Quote

"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
Henry Miller

From my bed of pain...

I have a cold. It's a humdinger. I have armed myself with anti-viral tissues, hand sanitiser, lemons, honey and online South Park. And I am having a sofa day.

Over the past few days I've done some lovely stuff.

I completely omitted my trip to the Empire State Building. We went on Friday. Joe's friend Andrew was visiting from Delaware so in the spirit of giving him a real New York experience, up we went. Well, first we walked around midtown for about an hour searching for food...here's the thing, midtown Manhattan on a Friday night: HEAVING with food. And yet somehow everyone ended up eating falafel and cheeseburgers from a street vendor. ???

I LOVE the ESB. The view at night is insane. Almost unreal. ESB photos here and top are courtesy of one Kait Snoddy.

Soooo is this photo - latest hair incarnation. I'm pretty happy with it:D




After the ESB we headed home and hd a nice time chilling in the kitchen. Then it was Saturday which was a pretty quiet day, just bumbling around, I wanna say we watched a movie...that's right we did, at least we attempted to watch Life of Brian. Wave, Kait, Joe and myself occupied the sofas on the first floor and got comfy. Next thing I knew it was light outside and Wave, who had been sharing my sofa, had mysteriously transformed into Joe, and there was noone else to be seen. And it had snowed again an was fffrrreeeezing out. So we did what any sensible person would do - ordered in! Breakfast to your door, oh New York I love you so. Then err...we probably went to the roof and gazed at the view (which is impossible to get tired of). Then...lor, honestly I have no idea any more what anyone did on which day. Cool things I did this week:

• Enjoyed frozen Pina Coladas mixed by Gbolahan who is the coolest person known to man.
  

• Went for pizza at a really scrummy pizza place that I forget the name of

• Walked through Central Park in the twilight

• Watched a free piano concert at Juilliard which was very cool, it was a student recital and he was playing some seriously difficult stuff (Liszt, Ravel, someone else - who says I can't be a high culture buff?)
• Went for breakfast
• Did it again
• Lay on the floor for about an hour alarming new housemates who haven't met us yet and therefore don't know what to expect
  
• Watched the sunrise from the roof twice
• Watched Wall-E
• Got a cold
• Went to Inwood Hills park with Wave and Joe
  
• Went to Madison Square Park with Wave and Kait where I read there was a light installation by Jim Campbell - it was smaller than I expected so a little disappointed, but still beautiful (not as disappointed as Kait who was expecting a band. We said 'wanna come and see pretty lights?' Apparently there is a house music group called the Pretty Lights. Yes Kait, there is a house music gig in Madison Square park, for free, at 9pm on a Tuesday night. Yes. Aaaand then ate some yummy curry.
• Went to another Juilliard recital - this time violin and cello. Didn't make it through the whole thing - this was after Inwood Hills, and we'd done a lot of walking in the cold. I was suffering from stuffy head and ouchy knees, Wave was suffering from just not feeling great and Joe was suffering from sleep deprivation/anti-Shostakovich syndrome, so we dragged ourselves home and - historic moment - all went to bed before midnight. The two biggest night owls, and Wave who is definitely in the top 10. Woohoo!

Tomorrow is Friday, and will by my one-month Loftstelversary. I have been here a month already - shit! Where does the time go! Please no more.

Brooklyn Sunrise












A happy Wave talking on Skype.









RA Kenso's way of telling us the 2nd floor shower is broken








Spot the cool kids who climbed a tree









WOOHOO we were looking for the Eagles (the bird not the band...although now I mention it, quote of the day:
'Where are you going?'
'To see the Eagles'
'Yes, the Hotel California Eagles.'
'Oh. Are they playing today?'
Ummm neeooooooo! Hahaha)




Inwood Hill park is in New York. No, wait, it's in Manhattan! It's on the same tiny island as Times Square, Madison Square Garden, the New York Times, Soho...if it weren't for the buildings just about visible in the distance, this place could be in Hampshire. Crazy.










And now my sofa day is drawing to an end...I've watched 2 movies, 4 South Parks, eaten two meals that consisted of pasta, done one awesome grocery/pharmacy shop, almost gone through one box of tissues and one bottle of hand gel, make about 80 bad 'your face' jokes. And watched the lights coming on in Manhattan - the Empire State lit up right at the top, then the rest slowly lit up too. Manhattan Illuminations. Pretty special.

And so ends my sofa day...I still feel a little like crap, but better than yesterday/this morning.

Wave et moi on the way to Madison Square Park...this girl is genius, I want to keep her.

P&Lxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Day-brighteners

Some RAD paint sculptures http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/11774/dentsu-paint-sound-sculptures.html
If movie posters told the truth: http://www.listal.com/list/m-p-t-t-t




A well-known old favourite that never fails to make me laugh: http://www.nirvani.net/misc/emergency/

Example of Lewis Carroll's smarts: http://www.futilitycloset.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/2009-05-18-square-stanza.jpg


If you ignore everything else on this page, you must watch this beautiful animation: http://vimeo.com/14803194

40 Belief-Shaking Remarks From a Ruthless Nonconformist

by David

If there’s one thing Friedrich Nietzsche did well, it’s obliterate feel-good beliefs people have about themselves. He has been criticized for being a misanthrope, a subvert, a cynic and a pessimist, but I think these assessments are off the mark. I believe he only wanted human beings to be more honest with themselves.

He did have a remarkable gift for aphorism — he once declared, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” A hundred years after his death, Nietzsche retains his disturbing talent for turning a person’s worldview upside-down with one jarring remark.

Even today his words remain controversial. They hit nerves. Most of his views are completely at odds with the status quo.

Here are 40 unsympathetic statements from the man himself. Many you’ll agree with. Others you will resist, but these are the ones to pay the most attention to — your beliefs are being challenged. It’s either an opportunity to grow, or to insist that you already know better. If any of them hit a nerve in you, ask yourself why.

***

1. People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

2. He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

3. The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

4. There are no facts, only interpretations.

5. Morality is but the herd-instinct in the individual.

6. No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any.

7. Without music, life would be a mistake.

8. Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

9. In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

10. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

11. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

12. We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the way in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

13. No victor believes in chance.

14. Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

15. Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

16. It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

17. The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

18. The future influences the present just as much as the past.

19. The most common lie is that which one tells himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

20. I counsel you, my friends: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

21. Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, is what makes someone a friend.

22. God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

23. Success has always been a great liar.

24. Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

25. What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

26. Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

27. When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

28. When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

29. Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

30. All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

31. What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

32. Fear is the mother of morality.

33. A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.

34. Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.

35. There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

36. The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.

37. The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart — not something that comes upon the earth or after death.

38. What is the mark of liberation? No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.

39. Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

40. We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

One of my new favourite artists, Lissie, covers 'Pursuit of Happiness' by Kid Cudi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQMJCOT2wlQ&feature=relmfu

That's all, folks

Wreathed in smiles

Sunday Sunday

Went to the roof first thing in the morning to sing along loudly to my iPod - only place you can do that except in the shower, and people were sleeping still so didn't want to do that!

Went for cinnamon raisin bagels with cream cheese and coffee, alllll free, with the wonderful Wave and Adam. Made lots of plans. 'We are so homeless'

Read a comment that has really made me laugh nd I wholeheartedly agree!

My hair is frickin raaaad.

TTFN!xxxxxx

What do I know?

Not much, it would seem. This is how a conversation often goes at Loftstel, when I am involved.

'Have you read this book?'

'No'

'Have you seen this movie?'

'No'

'Do you know this symphony or band so hip they don’t even exist yet?'

'...................no'

'What are your politics?

Which philosophers have you read?

How much Shakespeare can you quote?

Can you cook well, and speak 3 languages, can you tell how old this whisky is just by tasting it?'

Housemates who are my age or a couple of years older, constantly waxing lyrical about these/related topics, and I just feel like I'm drowning in a sea of knowledge and my lifebelt (which is made out of my specialist subjects: what it feels like to get a tattoo, classic rock, Broadway musicals) has drifted far far away. Anyone who hasn't read Nietzsche or doesn't watch the Daily Show is kind of screwed.

In these situations I often want to say these things:

Do you genuinely like that wine you just spent so much on, or is it just because you read that it will associate you with sophistication?

All those artists on your iPod, how many of their songs have you really heard? Just the one? Thought so.

How is it that you know so much, with so few years between us?

I don’t know that artist, I don’t know that band, I don’t know that poem or that piece, I don’t know which album that song comes from and I sure as hell can’t identify that frickin cheese. Know what I like? Comedy.

And know what else? Sit coms.

Also – romance, fantasy, eating cereal because I burnt my toast, listening to the bands I grew up with even if they’ve no credentials these days.

I like chocolate, sweets, the colour pink. Some of Picasso’s paintings do nothing for me

Does that make me a philistine?

I don’t always know what goes on in the World, can't name every film director or political prisoner, and God knows my palette is not refined enough to know why you just spent twenty quid on a shot of bourbon.

And why should I? I’m young, my whole life’s ahead of me and there's plenty of time to learn and discover.

I’m happy to find things as they come to me, not go out searching for things to enrich my life without knowing what they are.

I sometimes think 'wow, are me and my friends so vapid? We don't discuss politics every single day like I seem to here, and we choose our drinks based almost solely on the price, not the bouquet.' And then I think 'Hell, no'

I talk about different things with all my friends, but the common denominator is people. We talk about people more than anything else - people we know, people we wish we know, people we used to know. And since everything in my life is based, in some way, on people - I think it's pretty ok to talk about them more than anything else.

Other common conversation topics are animals, classic rock, school, college, university, what we want to do with our lives. Maybe the people I live with now all just have it really, really figured out - they have time to be discussing Mozart and Matisse because they aren't spending the time sharing thoughts and helping each other find their way. Don't get me wrong, me and my cohorts have had many discussions about the meaning of life et al, but really we cover stuff that's directly affecting our lives. Cos, y'know, they are our lives...that we are in...right now...it's hard not to talk about things that directly affect them. I'm really glad to be surrounded by so many people who are all incredibly intelligent and know about everything there is to know, I learn several new things every day. But it can make a person feel, to put it bluntly, stupid.

It's tempting to give in to the pressure and spend a week in the library reading 'Being cosmopolitan and sounding super educated for Dummies' - but no. I'm not stupid by any means. I think I know plenty for a girl my age, but not so much that by the time I'm 40 there will be nothing new for me to discover. Which is nice to know. That would suck.


There, that has made me feel much less inadequate, and I am prepared to face the next day when I will probably have to smile and nod along while they discuss in detail the merits of hash over skunk or their previous opiate habit (is this an attempt to emulate Mr Taylor Coleridge or similar?)

In fact, I must be the most well-informed person in the house. I'm the one who knows where to get free coffee and bagels every Sunday from noon.

One day like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NFV8dHrZYM&feature=artistob&playnext=1&list=TLRBh0kte84Aw

This is my song of yesterday - by the great band Elbow (who I am priveleged enough to have seen twice already)

I will have to tell the story of yesterday...it was the best day I've had in New York so far.

It all started Wednesday night at about 2am. I was in the kitchen with Joe and Tuan, talking. Ludmila came out and told us that the walls are paper thin and we were being loud (hmph, no we weren't) but anyway...so me and Joe decided to go downstairs and watch South Park, via laptop-TV link up.
Then suddenly it was light outside and people started coming downstairs to leave for work. And at 7am Joe said 'let's go on adventure' so I said 'yes let's' and off we went. Well it wasn't quite that simple...see, I'm always suggesting we do daft things at silly times of day and night and don't get any takers, so I just go on my own. So it was quite turn up for the books having Joe suggest doing something...at 7am, no less.
We hopped on the subway to get to 61st St and 3rd Avenue, based on our Google search for 24 hour diners with a view. This one specifically had a view of the Roosevelt Island cable car, which is a pretty weird thing to have a view of but it was a view nonetheless! And got giant breakfasts (corned beef hash, potatoes and 2 eggs over easy, plus about 6 coffees each) and then sat in semi-comatose state for a long time.

Then we wandered out, and the first thing we saw was Dylan's Candy store, which is like sweets Mecca. Really big, 3 floors, and something like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Or even better - imagine that me, I, Tessa - am a shop. I would be this shop.
That lollipop is BIGGER THAN MY HEAD.

We then headed across town, to Central Park. It was pretty cloudy, but not actually that cold.



We found a nice rock to sit on, or rather I said 'OOOH let's climb the rock' and Joe reluctantly followed.
See? Reluctance.












Next destination was Fifth Avenue. Bear in mind none of this is planned, we are just drifting along in our extremely full and sleep-deprived state, laughing at pretty much anything.

We stopped to stare at beautiful shoes and jewellery in the windows of Cartier and Louis Vuitton. Then we passed the Trump building (well, one of many) and wandered in just to see what it was like...gold, that's what. He likes his gold-y decor. We were both sporting attractive pale-skinned, purple-eyed, scruffy-haired looks, and I'm sure people wondered what the hell we were doing in there, but there you go. (I am going to coin a term for how we looked and it is 'Trampires' - tramp vampires)

Then we wandered a bit further down and came to the Apple store, where we had fun listening to music on amazing headphones and dancing to Paint It Black in the middle of the shop floor.

Next destination was the Lego store, the logic being that we'd already been to one children's fantasy land of giant things (Dylan's) so we should just carry on. Very cool Lego version of Rockefeller Centre which stands opposite the store, and a giant dragon...and y'know Lego.

THEN we went to see St Patrick's Cathedral. This door is huge, like 20ft high, but not in use as a door. It is very, very beautiful inside. Joe fell in love with the organ.

I'm sure there were a couple of other stops along the way. But I cannot remember them. We did an awful lot in 6 hours. Lot of walking. Lot of talking. Lot of senseless hysterical laughing.




We ended up people-watching at Grand Central Station for about an hour. Where the worst and possibly funniest thing of the whole day happened. We were standing at the top of some stops, leaning on the balcony and gazing out at the throngs of tourists, mostly school field trip parties. A guy set up his camera just next to us on a tripod. Into our field of vision came a family - a mother and two young girls. One about 8, and one maybe 5/6. They looked pretty lost, and the mum started walking off with the older girl, leaving the little girl trailing behind. When we saw this, Joe and I both started commenting loudly about how crazy that was, and how the mother was not doing a great job - this is Grand Central Station at lunchtime, it's heaving with people. And, y'know, we weren't wrong to be saying this - although perhaps some of the phrasing wasn't so great - but then it got really bad. The older girl walked away from the mum, and began coming up the steps we were standing at the top of. So of course we started saying 'oh my GOD is that woman crazy? You can't do that here! Does she not know?!' Then we realised the guy who had been taking photos next to us WAS THE GIRL'S DAD and she was coming to get him.
Oh my gaaaads.....sheer mortifcation. While Joe was doubled over beside me laughing, I looked down at the family. And the dad turned around, speaking to the mum, and pointed at us...ooooops! So, sorry blonde family from out of the City. Our bad.

Bloody funny though.



When we finally got on the train to head home, it was around 3pm. We came out of the subway into bright sunshine, and warmth. It was t-shirt weather! Beautiful and unexpected - it's still February.

So then we had the brilliant idea to go up to the roof! All I can say is - sun, a beautiful view, good company - what more does anyone ever need?


This is beautiful Agustina, one of the RAs


THAT IS THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING and Manhattan skyline. It doesn't look too clear in this picture but it's amazing from the roof.






And here we have the view if you face the other way...ok it's not so Majestic. But. DO OR DIE BED-STUY, Bedford Stuvesant pride!







Jose Nelmarro 'I'm so disoriented'
His t-shirt, for the record, says 'Music is Life, the rest is just details'
Mine said 'I'm losing my fucking mind'

This is when I taught Joe the phrase 'Dirty stop-outs' as in 'We are such...'













So yeah. Agustina had to go back to work, and we stayed on the roof til the sun went down and then I had a very confusing sleep which started at 4pm Thursday, ended at 4am Friday, then guess who went to get breakfast at 7am again, that's right the Trampires, then my sleep started again and finished at around noon.
But this is ok because tonight we go E.S.B! And I am so excited because I love it so much!

I leave with a sentiment from Dylan's Candy Store
Unless your name is Jess or Ellie in which case I leave you with ARGH ARGH HELP ME! SHITE! Hahaha love love lovexxxxxxxxxxxx

Sugar sugar

Peace reigns in the happy community of Loftstel.

I had a great day. I didn't dance, and I re-iced my knee for a while this evening cos I had to do a fair bit of walking but other than that, a great day. I went to Union Square to buy hair dye and also to Bleecker Street...ahhhh Bleecker. I've missed it so much. I forgot how much I love that place - the music shops, the vintage shops, the bakeries, the books! I went to bookbook, my old favourite. I now have a Rolling Stones biog, a book called 'Girls Like Us' chronicling the lives and careers of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, and a book of Greek myths. And they were all on sale, averaging $5. Yay! Then I went along to Magnolia, the bakery made famous by Sex and the City. The cupcakes here are fine, as good as any other cupcakes in the city, but I got a 'chocolate pudding pie' which is exactly what it sounds like - a little pastry filled with chocolate goo with cream on top. OH MY new realms of delight. They put it in a box and gave me a bag for it and as soon as I left the shop I just opened it and ate it right there on the street...wow.

Back at home everyone is in a good mood, and I found a Nesquik flavour I haven't tried yet (I don't think I'll get it again though, it was delicious but I think it did funny things to my mind, lawd knows what was in it). My quote of the day was

Me, referring to something or other: I'm confused
Eric: No you're always confused
Me: No I'm not, just sometimes
BANG
Me: OW
Eric: What did you do?
Me: Hit my head on the window...

Ah, comedy timing.

And then Agustina made a cake and shared it with everyone. It was mostly for Argentinian Franco though because someone tried to steal his stuff at work and then someone tried to mug him on the way home. All I can say is more fool them cos he's really big, and he punched them in the face and ran away. HAHAHA.

And THEN Susan came upstairs and gave me a cheesecake, I don't know why.

Tomorrow I want to go to Inwood Hills park, right at the top of Manhattan. It's allegedly the place where the Indians signed the treaty to sell their land to the foreigners. It's also home of a bald eagle rehabilitation/breeding programme so you can see eagles there in the winter! Tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day so it will be lovely. Everything is lovely and now I'm going to watch Monty Python!

Love to all my peoplesxxxxxxxxxxxx

Time is an abstract concept

This is technically yesterday's post. But, as the title suggests, yesterday and today no longer exist in my world...


Well. What a crazy day/night/yesterday/what day is it?

Yesterday we were supposed to go to yoga at 9pm, and meet Velvet there because she was coming straight from work. We slightly failed there...as by the time we were ready to go it was 8.30 and there's no way you can get from Greene Ave to St Mark's Place on the LES in half an hour. No. Way. So we sort of stood Velvet up...for which we feel very sorry and we made it up to her by helping her gather the ingredients for a cake. At midnight. Then we baked the cake, at 1am. Then we ate the cake, at 2am. We shared it with some hungry Brazilians and a couple of Argentinians. I ate large amounts of icing and felt a bit funny...I could literally feel the sugar entering my brain, it was weird. It was a very delicious and somewhat experimental cake recipe...honey, cinnamon and Snickers Almond. Don't ask. Then everyone went to bed, fair enough, it was nearly 4.

NOT ME!

I did this instead:















Brooklyn Bridge for the sunrise! It was beautiful, almost completely empty and peaceful in spite of the heavy traffic crossing the bridge.

Then I came home, had breakfast and went to BDC for lyrical contemporary...which is where my day started to go wrong. The class was great, we didn't have to do any corner stuff yehoo just lots and lots of routine. I've been feeling twinges in both knees every now and then just walking around and stuff, and the left one was not great all through the class but we didn't do anything particularly dubious...apart from I just remembered...yes we did, there was a whole big drop to the floor spinny round thing...well that'll be it! And then right at the end of class, after we'd done the routine through in groups and got back together to do it one final time all together, in the last 8 counts of the whole thing...CRACK. Left knee ow ow ow pain pain! Couldn't put any weight on it, was a real shock as well and it fudged up the ending of my dance. Thank goodness that's when Tracie stopped the music and dismissed us, so off I limped to the changing room looking like right plank.

The excruciating pain is now gone but it still feels hot and quite tender, so I am currently sitting with frozen strawberries on it. Baah humblebug.

THEN I went home, ate some lunch and snoozed for a couple of hours until Wave woke me up at 4 for our planned excursion to Riverside Park, the long walk along the river. (Then we had a giant argument with a certain housemate who we are still discussing now because he genuinely hurt our feelings and made us very confused by being so frickin rude)

So off we went, and arrived just in time for sunset. Again, very lovely peaceful place - I spent aLOT of time walking up and down Riverside last year and it holds a special place in my heart. It was very quiet, just the odd jogger or cyclist. We walked from 96th to 54th, taking pictures and feeling chilly and enjoying the fresh air off the river.

Then we walked back up to 79th where we had arranged to meet Velvet (we tried extra hard to make this rendez-vous since we missed the last one) made it there for the appointed time of 6.30pm. And this was stupid, because the corner of 79th and Riverside is at a busy crossroads, with no shelter, no coffee shops and a lot of freezing cold wind. Why did we pick this as a meeting place? Simon Cowell only knows. We waited, in the sub-zero temperatures, for half an hour before deciding to give up and run to the subway. Because we are stupid. This is why it's so stupid: Velvet was coming to us from 45th St and 9th Avenue. To 79th and Riverside. When our destination was Brooklyn. Which is nowhere near 79th St. It is in the opposite direction. Do you see the logic? No because there is none.
Anyway. Ran to the subway, travelled back to Brooklyn in search of a mysterious eatery known as 'The Meat Place' which isn't its real name. Wave has been waxing lyrical about it for a while.

Oh my giddy aunt.

WHAT a meat place. It was epic. Ribs, pork belly, pulled pork, sausages, brisket, more ribs...and all the extras, basked beans, coleslaw, potato salad. And a huge whisky bar.
I had a 1/4lb of ribs, 1/4lb pulled pork, 1 spicy sausage and portion of a burnt-end baked beans. Wave had 1lb of pulled pork (!!!) and also got the baked beans. It was so very very delicious. I haven't eaten much meat since I've been here, mostly because I can't afford to. So you can imagine how I fell on my food. I'm a biiiiig meat fan.


This is what a pound of pulled pork looks like.

This is what two hungry carnivores look like.

Very full and content, we hauled ourselves out and back to Loftstel. The first thing we heard was Velvet saying 'UGH...you guys smell like a hot dog!' Apparently being in the presence of that much barbecue meat doesn't go away easily. And Kait and Velvet are ve getarians, so they loved us a lot.

Anyway. Although there was some unpleasant incidents, I had a great day yesterday. I accomplished a lot. i went for two long walks, saw a sunrise and a sunset, two beautiful views, one great dance class, one delicious meal/new discovery and lots of time spent with a good friend. Wave is pretty much too cool for school.

Ok, so...today's life lessons...

One: My knee hurts. There is a dancer's injury clinic that's free on the 28th so me and Charles are going. Hopefully this will help.
Two: Umm...I don't think a numbered list is the way to do this.

As I mentioned, I fell out with someone who shall remain nameless today. And Wave did too. We had made these plans to go to Riverside the day befor yesterday, we were all excited, worked out where we were going afterwards for beer and free pizza, who was going to wake who up even. And then when we did wake up this person, they shut the door on us and locked it. And they were the only one who knew where the beer/pizza place is. After we'd established that he wasn't coming with us we at least tried to get the address of the place and got a useless mumbled response. I was absolutely fuming. We went off and had fun, but when we got back I was fuming all over again because he seemed to think it was all a big joke. Now, I did think that we did the same thing to Velvet when we stood her up at yoga. Main differences: we immediately apologised, those plans were pretty vague anyway, she was with a co-worker so not left alone and we didn't deliberately back out and shut doors on people we're just crap at being on time.
Here's why I was (and still am) angry: we had plans, you don't just bail on them at the last second.
Having doors shut in your face hurts your feelings.
If you do change your mind about plans and don't want to go, say something. Don't lock yourself in your room like a child.
If you've hurt someone's feelings, or bailed on plans at the last minute, it's common courtesy to say SORRY
Whatever beef you have with the world or whatever, it's so unfair to take it out on the people who are trying to be good friends to you and KEEP TO THEIR PLANS THAT INVOLVE YOU

And what I learned from this experience -
Some people just want to exist in a state of misery and drama and not allow friends into their life - this is not my problem. You can try to reach out to them and be their friend but if they won't let you there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO and you shouldn't have to. At some point they will wake up and realise noone can survive as an island but til then don't worry about it.
Some people haven't grown up enough to deal with their feelings in a way that doesn't hurt other people - this is not my problem either
If someone locks a door in your face they're not worth bothering about
If someone is too stubborn/proud/rude/whatever to make a simple apology for backing out on plans last-minute (that's not asking much is it?!) then they aren't worth bothering with.

It's a shame because previously I got on with this person very well. But something else I learned - I don't want to always be Tessa the Amazing Doormat girl. Often in these situations I will just say nothing, or I will apologise even if it's nothing to do with me, just to keep the peace. I don't like conflict amongst my friendship groups at all. Or in the world in general. I am definitely a peace-loving being. But I really stuck up for myself and Wave yesterday - we both had principles that got violated, feelings that got hurt and time that got wasted fretting about something tht was not our problem - it was someone else's lame, pathetic issue. And although I still don't like arguing with people, it was damn good to speak my mind and not take any prisoners, because I sometimes get the feeling everyone here thinks my brain is made of rainbows and I don't know what angry means. Since I've been here (and in general) I've been so laid back I'm almost horizontal. I let everything go, if someone says something stupid or arrogant or insulting I just go 'whatever'. Which is why I'm now 'the permanently smiley optimistic one'. Good to break out of your pigeonhole.
So I suppose what I'm saying in a rambling kind of way is that I don't like conflict and I don't like losing friends, but sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself and not let people just get away with things. Everyone is responsible. People who think they can do hurtful things and not take responsibility for it are not worth bothering with. Hey, everything about my life is really different in New York - it would be silly not to take the opportunity and try and change some things about myself for the better too. So now I am 'the smiley optimistic one you don't want to cross'. At least I hope I am.

This is me and Sam and we are on TV! (We use laptops to watch movies by hooking them up to the TV downstairs sometimes, and this is my current laptop background! Hey Sammy Bee)

I have some really fab friends! Happy days, peace and love and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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