Where does the good go?

I've been listening to the saddest song ever over and over again the last few days because it's so damn good that I can't get it out of my head, or stop. It's called "Where Does the Good Go" by Tegan and Sara. This has not been really good for my pshyche, as this week is probably one of the most stressful I've ever experienced (mostly because I'm totally. burnt. out.), and all I want to do is cry but I can't, for like the first time in my life.

Anyway, this reminds me that I think I have become the shell of a human. I mean, the song reminds me of that. I tell my roomie the only way I can get through the work day is to be the shell of a human. Coming up on my 8 month anniversary I'm worried I've become too good at that. Toss in a little heartbreak, no time to reflect, and a parental separation and you get a fucking deer in headlights. That's me. This song reminds me of that.

Music is a funny thing. As spring approaches I tend to become, um, more alive... reminded of things that make me happy (short sleeves, sandals, baseball, music...)... and all I want to do is wear short sleeves, sandals, listen to music and go to baseball games... ok, and read.

The other day I was on a crowded train and it was freezing outside and my iPod started to play this really really awesome Tom Waits song (Ol' 55) and I flipped out because to me Ol' 55 was not an appropriate song for a crowded train in winter. It's a summer song, a travelling song. I feel the same way about Where Does the Good Go. It's an escape song. It makes me want to drive. Fast. In a car. See the sky, trees, maybe a mountain. Restless, I am. Ready to be free and stretch and wiggle my toes and shed the walls I've gotten really really good at building. Maybe if I listen to this song enough it'll speed up that process. So if you see me sobbing on the A train it's not a big deal, really, just amazing music.



Lyrics for your sobbing pleasure:

Where do you go with your broken heart in tow?
What do you do with the left over you?
And how do you know, when to let go?
Where does the good go? Where does the good go?

Look me in the eye and tell me you don't find me attractive
Look me in the heart and tell me you won't go
Look me in the eye and promise no love's like our love
Look me in the heart and un break broken, it won't happen

It's love that leaves that breaks the seal of always thinking you would be
Real happy and healthy, strong and calm
Where does the good go? Where does the good go?

Where do you go when you're in love and the world knows?
How do you live so happily while I am sad and broken down?
What do you say it's up for grabs now that you're on your way down?
Where does the good go? Where does the good go?

America's Next

My boss just told me I look like a super model today. I wonder how this can be true, really, as I'm wearing my really old plaid pants and a black shirt. I added a bracelet. Maybe I'm having a good hair day? I doubt that's true since I didn't shower this morning, and haven't brushed my hair in over a month. Perhaps I applied just the right amount of bronzer?

I have been a bit down on my physical appearance as of late as
1. I am female
b. I am stressed.

I need my eyebrows taken care of, a pedicure, for my fingernails to stop being short (my bad), and a couple more months at the gym would be good. I would like a new wardrobe, and to be the person who wakes up early in the morning to do her hair, creatively apply make-up, and accessorize strategically. The problem is... I just don't care. I'd rather sleep.

As my life has slowed down a little (or, not so much slowed down as the evenings have freed up and I've been able to do the fun things with friends I choose to do.. that and I got a piece of paper that tells me what I will be doing for the next 3 years of my life. That helps), I've gotten the chance to get a little bit of perspective, do a little reflecting, and I am starting to come to that horrifying conclusion that maybe I spend to much time focusing on what I don't have, rather than the amazing number of wonderful things I DO have.

I guess if I got a pedicure, and laid on a regular basis, I would be like the ad for Entourage. "Maybe you can have it all."

I kinda hate the idea of this. But at least she points out that she hates pink sports attire too. (Though rhinestones are right up there too, methinks.) And I like this bit: "Baseball is my escape. The sights, the sounds, the way the park smells. There is truly no place I would rather be than at a game... Baseball represents family. It represents my childhood...The beautiful thing about baseball is that anything can happen. It's like life in that way. As soon as you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you realize -- you know nothing. The only thing that's guaranteed is that it will be an exciting ride."

I wonder if people call her Aly.

A lovely article about how much the Nats suck (at RFK)

Feels Like The First Time

Once upon a time (in 1992) a little girl (named me) used to have reocurring dreams (or half-dreams, had while listening to WTOP radio broadcasts on my Walkman, in bed, under my blankets, pretending to be asleep) about walking into a baseball stadium for the first time. Vivid images they were. 1992. Camden Yards. Just built. Up high. Entered. Looked down at left field, out to home plate. It was very very green. 10 years old. Never been to a game.

I wanted, more than anything, to go to a game, to see this view, to buy a ticket for myself and my dad for his birthday. An entrepreneur, I made it happen. Never in my life will I forget what it looked like that first time, what I felt that first time, where we sat that first time. Vivid. Brilliant.

13 years later nothing had changed. Camden Yards. Game for his birthday. 13 years later I wrote this: "I smiled and took a sip of my beer. I told my dad about the time I saw the Nats play at Dodger stadium the week before Ieft Los Angeles. I told him how everyone says Dodger stadium is the most beautiful place ever. I told him how I remember sitting on the third baseline, nonplussed.
"Nothing compares, dad," I said, "This is the most beautiful place on earth.""

ESPN has been running that commerical fairly regularly this week. You know the one. Or, the ones. The ones about the love, the passion, about how it's more than a game. They tend to show those shots of the outfield. The one where you look out over left field and down to home plate. It makes you teary if you have a heart, like the way you get when you listen to the Field of Dreams soundtrack.

I write that because that is today. Today is that day where, for the first time this year, I will walk out, up high, and see across that green and - just like that first time, that one time every year, every time, every spring, summer and fall - for a moment I wont be able to breathe. And then for the remaining moments all I will do is breathe. The fans, the smell, the songs. Euphoria, I think is what they call it, likened to those fleeting post-coital moments, but rather than last moments it lasts hours. More than a game.

The Next Big Thing

Sunday night my friend Goldfish and I were sitting on my couch watching poker on TV when I said, "Dude, the next big thing: Rock Paper Scissors. You heard it here first."
He laughed at me and make a crack about thumb wrestling.
"No, I'm for serious!" I protested, and immediately insisted that he follow me to my computer where I introduced him to the wonderful world of competitive, to-be-ESPN-broadcast Rock Paper Scissors.

You see, I was introduced to the World RPS Society years ago by my friend Micah, who taught me all (OK, much. It was a long time ago.) there is to know about poker years and years before that. I remember driving with him, in his Mustang convertible, top down, across the country, sun beating down, as I listened to him spout out various rules and strategies of poker over various tracks and albums that ranged from Tom Waits to Toots and the Maytals to Manu Chao depending on which section of the country we blazed through. I was given 10 days notice. I will never forget.

I sat in a hot, non-air conditioned room in Baltimore in August when my phone rang.
"Alli, I need a huge favor," he said, before the hello.
"Anything." Micah is an Anything friend. Anything you need, whenever you need it. Always.
"I need you to drive cross country with me." Pause. "Next week." 24 hours later we were sitting at a restaurant with the map spread over our table planning the route, and 12 days later we were in the middle of nowhere talking about our childhood, our futures and the Flop.

Needless to say when you have this experience with someone (twice... one year later I pulled the same stunt. "Micah, I need a favor." "Anything." "Drive cross country with me." "Done.") you listen to what they say. Always fold if your hand is under 17. Lie as much as possible. Pretend you don't know anything. Rock Paper Scissors is the next big thing.

Two and a half months ago I sat cross-legged on Micah's bed in Los Angeles with a TV pilot script he had written in front of me. It was 1 o'clock in the morning, the phone was on speaker, and we were talking with his co-writer that lives in New York. I had been called in for some edits, as a third person, as the guy you call when you can't read another word you've written because your eyes will fall out of your head. Pitching a TV show about RPS was the goal. An outlandish notion, perhaps, but only with Anything people do outlandish ideas become a feasible reality.

The Death of Dating, or The Boy with the Chopping Block in the Baseball Field

Last Monday my friend Diana told me she met a great guy at a bar who called her 2 days later - textbook timing - to tell her that he had a great time, was pleased to have met her, and could they get together Friday night. Diana said sure, suggested dinner and a movie. He suggested dinner. At his house. Which he would cook.

"Oh, NO!" I exclaimed.
"I know!" she replied.

Cooking for someone is an involved activity and to do so on a first date is entirely too hot, too sexy and entirely too intimate. Cooking takes thought, effort, energy, sensitivity to dietary restrictions, could possibly be considered traditional, romantic, almost other-worldly and honestly, what is more fun than standing in a warm kitchen with amazing smells while you drink wine and watch a boy cut scallions? This is intense. And certainly not a first date activity. Starbucks are for first dates. Kitchens are not.

For several minutes Diana and I listed the various boys in our past who have cooked for us - all of which can be directly tied to intense feelings and heartbreak. While we went back and forth deciding whether or not she should accept his offer I wondered why we put up so many barriers. At what point in our lives did we lose the proverbial innocence and start putting up emotional blocks that keep us from entering a boy's... kitchen?

I remembered a moment in my own kitchen with a boy who was in the kitchen for the first time, drinking a glass of water with me one hazy morning.
"You eat seafood, right?" he said.
"Uh huh."
"Do you like pizza?"
"Yeah, but really only fancy pizza," I said.
"You should come over. I make this really great scallop pizza that you'd love."
I looked at him. "....yeah...." I replied slowly, recalling that the night before when we stood in the rain, lip locked with his hands up my shirt him saying, "I don't want a relationship, if that's what you want then we need to wait a few months..."
The relationship was tossed out the window pretty quickly. But talk of pizza the morning after? This does not a deal make.

It didn't stop there in this quick fling. Again, at my house he said to me,
"Don't tell me those are YOUR Mr. Show DVDs" he said, and later, "The David Sedaris box set?" I saw our fling jump off the cliff. Fondness for one's DVD collection, book collection does not a fling make. Flings don't like films. Flings don't read, and flings certainly don't cook.

I tried to hang onto this one though, and keep my little mouth shut. But I'm not very good at that. He drank Yuengling in my bed! He told me he was a better baker than he was a kisser! He looked me in the eyes and told me about going home and going to a baseball game and sitting in his hometown team's stadium!

And then, it died. Maybe my girlfriends and I are a little too neurotic. Maybe we need to be a little less devoid passion, less enthused with our interests, and gain back some naivety. Or maybe we know our boundaries.

Diana's boy cooked dinner for her. It took hours. The margaritas were good, but not good enough to keep her from crossing the lines she so recently drew for herself.

I, I decided to be the first one to say it outloud. "I think we should maybe just be friends. I mean, if it's one or the other because clearly we just have too much in common to make this be a fling-thing."
"I hate talks like this," he said.
"Me too," I said.
And that was that.

***

Today Diana's boy texted her and called he saying what a great time he had. Di, I'm sure, if she could, would have spent the last three days in the shower washing off the dirty residue of this date gone bad.

I, bummed that I yet again found myself on a different page of someone who had a high "This could be a lot of fun" potential, but died with little to no hope of rekindling, carried on about my weekend. I went out to eat with friends, found myself at a restaurant in the village splitting a bottle of wine and eating desert with two of my great friends when my phone buzzed. I looked down. I had a text message from him. "Walk-off grand slam? That's rough" it said.

A text message about the Orioles. A random text about what I looked like with my clothes off would have been easier to handle, but baseball? Seriously? I was touched, and had to brush away my stupid girl fantasies of going out to a game, drinking lots of beer, coming home and having hours of amazing sex.

Clearly I need to invest myself in a different sport. And apparently, stop eating. Anorexia and curling? Anyone?

The book-up

At this time, every year, I read the first chapter in this amazing book called Baseball and Philosophy. This chapter is about the idea of home and all of its metaphorical and philosophical implications in the game of baseball. I've written about it several times in my various blogs, and I bet some of you regular readers are nodding your heads and saying "yes yes, I remember," or maybe "god dammit, is Alli going to go off on one of her baseball metaphor rants again??? Can't she find ANYTHING ELSE to write about?"

Well, no. Some things don't change, and my deeply rooted obsession with connecting baseball with Home is something that wont change ever. So get over yourselves.

So, Sunday night as the Mets game played through my apartment I went into my room and looked at my bookshelf in hopes of pulling down the book and reading that chapter. For months and months I've wanted to write a piece on how I feel about the Mets, how I feel about "home," and I thought Sunday, opening day would be a perfect time to do so. I use the book for reference. The problem is, the book wasn't there.

This always sets me into a panic. I'm head over heels in love with my book collection. And the inability to find this particular book at this particular time was a very weighted thing. I scanned the shelves again, and again. I looked in my living room, in our solarium (the office...), and nothing. And then, all of a sudden, I remembered that months ago I had lent it to a boy - a boy who was one of my oldest friends, and lovers, who I haven't spoken to in months because he, well, something that had a bit to do with him caused something inside me to, um, die. Basically.

All of a sudden I paniced. All of a sudden I thought, he take take himself out of my life as a lover, I can handle that. He can take himself out of my life as a friend, I'm learning how to handle that. BUT he CANNOT take my BOOK. This is not acceptable! I was suddenly innundated with recollections of how DC - where he lives, and I am from - is no longer home. A shell of a city, a place that holds memories, like a ghost town, empty, heart-broken like a stadium in the month of November.

So a day later when I calmed down I sat down at my computer and wrote an email simply asking him to send my book back (God dammit... but leaving that part out). Turns out, he doesn't have it. All of that irrational anger over nothing. I love baseball. Seven whole months of intense passion, intense anger and unwavering patience and determination that boils down to (or over into) some of the greatest victories, and greatest losses in American history. Love. It.

I thought real hard when I read the email that said "listen, I looked everywhere, it's not here." I racked my brain. Who else, who else on earth would I lend THAT book to. And then I remembered.

I gave it to my friend John. He's a new friend. I remember the first thing I said to him ever in life was "Nice shirt" when I saw him sitting at a computer in a bright red T-shirt that said "Damon Sucks." John has a tendency to text me after every time we hang out saying that we shouldn't wait so long until the next time. In fact, he's such a good friend that I am actually friends with him even though he's a Cowboys fan. THATs how great he is. I wrote him an email asking if he had the book. He said "I do have it. We'll have to hang out and trade that book for my mets
ticket." A relief. And John, he lives in Queens. Home.

This turns me on.

Contemplate Your Navel

The show I have been working on like a crazy person since January closed over the weekend, and today was my first day back at work without getting innundated with emails regarding said show. Therefore, I spent a large portion of my day thinking about my bellybutton.

You see, it kinda hurts. I pulled up my shirt to check it out. A tad red, nothing too alarming. Sore. I poked at it. That hurt. I poked some more. It still hurt, and it was still red.

I got it pierced during spring break my Freshman year in college which was about... 7 years ago. I have never taken it out. I have never taken it out because I am terrified of penetration. Or at least penetration in the form of small, metallic object. But it's cute and never gave me trouble until that one day when I was on Venice Beach in California enjoying all things Venice Beach has to offer, looked down and realized one of the balls that keeps it together had fallen out. I wandered into one of the piercing/bong-selling stores, lifted my shirt and said, "I need something that fits, there."

Today, at work, it was me and my bellybutton. Then it was me, my bellybutton and myspace, and finally me, my bellybutton and an article entitled "Too Busy to Notice You're Too Busy" in the New York Times about how people these days seem to make themselves so busy they start to go insane. They particularly busy themselves with things that most often are insignificant annoyances.

I got really sad. What if I have to take out my bellybutton ring? See, I really love it. Other people love it too. My grandfather, he hates it. I'm planning to be at the beach for a week this summer and the bellybutton ring looks really cute and sexy with a bikini. For the last 7 years I've told myself it was staying in until I got pregnant, which is when I will probably start eating chicken again too, but when am I ever going to get pregnant and be in a position wherein I will have to give up:
1. my bellybutton ring
2. my dietary and ethical choices
3. my life
?!

Then I thought, maybe the New York Times is onto something. And I remembered: This is why I hate theatre. Because I love it so much, and work so hard, and when it stops I go insane.

This is why I try to maintain a balance in my life, I remembered. So I thought of my tickets to 8 Mets games. I remembered that it's 6 days until the Sopranos starts again. I made dinner plans with a friend. I went to the gym and watched Jeopardy. I came home, put some sort of ointment on my bellybutton, watched television and came to the conclusion that when you're left with a little time to breathe, maybe contemplating your navel isn't exactly the most relaxing thing to do.