What Possessed Me

Irony, career angst, streaking, fantasy boobs, etc.

 

Shrink: I think it's ironic.

P: What is?

Shrink: But not a coincidence.

P: WHAT?

Shrink: What you do for a living.

P: ...

Shrink: That what you do every day at work is the thing you have always dreaded the most.

P: I thought it was a coincidence.

Shrink: It's not.

P: It isn't? (genuine surprise)

Shrink: I doubt it.

P: Jeez...

(Silence as I contemplate this revelation which has been abundantly clear to my shrink for months.)

Well, that doesn't sound very fulfilling.

Shrink: Maybe you find fulfillment in being unfulfilled.

(Silence as my tiny brain explodes into a million pieces.)

Sometimes I think my shrink watches more "In Treatment" than is strictly good for her (though 99% of the time she is completely spot-on and scarily perceptive). Speaking of head shrinking, I can't believe I found this photograph, which is an exact representation of my recurring dream (running and then realizing I'm pantless). Sadly, only in my dreams do I have perfect boobies and gazelle-like gams.

Image via foto decadent.

Eye Break: Denis Dailleux

The taxi careened across the Brooklyn Bridge while I dozed in the back seat, exhausted from several long days and late nights at the office. I find that the best sleep is the kind I'm not allowed to have - catnaps during a critical scene in a movie, snoozes in a dark lecture hall, the nod-and-bob on the subway - it feel so much more delicious than sanctioned sleep.

I awoke suddenly when, in my fragment of a dream, the taxi stopped short. I awoke to the car weaving through traffic, the driver speaking Arabic on his cell phone.

Perhaps it was the distinctive sound of Egyptian dialect that transported me to Cairo, where I lived for a time when I was in my early twenties. In my drowsy state, I thought I was there - a young girl out on her own for the first time in a sprawling, fascinating, exasperating place. 

For a moment or two, I was crossing an enormous patchwork city, inhaling dust and the acrid scent of burning refuse and worrying if the driver knew the way to my dark, unpaved street.

So much history, so much emotion in a fraction of a second.

When I saw these photographs by Denis Dailleux, my heart stopped the way it does when you see a former lover.

The nostalgia they evoked in me was so potent that I felt overcome by a terrible ache. It was as if my heart was saying, There you are, Cairo! You are just the same. And I am so different. 

Did you miss me, mon amour?

Dailleux's photographs are uncommonly beautiful - see for yourself here.

And now, a cheesefest

When you watch this video clip, four things will happen:

1. You will lose any small shred of respect you may have for me. Les Miserables? Andrew Lloyd Webber? Really, P.? Is that how we roll now?

2. You will then jump out of your seat and start pumping your arm, Arsenio-style. Trust me, it will happen.

3. Toward the end of the clip, you will burst into tears of joy.

4. And burn dinner to the ground in the process.

This happened. I watched this never-been-kissed, dowdy woman sing three times tonight after Fauxhawk's dad told us about it and I got totally farklempt. I may need to watch this at least once a day from now on just to stay afloat. What can I say, I'm a sucker for an underdog. And I love seeing Simon Cowell get ridiculously moony.

Image via ffffound.