Melancholia. I caught it, briefly, earlier this afternoon, but then I rallied and made a quick near-teary cell phone call to rescue myself then went to a coffee shop where I ate a toasted cheese sandwich and read Sy Hersh, and now I feel better.

Another reason I don�t think I could live in New York has to do with the way so many of you New Yorkers talk about money. I can pinpoint the exact moment that my friendship with DP started shrinking away from itself and contracting like a sick stomach � he had been in the city for about a year, I think, when he called to tell me that he�d just gotten a $25,000 raise at work. I congratulated him, trying not to show that I was taken aback by his telling me the exact figure, and I said something along the lines of, Wow, next time I come visit the drinks are on you. But he sighed and said, "Oh, don�t be so dramatic, people get raises like this after their one-year reviews all the time here. In New York a $25,000 raise is nothing, it�s the difference between living in Brooklyn and Manhattan and that�s it. I�m going to move as soon as my lease is up and it�s not even going to make a difference in terms of my disposable income, so please, just stop it with the drinks-are-on-me, all right?" He sounded annoyed and irritated. I�d been rebuked. I felt so ashamed of myself for being such a rube, both on account of my general discomfort with that kind of money talk and because I was so poor compared to him that to me an extra $25,000 a year would be a windfall. The strain of money-vulgarity that we tend to endorse here in Seattle differs from the one that I have found embodied in DP and other New Yorkers I�ve met mainly in terms of its cluelessness, for instance that time I went to the party where several friends were discussing the possibility of each putting in 50 grand on a castle in Slovenia that they could then use as a vacation house. It didn�t occur to any of them that there might be people in the room who would be excluded by that kind of talk; when I later expressed surprise that everyone had been so casual about it, I got busted for my surplus sensitivity and lack of consideration; these real-estate speculators were lovely people who happened to have a lot of money, how dare I hold that against them by suggesting they weren�t entitled to the same freedom as everyone else and should censure their conversation for the sake of others� comfort. Whereas in New York it�s more like You bet I�m rich, so fuck you. Or today, at the coffee shop � yeah, it was one of those afternoons � while I was waiting for my sandwich I was eavesdropping on an exchange that at that point was dominated by one of its two participants, a D-cup cupcake with a smooth bob. She was talking to a guy about how she�d spent several years working as the personal assistant to a local software executive, but she soon realized that she�d gotten the job on account of her looks and even though the pay was terrific she began to hate the superficiality of the position and also the mindlessness of her work. I had so much more ambition than to be the hot chick behind the desk, she said, it was stifling not to be able to use my mind and my degree and to be around people who didn�t even want me to, so I had to get out for my own self-respect, because I knew I was capable of so much more. The guy nodded earnestly � it was this earnestness, not his next question, that made me aware that this was a pickup attempt in progress rather than a meeting of old friends � and asked her what she did now. "Oh," she said, "I�m retired. I cashed out all my options before the tech bust and paid off my condo and put the rest in CDs. Now I don�t have to do anything, so I basically hang out. I love this place, don't you?" In New York, I think, the same exchange would have included the post-stock sale net � la DP, perhaps along with a brief sketch of the CDs� income-providing structure and � this is important � some self-awareness with respect to the incongruity of touting one�s talent and ambition while simultaneously embracing the life of a professional slacker. Self-awareness bordering on self-hate, I mean, the intriguing sexy strain of self-hate particular to Manhattan, the intelligent self-hate that buzzes like a breeder reactor and indeed seems, to this rude exile, to provide the city with its distinct dark power. (Viva Manhattan � I salute you!) We don�t have that here. If Manhattan is amphetamines, Seattle is Thorazine. If I told the story of the coffee-shop hottie to an assimilated Seattle resident, chances are that he or she would regard me with confusion. Here�s what he or she would say: "Wait, I don�t get what you think is so funny. Why should she be working even though she doesn�t have to?" And that is not funny.

Another Seattle phenomenon is how having a lot of money is often equated with being on a higher spiritual plane. Once I was about to meet a super-rich retired techie, and I was given the brief on him in tones of awe as if he were the Dalai Lama: "He only eats organic food and drinks organic wine, he even visits the farm where his vegetables are grown so he can meet the farmers. He only wears Egyptian cotton and handmade shoes from Italy. He does yoga and Pilates every single day!" Well, so what. Dude has no job and no significant other and no commitments, and he has the time and resources to do and go wherever he wants. This is not a comment on his purity of soul or betterness than the rest of us poor slobs. If I had that much money in the bank and never had to hold down a job again, maybe I�d work out all the time and get a fantastic body too, but I wouldn�t expect to become a cult object. In my experience, people in Seattle either resist or willfully ignore the idea that having money can be an accident of fate, which to many of them it was since here after all is where the historical high-tech gravy train left the station. It�s as though once you have it, you have always deserved it and your self-congratulation is allowed to become retroactive, you can swathe yourself in it like a family tartan. I have not known as many self-rich people in or from New York as I have in Seattle � in New York it was their families� money � so the contrast I�ll draw here is less evidence based, but it seems to me that living in New York, the decision to do so, inherently contains a gamble: you might end up famous with your name in lights, you might get squashed like a bug. To speak of one�s big break implies the role of luck, that it could have been someone else. I guess I�m saying that it�s the worthiness that�s presumed; New York: Shit, that could have been me, but Seattle: It was me, of course. This also goes back to self-awareness and self-hate, see.

Oy. I�ve got no real point to make here. Maybe I should shut up and move to Arkansas.

People, if you could possibly have a heart and refrain from telling me what you consider chump change, I�d appreciate it. And I don't want to know how much you make, either, so please keep that to yourself as well. Thanks.

Weekend weekend weekend. Rock.