It feels like I've entered publishing during a civil war. The just-familiar world of words and books is shaking and crumbling at my feet. Tho new is seceding form the old.

This morning at work I was sent to retrieve as many copies as I could of Crain, a magazine that had published an article about the company.

The article was front, center, and large. The graphic displayed a Kindle with great, sharp, teeth attacking and consuming a hardcover book. Although it was a drawing, it may as well have been a photograph, because that is literally what's happening.

Some have advised me not to enter the world of publishing, because it is a dying field. As each new mac invention and digital-portable-whatever gets thrown onto the market, another newspaper, or paperback book gets bulldozed by its modernized counterpart. It's like Fahrenheit 451, without the burning of books, of course.

The ipad is now selling children's books that are interactive and whose pages you physical turn with your hand. Of course, physically turning really means finger gliding across the screen. Our children will be inept page-turners.

In Alice in Wonderland, the clock ticks, the cat talks, and you literally follow Alice through the rabbit hole.

I can't imagine growing up without real books, ruined book covers that I drew on with a crayon, or bindings, tattered and frayed from constant and relentless reading.

The Magic Skates was one of my favorites. The pictures were bright, and I could hold the sweet smelling, shiny pages right up to my nose as my mom read aloud. Can you imagine a parent putting their child to bed with an ipad? How cold.

My mom says that she felt the same way about the transition from records to CD's. She couldn't imagine choosing the modern version and foregoing the aesthetic appeal and bold sound of a record. But it happened. Will it happen to books and newspapers?

I feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak. Why enter an industry that is being pruned of all the things I love most? Just the other week, and editor at Open Road yelled at one of the techies because at a publishing company, we have no machines with word processing applications.

It is a luxury to be in the business of reading.

I feel that way despite having spent all day organizing book shelves.

It wasn't so bad. I bagged 5 books. Among them: A guide to happiness, Paul Newman's biography, a book about werewolves, and a new Gleick to add to my collection.

Today was also the last day for my fellow interns. We spent our lunch hour eating pizza and sharing thoughts in a circle. The topics discussed included favorite or least favorite person in the office. And, of course, office crush. We were gossiping to such an extent, that we closed to door to the small conference room, lest anyone overheard us.

It's harder to write when you're down, why is that?

Yesterday was a dark day. I left work with a toxic inferiority complex, generated by the growing knowledge that my fabulous internships are direct results of my very well connected grandparents, and not necessarily my own merit.

Many of my family members have thrown in an encouraging, slightly anecdotal word to the contrary.

The only person who has been successful in bolstering my confidence is my grandfather. In typical Ash style, he reminded me of his reputation, something he values dearly. And comforted me by saying that he would not have used his connections had he lacked faith in my ability to uphold is reputation.

This was on speakerphone while my mom cut his hair. I am still beaming.

I'd never walked up Madison at 7PM.

At 3PM, I find a variable assortment of runners, mothers with perfectly dressed children, small outfitted dogs, and, of course, normal people. But yesterday, as I perused the east side of the street, I found and felt something very different.

On 71st street, between a Prada and Ralph Lauren is a church. A few blocks up between more fancy boutiques, another church. Around the corner of a stiletto, spinning on a swarovski crystal pedestal, a trickle of a line is forming for the soup kitchen. Cardboard boxes, umbrellas and blankets are building forts like the ones my brother and I would make in the living room.

For me, it was the collision of real and fake, idealized and actual. The doors of Ralph Lauren opened, and fragrant, freezing air poured out. It smelled materialized, rich, luxurious. The homeless man wreaked of urine, tobacco and sweat.

I feel like I'm caught in a world where nothing is real.

4 Danish boys came over tonight for pizza and lots of beer. It was nice to be around people my age, boys was just an added bonus.

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.