Last night, I went to a
basketball game. I sat in the lower section for the first time, the place I've always dreamed of sitting instead of high up in the rafters. The people who sit in the lower level are more civilised, quieter and not nearly as exciting to be around. It takes them a bit longer to get into the game, once they've drank enough beers and loosen up around their coworkers and first dates. They eventually even take off their sports coats. Once guy started dancing pretty crazily, he was clearly on coke though. The Knicks won for the first time I've paid to see them, it made me happy.
For the first time, also, I fell asleep and missed my train stop. Even though I've been further down the F line to go to Coney Island, I really don't know the order of the stop or how far they are from my house. I woke at Avenue I, startled that I couldn't remember anything, really, since West 4, or maybe I fluttered my eyes at Bergen Street, but honestly I think it was West 4, two stops after I got on the F. When I've been very drunken, I never missed my stop. But now, very tired and barely drunken, I fell asleep fast, the ding-dong of the train doors not disturbing me at all.
There was a home/Manhattan bound train coming shortly after I shook the sleep off and tried to contemplate where I was. It was an elevated stop and I did not know if I'd have to run down to street level and back up in order to catch the train. Luckily, there was a cut-through and I made it to the other side just as the train was slowing to approach the stop.
I counted the stops to home. One, where my eyes finally opened as the doors were closing. Two, how far am I into Brooklyn, how long have I been sleeping on the train, why didn't anyone wake me? Three, Ditmas, hey this is the stop after mine, I'm nearly home and not halfway to the Hamptons as I'd thought. I got off at my stop, the only person in the mostly empty train getting off. I walked through the freezing streets, wondering when I left Manhattan. It seemed some how too long to have taken when I looked at my watch but so short in my memory as it was West 4 to Avenue I in the blink of an eye.
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
I'm starting to have stressed out dreams. My stressed out dreams are always very vivid to me and the flashes of them stick with me for a long time. I wonder why these are the dreams I recall. Maybe they are the only things I ever dream about. I have dreams about confronting people about things I don't find it worthwhile to confront them about in our day-to-day world. I am afraid to say things that will stick forever. I had a dream last night that there was a showerhead dangling in the showerstall and the tiles had become moldy. This was a stressed out dream because I felt uncomfortable the whole time, that something was amiss, I had failed to keep my apartment tidy.
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
My landlord gives me a Christmas card, probably just an extra from the package she buys and just signs her name and scrawls a "Merry Christmas" and doesn't have to pay postage. In return, I gave her the January rent check on the 28th instead of 31th last year. I wrote out this year's January rent check for the 27th. She married now so I thought one more day early would be nicer. I figure she's young and would appreciate blowing half of it while clubbing someplace obscure that only hardcore Brooklynites like herself know about on New Year's Eve. I could have given it to her already based on my budgeting, thankfully I didn't.
I decided to post-date my student loan check for next month, paying them more than I need to since I've only paid off $800 after diligently paying for 3 years now. I dated it for Jan 1, 2003 and mailed it about a week ago. Today, I realized that they already cashed it. The bank said they can't prevent this from happening as no actually person looks at incoming checks. The student load bitches told me that post-dating checks
not are acceptable and they do
not accept them, but cash them at will, and they will
not give a crap that they took my money from me before I wanted them to have it. I sent it in early, postdated, so I wouldn't forget. I was trying to be responsible even though they told me that they don't consider payments late until a week or so after they are due.
Not that there is any reason to be nice to one's landlord during the "holidays" by giving her rent a few days early, but I am just that kind of girl. Now I can't be that girl. I must be the slave to the student loan people that truly am.
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Rules to not doing stupid things at work:
(a)Do not look at your list of Christmasy errands while trying to write down what someone want you to do for them. You'll have written instructions that say "Change gift certificate" and be really confused. That's the only rule right now actually.
The irony of my emergency contingency based on reliancy plan for this morning: I stayed at the parents' house thinking I could take the NJ Transit to work if they called a strike so I would not have to wake at 6 am to begin walking to work. I woke up at 6 am anyhow. And the train I was going to take was "cancelled" making me later to work than I would have been if I left from Brooklyn.
I've been drinking massive amounts of tea today. I wonder how it would taste if you heated VitaminWater and used that for the base of your tea, taking into consideration their respective flavors.
The important part of having something to write is looking at the world from a certain angle and observation point. Part of writing a story is remembering details from moment to moment. I haven't been observant or remembering very well these days. Seriously, I posted about my ponytail last week.
It's the Christmas music. They are feeding it to us block out all thoughts and only allow us to see "Buy!" "Sale!" "Purchase!" "Santa!" "Product!" It's very hard to think when "Jingle Bell Rock" is going through your head. Very hard indeed.
Monday, December 16, 2002
Warning: This is a terribly selfish, self-centered and somewhat boring post about my hair.
When I cut my hair shortly after getting my degree, I did it because I thought that there was no point having longer hair when it spends all of its time in a ponytail. For the past year, after no longer getting it cut close to my head each time I went for a haircut, no longer needing haircuts monthly since longer hair doesn't freakout as fast, I finally have sufficient hair for a ponytail again. When one cuts their hair short, they think "it'll grow back" but it takes 78,796,800 times longer to grow back than it takes to think those 3 words.
[This number is not arbitrary, but a calculation based on the assumption that one can think 3 words in a second and it's been 2 1/2 years - approximately 912 days - since I thought that - times 24 hours a day - times 60 minutes an hours - times 60 seconds a minute.]
Although I've been trying to put my hair in a ponytail for several months now, it was a sad, sad ponytail with more pony than tail. Now, there is equal pony and tail amounts. I love it. I missed it. The way it swings back and forth as I walk, the little hairs that inevitably fall out around my face. I'll scan a picture of myself at 4 in a ponytail with hairs falling about my face. I look pretty much the same + glasses and age. The same clusters of hair still fall out.
The reason why I dismissed my long hair is my favorite part now. I guess I'm ready to go back to being a student since I have the hair for it now. I wonder if I'm too old to put it into two braids as I would like Violet Bauldaire's hair in a ribbon whenever I needed to think real hard. We'll see in about 6 months.
Friday, December 13, 2002
I recently ventured to street level for my daily walk around the neighborhood mid-day stroll. Sometimes I buy lunch, sometimes I don't if I brought one with me. But each day, I make sure I get out at least once. It's a lot like prisoners being able to walk around the yard, but my "yard" does not have razor wired fences and snipers in towers. Instead, I had blocks upon blocks of tall buildings, dirty sidewalks and tourists. I generally only walk down Madison Avenue. Tourists seem not to know there is a Madison Avenue below 42nd Street.
I turned onto Madison while lighting a cigarette and instantly became disoriented. What was this bright globe in the sky streaming yello-white light? It was so brillant, hanging in the southern sky, making the top of the pretty "skyscrapers" circa 1910 disappear in it's radiance. My eyes wanted to tear, I could barely keep them open. The people walking with their backs to the burst of shining light were mere shawdows. The looked like moving silhouettes with glowing white edges. I couldn't see where to walk to avoid walking into the approaching figures. I felt mole-like. I was unable to recall waht it felt like to be facing the glaring sun.
In our final year of college, we wondered why there was not a college run "disorientation" to compliment the "orientation" that they had given us upon entering. Partially, we believed that the week after exams and before graduation was our disorientation as we drank ourselves silly night after night after a semester of severely pared down partying. But we hope for a formal sit down, where we would "disoriented" back into the realy world.
We wanted somene to let us know that the ideals that we'd been allowed to build would be tested and most of the ultimately defeated. We wanted to be told that all tis hard work would get a job for maybe a year or two and we'd then have to return to school to ever be taken seriously in their adult world. Someone should have said that one day we'd all realize that most females cannot converse about feminist theory and many of our future workmates will profess to "not being a feminist or anything." They should have told us a thing or two about what was out there. But letting us get silly drunk for a week was probably better in the long run.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
I haven't had much to write because I know what I must do and this isn't it.
How self-assured and cocky I'd been three years ago. I knew exactly how smart I really was, what it is that I wanted, and how I was going to get it. I was one of those people that knew what they wanted to do with their lives, I was the pride and joy, I was ready to take on the adult world by retreating into the academic. I had a plan. I haven't looked back in 3 years, sometimes I had no place to look back to, and now I must.
After writing and rewriting, fretting over commas and how to maintain a relaxed yet certain view in sending a request for my old college professor to write me a recommendation, I finally just hit send. But I did one of the things I had to do, the necessary parts to moving forward. I must dish out $5 here and there for offical papers with office seals even if I still am paying for the education behind that paper. I must believe in my GREs as merely a test score and not worry if they show the excellence I am capable of. I must learn how to edit things as that was one of the major downfalls to my PhD applications.
I get anxious thinking about it. Maybe I think too much rather than just press forward, bust out the spiralbound and fill it with dates and requirements, tentative schedules for what will ultimately be a tentative future for the tentative remainder of my working life.
Who was that girl who would make decisions so quickly, for whom the rest of her life seemed just as easy to plan as the rest of her night. She lived in excesses of studying, drinking, and various other contrasting verbs ending in -ing. I need to email her as well and ask if she'd like to share some of that with me.
Going forward is what I want to do, but sometimes I find myself lacking what I felt I once had. However, buying the "determination" Vitamin water was easily the best decision I've made all day.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Friday: Father gets parking ticket while picking me up fromtrain station. I become all outraged as I do whenever anyone messes with my clan. We eat dinner with granny. Marie, my youngest sister, and Katie all sit in my basement where we create a new language based on the fact that Antartica is sometimes hard to say. Katie knits me a blanket that I sleep under for the remainder of the weekend.
Saturday: The Bronx is easiliest the furthest outpost to New York. The Bronx is really too far away to have to travel from at 1:30 am. I surely could have returned home faster from any place in Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, the towns along the Hudson in New Jersey, my hometown and possible anywhere in the state of Maine. While seeing old friends is fun and all, travelling that far home is not something to be done late at night, if ever.
Sunday: I decide to go shopping for some odds and ends in Manhattan. Apparently the rest of the metro area is also out shopping for odds and ends. I don't think people have showered since Friday morning and many appear to have gas. It's a stinky, hot crowd I'd rather not be near. The crowded over-heated shops and stuffy stores lead me to wander downtown Manhattan. Bess & I watch the Sopranos while eating Cracker Jacks. Our prizes suck, the Sopranos are only mildly less as disappointing.
Monday: I am asked to review the supervisory capabilities of a particular person that I has made my life uncomfortable. I'm busting at the seams to let them know what I really think and trying to compose something that looks acceptable but still hints at the sad awful truth. My Christmas spirit is also crushed.
Monday, December 9, 2002
The only good thing, the single event that makes this bleek season worthwhile, is finally occurring. Snow! The lovely powdery coldness is falling from the sky. Manhattan in the snow is so depressing. The difference between what my neighborhood, with wee front and back yards, looked like to the slushy Midtown streets is disappointing. The flowerbeds and bushes, the parked cars and front steps were dusted with the lovely pure white stuff in Brooklyn while gritty gray snow and slushy puddles was all to be found in Manhattan. I was to go see Harry Potter this evening but I'd rather spend those hours making a snowman in Prospect Park, walking down silent, still streets with the only sound being snow settling in the trees and the large plopping sound as big clumps of it fall from overburdened branches. I cannot wait for a snowy weekend when I can take a walk in the Cemetery, looking over all of the city and Brooklyn cuddled in a white blanket.
Maybe the particular fascination with snow is just related to being from a temperate zone. If we didn't like it, how would we get through the winters? We'd move to Miami instead as I suspect snow-haters have already. But I think that my love of snow is also founded in the day I came into this world.
During a snowstorm, the likes of which we have to think back to 1996 to recall, weeks after she was actually due to give birth, when my mother's hips had become bruised from being so pregnant for so long, I finally decided to enter this world. My father was still working when my mother went to the hospital. I'm not sure how she got there as this was never part of the story I was told, but knowing my mother she might have very well walked through the hilly "Reservation." When my father returned home, he found my aunt waiting for him because she knew, despite his tough-guy image, his "I do 50 one-handed push-ups in the morning with my 2 year-old on my back followed by 150 sit-ups" ways, there was no chance he'd be able to drive him self up the "mountain" to the hospital.
My aunt was a level-headed lady and she managed to drive their heavy blue Nova up the twisty slick roads as my father nervously fidgeted beside her. The 15 minute drive took well over an hour. He then paced the waiting room, trying to decide if he did or did not want to see his wife give birth. When he finally decided that he did, the doctor was walking towards him telling him that he had yet another baby girl.
There are two things that my sisters and I had in common when we were born. One is that Eeach of us had a small bump on the top part of our right ears and each of us was born in a snow storm. The second is our lives began with the soft white stuff falling from the sky and even though when we were 6, 8 and 12 having to shovel the walks and driveway when school would let out early, we all love snow. The misery of shovelling was never so bad when we'd race to see who could get more done, worked in shifts of coco makers and shovelers and had our cheerful black lab biting at each shovelful. I believe my older sister, in her prissy ways, may like snow less than she used to, but maybe not. Maybe she still gets as giddy as I do when snow falls on the warm inner hollow of her ear.
Thursday, December 5, 2002
In addition to the many Christmasy / Wintry songs that are being forced fed each second of each day, which then flood my head as all I can thinking about is "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow," I am currently inflicted with really bad 80s songs. In particular, one song, Phil Collin's
Against All Odds is stuck in my head. I'd give anything, anything to get rid of this. "It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas," would even be preferred. I'd rather no Christmas music at all, but realize that this is a hefty order to fill in the next 3 weeks. But please, not Phil Collins.
Additionally, the brain synaptic issue that borders on deja vu I've been having is not getting any better. I am beginning to separate what is dream, a similar event and what is simply unexplanable at least. I'm sorting through these thoughts and assigning them to categories and begining to realize that I dream more than I'd previously thought. Most of my dreams hang so close to reality, though, that sometimes I forget where they belong. However, if they boy in my dream last night really was working as a Macy's Santa and the jazz musician and him were arguing, my life might be a bit more interesting. This is what happens when I haven't had a drink in nearly 2 weeks.
Wednesday, December 4, 2002
Winter is the name of a season that starts on the shortest day of the year and ends when the day and night become balanced once again / spring. Winter actually has nothing to do with the weather, weather happens regardless of what time of year it is, but most people associate it with being cold. It supposedly begins on December 21 (or 20 or 22 as some seasonal stickerlers will inform you). It is currently December 3, winter is supposedly weeks away but a step outside seems to indicate it's mid-January.
There is no bright sunshine left as the sun sweeps pitful shallow angles in our southern hemisphere, never entering my bedroom window in the morning any more. In the summer, it unbearably shines upon my sleeping body at ungodly hours like 7 am. The only comes out now in these low glaring bursts that usually occur while I am at my desk or sleeping late on the weekend with a hangover. It's barely light out in the morning, very dark out when I get released from the restraints and am allowed to leave the confines of my stuffy windowless office.
Nothing glows with that yellowish hue of pure sun as it does in the spring, summer and fall. If you have forgotten what that looks like, go look at pictures of you taken when there was sun and you'll see this lovely yellowish aura of sun. Instead, everything is the cold cool color of flat sun.
When I look at my livingroom window to the brick buildings against the aqua sky, I am reminded of pictures taken in the 1970s. Back then, film wasn't as good. Nothing was as good, actually, everything is better now except that they discontinued pudding pops. And the world had this flat, washed out look. Go look at pictures of yourself as a child in bell bottoms with snarly hair and snot on your face and you'll see the flat color I am talking about. It's depressing.
My hair is fading to this lifeless mousey brown because the sun is not dancing in it, making reddish sparks of color. I wore a mustardy yellow sweater and plaid pants today because I felt very 70s in this flat horrible time of the year. However, the mustardy played off the bouncing office lighting and made my hair look happy and shiny if only for a second.
Maybe that's why people wore such strange and off hues in the 1970s, to deal with the fact that the light was boring and flat for an entire decade. Maybe disco holds important answers to surviving the winter months. The secret may lie in platform shoes and funky hip shaking beats. I think ought to rent Saturday Night Fever and buy one of those disco hits CDs and study up. It might also be helpful to catch as many rerun episodes late at night on FOX of That 70s Show for futher clues of how to survive this boring, dark, horrible season.
The best part of December 21 is not that it is the shortest day, it's knowing that the days start getting longer from that day forward, a gradual lengthening to summer.
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
Right now I am experiencing strange deja-vu like mental synaptic glitches. Have I dreamt this all before, have I seen this before, am I just going through the same thing over and over again?
This moring, at 5:30 am, my mother left New Jersey while it was about 15 degrees with negative wind chill factors. By mid-afternoon, she will be in the Caribbean, on an island where the highs are expected to be 90 degrees today. Thursday it might snow in New York, another "nor'easter" as we've been having about every other week since October. The weather in Aruba is going to be windy, warm and 85. Do I hate my mother? no, but this is the closest I've gotten to hating her since I was a bitchy bitchy teen. Please excuse me while I sulk over my coffee, dreaming of warm places where my nose turns red from sun exposure and not from walking 3 blocks.
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
A few weeks ago I volunteered to be in the office today and tomorrow to prepare materials for a very important meeting the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. I figured that with my parents around the bend, it would be no problem for me to hang around however late I needed to in order to get these very important documents together. It was a gesture of kindness to the other person who would have had to put together these materials as she has a longer journey for the Thanksgiving holiday than I do. I'm a nice chick like that.
Last night I went to bed fairly early, finished a Lemony Snicket, got a big glass of water since my throat was strangely sore and fell into a deep slumber. This morning, every turn to hit snooze the normal 50,000 times caused my body to ache. Getting out of bed, I felt like a 65 year-old after running a marathon. I did nto want to go to work, but had to! had to! had to make tables and edit for style and assist and lend a hand and be in the office. Even if I am getting chills when in a sweater drinking piping hot tea. Even if I sound groggy and every joint in my body aches. Even if I feel on the verge of hallucinating. I am clearly sick.
Tomorrow they are predicting snow. My input is that it will snow, probably 2 to 3 inches by morning tomorrow. Just because I will then have to carry a heavy bag with several days worth of sweaters and knitting projects in the freezing cold while I still ache and want to die so that I can get into the office and harass people who've known about this deadline for weeks into dropping of their important materials. I will then have to suffer through some horrid amount of human-traffic trying to get to New Jersey as I'm on my last legs, my final energy most probably provided by giving in and buying a gingerbread latte, probably slipping in the snowy gutter on 34th street to be nearly clipped by an on-coming bus. Yes, it will snow, just because it's the only thing that can make my situation even worse.
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Narrating my life since last Thursday, in a play-by-play fashion would involve a lot of repeats to the point of boring repetition. Mostly, it would involve: meet friends at bar, drink beer, laugh, drink beer, take subway home, ad naseum. I didn't even have wine or a mixed drink to make the story any more interesting. Instead, I will provide the amusing asides that filled those times when I was not in a bar and drinking beer like some sad, sad 20-something disgruntled office worker that I've become.
Thursday night, I met up with my old college roommate, the one who was going to India last year for 3 weeks but stayed for nearly a year. We walked in the rain to the Prospect Park F-train stop, she heading towards downtown Brooklyn (also better known as the direction of Manhattan) and I two more stops Coney Island-bound. As I was scolding her for never actually having seen Prospect Park before that evening, a train for each of us passed, leaving a long wait on the platform before we could get anywhere. While sitting and giggling about boys and secrets, a young man came down with a very small evergreen, about a foot high.
Friend: Nice tree.
Boy: I thought it would be nice to grow my own Christmas tree and use it every year.
Friend: What happens when it gets too large for your apartment?
Boy: It will only be six feet tall. It says so right on this little tag. (holds up little tag as proof)
Friend: I guess you thought of everything.
Boy: Except for the fact that apartment gets crappy lighting, my cat will pee in it and my girlfriend insists she's allergic to piney trees.
Friend: Good luck with your tree then.
Friday night, as I was getting ready to leave early to go meet Bess in Madison Square Park (the more southern fountain), I managed to some how loose my keys in the last few minutes in my house. After searching for a half hour, I called several people until I finally got someone who was actually home: my dad. When I can't find things, I get very panicky and become frazzled about my missing article(s). My father began to guide me through the basic method of finding things: retrace your steps.
Dad: Before you think you picked up your keys, where were you?
Self: I went into the bathroom to look at my hair
Dad: What did you do in the bathroom? Brush your hair?
Self: No, I went to check out my hair and make sure it looked okay.
Dad: Did you take anything out of the medicine chest like gel to put in your hair?
Self: No, I was just looking at my hair. I wanted to make sure it didn't dry weird or anything.
Dad (confused voice): But you didn't actually do anything to your hair, you just looked at it?
Self: No, I just looked at my hair.
Dad: And that's what you went into the bathroom for?
Saturday night, after I left the karaoke place and headed in the wrong direction towards what I thought was the F train but was actually some random south by southwest direction taking me far into the semi-deserted streets of SoHo, I ran into many clusters of mid-30s yuppie types trying to get cabs after drinking at their friends' downtown lofts and on their way back to the Upper East Side. I actually had no clue I was walking in the wrong direction as I took quick long strides against the cold, determined to not freeze mid-step.
I approached yet another cluster of people frantically jumping in place while one of the thick-necked men in the group attempted to get them a cab. I was stuck on the corner with these people as I had to wait for the light. A cab was coming down the street. Thick-necked man in a coat that was too light-weight and a plaid scarf was pretty convinced that this was the last cab between Houston and Canal for all time and his female companions would have to walk in their $300 Gucci shoes that were pinching their feet if he did not get this cab.
Thick-necked: Stop! Cab! Stop Cab!
(it appears as if the cab is not going to stop, but it actually does stop, just across the street and light traffic of 10 or so cars passing is separating the group from the cab)
Thick-necked: (to cab driver) Fucker!
Gucci-pumps and jeans: We've been waiting forever! (shrill giggles that make my cold ears get instant frost bite)
Thick-necked: Fucking-a man!
Self: (in a calm, clear, loud, semi-drunken voice) He stopped for you, you know, on the other side of the street. (pointing across the street to indicate the cab that has clearly stopped) Even though you found it necessary to call him a (with bitter irony)Fucker.
(Another cab comes to a stop in front of the group of bouncing people, and they proceed to get in).
Gucci-pumps and jeans: Say you're sorry to her, I think you offended her.
Thick-necked: Sorry, I didn't mean to use offensive language in front of a lady.
Self: Don't be sorry to me. You didn't call me a fucker.
(I scamper across the street as the cars have now passed. I walk up another block and realize I have no clue exactly where I am and cannot figure out what direction is what as I keep on searching desperately for a landmark, missing the Twin Towers temporarily until the alcoholic fog lifts long enough to let me figure out I have about 1,000 blocks to walk to get to the train).
Nothing funny happened on Sunday. I spent the day walking all over Manhattan, including rushing from Chelsea Piers and 23 to 5 Ave and 15th in about 25 minutes, out pacing many couples of gay men who were briskly walking along. I did not buy anything, drink anything or have any amusing exchanges with strangers. Sunday was kind of boring that way.
Monday, November 25, 2002