Insomnia

Drinking caffeine at 4am in the morning is probably not the best method of remedying the effects of insomnia, and yet here I am with Diet Pepsi in hand. Perhaps one way to get over my wakefulness during these midnight hours is to strip myself of all the ubiquitous distractions of urban life. Were I holed up in a mountain cabin stocked with a couple microbiology textbooks, a few bottles of Dasani water, and a wheel of cheese and some crackers for sustenance, I reckon I would be able to reset my Circadian clock and jar my system back into a semi-normal sleep pattern. But then I’d start freaking out about all the rustlings and strange noises being emitted by the woods. Visions of “The Blair Witch Project” would play in my mind, rendering me once again, sleepless. Oh the futility!

In search of...

...Lloyd Dobler.

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed... or buy anything sold or processed... or process anything sold, bought or processed... or repair anything sold, bought or processed."

A Litany of Lyrics

On friends:
"It's not where but who you're with that really matters"
-Best of What's Around, DMB

On heartbreak:
"Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures"
-Nothing Better, The Postal Service

On surviving:
"It was me and a gun, and a man on my back. But I haven't seen Barbados, so I must get out of this."
-Me and a Gun, Tori Amos

On the foreboding:
"Under a blackened sky far beyond the glaring streetlight, sleeping on empty dreams, the vultures lie in wait"
-Wait, Sarah MacLachlan

On sleeping puppies:
"Sweetness enveloping me, tangible serenity and calmness even as the world tries to invade me"
-Sienna, yours truly, All Aglow

On ambivalence:
"How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies, perhaps we don't fulfill each others' fantasies.
And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives with our respective similarities, it's either sadness or euphoria."
-Summer, Highland Falls, Billy Joel

On discovering "Aida":
"The souls of men and women, impassioned all. Their voices rise and fall. Battle trumpets call. I fill the bath and climb inside, singing."
-Verdi Cries, 10000 Maniacs

On automatons:
"Never had a point of view cause my mind was always someone else's mind."
-Breath of Life, Erasure

On being consumed:
"You are in my blood like holy wine. You taste so bitter...and so sweet. I can drink a case of you and still be on my feet."
-Case of You, Joni Mitchell

I welcome you to append...

Au Soleil...

It is hotter than...

a Saharan bonfire at high noon
an iron searing your eyeball
Lucifer's rectal temperature
Brad Pitt

...out there.

Mainstream Hilarity

Chaz Reingold is an icon.

Wasted Youth

_____Was rummaging through my stored belongings today in search of a cherished t-shirt (no dice!) and stumbled upon a keepsake box from my college years. I kept journals in those days and started leafing through a few them for a quick jog down memory lane. Wow, I know I'm a total nut job now, but back then, my days would probably have been better spent locked up in a rubber room.

_____Most of the content is just insecure babbling by a clueless college kid who imposed drama on the most pedestrian of events. If I knew someone today that was as insecure as I was back then, she would utterly annoy me. A goodly portion of one journal is dedicated to my deep-set obsession with a summer fling. I now cringe at the crazy dribble I wrote in there about this guy. Hormones are pretty effective at overpowering common sense. I had to skip through much of that recorded saga, it was so embarrassing. Ay yi yi. I'm vacillating between keeping the journals for posterity or using them for kindling. Maybe a nice compromise is an abridged version with all the prurient passages and accounts of reckless mischief blacked out a la top secret government files. Hmmmm...there might not be much left to read after that.

_____I also found various loose paper scraps with poems I had written, some somber and dark, but many just plain nonsensical. Talk about issues. I had some pent-up aggression back then. In fact, one of the sheets had the word "AGGRESSION" violently scribbled on the back. Cuckooooooo. But reading those diaries made me appreciate just how much I have evolved since my twenties. I seem to have gone from "cynical idealist" to "optimistic realist," and traveled the full spectrum in between. Where to now? I love not knowing.

Post Mid-Year Resolutions

1. Stop behaving like I'm on crack all the time.
2. Commence practicing the virtue of humble abstention from inconsequential argument.
3. Resume a workout schedule of running 4-5 times a week.
4. Reduce (impossible to eliminate) my habitual procrastination.
5. Avoid mindless drinking. (Mindful drinking, however, is acceptable.)
6. Read a book a week. (OK, every 2 weeks.)
7. Draw and write more to nurture the right hemisphere.
8. Learn a new language. (Toss-up: Japanese or German)
9. Drastically decrease salty snack intake.
10. Join a singing group.

I'm pretty adept at failing miserably after setting lofty goals and this time will most likely be no different.

Trivia Question

How do you play golf without a tee, club, or green?

On an unrelated note, Happy Belated Birthday, Prima!!!

#7 of the Top 20 Things I Detest Doing...

Packing! Just shy of #6, "Cleaning up puke."

Pbbblllllttttt...

Hot-lanta, Jaw-ja

Despite having spent an oft-time exhausting week down here in the south with my newly born niece (not even a week old!), I find myself a mite bit melancholy at leaving for the bustle of the city once more. Time spent with my family is such a release (especially with the new baby plaything)--just like a natural health elixir. So corny. But truly, it's rare that more than a few moments pass without ruckus laughter at an inside joke amongst us siblings or a fit of giggles at some absurd comment mom or dad blurts out. How I love hearty, insanity-induced belly laughs with the fam. Nothing like it.

Non sequitur: "My Fair Lady" is on TV right now. Freddy, that lovesick sap, is singing "On the Street Where You Live." Eliza's getting all fired up because he's all talk, no action. Seems it's an age-old problem. Ha ha.

Hotel New Hampshire

__________________________________________

Love's Strategems

Donald Justice (1925 - )

But these maneuverings to avoid
The touching of hands,
These shifts to keep the eyes employed
On objects more or less neutral
(As honor, for time being, commands)
Will hardly prevent their downfall.

Stronger medicines are needed.
Already they find
None of their strategems have succeeded,
Nor would have, no,
Not had their eyes been stricken blind,
Hands cut off at the elbow.

_______________________________________________

I remember reading this in John Irving's "Hotel New Hampshire" a few years back (disturbing story, but a good read nonetheless.) To me, this is not simply a love poem. I tend to think that it refers to all that is inextricably tied to your core self--your true passions: what you adore, what you abhor, the things you really believe that make life worth a damn--and how it's impossible to ignore or deny them. Your inner desires are always there, whether you act on them or not. You can choose to merely think upon them and constantly feel unfulfilled, or, to further beat a cliche to death, "to thine own self be true."

_____

POST SCRIPT: Just read all that & seems a bit like a load of rot in retrospect. Bwah ha ha. Oh well, I still think worlds of the poem.

Esoterica, Part 1

I'm finishing up a book by Mario Livio entitled "The Golden Ratio" which traces the history of a little-known number represented by the Greek symbol "phi," not to be confused with the more popular "pi" (the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter).

Definition of "phi":

Take a line, AC:

A__________________________C

Separate the line into 2 segments such that one segment is larger than the other:

A_________________B________C

where AB > BC

Phi is the ratio in which:

AC/AB = AB/BC

While this seems pretty simple, the resulting ratio is an irrational number (like pi), and cannot be reduced to an integer. Seems pretty strange when you learn that polygons that have perfect symmetry bear this irrational relationship in their geometry. Phi, also known as "golden ratio" or the "golden section," is surprisingly prevalent in many natural phenomena such as the pattern of petals in a rose or the spiral within a chambered nautilus.

While I'm not usually a fan of non-fiction (snoozefest!), I've been fascinated by the depth in which the author researched his material, reaching back to the beginnings of civilization and how humans have used and thought of numbers throughout the passage of time.

Obscure, but edifying, I find. Bla dee bla.

Averie

A delicate head nestled in my palm,
I try holding my breath to hear hers.
Gestures, soft sighs, expressions, and yawns--
She speaks volumes while saying no words.

A Front Yard in Mystic, Connecticut

Taken by Christine Famuliner during our recent excursion through New England

Popping the Cherry

Ahhh...the original entry. Apologies in advance that this won't be the most stimulating post (nor blog, for that matter) since the hour is approaching 5am on a Thursday morning. Have been wanting to start one of these bloggy thangs for the past few weeks as I have found myself with many more leisure hours than should be legal after recently graduating from a grueling (time-wise rather than academic-wise), yet extremely worthwhile, one year MBA program here in Philly.

The past year has been a blur of lectures, presentations, happy hours, travels, excessive clowning around, more bottles of beer than necessary, and too much fun. Felt a lot like camp without the bunks, counselors, and mosquitoes. I daresay this blog will be, at least initially, a feeble attempt to recapture some of the memories from the last 12 months (probably through random references to happenings-past) and will most definitely result in reading material that induces coma in the average person. But I imagine, as with all things, I will move onto other topics...which will likely be equally as coma-inducing. Ah well...

Soooooooo...my life these days consists of:

• Trying to get the company, which I am starting with two classmates from the MBA program, up and running and FUNDED so we don't starve for the rest of the summer. It's going remarkably well for not having a freaking clue about what we're doing. There are companies that are actually interested in buying what we have to sell. Phenomenal. I've always had the entrepreneurial gene in me & it's finally being expressed, but how I wish I had made more mistakes to learn from in my earlier years when I was instead working in damned corporate America like a monkey.
• Riding on Philly's public transporation system, SEPTA, to get from the West Phila apartment I am subletting for the summer to Center City or any other part of the city that doesn't reek of urine and is void of trash-strewn sidewalks. Pain in the friggin' ass. Can't wait to move back toward civilization (read: East of 30th St. station) in Sept.
• Filling my calendar with various events in the city. Since the summer began, I've been to the Lynnard Skynnard concert @ the Mann (note: can mark "Hear 'Freebird' played live" off the to do list of life), Live 8 (a sea of people with swatches of sweet performances), and the Elton John/Patti LaBelle July 4th concert (less than stellar, but something to do). Planning to hit the Mann as much as possible this month--I believe the enjoyment of the harmonious strains of an orchestra while on a blanket under a night sky to be a slice of heaven. (Side note: I just heard what sounded like 3 gunshots outside--I need to get the hell outta here.)
• Acting like a college kid with the rest of my grad school buddies, a number of them unemployed, doing all of the above activities with them in addition to: watching flicks @ the Ritz, partaking of the occasional (well, more than occasional) frothy beverage, and whiling the nights away with 3 hour games of Trivial Pursuit at 2 in the morning.
• Anticipating my older sister giving birth to my first niece. She'll be a July baby! I am insanely excited at the thought of becoming an aunt.

Methinks it is time to get some shuteye. 10am meeting. Of my own scheduling. Why do I do such things to myself?