Author: Dan Rhatigan

Very weird experience last night. After spending the evening on Staten Island with Adam and his girlfriend, Naomi, I was riding the ferry back to Manhattan when I looked up from my book and noticed that some fog had rolled in and obscured the lights of New Jersey that I should have been seeing. In fact, I couldn’t see a single that at all outside of the ferry. If you have ever seen the harbor and the skyline at night, you know that there are quite a few lights out there, so this was really freaky. I walked out to the front of the boat to see if anything was visible out there, but there was nothing whatsoever. This was scary and wonderful all at the same time. It was a little surreal to be in the middle of New York (fucking) City with no signs of life around me, but it also had this strange sense of being on a haunted ship or something — no sky, no shore, just the sound of the water and the engines.

I walked to the back of the boat to see if Staten Island were visible at all, just as the lights along the Brooklyn waterfront began to reappear. Still no sign of Staten Island or Jersey, however. I raced back to the front of the boat, and there was the Manhattan skyline, lit up like a Christmas tree and clear as anything, as if nothing had been out of the ordinary. I looked back and saw this thick black cloud of fog hovering over the harbor behind us. It looked tangible, and more than a little evil.

Now that it’s been a year since my first online journal entry, I thought I should take a moment to pause and reflect about what I’ve gotten out of this little experiment. (Those of you who know me better will be think, and rightly so, “Pause and reflect? Day-um, Sparky must have a BUTTLOAD of work that he’s procrastinating about.”)

Overall, it was a good idea to start it. I’ve never been very disciplined about keeping a journal, although I’ve been partial to the idea ever since I first read Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy. The decision to post the entries on the web site has been a good motivation for me to keep writing. Not only do you people keep nagging me if I slack off, but the feedback I get encourages me to keep going. It’s also been a great way to make lots of new friends, which has probably been the best part about it.

My original thought for the journal stuff was for it to be a way for people who knew me to keep up on what I was doing so I didn’t have to write so many similar e-mails. As fate would have, almost no one I know reads this regularly, and it’s become a tool for new people to get to know me a little better. That’s been a nice surprise, and it’s helped get me over some of my inherent shyness. I’ve found myself meeting people who already know too much stupid stuff about me for me to worry about making a good (and possibly misleading) impression. Hell, this sort of shameless self-promotion has even gotten me laid a few times. God bless technology!

My writing has also gotten a hell of a lot better. Writing more often has made it easier for me to control my voice and sharpen my skills. The journal writing has gotten closer and closer to the way I actually speak and think, and my paying attention to that aspect has even helped me with more formal writing, which I’ve been doing more and more for work.

Why all this introspection? Well, aside from marking the anniversary of this journal, I’m also beginning preparations for my 30th Birthday Blow-Out Shindig. Yes, it’s true, and you’re all invited! Details to follow, but if you have any desire to boogie with Sparky in his spacious Williamsburg loft, make sure to keep your calendar free. Details to follow.

I get lots of compliments about my spacious loft in the ‘hood and the veritable museum of crap that I keep inside of it, but my secret shame is that I usually hate being such a pack rat. There’s no way that I could live in a smaller apartment even if I wanted to. I have already managed to discard truckloads of thrift-store clothes and furniture, old books, records, stacks of unused paper and art supplies, shoes that seemed cool for about a week, etc., but there always seems to be more lying around or more coming in. I get very sentimentally attached to a lot of my things, or I think that I ought to maintain my own reference library of books or source material for mix tapes or collages. I have lots of neat things, but it’s a real pain in the ass.

A lot of the time, I just wish I could be one of those glamorous minimalists who can live in a modest apartment filled with nothing more than an elegant little futon, one or two achingly beautiful Eames chairs, and a thin, futuristic laptop (perched on a long, otherwise empty desk made from a slab of something interesting with spindly metal legs attached) for good measure. I want to own about 10 pieces of beautiful, versatile clothing, and 3 pair of shoes at the most. Maybe a few Polaroids of frolicsome moments pinned to the wall for decoration.

Even that laundry list seems like a lot when I look at it. The irony, though, is to have so few things would probably mean spending enough money on them that each wouldn’t deteriorate immediately. I could probably sell my warehouse full of stuff here and invest in that new life. I probably wouldn’t be able to afford the rent on a place nice enough that I wouldn’t need to camouflage the structural defects with knick-knacks, though. The trouble is, if I got rid of everything, I would go crazy from the recurring instinct to wander over and look for the box of old photos or that old book with the crazy picture in it. Or I’d want to make someone a card with that old paper and some of the little plastic toys in that other box. Or I’d tell an anecdote that could only be illustrated by that one…Oh well, you get the idea. If I ever have the clearance sale, just promise you’ll keep in touch in case I have a relapse and need access to all the toys.

Note to self: The very friendly Asian woman who runs the grimy laundromat down the street and speaks no English should not be trusted to wash those expensive, richly colored dress shirts that you can’t afford to replace right now. There is no ancient Chinese secret being used there. Only cheap bleach.

Old habits die hard. No matter how old I get, or how much poise and self-confidence I have, I still have these occasional relapses to my high-school social instincts. Meaning that a lot of the time when I find myself around the cool, popular kids, I become a shy, awkward, babbling, grade-A loser. Why must the simplest things sometimes be so difficult?

It’s a very modern, very Internet-enabled thing to have someone break up with you via e-mail and AOL IMs, but it doesn’t feel very savvy. It still sucks.

I was waiting for this one to happen, but I’m still sad. And yes, I feel dopey for being sad, since I was expecting it, and since nothing had even gotten serious yet, but still…