My day so far:
There is a strange smell (it's non toxic) that is coming up on all the floors in the entire building.
It should be only momentarily before they are finished flushing out pipe system on each floor.
But it smells like rotten eggs, burnt meat and makes you gasp when you reach the relatively fresh air of midtown Manhattan since it completely stinks. But it's non-toxic, so I shouldn't worry. It's gone a way in the past hour, but for many hours the smell in the office buidling was horrific.
The appeal of "The Bachelor" for women is hardly a mystery. This gauzy ABC dating competition is "Jackass" for women: a reality show that revels in emotional risk taking and rejection in the same way that "Jackass," the MTV series, celebrates men's foolhardiness and physical pain.
Emotional risk-taking and rejection : women
Foolhardiness and physical pain : men
I can't discuss that above paragraph any further except to state that it makes me ill at ease.
There's this horrible joke about two bees who meet up in a backyard and discuss where they're going to search for pollen that done. One of the bees says he plans to check out a rose garden, and the other said that there is a bar mitzvah that other bees had recommended. The second bee asks the first to join him at the bar mitzah, but the first bee declines, preferring to stay with the tried-and-true roses. The next day, the two bees run into each other and the first asks the second how was the bar mitzvah.
"It was a blast, flowers all over the place, delicious high-quality pollen. I can't believe you missed it for some roses."
"But, what's that thing on your head," the first bee asks.
"Oh, this," the second bee says touching his head. "It's a yarmulke, I didn't want anyone to this I was a wasp."
While the groan factor on this joke is pretty high, you can get a few people to chuckle at it now and again. However, while reading
The Wide Window of the Lemony Snicket series (at work since I literally have nothing to do) I came across this line which made me wince "But on a cold day, in a drafty room, chilled cucumber soup is about as welcome as a swarm of wasps at a bat mitzvah."
I've torn apart about 10 paper clips out of sheer boredom, unfolding all of the bends and then twisting and turning until they fall into pieces. There's 5 more Lemony Snicket books for me to read. Excuse me while I get to my important work.
Thursday, November 21, 2002
You know how it's possible to expedite the blooming of plants by cultivating them in a greenhouse? I propose that you find a comparable approach to use on your growing anxieties. In other words, Capricorn, compel your worries to mature very rapidly. That way, instead of torturing you with a slow proliferation of half-conscious apprehensions for the next four weeks, they'll ripen overnight into their full-blown state. You'll be able to have a climactic showdown with them by the end of this week, and then move on to more enjoyable explorations. Schedule your worrygasm -- the orgasmic culmination of your worries -- for no later than November 27.
Sometimes, I fucking hate how to-the-point Rob Bresney can be. This is no new news to me, but I'm not fully ready for this. A week is good, a week is good to confront it face on, "look the devil in its face" I was told many times in the past week. Maybe I'll just let a few more people in on the devil I'm facing.
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
When I woke this morning, it was not the usual reluctant rising an hour or so after my alarm first went off. It wasn't the usual rush to get ready and out the door to get to work some time before 10 am. Rather, it was a long relaxing morning that had me awake for hours before I finally decided to leave for work.
The sun was not up when I got out of bed and into my fuzzy slippers. The moon was still out though and I went to the balcony and had a cigarette while I watched it turn from a brillant white orb high in the sky to a yellow spot hovering over the hills of the cemetery. I watched the moon set, something I haven't done since I was a child and would sleep with my feet towards the pillows on full moons since the moon light flooded my childhood bedroom. I had a large cup of tea and watched some news, took a long shower rather than my usual morning quick-washes. I debated several outfits and even had time to knit. It was only 7 am by the time I was completely ready to go to work. I knit some more until 8 am.
Honestly, I leave for work at 9 am more often than I ought to. I get into work at 9:40 when I leave at 9 am. This morning, I left at 8 am, for the first time in months and months and got to work at 9:10 am. I do not understand how leaving an hour early only gets me there a half hour earlier, but it proves that leaving later is just better off. Who wants an hour and 10 minutes commute when it can be 40 minutes door-to-door?
In the end, rising at such an hour is not fully worth it except to see the moon set as the sun rises. While it might be nice to spend a bit more time getting ready rather than a mad rush, leaving before 8:30 am just leads to crowded trains and a few minutes "earlier" to work.
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
There's been a brand-new spin put on the environmental issues of transportation. It's called
What Would Jesus Drive. The pledge one is to take is as follows:
Confessing Jesus Christ to be my Savior and Lord, including Lord of my transportation choices, I pledge the following.
I will organize my life so that it is easier and more desirable to walk, bike, car pool, and use public transportation.
If I need to purchase a vehicle, I will choose the most fuel efficient and least polluting vehicle available that truly fits my needs.
I will discuss with others the moral concerns and solutions associated with transportation.
I will encourage automobile manufacturers to produce the most fuel-efficient and least polluting vehicles possible that truly fit the needs of the American people.
I will urge government leaders to support public transportation, a significant increase in fuel economy standards, and research and development for promising new transportation technologies that reduce pollution and increase fuel efficiency.
I'd pledge, if it wasn't for the Lord Jesus Christ-Savior stuff.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Yesterday afternoon, I called my mother to complain about the intense pain on my upper left arm as a result of getting Hepatitis A shot into it so that my body my develop lifelong immunity to the disease. She then asked me if I had $700 to which I laughed. She then asked if I had any vacation time, to which I have 12 days. The explanation for these questions made me want a sugar daddy, a better paying job, an "Antiques Roadshow" valuable, or any other thing that would give me $700.
She is going to Aruba for business immediately after Thanksgiving for 5 days. Her company is paying for her to stay in a nice hotel in a sunny warm place while she spends each day indoors at meetings discussing whatever it is she does. She'll have a nearby beach, a large hotel room and sunshine going to waste. And for $700 airfare I could go with her without worry of hotel or meals. But I don't have $700, I barely have $70. Does she not notice how pale my skin has become, how my hair without the sunny highlights caused by sunshine isn't as bouncy-looking, how a vacation would be so appreaciated?
I said I would not have an expensive wedding like my older sister is planning when I marry, so she can buy me an airline ticket to Aruba. I believe, however, that she thinks I will have a life of spinsterdom and therefore shelling out money for my wedding is something she does not plan for. It's only 5 days of sunshine, not worth the debt. It's only 5 days of sunshine being wasted on a woman who will spend them indoors.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Only working at large research non-profit are you scheduled to watch something on PBS. Next week I have to take an hour and a half to watch something on tape along with most of my department, because it's relevant television. I've probably have already seen whatever it is that they want us to watch if it played on PBS. Because I'm turning into the biggest public television dork ever. I might start calling in during funding drives to donate just enough money to get my the canvas tote which I can then use to return books to the public library and then fill with organic vegetables on my stoll home so I don't generate unneed trash by using those plastic grocery bags they give you.
Shortly, I am going to see my doctor to get a Hepatitis A vaccine booster shot. They did not call to remind me to do this. Rather, I am so interested in getting out of the office for an hour that I don't mind going to get a shot. Next week: I may donate a kidney to avoid sticky circumstances.
Last week, Joyce Carol Oates informed me that nervous breakdowns were out of fashion while back in the 1960s every good liberal arts student eventually had one. While I never had a nervous breakdown while a college student, I may be due for one now. It's not very like me to do something so "out of fashion" so I will try not to. Much like I desparately would love a pair of clogs but realize these shoes are more for the PBS canvas tote carrying crowd than for me, I am trying to avoid mental chaos. In the mean time, I'll try my very hardest to maintain a clear and level head, maintain a healthy outlook on the world and not indulge in copius substances as an escapist tactic to avoid this breakdown. I feel as if this may be overly dramatic, but it's not. This is merely not the right platform for what's on my mind. Excuse me while I stay emotionally detached.
Monday, November 18, 2002
Last night,
Bess and I went to see 8 Mile. Eminem has really nice sideburns. I wouldn't think that a white hip hop artist would bother to cultivate sideburns, but his are pretty nice. His "love interest" of a completely under-developed character, had flippy hair much like Paige from Trading Spaces. My only problem with this is that the movie supposedly takes place in 1995. No girls had flippy hair back then, maybe in Detroit they did but I doubt it. The movie was neither disappointing nor amazing. It was just average and only instilled in me the desire to go buy some of his music.
Bess also gave me a small green note pade from
a wacky asian company which says "Color of Time / 20:00 / There is another clock in your mind / Your time is appointed by the color you choose." I also received a set of pencils that the box describes as "Dream, hope, truch, confidence . . . Little things make the mighty world" and each pencil says "Hey~Lovely Hori / The sun is warm, the sky it clear. The nature's / touch is soft like breeze's" No, there are no typos on my half in there. This is what these things say. They make my desk with the black metal pencil cup, black plastic stapler and burgundy tape dispenser a bit more cheerful.
Friday, November 15, 2002
Mike Bloomberg, man of thousands of great ideas that seem be thought through for all of two seconds, decided that he wants to re-instate the
commuter tax. Those from Connecticut, Long Island, Jersey, Weschester County and beyond will have to start paying for hanging out in the city. They apparently use our resources. If you doubt this, go to the meat packing district on the weekend to see the throngs of Long Island girls waiting at the "Don't Walk", using up our electricity since they aren't too sure on the finer point of crossing between lights.
Unlike my strong objections to the anti-smoking bill, I applaud this move. Make it more expensive for out-of-towners to come into the city. Make it a financial disincentive to work in Manhattan. Maybe the idea of setting food in Penn Station around 5 pm won't give me an instant migrane when people stop working in the city because it's costing them a few extra thousand a year.
Please, force these people to pay for the police who stand around Port Authority late at night insuring that office workers drunk on a Friday get home safely to screaming spouses who were worried about their where-abouts (and by worried, they mean worried they are having an affair). Maybe they'll leave their cubicles for a Jersey Corporate Farm so that the 20% of the city government workers will have jobs when they get laid off as Bloomberg is also trying to cut back city government. Please, create a reason for new businesses and corporations to not open in the city. Please levy this tax so that the frantic people on television who fear that New York's economy will will turn under are right. Please, do anything to make this city more affordable for people who dream of living on Irving Place or anywhere betweenthe Hudson and East Rivers.
Maybe we should also impose a very high tax on the elderly. They have been living around for a while, in rent controlled apartments in the West Village, West End Avenue. I think it's time for them to consider Miami. So let's get them out of the city too. Bloomberg can also impose a "pooper scooper" tax so that dog owners will flee the city where their dogs can crap tax free in backyards. Please, make everyone leave the city. Because I'd like a chance to live within the borough of Manhattan once again.
I give him until September 2005 to make the housing market more affordable. If he keeps up with the stupid laws, we might be one our way.
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Last night, I tried to be super-girl. I tried to do 50 things and get to bed at a decent hour. I tired to be high-efficiency urban office worker getting everything she needs to get done after 6 pm in preparation to continue her high-efficiency urban office worker status. I failed.
When I returned home, I put on a mask to shrink my unsightly pores and did some knitting, accidentally falling asleep. I tended to my bird and prepared a quick chicken marinade. Then things began to fall apart as I began to sort my laundry and cook my chicken.
The hiss of marinate boiling over first made me return to the kitchen, turning down the flame and then continuing to turn socks right side out and decide whether lavender should be washed in the darks or lights. A smokey smell filled the apartment. I sniffed around and dropped the armload of sweaters on my bed. The kitchen was rapidly filling with smoke and the smoke detector that I suspected needed a new battery lay silent. I took off the cover and was choked by massive amounts of burning dinner. The smoke was so heavy that I had to place my skillet on the balcony, open the windows in the kitchen and turned on both fans.
The black char on the bottom on my high-quality pan came off in several large, clean hunks. Unforuntately, I do not have non-stick-chicken but instead a thin skin of burnt. My pan lid and outside needed a good scrubbing. It was already 10 pm. My laundry still needed to be done.
By 12:30 am, I was knitting while my clothes dried in the empty laundrymat. The pan had been scrubbed clean, the kitchen wiped down and sparkling. I had eaten my burnt chicken, tearing off the charred crust. My eyes were heavy as I folded pajamas, pressing them to my nose to inhale the sweet smell of fabric softener, wanting badly to be in them.
When folding my new black turtleneck sweater, I noticed that the arms and body looked smaller than what I recalled them being when I wore it on Monday. After I returned home through the silence of my slice of New York, I tried on this sweater. It was half way up my forearms, barely to my waist line. It had shrunk, leaving my a note:
For 2 years you wanted me, light-weight ribbed black turtle neck sweater in cotton. You searched everytime you went shopping for me. You forgot sometimes, in the summer, all about how you wanted me. But finally, you and I became united in these past few months. Once a week or every other week, you'd put me on and I kept your neck warm in the cold and your body cool in the stuffy office. We were in love.
However, this weekend you came back from New Jersey, abandoning me for lighter sweaters for this so-called Indian Summer. In your bag that you normally only add stolen cleaning supplies and tissues from the massive amounts your mother stores, you had something new. A pair of mittens.
I heard you go on and on about how you've wanted these mittens for so long. Longer than how long you searched for me. How was I to feel, knowing that I was not desired for all those years? How was I to feel when you only wanted me for my functionality in your office wardrobe? These mittens you've wanted for much longer, they reflect what you truly love. I am only function.
So I shrunk away in the dryer. If you had really loved me you would have noticed my "lay flat to dry" label but you were too distracted since you burnt your chicken. Maybe you can find someone who will appreciate me, or wear me because you feel bad even if I am too short on your arms and torso.
I hope you have a good life, as I on the bottom of a stack of sweaters were you buried beneath their wooly itchiness. I hope you indeed love these mittens, even though we know the colors aren't "you" the way my light-weight black ribbing was. I hope your hands are happy while your neck stands exposed to the wind. It's tragic though, because you need me more now that those mittens.
Farewell, Your shrunked light-weight ribbed black turtle neck sweater in cotton.
Thursday, November 14, 2002
"Tara, what were you doing driving down the Bowery at 3 am in the morning?"
I was going to see the New Deal with my companions.
"Where you drunk? Were you on drugs? How exactly is it that the entire exhaust system was scrapped out from underneath a car that you aren't even on the insurance for?"
No, no, and if you were a bunch of Jersey fuck-wit insurance folks you'd know that the streets in Manhattan can indeed scrape out the undersides of cars, especially if these streets are anywhere near Canal Street / the location of the crime.
"We still don't fully understand why 6 young girls were in Manhattan at that hour on the evening."
No need to worry, my darling insurance adjuster. The evening's music is forever recorded on a live cd. Would you like me to forward you a copy along with the accident report that I never intend to pick up?
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Celebrity! There is something innately disappointing about meeting someone you had admired for so long, be they a writer, musician or actor. You consume their chosen art and eventually believe that you know something about the person behind it. You imagine what they are like based on the cover and 3 sentence biographies on dust jackets or the way they walk onto stage during a live performance. In the end, they are just kind of regular and all of the exciting qualities that you believed they would hold just do not exist.
When I went to see Joyce Carol Oates last night at the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble, I was expecting a frazzled woman who would continued to speak along the lines of “Oh, I just thought that was a neutrino whizzing through my brain” in response to the microphone feed-back that occurred at the beginning of her talk. While innately odd, she was personable, enjoyed joking and had a rather wry sense of humor. I expected a frizzy haired, very thin middle aged woman who writes about 2 books a year, and therefore is not used to speaking, and when in a speaking situation she would read her book passages, make obtuse statements and answer questions in a manner than left the questioner unsure of whether their question had been answered.
Instead, she was a frizzy haired, very thin middle aged woman who would read form her book followed by adding additional points so that the passages made sense out of context. She would frequently joke about things such as “nervous break downs are out of style” and how all of her Princeton writing students “rowed crew, played the violin and volunteered while getting good grades.” She was very concerned about answering questions that people had in thorough manner. She was, disappointingly, less eccentric than I desired.
After
Bess and I parted at Times Square, I took out the Joyce Carol Oates book I am reading. It was an older book, one of my favorites and the only book of hers that I’ve read twice. I bought it at the Stand for $6 a few weeks ago. I began to read her book and suddenly, it felt different. To know that maybe she was being wry and not desperately serious in a given paragraph. The book resonated differently in my head. It was not exactly the same because now I knew more about the person behind it. But then I wondered, if I was trying to bridge the gap between the words on the book and the woman dressed in teal I had seen earlier in the evening. I realized that she was not the same person who wrote this book, some 30 years before. That person may have been more frazzled, less content with life as middle-aged people seem to be.
While I have “met” numerous movie stars living in New York, I have not really talked more than 3 to 4 sentences to these people. I did not exactly meet Joyce Carol Oates either, I just heard her talk and found the upstate New York accent as the voice behind the words that I read. I have only really met one celebrity type as far as talking to extensively, getting to know what makes him laugh, what he puts on is French fries and on an increasingly more personal basis. And next time I went to see him play, he did not hold that wonder over me, that amazement because I knew he liked Sesame Street, that his laugh was a bit odd.
When completely defrocked of that wonder that makes them celebrity, the interest in them wanes. Part of it must be just the fascination of consuming another person’s work without knowing who exactly it is that created it. And through each book or concert or movie, you try to see further and surmise more about who this person in. In the end, they have funny laughs, an unexpected wry sense of humor and very normal ways that pale from the build up that existed in our minds.
[I wrote this for Alison in response to what people want to know about celebrities. Not too much, just enough to let us continue to wonder is the answer]
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
She told me that he had asked, without sarcasm but with sincere inquiry, "Does she really feel secure in his arms?" And that has made me laugh so many times in the past few hours, it has made it sort of impossible to take anything else seriously, many things can be boiled down to that one statement.
I tried to play
MASH for the fun of it and realized that I couldn't come up with 5 boys in my life that I am remotely interested in. I then realized there aren't
any boys in my life that I remotely interested in, harboring secret obsessions over, or contemplating stalking. Men I had previously liked or lusted no longer appeal as likable or lustable. Part of me thinks that I ought to have someone to pine over. But I just realized this fact today, something that obviously hadn't bothered me until that point.
I've had some bad news that I am not emotionally ready to handle so I'll be knitting/crocheting/crafting a lot in the coming weeks / months to ignore the nagging thought in the back of my head.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
This week, during one of the $5 eveings at the Cobble Hill Cinemas, I fully plan on going to see
8 Mile. I am mildly or moderately embarassed by this fact but obviously not that shamed as I'm sharing this with the world. There's just something about Eminem and the movie that makes me want to go see it.
[Here I deleted a whole bunch of stuff on Eminem I was rambling about]
In less than 24 hours this past weekend, I peed in the woods, lost my wallet, became separated from my cell phone, had to return a hat, bought more yarn, had a shower door fall on my head and finally found the mittens I've wanted for about 5 years even if I find the color disagreeable. I also had Jersey boys buy me plentiful beers, was asked what made me smell so nice if I wasn't wearing perfume (and not in a cheesy hitting on you type of way), had that crisp smell of fallen leaved fill my nose and head, and was accused of not showering because my hair looked "greasy" when, in fact, my hair has just become darker now that the sun isn't shining on it as often leading to the conclusion that it was dirty.
Monday, November 11, 2002
On each of the three floors the company blessed enough to employ me is a "kitchen”. On top of each refrigerator is a "first aid kit". The kit is half-stuffed with bayer, advil, tylenol as other first aid kits things like bee sting creme aren't as necessary when there's a hospital 5 blocks away. The pain relievers are more important, possibly essential. I am not one to take advil for headaches. Rather, I'm known for spending an entire day with a massive headache, wondering when it will go away. However, the events leading up to appearing at work caused me to set down my bag, turn on the computer and promptly walk to the kitchen and snag some advil.
Of course, I cannot deny the fact that I may have gone out last night, may have drank some beer and may have been mildly drunk but did not drink as much as I do on a Friday night with
Bess may have something to do with the headache, but not entirely. Additional circumstances piled on in a matter of added to any headache I was going to get.
Besides small events and instances, there is one primary cause that occurred on the short but hellish subway ride form Brooklyn to 34th Street. When the subway pulled into Church Avenue I looked for a seat as I have a fairly large bag since I insist on bringing too much stuff with me just to go to New Jersey for a few days. I found one at the end of the car near the door, tucked the bag between my feet and thought about whether or not I wanted to read my book. Pay attention now as this is what send my head into overdrive.
Across from me was your typical homeless or crazy older person with a deeply tanned and wrinkled face, a dark down coat stained and a tight knit hat with a dirty worn edge down around her eyebrows. She smelled a bit, but enough to ignore it the same way men of Eastern European descent who bathe themselves in cologne can be olfactorily ignored. In the next minute, however, I would become so disturbed by this person that I required two advil, a large black coffee and another cigarette once I finish relaying the details if I could possibly capture the events in words. Hopefully, I don't make it nearly as vivid as it was. If you are eating lunch, you may want to come back once your food as digested if you have a weak stomach.
She reached down into a black plastic bag at her feet, and began to rummage through it. The scent rising form the bag was much like the garbage piles in front of the "loft" building in Williamsburg where the garbage men seem only to pick up trash once a week, maybe every other as hpstrs continue to add their decaying organic chai and spoiled yogurt in cheap plastic bags day after day, the absentee landlord that won't provide a dumpster while the trash is thrown on the curb, until the scent makes your nose pinch deep from inside and your eyes nearly water. The scent made the wild berry crunchy granola-like cereal I had just eaten churn.
She rummaged through the bag, the scent getting more intense with each push of her hand deeper into the seemingly endless depths of only a grocery sized bag. The bag contained pieces of paper, colored greasy gray and other colors of filth that commonly make up the palate of dumpsters and the Gowanus Canal. Scraps of food were mixed of similar murky colors, no clear indication of what plant or animal matter they had originally been. Looking at her pick through garbage caused my brain to start to thud against my skull, my vision to tune in and out (this may also be attributable to crossing my eyes and making faces the previous evening).
I looked around the train to save my eyes from this assault any further. Only 30 seconds had passed since I'd sat down. Many other people with staring at this woman, completely confused, wishing she could just be the more easily tolerated stinky and passed out homeless person on the train. But she was active and digging through a bag of trash.
My eyes followed those of the other passengers back to the homeless person. She had produced something out of her bag, about 3 to 4 inches big. It was especially stunk, was of the grayish nothing color of everything else in the bag and had a slimy texture to it. Maybe it was a mostly decayed banana, maybe a piece of fish or chicken. I am not sure exactly what it was. I did not want to think about it too much.
Her dirt incrusted nails dug into this piece of "food" and tore off small bits. My stomach was pushed about 6 inches closer to my mouth. My head swirled. She was clearly eating some sort of decayed trash. I stood up, I could not look nor could I look away. I walked to the other end of the train, grabbed a hold of the rail and closed my eyes tight.
It was clearly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. I could not get it out of my head, I could not get the smell out of my nose like sweaters worn after being in a bar still lingering of smoke that may or may not be imaginary. Or when you singe your nose hairs lighting a cigarette and only you can smell it.
For the rest of the ride, that part of the train remained empty except for the garbage eater. Yuppies pressed against me and stumbled on my bag. I regretted eating that morning, I regretting getting out of bed.
While walking to the train with Edward, a very rare event, too many pigeons were hanging out on the sidewalk. "Do you know they eat feces?" he asked. I mentioned that my parents' dog occasionally eats cat poo. We winced at each other and discussed how gross animals were, what it is that makes them want to eat just disgusting things. Less than 2 minutes later, I'd see a lady eat trash and get a headache big enough to make me want advil more than ever.
Friday, November 8, 2002