Sometimes it pops up and bites you in the ass. A flashing sign, meal for one clutched in your fist. the need washes over you like a tidal wave. Nothing can touch the desire. nothing quenches the thirst.  But it's a need to obliterate the present, forget the past. It's a craving for release, not a hunger for a flavour. and remembering that helps it to fade into the background.

SleepNoMore.

All is darkness around me. I am becoming nothingness dissolving into the ether. I wind my way through blackened false night, wary of my feet no longer part of me, no more than flesh and bone and no less. I hear the beating in the distance, it rumbles in me. The red tinged womb. Cushioned ceiling, velvet wall tablecurtain chair. It smells of booze and smoke and excitement. Calming and distressing. the red club the black 6 should be. myself drifting. a card clutched in a chilled hand. I watch. I wait. poised at the edge of touching. dallying. waiting. until i am called to lose who i am. I turn my hat around, one veil discarded for another, emboldened.

I will not follow, I will not lead, I will only allow myself existance. holding still in time feetplanted in now. I taste with my hands, touch with my eyes, smell with my memory. I can feel the collision, the not right. new filled with old. old reading new, playing together on the floor behind the mirror death. fading in the light. i dance to the slow steadiness. i gobble up the world. The children are gone, beds empty, unmade, they swirl through the air. teddy forgotten by the phone, i comfort him to hold onto the string of reality fraying.

Inside i am outside, trapped in the insideout life. walls crumbling are being built. she hides her face from the light but stone does not see. she faces from death. tatters of memories, sage bundled for the burning, symbolic and meaningless, i tear myself from rubble. rip the shreds, readthe sodden words, open the cupboard to find it bare. and lacking, i want to crawl inside. not this time.

I find the tailor, the apothecary, the stuffed birds and beasts howling and cawing in silence. the boxes stink of dirt wet. i have become nothing. the couple, drunk on their desire, blinded by lust, they do not see me. they crumble crumple and i watch them dissolvedespair. but i am lost and do not understand. My mind is gone, repeating in spiral, tight circles, i float, I find myselfwanting. A lock of hair gone, checked in, tuckedinto bed. my doctor more mad than I. A woman in white, a goat a wood. Peaceful. still. order in the branches. my nurse who i drifted here to see wanders off. I do not follow. she does not mind. I watch the doctor become the patient. how to write when there is no more chalk. dust. float. redwomb destroyed. i look with my fingers and they comeaway red. stuckysweet. nomore soft, nomoresafe.

Below I must find a way out, before my dust drifts too far apart. The air is cooler below, the light full and bright. a bed fit for a king. a drink a dance. I am driven by a force not quite internal a pulsating reality that I can't graps and can't avoid. i have no skin, nobones. I am the essence of nothing. I feel the betrayal, i smell the angerfearhate. lust. loathing. it excites me. Shudder.

out of time, grounding gone, realitybalks. I am history. Bellhop too drunk to notice me, his mistress to real. I test the rotary dials to know they are. to feel like something is. I feel the ether shudder, I am not alone. white clouds of smoke we become. together. dust drawing from all the corners. pulled. together sad, together frightened, becomingoneself.

We follow the men. We hear the music. all is well until something is minorchord. flying featherstuck. deadweight falling. we sit, we wait for the light to guide the sound. wait for those that follow the woman. building aching for understanding wholeness, pursestrings tight. knifethickdust takesshape. it is noone and everyone. all of us together are still nobody. we wait for the ones we follow. whobringshape and give wholeness. they eat with their hands accuse with their mouths until the last can nolonger abide. until the last flingshimself into the ether, whitesmokebelow. until hebecomes nothing to free us all and separate one from the other.

We find ourselves again after.we become. And I turn my hat around but can not truly hide as before. I have seen the becoming and it is futurenow.

Waking dreams

Sometimes I sit on the Subway, watching the other straphangers, and I make up stories. Nine times out of ten, they're mundane. That guy looks sad because he's fighting with his boyfriend or that girl seems stressed because she's the CEO of some major company but can't make it to little league. But then, the crazies come out. The world becomes my comic book, and my fellow riders are the characters in some amazingly complicated plot to rule the world. it's kind of awesome actually. I do worry about myself when I move from comic book fantasy to the completely surreal.

I have an antique radio in my front room. It's one of those massive pieces of furniture, circa 1940. I got it for free from the antique shop a block away, and it works. Well, it gets a station, and might get full am band if I fix the tuner. But I'm not too fussed. It's awesome and fun and makes no practical sense in 2011. This only makes me love it more. Earlier tonight I caught myself imagining my radio, anthropomorphizing it even, in a three piece suit, complete with ganster (not gansta- that's different) fedora-type hat and Cigar. It was threatening my microwave that came with the flat, claiming the microwave was an upstart and didn't know the value of hard work. "A baked potato that takes 4 minutes isn't a REAL baked potato!" The microwave, dressed in jeans, a hoodie and emo kid sunglasses, just shrugged in the hipster teen way and pretended to ignore the radio but I could tell it was going to scar the microwave emotionally to the point where it might be trapped in middle management for life due to low self esteem. It would run off to Nowheresville and have an unsatisfying marriage in suburbia. I'd spend my days with a senile old radio muttering away in the corner about the Benny Goodman Orchestra and how no one appreciates Bakelite and quality wooden casing anymore.

I can't tell if I'm asleep or my downstairs neighbour just smokes too much weed and it filters up through the floorboards.

Fight or Flight

I think a lot about the way I react to situations. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. There are so many things I would love to do over. Most of them are to know what the other outcome would have been. I make it a point to avoid regret. Regret leaves permanent scars. Most of my regret stems not from what I have done but what I avoided doing. All the times I ran away and avoided facing my fears, the things that would hurt, the tough stuff that's no fun but my responsibility. If I'm not there, the point will come across eventually. It ends up hurting worse.

I'm not a fighter. If it must be binary, then I will gladly take on the label "lover". I love people, though I'm often awkward around them. Mostly I'm awkward because I love people. I like shiny, new things. I get really excited at making new friends, I get what I like to call 'friend crushes', and I come on rather strong because I get so excited that there's this new person in my little world. It's beautiful and sharp and amazing and bright and super clear. This does fade to something more sane, thankfully, and I bounce less. The shine tarnishes a bit, the person becomes real and three dimensional. And I assume they will see through the bounce and giddy and find me lacking. So I run away before that rejection comes.

I'm like a kid, hiding from the scary Dalek behind the couch. Afraid it's going to come and exterminate me and insanely curious as to whether it's still there and chasing me. So I'll peek out from the cushions, hoping all at once that it's still there and is gone. But I know, deep down, that if it's gone, I'm going to feel so much worse than if it's there.

Writing has been like that a little these days. I want to write. I love that ideas floating in my head, I even fall in love with them a little. But as soon as I start committing them to paper or "paper" I fear they won't be good enough. and i freeze up and run away and hide until they drift off. and then I feel like all of me is not good enough.

I recently met a published author, who's work fascinates me, despite being nothing like that way I write and subject matter that's not entirely in my comfort zone. I'm not unwilling to admit a touch of a friend crush. It makes me want to write. I want to feel good enough. I'm beginning to want to run away. It's almost becoming a litmus test that I'm not sure I like: if I run and you at least make a passing effort to follow, then I will turn around and run back. Repeat. I've never been patient and I'm not very good at sitting still. or waiting.

I don't know where this is really going. Life is exausting, I need to find the stillness and am failing miserably. Also I wanted the Celebrity post off the top of the page. I'm going to try to write again. I shouldn't be afraid of things that aren't actually frightening.

Celebrity

Everyone who has one loves to tell their celebrity story. For a while mine was seeing Emma Watson while she toured the ADC theatre at Cambridge University, and nearly offered her tea. She looked a lot like another friend of mine from the back... But I have a new story now.

I've been looking for a new pair of boots for a little while. I need new Kitchen boots too, but that's more a matter of spending the money and taking the 5 minutes to order them online. I've worn the same ones since 2003, basically. I just replace them when they get too beat up. Shoes and boots for out of the kitchen, well, that's another matter. I'm fussy about everything, footwear especially. I've abused the heck out of my feet in my time. It's not about the fashion, it's form and function. They have to look exactly right and fit exactly right. The should be build to last. After that, I'm flexible. Exactly right isn't limited to one look, but I have to like it. So I'm looking at people's boots more than I normally would.

A week ago, Jennifer Aniston came in for dinner. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last, I imagine. She's a friend of the owner. I snuck upstairs to use the bathroom and take a peek, so I have a good story to tell my folks. They like hearing stories about that sort of thing, makes then more comfortable with my living in New York City. There she was, sitting at a table near the back. Mission accomplished.

Someone came into the bathroom behind me, and so I kept my eyes down as I was washing my hands. Unusually, the other occupant bade me good evening when she exited the stall, and I immediately noticed her boots. They were a dark leather, mid calf, with dark skinny jeans tucked into them, a little bit of heel but tolerably low. I proceeded to compliment her on them, asking where she had gotten them,and as words began to tumble out I looked up into her face and realised I was speaking to Jennifer Aniston. About boots and the importance of comfortable footwear. And how we're both fussy but in different ways.

People always imagine what they would do if they ever met a celebrity. Well, I know I have. Clearly, I just see another person in a bathroom, and treat them as such.

I wonder about celebrity a bit. My current Chef is a popular blogger, with followers in multiple countries. A former chef of mine is one of twelve 2 Michelin starred chefs in the UK. And I was offered a job with Tom Aiken who may not be well known on US shores, but certainly is in the UK. Brushes with fame, always on the fringes. I rather like it there. I rather think that the celebrities are occasionally jealous of me in the same way that I'm Jealous of them, for the opposite reasons. I think so often how I'd love the fame and attention, not to mention the money. I like to imagine celebrities are jealous of me. I can fade into the crowd, be anonymous. I have to work to stand out. They have to work to hide. Frankly I think I have it easier.

Alcohol

How do you know when you have a Problem? When you drink alone? When you have a drink every night? When you drink to intoxication more than once a week? More than twice? Three times? When you wake up on your day off and think "goody, beer for breakfast?" When you think that and it's not your day off? When you can't stop after the second beer? When you know that and have the second one anyway? When you lose count after 5? 10? 15? And wake up at the end of the Line? When all you want when you wake up hungover is more to drink? When your calories are more from Booze than food? When it jeopardises your Job?

I don't know. I wish I had The Answers. I wish I had the solution.

How do you make it better? When your hands shake so bad that you can't hold a glass. When you wake up drenched in sweat? When the Dreams come back? When you want a drink so badly that you can taste it? And you know you could have one, but it always leads to two, which leads to so many you lose count.

How do you change your image? How do you replace the Flavour? And don't say Non-alcoholic beer, because it's not the same. How do you replace the activity?

I don't know yet. But it's time to figure it out. and hopefully it will stick this time.

Change in the air

There's a chill in the air these days. Winter is coming. I could feel it in my bones for the first time today. It was the first day off I'd had since starting my new job. I didn't leave the house, but cleaned and watched 'Hair' among other things. A TV day. I'm watching 'Moonstruck' now. I've been meaning to watch it since I took this job- the place is directly across the Lincoln Center. It's not the reason I took it, but I will say that the association didn't hurt. I ride the Q every day (except when I happen to catch the B) and walk through Columbus Circle and the Artist's and Merchant's Gates to Central Park. I get to walk past one of my favourite buildings, though it has a shiny new façade that replaces the strange 1960's original. 2 Columbus Circle, inspired by Italian palazzos; "the lollipop building." I'm sad that it's been modernised, but the fact that it still stands means that I can remember how it looked before. I'm nervous for the snow that will inevitably come. I hope that I will be warm enough. I hope I will adjust to the bustle of the City. My work life is falling into place. It's making sense, I'm getting the hang of things, though I'm still a bit slow in the Prep. The Health Department came yesterday. Completely terrified me. I've never been comfortable when I don't know the laws well enough. It's something to learn, I'm not going to let it frighten me again. Challenges. Memories. I have rambled enough.