Obsidian Noise

Sometimes the city is like a giant suffocation chamber. Sometimes it’s like an infinity balloon. I’m happy with both, though both could be better.

The stoics say the key to happiness in life is to want what you have, and don’t want what you don’t have. It’s either the most brilliant perspective on tranquil living there is, or a total copout for the weak. “I know I can’t get it, so I don’t want it.”

Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck you.

Yesterday I did something ridiculous. I put on my 5/4/3 wetsuit and jumped in the Hudson, around 4:45pm, at 126th, and swam out and down with what turned out to be a wicked current to the low 70s. I had strapped a drybag around my waist with some shoes, pants and the perfect hoody. It actually stayed ahead of me, floating on the surface, for the whole swim. I struggled to get out in the low 70s, hands and feet blue, shivering like a motherfucker. I threw my clothes on and jogged back home feeling like a dumb motherfucker.

I should get a hood and booties when I do that again.

Have a great Wednesday. And remember to feel good about yourselves because you’ll always know that, compared to me, you’re friggin’ geniousness and will have an easy, happy life. No matter how bad you might feel sometimes, you’ll never, ever come close to being as idiotic and moronic as me, or fuck up as badly as I do on a near daily basis.

So enjoy that, you lucky assholes.

People shouldn’t get too attached to me. You will hurt if you do, and that’s just how it seems to be with me. If I could change myself for you I would, but for whatever reasons, be they genetic or environmental, this is the state of things.

I get along with people fine. But as soon as you try to get a little too close, I will push you away until you have contempt for me. Once I help you reach that point, after a few days of wishing I were dead, I’ll be happier again because, when it’s just me, at least there’s no one to let down, no one to hurt. I’m better off this way. I care too much about people to let them get too close too me because I know it won’t be good for them.

Sometimes, in the All Night Room, I dwell on the things and people I’ve lost along the way, and how much I still love them, and how much I hate myself for letting myself feel that way. I think back a lot and remember so much. I replay specific events in my mind until they’re almost real, and when the Room brings me out of it, it breaks me apart. Sometimes it just makes me feel foolish. Sometimes it’s a thousand burning, sinking ships in my heart.

When the All Night Room is on you, there’s nothing you can do but let it in.

After a long day yesterday I was reminded I agreed to go to a dinner at someone’s house.

A couple weeks ago, I was speaking about cooking and food with a woman from a department I’m acquainted with. With great joy she told me about a special Japanese knife she has that is perfect for everything! And she really made sure I understood it has a wooden handle! I wasn’t sure what the big deal was, but I appreciated the obsessive communicating. I’m sure I do that about some things, too.

She sent me a mail the next day asking if I wanted to go and check it out and cook something at her place. Mmm hmmm.

I put it off for a week, canceling our first attempt because I became overwhelmed with a deadline. This week I had nearly forgotten again, and when she wrote to remind me about Thursday’s dinner, I was injected by that dread a person gets when possibly having made a mistake. I was certain I had something else scheduled for the evening and that I’d have to cancel again.

But, as I looked through all my bookings and due dates and obligations… free as a grizzly! Dinner on.

She doesn’t live far from where I work and I grabbed fruit salad on my way over. I bing-bonged the door and she buzzed me in. When she opened the door to her unit I could already smell something cooking and it was great. I was about to give her a hello hug, when suddenly I heard “Hi!” from a booming deep voice.

And standing just behind my knife-worshipping friend was a gigantic man. “I’m Adrian. Good to meet you and thank you for coming!”

Wowsers.

So, she has a husband, turns out.

I mean, having a husband is usually something someone mentions when inviting someone to their house, isn’t it? Or at other times during other conversations? How is it possible that she has a dog I knew about, but a husband I didn’t?

In that period of taking my shoes off and handing over the fruit salad, I ran scenarios through my head. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be there?  Or maybe she just didn’t think to mention it. Who knows.

Point is…

HOLY MOLY was he a great cook. He made curry from scratch, with lots of fresh vegetables and a great jasmine rice with spice and a squashy soup thing. The curry was exquisite. You think you’ve had all the curry varieties that there are, but NOPE. This was absolutely marvelous stuff. I obsessed about it with him, while the person who invited me over sort of looked on. One serving was enough, and it was excellent.

I left around 8:30 and headed straight home to get some other stuff done. I fell asleep around 11 because of my shitty sleep the night before, and was up early, ready to fuck shit up today.

Three meetings this afternoon, one with a very senior administrator, requiring me to wear a suit. No big deal. I got a new one last fall that I like, and it’s custom tailored for my shoulders so it doesn’t feel too much like a costume. Though I recognize that’s what it is.

Wait, what’s that sound? It sounds like someone’s about to speak into a large, high powered megaphone… with all that feedback…

AHEM! Welcome to Dissertation Alley. Once you’re in, you can never leave. Watch your back in Dissertatioin Alley because no one cares about how badly you’re fucking up, and there are traps everywhere. So welcome! Enjoy the misery! Enjoy the pain! Drink the stress! Bathe in it, motherfucker! Your DEAD!!

Oh shit! It’s the weekend!

Time for the hermitage to resume. <sigh>. I wish I had a happy sex slave. Is that bad?

Probably is very bad. Ignore that.

Have a great weekend!!!

thursday, march 28 2013

Sick in the shnoz. I can’t help but think it’s all from that assface in the sauna the other day.

I need to up my game. I need to up my writing and do more at work. I need to get more visibility for myself and get more innovative and creative here, and I can.

I moved over to a double window desk overlooking Broadway. I’ve also been asked to alter my focus at work and will begin spending more of my time working on things I’m interested in and writing about them. I’ll be getting paid to do that, which sweetens my NYC gig. Can’t compete with San Diego for weather and lifestyle, but I think I’m really going to love my new role here.

Spring is in full force, nearly. Time to go out into the woods for a 2-3 day. Who’s with me?

I couldn’t fall asleep last night even though I had heavy training. I was laying there thinking about all the failed relationships I’ve been in, and how isolated and separated I am from my family. It occurred to me that I’m basically completely alone.

I have some good friends here and there, but ultimately I have no home base, no root or anchor to anyone, anywhere. It wasn’t a great feeling, but in the All Night Room your thoughts and feelings can get exaggerated.

Today I’m just thinking about things I can do better overall, and the lack of fixity isn’t affecting me as much. When the sun is out, it’s often like this. In the All Night Room, it’s a less comfortable story.

Another weekend almost here and spring is calling us outside.

Racing to prepare for an 11a meeting. I’ll get back to you guys in a couple hours.

In the meantime, quick story from yesterday. I’m in the sauna after training, two other dudes in there, one older, one younger. I enter the space and stretch a bit and sit down. After abot 10 minutes, the older guy starts emptying the contents of his sinuses into his gym towl– the towels you get with your membership and that you return after you’re done using it. The first time he did it was nasty and cringe worthy. The second time I started to get highly annoyed. And, a few minutes later as he began to blow shnoz again, before I could stop myself I said: “That’s pretty gross.”

And both of them looked at me. And I said: “You can’t get a tissue or something?” And he said: “There’s sweat all over the floor in here, isn’t that gross?” And I said: “There’s a huge difference between sweat and the insides of your sinus. You know other people will be using that towel, right?” And he said: “Yeah after it’s washed.” And I said: “You don’t see people walking around wiping their asses with their gym towel.” And he said: “Don’t get vulgar.” And I said: “Blowing your nose into a public gym towel is vulgar, especially when there are paper towels right there.”

And that was the end. The younger guy got up and left at some point. And after a few minutes, I left the older guy, maybe in his 50s, alone in there.

On my walk home I wondered if I done the right thing, or the wrong thing.

Later.

Remember last week I was talkin’ about Friday and Fire Day and how I associated the two together and wasn’t sure how it happened other than the similar prefixes? I was recently reminded that Tuesday in Japanese is Ka-Youbi, “fire day”, and as I spent a year over there that might explain some of why I assumed there was fire-related day in our calendar. (Incidentally, it’s also “fire day” in Korean.)

So today is Tuesday, March 26th. But in reality it’s Tiw’s Day, another Norse god.

Tiw is the Old English name of what was originally Tîwaz in Proto-Germanic, which I’d like to think is the language of my ancestors, though going back to 500BC makes everything difficult to be very certain of.

Tiw is the god of war and law, but like most ancient celestial beings, the associations get immediately murky as soon as you look into it. For instance, Tiw is also Tyr, who in certain regions subscribing to Norse mythology was a son of Odin. Though interestingly, Týr is also a generic word for “god” in ancient Norse, so there’s some belief that Tyr was a standalone supreme god until Odin became more popular, and Odin of course is now also considered the “god of war”.

The residues of those ancient times, whole civilizations that were around for hundreds and even thousands of years, comprised of people with lives not unlike ours, dudes and chicks with hopes and dreams and desires and problems and mysteries to ponder, are all gone now, mostly forgotten, save for the fact our genes carry the same code. I’m so happy that our days of the week are from that ancient, kickass time, and not like, “Saint Paul’s Day.” Fuck that shit. I want my Tiw with sword and shield in hand.

It’s train like a motherfucker day. Let’s turnaround and go again.

I had an interesting weekend. A good friend of mine had a cocktail party at his place in Chelsea on Saturday night. It’s not what I’m into, but he’s a good friend it had been about a month since I’d seen him so I thought I’d check it out. Also, he sent the cocktail menu in advance and I was surprised to see a drink I co-invented on there, called “Ghost Face Killer”, named because it has Ghost Pepper infused salt. The Ghost Pepper is the word’s hottest, grown in Nagaland, India, which I introduced him to. It is the case that I’m still not drinking, but it is also the case that I was hyper-curious if people were going to like my invention.

I invited a couple female friends to check the party out with me, girls who would be able to do well in the crowd and enjoy it. I was glad both could come.

I went early to see if the host needed any help with things, but as he had hired a team of bartenders for the night, there was nothing to be done. I was surprised to find a crowd had already formed when I first arrived, about an hour early. And an hour after that, there were about 80 people (according to the bouncer checking names). My guests came about a half-hour after that. Had I known it was going to be such a big event, I would have prepared them better. Fortunately for me, both of them dressed up, so they fit right in. Unfortunately for me, I did not dress up, and was wearing grey pants, black Limmers, and a black t-shirt. This time I was definitely, definitely, the only one not wearing “get laid” clothes. You know: blazer, jeans, stripy shirt unbuttoned at the top, little fuckface booties on the feet. You know exactly what I’m talking about: barf coverings.

There were lots of douchey fuckfaces in there, and a large swath of the most monied young people of New York City. The senior editor of Vogue magazine was there, a 30-something brat, also a ferrari race car driver, a member of the New England Patriots, various CEOs, lots of investors and hedge fund robots, the owner of Equinox was there, etc. Outside his building there were rows of cars with drivers.

My friend’s place is really nice. It’s the penthouse of a relatively new building, has two wings, four bedrooms, and every amenity you’d expect from a place that was designed by someone whose design fee alone was equivalent to the full cost of a large upper class house.

My friend is a good guy, someone of great character and good intentions. It’s still confusing to me that he’s able to spend time in the douchey circles, but for him it’s a strategic interest– he relies on wealthy investors to keep his fund going, so some of these parties (not all of them, maybe about half of them he said) include invitations to all of those guys– the young hyper-wealthy of the city. Some are the sons or daughters of oil barrons, heirs and heiresses to this or that ill-gotten fortune from eras of slavery and exploitation, some got lucky gambling in the market, legally or not, some are just good at exploiting opportunities that allow them to take as much as possible for themselves.

After separating to mingle for a bit, I reunited with both of the people I invited and heard some hilarious stories about things they were being told or shown from the various be-jacketed prowlers. “This one guy came over and started showing me pictures of how he crashed his Bugatti into his tennis court at his mansion in the Hamptons. I was like, are you kidding me? That’s your opening? No names or anything else?”

And they weren’t. Apparently that’s how it works in that circle. My guests seemed both shocked and entertained by the scene, though one of them had experienced it all before, but not to this level.

The guys in there assumed that the girls there were all hangers-on, and on nights like this, that’s what they wanted. And truthfully, most of the girls in there were just doing what they know how to do. The preponderance of Eastern European accents and tits and gratuitous physical contact spoke to that. Incidentally, “hanger-on” is the right word:

“n pl hangers-on: a sycophantic follower or dependent, esp one hoping for personal gain”

And if any of you need extra:

“syc·o·phant  (sk-fnt, sk-)n. A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.”

The place was crawling with the shallow and the idiotic. Braggarts and toadies, groupies and hilariously cookie-cutter narcissists. It’s actually very hard to describe adequately how slimy the whole atmosphere was, but take my word that it was quite a scene. If you  visualize what a party of billionaire 30-somethings would be like if each had the character, maturity, wisdom and gumption of a teenager, you’d be close.

When the super babes started going in groups to the bathroom to do lines, and when people started spending varying lengths of time behind closed doors, I grabbed my guests and suggested we leave. They were already ready and happy to head out, and both were in a great mood from the buzz of the absurd.

We had a nice conversation about the whole thing afterwards and I learned how girls read situations like that, and how they interpret what’s going on there, and the various personalities it takes for a scene like that to develop. We ended up grabbing coffees, and one of them decided to crash over.

Overall it was interesting and I’m glad I went, and equally glad I left when I did, probably around 1:30a, presumably when the “party” was just getting started for many of them.

I debriefed with my friend about it the next day and learned more things. He assured me that what he had going on that night was “nothing” compared to even average weekends for that circle, and he was happy to tap into it when needed, and happy to stay away in all other regards. For instance, he said, he didn’t let a single girl stay over even though by the end it was just him, his brother, and 5 hot, probably desperate women with nothing else to do. He made them all leave, which, since he’s single, was impressive to me. I’m not sure I could have done it.

He deserves our props for that my monkeys!!

———————————————————–

Had great training yesterday that lasted two hours and my legs are sore as hell now, which is perfect. I have the day off from training today and all I want to do is head home after work, put some radio on, and finish painting a new secondhand table that I carved some neat things into.

OK, coffee meter’s running low. Hope you all have a great start to the week and don’t forget to do that thing you’ve been putting off because I’m pretty sure today is a perfect day to do it.

Later!

Fire Day, 3/22/13

Though that’s actually incorrect.

For years I went around telling people Friday was “Fire Day”, in the same way that Saturday is “Saturn Day” and Sunday is “Sun Day” and Monday is “Moon Day”. Those are all correct. But Friday has no relationship with Fire, and I’m uncertain when I first started that association or why, besides the obvious similarities between “fri” and “fire”.

It’s actually Frīġedæġ, or “The Day of Frigg”, named after the Goddess Frigg, whom you might know is the wife of Odin.  So all the Nordic and Germanic languages incorporate that root into Friday, so you have Fredag in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, Freitag in modern German, and Vrijdag in Dutch.

In the Romance languages, though, “Friday” is very different. Vendredi, venerdì, diēs veneris, vineri, etc. That’s because many cultures around the heart of Western civilisation traditionally associated the day with the goddess Venus, and as the Romance languages share Latin as their root, “diēs veneris” or “Day of Venus”, is reflected in all the Ve/vi prefixed words for “Friday”.

Incidentally, how many Romance languages are there? Lots of people confuse this. Romance languages are actually very particular. Firstly, they are called such because they are the languages that were spoken and evolving across the rapidly growing Roman empire, so they are literally the languages of Rome from about the 500-900AD period. Growing up, of course, many people assume we call them “Romance” languages because of the kind of cultures that speak them– the French, the Italian, the Spanish– you know, the romantic places. You don’t usually associate Germany with “Romance”, for instance, and it makes intuitive sense to us that German is not a “Romance language”, but the reason is more particular than how we portray culture. Germans can be quite Romantic… right?

Maybe?

The main Romance languages are just French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and… the one everyone forgets but that makes the most sense of all… what is it?

What could it BE???

Romanian. Duh.

————————————————-

I slept deeply last night, making up partially for what I missed the night before. I did train yesterday, despite being sleep deprived, and though I didn’t have full power it was still worthwhile. I got a good pump going and getting in the water felt good. Back in the pleasantness of former lifestyles. We would often be sleep deprived while swimming, so yesterday was kind of a return, and felt pretty good. I was sore, but the strokes stretched me out well and it was nice to push myself through the water while tired. There are times I feel that I could probably swim indefinitely. I don’t get that same feeling from running.

Today I have one meeting scheduled, and I have lots of writing to do, so with coffee on one side, and a large slightly cracked-open window to the other, it’s time to get started.

Have a great Day of Frigg– please do something you really want to do today so when you crash tonight you feel complete and satisfied.

No entry for yesterday because I hit the ground running and didn’t stop until around 10p. I crashed in Chinatown and had an awful sleep, just 5 highly interrupted hours, and am now in the secret office thinking about what to do.

I can survive the day, but my body is broken down from training and I didn’t recover enough (because of lack of sleep). My legs are sore and my eyelids heavy. I got used to a pattern of training hard and recovering well through rest and nutrition. When that gets screwed up, it can cascade. There’s a difference between getting only 5 hours of sleep, and getting only 5 hours of sleep after an evening of heavy and serious physical training. Your sleep requirements change dramatically when your body needs to heal. If you body isn’t healed, your brain will adjust to try to encourage healing, which means feeling not just tired, but actually sleepy, until you recover.

I could sneak a nap in here, though that’ll be hard. I’m supposed to train at 1p. Will I go through with it?

Yes.

No compromising what needs to be done.

Between February 1st and now, I have only had one night in which I drank alcohol. It was at the Gojira/Devin Townsend show, and the only reason I drank was because the person I was with, a highly respected metal guitarist, started ordering for me. I’ve been out with him twice since and explained I wasn’t drinking because I was training and it was respected immediately, no problems. Going alcohol free has helped me achieve great strength gains, and I’ve also been feeling more balanced and zeroed-in overall. I have a couple friends who find this lifestyle harder to accept, and they pressure me. But I’ve just stopped hanging out with them. I have better things to do. For me, I don’t care if you drink or smoke pot or make questionable decisions all the time. I can still like you and hang out with you and have a good time. Just don’t expect me to be like you. If you need to be around people who reinforce your esteem by doing as you do, reflecting your own behaviors back at you, then it might be important to figure out what the implications of that are for yourself.

It’s hard for me to watch people tightening the bindings that so often are the cause their dissatisfactions, especially when they confuse “distraction” and “entertainment” with happiness and well-being. You have to build your awareness of what’s really happening with you and to you, and break out of that shit.

Onwards into the Day of Thor.

It snowed last night and it was beautiful. I was in my office, not the secret one but the one with the big window, and I had my lamp on, and I wrote and read while the windows rattled and my coffee steamed. The ideas were flowing and the moments of last night were good.

Walking home was a blast. Despite the short duration, we had a mini blizzard, full on white-wash for a few hours around 9-11p. I trudged up the sidewalk, Limmers and Teryx happy as they’ve ever been, and by the time I was home my eyebrows were snowy, my cheeks were pink, and I was happy.

Today is a race around. I’m here writing quickly in preparation for a 3p. I’m not sure I’ll make it to training at noon, so I might have to go in after work. I don’t mind. Keeping the body confused is good. That way it keeps growing stronger, staying ready for everything.

Enjoy Tuesday March 19th 2013. The only there will ever be.