lot been goin on. i kept vowing i would write a post about my birthday, but for some reason it didn't want to come. one last stab, quick:

it was lovely. i'd written in the e-mail: if it can somehow easily and harmoniously coalesce into a full but relaxed day of enjoyable activities and friendfulness, well that would make me a happy twenty-fiver. pretty much it did and it did. birthdays, i find, are if nothing else guaranteed to make you pay a little attention to how you're spending them, which way they resonate; a way to check in with your life.

this one started with saturday morning yoga class - or, rather, with the sunny bike ride to it - then brunch at cafe lift with sara, dave, russ, and some fellow students (dave and i shared 'jen's crespelle' and spinach salad.) angela joined s d and i for a hayride around the block at rtm harvest festival (surprisingly sublime) and to give me the only present i received on my birthday (tied with the blue ribbon i wore in my hair.) here we are:


we were back down to three for a round of mini-golf at franklin square, and then i had some time to myself for playing digital pianos at 8th street music, picking bottles of sangiovese and lillet at w+s, and - on something resembling a whim - taking an eye exam and ordering contact lenses for the first time in seven or eight years. that's about when everybody called - i talked with my mom while i walked to long in the tooth to pick up the new sharon and bettye albums. then i came home - being out of plans - and chatted with mali while we peeled apples for a pie [#3] and i froze some raw milk ginger was it? these (and the wines) we brought to dinner at joanna's with ian (in town for the weekend - we got to see each other three nights running) and sarah, a lengthy leisurely meal and discussion.

this was significant: i had characteristically hoped that the day could find its way to a dancing conclusion, but despite some rounds of txt inquiries this was seeming doubtful around mid-evening. then i learned that tara and roberta, david, john, and erin, had, mostly independently (coincidentally), wound up at an opening in south philly, which had, unexpectedly, developed into a dance party. they all wanted me to come - truly, i could not have made it there in under a half hour (if that), by which point they figured the dancing would be nearly over. but if that was frustrating just then (and also that nobody was up to the ordeal of meeting to dance elsewhere - "i hate philly dance culture," i said, and still say), still it was meaningful to know that, somewhere way across town, there were was a spontaneous outburst of dancing among a randomly assembled group of my friends, and that they were thinking about me, and dancing for me, on my birthday.

as the day ended, i found myself, pretty randomly, at a party (an early halloween/birthday party) full of people whom i mostly didn't know - acquaintances at best - and i stayed for several hours, most of the time in low-key one-on-one conversations. that was almost the nicest part of the day - or rather, it seemed like such an nice, refreshingly relaxing note to end on. it was such a full day, filled with experiences and activities and interactions - with friends, strangers, and various shades between - none of which was especially monumental or noteworthy on its on, but collectively emphasizing an sense of flexibility, a network of possibilities, here in this city, my city. started off my 25th year feeling, almost suddenly, more personable and open and able to be gregarious than i've been in a while. and it was a sunny funny sunny day too.


since then there was also the party - autumn comes to delicious berry - which deserves some words of its own. well first there was practically a full week of planning/prepping, including a couple evenings in the penn print shop (to create the "Complimentary Notes" that nobody seemed to think were as perversely amusing as mali and me) and a field trip with to linvilla orchards with three of my fave philly fillies - tarasarareb'n'roo, together again for the first time? - to load up on pumpkins, gourds, and cider donuts. the most memorable thing about the actual party (which consumed the bulk of mali's and my attention before - well, along with felix the plucky orphan kitty and his friend gordon the gourd - and a good deal of it during) was the food. in my case, mostly hand-crafted junk food: ginger[fivespice]snaps! four different ice creams [licorice, coconut ginger, cranberry sherbet, apple sorbet]! pie [#4]! homemade terra chips [oven-baked slices of sweet potato, beet, yuca, redcoco, cuscus]! homemade candy corn! oh yeah, i made some garlic chard too. mali and delia handled most of the "real food" (including real pumpkin pie), and most of the kitty business as well. oh right - then there was the memorable moment when this weirdball showed up:


who are these bozos? what's with the haircuts? and the eyes? um. and i say, what the devil color is that behind them!? (why that's delicious berry - rather washed out though.)


and since then...i've barely left west philly. to be precise, since the subsequent sunday - when i went to libswalk for a job interview (don't ask), liblands for cake and wine with the t-ster, c-town for dim sum and boba (with above-pictured mystery traveller), and locust bar for taraoke (fun with sublime, kinks, and "road to nowhere," but i pledge next time i'm gonna try "help the aged") - i've gone across the river exactly twice. (as of tomorrow that's ten days - but i'll probably break it.)

once i almost forgot about - i took the bus (it was pouring, but still i should have taken the subway) and met liza in olde city to see into the wild, but we both missed it so we killed the intervening hours before the late showing at old standby mediocrities mexican post and cosi. the second time was this saturday, when i had my first morning of cooking brunch at the cafe (it was great!) and then rode all over town poring thrift and vintage stores hoping to augment my costume (to nearly no avail - did get a sweet star-buckled belt - though i did inevitably, almost inadvertently, augment my record collection.)

otherwise i've stayed in westy. some days i've barely left the house, it's true. (though i'm less contrite about that than you might think - a good chunk of that time i was working, or something like, and besides, our house is nice.) but i've been active too. apart from arthouse movies and, well, my job-thing, west philly seems to be staggeringly capable of fulfilling all my needs. (there's even mediocre mexican and costumarily unsatisfactory clothes stores here too - on friday i did what felt like the african-american version of that center city trawl, taking in forman mills, the endlessly fascinating 52nd street mall, and the second mile, where i at least got some swifty-neat cordy overalls.) (no critical mass[querade] over here though, which is mostly why i missed it.)


banking, post-office, yoga, dance, music, theater, brunch, art, houses, friends, serendipity, parties, people:

• pfcu [50th & bmore] - deposited checks for dj gigging and yoga-teacher-glasses-breaking-compensation. remembering to remove my atm card after the transaction.

• usps [50th & sansom] - rec'd: presents from dede (wallet) and my folks (huh? ok.) but more excitingly my dad's new manuscript, which i am presently 100pp. into and loving (it's like reading my own novel - 'cause my dad is like me - but better.)

• wake-up [49th & bmore] - liking the smoother thursday class more than wednesdays with glasses-crusher, though she's okay too. by no means have i abandoned the loft though - i've just been playing hooky these past two weeks (after two years plus i'm surely entitled?) so as to check out...

• take the lead [47th & pine] - my first swing at it since high school, practically. jitterbug's out in the aughts, now lindy's the thing and 'blues' is queen. so i'm new to the latter, but it's not hard to take to (slower, closer, looser: sexual.) last week reb came and we faked it; this week there were costumes, live tunes, getting the hang back. something endlessly fascinating about this kind of social dancing situation. also: (as my pop's narrator would say) coeds.

• mill creek tavern [42nd & chester] - soft people (incl. michael, mr. marvelous himself), opening for stinking lizaveta (buddies of dave's; local legend metal-jammers; must have read a different translation of bros. k than me), in extempore collaboration with (backing up?) damo suzuki (ex-can; int'l legend krautshouter; crazy old japanese dude ranting guttural gibberish.) um. i was there for st. liz - or for dave, really, so the rest was an odd surprise - less so the handful of familiars in the crowd, but like that. not so much my scene, but...hmm.

• curio theatre [28th & bmore] - death and the maiden. set (not "set") in s. africa. great production - riveting. arena staging. ending less interesting than i'd've hoped. unresolved questions, fine, but under-resolved dramatic arc unfortunate. still, right on. look forward to orton's butler.

• white dog cafe [34th & sansom] - rafa's 30th birthday! with m+r, gabe, mark, joanna. excellent company and decor (the room with 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-pointed stars on the ceiling), slightly underwhelming meal (even though the waitress emphatically assured me my unplanned order was "the best brunch option") but - sensational desserts: pumpkin ice cream sandwich (ginger cookies) and local goat-cheesecake (lime-"spiked" crust.)

• POST - more on that in a sec - but also, incidentally dg's mural [47th & bmore] - first side's done - i'm in it!


let's see here - i'll do it a bit roundabout. yes, after the brunch on sunday, j and i (with m+r, briefly) took a look at some studios (and artist homes) around westy. it was blustery and brisk, even with secret sunday-pants and super-soft sweater, but good in the sun. fall, finally? we talked about the aspirations and frustrations of meeting new people - still a project, to branch out solidly from collegiate networks, looking for something sustaining, something more, perhaps, pertinent to the present, (post?)-post-adolescent, urban, situation. she puts it straight up: wanting to meet people she might date. which is not how i tend to think about it. on the whole. but, maybe, should be? thing's tricky. we discussed. shades of those ancient freshman year analytic principles of r'ships.

we saw zarouhie's abstracted nola birdseyes at the cathedral. we saw zoe's cellular microscopy fantasias at metro. we went to jj's house - also home to kara rennert and her marvelous ceramic heads and figures - and that's where we ran into kate, who said "i figured i'd see you here." funny thing is i'd kind of figured that too. hm. she joined us and pointed us towards amy orr's house, which even more than jj's is an enviable, exquisite home-space, a charming building filled with beautiful objects, only a fraction of which were the official display pieces - although those, her found-object quilts (twist-ties, credit cards, action figures, crack vials), and falsie pillows (emblazoned with latex breasts) were utterly arresting. (amy took being called a hero in stride; she said she always needed cards and i handed her expired fmfcu visa.)

after that we swapped j for d before the culminating stop, the studioful-house where zoe was sharing her more recent and less metro-friendly drawings (e.g. the ones made with blood); james p. and jill m. also had work on display, but it was slightly overshadowed by, respectively, the former's congenial humor and hospitality and the latter's unanticipated performance on the aerial tissu (which, to my inexperienced eye at least, was absolutely spectacular. kate: "your muscle tone must be unsurpassed.") there was even a bonus demo show/tell from electronic music guy joe, of some of his favorite gadgets; then some bonhomie in the kitchen with ken and zoe and the rest. by then it had gotten chilly out again. ah! good good day of walking around looking at art and houses, meeting west philly artists, talking to folks in my neighborhood.


my neighborhood. these are things that happen. even after two years in northern liberties, i didn't do things in the hood this way. (unless you wanna call all of center city a 'hood, which isn't entirely implausible - it's not even all that much bigger.) there's a very simple explanation for the difference: i know people who live here. i even live with some of them (i.e. more than one.) but more imptly than that - there houses where i can, more or less, just go, without especial pretext or much advance planning (only two like that, 4834 walton and 1013 47th, but that's for now) - houses of my neighbors, houses of my friends. and i have other friends around here, in 1-brs, in collegiate housing, on scaffolding, that i can visit, even if i haven't taken so much advantage of that yet. and: my best friend lives here - i'd forgotten what it's like to for us to be that much more accessible to each other, even if the difference in the amount of time we share isn't that dramatic.

this weekend i went to three costume parties - all of them in west philly, which is telling even if that's just how it happened to happen. kate was at all three. who's kate? friend of dave's. otherwise very little overlap (dave and reb at two each; that's it.) the party friday night was at kate's house. i'd only met her once, briefly - three weeks back. but we played invitation tag and i was it, so i walked the four blocks down and half-a-block over, braving the downpour so i could bring them a pie [#5 - hands-down the best one i've made yet this season] in a milk crate, shielded with foil. i didn't know anybody else there ('til dave came), so i met some. though i probably won't remember them later sans santa/pirate/fifer/banana getup. didn't stay forever (b/c work) but had a good time.

the second one was at the walton house. i djed. plenty of folks i know, though i barely got to talk to any of them, of course. lots of fun all the same - read about it there. kate came and stood near the dj, but for a long time i didn't realize it was her - she was masked, and i was looking for her as a cowgirl (we'd matched the night before.) the third party was at ang's. two months in and they've already established a great party rep, as far as i'm concerned. i really like her roommates, and the people that show up (the majority of them tla video staffers) are good people, good party people. best costumes at this one i think - brontosaurus, madeline, pee-wee herman, coupla romans, obscure horror characters. ang was a giant squid. dave revived birdman; k8, masked again, brought crafty airplane-safety-illustration fridge magnets as a hostess gift. enjoyed talking with natasha about philadelphia, brazil, and michael jackson.

point being, perhaps, that there's three different, basically non-overlapping communities, right there, to which i am, however tangentially, connected. throw in the swingers and the brunch crowd (my housies and their circle) and the post artist contingent, and you've got three more sets. six, just within the past week; all of them to a greater or lesser extent centered around west philly; all of them groups that i am to a greater or lesser extent likely to be in contact with, more or less often, as long as i'm around here. not that i'll end up making new, true friends with many or even necessarily any of these people...or that i'll end up feeling like fully part of any of these communities. but at least they're there. it's good to know they're there. and maybe i will. maybe i'll make one of my very own.




did i tell you what i've been wearing? my thought was that i should go as a texan. or even specifically an austinite, or possibly stephen austin. couldn't find anything specifically texan (no state-shaped belt-buckles, lone-star flags, or "don't mess with" t-shirts) so "texan" got conflated with "cowboy." then "cowboy" got confused with various other western archetypes (farmer, bandit, sheriff.) native ang lent me her plastic bandolier and picked me up a holster/sheriff-star set and mustache (which i never got to wear, lacking spirit gum and spirit.) i got those overalls and a farmerish red-and-white shirt, and stuck with the decently appropriate straw hat i already owned. looked all over town for some cowboy boots before realizing that mali already had some that fit me fine; she also lent me a purple bandana. oh, and i got that big star-buckle belt. lastly i wore the southwestern motif bola that my piano teacher gave me at high school graduation. the ensemble ended up pretty vague and general, but people seemed to like it anyhow.

so... am i moving to austin? when am i moving to austin? people keep asking, and i keep equivocating...yes, i'm still planning to... pretty definitely not until after the new year. a better answer, which i'm starting to revert to (the balance may have only just shifted again), is that i don't know. i really don't know what i'm gonna do.

i know that i'm not trying to make a decision at this point: i am staying in philly at least until january; to make a go of this job, to be east for the holidays, to continue enjoying the things i'm enjoying. you might have noticed that i'm pretty positive on west philly these days. (though, absolutely, it's not without its problems.)

in the meantime, i am sort of self-consciously surrounding myself with "texas culture" of various sorts: i'm reading lonesome dove. (yes, still.) i'm watching friday night lights. i'm listening to austin indie rock: okkervil river, the excellent knife in the water, er, spoon. and listening to chart country too, especially when getting into character. [one of amy orr's found-object quilts had a sticker advertising a magazine as "the how-to guide for living in the west" - perhaps that's what i need, he chuckled.]

i've gotta say i'm...not particularly feeling it at this point, even though i do still think it's a good idea. and i do still honestly think that i should give it a shot - not that i owe it to austin, or myself, but that a lot of good could come from it. but my reasons have gotten so confused at this point. goofball 'goni's surprise visit here, strangely enough, left me more conflicted about it, rather than less - which isn't a great sign, but there are some mitigating factors...

you know? we'll see. i do feel like i'm not in limbo anymore - at least, in a lot of ways i'm much less in limbo than i was. it's too easy for this life to feel like limbo, anyway. i'm trying to stay out of that.

it's 7:25 am. good night.

[eta:
okay, here's a halloween pic for you, from friday night's party. courtesy of facebook. taken by the cowgirl, who'd sashayed her way out of sharing a frame. that's me in the mid, more or less my full get-up minus the kick-ass belt i bought the next day, plus a gourd. birdman/phœnix on the left. lightswitch on the right - but you'll notice it's not wearing a costume. should've had it take the picture instead.]

did the ironing in a cowboy hat
felt as fresh as the paint in this new flat

. . .

texas only kept me awake
another interest I won't fake

. . .

it's so exciting to be sleeping here in this new room
you're my reason to get out of bed before noon

Labels: birthday, party, philadelphia, texas, westy