Actually, this title was supposed to be "The Saga of Temperatures," but then I typed Fahrenheit and had a Deutschpiphany which Wikipedia then soullessly debunked. This is a key reason I take arbitrary offense to the idea of personal computers in the form of cellular phones - 24/7 access to the internet somehow saps the wonderment out of epiphanies such as the one I just had about the word "Fahrenheit" which breaks down into "Fahren" which means to go and "heit" which is one of those handy suffixes that just means "-ness" and here I am, at the mall, realizing Fahrenheit is actually "goingness" and I was blissfully diving through the implications of "goingness" when I Wikipedia'd it and found out it was named after some lousy German guy with a kooky last name.
Lame.
But that serves me right for all the jokes I ever made about places being named after John _____. Like Wilmington, which was obviously founded by John Wilmington in 1877, when he crossed the ocean on a fleet of mermicorns (which are unicorns crossed with mermaids yes Meredyth if you are reading this I am still drawing those sad limbless amalgamations in the margins of my notebooks), that promptly went extinct once he disembarked at a seaside bodega selling gnarly boards and overpriced ice cream over at Wrightsville Beach. John Wilmington was smitten immediately by the pristine meteorological chaos of the place, which is why he gave it his name.
Fact: None of the above is true. Also fact: Some kindly North Carolina family is right this moment flipping through the Thomas Kinkade catalogue. Also also fact: I am a terrible employee. Also (cubed) fact: I don't really give a hoot.
Technically it's autumn, but today, as I drove the arduous mile-and-a-half to my place of work, here at the mall (did I mention I work in the mall), the temperature on Shoji's dashboard read 79. Does Central New York ever reach 79? No. Does this affect why I love it here so much? Absolutely.
I woke up with a mission: to ride my bike. I've veritably skyrocketed up the ranks of bike-riding prowess until I can now - wait for it - ride a whole hour without perishing. This is huge! Soon, maybe, I will actually be at a level of efficiency where I can go real human places on my bike, instead of winding around the neighborhood making all the traffic angry and basically behaving like I am an eight-year-old who just got her training wheels off. So I woke up, and it was a lovely day out, all blue skies and mild temperatures, and I calculate - if I drink this coffee within the next hour, I should have ample time to commandeer the neighborhood, make it home, change into my faux-gallery-owner clothes, and be at the soulsucking mall right on time.
Unless it starts dumping rain. Which it did. Which made me go: "NOOOOOOOOOOOO." A noise not dissimilar to what I do every time we find a brave cockroach, who, my mother insists, is the "outdoor kind" so he's probably just adventurous but I still kill them with vigor and relish. My mother, incidentally, was once described by my friend Ariel as thus: "She's a very sweet lady, but 'with it' are not words that come to mind when thinking of her." My mother will also be here on Wednesday. Expect eye-rolling disbelief to follow.
So Rob, from the other room, declares, "It's supposed to clear up!" Which is truth, not just optimism, and this is one of the reasons I realize my aversion to personal computers in the form of cellular phones is so arbitrary - he was reporting, live, from the satellite view of his handy-dandy Weather application, or "app" as all the hip kids are saying these days.
And lo and behold, it sure did, and I raced out of there and spent a glorious sixty minutes barreling over speed humps and running into curbs and flying down sudden unexpected hills and have I mentioned I am in love with that bike? I am. And vicariously the fellow who gave it to me who is (as we speak!) preparing a dinner that he will deliver and devour with me here at the mall. Did I mention I work in a mall?
Yes, this post is only about the weather. But the weather here is alternatingly stupendous - today, getting rained on, then getting dried off, then rained on and dried off again in the course of one bike ride - or sluggish, as when it just rains and rains and rains. But I will take rain, thank you. After all that snow, rain is magical.
Also, Rob and I have had burritos at Flaming Amy's twice in three days. I am not ashamed, for two little words:
Salsa. Bar.
Here are three more:
Peach. Ginger. Salsa.
And one last one, just to drive the point home:
Salsa.
This could be a goddamn haiku!
Stay tuned, friends and frenemies, for the following: my mother's visit, why visiting writers are kind of always awful and how I will someday eat that statement alongside my hefty slice of humble pie, why there is a God, the meaning of life, etc, etc. Promises.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Saga of Employment.
I am at my job right this second. I am also typing this right this second. Do a little deducing, and you should be able to see the point I'm going to make anyway.
Three big things happened when I came home from NYC: my third class started, I got a bike, and my job began. This has created an actual need of a planner to schedule the following: when I need to go to class, when I need to go to work, and when I can go bike riding, rain permitting. A brief note about my bike and bike-riding skillz - I essentially have none. I think it's been ten or maybe twelve years since I actually rode a bike with any regularity. There were the Gilded Bicycles of old AlHam, but they were always either in a creek, outside the VT, brakeless, or almost always too tall for me to ride. Rob, watching me almost topple to the ground every time I tried to mount this new bike, admitted he'd never really realized what an awful thing being short is. I think I said something like, "You're telling me, bub" and proceeded to fall over on my bike.
Regardless of my sad lack of height, this bike is the most amazing wonderful magical bike in the world. Essentially, it's a child's bike, but grown-up size, because it has fat white-wall tires and tramp-stamp decals and it's bright blue and doesn't have any gears at all. It brakes by back-pedaling, which is good for me, as I never really got the hang of hand-brakes.
The bad news is, one spin around the neighborhood and my knees feel crumbly, there's a bad taste in my throat, and I look a little like I've been stewing in a sauna for an hour. I blame the humidity, mainly, but I also blame my utter inactivity of the past, well, forever. But I still love that bike, and it's leaning against our living room wall right now, and it kind of makes it hard to concentrate on whatever movie we're watching because I keep thinking "GODDAMN THAT IS ONE SNAZZY BIKE AND IT'S MINE." Unless we are watching The Fall, which is one of my top five favorite movies of all time.
So there is the bike. There is also the job.
Somehow, with 72 hours, both Rob and I managed to find not only employment, but the most absurd kinds of employment possible - Rob is now working for a medical research group that needs him to call German people, in Germany, and ask them, in German, when they want to go on this free trip they've signed up for, so they can take this new medicine that is meant to prevent traveler's diarrhea.
Yes. Rob will be speaking in German about poop. All. Day. Long.
Meanwhile, I'm here, at the - gasp! - mall, where I tried to work once upon a time and where I actually do work, if you can call it working. No, I work, but I work on my work. That's because there is practically no work at work. By which I mean, if you're going to buy art at the mall, you're the type of person who buys art at a mall, and I can't help you in any sense. So I try to be friendly and say hello to everyone who wanders in, but most of the time they can't see me because I'm hiding behind the counter, and they just get confused at this disembodied, somewhat insistent, a little bit crazed-sounding "How you folks doing?!"
The art, though, is something to behold. Right now, I'm in view of four Thomas Kinkades in gaudy, gilded frames, some giant angular photo of a man playing a piano, two separate depictions of herons, a Van Gogh reproduction, a lifelike portrait of a wolf, James Dean's headshot, that famous poker dogs picture, and half a dozen high-res photos of UNC basketball games. Those puppies, by the way, sell like hot cakes.
Likewise, within the store's stacks and stacks of canvases, there are also the following:
A romanticized, detailed portrait of several bunnies
A lot of Jesuses of various ethnicities
Around 800,000 vaguely Italian landscapes
A portrait of a reclining Tyra Banks
My proudest moment by far was when someone came in and bought "Blowing the Wad," being a framed print of an oversized 100 dollar bill, with a hole burning through it, and two flaming dice passing over Ben Franklin's charred face. I can only imagine where it hangs now.
But a job's a job's a job and I'm pretty glad to be in one where I can get my schoolwork done and also eat bad Chinese food as much as I want, which is much more than I would like to admit. The cushiness of it all is karmic, I believe, retribution for all those years at the Writing Center and the hundreds of awful conferences - for having an on-campus job that was actually a job, not just sitting in the Emerson Gallery. Now I get to sit in the Emerson Gallery. Except everything's for sale. And I guess I ought to be selling it, but like I said - if you're gonna buy art in a mall, you're gonna buy art in a mall. And I'm gonna judge you. But not really, because if it were up to me, I'd plaster my walls with a mural depicting me, Orson Welles, and Penny all riding on a tandem bicycle, or maybe in a hot air balloon, eating ice cream and having the happiest time of our lives.
You think I tease. You keep thinking that.
Three big things happened when I came home from NYC: my third class started, I got a bike, and my job began. This has created an actual need of a planner to schedule the following: when I need to go to class, when I need to go to work, and when I can go bike riding, rain permitting. A brief note about my bike and bike-riding skillz - I essentially have none. I think it's been ten or maybe twelve years since I actually rode a bike with any regularity. There were the Gilded Bicycles of old AlHam, but they were always either in a creek, outside the VT, brakeless, or almost always too tall for me to ride. Rob, watching me almost topple to the ground every time I tried to mount this new bike, admitted he'd never really realized what an awful thing being short is. I think I said something like, "You're telling me, bub" and proceeded to fall over on my bike.
Regardless of my sad lack of height, this bike is the most amazing wonderful magical bike in the world. Essentially, it's a child's bike, but grown-up size, because it has fat white-wall tires and tramp-stamp decals and it's bright blue and doesn't have any gears at all. It brakes by back-pedaling, which is good for me, as I never really got the hang of hand-brakes.
The bad news is, one spin around the neighborhood and my knees feel crumbly, there's a bad taste in my throat, and I look a little like I've been stewing in a sauna for an hour. I blame the humidity, mainly, but I also blame my utter inactivity of the past, well, forever. But I still love that bike, and it's leaning against our living room wall right now, and it kind of makes it hard to concentrate on whatever movie we're watching because I keep thinking "GODDAMN THAT IS ONE SNAZZY BIKE AND IT'S MINE." Unless we are watching The Fall, which is one of my top five favorite movies of all time.
So there is the bike. There is also the job.
Somehow, with 72 hours, both Rob and I managed to find not only employment, but the most absurd kinds of employment possible - Rob is now working for a medical research group that needs him to call German people, in Germany, and ask them, in German, when they want to go on this free trip they've signed up for, so they can take this new medicine that is meant to prevent traveler's diarrhea.
Yes. Rob will be speaking in German about poop. All. Day. Long.
Meanwhile, I'm here, at the - gasp! - mall, where I tried to work once upon a time and where I actually do work, if you can call it working. No, I work, but I work on my work. That's because there is practically no work at work. By which I mean, if you're going to buy art at the mall, you're the type of person who buys art at a mall, and I can't help you in any sense. So I try to be friendly and say hello to everyone who wanders in, but most of the time they can't see me because I'm hiding behind the counter, and they just get confused at this disembodied, somewhat insistent, a little bit crazed-sounding "How you folks doing?!"
The art, though, is something to behold. Right now, I'm in view of four Thomas Kinkades in gaudy, gilded frames, some giant angular photo of a man playing a piano, two separate depictions of herons, a Van Gogh reproduction, a lifelike portrait of a wolf, James Dean's headshot, that famous poker dogs picture, and half a dozen high-res photos of UNC basketball games. Those puppies, by the way, sell like hot cakes.
Likewise, within the store's stacks and stacks of canvases, there are also the following:
A romanticized, detailed portrait of several bunnies
A lot of Jesuses of various ethnicities
Around 800,000 vaguely Italian landscapes
A portrait of a reclining Tyra Banks
My proudest moment by far was when someone came in and bought "Blowing the Wad," being a framed print of an oversized 100 dollar bill, with a hole burning through it, and two flaming dice passing over Ben Franklin's charred face. I can only imagine where it hangs now.
But a job's a job's a job and I'm pretty glad to be in one where I can get my schoolwork done and also eat bad Chinese food as much as I want, which is much more than I would like to admit. The cushiness of it all is karmic, I believe, retribution for all those years at the Writing Center and the hundreds of awful conferences - for having an on-campus job that was actually a job, not just sitting in the Emerson Gallery. Now I get to sit in the Emerson Gallery. Except everything's for sale. And I guess I ought to be selling it, but like I said - if you're gonna buy art in a mall, you're gonna buy art in a mall. And I'm gonna judge you. But not really, because if it were up to me, I'd plaster my walls with a mural depicting me, Orson Welles, and Penny all riding on a tandem bicycle, or maybe in a hot air balloon, eating ice cream and having the happiest time of our lives.
You think I tease. You keep thinking that.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Saga of Country Mouse.
Why is it called the big apple? Because it's full of worms.
So here's how it happened: rather than return to my fair alma mater, up in the boonies of central New York, and finally confront not that I've left there but that I'm never coming back, I went a few hours easterly and spent my Alumni Weekend having an alternate, more intimate reunion in a much larger, much more populous place. And if any of you class of >09 are reading this, I'm sorry I didn't see you, but I had to do what I had to do.
Had I had a car, the choice would've been easy, because all I wanted to do with my fall break was drive around the hills and look at the farms and foliage and go eat Minar and stand in Lake Oneida again, but I was doomed to be a pedestrian, so I landed in Newark, bought a MetroCard, couched myself at some friends' place in Brooklyn, and it was just like Sheep in the Big City...Comes Alive!!!
And maybe there is too much city in New York City, or maybe I am too much of a sheep, but that place and I mix about as well as mud and bread - which is odd to me, considering I spent four glad months in Vienna, but those were months with many train rides into the hills, and many walks through the Wienerwald, and pretty much daily siestas in parks. So it isn't just urban-ness I don't like - it's there, and maybe it's not just there, but Williamsburg, where hipsters are as ever-present as roaches, and I mean real, utterly absurd hipsters wearing grandma windbreakers or glasses the size of windowpanes or shaved initials in a girl's hair. So I learned what I already knew, which was a theme of the whole episode: you can have New York. I don't really want it. Give me Seattle, give me San Francisco, give me D.C. or Chicago, but you can keep the Big Apple, blasphemous though that may seem. I will only make myself a permanent resident there if I have a trillion dollars, which seems to be about the amount you need to live a pretty normal life.
And naysayers, say what ye will about the South, but you gotta admit, the price is pretty nice. Plus we have an ocean. Did I mention the ocean? It is free to look at the ocean. It is also free to get in the ocean. And I love getting in things. Especially when it's free.
But what did you do in New York? What were the highlights? The lowlights? The midlights? Are we talking about hair or illumination?
The good things were these: I went out to Long Island for a night to stay with Winston and his band of a band, Ball of Flame Shoot Fire, who are incidentally very great and you should listen to them and buy their albums on iTunes, and it was a really nice reprieve from the chatter and roar of walking around Manhattan - I've never been so grateful to see green things, or be in a house with a yard and a driveway and a creepily pink basement. Also, they make me laugh, which is a skill, considering I have the sense of humor of about a three-year-old. Which none of them seem to mind. And we ate food and watched TV and sat around their back deck and tried to pet the stray cat that had wandered up - these being three of my favorite activities (eating, TV-watching, and stray-cat-befriending).
I also went out with my friend Katie, of the Western Road Trip fame, for a night of pierogies and lattes and IPAs, which was equally great. It was pretty refreshing to hear an opinion of post-AlHam life that wasn't at all related to ironic theme parties or over-involvement in campus organizations - for instance, did you know majoring in Creative Writing leads to not only none, but negative job opportunities? And how, at my school, no one told me that? Or that, you know, things cost money? And you will have to make your way regardless? We also discussed the following: dogs, haircuts, and blues dancing, which is apparently just dirty dancing to very sad music, which sounds right up my alley. Went to a snazzy Village banjo bar afterwards, where there were young dudes playing old-timey jazz that put me in mind of silent movies, and couples were swing dancing, and the bartender gave me a dirty look but I didn't care.
I also took a free boat ride around the Statue of Liberty. I always love being on a boat. Especially for free.
And here's the transition: My first few days, it was weirdly enjoyable to be acknowledged as a lady on the street, which is a weird and stilted way to say that some guy in Times Square who was asking for donations looked and me and said, "How 'bout you, beautiful? Can you spare some change for the homeless?" And I didn't have a cent on me, as usual, but I did smile, and apologize with a shrug, and went into the giant Toys-R-Us to look at the ferris wheel inside the store (I would've ridden it, but it was not free). Because he called me beautiful, which he probably didn't mean, but it was still nice to hear. Or a guy in a Starbucks saw my hokey Lonely Planet guide and asked where I was visiting from - perfectly harmless, probably just friendly, but look, it's nice to get flirted with. Or so I thought.
Cut to Saturday night. Here is what I consumed: dinner. (1) cherry 4-Loko. (1) Beam Cream, being Jim Beam mixed with cream soda. (1) Surfers on Acid shot, which I can't remember the ingredients of, but it certainly tasted better than my (at least 4) shots of Evan Williams. Plus around (5) beers. Then (1) communal Joose. Followed by (1) more beer, at least. You do the tallying.
Needless to say, you put all that shit in you, you start feeling pretty good. And not happy good. More like, "Oh we're at a bar in Williamsburg I should probably dance with this man" good. Who were these men? How was I dancing? I don't know. It was humiliating, and things only got worse.
The friends I was visiting were all very tall, as they have always been, so they take longer steps, so I tend to lag behind, so by the time I got to the door of the next bar, which seemed an insurmountable pilgrimage from the last one, especially when you keep stumbling into buildings, my friends were already well inside, toasting, cheersing, making equally ridiculous fools of themselves as I did. Here's another fact: it's very hard to use your hands when you're that drunk. So when the bouncer saw me battling the slits of my wallet to liberate my North Carolina driver's license as though it was a Rubik's Cube, he told me I couldn't come in. I said I just wanted to see my friends, I didn't want anymore to drink. He said he was sorry. So I hailed a cab, and somehow remembered the cross-streets of my friends' apartment, and rode through Brooklyn, embarrassed, but really too disoriented to think anything, except for when we stopped, and I tried to swipe my bank card because I didn't lose anything but all my cash and a good amount of my pride, but it was just as hard as getting my ID out, so the cab driver had to get in the back and do it for me, which I guess made him think it was okay to ask for a kiss, and tell me I was so beautiful, and I was so pale, just one kiss.
And I said no and got the hell out and walked away and called Rob and cried and cried and cried. It was 3:30 a.m.
My friends were fairly appalled when I told them what happened the next morning, but I just woke up grateful that I still had everything, that I'd made it home, and that something worse hadn't happened.
The funny part is, this mirrors entirely my 21st birthday in Berlin, when my friends and I went on a pub crawl and I ended up sick in a toilet stall, abandoned again. That time, someone had to put me into a cab for me, but when I got back, I was ecstatic - that was awesome holy shit what the fuck best birthday ever. There was nothing sexual at all about that night, and though it was terrifying at the time, it's pretty funny to talk about now. That night in Brooklyn had nothing funny at all about it.
Except for this: I spent the rest of my time there singing "One night in Brooklyn!" to myself, to the tune of "One Night in Bangkok." Which you can enjoy here. (It takes about a minute and a half to get going, so be patient.)
And there were other small good things - the Guggenheim (how much fun would it be to rollerblade through there?!) and the little kids interpreting the Kandinsky exhibit with crayons on the floor, the quiet, shady walk I took through brownstone Brooklyn en route to Nick's play, spending way too much money at Strand, lunch in the Hearst building where I saw Nina Garcia from Project Runway (we made magical eye contact), and I swear I saw Martin Short on the street. My friends were all welcoming, and for the most part, we had a pretty grand time.
But mainly I was ready to go when it came time to - so much so that I did the only selfish thing I'd done all week and bumped my flight to an earlier one rather than sit, stewing, in Newark.
And seeing Rob again was absolutely tremendous, and I was very nearly on the point of crying because I was so happy, and seeing our street again, our neighborhood - I had this sudden possession and love of everything.
My trip to New York was a forest fire, as Rob put it. Meant to obliterate everything and make it all new again - charred, but sprouting.
And as if it wasn't enough to come home to the fellow I'm in love with and sleep in our big comfy bed and read all my mail, Rob flips on the living room light and there is a bike. With a bow on it. For me. What kind of boyfriend buys his gal a bike?! Mine, apparently. And it was amazing, and I've been riding around the neighborhood every day since, and it makes me so unspeakably happy even though my knees feel like hell afterwards.
Whew. There's that, ladies and babies. I'm real glad to be here, alive and well and believe or not, absolutely content.
So here's how it happened: rather than return to my fair alma mater, up in the boonies of central New York, and finally confront not that I've left there but that I'm never coming back, I went a few hours easterly and spent my Alumni Weekend having an alternate, more intimate reunion in a much larger, much more populous place. And if any of you class of >09 are reading this, I'm sorry I didn't see you, but I had to do what I had to do.
Had I had a car, the choice would've been easy, because all I wanted to do with my fall break was drive around the hills and look at the farms and foliage and go eat Minar and stand in Lake Oneida again, but I was doomed to be a pedestrian, so I landed in Newark, bought a MetroCard, couched myself at some friends' place in Brooklyn, and it was just like Sheep in the Big City...Comes Alive!!!
And maybe there is too much city in New York City, or maybe I am too much of a sheep, but that place and I mix about as well as mud and bread - which is odd to me, considering I spent four glad months in Vienna, but those were months with many train rides into the hills, and many walks through the Wienerwald, and pretty much daily siestas in parks. So it isn't just urban-ness I don't like - it's there, and maybe it's not just there, but Williamsburg, where hipsters are as ever-present as roaches, and I mean real, utterly absurd hipsters wearing grandma windbreakers or glasses the size of windowpanes or shaved initials in a girl's hair. So I learned what I already knew, which was a theme of the whole episode: you can have New York. I don't really want it. Give me Seattle, give me San Francisco, give me D.C. or Chicago, but you can keep the Big Apple, blasphemous though that may seem. I will only make myself a permanent resident there if I have a trillion dollars, which seems to be about the amount you need to live a pretty normal life.
And naysayers, say what ye will about the South, but you gotta admit, the price is pretty nice. Plus we have an ocean. Did I mention the ocean? It is free to look at the ocean. It is also free to get in the ocean. And I love getting in things. Especially when it's free.
But what did you do in New York? What were the highlights? The lowlights? The midlights? Are we talking about hair or illumination?
The good things were these: I went out to Long Island for a night to stay with Winston and his band of a band, Ball of Flame Shoot Fire, who are incidentally very great and you should listen to them and buy their albums on iTunes, and it was a really nice reprieve from the chatter and roar of walking around Manhattan - I've never been so grateful to see green things, or be in a house with a yard and a driveway and a creepily pink basement. Also, they make me laugh, which is a skill, considering I have the sense of humor of about a three-year-old. Which none of them seem to mind. And we ate food and watched TV and sat around their back deck and tried to pet the stray cat that had wandered up - these being three of my favorite activities (eating, TV-watching, and stray-cat-befriending).
I also went out with my friend Katie, of the Western Road Trip fame, for a night of pierogies and lattes and IPAs, which was equally great. It was pretty refreshing to hear an opinion of post-AlHam life that wasn't at all related to ironic theme parties or over-involvement in campus organizations - for instance, did you know majoring in Creative Writing leads to not only none, but negative job opportunities? And how, at my school, no one told me that? Or that, you know, things cost money? And you will have to make your way regardless? We also discussed the following: dogs, haircuts, and blues dancing, which is apparently just dirty dancing to very sad music, which sounds right up my alley. Went to a snazzy Village banjo bar afterwards, where there were young dudes playing old-timey jazz that put me in mind of silent movies, and couples were swing dancing, and the bartender gave me a dirty look but I didn't care.
I also took a free boat ride around the Statue of Liberty. I always love being on a boat. Especially for free.
And here's the transition: My first few days, it was weirdly enjoyable to be acknowledged as a lady on the street, which is a weird and stilted way to say that some guy in Times Square who was asking for donations looked and me and said, "How 'bout you, beautiful? Can you spare some change for the homeless?" And I didn't have a cent on me, as usual, but I did smile, and apologize with a shrug, and went into the giant Toys-R-Us to look at the ferris wheel inside the store (I would've ridden it, but it was not free). Because he called me beautiful, which he probably didn't mean, but it was still nice to hear. Or a guy in a Starbucks saw my hokey Lonely Planet guide and asked where I was visiting from - perfectly harmless, probably just friendly, but look, it's nice to get flirted with. Or so I thought.
Cut to Saturday night. Here is what I consumed: dinner. (1) cherry 4-Loko. (1) Beam Cream, being Jim Beam mixed with cream soda. (1) Surfers on Acid shot, which I can't remember the ingredients of, but it certainly tasted better than my (at least 4) shots of Evan Williams. Plus around (5) beers. Then (1) communal Joose. Followed by (1) more beer, at least. You do the tallying.
Needless to say, you put all that shit in you, you start feeling pretty good. And not happy good. More like, "Oh we're at a bar in Williamsburg I should probably dance with this man" good. Who were these men? How was I dancing? I don't know. It was humiliating, and things only got worse.
The friends I was visiting were all very tall, as they have always been, so they take longer steps, so I tend to lag behind, so by the time I got to the door of the next bar, which seemed an insurmountable pilgrimage from the last one, especially when you keep stumbling into buildings, my friends were already well inside, toasting, cheersing, making equally ridiculous fools of themselves as I did. Here's another fact: it's very hard to use your hands when you're that drunk. So when the bouncer saw me battling the slits of my wallet to liberate my North Carolina driver's license as though it was a Rubik's Cube, he told me I couldn't come in. I said I just wanted to see my friends, I didn't want anymore to drink. He said he was sorry. So I hailed a cab, and somehow remembered the cross-streets of my friends' apartment, and rode through Brooklyn, embarrassed, but really too disoriented to think anything, except for when we stopped, and I tried to swipe my bank card because I didn't lose anything but all my cash and a good amount of my pride, but it was just as hard as getting my ID out, so the cab driver had to get in the back and do it for me, which I guess made him think it was okay to ask for a kiss, and tell me I was so beautiful, and I was so pale, just one kiss.
And I said no and got the hell out and walked away and called Rob and cried and cried and cried. It was 3:30 a.m.
My friends were fairly appalled when I told them what happened the next morning, but I just woke up grateful that I still had everything, that I'd made it home, and that something worse hadn't happened.
The funny part is, this mirrors entirely my 21st birthday in Berlin, when my friends and I went on a pub crawl and I ended up sick in a toilet stall, abandoned again. That time, someone had to put me into a cab for me, but when I got back, I was ecstatic - that was awesome holy shit what the fuck best birthday ever. There was nothing sexual at all about that night, and though it was terrifying at the time, it's pretty funny to talk about now. That night in Brooklyn had nothing funny at all about it.
Except for this: I spent the rest of my time there singing "One night in Brooklyn!" to myself, to the tune of "One Night in Bangkok." Which you can enjoy here. (It takes about a minute and a half to get going, so be patient.)
And there were other small good things - the Guggenheim (how much fun would it be to rollerblade through there?!) and the little kids interpreting the Kandinsky exhibit with crayons on the floor, the quiet, shady walk I took through brownstone Brooklyn en route to Nick's play, spending way too much money at Strand, lunch in the Hearst building where I saw Nina Garcia from Project Runway (we made magical eye contact), and I swear I saw Martin Short on the street. My friends were all welcoming, and for the most part, we had a pretty grand time.
But mainly I was ready to go when it came time to - so much so that I did the only selfish thing I'd done all week and bumped my flight to an earlier one rather than sit, stewing, in Newark.
And seeing Rob again was absolutely tremendous, and I was very nearly on the point of crying because I was so happy, and seeing our street again, our neighborhood - I had this sudden possession and love of everything.
My trip to New York was a forest fire, as Rob put it. Meant to obliterate everything and make it all new again - charred, but sprouting.
And as if it wasn't enough to come home to the fellow I'm in love with and sleep in our big comfy bed and read all my mail, Rob flips on the living room light and there is a bike. With a bow on it. For me. What kind of boyfriend buys his gal a bike?! Mine, apparently. And it was amazing, and I've been riding around the neighborhood every day since, and it makes me so unspeakably happy even though my knees feel like hell afterwards.
Whew. There's that, ladies and babies. I'm real glad to be here, alive and well and believe or not, absolutely content.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Saga of Miscellanies.
There's a certain late-night hysteria necessary for me to actually use this thing. During the daylight hours, I think, shouldn't I be writing something, or reading something, or doing something that will somehow scoot me just a little further towards that intangible, vague, and somewhat gooey goal of being a Real Writer? And then I find myself on the backroads of the Internet, or, more embarrassingly, the secret cul-de-sacs of facebook, or Rob and I realize we've been in the apartment for six hours and what's worse, we've been watching America's Next Top Model on Oxygen the entire time and now we're both hollering "MARJORIE HAS TO GO SHE'S TERRIBLE SHE'S SUCH A DEFEATIST." So then Rob goes out to get Cherry Limeades, and I stay in to see who won.
And that's more of an exercise (in workshops we call them "warm-ups" just like real sports people!) to make me less embarrassed by my own noise. (In workshops, they'd also cross out about half the shit I just typed.)
But first, things you must know - on the internet I believe it's called "linking" - to justify the title.
A of all, and most importantly, this album, which you should be able to preview for free in that little blue lala box: Wild Beasts!
Oh, my god. Oh my god. Oh my god! Why is this so good? How is it possible? I listen to the title track about six times a day and actually shiver, it's so good, and eerie, and insane. Every now and again an album lands in my lap and reinvigorates everything - we played "At Mount Zoomer" nearly every day on the road trip out west, so much so that I think Katie might still have nightmares that are the opening doo-doodle-oos of the first track, and this summer, I learned all the words to "Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea" because it was our daily soundtrack driving down the Eastern seaboard - but this! Wild Beasts! Amazing!
And what's more, I also got the latest Modest Mouse album and I think my 18-year-old self may actually be dead because it's dreadful.
B of all, these: http://www.catrackham.com/ and http://www.buttercupfestival.com/2-12.htm
All of it, genius. I want to write things that come from the same brain schema that made up Cat Rackham and the weird little reaper of buttercup festival, and that give you chills like a Wild Beasts song. Truthfully, that's what I want to do.
I've had a novel brewing, just barely, in my head, because there is nothing more audacious and absurd than trying to tackle a novel, and I realized today that I've been approaching it the way a kid approaches making Icky Mix: Go in the kitchen, get a bowl, and throw everything in, and hopefully what comes out is not a viscous, puce mess. I don't know the details, but I do know that the Rocka-Fire Explosion will play a major part.
C of all, the Rocka-Fire Explosion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5npVNERoyw&feature=related
Fact: I know most of the words to Pop Lock and Drop It because I have watched this video that many times.
Or, conversely, there is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGWJbcTvL_M&feature=channel_page
You are mesmerized. Admit it.
But in the real world, also known as when I am not on the internet, the weather has been very, very, very wet. As in today we decided to revel, or attempt to revel, in our glorious unemployment and this boon of unoccupied time, and so we were shimmying into our swimming gear when the clouds let forth a mammoth downpour. That's really how we got to watching America's Next Top Model. Fucking rain. And yes, we're both still unemployed, and I've taken to actually waking up and praying to various retail deities: "Please, lords of Petsmart, let today be the day. Glory to Toys-R-Us and RadioShak, and may the sun always shine on Michael's Crafts and Art Supplies. Hallelujah, Books-A-Million." This is not a joke. This is a fact.
Our air conditioner froze somehow. This was not nearly as alarming as the enormous roach we found, though. Or rather, that I found, and squeaked out something like "Uuunh giant buuuug uunh get it get it get it" and then Rob dutifully fetched Sergeant Swat and disposed of him. I'm just grateful it wasn't a brown recluse. Or an alligator.
Oh! And I got a story accepted, which, ironically, does scoot me a little closer to being a Real Writer. More on that to come. Reading Philip Roth and not happy about it. And I'm going to New York in less than a week, which is something exciting to come home and report on - there will be drinks, and a boat ride, and maybe some wandering, and hopefully a lot of happy times that we'll all reflect on, wistfully, someday in the future.
Amen!
And that's more of an exercise (in workshops we call them "warm-ups" just like real sports people!) to make me less embarrassed by my own noise. (In workshops, they'd also cross out about half the shit I just typed.)
But first, things you must know - on the internet I believe it's called "linking" - to justify the title.
A of all, and most importantly, this album, which you should be able to preview for free in that little blue lala box: Wild Beasts!
Oh, my god. Oh my god. Oh my god! Why is this so good? How is it possible? I listen to the title track about six times a day and actually shiver, it's so good, and eerie, and insane. Every now and again an album lands in my lap and reinvigorates everything - we played "At Mount Zoomer" nearly every day on the road trip out west, so much so that I think Katie might still have nightmares that are the opening doo-doodle-oos of the first track, and this summer, I learned all the words to "Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea" because it was our daily soundtrack driving down the Eastern seaboard - but this! Wild Beasts! Amazing!
And what's more, I also got the latest Modest Mouse album and I think my 18-year-old self may actually be dead because it's dreadful.
B of all, these: http://www.catrackham.com/ and http://www.buttercupfestival.com/2-12.htm
All of it, genius. I want to write things that come from the same brain schema that made up Cat Rackham and the weird little reaper of buttercup festival, and that give you chills like a Wild Beasts song. Truthfully, that's what I want to do.
I've had a novel brewing, just barely, in my head, because there is nothing more audacious and absurd than trying to tackle a novel, and I realized today that I've been approaching it the way a kid approaches making Icky Mix: Go in the kitchen, get a bowl, and throw everything in, and hopefully what comes out is not a viscous, puce mess. I don't know the details, but I do know that the Rocka-Fire Explosion will play a major part.
C of all, the Rocka-Fire Explosion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5npVNERoyw&feature=related
Fact: I know most of the words to Pop Lock and Drop It because I have watched this video that many times.
Or, conversely, there is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGWJbcTvL_M&feature=channel_page
You are mesmerized. Admit it.
But in the real world, also known as when I am not on the internet, the weather has been very, very, very wet. As in today we decided to revel, or attempt to revel, in our glorious unemployment and this boon of unoccupied time, and so we were shimmying into our swimming gear when the clouds let forth a mammoth downpour. That's really how we got to watching America's Next Top Model. Fucking rain. And yes, we're both still unemployed, and I've taken to actually waking up and praying to various retail deities: "Please, lords of Petsmart, let today be the day. Glory to Toys-R-Us and RadioShak, and may the sun always shine on Michael's Crafts and Art Supplies. Hallelujah, Books-A-Million." This is not a joke. This is a fact.
Our air conditioner froze somehow. This was not nearly as alarming as the enormous roach we found, though. Or rather, that I found, and squeaked out something like "Uuunh giant buuuug uunh get it get it get it" and then Rob dutifully fetched Sergeant Swat and disposed of him. I'm just grateful it wasn't a brown recluse. Or an alligator.
Oh! And I got a story accepted, which, ironically, does scoot me a little closer to being a Real Writer. More on that to come. Reading Philip Roth and not happy about it. And I'm going to New York in less than a week, which is something exciting to come home and report on - there will be drinks, and a boat ride, and maybe some wandering, and hopefully a lot of happy times that we'll all reflect on, wistfully, someday in the future.
Amen!
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Saga of Inconsistent Blogging
Friends! Fear not, for I have not abandoned you! I have been reticent these past -- goodness! -- fourteen days because, lo and behold, I have been out! In the human world! Interacting! Schmoozing! Mingling! Carousing! Being a real live person!
And when I wasn't doing that, I was ensnared in very long books that I had to read very rapidly, books like Sophie's Choice, which overall just confounded me because what are passages that raunchy doing in a book that is pretty much about the Holocaust? What bizarre dichotomy is that supposed to be? Am I supposed to be simultaneously aroused and unhappy? Because that really is a poor concoction.
And when I wasn't doing that, I was here, at my desk, feeling my body heat seep into the cushion of this $7 office chair and typing away at what I guess is titled "The Great American All-You-Can-Eat Never-Ending Pie Buffet: a memoir of pies." Twenty-six pages of pie, recollected with more than just a little nostalgia. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, so I'll retreat and recharge and tell you what I came here to tell you. Go get snacks- if you're Karli, go get a pickle. (Karli remains the only individual I've ever known who actually gets pickles at movie theaters. I think she should start a club of Pickle Enthusiasts - it really is the weirdest thing for a movie concession stand to sell. Likewise, the creepiest thing someone can offer you as refreshment? Fruit leather. I've thought about this. A lot.)
Fun fact: Being a human is often a very difficult undertaking. There is no Playfair for graduate school, and while I'm grateful that I never ever have to undergo that divine, sweaty, meet-n-greet torture again, I do kind of wish there was a more direct way to, you know, meet people. I had this ridiculous American Girl book that my mother got me as a birthday gift once called, aptly, The Caring and Keeping of Friends - essentially a juvenile etiquette book, but it made friendships sound a lot like tomato plants: stubborn, needy, and frequently unfruitful.
So while there are no Orientation Groups (TOM DO YOU REMEMBER HOW WE MET ON THE FIRST DAY OF COLLEGE EVER? YOU TOTALLY DO) and no hall parties and no forced socialization via absolute isolation, there is a handy-dandy listserv that, sadly, acted as my lone fishing line out into society. So when an event is advertised, I mark it largely on my calendar, drag Rob along, and we do our best to be interesting and not painfully couple-y, which is a lot harder than you'd think. But these past two weeks have been jammed with get-togethers, in backyards and on front stoops and in local watering holes, and slowly we are accumulating phone numbers and facebook friendships and real ones, too. And, as we all know, I love gettin' digits.
But what was really most relieving, dear readers, and what I want to impart to any and all who are considering sprinting from undergrad into graduate school, especially from a place as incestuous as Hamilton, was last night, at the Fundraising Speed Dating event, which I volunteered to bartend for because I am still utterly unemployed, and I like beer, and sometimes I like people, too. So while the daters were chatting each other up and down, I'm yammering with the other gal on bar duty, who happily shares her cigarettes and opens the wine bottles. And she's pretty much everything I have trouble being--vivacious, open, outwardly friendly--but at some point during the evening she admits how hard it's been, trying to go out and be social when she has a dog and privacy at home, how really arduous friend-making can be.
And I was just all, "OMIGOD I KNOW RIGHT?" Except I meant it. And it was so, so, so relieving, knowing I was not this awkward little pigeon, cooped up all day in my apartment, utterly inept at simple chitchatting, but that everyone was just as daunted, and moreover, everyone was just as willing and ready to be friendly - it just takes a little booze to get everyone, as my folks would say, situated.
Unfortunately, my bartending stint ended in semi-disaster. I spent about two and a half hours essentially doing squats, bending from the mini-fridge to hand up Yuenglings and chilled bottles of wine-bought-by-the-crate to all those thirsty flirters, and today, my hamstrings are strung tighter than a banjo, giving me this really attractive, hobbling gait. Anticipating the oncoming pain, or at least realizing there was something unhappy going on in my knees, Rob and I spent most of our time at the following potluck sitting outside on the front stoop, where we discussed such things as: Brown Recluse spiders, my ever-expanding fear of alligators and now Brown Recluse spiders, various names for cockroaches, and Girl Talk the board game, not the downfall of Western Music as we knew it. Those spiders are fucking terrifying.
But there was also a lovely gathering at the overflowing bookstore downtown last Thursday night, a reading created just for us first-years, and hells yes I volunteered to stand in front of all those folks and almost pass out. Readings always make me anxious, but there''s few feelings more rewarding, or more satisfying, than presenting your own work in your own voice and knowing folks liked it. Case in point: when Katie and I gave our long-delayed reading for the road trip we took in Summer '08, I don't think I'd ever felt more stressed - I was too tense to even finish my buffalo fingers, and everyone knows how much I love that damn diner buffalo sauce. The anxiety only mounted as not one professor, nor two, but pretty much the entire English department filed in - maybe they had carpooled? But, of course, as anyone who was there knows, it went amazingly well, and I was too buzzed on adrenaline to sleep well that night.
This Thursday night reading was much the same - people just kept coming, pretty much the entire program, awkwardly assembled in a store that is fit to hold about eight audience members, and we had a crowd of at least thirty, maybe more. I shook like a leaf through the first two readings, and then they introduced me, and I went up, made some self-conscious remark about my height, and proceeded to knock their goddamn socks off!
No, really. I was a wreck, I couldn't breathe right, my face was turning sunburned red, but everyone was laughing and I think that's why I'm such a smart ass sometimes - because there's few things that feel better than making someone laugh, and laugh hard, and tell you how much they laughed afterwards when you're mingling out on the sidewalk, and then you all go get beers and play some darts and feel the world settle somewhat, in a good way, in a way that makes you feel less afraid of, or at least intimidated by, your own life.
And it was a brilliantly timed event, too, as I had my first deadline looming ever nearer, the dreaded Memoir draft. I'd been working on a piece that was supposed to catalogue all the times I'd been naked when you shouldn't be naked, spanning shared baths as a child to skinny dipping in high school to things that should not be discussed on the internet, but the piece had taken an intense nosedive into the realm of sadness and melodrama, all cliched body image bullshit, and I was very displeased. But then there was this reading, and I remembered, oh yeah, I can make people laugh sometimes, I can be fucking funny, and that, combined with Rob and I watching the Great American Pie Cook-Off Challenge on the Food Network (where some ass tried to turn in a watermelon pie for the citrus category), made me embark on the piece I ended up composing in a 72 hour blind frenzy of creation - an eight-part essay all about pie. We'll see how it goes over with my peers.
In the meantime, we've been keeping busy with our ambitious reading lists. Rob rode his bike 20 miles over to Fort Fisher, where I was waiting for him, and he was too dehydrated and I was too sunburned to really enjoy the beach itself, but this little Pomeranian walked by some friendly old lady decided to nestle between my ankles for a while and it made me unspeakably happy. The job situation is still bleak, but we're hoping the war will end soon, hopefully with us not on welfare.
And I promise I will type more regularly - but I warn you, now that the faucet's on, you might have trouble shutting it off. See what I did there? No? Me neither. Good night!
And when I wasn't doing that, I was ensnared in very long books that I had to read very rapidly, books like Sophie's Choice, which overall just confounded me because what are passages that raunchy doing in a book that is pretty much about the Holocaust? What bizarre dichotomy is that supposed to be? Am I supposed to be simultaneously aroused and unhappy? Because that really is a poor concoction.
And when I wasn't doing that, I was here, at my desk, feeling my body heat seep into the cushion of this $7 office chair and typing away at what I guess is titled "The Great American All-You-Can-Eat Never-Ending Pie Buffet: a memoir of pies." Twenty-six pages of pie, recollected with more than just a little nostalgia. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, so I'll retreat and recharge and tell you what I came here to tell you. Go get snacks- if you're Karli, go get a pickle. (Karli remains the only individual I've ever known who actually gets pickles at movie theaters. I think she should start a club of Pickle Enthusiasts - it really is the weirdest thing for a movie concession stand to sell. Likewise, the creepiest thing someone can offer you as refreshment? Fruit leather. I've thought about this. A lot.)
Fun fact: Being a human is often a very difficult undertaking. There is no Playfair for graduate school, and while I'm grateful that I never ever have to undergo that divine, sweaty, meet-n-greet torture again, I do kind of wish there was a more direct way to, you know, meet people. I had this ridiculous American Girl book that my mother got me as a birthday gift once called, aptly, The Caring and Keeping of Friends - essentially a juvenile etiquette book, but it made friendships sound a lot like tomato plants: stubborn, needy, and frequently unfruitful.
So while there are no Orientation Groups (TOM DO YOU REMEMBER HOW WE MET ON THE FIRST DAY OF COLLEGE EVER? YOU TOTALLY DO) and no hall parties and no forced socialization via absolute isolation, there is a handy-dandy listserv that, sadly, acted as my lone fishing line out into society. So when an event is advertised, I mark it largely on my calendar, drag Rob along, and we do our best to be interesting and not painfully couple-y, which is a lot harder than you'd think. But these past two weeks have been jammed with get-togethers, in backyards and on front stoops and in local watering holes, and slowly we are accumulating phone numbers and facebook friendships and real ones, too. And, as we all know, I love gettin' digits.
But what was really most relieving, dear readers, and what I want to impart to any and all who are considering sprinting from undergrad into graduate school, especially from a place as incestuous as Hamilton, was last night, at the Fundraising Speed Dating event, which I volunteered to bartend for because I am still utterly unemployed, and I like beer, and sometimes I like people, too. So while the daters were chatting each other up and down, I'm yammering with the other gal on bar duty, who happily shares her cigarettes and opens the wine bottles. And she's pretty much everything I have trouble being--vivacious, open, outwardly friendly--but at some point during the evening she admits how hard it's been, trying to go out and be social when she has a dog and privacy at home, how really arduous friend-making can be.
And I was just all, "OMIGOD I KNOW RIGHT?" Except I meant it. And it was so, so, so relieving, knowing I was not this awkward little pigeon, cooped up all day in my apartment, utterly inept at simple chitchatting, but that everyone was just as daunted, and moreover, everyone was just as willing and ready to be friendly - it just takes a little booze to get everyone, as my folks would say, situated.
Unfortunately, my bartending stint ended in semi-disaster. I spent about two and a half hours essentially doing squats, bending from the mini-fridge to hand up Yuenglings and chilled bottles of wine-bought-by-the-crate to all those thirsty flirters, and today, my hamstrings are strung tighter than a banjo, giving me this really attractive, hobbling gait. Anticipating the oncoming pain, or at least realizing there was something unhappy going on in my knees, Rob and I spent most of our time at the following potluck sitting outside on the front stoop, where we discussed such things as: Brown Recluse spiders, my ever-expanding fear of alligators and now Brown Recluse spiders, various names for cockroaches, and Girl Talk the board game, not the downfall of Western Music as we knew it. Those spiders are fucking terrifying.
But there was also a lovely gathering at the overflowing bookstore downtown last Thursday night, a reading created just for us first-years, and hells yes I volunteered to stand in front of all those folks and almost pass out. Readings always make me anxious, but there''s few feelings more rewarding, or more satisfying, than presenting your own work in your own voice and knowing folks liked it. Case in point: when Katie and I gave our long-delayed reading for the road trip we took in Summer '08, I don't think I'd ever felt more stressed - I was too tense to even finish my buffalo fingers, and everyone knows how much I love that damn diner buffalo sauce. The anxiety only mounted as not one professor, nor two, but pretty much the entire English department filed in - maybe they had carpooled? But, of course, as anyone who was there knows, it went amazingly well, and I was too buzzed on adrenaline to sleep well that night.
This Thursday night reading was much the same - people just kept coming, pretty much the entire program, awkwardly assembled in a store that is fit to hold about eight audience members, and we had a crowd of at least thirty, maybe more. I shook like a leaf through the first two readings, and then they introduced me, and I went up, made some self-conscious remark about my height, and proceeded to knock their goddamn socks off!
No, really. I was a wreck, I couldn't breathe right, my face was turning sunburned red, but everyone was laughing and I think that's why I'm such a smart ass sometimes - because there's few things that feel better than making someone laugh, and laugh hard, and tell you how much they laughed afterwards when you're mingling out on the sidewalk, and then you all go get beers and play some darts and feel the world settle somewhat, in a good way, in a way that makes you feel less afraid of, or at least intimidated by, your own life.
And it was a brilliantly timed event, too, as I had my first deadline looming ever nearer, the dreaded Memoir draft. I'd been working on a piece that was supposed to catalogue all the times I'd been naked when you shouldn't be naked, spanning shared baths as a child to skinny dipping in high school to things that should not be discussed on the internet, but the piece had taken an intense nosedive into the realm of sadness and melodrama, all cliched body image bullshit, and I was very displeased. But then there was this reading, and I remembered, oh yeah, I can make people laugh sometimes, I can be fucking funny, and that, combined with Rob and I watching the Great American Pie Cook-Off Challenge on the Food Network (where some ass tried to turn in a watermelon pie for the citrus category), made me embark on the piece I ended up composing in a 72 hour blind frenzy of creation - an eight-part essay all about pie. We'll see how it goes over with my peers.
In the meantime, we've been keeping busy with our ambitious reading lists. Rob rode his bike 20 miles over to Fort Fisher, where I was waiting for him, and he was too dehydrated and I was too sunburned to really enjoy the beach itself, but this little Pomeranian walked by some friendly old lady decided to nestle between my ankles for a while and it made me unspeakably happy. The job situation is still bleak, but we're hoping the war will end soon, hopefully with us not on welfare.
And I promise I will type more regularly - but I warn you, now that the faucet's on, you might have trouble shutting it off. See what I did there? No? Me neither. Good night!
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