Interlude

For posterity, I have to record that as I was crossing Lexington Avenue at 58th Street today, I saw a discarded pair of leopard-print panties with red lace trim lying on the asphalt. How did they get there? Did they actually belong to someone or did they fall off a truck full of underwear? Does the owner miss them? Were they traveling panties, like Tom Robbins' traveling Can o' Beans? Did they have a mission? My instinctive reaction when I saw them was to say, "Woo!" As in, "Hey asphalt, them's some fancy panties you got there!"

You know, I feel like I live my life in snippets, all a few months or years long. One phase or another, one committment abandoned, a new one taken up, endlessly quitting smoking and drinking and karaoke and blogging, only to take them right back up again. (This has nothing to do with the panties, by the way.) Groups of friends picked up and discarded --- hey, maybe it does have to do with the panties, after all --- and boys, well, let's just say sometimes I wish I was 17 again so I could start all over.

[Jeff Healy's "Angel Eyes": one of the most heartbreakingly romantic songs I've ever heard. I love having streaming 80s music on my computer.]

Not to mention all the half-heartedly pursued dreams... I've probably expended more energy talking about the great things I want to do than actually trying to do them. Maybe all the mini-eras of my life come from the way I changed schools as a child. Three years at each school for four schools, then college, then seven different apartments and twelve different jobs in three cities in eight years. Permanence isn't really something I'm good at.