Yesterday, I watched Citizen Kane and sex, lies, and videotape. In between the two, I pissed on a guy on 34th Street and got a blowjob from him. I was paid a nice chunk of money by him and I left his house more happy than I had been in a long time, since the last time someone paid me. There are two factors at work here that are causing happiness for me lately and I don't like the correlation, but I don't know if I can do anything about it, don't know how to cut those ties or to promote new causes of happiness. The two things that make me happy and that bother me because they make me happy:

1. Someone desiring my body, even if they are a hairy, unattractive person.

2. Getting paid money, having cash in my pocket.

It is funny, the connections, the ties between forms of happiness, how if you are already happy than you can appreciate other things and be made happier by them, some upward spiral. It is hard to get on that progressive happy track, but when you are on it, things are pretty awesome. You, or at least I, watch movies in a different way, a good way. Too often, movies are a way of killing time, of doing something because you are bored and don't like to be alone with yourself. This is what they have been for me lately.

Yesterday, however, a change occurred, and sure, some part of it probably lies with the getting money/being happy connection, but I also think that I watched these movies differently, engaged with them, because the movies were so excellent - that there excellence compelled an engaged viewing.

Welles was 24 when he made Citizen Kane. That blows my mind and I have a year left to compete with him and produce an equally awesome first work. I don't know why I am so wowed by age sometimes, like Zadie Smith publishing White Teeth at the same age. It's yet another way for me create a sense of inadequacy and guilt for myself. It is one of my hobbies. But sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh's first feature also, I watched twice, once last night, and again this morning. Everything is so perfect in that movie and the acting amazes me, just watching the facial expressions. James Spader is so amazing in that movie. But yes, both of these movies have got me excited about various cinematic techniques and wondering how similar effects could be achieved, or if they have been achieved in the written form. How do you do things with isolating sounds, carrying them over one scene into the next - how does one do this successfully on the page? Is it even possible?

After Joe and I watched sex, lies, and videotape, we went to the Metropolitan. I was in a good mood, saw various crushes, past and present, and those made me happier also. It's like crossing a stream by hopping from stone to stone, amazed that you are making it across without having to tread through the water and just hoping that you will keep on being able to land on a stone with each step, amazed that you are making it that far, that you keep on catching the stones, and you get giddier and giddier as you near the other side. This is that happiness linked from one thing to the next, the happiness perpetuating itself, aware of it, and giddy because of it, a high wire act and looking at the ground beneath you. But normally, you run out of stones and eventually wade through the creek for one jump or so and that is the problem. I think you have to willfully ignore that upcoming fall and sort of trick yourself with each stone you land on that you are going to make it. It is the only way to make it across.