STAGNATING

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED ABOUT EVERYONE

For my birthday I decided to do something out of character and get a tattoo.

Not! Angelica was going on for awhile now about how much she wanted to get one, and took the plunge last week. She asked me to be on hand for moral support, though all I really did those few days leading up to her appointment was ask repeatedly if she was completely, absolutely sure about getting it. "It's going to be on you for the rest of your life." I can't help but feel like people seem to forget that one significant part of getting inked. I guess I've see one too many ugly ass tattoos, especially those that hold personal meaning. I'd just make a scrapbook.

I'm indifferent about tattoos. I'd never get one, only because I don't think you should put bumper stickers on Ferarri's (comedian Sebastian Maniscalco's eloquently phrased words). And I'm not implying that I think of my body as the automobile equivalent of a Ferrari, nay. Rather, I am of the school of thought that the sleek and refined vehicle exhudes enough mystery, and performance capabilities to draw attention to itself. 

Anyway.

Dave did her tattoo that day.

Deep personal meaning.

So cryptic!

And tiramisu for my birthday.

MEET ME HALFWAY

Needing a break from re-organizing my room the entire day, I walked a few blocks down to get a sandwich and an iced mocha for dinner. Angelica called as I was mid-stroll, asking where I'd been the past few days (my phone had been turned off because I hadn't bothered charging it). "I'm walking to your place right now," she says. "And I never walk." She exaggerates, that one.

We sit on the benches in Copley Square right as the light starts to fade and the night finally arrives. She does most of the talking while I break fast at 8pm there on the bench and listen. We sit there for some time, gazing at the beauty of Trinity Church before us, and the Boston Public Library right behind us, and the gleaming John Hancock Tower looming over us.

I have a love-hate relationship with this city nowadays. That night, in the middle of busy Back Bay, I forgot about the hate part momentarily.

FRIDAY NIGHT LONELY HEARTS CLUB

Last Friday night I was at Angelica's place watching Miss Congeniality when there was a knock at her front door. She told me she was having the usual church group meeting and since it was just one other guy coming over that night (everyone else in the church group was out of town for summer), she asked if I'd stay and join them.

Miss Congeniality is funny and all but my first opportunity at participating in a Bible study trumps all in chill Friday night plans. Benjamin Bratt who? Let's get this party started. Just hanging out with Christians and taking turns reading verses from Jeremiah and discussing his self-doubt in being chosen by God to deliver an important message. I have to say I enjoyed the session more than I thought I would. Richard, the guy leading the study was a cool guy, my age, and was super stoked to have a Muslim sitting in and running her mouth with questions and remarks.

It kind of blew my mind though that a lot of people aren't aware of the many similarities the three Abrahamic religions share. I got to thinking how useful and rewarding it would be if people of all faiths or atheists even volunatarily sat in on each other's meetings in efforts to understand the complexity, as well as similarities of what we each believe and why, something no class could teach, but that's just me. It is curiosity and inclination without confinement, and it is rewarding, without a doubt. Acceptance and appreciation for things that are not familiar to us always is.

We sat around in the living room for three hours, going off topic at certain moments, and then they told me that they ended each meeting by praying for others, and then sharing a personal trouble in our own life that we'd like the rest of the group to pray for. "So, how we do it is, we'll each pray for the person beside us. I'll pray for Angelica and what she just talked about. She'll pray for you, and you me," Richard instructs. We close our eyes and I can hear them muttering words around me. I say mine silently in my head.

Angelica turns to look at me after we're done and says, "Our friendship just reached a whole new level. I'm praying for you now."

CONVERSATION

Wood had a day off and came over to Boston from Providence to catch up.

We were lost in conversation, like old times, and ended up walking aimlessly from Boston, through Cambridge, all the way to Watertown, seven miles away.

Sometimes that happens.

AMBITION

I want you to understand clearly my conception of art. What I want and aim at is confoundedly difficult, and yet I do not think I aim too high. I want to do drawings which touch some people...In either figure or landscape I should wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but serious sorrow....I want to progress so far that people will say of my work, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly - notwithstanding my so-called roughness, perhaps even because of it....What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity, or an eccentric and disagreeable man - somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low. Very well...then I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less on anger than on love.

- Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother, Theo