2001-07-06 10:31 a.m.
You say it's your birthday...it's my birthday too, yeah

happy birrrrthday to me. ;)

yesterday I turned 25...and I had more unexpected fun than I have had in a few birthdays.

Dan and Mari surprised me with a biiiig dinner (okonomiyaki, onigiri, sunomono) and too much dessert...:)

More than that, it was the surprise that folks remembered. Too often lately, it seems like I'm not making enough of an impression on people's radar or not exuding the right kind of energy to be given a shit about. It's always sooooo nice to be reminded that people care about ya. You know they do, but to get a little poke in the side, well, that makes for a good lead-in to the weekend.

(Also, Rachel was planning her own deal off in the wings, which makes me happy...I'm glad we've got a roommate who jumps into things that soon after moving in...)

And speaking of the weekend, things are about to hit high gear...

Saturday's all about a comic convention (maybe get a sketch or two), the first Warm Up Party at P.S. 1, and some DJ thing or another at Fun...and I'm dying to be that busy. :)

as the man says, right on right on.

left turn:

my present from Mariko was Underground by Haruki Murakami, his study of the sarin gas attack in Tokyo in 1995, full of first-hand interviews, all in an attempt to understand the how/why/who/why.

I've been wanting to read this book as research, but also out of personal curiosity. The attack happened during the tail end of my freshman year in college, and I remember that I couldn't stop thinking about it, every aspect...until it faded out of view, like all news stories.

I was reading this book on the D train (NYC) on the way to work today and thinking, "could this happen here?" It's a frightening possibility, if anyone had enough of a point to make. The bigger difference is that Tokyo's subway system, especially at the points that the Aum Shinrikyo cult struck, is much more condensed...more people, less lines. Could NYC be as susceptible to organized attacks? We certainly don't have the police force to watch for such things, not with the amount of traffic on morning trains.

Breaking points in society fascinate me. The trends, the motivations, the tell-tale signs that people are losing their way, if there was one to lose. Back in college I was dreaming about writing a street mythology with inner city kids from around the country, seeing what values would arise, who people of today's America could agree on looking up to.

It'd have to be a pantheon. We're a polyglot and polytheistic society already. Except for Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, and a few others, we live in a society of small gods, deities that we pray to in quiet moments, times of weakness... so who would we pray to if we could invent him/her?

These are the things that I think about...even on my birthday. And I hope I never stop. :)

left turn:

the key to immortality...is removing the idea of living your life according to time.

Once you can live without alarm clocks, without timetables, without a burning need to be somewhere by a certain point, when you can live your life at the pace that is you and see everything that you ever wanted to see...

...you're there.