Break Away

I had a terrific weekend. I spent it all in East Brunswick with Dave, hanging out at home, cooking and eating, cleaning and doing laundry, going to the gym and running errands. My mind was away from New York City and my nebulous job prospects, and I enjoyed my time with him and the dogs. I wasn't at all stressed.

This suggests that maybe what I really need is to get away from my office altogether. I've assumed that it helps to continue to come in and maintain my routine as long as possible, and job-hunt from work. But maybe, psychologically, it's better for me to move on.

I have to admit, I'll be happy when I never have to walk into that office again. Just seeing the building, when my bus from New Jersey pulled into the Port Authority this morning, gave me a grim feeling.

By the way, and speaking of grim, have you seen "Precious" yet? Dave and I saw it yesterday and loved it. It's a tough movie to take at times, but incredibly eye-opening and the performances are unbelievable. Mariah Carey is unrecognizable -- I literally didn't realize it was her until the end credits rolled -- and Mo'Nique is terrific as Precious' mother. Go see it!

(Photo: Sunrise on E. 29th Street, Nov. 2009)

Comedy of Errors

Our Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be a haphazard affair, though ultimately delicious and satisfying. I managed to buy the wrong essential ingredient, destroy a blender AND make a pie! Whew -- no one can accuse ME of being lazy!

Want details? Happy to oblige:

1. We cracked our first bottle of wine at 2 p.m. It's nearly impossible to correctly time a dinner when you're buzzed, but it sure made the rest of the day fun.

2. When we first turned on the oven, we were nearly smoked out by some residue left over from making pot pies the night before. We had the bright idea to set the oven to its self-cleaning cycle, which then prevented us from opening it for the next hour or two. Thus, we were considerably delayed in getting the turkey launched.

3. I bought something labeled "sweet potatoes" at the store, but whatever they were, they were not the sweet potatoes I'd imagined. For starters, they were white instead of orange, which we didn't realize until we'd started cutting.

4. We tried to make the sweet potatoes the way my mom does, whipping them and then baking them with marshmallows on top. But when I tried to puree the roasted potatoes in a blender with brown sugar and butter, it was like pureeing cement. The blender gave up the ghost with a rubbery smell of protest, and we threw out the sweet potatoes, which tasted something like sweetened plaster.

5. I made the pumpkin pie -- at least the filling -- by mixing canned pumpkin with various other ingredients from a recipe. I had to estimate the spices, because we didn't immediately have measuring spoons at hand, and I overspiced that pie pretty fiercely -- but we agreed we liked it nonetheless. Let's hear it for ginger and nutmeg!

For all that went wrong, though, a lot went right. Dave's brined turkey was delicious and juicy, and his mashed potatoes and my roasted Brussels sprouts worked out well. The cornbread stuffing would have been better had we not bought pre-made cornbread from the supermarket, which turned out to be unreasonably sweet. (Why do people put sugar in everything these days?)

Anyway, we finally ate around 7:30 p.m., which made it a memorable Thanksgiving!

(Photo: Shadow of a porch railing in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Nov. 2009)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick note to say Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I'm in New Jersey, about to embark on another cooking adventure with Dave. We'll be having butternut squash soup, brined turkey with cornbread stuffing, both sweet and mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie for dessert. Yum!

I may be going through lots of changes, but I am thankful for all I have -- my health, my family, my friends, my wonderful Dave and his wonderful dogs, Ernie and Ruby. All things considered, I've still got it really good.

(Photo: Wreath on a front door in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, Nov. 2009)

City Lights

So how’s life as an imminently unemployed person, you may ask?

OK, I’ll tell you. Twist my arm.

So far, things have been more or less OK. I’ve been going into the office almost every day, but I’ve been working much shorter days. I’ve been handing over my job duties -- the few that will be preserved -- and applying for new jobs. It’s been good to have a place to go each day where I can focus and see colleagues, and it also helps that I can continue to get a hot lunch in the company cafeteria, since I’m not much of a cook.

I’ve been striving to preserve my routines. I go to the gym, I do photography, I visit Dave on the weekends. Keeping my life stable as much as possible seems to be a good idea. I’ve had some very fun days just being out and about.

I do get depressed, though. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced true depression before, but maybe this is it -- a feeling of dread, a lack of desire. I have to make myself get moving sometimes. Occasionally I have a social outing and I can tell I’m not being much fun, but I just don’t have it in me, and I can only hope my friends appreciate my circumstances.

I haven’t been sitting much, but I plan to work on that. The negative feelings seem to come when I start thinking “what if,” and I need to stay away from “what if” and stay rooted in the present -- in the “what is.”

I am looking forward to this weekend. I’m not working today, and I plan to head out to New Jersey in the afternoon, after maybe doing some photography in the morning.

On Monday I took my new camera out at night and I got some terrific shots, like the one above. This camera captures city lights really well!

(Photo: Buildings lining the east side of Madison Square Park, including the New York Life building at left and the old Metropolitan Life tower at right.)

Vine

When I was walking downtown recently I came across this vine growing on a fence. It surprised me to find such a delicate-looking flower in mid-November. But things have been pretty warm here overall -- the begonias and coleus in the flower bed outside my building haven't frozen yet, either.

I had dinner with my friend Joe last night and caught him up on the drama in my life. His dog died at about the same time as Armenia, so we could commiserate over the loss of a pet.

Did I mention I'm reading "Schulz and Peanuts," a biography of Charles Schulz? I've always loved Peanuts, even though the strip made less and less sense in its later years. I still have a few Peanuts paperbacks from childhood, and the minister in the Presbyterian church I attended as a kid always used a Peanuts strip to illustrate some point or other during his sermon. It's easy to forget how deeply Charlie Brown and his colleagues were woven into our culture in the 1960s and '70s. In fact, watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" remains one of the highlights of the holiday season for me!

And speaking of holiday season, I've created another book of my photography -- the promotional badge is to the right. I'm giving it as a gift to family members. Click on the badge to preview the book!

Secaucus

I had a busy weekend. I was out all day photographing street art on Friday (I didn't even bother to go to work) and on Saturday morning I had a real urban adventure.

For months on my way to and from Dave's, I'd seen interesting graffiti from the train as it passed through Secaucus, N.J. On Saturday I decided to find this graffiti, which is painted on the concrete support pillars for a huge overpass of the New Jersey Turnpike.


I took the train out to Secaucus and began walking. I'll spare you all the details except to say it took a good 45 minutes of trial and error before I finally found myself beneath the Turnpike, which towered over my head. The ground beneath it is marshy and full of tufted brown grasses taller than I am.

Walking around down there was a bit treacherous -- more than once I took a step onto what looked like solid ground, only to be up to my ankles in mud. (And this being an industrial area of New Jersey, God only knows what's in all that mud.)


I did eventually make my way over to the graffiti, though, and it was terrific. A street artist named Faro painted several of his trademark mummies on the concrete pillars, including these two.


This guy seems to be saying "Rock on!"

Getting back to the train was much easier because I knew which route to take. All my photos will be up on Flickr in about a week!

Dreams

When I woke this morning, I realized almost immediately that I had been dreaming. I tried to clutch the dream, remember it, but its misty retreat left me with nothing.

I was reminded of an article I read in The New Yorker yesterday about dreams, and specifically nightmares. (I never have nightmares -- at least, not that I remember -- and I never feel fearful or anxious when I awaken.)

This article, unfortunately not available online, contained a few interesting factoids. One is that women remember their dreams more easily than men. This may explain why my female friends can often describe dreams in great detail while I can’t remember whether I dreamed at all.

(When I was in the Peace Corps, my roommate Juliet would awaken every morning and offer up a step-by-step recitation of her dreams. It blew my mind that she could remember them so well. Every plot twist, dialogue, scenes stretching back what seemed like hours -- you name it. I always suspected her of making it all up.)

The other, and more interesting, factoid is that dreams seem to be changing. When Sigmund Freud recorded dreams at the turn of the century, they were long narratives, at least according to his notes. Many took pages and pages to record properly.

Now, researchers have found that dreams tend to be shorter and jumpier. If in the old days they were full-length feature films, today they’re YouTube clips. The article quotes British psychoanalyst Susan Budd: “Modern patients don’t often produce the kinds of dreams that Freud had. Modern dreams mostly seem to be shorter and more fragmentary, and this is because the dream is undoubtedly a cultural as well as a neurobiological product.”

We often talk about the ADD-inducing effects of our culture, from the Internet to our crazy workaholic tendencies, but I never thought about their effects on our dreams. It’s fascinating, and a bit alarming, to think our minds have been rewired to produce short-form nocturnal dramas.

My dreams, on the rare occasions when I do remember them, seem more long-form. One scene will pass into another, but there’s usually some kind of transition -- seldom just a jump or abrupt change. I don’t think I’m immune to our cultural slide toward ADD, but maybe I’m less affected, since I don’t watch much television and I tend to read a lot.

Anyway, it was a fascinating article!

(Photo: W. 40th Street, earlier this week)