Social Magic Practice

Uniform of choice: bulky sweater, cozy sweatpants, thick socks, ponytail.

Today is the last day of my vacation home, and nestled in the new couch, body drenched in hazy sunlight, I reflect. The quiet afternoon allows me to focus my mind, which has proved difficult for me lately.

On the east coast, the city grinds its jaws, unmoved by my absence. I can't say that I was unhappy to quit the city for the fresh, wide open views of Colorado, at least for a week. I will find myself in the city's screeching, howling intestines tomorrow. Though I often describe New York City with such grotesque imagery, I can't hate it. The energy and power of the vibrant artistic culture I explore suits me and fuels my 22-year old mind.

For now, I can spend this soft afternoon in peace.

Last night I went out in Fort Collins' downtown area with my brother James, who is both excitable and magnetic in social scenarios. He explained to me the new magic he's been practicing: an ability to raise energy levels in a room and make people unconsciously happy, including strangers. I suppose this social experiment seems obvious to some, but when you actually practice it, the results are thought-provoking.

For example, we found ourselves at house party where people were playing Nemesis, Beer-Pong's beefy big brother. Assigning ourselves as the cheerleaders, I followed his cues and we succeeded in electrifying the room. By talking, cheering and shouting hilarious observations to the opposing teams, we had everyone excited. Granted, this was a party, so people were open to becoming wild. However, this magic can be practiced on smaller groups, and James demonstrated this to me last night. People wanted to be around him, eagerly listening to his stories and jokes. I even found myself becoming increasingly animated as I was speaking one on one with him.

I want to be a magnetic person myself, but I know it wouldn't be my style to be this outgoing and daring.

By the way, fall has set, and grey winter approaches. The passing of my favorite season feels abrupt. I didn't savor fall as well as I should have.

I'm noticing that my stamina for writing is not so robust. I become exhausted with translating the images in my head into language. And with that, I have to sign off. I will post again soon, in an attempt to exercise my words.

BK in BK

Functional Offering / Bitching About Life

Today I saw a dead dog.

A curly mop of hair lay sideways against the street, its face slack against the concrete. Blood seeped from it’s head, forming a long trail of a color more brilliant than I would imagine it to be; my close abrupt glance at its face showed it wasn’t as concerned as I. The image is somehow burned into my brain, maybe because there is such significance in death. Why does something dead look so much more important than something alive?

I’m not really ready to contemplate death, because it hasn’t fully introduced itself to me yet and I’m not particularly looking forward to the day when we will have our first formal meeting. Even now I can indulge in an image of death and myself each settled down in a chair with tea, his gruesome smile leaving me defenseless, aimless.

I didn’t intend to write about such a dark topic, but it seems as if this needed to be out.

My intention is to improve my writing skills. I can write and write and write in my journal but I ultimately fail at writing anything except my grasping feelings of love and their significance. It seems that I can’t really keep up normal correspondence with myself, because it seems that the me that writes in a journal is 15 years old and constantly complaining about something. I’m thinking that maybe if I expose my thought to the world, even if no one reads it, my thoughts will become more eloquent for my imagined readers. Sitting outside on Fifth Avenue and 45th street yesterday, I attempted to narrate everything I saw -- in my own head of course. There was a moment there where I suddenly got the strange feeling that I was locked in place, and that I could somehow leave a part of me there forever, sitting on my bench. The stream of people would never cease, many people walking past multiple times. I think of “fingernail guy,” the old man who sits on a crate by the Roosevelt Avenue stop in queens, forever rubbing his yellowed and extraordinarily long fingernails against his t shirt day in and day out. People who live there know him; give him food and money though he never asks. Maybe I could be that guy, but a prettier, younger, female-er version on fifth avenue.

The decision to write more comes from the recent big change in my life. Suddenly I was handed a diploma, many congratulations and a cookie (but really, a cookie). What no one said was that life sucked in the real world. Wait, no. Actually they did say that all the time. I don’t know why I never gave much though to the world I was about to throw myself into, but I always assumed that Things Will Be Okay, and I Will Find A Way to Live. Apparently there was a Greatest Hits of inspirational bullshit playing on repeat inside my head. The truth of the matter is that money is the bane of human’s life experience. Getting a job is so difficult, and you’re so happy that you’ve got it that you forget that you actually have to work all the time. Then you are so exhausted that you spend your money to relax and to release steam. Then you’re out of money and you have to go to work again. And this, THIS! is life!

There may be a few other things in life too.

Maybe this is what I need to explore now.

So I’ll finish this small functional entry here, with hope of more to come. Observations, rants, glimmers of hopeful shit abound.