You know it's been an interesting weekend when...

... you arrive at work on Monday morning and there is a huge bouquet of flowers on your desk, and you're not quite sure from whom the flowers could possibly be. Unfortunately the intrigue stops there, as they are from your company, or so you assume when you read the card, which says, "Congratulations to the best PMINJ". You hope that PMINJ stands for Project Manager in New Jersey, though you suppose it could be Poetastic Madwoman or Prime Minister or Pretentious Maneater or Promiscuous Monster. At any rate, your office smells good, you are well-rested and your house is clean, and all in all things are looking a little brighter. And lo and behold, at some point in the last couple of frantic months, it seems you have gained a fair amount of respect for your work. And still, you hope to never, never, never manage a project again.

The key to happiness....

... seems to have fallen out of my bag somewhere between the start and the end of yesterday. In between, there were two cars and a beach, so things aren't really looking too good for finding my keys. Apparently I put too much stuff in my bag and my keys felt their personal space was being infringed upon, and so decided to leap to freedom, leaving me sandy and deserted in front of my apartment. Luckily, I'm immune to the locksmith spaz tax now, having distributed keys to my apartment the last time I was locked out. Still, it was a rather unpleasant end to an otherwise very pleasant weekend.

Speaking of the beach...

... Inspiration is usually fleeting for me. I am quite prophetic in a half-awake state, but I generally forget my point or realize its irrelevance between the half- and full-awake parts of my day. Friday night I was rushing for the subway so I could catch the last train home and I realized in my state of alert exhaustion that there is something about the city that makes me so calm. When I moved out of the city, I felt quite differently. I had just spent four grueling years in college, dashing about to finish work with which I had become obsessed, manage relationships with which I had become obsessed, appear in performances with which I had become obsessed... Moving out meant extrication, exhalation, and exultation. But now I realize, it was college that exhausted me, not the city as I've been explaining to people for years. There is, and has always been, something very life-affirming in the concrete and steel of New York. It is the realization that man can have a permanence, something that results from a self-supporting infrastructure, as structures crumble and become even more beautiful.

At the same time, I have always hated the beach. At the end of a sand-covered, wave-battered, seagull pooped-on day, I usually look back and say never again. But yesterday I kept an open mind and an open heart, and I just let myself take it all in. The beach, for all of its therapeutic claims, is full of busy-ness. The constant pounding of the surf, the screams of kids in the water, the gusting wind, the multicolored fanaticism of beachgoers, and the sand -- always creeping onto you until eventually you are downright breaded... these things can drive you mad. And yet, as a species we crave the ocean, building around our shores, carrying out annual pilgrimages to the beach. What is it about the circus of these trips that we find so calming? Yesterday as I awoke groggily after an hour's nap in the midst of all this, I finally found my beach zen -- it is the chance to feel small against a giant horizon, to let the earth batter you and to rise up baptized by all the earth has to offer. And as I continued to wake up, that feeling stayed with me and I knew my impression of the beach had changed forever.

and one other thing...

... to say about this little backwards journey through my weekend -- before rushing off to catch said train, I had the pleasure of meeting two more webloggers, little old me with my little old blogspot blog met two super cool weblog celebrities -- Amber and John. I think you will find, as I have, that they are each prime examples of why this whole phenomenon is so incredibly wonderful -- creative, inspired people I would have never otherwise met get a chance to reach out to each other and make a mark. And what a mark!