Am I back?

2010. Will this be the year of consistent blogging? Letting the travel blog rest while I ponder a stationary life filled with my favorite things: reading, cooking, eating, sleeping and WRITING. Got the journaling back on track. Whew! Was opposed to any kind of blogging. Thinking it might clog up the wheels of actual writing. But as I scour novels brimming with intimate description - the meat of all good prose - I succumb to the acknowledgment that I have not the attention, drive nor stamina to be anything more than a one page wonder. Alas, the attention span of a blog entry!

So we'll give this a whirl. Attempting regular installments. Just to test my consistency, my drive, my dedication, my discipline. Fearing that each of these are lacking I won't stake my breakfast, much less my reputation, on any measure of success. Even with the bar set at about two feet below sea level.

Okay, enough of a pep talk. Will I cobble together any sentences of note today on this Day One of my first blog attempt of 2010? Topics topple by, landing weightily at my feet. Will they be left to shrivel without so much as a notation? Or will they gather one more day of dust on the desk of my muse?

Maybe I'll move to Maine where there will surely be constant fodder. But I live in New York City, the city of tales and books. Just walk out the door, pick a direction and there will be a story. Like any number of celebrity encounters in the streets where I walk:

Sam Waterston smiling winkingly at me as he took one of my handouts at Playwrites;
John Glover to the rescue at the stage door and guiding me on my way at the Friedman;
Sean Penn attempting to reason with a teenaged daughter on 9th Ave;
Uma Thurman at MoMA shop keeping a low-profile with her boyfriend's hand down the butt of her pants;
Robert DeNiro handing me his driver's license at 6am so I'd recognize his name at the Tribeca polls;
Jean Stapleton under her real name discussing details at the registration table;
And of course the brief exchanges with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at their book signings.

There are more. These are just the ones at the tip of my fingertips today. But other than the fact that they're famous, there's nothing to tell. But celebrity sells. So thank goodness I'm not in it for the money. More interesting encounters are the ordinary people getting through the day. Like:

Old woman with a walker who yelled at me because I didn't hold the door for her.

Funny, that's all I can think of now. Interesting but fleeting. And that's why they must be written down. Or then they're forgotten. And eventually prove to have never existed. And that's why I write. For my very existence. To prove I live. For what other proof is there?