Neglect, neglect, neglect.

No matter, today was fantastic.

It began with the secretary informing me that I would be shadowing her for the morning. While secretarial duties may seem lowly and uninteresting, for me they are thrilling. Ever since I can remember, I've desired to answer a multi-lined phone.

I spent the morning doing just that.

James Gleick called.

Yes, that James Gleick, author of Genius.

I just finished reading Faster, the third of his books I've read this summer.

I told him to please hold, pushed the transfer key, but hesitated before dialing the extension.

I wanted, more than anything, to tell him how much I appreciated his books. How he taught me physics, chaos and chemistry through wonder and colorful characters.

Alas, I dialed 213 and Gleick left my life, or at least his voice did.

Tony Bourdain also called me. Somehow, in retrospect, that feels less exciting.

I was given the wisest words I've heard thus far. I'm tempted to cherish them for myself, they feel like insider, trade secrets.

We had an intern lunch with agents and partners today. One of the partners said that if you have an interview in publishing you need only prepare yourself in one, simple way.

Obtain the New York best seller list, draw a line through the center of the listed books, read all the books above your drawn line.

This, he told us, is all you need for preparation. Publishers know that you've read Shakespeare, but that doesn't matter today. Prove that you know what's happening now.

To men in NYC, and all over the world, I ask you this:

Why must you sit with your legs spread as though they being pried apart using one of those dentist's clamps? It began in 6th grade carpool, when I was squished into the door by your this ridiculous and incessant phenomena. It has followed me through life, today manifesting itself on an over-crowded train during rush hour.

Don't tell me it's just a comfort thing, either. I have seen men sitting, legs crossed tightly.

Men, you take twice the space you need, and look utterly foolish. Stop spreading you legs like your straddling the worlds largest pumpkin.

and

To the man with the fruit stand outside my apartment:

Where art thou?

You sell me my morning banana for only 25 cents, it makes my day, everyday.

You don't placate me with a smile I'm only paying you a quarter after all.

You speedily deliver a yellow pocket of creamy, sweet, fruit into my hands.

I don't think you sleep, because you're dutifully on the corner every time I walk past.

But today, my dear fruit man, you were a no-show.

I went work with nothing more than a smelly coin in my hand.

Please come back.

I've been sick, and it has been raining.

To make myself feel better, I took the 6 downtown. When the doors opened at 42nd street, music poured in, it beckoned me out, despite the unpleasantly warm draft that accompanied it.

I cried. Like one of the eccentric characters I spend so much time studying and thinking about, I couldn't help myself.

The City, especially during the summer, is accustomed to street performances, but this music was more than a well-rehearsed act. It was sound so rich and cultural that it flooded my body, nourishing the sick, apartment-bound person I've been reduced to recently.

I think I cried because I felt that these men and their music were an act of generosity, unintentional perhaps, but generous just the same. Plenty of songs are catchy, even trashy ones. This music was more that catchy, it was captivating; the direct product of culture, irreplaceable, impossible to replicate, impossible to ignore. It filled ever terminal of the dank, hot New York subway station. Even as people rushed past en route to their busy lives, I knew it touched them all. It was truly generous, and that's why I cried.

This is them in times square:

Why is follow-through such an issue?

I make promises to myself, I set goals, I have good intentions, but sometimes my lack of follow-through is crippling.

I reassure myself with the anecdotal theory that it's my age. The last 14 years of my life have been somewhat rigidly structured with homework and school. Therefore, it must be only natural that I rebel against certain goals, even if I've set them for myself.

I do want to blog daily, but it's work, so I avoid it.

I reject the structure of deadlines, which manifests in unavoidable and unreasonable procrastination.

If gawking at Grand Central makes me a tourist, then so be it. As I entered the main terminal this morning, I felt like I had stepped into the great hall of Hogwarts. It lifted my spirits and my sour stomach. Grand Central is majestic, magical in a way that blows an air of adventure. It's another world, where food, travel, business and sheer architectural wonder, collide.

A bright conversation on the phone with a friend reminded me of the quote from a manuscript that I meant to mention long ago. It's about clarity, a woman says to a man:

"You know mostly I think that life is a terrible blur. But there are these moments of clarity when it all swims into focus and it's then that we need to act, because in these moments and by these moments perhaps we are defined."

I come across words that speak to my soul and others to my logic. This speaks to the latter. If only the moments of clarity were more frequent, they wouldn't be saturated by pressure. Sometimes moments of clarity are so intense, they're immobilizing, rendering them a blur just the same.

What do we do with our moments of clarity? Jot ideas down onto a notepad? Run around and

set about changing the world? Do some have more clarity than others, or are we all swimming in the same vortex of haze?

In my living room at home, my mom has hung great panels of butcher paper that she spray painted. The images are of trees and brush in a fast motion blur, meant to simulate passing something quickly as though in the window of a car or a train.

That's how life feels.

Yesterday was the final game of the 2010 World Cup. 4 years ago, I could hardly fathom that in 2010 I would be 19. Today, I wonder what life will be like when I'm 23. It feels like a blur, I wait for the clarity.

I'm being delinquent and writing at work, I can't help myself.

Broken Vessels, Essays by Andre Dubus, so complex and saturated with meaning that I could literally cry.

The first story is about a year he spent renting a house for cheap, with came with the consequence of tending sheep. He writes:

"This was my first encounter with sheep. When I was a boy, sheep had certain meanings: in the Western movies, sheep herders interfered with the hero's cattle; or the hero's struggle to raise his sheep. And Christ had called us his flock, his sheep; there were pictures of him holding a lamb in his arms. His face was tender and loving, and I grew up with a sense of those feelings, of being a source of them: we were sweet and lovable sheep. But after a few weeks in that New Hampshire house, I saw that Christ's analogy meant something entirely different. We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves."

Wisdom for today:

"Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people."

Today, without shyness and in front of the other interns, I announced that the murder novel I had been reading was simply too scary for me to handle. Thank god I did. Dubus is a pleasure in which I will indulge for the rest of the day.

This weekend I decided to commit myself more fully to this blog. Katharine Weymouth critically said that some people wake up, write about how they feel, and call it a blog.

I do not want to do that.

I think a good entry should be through provoking, but not overwhelming. My goal is to write more often and more freely. I aspire to meet the standards of Katharine.

Cooking in the oven that is New York City.

Only yesterday, Nans and I were in stark contrast as we sat atop a rock and dipped our feet into cold, salty water. I understand why some leave the city in the summer. It is much more pleasant to feel the breeze of ocean air, eating clams on the half shell, than it is to be blasted with stewed urine and garbage air, hot and enveloping. All those things said, I would still rather be in the city. I love it so.

Roasted peanuts and iced coffee from Dean and Deluca for lunch.

Stonington Connecticut, watching C-SPAN with my grandparents. Ash reads a manuscript and Betsy strokes princess Pearl. We sit in a pool of newspapers.

Katharine Weymouth, Washington Post Media Chief Executive is being interviewed.

Her wisdom: If you admire someone, take them to coffee and ask for their advice. People are always thrilled to know they're admired.

Who would you ask to coffee?

I came to New York to network. Unfortunately, changing coasts has not assuaged my constipation in doing so.

Traditionally speaking, if a man is interested in a woman, he pursues a relationship with her, he courts her. The same strategy is used for networking in the professional world. They should really call networking, professional dating. For some reason, however, I cannot apply the practices of dating to non-romantic relationship, it feels wrong. Why is that?

If I'm at a party and I meet someone who I'm interesting in and I ask for their number, am I hitting on them? Outside of the thematic confines of this conversation, I believe the general answer would be yes.

Much of networking has to be done at a grass roots level. You can't jump the gun and ask an executive to have coffee. I want to connect with some of the other interns I work with. So how do I network with them, while avoiding the awkward implications of professional dating? Do I preface myself by establishing that I want their number for strictly non-romantic purposes? Wouldn't that make the conversation more awkward?

I feel like everyone else has taken social networking 101, and I skipped class that day