My weekend by decades

Another silent weekend on the blog. Whoops. I've been busy doing things.

Friday night I went Dutch Kills for a few gimlets and to catch up with Lauren, who I haven't seen in a few weeks. I really like that bar, its nondescript facade belying the warm light and high spirits of what's inside. Also, I like the idea of Long Island City way more than the actual neighborhood. Or at least that is what I tell myself when I feel a pang of jealousy at the impossibility of my living there. I hearken back to the memories I have of LIC being a shitbox of a neighborhood and how easily I could have accessed it; I am adept at being too early for some things, too late for others and pretty much always tripping on one shoe lace or other.

I spent Saturday working my occasional library job, which also happens to be my favorite one and caught up and checked in and enjoyed the relative silence of a less dense population with fewer computers and accompanying issues and, amazingly, way more staff than where I usually am.

I spent the night at my parents' house and it was a strange series of events, none of which I'll elaborate in a public blog that has left me pondering whether or not everyone's parental relationships are as fraught with roller coaster conversations and layer cakes of history as mine seem to be. Or do most people just like, watch TV together and not talk at all? I only know for certain that I grow up a little more every time I come home from a weekend at the folks.

Sunday was a lovely, if chilly afternoon spent a a christening/birthday party for Marianne's sons. There was a ton of food and booze and babies and falling leaves and wood smoke in the air and it was a pleasant afternoon spent chatting and enjoying the 80s playlist that permeated the backyard.

That party really made me feel older than I am. Like I was in my 40s but only because I was drinking wine by a fire pit, talking about work and there were kids running around who belonged to people my age or younger and everyone was paired off or had been or wanted to be. It was a different feeling from the night before at my parent's house when I felt 18, still searching for an answer from someone who still sought the answers herself but not knowing it. Or the night before when I felt 27, when entering the warm light of a bar on a Friday night in autumn could augur stumbling home alone in a clumsy tumble of angst or stumbling to a strange home in a clumsy tumble of limbs. I guess I'm like Whitman: I am large, I contain multitudes. Except mine would be: I am old, I contain decades.

That's all I got. Whachu got?

Percentages

There is perfect weather just outside the walls of this library. I can see 40% of it from my seat.

See?

But just like that odd, trapezoided view, I am trudging through a work day. I am thankful I have the weekend to look forward to. Though I feel 90% better, I'm still not 100%, physically. Then again, I don't ever feel 100% unless I'm lying down, reading. I digress. It is a beautiful morning and my commute was perfectly timed.

All the public transportation greeted me on time and pulled into the stations/bus stops as though to say GOOD MORNING YOU FABULOUS BITCH! Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit. I just feel ok because my voice is, like 80%  back. (I still go to talk and 50% of the time it comes out as a whisper but whispering makes me mysterious.)

This morning in La Coronita was the farmer's market and I had about 20 minutes to kill before I had to report to work so I walked it. It was only a block long but jam packed with mounds of beautiful, fresh produce and freshly baked products. There was also some kind of event at 9am that had people dancing in the street, not unusual for this neighborhood. I didn't have time to investigate. I then got talked into buying a kale, onion and cheese msemen from the Moroccan bread vendor and I was not disappointed, though her suggestion to eat it with a fried egg makes me want to buy a mountain of them and take them home with me. I just know I'd love the food, architecture and history of Morocco but I had to scrap my dream to visit when I read about what it is like for female tourists there. I suppose I'll just have to taste it here in NYC. (There is actually a pretty good Moroccan restaurant three blocks from my apartment.) So then I just felt wistful as I got to work, where I just became aggravated and just like that was gone my 90% better feeling. But I'm fighting it. With closed fists.

I'm meeting a friend for a drink in LIC later and if there is anything that makes me feel 60% better for 40% of the time I'm doing it, it is a fancy cocktail.

I'll be spending the rest of the weekend on Long Island catching up with my tribe out there. It is 20% work related and 80% friend/celebratory related. I am 100% looking forward to it.

MATH.

A mid-life crisis quote from someone else

I'm working on a poem so I have no creative energy to lend here today. But BEDO demands. Here's a quote from one of my favorite authors, Gary Shteyngart which was clearly pieced together from various parts of my heart. Enjoy.

"I think of my mother and father. Of their constant anxiety. But their anxiety means they still want to live. A year shy of forty, I feel life entering its second half. I feel my life folding up. I sense the start of that great long leave-taking. I think of myself on the subway platform at Union Square. I am invisible, just a short obstacle others have to get around. Sometimes I wonder: Am I already gone? And then I think of my wife and I feel the whoosh of the number 6 train, the presence of others, the life still within me."

Voicelessness

Ok, so I missed a few days. If it is of any comfort to the overachieving future me, when I happen to look back on these days as an old woman, I'll take this post to remind myself of how shitty the days in question were. Because they were shitty, in ways both inconsequential and profound. And how I can't even physically talk about any of it.

Let's dispense with inconsequential business. I'm sick. The kind of sick that sounds (or doesn't sound) a lot worse than it really is: laryngitis. And it is accompanied by a hacking cough. My voice all but disappeared two days ago, making my already fervent internal dialogue border on manic.I have just been walking around without my voice and suddenly I have a million things to say.

 I have learned a bit about communication the last few days: you can absolutely set the tone of every single interaction you have with people by using the timbre and tone of your voice, and manipulating your body language. People will respond to you in an almost subconscious, mirroring way. For example, every interaction I had with a stranger where I had to use my voice, I started out with an apologetic whisper, shrinking into myself while also leaning forward to appear as un-weird and defenseless as possible, "I'm sorry I'm whispering but I have laryngitis." And every single person responded with sympathy and their own whispering. That cracked me up every time. "Oh, I'm sorry. How can I help you?"was the general, hushed response. It made me smile that by and large, people are willing to help someone who is even slightly at a disadvantage. Also, I suppose this is because I was apologetic in my mannerisms too, and close talking so people could hear me, everyone was super nice. Perhaps there is something to this. Probably not.

I've had to be out sick from work for two days and I go back tomorrow. My voice is still not better but, being the newbie, I have no sick days. Library patrons will just have to be as understanding as the sales clerks I encountered the past few days or I'll whisper so hard at them, they'll think they were in a library.

And now for the profound. I received word over the weekend that a friend from high school died. She was my age, married to a sweet man and leaves behind two small children. I will say that she was part of my social circle, though we were not close friends. I saw her most recently about three or four months ago at the first communion party of a mutual friend. She seemed herself and was getting in shape and doting on her children, planning for their (and her) future. But you make a plan and apparently god not only laughs, but he shits all over it. She suffered a stroke a few weeks ago and was on her way to recovery but took a turn for the worse and passed away at the hospital.

I went with my voicelessness to the wake last night, which is just as well. There is nothing to say. Like so many people we all know, our lives ran parallel in high school and the few years that followed. She became a wife and mother and we got together every now and then but she seemed like one of those people who lucked out in love and family and I liked to know that she was there, doing the things that families do together, the kind of goodness that, once lost, just leaves in its wake this vague feeling of dread.

I don't want to be cynical; her good humor and optimism would not have appreciated that. From the sheer amount of people that attended her wake last night (and likely again tonight) it was clear that she was loved and will be missed. Can any of us expect anything more than that?

So that encapsulates what has been happening the past few days I've been MIA from BEDO. I lost another person from my life (2015 has been a banner year in that department) and I'd love if we could make it to December with a long beat of nothing sad or terrible happening. I'd love to pink cloud my way through the next few weeks and deal with autumn as a time when nothing is dying but rather preparing for rest and renewal. Renewal is the word I'd love to see etched, graffitied, stitched and tattooed on every surface I can see and in the eyes of every person.

Here's one of my favorite songs of all time which for some odd reason has popped into my head so many times over the last few days. And now it can get stuck in your head too. I wish we could sit around and listen to it together.

I am sick.

I am calling out sick today from the blog, because I've almost completely lost my voice and they've sent me to yet another understaffed location and I am unable to leave and so I cannot call out sick from work. Decorum dictates that I shouldn't get into it here so I won't. Instead, enjoy this dramatic poem by Barry Cornwall:

The Watch - Poem by Barry Cornwall

I wakened on my hot, hard bed; 
Upon the pillow lay my head; 
Beneath the pillow I could hear 
My little watch was ticking clear. 
I thought the throbbing of it went 
Like my continual discontent; 
I thought it said in every tick: 
I am so sick, so sick, so sick: 
O death, come quick, come quick, come quick, 
Come quick, come quick, come quick, come quick... 

As soon as I am set free from this cage I'm going home to sleep and weep. Bye.

Ignoring Superfoxes

Whenever I do these blog every day blah blah blahs, I inevitably check the online blog I kept starting in 2002. I used to blog every day over there without even really thinking about it. I've always kept a journal but I'm really quite glad I kept an online one for so long during most of my 20s because I can conjure up a memory that is easily searchable. This is in contrast to the journals I kept pre-computer (I am that old) when I generally sit on the floor, surrounded by a bunch of marble and spiral notebooks filled with horrendous handwriting and dumb adolescence. The journals I kept in my 20s and early 30s were only ever filled with deep, eloquent insight and significant observations on the nature of humanity. Ahem. Behold this entry from October, 2003:

went to sin-e last night. had some beer. the band i went to see was good, as expected. when i arrived, there was singing a young man with such an amazing fucking voice. his name was tom mcrae i believe. lovely.

i did learn a lesson last night... never remember or acknowledge anyone MORE than they would you. in other words, be careful with my regard for veritable strangers. my sexual attraction for an unnamed individual led me to esteem him greatly. this was a mistake, as, due to the fact that we have exchanged only a few conversations, i barely knew him at all. i received not so much as a head nod last night and perhaps i am just miffed but still... why give credit where it is not yet due?

having typed out that convoluted paragraph, i would just like close by saying what a shame that i set my expectations so high and not have them met,as he is a fucking superfox.

no more of that.

today i will be mailing via snail mail a crapload of resumes. i am in charge of at least looking. perhaps my foray into staten island this weekend was a precursor, and introduction, if you will as i am applying to a position there. the commute would be a bitch, but i simply cannot tolerate where i am any longer.

my head feels not unlike a chilled head of lettuce. i need a shower.

I have a few things to say about this:

• I miss Sin-e. It was a great venue to see bands.
• I have no recollection of Tom McRae, nor his singing voice, nor anything of the kind and a quick Google search of his music doesn't help me remember either. 
• I have nothing but embarrassment at my dramatic takeaway from whatever happened at this show. I have spent the majority of my adult life both remembering and acknowledging people way more than they did me for awhile, until I got older and stopped tallying that and realized I only surround myself with nurturing, giving people. So I'm giving myself a point for that.
• I have less than zero recollection of who the object of my affection was at this time, making him likely not worth the angst I put into my projection of whoever I thought he was. Does that even make any sense?? 
• I'd be interested to remember since I described him as a superfox. I was 27 at the time in NYC so I was, in fact, inundated with access to superfoxes (superfoxii?) making the candidate pool for this particular evening, large.
• There is a lot of cursing in my old diaries.
• Lmao "mailing resumes"
• Lmfao "moving to Staten Island"
• I really can't recall why I hated my job so much back then. I had access to a lot of independence and I liked my boss a lot; we are friendly to this day. Plus I got a lot of great anecdotes from that time period. Sigh. Someday I'll look around and see little bits of silver in the gray.
• In a shocking coincidence, my head today also feels like a chilled head of lettuce. The more things change the more they stay the same.
• This entry was during an October I dubbed "Rocktober" (how droll) due to the insane amount of concerts I was attending that month. The entry that follows it has a list.

Sept. 23 -- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Oct. 3 -- The Realistics

Oct. 7 -- Tom McRae

Oct. 10 --Radiohead

Oct. 15 -- Interpol

Nov.1 --Walkmen

These were all shows at smaller venues mostly in lower Manhattan because Brooklyn wasn't that much a thing yet. Or was it? I can't remember. I loved that music scene during those years. I remember seeing so many bands in venues no bigger than a Knights of Columbus hall. I'm pretty sure it was around that time I saw The Strokes at the now torn down Vanderbilt in Long Island which was where people used to have proms. Six concerts in a month and me broke and all. I kind of miss being 27, but only because of energy levels and following bands around and having like nothing to fucking worry about except my latent existential panic about September 11 and ignoring superfoxes. 

My youth was wasted on me, as, I suspect, will be my age. Onward.

When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of attending a performance of  Sleep No More at a venue called "The McKittrick Hotel" on 27th Street. If you aren't familiar with it, all you need to do is click the website here to get a sense of the atmosphere of the show or read my brief summary here:

Sleep No More is an interactive theater experience that takes place in a "hotel" which is really just a group of warehouses, outfitted to resemble a 1930s hotel and residence. The audience is instructed to wear masks and to not speak at all throughout the performance and can walk through the hotel at their own pace and in their own order either following the actors around as they pass through the hallways or by examining the artifacts left around the hotel. The actors don't really speak either apart from a few instances. There are five floors of this hotel, each with varying sets and the storyline takes place among these floors. The plot is loosely based on MacBeth and the set design, costumes, music, lighting...pretty much everything takes its queue from film noir so it is very, very dark and many of the scenes are played out in a mysterious, creepy way. The fact that no one speaks and everyone is wearing masks adds an other worldliness to the creep.

I have seen this play before, four years ago for my birthday when a group of some of my very best friends came with me. I'll admit to being tipsy that first go around but I was blown away back then by the level of detail and the truly unique experience of being immersed in this dark world. Since Rowan is visiting, and I had always wanted to return, we took her to see it. It is the kind of experience that is very individual and can be different each time you do it.

When you first enter the building, you have to "check in" to the hotel and you are given a playing card with a number and suit. You then have to walk through a very, very dark hallway that immediately offers a huge sense of disorientation. As we zig zagged our way through the corridor, I had the notion that it was an effective way to leave you feeling you had transported back in time, a notion reinforced when you enter a speakeasy type lounge where you wait for your card number to be called, after which you are transported to the hotel via elevator. Inside the speakeasy are already actors from the production, but you don't really realize it until they start talking; they sound very 1930s and are dressed from the period. There is also a singer and you can order old timey cocktails, of which I did. I had a gimlet and it was delightful.

I don't want to get into too many specifics about the actual show in case there is anyone reading this who wants to go (I'll go with you!) and doesn't want anything spoiled. But I do want to tell you about how the actress who played Lady Macbeth kidnapped me from my group. I didn't know this, since my first experience at the show didn't feature anything but me walking around the hotel following various actors but there are "hidden" scenes that selected audience members can experience if they are chosen from the crowd. Last night I got chosen and I'm not even certain how. One moment she was standing on the other side of the room, set up to resemble a closed piano bar, in a beautiful red gown and the next she was approaching me and caressing my cheek under my mask. She grabbed my hand and led me to the hallway outside the room, the rest of the group around me in tow. She whispered in my ear to stay where I was because she had "something special" for me. So I did as I was told and she disappeared behind a door. We were all waiting outside the door and a minute later she opened the door just wide enough for me to enter behind her and then shut it! I found myself in a small parlor that was blue tinted but mostly very dark. She started to caress my face again in a "we might make out" way. But instead she took off my mask and started cackling. Her lips were full and red and as she laughed, there was the sound of a thunderclap in the distance and the lights flashed as though there was lightning. I almost peed myself.

She said, as she was caressing my face that she had waited so long for me to come back. "I've been waiting for you, Agnes!" She was saying this as she dragged me to the sofa and started telling me a story about a shipwreck. She was pouring water into a teacup and then put a little origami ship on top of the water in it. The story of the shipwreck involved sightings of demons climbing the masts. As she told this part of the story, she started stirring the tea cup and it turned blood red. She jumped up suddenly and said it was the anniversary of the shipwreck and then she grabbed me by the waist and dragged me into this pitch black annex of the room we were in. There was water spraying from somewhere and I couldn't see anything but she was holding on to me and i was holding on to her and I felt the beading of her evening gown and she was screaming something about the waves...I couldn't focus b/c I was freaking out. The noise stopped but it was still pitch black. She stood behind me and put the mask back on my head, turned me around and kissed the top of it. Then she put something small and wet in my hand and said something like "remember that there are things done that can't be undone" or something and abruptly shoved me out a door and closed it again and I found myself totally disoriented in a room I had been in before but was nowhere near where I entered. Since you can't talk at all during the performance, I couldn't even tell anyone what had just happened! I looked at my had and it was a wet cotton ball that was blood red and had left my palm looking bloodstained. It is probably the coolest thing that has happened to me while wearing a mask. Maybe.

I was able to eventually find my group again and managed to make it to the end of the show without being kidnapped again. Here's a photo of my mask, with Lady Macbeth's lips on the forehead.

And even though I really want to describe in detail the entire experience (yes, that was just a small fraction of a two plus hour experience) it is really something that should be left to experience first hand. I'm certain there are other accounts of possibly even cooler scenes that have played out for people during Sleep No More, so I'll leave it at that.

Actually I'll leave it at this link to a song by the Ink Spots called When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano that was playing at various times throughout the scenes and in random rooms of the hotel. It was used to pretty remarkable effect in really contrasting ways and it has been stuck in my head since last night. I now pass it on to you and you're welcome.