Lucky in Love 08-16-2008

It’s a gorgeous summer Saturday in New York, so this will have to be a quick post, as my bicycle and I are yearning for the sunshine. But before I go out a-frolicking, I want to report back to all of you, loyal readers, who have undoubtedly been AT THE ABSOLUTE EDGES OF YOUR SEATS wondering how my love life is going. So here’s the report:

I am on a romantic sabbatical, meaning that I am taking some time off of my normal romantic misadventures to think and to study, and to possibly publish a tawdry expose about each of my exes. Since this is the first time that I’ve been actively and wholly single in about a decade, I’m having a really self-indulgent time going to yoga and reading and riding my bike and napping, while changing jobs and moving apartments on the side. Still, I’m a little bored. To fill the time, I’ve spent hours upon hours slogging around in the sordid details of every single one of my crumbled love affairs, reviewing each ghastly breakup, and agonizing over a long history of love gone awry.

I’ve realized in this excrutiating and exhilerating exercise just how much I’ve learned from all these gorgeous and disastrous lover affairs, and I feel admittedly lucky and, surprisingly, have very few regrets.

Here are the top ten things that I’ve learned from my lovers over the years:

10. How to blanch a tomato

9. How to build a fire

8. How to surf (kind of)

7. How to roll a joint

6. How to merengue

5. How to strip and re-finish wood furniture

4. How to play the banjo

3. How to change a tire

2. How to build a bike

1. How to escape when being chased by wild turkeys or other fowl

Not bad, huh? Makes me feel like quite the renaissance woman.

I hope that all the survivors on the other side of those crashed-and-burned loves have tread off as well with some kind of new skill, something that they learned along the way. Because every time I change a tire, I grin ruefully at the memory of a sweet roadside kiss with a jack in my hand. And every time I’m being chased by wild turkeys…well, that hasn’t happened again. But if it does, I’ll remember a romantic Thanksgiving spent in the mountains of Arizona. And every time I slip the skin off a tomato and am left holding its exposed flesh gently in my palm, I feel a distinct and wonderful stretch in my heart that is remembering what it felt like to be in love for the first time.

And if that’s not lucky, I don’t know what is.

iCovet 07.19.2008

iCovet the iPhone 3G.

I know that I shouldn’t want it so badly, and that Apple’s whole manipulation of the supply and demand of this magical mystical new device is a pretty slimy endeavor. And that their exclusive contract and weird subsidy arrangement with AT&T is crappy. I understand that the business plan around the iPhone is based in building hype and exploiting emotions through the media, and I agree that capitalism is an evil, evil system, and that consumerism is the non-renewable and highly polluting fuel that feeds that system.

And still, iWant.
I’ve tried three times now to get the iPhone, undaunted by the 4 million year service agreement, unshaken by the $300 price tag, undeterred by the ominous reports of software failure and activation problems. What gets me are the lines.

I’ve started the standing-in-line process three times now, and lacked the tenacity needed for success. The first time was the day it first came out, and I went to the Apple store and waited for about 30 minutes behind about 648,000,000 other people, and then thought, “This is ridiculous. I’m not that trendy.” And figured I could wait five days.

Five days later, I woke up at 5:30 am and headed back to the Apple store, feeling more confident this time. The air was fresh and cool, and New York City seemed peaceful, full of promise and hope. I looked in the windows of Henri Bendel’s and stood in the shade of the Tiffany’s awning and felt an odd tingle in the back of my skull, sort of a mix of shame and bliss and patriotism. Or something.

And then I rounded the corner to where the Apple Store rests, like a beautiful clear cubic spaceship in the middle of 5th Avenue.

iMothership

But instead of the wondrous, gorgeous, spaceship that I have come to know and love, the scene on 5th avenue at 6:45 am on July 16 was remniscent of the scene in ET where the scientists have moved in and installed their scary science lab all around ET.

There were police barricades set up, and a red carpet, behind which there was a frenzied pen of photojournalists frantically snapping pictures of nothing. There was a jumping castle, which I still don’t understand. And there were thousands upon thousands of iPod flanked yuppies and geeksters waiting in a line that snaked back and forth in front of the Apple store like a roller coaster ride, and then roped down six blocks past FAO Schwartz.

These people are crazy. I was one of them.

I waited this time for closer to an hour, and moved maybe 15 feet during that time. Eventually, the shame became too great. I imagined trying to explain to someone who didn’t know about the iPhone what it was I was doing. The conversation in my head went something like this:

Imaginary curious passerby: Excuse me, ma’am, what are you waiting in line for? Is it for food? Medicine? A religious ceremony?

Me: No, I’m waiting for the iPhone 3G.

Imaginary curious passerby: Well, you must really need to make a call!

Me: Oh, I have a phone. And really, I hate talking on the phone. I never answer it. And I never listen to voicemail. But this is also an iPod.

Imaginary curious passerby: Oh! Well, you must really like music.

Me: Well, I have an iPod. But with this, you can send and receive email.

Imaginary curious passerby: Oh! Well, this is the communication of the future. You must have email!

Me: Right. I mean, I actually have 2 computers. But this has a GPS device, so I will always know where I am.

Imaginary curious passerby (laughing): Well, lady, it looks like you’ve been standing in the same place for a long time! I don’t know how you would get lost if all you do is wait in line for free gadgets!

Me: Oh, it’s not free. When all is said and done, I’ll probably drop $600 today on this.

Imaginary curious passerby: You are a silly, strange, and sad woman.

After this imaginary conversation, iCouldn’t stand it anymore. I left the line and went to work. And I’ve tried one more time since then, and still haven’t gotten within a half mile of the door of the store. But meanwhile, I keep seeing other people whip out their iPhones on the train and on the street and everywhere, and iAm seething with envy.

The iPhone 3G has been out for 7 full days now, and I am still texting away on my Samsung. Although I know that I will get the iPhone, I’m proud that I’ve set limits on what I am and am not willing to subject myself to in order to get one NOW. I am taking small steps away from the consumerist beast, and I am proud of those steps, tiny as they may be.

Besides, I’m going to Chicago for work this week, and I hear that you can get the iPhone there in only 2 hours. So if you get a call from me from a 312 area code, you can be pretty sure that:

This message was sent using my iPhone.

I am good at other things. 06.21.2008

I am a terrible driver. Those who know me well know this to be an inherently a part of who I am as my freckles or my metaphors or my double-edged exclamations of the word “Terrific!” I am a bad, bad, driver, and I should not drive. Period.

I think that it’s too bad that more bad drivers can’t own their deficiencies in this area. I mean, I’m good at other things; we all are. People are so comfortable confessing that they can’t cook, or that they have gruesome penmanship, or perhaps that they’ve never been very good at table tennis. But driving? For some reason, there’s a stigma. I’ve never met another self-proclaimed driving failure. In fact, it appears that the worse a driver is, the more he/she has to say about all the other motorists out there.

“People in this city just do not know how to drive.” Everyone in every city says that same thing. So I’m here to break down the shame and silence around poor motorism, and just own it. It’s true. I have driven in your city, and I do not know how to drive. I am a bad driver. I am worse in the rain. I am deadly in the snow. If you want to get somewhere with me in a car, let’s share a cab, or you can pick me up. Because I don’t want to be behind the wheel, and to be honest, no one else wants me there either. I AM GOOD AT OTHER THINGS.

Needless to say, I have to drive all the time for work. It’s part of the travel package: long flight, nice hotel, rental car, near death driving experience. Once again, I want to remind you: I AM GOOD AT OTHER THINGS.

My most recent trip to DC was a great example of why I shouldn’t drive. Although the trip was otherwise a great success, the driving part was a disaster from start to finish. I picked up the rental car at the train station, and they didn’t have the one I’d reserved. So, they offered me (with no other options) the “Free upgrade” into a much bigger car with a much bigger blind spot that I was guaranteed to be able to park absolutely nowhere. Because in addition to being a bad driver, I am a VERY BAD parker. But, I was tired and late and needed to get places, so I agreed.

The giant town car itself smelled like gym socks or jock straps or something else vaguely reminiscent of the boys’ cabin at summer camp, and it made me feel a little bit nauseous. Luckily, it was about 90 degrees and 150 percent humidity, so as soon as I started to drive, the smell just cooked right into my nostrils, as it had already baked into the upholstery, and the gross-smelling Sweatmobile and I became one and the same.

Sweatmobile and I started driving through the streets of DC, where, for some reason, all roads lead to the White House. Always. I don’t know how I always end up so lost and then found at good ol’ 1600 Pennsylvania, but I can tell you that there are very few places where I am unwilling to make an illegal u-turn, and that smack in front of the White House is one of them. I think that it could be construed as an act of terrorism or something else, and I can only fend of the Secret Service with my secret powers of jock-strap olfactory weapons for so long. So, I looped all the way around the White House not one, not two, but SEVEN TIMES over the course of my 24-hour stay in our nation’s fair capitol. (I did manage to pull off the illegal u-turns in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the EPA, and the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters. And aside from almost mowing over a few VERY old DARs in pearls and pantssuits, I did just fine).

After cutting off a few taxis and careening through a crosswalk full of senators, Sweatmobile and I finally seemed to be headed in the right direction. Of course, it took me an extra half hour to get to my hotel because every time I got in one of those roundabouts, I had to drive around and around it in circles for 10 minutes before summing up the courage to swerve Sweatmobile’s not-quite-nimble tank-like trunk across three lanes and out of the roundabout. Finally, I arrived at my hotel, shaken and white-knuckled and wishing for a Metropass, and I only had a few minutes to pull myself together before I had to head back out to my event that night.

Of course, I got lost, but it wasn’t quite as bad this time, the ruckus of rush hour having ended, and the tree-lined streets of Maryland feeling quite idyllic, in moments, as I rolled through stop signs and stopped vaguely to think in the middle of the intersections. Since I drive pretty much 40 miles an hour everywhere, all the time, I had some awkwardly profane interactions with the cars behind me on the highway, and maybe got a fist-shake or two as I careened through the school zones, but overall, it was a pretty uneventful trip. I arrived at my destination, and parked deftly in as few as 30 moves, leaving my Sweatmobile propped up on someone’s lawn and lurched awkwardly out into the residential street. Later that night, I offered a ride home to my organization’s president, who commented cheerfully that my car smelled like a locker room, and was gracious enough to ignore the red lights I ran and the near bus-collision in Dupont Circle.

“You’ll probably want to go ahead and turn out of the roundabout here,” he suggested carefully, after a few laps around, and I did one or two more circles for good measure and then screeched to the right and landed us in front of his hotel.

In the morning, I took the Metro. And I had a great work meeting, and then I put together a stellar outfit and wrote a really nice letter to a friend. Proving, as I said, that I am GOOD AT OTHER THINGS.

There Goes the Neighborhood 06.04.2008

I have been working about one hundred million hours a week, and I got home late tonight- almost 10 pm- to find that the entire train station had been transformed into a spiderweb of caution tape, with tons of people in orange vests draped around in it like dead flies. There were also some very very bright lights shining up from the tunnel, and some disheveled-looking white people drinking pellegrino by the turnstile. I was immediately alarmed, of course- what are all these white people doing in my neighborhood? Did an American Apparel open up somewhere? I worried that I had been at work for so long that my entire neighborhood had been gentrified in my absence

These things happen fast in Brooklyn. In the year that I’ve lived here, Bushwick has become the new Williamsburg, and Williamsburg is the new Park Slope (plus skinny jeans). Fort Greene is what Brooklyn Heights used to be, and I think that DUMBO has actually been annexed by Manhattan at this point. There’s a plan to turn Coney Island into the Hamptons of the Raritan Bay, and I think that someone told me that Burrough Park is “up and coming” too. Brooklyn is the new Manhattan, and Queens is the new Brooklyn. Manhattan is Mars, and the Bronx is static. And so on.  And every time it happens, all the people who built the neighborhood and created the community and care about each other and the way that they live and the way that this little corner of the earth belongs to them – well, all those people get “priced out.”  Which is to say, they get pushed out- scattered further south, further west, try to hold down another neighborhood and keep an eye out for the planned neglect and the land grabs and all of the other plans and tactics and strategies that seem to fall into such a weird and icky formula that is too much the same every time to be an accident.

It turns out that there’s no American Apparel here- not yet, anyway.  They are filming a movie in my neighborhood. Word on the street is that Denzel Washington is here. The white people are actors, and the whole thing will be over in a few days. Apparently, they just needed a slum- and that’s all that they see here, ignoring the goofy, cheerful butcher with his shopping carts full of goat carcass, and the little cat he feeds each day.  They look right through the tailor and shoe repair shop and the pharmacy that’s been here 30 years- they don’t see the families that plan the giant street bazaar once a month all summer, or the crossing guard who has been walking little feet across the street since 1979.  They can’t see any of the things that make my neighborhood so great- they only see the backdrop for the scene in the movie that needs a slum.

My neighborhood is the best kept secret in Brooklyn.  Thanks, Denzel, for keeping it real…

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams 06.01.2008

When I travel for work, which happens often, they put me up well. I appreciate it; it certainly does take the edge off of all that horrid airport time to curl up at the end of the day in the ample lap of luxury. I mean, I’m not staying in resorts or villas or anything, but when I think about my family’s road-trip travels, and how easily impressed I was by hotels (motels) as a child (well, ok, and through most of my 20s), I feel like I’ve climbed the ladder of capitalism past the Red Roof Inn, and I’m ok with it.

The thing about it is, though, that I’m a bit of a My Fair Lady type (the RAIN in SPAIN…) when it comes to all of this lifestyles of the rich and famous stuff. The soft, soothing, nuanced language of the wealthy is totally lost on me, and most of the time, I don’t know what it is that I’m supposed to be doing, nor what to expect as far as results when I do it.

For example, I’m in Los Angeles right now, which is a hellpit of smog and dissatisfaction anyway, and I’m staying in a very very fancy place. In my bathroom, next to the very fancy paper cups, is a small fancy sign, printed on heavy, fancy cream-colored paper in some kind of swirly font called “Lucinda” or something:

Please touch “O” if you require glassware in your room.

What I’m guessing here is that they’re talking about a phone, right? And by “touch,” they mean “dial,” and by “O”, they mean “0,” and by “require” they mean “want to be a real pain in the ass and demand something totally unnecessary.” Because, really, what would that conversation sound like? Do people really touch O and say things like, “Oh, pardon me, I require some glassware in room 1225 so that I can properly BRUSH MY GODDAMN TEETH?”

There’s a robe in the closet that has a fancy tag with instructions, telling me gently how to put it on. Is luxury really just for imbeciles? Who wouldn’t be able to figure out how to put on a robe? I’m going to touch O and ask about that.

There’s also complicated food stuff. There’s a minibar with some kind of sensors attached to the snickers bar that will know automatically to charge my room millions of dollars if I touch it. And the room service menu has got me totally stumped. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for yuppie food language. Anything that’s “steel cut” or “hand mulled” or “wood fired” sounds immediately worth an extra $20 to me. But the room service menus take it to a whole new level. I believe it to be some kind of genius marketing scam, targeting the lonely and alienated business traveler, who is hungry not only for a $45 dinner, but for some small semblence of human touch or connection. So suddenly, I find myself twelve stories up in the Hyatt watching Universal Studios burn down and ordering things like “coddled potatoes” and “pine nuts nestled in spinach.” Because the room-service menu writers know that I’m unlikely to do any other coddling and nestling, so dammit, I want my vegetables to have snuggly adjectives. I want my entrees to be smart and complicated and have personality. I’m starved for company more than I am for food. That’s why, tonight, I ordered an “uncultivated mushroom tart and petit vegetable.” Who cares what it tastes like? It’s uncultivated, and petit. It comes with hand-cuddled potato kisses. I’m in love with the person that my room service has come to represent.

Clearly, it is time to go home. I CAN NOT WAIT to get out of this luxury hotel and back to my hot, tiny, weird-smelling, super-noisy, peeling-paint shitbox of an apartment. Ahhhh, Brooklyn…just the thought coddles my heart like a potato. One more day!

Newyorkiversary. 5.27.2008

On May 27, 2007, I went to a pool party. It was already so hot in Tucson, and I laid stretched out across the concrete with my feet dangling in the water, feeling the sun bake my chest. “I’m going to leave here with a burn,” I thought, and I didn’t mind at all. All around me, friends were chatting, flirting, talking, draping arms around one another. Someone was moving into the house, and his piles of boxes shifting from porch to kitchen, and then disappearing into his room reminded me of the ones I’d dropped off at the post office the day before. My suitcases, with what was left, were packed and sitting by the door. I only had the clothes I was wearing; everything else was folded and sealed and waiting.

I jumped in.

Wearing jeans in the pool is a lot of work. It seemed like I was underwater for a very long time, sunglasses drifting off my face and floating towards the surface. My hair, recently so much shorter than it always had been, swirled around my face. Someone’s kid was laughing up above, and I could hear it, through a tunnel, but all I saw was water and light. I surfaced with a splash, cracked a joke, asked the kid to grab my sunglasses for me, and stretched out in the sun again. I was dry in 20 minutes.

Later that day, when we all went out for dinner, I realized that I’d left my keys at the party, which is probably the hundredth place I’d left them over the course of a decade. And then I realized that I didn’t really need them anymore, that those keys didn’t open anything that was mine. I didn’t need to go back for them; I was done.

And then Lu drove me to the airport and I moved to New York.

Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. My suitcase was too heavy, and so we had to lug it back off the baggage check area, and open it up and move things around, and try to put a pair of shoes in my backpack, and throw away the shampoo. This poignant and dramatic moment I’d imagined, where my friends would watch me drop off my bags and walk gracefully towards the gate; that moment wasn’t mine. My moment was me squatting on the floor of the Tucson International Airport with a nest of my clothes spread out all around me, forty minutes before my flight, head a little light from beer and sun, my shirt smelling like chlorine, my sunburn starting to show, asking Lu if she thought I could get away with a 52 pound bag.

That’s my moment. And it makes me grin and grin and grin.

I’ve lived in Newyorkcity for one year. It’s been twelve months and it’s been a thousand. Here I am. Who would’ve guessed. It’s starting to get hot here, now, and I’m sitting in my room with my feet propped up on my guitar, thinking absently that it’s almost time for me to put in my window unit, and dreaming up – you’ve guessed it- the TOP TEN LESSONS I’VE LEARNED IN NEW YORK! (drumroll!!!!)

10. People really do wear skinny jeans. More people than you ever would imagine. And no one looks good in them.

9. When your friends say to you, “It’s time to go to Cubbyhole!” you should say to yourself “I’ve had too much to drink. It’s time to go home.”

8. The cab driver does not know where he’s going.

7. I am a Mac person.

6. Sometimes a career is just a career.

5. There is very little worth doing between 14th Street and 59th Street.

4. The secret to revolving doors is not using your hands.

3. It doesn’t matter if it’s dog poop or human poop. You should get off the train and get in a different car.

2. The G train is a long wait for a bad ride.

1. I am capable of anything.

All the Frogs in China 5.23.2008

It’s been brought to my attention that not everyone knows the William Carlos Williams poem that was the subject of my satire in my last post. Taken out of the context of the original, I can see why yesterday’s poem might have seemed lonely, sad- even despondent.

I assure you that I am joyful, lovely, and ebullient as always. Maybe a touch more cynical than before, but putting it to good use, I promise.

So, I’m posting the original American classic poem below for your reference.

In other news, I’m loathe to admit that I’ve been so caught up in my own petty happenings that I’ve forgotten to pay attention to the rest of the world this week. Trying to catch up, I googled “Is Hillary Clinton still campaigning?,” upon which the Economist (blech) had a lot to say in their poorly titled article “Is HIllary Clinton still Campaigning for President, or Something Else?” (Come ON- who is writing titles over there at The Economist?!?)

I’ve also spent a little time following up on the slew on terrible disasters that have happened across the world recently. Those of you who know me may remember my gruesome and totally inappropriate fascination with the Tsunami of 2004, or Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I’m equally horrified/obsessed with the earthquake in China. Here’s the fact I can’t drop; the day before the earthquake hit (shook?), apparently, tens of thousands of frogs appeared, croaking up from cracks and ponds, and swarming the streets and hills of China. If the frogs knew- shouldn’t science have seen this coming?

In trying to find out more information about this gross failure of seismology, I also learned that the Chinese government is punishing Chinese people who spread rumors on the internet about the frogs. So I don’t know who to believe, but I’m inclined to shy away from reports stemming from the same government who insisted that internet images in China resulting from google searches for “Tiananmen Square” show some hip touristy spots to get food and souveniers in Bejing.

We live in a strange strange world. Here’s the WCW. Have a good night.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

This is Just to Say 5.22.2008

I’ve decided to change forms tonight. I grew bored, I suppose, of those drowsy 17s. Perhaps you did as well. Regardless, here’s some sardonic William Carlos Williams-style craigslisting:

This is Just to Say

I have posted

the verses

that I thought

would draw you

and which

you were probably

hoping

would coalesce

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Haiku 6 (starting to come unglued) 5.21.2008

There is this Joyce Carol Oates story called “The Boyfriend.” Have you read it? Here’s the first few lines:

She hadn’t made any mistakes, at least any serious mistakes, in quite a while. So she’d become complacent.

Her name was Miriam, she was thirty-six years old, tall, long-legged, good-looking, with a pale smooth freckled skin and honey-brown eyes set sly and slanted in her face, as if in irony.

Eerie, huh? Sound like anyone you know? I believe that in six more years, I will be this woman. I lifted today’s haiku shamelessly from this story, figuring that if anyone recognizes the quote, if anyone responds to me and says, “Miriam?” that I will then have found my soulmate. Or something

Here it is, totally plagerized:

Haiku 6

Tall and long-legged
eyes set sly and slanted, as
if in irony.

I missed a day in the Haiku Project, which kind of throws my plan, a little bit, because the whole thing was based in building something consistently throughout the week. But, I find I’m divesting from it. I’m restless. I’ve grown bored of myself and my games and my projects. I think that I am coming a little bit unglued. It’s unsettling and familiar and sort of like comfort food, in that I know it’s not good for me to follow my dark knotted path into the depths of my crazy, but it sounds so lovely, like a vacation, to be there. Temporary fits of semi-psychotic instability are the macaroni and cheese of my emotional life.

There are other stories by creepy dark writers about women named Miriam. It’s a theme, you could say- the “Crazy Miriam” story that marks every reclusive and brilliant writer’s descent into madness. Joy Williams had a Crazy Miriam story about a woman (named Miriam) whose husband (who she hated) was paralyzed in a hunting accident, and so she fell in love with a taxidermy lamp made out of buck’s legs bound together. She took that damn lamp everywhere with her.

That just as easily could be me in a few years, except for the part about the husband, I think.

Anyway. There’s a long weekend coming up, which means that whatever structure and schedule is keeping me accountable to my remaining shreds of social acceptability will be soon abandoned. If you find me wandering naked and mumbling by the freeway with a taxidermy lamp sometime on Sunday night (HOW FUN!) don’t ever say I didn’t warn you…

I think that everyone should go back and read my Frankenstein blog again. It’s the only thing that makes me happy.

-M

Haiku 5 5.19.2008

The crowd is getting restless.

I’m starting to get kind of smarmy responses.  People are losing trust.  They’re feeling tricked, and vulnerable.  I know because they are sending me haikus about their frustrations.

Our Harper’s stats stand strong:

Number of responses: 29

Number of responses en haiku:  22

Number of people who want to know what the hell I’m up to:  at least 3

Number of new friends I think I’ve made through this project: at least 4

Number of pervy irrelevant responses:  Still just the 1

And, for today’s post:

Mouth’s corners upturned
Sharp elbows, sharp mind, warm soul
I am a giggler