Hey, did I mention that I climbed Mount Monadnock last weekend?



Well, I totally did. And it was awesome. More photos on Flickr.

It's been well-documented that I hate it when strangers talk to me in the city, with a few exceptions. But today while I was waiting for the subway, occupying myself with my usual regimen of agonizing about my life, a somewhat tipsy woman came over and saved me from myself. She asked me where to get a train to Park Street, and then began chattily telling me about how she hates the Orange Line because of the time she was robbed at gunpoint at one station. I sympathized, and that was all the encouragement she needed to keep going. She told me where she lived and where she worked, and where she was moving and how that would make her commute better. She told me about her job and her roommates and how her boyfriend is too cheap to buy a bus pass and walks to work instead. I smiled and nodded and even talked a bit about my job, when she asked. And when she thanked me for the directions and got on her train, I marvelled at how simply her life had been opened to me, like a storybook, and closed again with a quiet thud as she walked away. Unlike my own dog-eared book that I flip through constantly, searching for clues to pages yet unwritten.

At first I thought it was the shoes. They were these crappy, cheap little things I'd bought at the last minute, when I realized that after all my trouble to track down an interview suit weeks before, I'd totally neglected footwear. So I picked up some round-toed, kitten-heeled shoes that I didn't hate too much at TJ Maxx the day before, and I thought they'd do. The next day I realized that I'd forgotten one of my shoe-related rules when picking them out -- shoes must have some kind of strap so that I'm not constantly clenching my feet just to hold them on. What this meant was that I couldn't run. In a city where public transportation can and will conspire against you to make you completely miss appointments and interviews, being able to chase after trains and buses starts to seem very, very important. So as I tottered to train platforms, around suburban streets, and through office buildings, I thought for sure that it was my shoes making me feel so unbalanced.

Imagine my surprise when, several nervewracking hours later, I set my feet on the Boston streets again and found that the world seemed to have righted itself, as though I had stepped ashore after a rough sea-journey. The familiar skyline rose over my head and the ground felt stable. And I was still wearing those damned shoes.

In less pensive news:

I won a Moosewood cookbook! Totally randomly. I entered a drawing months and months ago at Finagle A Bagel and totally forgot about it, until I received an email last week saying that they were going to mail it to me. It arrived yesterday. It is autographed by the Moosewood Collective! Not that I am all gushy over autographs generally, but I think it's cute.

Also, last week I found myself in H&M, which seems to be the only store these days that I can go into and find too many things that I like, instead of walking around in a huff hating everything and knowing that I will never find what I want. Ever. They had ladies' tuxedos, which my inner crossdresser desperately wanted, despite the fact that I cannot think of a single circumstance in which I would actually wear one, barring a sudden career change which involves being on a very fancy waitstaff. So I resisted. But I did try on way more clothes than I have in a long time. I need to not accidentally end up in that store anymore.

Poetry group meets tonight and I think for once I am actually going to have a poem to bring. Which is not to say that I actually like the poem very much, at this point, but it is something. Many other things in my life lately have been sapping my mental energy, so I have not been doing much creatively. But as long as I have words on paper, then there is something to toy around with and edit and share.

Career planning seems an awful lot like a game of chess, where you have to plan all your moves far in advance, all based on hypothetical opportunities offered by your opponent. Life is more like a chessboard with infinite sides and infinite players, which makes it even harder to predict anything at all. Even if you know where you want to end up, the path is tricky to figure out. And if, like me, you don't know your desired destination, it all begins to seem incredibly senseless and tangled. I think it would be easier if I could convince myself that having a goal really isn't important, since there's no particular place I want to end up. But its absence is what makes it seem so important, like a boring lecture that you weren't paying attention to until the teacher asked you a question and you had nothing to offer but a blank stare.