talent show. it's in harlem, this weekend.



new york is being awfully nice to me today.

it's a fine day.

i had an audition this morning--just the regular cattle call, but for a smallish theatre that gave signs of using the auditions to cast, for real, rather than holding the auditions simply because they're required. and it's a good play, and the part is exactly the right kind of thing. the guy in line ahead of me turned to me before he went in, adopted some false camraderie and said, "we can take it easy, right, sister? no one's casting from this pool!" i gave him my best deadpan anthony hopkins, and said: sir, you have no idea how talented i am.

it went well. well enough that i dropped by the cafe for a sweet-potato doughnut afterwards.

later, when i paused by the fruit cart on 33rd and eighth to dig out a quarter and buy myself a banana, a homeless guy came up next to me. he called me miss and asked if i'd buy him a banana. i'm often uncomfortable with how dismissive i am towards people who ask for money on the street--it's a survival tactic and you gotta have limits and whatever, but still--but i didn't skip a beat before telling him to pick out the one he wanted as i handed the fruit man four bits. if he'd asked me for a quarter, i'd have probably snarled, but i can't stand the idea of anyone hungry and sitting in front of a fruit cart, wanting a banana and not getting to have one.

yesterday i went to ground zero for the reading of the names. it was good when i found a quiet spot in st. paul's churchyard to listen. so many people were lost that it took forever to get through the levines and lopezes. all of it would become very real and very large all of a sudden, and then there would be some tourists taking grinning snapshots in front of the chain link fence around the giant gap in the city that's there now. also, some guy was dressed as thomas jefferson.

today is my two-year anniversary. i've never done that before. i asked the monkey if we could make cards for each other, and he seemed to see exactly what i meant. he made this beautiful card with cut-paper tulips and a vellum vase and gold foil. i wanted someone to make a project for me. check.

things are going well. the new shrink seems nice. it's almost the one-year mark, though, of my time here, and that's sobering. i take solace in thinking i'm doing a lot to help myself--i sent out a giant mailing today--but it bothers me to be a year without being in plays. and yeah, the show i'm doing counts, i guess, but barely. it's been exhausting lately. we've had meeting upon meeting and i am so not into running this company. not if everything has to be a consensus between the ten of us.

if you're not doing anything the first weekend of october, we're throwing ourselves an opening night.

something has descended. suddenly, i want to make out with people. i'm not going to do anything, but i'm curious what has knotted my panties over the last week or so. young platonic friends, people on the street, recently brokenhearted friends of friends who arouse my pity . . . and apparently, my ardor. i want to bump noses with them. wassup, world? how come i want to get dressed up and tipsy and play spin the bottle?

i think maybe one of the worst things is that when something good happens to someone who intimidates me, or whom i envy, or who cut in front of me once in the lunch line, i'm convinced all anew that i will never measure up.

this is me saying the words, and never mind the gagging sounds: good for you! a rising tide lifts all boats! if i can't have this thing that i want, i'm glad you have it!

gulp.

a long time ago, when i was asked to be in a couple music videos for these guys, i went out and bought an album of theirs for research. and then the director gave me an advance copy of the new CD the songs in question were on, and then i heard them so much during the shoot that i got sort of queasy at the thought of popping it in the stereo. i listened to them later, and they gradually grew on me, but this earlier stuff is way, way better. i like it a lot.

i'm going to the lower east side to get a hair cut i can't really afford. i hope that doesn't make me shallow.

the best one is going through the crap. good thoughts to her.