This morning I waslistening to the Pogues and cleaning up my room. It was the superficial cleaning, picking things up, putting things away etc. Not the real cleaning. The real cleaning involves a vacuum cleaner, dust rags, moving furniture around and the like. I don't do too much of that even though the crisis prompted in my upper respiratory system when I put my cosmetic products in their little crate on top of my dresser should alert me to the fact that it would be a good idea to clean before it gets any worse.

When your mother gives you dust masks for Christmas so you can clean your house without going into some type of respiratory trauma, you know you are doing something wrong.

I haven't listened to the Pogues very much in a long time. When I play their CD I have this uncomfortable sense of being carried back to an earlier time when I was a little angrier, and little sadder, and little less abashed, and frankly, more interesting.

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I'm pretty sure that my therapist quoted the last season of Sex and the City to me last week. We were talking about relationships and he said something along the lines of: if you fail in love, does that mean you didn't love at all? I wouldn't have thought anything of it except that he made this big production of saying at least twice that it definitely wasn't from Sex in the City but from some other movie or tv program he had recently seen. Later when I was thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I had heard it as well and it almost certainly was a quote from the program. Not only was it a line from the show, but it was one of those kicker lines meant to sum up everything going on in the whole episode where you actually see her words being typed out on the screen.

The funny thing about him mentioning Sex in the City (and this has nothing to do with love or sex or anything we were talking about) is that a whole plotline around Miranda, one of the four characters, is inextricably linked to the experience of therapy for me. My therapist has this office with big arched windows in the West Village overlooking Sixth Avenue and there is what I thought for many years was a church, but realized its some old municipal building, red brick, heavy romanesque (?) columns with a little garden next to it. I look into that garden every week when I am speaking about intimate, challenging details of my personal life. When Miranda decided she wanted to get married but couldn't figure out an appropriate place, she stumbles upon the same garden. It turns out to be the perfect venue for her wedding, with a sufficiently tasteful and secular backdrop to an event she was desperately trying to keep true to herself. It was a strangely nice feeling to know that all of the viewers all over the world watching Miranda tie the know now know this little place that occupies such a significant association in my own psyche. I wondered if people realize that wasn't a set piece or something they put together for the show. It's a real place where people can go and sit, that is in fact very lovely.

The thing that I have found the most beneficial about therapy is that it helps me do things that are good for me. Although I invariably put it off for too long, it turns out that cleaning my room is good for me. Feeling better about my surroundings makes be feel better. Belonging to the Y, having a job I like, losing weight, and getting into a relationship. All these things are good for me and I was able to do with more ease, because of therapy. I also have a sneaking suspicion that all these things make me a bit less interesting, but the underlying assumption there is that loneliness and angst are more interesting than life satisfaction and contentment. Clearly this is debateable, but I'll set that aside for now.

I was thinking about this this morning though when I forewent organizing my sock drawer and just stuffed everything in and shut it. Yesterday, I found a little apartment in Hell's Kitchen, in my price range (well almost), in a workable space. The question is could a live in a junior one bedroom, with my three closets full of stuff? I currently live in an (uncharacteristically) large apartment in Northern Manhattan, which is (characteristically) rough around the edges. One of my reasons for looking for a place to buy is the realization I came to that I resent the landlord's neglect of the building to such a degree that I won't lift a finger to make the apartment nicer. No painting, although the apartment desperately needs it. I even resent staying home to wait for the workmen. Right, so once it was decided that I needed my own place the question became what sort of place can I manage in. There is clearly an array of attractive things about Hell's Kitchen, I can walk everywhere for one. I could sleep late and still get to work on time. I could go out late at night and still get home without a twenty-five dollar cab ride or a two hour stint on the subway. But is it going to be good for me. The biggest question is can I fit all my stuff into a junior one bedroom in midtown? Would I go to the gym more if I was closer to it? Would I keep my apartment neat or would it be utter chaos? Would it be a home that would be good for me?