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The Swing Of Things

The suitcase officially went back into the basement today, so I guess the vacation excuse is officially over. We got back home late Tuesday night (memo to self: Miami remains the worst reentry point into the US of anywhere), and Wednesday was mostly about resting up and feeling settled back home. Yesterday was my first morning back at work, which was fine, but as usual, the early rising and energy reqired at work makes the afternoon and evening after a bit of a wash.

That, and I'm finding it hard to get back into the swing of things, especially writing. Blogging lately, for me, has been an off and on enterprise at best, and, admittedly, more off than on. Writing about politics isn't simply frustrating at this point; mostly it feels simply pointless. Watching TV news and discussion programs - which I do a whole lot less lately - is frustrating and, I hate to admit, depressing. The waste of time and energy spent on useless topics ("our first story tonight: something not very controversial that happened on the Republican primary trail, amongst candidates you don't care about, pretty much all of whom will never be President.") really just floors me.

I'm left trying to fashion a blog out of movie reviews, the occasional pithy observation, and some witty asides about television programs I've seen, and no, I don't think that's much of a life, either. At the same time, I have no interest in simply stopping. As much as I like the idea that someone reads what I write, enojys it, gets something out of it... I write mostly because it fulfills something for me. And still, as I do it, literally as I type this, I feel more purposeful than I have... well, since I scribbled a few words about my vacation from a hotel room in St. Kitts.

There are two other obvious complications: I just got an iPhone for my birthday - mostly because my iPod died and I've come to the conclusion that the BlackBerry Curve, while nice, is technically flawed - and I have to admit, the remarkable number of things it can do (listening to online radio of disco remixes whilst reading the AP newswire, for example) means not even having to use my laptop for most anything. Second, on the job front, I am up for a fairly significant promotion and, when I am realistic, getting that promotion changes my priorities. I'm actually ambivalent, on a quiet personal level, about moving up, because I don't really know if I can sustain writing, even at this reduced level, over the long term while in management. On the better days, I resolve to try. On the worse dys, I just curl into a ball and avoid everyone and most everything.

(None of the last few sentences belong in a blog post that could potentially be read by your boss... but oh well.)

I suppose my point is that "real life" - off of the interwebs - has become the life I'm actually spending more time leading. Interesting things are happening; interacting with real people in real time is emotionally fulfilling; pounding the keys about personal and political frustrations isn't much fun (and frankly, has never entirely been my style). There's no real conclusion here, no absolute "that's it, I'm done", no resolution that I'll try harder to blog more. It might happen... and probably, however well intentioned, it won't anytime soon. Life goes on, I'm back in the swing of things, the journey continues... and that, really, is what matters, isn't it?

Island Time

Long ago - before I started working for Starbucks and my income dropped to 25% of what it had been - I liked to take my Spring vacations in the Caribbean. Back then I had a plan (a life's goal, if you will) of seeing every Caribbean island at least once. And I was doing pretty well with it, too. In the months before I quit my old job, I had even made plans to make my next vacation a trip to Nevis, which seemed somewhat remote and less accessible.

But then I quit my job (and just to be fair, I'm not trying to blame Starbucks for my financial predicament; I made the leap out of corporate life knowing that it would be less money and challenging. Not quite that challenging, but still), and vacation plans became, literally, a luxury I couldn't aford. For several years I took almost no vaccations involving considerable travel (Maine, Canada, that sort of thing), and indeed, almost no vacations at all. 

Then I moved back home, and between her financial support (I can't pretend it's not there) and my own mildly improved fortunes, vacations to further off places resumed. There was our lovely trip to Tucson and Sedona in Arizona. We took several cruises (qhich is a quick way to up one's island total, I found).

And this year, I managed to convince her to join my island hopping quest directly.

And oddly enough, here we are, on St. Kitts.

St. Kitts and Nevis are one nation, St. Kitts lying slightly north and east of Nevis, the islands separated by a two mile strait (a moment where the Atalntic meets the Caribbean). Yesterday, spur of the moment, we took a ferry from Bassaterre, the capital, over to Charlestown, the capital of Nevis. Two islands, one vacation.

We have shopped and explored and eaten wonderful food and laid in the sun. Well, technically I have laid in the sun while mom sits in the shade or under an umbrella, rrading a book (the latest Sara Paretsky, on her way to capturing my newest Elizabeth George). My face is red and a little sore, but otherwise, it is a typical tanning adventure. Already in just a few hours over a couple of days, I am several shades darker.

St. Kitts is marvelous, less developed than some of the islands (Nassau, Aruba), not too expensive, with some nice opportunities to eat well, pick up a few duty free items (a watch, some perfume, and my boss's cigarettes), and generally relax. Nevis, as I suspected, is somewhat less developed, but even more pleasantly low key and easy going. And we even managed to shoehorn in some history, seeing the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton (which, for this graduate of Hamilton College, was a treat).

It's the change of pace that I notice the most, not surprising for your average impatient New Yorker... but somehow the cheerfulness and friendliness of most Kittians makes the slow pace tolerable. Our dinner the first night (at a local legendary beachside "shack") took 45 minutes to arrive, what with the crowds on hand for the bonfire and the fire eater (he was quite remarkable). Somehow the wait was just fine. And the food was worth the wait.

Being here, on island time, made getting to writing this post an effort; I have had it in my head for tow days, but life, and wandering, intervened. We only have a couple more days to enjoy, but this trip is already one of the standout vacation choices I've ever had.  Now it's off to my morning run and another great cup of coffee at the local coffee place, a cup every bit as satisfying as the ones I get at work.

I promise to poat pictures too.

Oh, and, Happy Easter. :)

Til The Clouds Roll By

In the end, as I think about it, the thing about a hurricane is not what you can anticipate, but what you can't: what makes a hurricane disastrous are things you either couldn't figure out in advance, or knew about, but couldn't prevent.

If you can figure out, for instance, that a hurricane hitting New York City and its coastal surroundings would be an enormous human disaster, you can move a lot of people out of the way. You can't move a lot of houses out of the way, but depending on how bad the storm is, that might not matter.

People will, no doubt, debate a lot of silliness about whether all the evacuations were necessary, whether public transportation should have been halted, if it all seems, in retrospect, like overkill. Have at it, I suppose. It seems to me, though, that, what will remain, after all the shouting dies down, is the reality that we dealt pretty well with things we could anticipate. 

The problem with Hurricane Irene, are things we couldn't.

it seems obvious, now, that a 500-mile wide tropical storm is still a big mess after it hits the coast... but no one, really, quite predicted what a disaster the storm would be once it traveled north of the New York coast. This is a storm that, most likely, will be recalled - as these storms are - most by the places that were most devastated worst. Upstate New York, Vermont, a great deal of Connecticut... Irene is probably destined to be their memory, more than for those of us who waited, with varying anxiety, for a deluge that didn't quite deliver. 

It could have been worse, it could have strengthened the way some forecasts predicted... but this doesn't have to be a story of What Might Have Been. The good thing, the amazing thing is that, for what it actually was, people took it seriously. And some serious people showed their seriousness. 

As much as Michael Bloomberg gets a terrible reputation for his imperiousness and  his occasional high-handedness (none more than his own faith that he, alone, is best suited to be Mayor), he does have a Chief Executive knack for making a plan. His decisions to evacuate low lying areas, to shut down the nation's largest public transportation system, were big choices and he owned them and clearly, they worked. Similarly, Chris Christie bluntly laid out a plan to evacuate New Jersey's shore points and said so in a clear, forthright way: take this seriously. Don't wait for the storm, don't be an idiot, and don't waste the time of people whose job it is to respond to disasters. Bev Perdue in North Carolina came off similarly forceful, practical, and determined.

It's easy to say "non one wanted to be the next Katrina", but it's more than that; the question, ultimately, is whether one thinks its alarmist or simply prudent to prepare for the worst. All over the East coast were officials who hedged that choice, who lagged on forcing evacuations, who seemed to follow the lead of others, rather than take it. On Long Island, the sense of just how bad things might get seemed to unravel in a fog. Connecticut officials seemed very concerned, but not quite ahead of the possibilities.

Sure, as Sunday unfolded, it was easy to feel kind of had; yes, it rained wherer we were for just about 24 straight hours... but we had no real flooding, no downed trees on our street, no power outage of any kind. The search for batteries and flashlights, the sight of a grocery stores cleaned out of bread and bottled water (how... prison), it all felt a little absurd. Sunday afternoon, we went out for a newspaper. 

But one reality of Irene, I think, is how oddly capricious the results were: just blocks from places which had little more tha a long rainstorm were places full of downed trees, flooding, massive power outages. My little Westchester town came through mostly intact. The town where my Starbucks is saw massive flooding. The towns next to it are littered with tree debris. It was still hard, this afternoon, to find a passable road from that town to my hometown. Our commuter rail - the one that everyone questioned stopping - is probably going to need a week to resume full, normal service. Had trains tried to run through the storm, I guarantee you the mess would be longer to recover from, and worse.

So New York City came through less scathed; and the Jersey shore dodged some of the worst of ocean surges and less rain. Even Long Island took less direct damage than anyone expected. Even so, what probably matters most is preparation. And seriousness.

And what can be anticipated.

For me, what really pushed me to prepare for this storm was my Mother's memory of the Hurricane of 1938, called the Long Island Express, the one storm from history where a hurricane traveled up the East Coast, never hitting land until it crossed Long Island and slammed into the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts. My mom's childhood hometown in New Jersey took a glancing blow, one she never forgot. About six months ago, she found this PBS special about the hurricane. The stories in it have stuck with me ever since.

Yesterday, by the end of the day, the clouds rolled on. The winds whipped by, and even the tail end of the hurricane, the tropical storm, pretty much blew away without incident here at home. Much as we anticipated. It wasn't that bad. This time. And maybe, if we keep taking them seriously, and we prepare for the worst, we can at least know how to meet the disasters we can anticipate.

Here's To Good Friends

Today is a day off and I've been catching up with good friends, all of us linked in strange, nearly magical ways. This one's for you guys, and all we talked about today:

 

 

Friday Evening Footprints in the Sand

 
jinb

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Greetings from Nassau. :)

We've been having a lovely cruise around the Eastern Caribbean. I thought I might try and write - a little - while onboard, but a preference for leisure very quickly took over, and happily, my pooter seemed most comfortable stored away.

Tomorrow the dream ends, and we are back to real life, and real time.

It's the sense of time that's struck me a lot on this trip - the time we have, the time we waste, how much people can try to cram into a day. And how hard that becomes when there are no clocks.

Like many cruises, and resorts (and, if you never noticed, Starbucks), the Norwegian Epic has almost no clocks anywhere. Not on most of the public decks, no clocks in staterooms, and so it can become a mystery just what time it is. This is fine, say, if your day majinly consists of lying around by the pool... but this is a ship full of activities and options. There's a (fabulous) spa, an awesome gym, and lots of dinners and shows to choose from. All at scheduled, specific times. 

And no clocks.

It's enough to make one buy a watch (and thanks to a very large onboard shopping plaza, lots of nice watches at deep discounts to American retail prices)... but it's also kind of a pain. A 10:00 gym class, a 12:00 massage... what time is it again?

So far, I've nearly missed one reserved only lunch, and two spa appointments, not to mention nearly missing the boat trip I'd arranged to join from St. Thomas to St John. My phone has become a lifesaver in terms of keeping track... but in St. Thomas and St. Maarten, my phone decided we were in the next time zone... and I gained an hour. And generally thought I was late. Or early. Or something.

Sure, time is a luxury problem - and so are those spa appointments - but it's the sense that time should have no meaning, on a rigorous schedule, that's really striking me as odd. Culturally, I think the tension between a vacation where time doesn't matter, and the heavily scheduled leisure of a cruise trip, are a good example of how confused Americans can be when it comes to leisure and time off. Have a great time, take it easy... but try to be on time.

And now, I probably have to go off to an appointment somewhere.

The A List: All The Pretty People At The Shallow End Of The Pool

I've been trying to avoid this, but it just has to be said: I have become enthralled with The A-List:New York, Logo's new reality series which does a "real Housewives" like gloss on gay men in New York City.

Partly, this is pure shallowness: there's so much toplessness and buffery on display that it's just ridiculous (I think "notices buff men in filmed entertainment" is the new shorthand form of gaydar; if you can name the cute ones, you are one of us)... and confirms my own taste-o-meter for reality TV: from Paradise Hotel to Temptation Island to that brief Bravo series on picking America's next male model... if they wear a bathing suit, count me in.

But The A-List is, if possible, shallower than that: it's every "oh my God, did you see his boyfriend" story ever told, every overly dramatic queen's dream of everyday life. It's all hair and clothes and bitchy comments  and buff bodies and the 6 to 10 other things that make for the most shallow conversations imaginable.

And it's utterly fascinating, and utterly true.

The A-list's conceit is that the young men on camera represent some sort of urban gay elite; like the other shows, it's more "legend in my mind" than The Real Thing, but it makes perfect sense: if you can dine out on being Britney's hairdresser, if doing Beyonce's makeup makes you a somebody, if anyone cares that you do the flowers in Ivanka Trump's office.... it's gay men in Manhattan who can somehow make that seem important.

The most "famous" face on the A-List is probably Reichen Lemkuhl, a former Air Force officer who gained some notoriety dating Lance Bass, one of the men in N'Sync, and the only American boybander (so far) to come out. Next most famous is probably Austin, who was part of a messy series of relationships Marc Jacobs pursued since kicking drugs and buffing up into a new Gay Icon. There's also Derek, a modeling agent who apparently knows Lindsay Lohan, and Ryan, a hairdresser who married well (a much older, black banker who is rarely seen), and Ryan's friend TJ, who is also his Personal Assistant.

All of these boys, and Reichen's new boyfriend Rodiney (the requisite Brazilian model), do a credible job of representing what passes for gay social life: heavy on the arts, fashion and the visual, cute and young. It's a literal "Logan's Run" where it's rare to hang around much past 30, or maybe 35 if you push it (Mike Ruiz, also known to Drag Race fans, adds some grace to the image of the aging boytoy). Everyone's a little too young, a little too immature. Put it on camera... and it shows.

The A-List, like other reality shows, doesn't necessarily tell anyone anything they didn't already know: gay men can be shallow, and too caught up in what's pretty and of the moment. Since Stonewall, there's been a long line of books (Dancer from the Dance and Faggots, most famously) and plays (The Boys in the Band) and movies (Lots, but start, say, with Jeffrey) to make much the same point. Still, the A-List does climb up and under an image of gay life that I've rarely seen represented so fully, so unashamedly, and yes... probably so badly for the cause: this is a reminder that while we talk about "gay rights" and make gay men seem like saints... we often forget about the boys who, well, go to The Saint (a legendary nightclub, dear... look it up).

As well, the A-List climbs under and around the gender issues that the Housewives programs can't seem to address (or at least... that's my line and I'm sticking to it, to try and seem deep): bitchy and queeny they may be... but these are definitely men, and that complicates dismissing their emotional issues and social problems in quite the same way as the women of the Housewives' shows. This is a world that, up til now, was not necessarily visible to those outside of it. Trying to explain the "gay world" of clubs and parties and Fire Island to outsiders often seemed, like, well, trying to get people to believe in a mythical place (it's why, for instance, all this stuff about "the gays" and the SATC world of straight women's NYC can seem like the real thing... when those in the know can tell you, firmly, it isn't the same at all). The A-List is warts - well, not warts - and all: the "telephone, telegram... tell a fag" world of gossip and cuteness and relationships built on little more than looks and air.

And sure, it's about the small, petty details: watching Reichen lie to others, and himself, about his attractions and his wants; about shallow friendships like Derek's and TJ's and deciding whether or not to like Austin, and watching a pretty boy like Rodiney try to "make it" as a model in New York. But more than the housewives shows, I suspect that what gives the A-List some emotional punch is the breadth of relationships on display: friends, enemies, lovers, business partners. It's intimate, and a little incestuous, and oh so pretty to look at. And, as Malone said, beautiful is all it is. It takes a while to realize there might be more to life than that. Here's hoping these boys find that out.

Wings, Angels, Other Sacred Objects

I'm coming up on the fourth anniversary of my experiment in blogging, and as always, at these milestones, I'm not where I expected to be, and a little weirded out. When I started, the idea of writing a daily blog seemed interesting and exciting, even a little challenging... but I was sure I'd have lots to say. And I kind of did.

Yet here I am, today, nearly four years later, with an oddly inconsistent exercise, and more than a little struggle to find topics to carry on the conversation.

When I headed out to LA this past week I knew my plans would make blogging challenging... but after a couple of weeks of pretty intense times at work, I figured I had enough of a backlog of ideas that I could balance the projects in California with a need to get back to the writing I was genuinely starting to miss.

As it turns out, I was incredibly busy in LA, with no time to put to writing outside of the writing I was doing for others. And, by the time I got home, I was yet again worn down and in need of some serious rest and removal of pressures.

And so it goes. I don't mean to dress this up as some familiar whine about feeling down for not writing enough; after all this time, and in the past few months especially, I begun - though just begun - to respect the balancing act in my life between writing and the rest of the work. I write when I can, I write because I have to... but for now, the process is erratic, and even inconsistent. And that's the reality I have to live with. The rest of my life - which in many ways, I had kind of put on hold - keeps moving, things keep happening... and I want to be a part of them.

Three years ago, when I went to LA for the first time, I was struck by the different vibe of Southern California, the one about which I'd heard so much, but didn't entirely believe. I came to believe, and came to realize that life holds a myriad of possibilities; and for me a life in California wouldn't be the opposite of the life I have in New York... but it would, in its way, be an entirely different exercise.

I still felt that, this time, though one of the amazing experiences I had then, and the person I met, is gone, now only a memory. In his place, I went and built new experiences, new memories, and still, the idea of a life, a completely different sort of life, has its pull. Lots of things do.

Yes, this is one of those rambling, slightly incomplete exercises in trying to explain what happened, where the time goes (and went), how I came to spend so much time offline and away from the writing I do, honestly, still love to do. Something about having to have the experiences to write about them, about how I am not moved, these days, by familiar arguments on the same tired politics, how a week spent largely free form news and current political affairs was a week where, I'm pretty sure, I didn't miss much. This one is about the higher things, what happens when you fly, when you fly away, and try to remember what's really sacred, and what's worth letting go.

I'm going to keep writing, and yes, I'm going to keep searching for that elusive balance between the life I live outside of the blog and the time I need to write about it. It isn't easy... but the things that can be let go, that don't really matter to me aren't about the need to write... it's realizing what I need to write about. Because on the right topic and with the right balance... I can soar. And if that difference makes any sense to you... then you, too, are probably reading in the right place. Still. Thanks for paying even a modest amount of attention.

Now I just have to go out and do the work.

Friday Evening Fenders

jinb
 

Friday Evening Fauna

jinb