Uncreated Conscience

After having too much fun and spending about $1500 to learn how to skydive (and I will be spending so much more in the process of getting my A license), the money issue has at last caught up with me. Of course, I don’t regret a single penny of it and it isn’t as though I’m extraordinarily poor. I am, in fact, many times richer than I was at this exact point last year with a goodly amount saved away in two separate accounts. My 401K is thriving. I am not struggling to meet my rent. I am not starving. I have a rather large “cushion” in my regular checking account for small luxuries. I am living quite comfortably, thank you very much. It’s just that seeing that cushion dwindle is making me a tad bit antsy, mostly because hoarding money is genetically ingrained in me. I am come from a family of Asians after all.

In all honesty, this financial panic came about because I just spent $800 for 10 hours of personal training at the gym, which has hit my bank account fairly hard. No worries, I say. I just won’t save the usual $700 this month and pay it off. I don’t regret purchasing those sessions either because I feel it will be better for my knee in the long run, it’s just that it’s quite a large amount of liquidity that I don’t necessarily have at the moment. My credit card is going to see some action for the first time in six months.

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The Apple store is utterly ridiculous. I went to the Fifth Avenue store after work yesterday with Pantalaimon in tow with the hopes that I would be able to rehabilitate him. All appointments at the Genius Bar were taken for that evening, so they told me to come back the next day and schedule an appointment online. In the meantime I bought a replacement battery in the hopes that Pan’s old one was shot (he is over three years old after all). Unfortunately, it appears as though something happened to the charge port because now I can’t even physically plug him in. This morning around 9:30am I made an appointment at the Fifth AVenue branch and the only time slot they could give me at the Genius Bar was at 10:40pm. What nonsense! Alas, I am in desperate need of an actual computer so this is quite important.

…only I keep thinking that the purchase of a new laptop (or any repairs greater than $300), although absolutely necessary, is a waste of skydiving money. It worries me a little that skydiving is getting to be a larger priority than my own writing. Is not so! …I don’t think, anyhow.

A while back I remember seeing the Kiwi movie floating around the internet somewhere and found it adorable and amusing. And a trifle sad, but in an uplifting way.

And then I found an “ending” to the original Kiwi movie which made me scream with laughter.

Little bugger forgot to wave off before he pulled! Oh well. I completely understand you, little Kiwi. I want to fly too. Hence why I jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

Oh Pantalaimon, baby, why aren’t you charging your battery even though you are plugged in? Is it because you were sitting in an overly hot car for a couple of hours yesterday? I am sorry! Please be good to me, darling. I need you. You hold so much of my data. And my novel. I will be a good girl and take you to the Apple store soon. Just don’t die on me yet.

Or perhaps you are wroth with me because I have been a neglectful friend and forgot all about you while I went skydiving (AT LAST!) yesterday. For that I don’t apologise because my graduation jump had been a long time coming and I had to take The Inimitable Bex and Derek and Ken down to the dropzone. Or rather, Derek and Ken, lovely, lovely men that they are, drove us down there.

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I would like to say that heat agrees with me. For the most part it does. The cold is unbearably painful but hot weather is merely uncomfortable at worst. I come from thin-blooded Californian stock after all. But while I say I can deal with heat, I always forget about humidity. Ye gods. There is nothing more disgusting than lying in a puddle of your own sweat. Because the air is so oppressive, your perspiration doesn’t evaporate, denying you any relief from the heat. The air feels like soup. In these conditions, my fall rate would probably be something ridiculous like 105mph. It feels so thick.

Having done nothing except order takeout, watch Law & Order: SVU marathons, eat an obscene amount of ice cream, and read Murakami all weekend, I feel like a completely useless slab of meat (steamed to perfection). I almost welcomed the dawning of Monday morning because I could rely on spending at least 9 hours in my frigid office and then go to the gym.

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I don’t what I’ve done in a past life to anger the weather gods so, but it must have been something truly heinous as it is forecast to be perfect and gorgeous tomorrow and I, as per usual, have no real means of getting down to the dropzone. Next weekend on the other hand, I have access to two possible forms of transportation but currently the meterologists predict thunderstorms for Saturday.

Last night The Inimitable Bex and I had dinner at Korea Way before heading down to Park Slope/Prospect Heights to bid farewell to her friend and coworker Jennifer Van Der Kwast, who leaves for Curaçao to spend three months with her husband (who is at the moment filming a documentary down there). I’m really not in that area as often as I would like; I fell in love with Park Slope the instant I stepped foot in Brooklyn a few years ago. Beautiful brownstones! Hipster coffeeshops! Vintage clothing stores! In many ways Park Slope reminds me a lot of home, of Pasadena: both are satellite “city”-burbs of a larger urban center. Although the architecture is different, there is something about Park Slope that is so very reminisicent of Pasadena that it sometimes makes me a little nostalgic. It is my dream neighbourhood. One day, I will buy an place out there. Now excuse me as I go win the lottery.

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When I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to grow up to be my skydiving instructor Laticia, I wasn’t being facetious. There are many reasons I have such an enormous crush on my teacher, not the least of which is because she is awesome and chill and patient and an all-around great person, but perhaps one of the most scintillating and alluring things about Laticia is that she won the lottery.

Do people even win the lottery? I used to be convinced that playing the lotto was all some grand conspiratorial scheme concocted by the government to steal money from its citizens one dollar at a time. The people who’ve claimed to have won? Completely fabricated. There is no deli owner in New Jersey with lucky millions! The Ministry of Truth is at it again.

One of the times Bear and I were hanging out at the dropzone, we took an informal survey of when people bought their own gear. The consensus seemed to be around 50 jumps (why did I have to get addicted to such an expensive hobby again? I think the main canopy alone costs $1500) but when I asked Laticia, she just laughed and said her story was slightly different.

“My husband’s family won the British lotto and were awarded £2.2 million,” she said. “I was 21 and just starting.”

What the hell? She’s totally not a real person. Not a real person.

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Goddammit, I meant to be writing in my own novel today, but instead I got sucked into finishing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Which I adored, of course. It’s a bit beyond me to review that particular novel (or any work of Murakami’s), but I will definitely say I give it a wholehearted recommendation.

This lack of having a ride down to the dropzone is making me unwontedly anxious. I am considering joining Zipcar so I can go down to the DZ this summer as often as I want without having to rely on Bear or anyone else for a ride down to Williamstown but I sort of desperately need to get down there next weekend so not too much time elapses between my last jump and this one. Ugh, I hate feeling anxious about anything; it screws with my sense of equilibrium, especially as I always like to having something to do, or at least a concrete plan of action. Also, I miss Bear horribly, which isn’t helping matters. I feel simultaneously restless and inert; I want to go out and do something but I can’t find anything I want to do aside from skydiving and the thought of leaving my apartment and being social makes me feel preemptively exhausted. However, I wouldn’t mind having people come over to my apartment to keep me company although I can’t think of anyone who would ride the train to the Astoria to alleviate my sense of ennui.

Perhaps writing in my novel will do. That is a good plan of action, JJ. Remember, you always feel better when things are taken care of.

Why, oh why does the weather have to be beautiful on weekdays and never on the weekends? Tuesday and Wednesday were gorgeous: clear, sunny, warm, with minimal wind. Saturday looks like doom: scattered thunderstorms. Dammit. However, on Sunday it promises to be good skydiving weather. If only I could figure out how to get down there. Oh, Bear! I knew I didn’t like this month-long cross-country road trip for a reason! (He spent the night in a parking lot in Chicago last night and will hit up the Badlands today.)

I have many things to catch up on since my return from holiday, actual work-for-a-living work notwithstanding. I think I wrote all of two words on my novel last week, although I did read a whole helluvaheapuvalotta books:

• Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
• Looking for Alaska by John Green*
• Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold*

*Highly recommended

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I may not have spent the past week in the Caribbean as I had initially intended, but I couldn’t possibly be more burned/tan. I am pleased with my first colour of the summer although I wish it were a bit more even. Currently my skin is a panoply of sour milks, pale golds, burnished bronzes, burnt siennas, and raw umbers, the darkest of which is splashed across my nose. I, who am ordinarily so religious about applying sunscreen (not because I’m prone to sunburn but because I am vain about future wrinkles) completely and utterly forgot about it this week.

Vacation (or “holiday” as Richard would have me say) has sadly come to an end. This coming week will be a bit of a downer despite its brevity because Bear has gone on his month-long cross-country odyssey. Yesterday morning as I was making my bed before leaving for work, I wrapped White-Harp up in his high school hoodie sweatshirt. She is disappointed she didn’t have the opportunity to run and stowaway in his gear. I said she was a meanie Harp. In the shower I tried to have a good cry about his going away because I miss him horribly, but all that came out was a strangled yelp and a moaning whine. Because I sounded like a whiny three-year-old throwing a fit because he wasn’t allowed to shove his favourite toy car up his nose, I stopped.

My feeling of emptiness mostly comes from the fact that neither of us could jump on Memorial Day on the account of the winds being too strong at 3000ft. We’re too inexperienced under canopy to manage that and would probably end up too far downwind to make it back to the dropzone. Bear and I have completed every one of our student jumps together but alas, the last was not meant to be. We’ll mostly likely have to complete our AFP E-2 dives separately (he could probably jump at Perris Valley in California), unless we want to pay another $175 and repeat our Level 6 because more than 30 days will have elapsed between jumps. However, I look forward to jumping because goddammit, I’m going to work towards having my Class A Skydiving License by my 23rd birthday.

I’m going to try and head down to the dropzone again this weekend to see if I can’t squeeze in my graduation jump. Anyone care to join me? I would love to have a graduation jump party! You can stand on the heckle deck and jeer and jibe at me as I land and have a beer or two afterwards! Now…who lives in New York City and has a car and wants to watch me possibly kill myself as I dive headfirst out of perfectly good airplanes? I’m willing to chip in for gas! And who knows? Maybe you’ll want to jump out of airplanes too!

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Nothing makes you feel more warm and fuzzy inside than hearing your skydiving instructor say to you, “You’re solid.”

Bear and I passed our AFP C-1 jump today, or The First Release Dive, otherwise known as the OMFG THE INSTRUCTOR ISN’T HOLDING ON TO ME Jump. It was fucking amazing: we exited at 13,500ft together, did one practice touch, and then my instructor was suddenly in front of me and we flew together. I used him as my heading; that is, if I saw myself turning away from him, I would turn back to face him. We held hands as we fell through a cloud and then I waved off and pulled at 5500ft. I’m growing more and more comfortable under canopy, although flying the chute still makes me much more nervous than freefall. Haven’t stood a single landing yet though. Must work on my triceps at the gym so I can complete the flare. Sliding in my (ample) ass is fine but doesn’t look good.

My instructor was filming me during my skydive which was really cool as I got to see what my body position looked like in freefall. I’ve got to remember to keep my stance narrower. Also, my hair was sticking out through the holes in my helmet, making me look like a flying hedgehog. Who is awesome? I am awesome.

Our goal is to pass the next three jumps and the graduation jump tomorrow. We shall see. We have been defeated by winds and extreme busyness thus far. But we spoke with our instructors and we may be able to do them consecutively in the same loads with each other. Next up: solo turns, then back flip, front flip, barrel roll, and changing the rate of the freefall! To anyone who has ever considered skydiving, I say: DO IT.

DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.