My Blog Is My Best Friend

The weather's been bracing the past few days. It's nice to wake up when it's sunny and cloudless and cool. The other day I took a nap in the afternoon under my big comforter with the breeze blowing in through the window. Last night was chilly and when I got home I made a cup of chai tea with milk and honey. I think what I like about fall is everything is about comfort. I wear sweaters and drink tea and take naps and snuggle up to keep warm. It's very luxurious and romantic.

Anyway. I've been thinking hard about stopping this blog for good. In recent entries I've really been struggling with whether or not this is mostly for other people or a personal journal. I always struggle with how candid I should be in these entries. There are certain places where I need to exercise discretion, like when talking about other people, because I don't want this to be some kind of passive-agressive, manipulative way of insinuating my feelings to people. Also, I don't want to embarass anyone. But that much I'm okay with. What it's more about is whether or not I want people reading some of the things I want to write; and whether they'll even want to read those things. I think what I mean is when I'm upset, which I have been recently. It's why I didn't post the past few weeks. Do people want to read about my being upset or lonely? Do I want them to?

I always argued with people who told me they didn't like blogs that mine was going to be different--honest no matter what. In fact that's why I started a blog as opposed to a private diary. I wanted to be as honest as I could in full view of everyone. Well, of course I'm not. There will always be things that I'm ashamed of, or that wil hurt someone deeply. Still, I wanted to be forthcoming in ways that I'm not in person, since I tend to be reserved and it bugs me. I want to SAY what I MEAN, but I never get it right.

I mean, it's necessary to have a private life (I think I read something about that once, how you need to have a secret life to be healthy). But I don't know, I just feel like I'm still not fully here in these words sometimes. And I'm tired! I guess if nothing else it's nice to have a place to sort out my thoughts.

Nice, someone is peeing outside my window. Writing this out has made me feel a little better, so, who knows, I'll probably be back to writing about some silly nonsense tomorrow.

Oh ONE TEP, you might be all I have. And by the way, in the spirit of full disclosure, the title of my blog refers to the book ONE L which was some guy's journal of his first year at Harvard Law School (oooh, I'm going to add "turbulent" to my title). Interestingly, the author's son was my year at Stanford, he was in Bereket's frat, and I guess Stefanie went on a date with him once.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist died yesterday. I have a very particular memory of Rehnquist, a man I know almost nothing about. He went to Shorewood High School in Shorewood, Wisconsin, a neighborhood north of Milwaukee, not far from where I grew up. Shorewood High has a nice, olympic-sized indoor pool and I'd always have swim meets there, and I remember walking into that old cement school building, and just before you entered the pool area there were two things above the door that always caught your eye: one was a plaque saying that Rehnquist had gone to school there, and the other was a giant gold papier-mache face that was either a prop or a set piece from the school's production, sometime in the past, of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I also remember that at one of these Shorewood meets some kid's suit fell off right when he dove in. He was doing the butterfly, so we all sat in the stands and laughed at his naked ass bobbing up and down as he swam, and we joked that it was a good thing he wasn't doing the backstroke. So any time I hear about Rehnquist, or the Supreme Court in general, I have these flashbacks of swim meets and some kid's butt, and that huge, papier-mache face.

This is strange. I'm essentially about to rewrite what I wrote yesterday. Should I change things? No one would know. And I feel so different now than I did last night. So much happens every day.

I got back to Boston on Monday evening, rode the Chinatown bus. It was raining when I got in. I was wearing a Stanford t-shirt and some woman started talking to me in Harvard Square, saying she goes to Stanford Medical School. I think I was kind of cold toward her because I was walking in the rain and just wanted to catch my bus.

One of the best things I did in New York was go to the new MoMA. My favorite paintings were Cy Twombly's Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons). Here they are, in order from Spring to Winter:









Aaagh, "Winter" is so scary and beautiful, it's my favorite. My other favorite thing was an architecture exhibit about this deserted elevated railway on the lower western edge of Manhattan that's been converted into a kind of park/walkway. It's called the High Line. Masha and I walked over to where it starts, but you can't go up there yet. I also really loved the Pissarro exhibit. I hadn't heard of Pissarro before I went, but I ended up buying a print of his for my wall.



He's great at capturing weather. Pissarro was Jewish, born and raised in the West Indies. I guess Cézanne was his protégé, but Pissarro is better.

My last few days in New York were the best. On Saturday Masha and I walked all around the city. We bought a bottle of wine at this market in Chelsea, where they also had wine tasting. We tasted this one wine and Masha asked "what would you serve this with?" and the guy said "wild boar."

Albert got in Saturday night and he, Masha and I cooked dinner in his apartment.







Um, I guess those are pretty boring pictures. "Check us out... making PASTA!!" Later that night I arm-wrestled Albert and I KICKED HIS FUCKING ASS.

One more, of us eating dinner:



I told Masha she should wear bottom eyeliner more often, it looks sexy. I love this picture of Albert.



Whew, okay. That's pretty much all of the stuff I had written last night. Honestly, it was making me really uncomfortable rewriting all that. The worst was when I remembered stuff that I had written that I thought was funny, so I would try to redo it and it would just end up sounding awkward.

Man, you know what? This whole entry for some reason is making me feel very strange. Even though now I could just start writing about whatever I want, I still feel weird. I guess I'm confronting the issue of whether this blog is a personal journal or a piece of public reading. In all honesty, what I would have liked to write about tonight was how my dad and Adam and I went to Walden Pond this afternoon, and while we were swimming over in this remote part of the pond we had this long discussion about buying and selling real estate as a way to make money. I guess there's a good living to be made in buying houses, fixing them up, and then selling them for a lot more than you paid, but the more I think about it, I'm like, man, how fucking pragmatic and soulless. No offense to anyone, but for me personally, if I was making a living buying houses and then reselling them, I'd be pretty unhappy, no matter how much money I was making. I don't know, the whole thing just creeps me out. I mean, I'm sure some people genuinely enjoy it, but it's not for me.

All right, I'm going to bed.

Fuck. Well I promised a lot of people that I would have a new post up here, and I had a long, detailed one going about my last few days in New York, complete with artwork and pictures, but then my browser crashed so I lost all of it. And it's 5:15 in the morning and I have to meet my dad at the airport this afternoon, so I'm going to sleep. I'll re-write the long post tonight.

While I was writing I had a few nice conversations on IM, first with Stef who thinks she's starting to find her clique at law school, which makes her happy. She sounds a lot more confident and content than when I left. I talked with Michelle for a while, which was fun. She was very complimentary about my blog, and very voluble in general. She has so much energy for such a small person. She's easy to talk to, has no pretenses. Then I talked with Avik, which always makes my night. We talked about that movie The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, which we both thought was great. According to Avik he was drunk, though I couldn't really tell. He was hilarious, though. Man, I love that guy.

Goodnight.