Today is the kind of day one trudges into Starbucks at 6:00 PM to order a venti non-fat chai the way that some people stumble over to the bar and order a double scotch neat after stuffed hours of soothing ruffled feathers and closing ones pores to the tide of human misery adrift on the featureless sea of bureaucracy. But let us put aside the mundane difficulties of a long-day of client wrangling: today the British Embassy bought my home.

I am a poster child for impossible love that ends in tragedy: teacups, spring and fall, slanted fictional not-quite-heroes, places with the promise of permanence. I invest in these things an unwholesome quantity of attachment. I suppose this is something else that we outgrow.

I will miss my little townhouse on the hill, with the glorious view of the city, the easy walk to restaurants, the rhythm of city life. I will miss this chapter of my life among the parks and the museums and coffee shops, the rich throng of people.

Current Mood: melancholy

Of Being a Precocious Regency-Era Child Trapped in an Adult's Body in This Horrible Modern World.


When last we left Our Heroine (Me), she was being lured by the promise of filthy lucre into that vast iniquitous institution that is Big Law, lulled into a false sense of security by her charming little townhouse in the city and the infinite horizon of pretty shoes and handbags. Let us just say, Dear Reader, that Things Did Not Work Out. I made a valiant effort, but in the end, I would have had to give up an essential part of myself to thrive or even, really, to survive.

So I have passed from that place, somewhat wiser, somewhat more willing to compromise on the trivial, but with a a certain sense that there is a limit to the reach of my universe, such as it has been created. Which brings us, more or less, to the present day. Having linked my already ridiculously long name to someone else's I am now, even more horrifyingly, a wife. I am not sure what this word means, but I suppose it can be measured in the absolute value of the cataclysmic deviations from my even keel. For yes, it is true that I am, in fact, moving out of the City. To the suburbs. For the commute. I (or rather mostly my dear, dear Realtor) have packed up the comforting majority of my accumulated worldly goods that had in the easy passage of time accreted to my home reef in colorful disarray. Only a few bare pieces of bric a brac remain. Every few days I am uprooted for an hour or so so that someone can violate the sanctity of my sanctuary for their buying pleasure.

In the meantime, out in the great Marylandian wilds, I myself have been tromping through other peoples houses (I think the count is presently at 60), a little saddened by the sheer pigswill that passes for architecture these days. And so now it has come to this:

I am looking for an apartment.

If there is anything more depressing than trying to find temporary housing in the Baltimore area on a budget, I have not yet encountered it. And I've been to third world countries. These adventures in poverty are really only trying for the sole reason that I like to nest. But I have hope. Somewhere out there is a little castle just for me. Well, other than the Castle that I already found and fell in love with that my mother thinks isn't big enough for my shoe collection, but you get my point, I'm sure...

I have been listless lo these many months, and when I say listless I mean loathe to start studying, loathe to clean my room, and loathe to change from my pink, flannel-lined, satin robe into something more suitable for public consumption. I also mean by "these many months", "since August 27th or so". There are weighty things on my mind. Things like weddings and the ostensible end of my life as a student. These, Dear Reader, are like putting away childish things, spaking no longer as a child, and looking through a glass darkly. Very darkly. Some might even say morosely. My childhood was a rich and glorious tapestry full of imagined things. My feet barely touched the ground, I was so wonderfully wrapped up in my concocted kingdom of clouds. And there I have stayed. But I am about to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the abhorrently mundane world of bills and long-term plans and 401(k)s. (Does anyone know what those are? Would someone like to tell me?)

Growing up means deepening. I thrive on the glib, the dilettante, the facilely brilliant. I have no desire to sink my toes into the ground, grow long scaly roots, look up at the same patch of sky, get thick around the middle, be of earth rather than air. Oh, I suppose it'll be good for me. Like spinach. With E. Coli.

If only Michael Jackson hadn't co-opted (for eternal ill) the concept of second star to the right and straight on till morning. I'd be on the next flight...

After a summer of being fed like the proverbial fatted calf at the law firm to which I am apprenticed, I am desperate to lose a good ten pounds or so.
To that end, I am back on South Beach Phase One. Which would be fine but for one thing: Grande Non-Fat Chai.

This humble drink, available at Starbucks all over the US --I can't vouch for overseas, as I was sorely disappointed at the Dubai airport-- is the perfumed oil that smooths the rough motion of the machinery of my day. To drink it is to be one with the universe. It's like valium. I'm serious.

Oh Oscar, really I do long to give in to your Wilde ways, but I must stay strong...

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: World Spins Madly On by The Weepies

This is my very first entry. I like beginnings. I'm good at beginnings, all dimply charm and easy laughter. It is harder to maintain something in maturity and beyond, into ripe age. The internet is littered with my fallen monuments of grandiose promise. Here lies Ozymandias, King of Kings, etc... There are difficulties, of course. The slick surface of first conversations, polished through much practice and frequent use, snags on quirks, quiddities, unexpected protrusions. (On a note completely tangential, I love how quiddity means both the essence of a thing and a hairsplitting quibble. English is, without doubt, the language of my soul -- so unruly, so heedless and duplicitous and mercurial in context.)

My last foray into this genre hid its intent in a disarming show of exotic idiosyncrasy, as innocent as any courtesan's display of flesh (an ankle, a glimpse of wrist). I once told someone disdainfully that online journals were not for the baring of tawdry internal deshabille best reserved for the pages of one's private diary. But I no longer keep a diary, and my inner exhibitionist has rebelled. The drama queen unfurls from artful slumber, extends an arm, a leg, pirouettes with a slow grace then faster with unbridled glee.

You, Dearest Reader, have been warned.