Goodbye.

If it weren’t tough economic times I’d use this supa-cool UK-based travel agency to send me on an exotic adventure into the bush somewhere. http://www.cazenoveandloyd.com/

Like a sponge.

Over the course of this past week in Portland I traded in my yoga pants for jeans and put on a real bra exactly twice, and that was to walk 2 blocks to see movies (Beauty in Trouble, Czech dramedy, eh; Tell No One, French psychological thriller, oh so good!) and drink beer in the daytime dark at the Living Room Theater in the Pearl district (pictured). Between said movies, I… watched more movies on DVD, thanks to a sister with “industry” connections (Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader… something else good I can’t remember), downloaded a bunch of new music (new Killers, Carla Bruni and Horse Feathers, old Magnetic Fields, Miles Davis and Mates of State among others considerably more embarrassing), read a boatload of magazines, finished The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Ilosa and started Seven Types of Ambiguity, a 600 page tome I’d picked up and put back a dozen times since it came out and finally decided to tackle thanks to long lines and the conveniently located Bargain Buys stack (damn you Powell’s and your strategic merchandising)– in short, did little but play tennis, hang with the fam, and soak up a ton great film, music and reading material and it felt good. Makeup didn’t touch my face, my hair went dirtier than usual, even my ears got a break from being ravaged by cheap earrings. Isn’t this what Christmas is all about though? When else can you be a complete slob if not in the comfort of your family over the holidays in a northern, gray city after having your emotions put in a blender on puree?

Garance Dore.

My new favorite blog for style inspiration/holiday phone call procrastination– a French Sartorialist, but with added gorgeous close-ups. And you get to brush up on your French! http://www.garancedore.fr/

Alvin Ailey’s 50th.

I’m still aching to go. Who wants to go with me?

I want this kind of happiness.

Dear Santa.

I’ve had a crap-ass last couple months, as you probably know. All I want is to curl up in one of these unbelievably cozy cloaks/security blankets for grown-ups I’ve been seeing all over the downtown mags. Incidentally, they’re designed by someone I went to high school with so maybe she’ll, you know, throw you a discount or something. http://www.lindseythornburg.com/

The unthinkable has happened.

I joined Facebook. I must be in a state.

Je suis triste.

I’ve lost my other half and I’m not too proud to say I feel like I’m dying inside. I tried to leave frigid New York for dreary Portland some 30 hours ago, only to get stuck in the absolute last California town I want to be in right now. Purgatory, again, still. It’s seemingly endless. I’m in an airport bar having a drink, about the only thing other than the occasional bread product I’ve been able to consume since I started this whole process (thanks, TraumaTrim!), and I’ve just been notified that my flight’s been delayed until 11:49pm which likely means another night in a sad, sterile airport hotel listening to Bon Iver on repeat and crying myself into a fitful sleep….

This seriously sucks.

ifeelnyc.

Cool new way to search for things to do in the city based on your mood. For example, thanks to last night’s unrelenting bartender and a wine glass the size of a small melon, today I am hungover. The friendly folk populating hungovernyc suggest a big, sloppy burger at Schiller’s, a nap in Sheep’s Meadow (a seasonal remedy, I hope) or the bloody mary at the Spotted Pig. Right now I’m feeling Do Hua takeout and mindless TV. Maybe I’ll stick it up there. http://www.ifeelnyc.com/

I know, I know.

I need to update my blog more than twice a season. I’m bugged about it by needling, annoying (very well-intentioned) friends nearly every day. But c’mon, people, things change. I needed a creative outlet like I needed air when I started this thing in January. I felt like I was dying a slow death working for lawyers and living in a big house on a hill. I was aging like a figure from an Edgar Allen Poe tale– spirited and sprightly one minute, withered and sallow the next. I got my culture and creative fix through a computer screen and stack of magazines, and spit it back out in the form of private verbal explosions and the sometimes blog. Unsurprising to anyone who knows me, it ultimately wasn’t enough. As that great sage Yoda might have said, “learn one must but live must one as well.” So I moved back to New York, got a demanding but very cool job, a bright and airy apartment above the beautiful mess and felt like I was again a fleshy, bloody cell in the vein of the City. The importance of the blog waned as the urgency of the job waxed. There was less desperate need to see and do (create) since seeing and doing became a normal part of my life. I was part of it again.

Well, yes and no.

The great and crippling thing about New York is exactly its bounty of possibility. There’s so much to do but you’re never really doing enough of it, are you? It’s enough to keep you up at night. Part of me craves that activity, wants to be in the thick of it, out meeting new people, seeing incredible things, having random adventures, collecting experiences, down the rabbit hole I tumble. And then writing about it, breathe it in and breathe it out. Constant pursuit. It’s an inextricable part of what makes Kelly Kelly. It’s why I had to leave San Francisco. And the other part of me is never happier than inside on a rainy Sunday (or solo Saturday night, as was the case yesterday– those nights both nourish and terrify me, I simultaneously relish them and am wracked with fear and guilt that I should be out Doing) with a couple books, a dozen meaty magazines, a pot of coffee, an innocuous Pandora station, a completely nonsensical French film that makes my brain hurt. It becomes an exercise in gluttonous consumption, see how much I can soak up, stuff in my brain in a single sitting. An intellectual Thanksgiving. This is the me that has always just wanted to lose herself in a trance of learning. No output, all intake. And these two parts – the collector/creator and the learner – are in near-constant violent opposition with each other.

Which is a long-winded way of getting closer to explaining the lapse. The collector/creator has been busy with work and traipsing through New York and any time left over has been greedily snatched up by that curious, cerebral little girl with her nose in a book.

So no promises for now, but I do feel another change coming. I had a birthday recently (28, holy crap), New Years is coming up, we’ll soon have a bright and shiny new president in office. So many arbitrary reasons to shake things up and tip the scales back over in favor of abundant honest expression. Stay tuned…