big empty house

this week i became the proud owner of a home theater. in one false swoop i said goodbye to the oversized stereo and undersized tv of the last millennium that had previously marked my ascension to early adulthood. i had really done well cramming them into whatever collegiate space i inhabited. microwave tops were media centers and all was well.

like clockwork, i graduated, got a job, got a larger apartment, and now own a big screen tv and microspeaker bose system and extended cable. in my own defense, he cable guy gave me more channels than i asked for, the tv is not that as big as most, and the speakers look a little older than the seller let on, so i can comfortably stay below the yuppy poverty line for a little bit longer. i still sit on borrowed furniture and my ceiling does leak water from the room above. i've got that landlord still balking on new paint. but it's that i have the time to worry about such things and that fixing and upgrading what i have has become one of my life goals, is where we should all be scared. this freedom from school forces us to find a new master. a slave to a new machine, no matter how rusty the machine is. why do we do this? gotta do something.

and because brokeback mountain is so much more in hi-def surround sound.

cold feet/warm socks

Yeah, that's better.

I've begun to understand the stereotypes against men. For years, I could stand on the outside and wonder what we as a people had done wrong to so many women. Why do we engender slumber party rants and chocolate chip cookie dough indulgence? Give us a break, I said.

Slowly growing into the roll has shown the inherent bastardness that manhood entails. It's something innate, though not as grandiose as Sarah Jessica Parker would have us believe. It's the subtly of our short comings that causes the problems. We're not out to cause trouble. We're the puppy dogs who ate the people food and threw up. That's right, men are dogs. Puppy dogs. So why not let us learn from our mistakes, get cat scratches in the face, and grow up to be those good middle aged dogs that want to sit by you on the couch and jump around only when encouraged.

I have reached phase two-medium sized dog in my Purina growth chart.

the city

new york city is exactly what i expected. only more. more people, buildings, food, people, dirt, clothes, streets, and people than i've ever seen. semi worldliness and architectural know-how did little to prevent me from emerging from the subway wide-eyed and camera happy. norman, frank, ludwig, frederick, and renzo were all there to lead the way, but it's the general cityness that really got me. that is architecture. it's not neat or necessarily high end. it's everything.

by day three i returned to stern faced urbanisto while quietly overloading on ambiance. silence is found on quiet snl sets, in back hallway hair bleachings, and amidst queens area housing projects. by the end, i'm in a half limp running-fall, down escalators across the city until the notepad sonnet of a transient pirate taught me the beauty of this great nation and its great cities. five strangers in five minutes said hello, exchanged stories of our destinations, realized none were from new york and were thus all transient, listened awkwardly, then intently to the pirates tale, then waved bye at terminal six while filtering back into the other transients.

now i'm home in san antonio to heal me blisters, sort my pictures, and make sense of it all.