Telephone

Yesterday my boss had a telephone conversation with his sick mother. She's been having heart problems. Apparently she was complaining about one of her nurses because I heard him say:
You think he's a sourpuss? Well maybe you shouldn't tell him that. He cares about you, and he wants you to get better even if it doesn't seem that way. He told you his age? And you told him he seemed older than you even though he's much younger? Oh good. Don't tell him that, it might hurt his feelings. Goodnight sweetheart. Let's talk tomorrow.
It made me sad to think of leaving New York and missing this.

Atonement

Yesterday was Yom kippur and instead of atoning for all things I should atone for (which are plenty) I thought about what play I wanted to write. I sat around on my bed, in the living room, watched Mad Men, spoke to my mother and stared at my toenails. I made pasta for dinner, decided not to meet up with anyone and looked at words I had written. It was not until this morning, after a sleepless night filled with anxiety, that I figured out what it was really all about. It might have been some sort of atonement for the things I shouldn't have written this past year. Or maybe it was just a much needed day of thought and nothing else. Here are some of the things I should've atoned for but didn't have time for:
Being addicted to Mad Men (there are other things to do)
Gossip
Not calling my little sister enough and making fun of her boyfriend
Not reading books I promised to read
Canceling appointments last minute
Being late
Judging people by what they wear (as if it actually says something about them?)
Saying I hated someone, when it really wasn't necessary
This year will be different.

The days I didn't feel like myself

and the hours went by without having accomplished anything at all.

Things I wondered about while watching the US open

The glitter dresses Venus Williams wears. With little glitter shorts underneath.
People checking their phone while they're visible on the big screens, usually during a crucial tie break. Who are they texting? And what? The scores?
Federer's pointy collar. Very seventies.

The day I thought I didn't have good ideas

We went to the beach, and had sardines and roast for dinner.
We gossiped about someone I didn't know who came from Minnesota.

The last first day of school

I wore a green skirt with blue dots and white sneakers.
It was hot and bright out. Like a dessert.
A teacher referred to hot tub time machine, the movie, as having a good second act.
As I was biking home I thought about doing groceries, but I didn't.
Instead I went to Epistrophy and had a panini and an aranciata and chatted with people working.
At night we watched a movie and ordered tacos.

Reality Television

While watching an episode of project runway's latest season, I started wondering why the formula for these sort of shows is so successful. When I was in Amsterdam I spoke to one of my good friends about success and failure and its role in history and how recently success is measured in economical terms.
In these shows success and failure is all we are trained to pay attention to. Winning and losing is the most important part of the episode. Who wins the challenge and who goes home. We start rooting for certain people and start disliking other ones, which is after all what we, humans, have loved to do since the beginning of time. The ironic thing of these shows, American Idol, Project Runway, Top Chef, ect, is that the person who wins the entire competition usually disappears from television, our memory, the general public's eye, as quickly as they rose to fame. So while this show is built on success and failure, the result of this success, the general success itself is less important that what got them there in the first place. The process. What we watch is the rise to success, the road to fame, rather than where they end up, or where they want to end up. Our fascination is with the competition, the tension between the contestants and the challenge itself. Do we ever see the winners of Idols as actual 'Idols'? Or the winners of Project Runway as legit fashion designers comparable to Marc Jacobs and Betsey Johnson? The answer, I think, is no. Perhaps the irony of these shows is that it is exactly the public nature of the process that makes us value the end result less. The mystery of how Madonna and Marc Jacobs rose to fame is part of what makes them who they are. Although it is the road to fame we view as entertaining, like watching gladiators in the arena, it might also be the dirty part we would rather not know once our idols have become precisely that. Untouchable.