all is optional

1. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before?
Went skydiving, interned at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), taught freshmen about life (orientation/university seminar TA), went to a baseball game (Yankees, where we started a stadium-wide wave that went around six times!), visited San Francisco with some of the best people I know

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Didn’t keep most of them; will make some.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Nope.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Nope.

5. What countries did you visit? Waiting to get my advanced parole approved by the Department of Homeland (In)security. Hopefully, it’ll get approved this year so I can go to Canada and/or Bahamas.

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005? More time to read, write, learn, and explore as I please.

7. What date from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 07 May, 18 September: went skydiving after talking about it for years, 17 November, 09 December

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Being a pretty decent orientation leader.

9. What was your biggest failure? Not writing, reading, learning and exploring as much as I should.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Not much besides the general colds and such.

11. What was the best thing you bought? My absolutely beautiful 12″ G4 PowerBook.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My friends in NYC who are absolutely brilliant.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? The Bush administration.

14. Where did most of your money go? An assortment of liquor (cabernet sauvignon, merlot, whiskey, gin), books, PowerBook, my Olympus OM-1.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? My PowerBook, seeing my uncle who I haven’t seen since I was 9,

16. What songs will always remind you of 2005? Jack Johnson, The Dandy Warhols’ Welcome to the Monkey House, Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth, Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine, Peter Sallet, Nick Drake, Howie Day, Beck, Ben Harper.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? happier
ii. thinner or fatter? same
iii. richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Kept in touch with people I like.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Allowing my laziness to get the best of me. (this has been the exact same for as long as I’ve done these.)

20. How will you be spending Christmas? I ate banana pancakes for breakfast, fiddled around on my computer, and read.

23. How many one-night stands? None.

24. What was your favorite TV programs? I don’t really watch television but if I did, it would be Family Guy and The Daily Show

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? Hating people is like letting them live rent free inside your head. I’m too broke to allow this to happen. (this is always the same, too, inadvertantly.)

26. What was the best book you read this year? Flowers for Algernon, Utopia, and Daily Afflictions.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? Beck, Elliot Smith, the John Butler Trio, and Nick Drake

28. What did you want and get? A good life of good family, good friends, New York City living, but best of all, clarity in all of these things.

29. What did you want and not get? To travel.

30. What was your favourite film of this year? Sin City, Finding Neverland. Others that I’m forgetting.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 20, went out drinking with some folks. Skydiving the day before was actually the more important thing.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Producing some quality writing and sending it to be reviewed by places that publish.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005? fashion? English major: fake birks, blazers, button down shirts, “dirty hippie” skirts, the like.

34. What kept you sane? Friends.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Not quite my style.

36. What political issue stirred you the most? Class issues. The war.

37. Who did you miss? My mom, Ham, some friends.

38. Who was the best new person you met? Tyler Davis and Lee Transue. Some quality freshmen.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005. Live and let live. Have no expectations and you won’t be disappointed.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: “It’s always better when we’re together” - Jack Johnson’s “Better Together” from In Between Dreams

The week in review (in bullet points):

Wednesday:

• Drove six hours roundtrip to Memphis, TN in order to give the American government my soul through my fingerprints. Got to love the immigration process. Thankyou, Department of Homeland (In)Security.
• Attempted to locate a Barnes and Noble in Memphis, TN. Failed miserably.
• Returned home and slept a good twelve hours.

Thursday

• Woke up following the hour of noon.
• Read Martin Page’s How I Became Stupid courtesy of Laura.
• Slept many hours once again.

Friday

• Drove six hours to pick up aunt and cousin from airport.
• On said drive, convinced mother to allow me to spend one year travelling the Middle East and surrounding areas.
• Successfully located Barnes and Noble in Memphis, purchased Silent Spring, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, The Bell Jar, and Cat’s Cradle for my independent study in American literature of the 1960s, alternately titled “Mysticism, Music, and Madness.” Also picked up a sketchbook to continue doodling in as my others are full. Failed to purchase the Festivus presents I had intended to purchase. Will attempt to locate them when I travel to Jackson, MS or Little Rock, AR later this week.

Saturday

• Read The Age of Innocence recommended by Tyler Davis.
• Went shopping at Wal-mart as it is the only grocery shopping place in Greenville, MS. You have to love suburban America.
• Wrote blog entries and uploaded photos from Fall 2005 to photoalbum. Expect photo entry soon.

Sunday

• Began reading Thomas More’s Utopia.
• Ate banana pancakes for breakfast.
• Watched numerous fluff movies including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Monday

• Went shopping at the illustrious Greenville mall, where the sole bookstore Waldenbooks has been replaced by a store called Xtreme Fashions. Purchased a red Jansport backpack after having searched for it for nearly three years, a white cable knit sweater, and a white “hippie” skirt.
• Read NYTimes.com cover to cover.

Tomorrow, I plan on checking out the new sole bookstore in Greenville, which according to Ham is located near Main Street. Also, I’ll stop by the Big Corporation (Wal-mart/Walgreens/CVS) to pick up yarn for a scarf and a couple of rolls Kodak Tri-X to shoot some portraits of the family. Trips to Jackson and Little Rock are in order alongside baking some cookies to send off presents to mon amis. Look for brown packages, you guys. I promise, no anthrax, except to Cat who asked for some.

Christmas spirit reigns supreme in Karachi and Islamabad, too.

Mmhmm, a Muslim nation celebrates Christmas to honour their fellows of another religion. (You still want to tell me it’s not a commercial holiday?) Oh, and don’t get me started on those Muslim terrorists.

In the past twenty four hours, I have received numerous “Merry Christmas” wishes by numbers unidentified on my mobile, by screen names on my AIM buddy list; both leave me wondering what in the hell are these people thinking? By what stretch of the mind do I strike you as a human being who celebrates Christmas in any respect: the supposed religious one or the overcommercialised one?

That’s all I got.

I left my square space in the same hurried fashion in which I first arrived. After writing my last timed final, French, I rushed back to shower before heading off to Park Slope to say goodbye for nine months.

There was a Social Movements short story waiting to be written and a playlist to summarise. There were books, clothes, and toiletries to be packed. There was a room to be cleaned, keys to be given away. All to be done before a plane at 03:46 p.m. or so I thought.

The Social Movements final was not mailed in until Wednesday night after I had gotten home. The packing was done at 9:00 a.m. and it happened rather quickly. I suprised even myself.

But, there was a transit strike. I had $39 to my name and no way to get to the airport.

All of them entirely unnecessary when put against saying goodbye to Tyler Davis. It’s hard to fathom that someone who I barely knew before February would end up inducing one of the worst separation anxiety attacks I’ve experienced to date. I can be entirely too apologetic to the two boys who had the (un)lucky fortune of coping with that or be grateful that somewhere beneath the hardened cynic, I do care about people. I haven’t quite decided which side of the fence I’m on.

Neverthelesss, the goodbye wasn’t tearful and it wasn’t goodbye either as I saw him the next afternoon before running away to the airport.

Davis arrived in Brooklyn Heights via a gypsy cab and thrust a copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go my way. It was my second Dr. Seuss book of the last 24 hours (as Cat had given me I Am Not Going to Get Up Today the night before).

Who would’ve thought that I’d buy into motivational speak from someone I’d known less than a year? But, it’s true. I trust Tyler Davis. He’ll tell me the truth, good or bad, when I need to hear it so, if I want to believe the ugly, I better sign up to believe the opposite, too. Thanks, Tyler Davis.

The brilliant boy he is suggested I check my flight status as I lamenting about getting to the airport on time.

“Maybe, your flight is delayed,” he said, “a lot of people won’t be able to make it to the airport today.”

So, I checked. Time of departure: 3:00 not 3:46. Oops!

Some optimistic fool once said, “If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”

Every now and then, fools are right.

Bundled into my jacket with my backpack over my shoulder, my bags in the hallway, I hugged goodbye the boys in my life and raced down Henry Street to the car service that rushed me to LaGuardia Airport in less than thirty minutes.

My scratchy throat and I boarded an Atlanta-Hartsfield International flight at 2:30, drank the worst coffee of my life, read the International Fiction issue of The New Yorker, napped alongside minor passive-aggressive indulgement on the War on Christmas. The second leg of my journey included more of the same, sans the coffee and War on Christmas. I was terrified after the first time. However, I did see a budding Buddhist check his e-mail near the restrooms in Atlanta (pictured below).

“Edit this story down so we can put it in the magazine,” Tyler said, flinging ten pages at me when I arrived at a busy Press office early Friday afternoon.

“I’ll help you,” C.J. offered.

An hour later, we were off to eat burritos and cut unnecessary details of an American boy’s wanderlust.

Watching bad pirate movies sets the tone for him to be my life coach (as he later dubbed himself) for the next three hours. Thanks, buddy. No sarcasm.

“I don’t know” and shrugging your shoulders are not acceptable answers. His words were hardly violent but they felt like bombs raining down on my head (and, I had no rain coat). I could’ve disappeared into those ugly, red, plastic booths but we were not in the Lower East Side so, I didn’t.

Before I knew it, there were crocodile tears in my eyes. He asked why I was crying but I had no words. How do you explain that you’ve become what you were making an active effort to avoid?

Pursuit of happiness: a tiny Himalayan nation just made it a political goal. So, why is it that I’m running in a diametrically opposite direction or am I? I’m not entirely unhappy; in fact, most days, I think I’m quite happy.

“$99 roundtrip to the Bahamas and $99 for three nights and four days. JetBlue is begging you to go,” he exclaimed. It is imperative for me to succeed as a person, as a writer.

And, maybe, he’s right. It’s time to start thinking about the future.

I jumped out of an aeroplane for a reason, to promise myself that this is twentieth year of life would not be the same stagnant puddle of potential sewage that others have described theirs as. But that’s precisely what I’ve done this term: cared far too much for things that I only care about casually and nothing of what I care about passionately (writing).

“It’s easier to care more about casual things,” I said, sinking further into my seat, when he asked if the paper would die if I weren’t around and whether or not I cared if it did.

It’s a terrible thing to be terrified of your own life, your own future.

“Hello, everyone, I’m trying to sell some grapes to raise money for my basketball team,” said a man holding a box of grapes on the F train that ushered Cat and I away from the latest Woody Allen film (Matchpoint).

Tick, tock, keep an eye on the clock: MTA and TWU negotiations might bring the train to a screeching halt in the middle of the station.

I gave the guy a band-aid I was saving for my right index finger and he gave us a grape each.

Later that night, as we stomped through the puddles, cold rain at our backs, through the East Village, Katy said, “I don’t like God… or vegetable oil” in response to the Grace Church on East 10th Street and the girl who declared Christianity and theatre as her two loves in her contributor’s biography for our University’s literary magazine Aphros.

And, I wondered if I wore atheism on my sleeve and bombarded people with it upon first glance and why atheists never had a beauteous temple to discuss their thoughts. Maybe, because there are too many different kids of us and we are far too busy judging one another to come together. To quote Dana Taplin, a poet and professor of environmental studies, “Sigh for America’s revolutionary generation.” Nevermind the fact that he was referring to the late breaking student anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s, we are no better now. In fact, we’re probably far worse.

On Erich von Stroheim’s art of directing,

“Take a close look at the world, keep on doing so, and in the end it will lay bare for you all its cruelty and ugliness.”

I apologise on behalf of the dipshit mayor of New York City, who allowed various media and the NYPD swarm Strawberry Fields on the 25th anniversary of your death. The helicopter hovering above the Dakota and the barricades that made animals out of us. I wanted to tell the obnoxious NYPD’s Finest to fuck off when he told us “to keep moving.” It was every thing you hated and I hated being a part of it.

“When the guns boom, the arts die.” - Arthur Miller, when he refused to attend a White House function at the height of the Vietnam conflict.