magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Three stories today. But I'm not going to tell the first one.

---

The second centers around a cardboard box and more of an emotional reaction than I'm letting on.

Sonali's friend Varuni, who has had a box of my stuff for almost five months, sent me another polite reminder of such about a week ago. I picked it up from her this evening. 'I'm not even entirely sure what's in the box,' I told her. 'I haven't seen any of it in nearly a year.'

She offered me a cup of tea. Some noodles with peanut sauce. 'I know that you're vegan. This is vegan-edible. I'm a giver.'

We talked about New York. And art. School, work, housing. Trees. And then she had work to do and I lugged my box out to Brooklyn and opened it up.

Clothes. Some of them still unwashed since I wore them last December. A book of my CDs. Very oddly, the half dozen CDs that had been lost when we moved out of our sublet in Providence. I have no idea how they ended up in Austin. Maybe they were in Stef's car the whole time that they were missing. An issue of McSweeney's. Two issues of The Wire. A bunch of junkmail. My paintings on paper from Rome. The two paintings that Chris had given me.

And Mr Bear. The teddy bear I've had since I was born.

---

Third, Marisa and I spoke on the phone tonight for about an hour. 'I feel I have to confess,' she said.

'Yes?'

'On your MySpace profile you say that you have a weblog, and that you don't want to link to it, but that it isn't that hard to find.'

'No. It's not.'

'I got curious. And looked for it.'

'Hrm.'

'Hrm?'

'Now I'm wondering what you've read, among my boring, self-indulgent thoughts and deep, dark secrets. Although I guess that they're not really deep, dark secrets, since I put them online where anyone can read them.'

'It seems that you have brunch a lot. And a lot of crushes. And you're vegan. But I knew that.'

None of which are terribly untrue assessments of my life. Although to be fair, while I'd love to eat brunch more often, it's usually only once a week. And while I do crush quite a bit, very few of them outlive the 'three-day crush' status.

Most of the conversation from this point forward was about the practise of keeping a weblog and how it affects your normal communication and interactions with other people.