The Guts of a Beggar

Earlier today, as sometimes happens with me, I was thinking about one of my dead crushes: Buster Keaton. (Keaton died in 1966, a terrible, terrible year of loss for me, despite the fact that I was not born until 10 years later....Frank O'Hara also died that year). It wasn't a random thought (though I do sometimes randomly think about silent film stars); it came from a gchat conversation I was having with my friend Lauren. We were discussing her natural optimism and my natural pessimism and how she thinks the universe has meaning and so do our lives whereas I think the universe is basically indifferent and that our lives have no meaning (in the very large and grand sense of the word). And I don't honestly see that as something negative because it doesn't affect the way I live my life. I still pursue happiness and practice things I am passionate about. I still give and love and laugh and all the platitudes that people hang on their living room walls and tag each other in Facebook memes about. I just always know in the back of my mind that ultimately, as soon as the last person I knew in my life dies or loses his/her memory, I will be confined to oblivion, as will we all. But I'm not really that disturbed by it because I will be dead and I'll care less about someone reading something I wrote than I will about...well, anything, because I'll be dead, whatever that will end up meaning. And that's the human experience and all the good stuff that happens in between birth and the moment of death is the only thing that truly counts.

Anyway, we were discussing all this, as one does on a slow Wednesday morning, and as I was explaining what my views were, I started to remember a Buster Keaton film I saw a few years ago called "College". It can be seen here on YouTube in case you are interested. It runs at a whopping one hour and four minutes. It features the inimitable Keaton as a newly graduated high school student getting involved in hilarity and falling for a girl who he thinks is out of his reach. It is funny and cute and romantic and all the things I love about silent comedies and in particular about Buster Keaton (who I also consider foine) and you spend the majority of the hour feeling good and laughing and being involved in what's in front of you. So, spoiler alert, he gets the girl. And in the last minute of the film, maybe less, you see them walk out of a church after getting married, sitting together in their living room with small kids in the background, then growing old in the same chairs (as he hilariously looks at her, annoyed) and the final scene of the film is a shot of their headstones, side by side. Even as I type this I am laughing because this is one of the funniest sequences in any film I've ever seen, and it is mostly due to its total unexpectedness. The entire film is a slapstick comedy and a romance and you are feeling good and happy by the end. Then in the very last frames of the film, you are reminded...oh RIGHT! THIS is how it all ends! It is totally unexpected but also, universally expected: everyone dies at the end. (Another fantastic example of this kind of hilarity/brilliance is Atwood's Happy Endings) "College" isn't even one of Keaton's most critically acclaimed films but had he never made anything else, I'd love him for that alone. And also for his face. Anyway, that's kind of a perfect example of my philosophy about life and its meaning and/or lack of purpose...kind of like this whole post.

Side note: who knows where the title of the post comes from? Let's hang out.

Memory 1: Benediction and a Broom

One writing project I have for March is to write about a memory a day: Memories for March. I'll share some of them here because if a memory is written about and no one reads it, does your blog get any traffic? A question for the ages.


Once upon a time I did not have a cell phone. It was the 90s, I think. The memories tend to get hazy as the years go on. For example, the very last memory I can conjure at this moment that involves me NOT having a cell phone is when I visited my old roommates in London in the spring of 1999 and I had to borrow my friend Katie's mobile phone version -0.1 to let her know when we could meet up after spending the day wandering through Hyde Park. It was awkward and heavy to carry but I enjoyed the ironic freedom of being able to be found and met without worrying about loose change for the pay phone.

So, when I got back from that trip, I realized that "everyone" in NYC was getting one and my curiosity won out over my troglodytism (patent pending on that word) and I got a very, very small flip phone since back in the aughts, we were determined to have small cell phones. If you don't remember that, then we can't date because you are too young for me. But today's memory is not about that. We'll have to discuss our relationship another time.

Anyway, it was an exciting time for me...I was 23, I was living in Manhattan on a bookseller's salary and I was now able to use my teeny phone to call roughly half of my friends who also had teeny phones and tell them to order me a margarita at Tio Pepe's on West 4th because it was two for one night and I was on my way.

During this time, one of my friends, Bridgit, had been living in Brooklyn, studying for her PhD in Queens and, just for giggles, joining choral groups that gave concerts in Manhattan at places like Lincoln Center.

She would always give me tickets and invite me to see these concerts and the first time her group sang at Alice Tully Hall, I felt like I should rent a fur coat and a silver cigarette holder. Lincoln Center, fuck, the entire Upper West Side lived in my mind as a place for 1930s rich people to drink champagne. Needless to say, I was excited to attend. It was a packed house and we had nosebleed seats, optimal for people watching and seeing the stage. I didn't see any fur coats or meet anyone named Chauncey or Bitsy. As it turns out, regular people attended shows at Lincoln Center, too. Because of Bridgit, I felt like I was “with the band.” 

Choral music lends an air of the sacred to any space (I wonder if any choruses have ever recorded anything in a subway station…those could use some benediction. And a broom.) I tend to feel like composers and performers open the door to the other side and that music is just a brief glimpse we are allowed before the door shuts in our stupid faces. The atmosphere was reverent and solemn and it put me in a state of reverie. I wish I could remember what was being performed that night but alas, it was 16 years ago. I distinctly remember it had a gorgeous adagio section and the reason I remember this is because it felt as though all the air was sucked from the room and the audience sat still and attention in awe of the sweet sounds from the stage. Oh, and also, my fucking cell phone went off at that very moment.

The phone was on a setting that when it was receiving an incoming call, the ringing would begin faintly, in long drawn out beeps and gradually get louder and louder, like a petulant child being ignored by its parent. It would only stop beeping if I manually opened the phone. TECHNOLOGY. Because I was so involved with listening to the music, it took me a solid minute to realize that it wasn't some other moron who neglected to silence their phone. No, the CALL WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE BAG...AT MY FEET.

Here I was inside this historical musical landmark at Lincoln Center, frantically searching for my complaining, miniature phone in the cavern of my purse as it got louder and louder by the second. 

My mortification was tangible. The other audience members were petrifying me in place like a hundred Medusas. At last, I found the phone at the very bottom of my bag (of course) and silenced it. I contemplated throwing it to the ground and stomping it to death, envisioning three cheers for how wonderful I was for destroying the enemy but instead I whispered a lame "sorry", only to be shushed Tammy and Chadley, cousins to Chauncey and Bitsy. 

The me of right now wishes I could go back, take my own hand and whisper to myself of back then that, a scant 16 years later, people will talk openly about their yeast infections on the subway in detail within earshot of dozens of strangers and in the grand scheme of things, the outsized ringing of this phone at this time, was as small in relevance as it was in size. But, I can’t do that. I simply have to live with the memory of my cell phone beep echoing through the past.  

I am only able to relax into a performance if I treat it like I'm on the ascension part of a roller coaster ride wherein I obsessively check if my seat belt is tightly fastened and the shoulder straps are locked into place. I will take my cell phone out over and over until the lights are dimmed to assure myself that it never happens again. People might think me strange, but as god as my witness, I will never interrupt a performance with my phone again. 

I have to cut this memory post short now because I have to call my OBGYN while on the subway. Bye!

A Big Pile of Dumb, Frayed and Worn Thread

It was my intention to submit my writing to a publication that has called for essays, short stories, or poetry on the theme of distraction. In researching my own writing for a seed to plant (I was hoping some crops would yield in time for a Monday deadline...or at the very least maybe,like, a small, bruised tomato), I was struck by the living, breathing irony of getting distracted by memories of writing about being distracted and distracting myself by writing about how distracted I am. When I first heard the theme, I assumed it would be easy to find something and expand upon it. I must have volumes of poetry, essays and stories on distraction. And I was able to find a bunch of stuff I could work with and expand. I just don't see it happening in time for this deadline. I am, ironically, so distracted by my own distraction and it isn't cute or meta. It is an obstacle. Ultimately, crafting a piece about distraction will boil down to honing in on one or two ideas and adding water, maybe some Miracle-Gro. Or I could show up to work on an average day and let an example of how distractable I am just unspool in front of me like a big pile of dumb, frayed and worn thread. Here's a great example:


Last week, the library patron I call the Haitian professor brought me both an article on feminism to read as well as a piece of violet chocolate so violently fragrant and rich from a Belgian chocolatier that I sighed when I bit into it. Chocolate and intellectual discourse... sometimes my job works for me.

I was able to kill around 30 minutes or so researching the brand of Belgian chocolates that made the delightful violet candies which then led me to look up those Belgian boys I met last summer and which Facebook provides ample photographic evidence that yes, they were incredibly good looking and no, I did not invent them. Then I got to reminiscing about the liquid gold of Orval beer and that glorious Belgian street waffle that cost me a euro and changed the way I look at and eat waffles for eternity. I remembered that one of those Belgian guys was on his Tinder account while we were at the bar and I remember thinking how easy it would be to date in Brussels. Or how easy it would be to date ME in Brussels since you would only have to give me beer and waffles. And moules et frites. And say something in Dutch.

Ahhhhh dating. In mining my archives I found some notes about the one time I tried speed dating. That glorious event resulted in my going on two dates with two guys, one of whom was just horrendous and the other of whom, looking back, I can only describe as vague and forgettable. I feel bad about that but, that's life. Sometimes people are a slightly more fleshed out version of a memory of a person. That was that dude. 

It was jarring to remember that I ever did a speed dating event. I am so spectacularly bad at dating, it is really just ridiculous. I learned early on in my life that I'm bad at small talk, bad at being polite for polite's sake, bad at inflating egos for the sake of being liked, bad at talking about myself (but exceptionally prolific at writing about myself, apparently), and really just abysmal at flirting, innuendo and taking things to the next level. I develop crushes easily but always assume they are unrequited and often need to be told directly "I like you, let's go out." So speed dating, at the time, seemed like a structured, direct way to do this. You'd see someone's face, hear his voice, pick up on any sociopathic vibes and fill out a handy little checklist and if the feeling is mutual, boom. Date. I've said it before, I'll say it again, we should extend the "If you like me, check yes or no" notes from childhood into adulthood.

And an hour had passed and I hadn't finished my essay and I hadn't done anything productive and short of turning off portions of my brain, I don't have a fix for this.

I just have this stupid blog.

Minutes

I don't have a mind made for meetings. This has always been true, from the moment I entered the working world. Sit me around a table with a group of others, pens gripped in their hands, fluorescent lights above us buzzing and my body appears present while my brain is out to lunch. My mind works in a way that absorbs every detail of the room around me anyway. So, when given leave to sit quietly facing other people and allow me to get away with half listening and I'm taking a trip. It's why I'll likely never be a manager anywhere. Managers of things see value in meetings. I see talking in circles and fodder for characters.

I took notes. Reading them back now, I learned a few things and none of them had anything to do with the other. For example:

• There is still money in the budget to buy testing guides and my boss has incongruously sparkling nails. They match nothing on her person, not her age or style or personality.

• A coworker was brazenly reading the paper during the meeting. If my boss noticed this, she ignored it. I suppose I can't point fingers since I wasn't listening to anything that was being said, really. 

• Administration is pushing us all to do more things, regardless of whether or not they are needed or make sense and the break room where the staff meets, eats lunch, and takes naps is located underneath the public toilets. Whenever anyone upstairs flushes, there is a sound not unlike a dying lawnmower being revved. It is difficult to eat lunch in that room and not think about the general public flushing the toilet.

•  I'm not being given a key to get into the building, ever and I've worked here for six months and I know for certain that it isn't for me and I'm depressed about it. 

That's what I learned in today's meeting and it was just as productive as every other meeting I've ever attended.

I had yesterday off, during which I did some freelance work and wrote quite a bit. I had started a long blog post about being very sick ten years ago but as I was writing it, it turned out to be the beginning of a short story. So it likely won't make an appearance on the blog but it marks one of the only times my writing a blog post functioned in the way I envisioned it would: as a jumpstart to my fiction. Who knows if it will become anything but I thought it was interesting.

Other than that, not much else is going on. February is mercifully nearly done and I reach out for springtime like Indiana Jones reaches for the Holy Grail. I can almost reach it.

I've been wanting to spend some time in an art museum lately. The last visit I took was to PS1 and I had a buzz going and it was just inundated with the one factor that generally ruins art museums for me: too many people. I just remember looking at a series of miniature cities that had mismatched landmarks and what I got from it was confusion. There was also a group of young women who kept asking people to take their photo in front of one of the art pieces. So PS1 is out. Where else should I go? I'm thinking about Expressionism. I just feel in the mood to see the world in bold colors and jagged edges, maybe a distorted face or two. Do you want to come with me?

AEC

I face the world with whatever courage I can muster. Most days it doesn't even feel like an effort but more of a rote habit, like the way I make my coffee or the pleasantries I exchange with the people around me most of my daily life.  I wrap myself up in a cocoon, in layers of cocoons that I've spent years spinning out of sarcasm and experience and humorous deflection but Jesus, sometimes. Sometimes I'm walking home from the train and the streets are empty and my head is empty and my apartment is empty and it strikes me as ironic how the absence of something has the identical impact of a million somethings. And then, when I get inside and I turn on a light it feels so good to let everything splash to the floor, disperse and trickle slowly in between the myriad cracks in the floor, like an offering to this old man of a building. This room has probably seen actual problems had by actual people over the years. So the eroded shadow of a silly little woman shaped bean is just a small addition to the hill.

So now that that's out of the way, now that I've had my occasional (still can't spell that word on the first try) good, hard cry,  now that I've gotten up and made myself something to eat and poured a glass of wine, now that I've talked myself out of feeling a certain way with all the rationale in my arsenal and now that I'm okay with being alone again, I can work on my book...an epic sarcasm about how I have spent the better part of the last thirteen years of my life. The upside of all THAT is that this shit is writing itself, every single day I'm employed. It is, in fact, the only thing I enjoy about my current job....the potential for it to be part of my book.

So what else happened today?

During my lunch break, I went outside to get something and realized that the closest liquor store, to my job is quite literally called the following:

Wine + Liquor = 

I'm not making that up; that name is on the awning in front of the store. Just Google "Liquor stores on 104th street in Corona" and the image that accompanies the results proves it. I've gone in there a few times and, despite everything, including all of the inventory, being behind bulletproof glass, the owners seem to be savvy and have their shit together. So I have to assume they were dipping into the merchandise when it came time to name their business.

As I passed by this afternoon there was a group of about six men, all wreaking of booze and eating white rice and chicken out of take out containers, laughing loudly about some slurred thing or another. At what point does a group of friends convene of a Friday afternoon, pickled and laughing and eating rice outside the Wine + Liquor= Drunk Face? A question for the ages, really.

I also passed a man today who was unloading a truck of produce into the side entrance of a supermarket. I noticed he was holding a crate of avocados and I suppose my eyes were following the bright green fruits, nestled snugly into place and how they conjured warmer than 25 degree climates when I made Accidental Eye Contact (AEC), one of my lifetime weaknesses. He responded to this by saying, "Chulita adonde vas?" (Cutie, where are you going?) And I wondered how, underneath my heavy down coat and wool hat underneath a fur lined hood and scarf wrapped triple around my neck....I still managed to make AEC and about how, short of wearing a blindfold, I could prevent myself from doing it. I do practice with my cats from time to time, so maybe that'll stick eventually.

Anyway, I don't have much else to add today. Except that I was reading some old writing and I wrote the following about my day in February, 2005 and I like that I wrote it because, like today, I want to be able to read and remember what it was like on an average day, ten or eleven years before.

February 1, 2005
over a rather sickly, sticky, syrupy breakfast the young greek waitress asked if i was an actress and would i consider being an actress and "you just have one of those faces." she was glancing peripherally at the manuscript i was reading, droplets of coffee soaking through the top two pages as i stirred horrible sweetener and noticed my pinky toe sliding through an unseen hole in my sock.
"no, i'm not an actress." i said, and i wanted to add "but i feel so dramatic all the time. so, maybe i am a little bit of an actress." 
instead i just chuckled nervously and said i was reading an unpublished novel (the truth) that i was enjoying (a lie). she asked if i knew the author. i said no (the truth) but that i was kind of proofreading it(a lie). i had no real reason to punctuate with lies, small as they were. i just felt...like acting.
and i wanted to sit in there all day long. just me, my coffee, the manuscript and the waitress. just bullshitting the day away.
then, later, as i trudged my way up the subway stairs i tried to remind myself that someday very, very soon, i'm going to have to stop twiddling my thumbs through day after day.

....also, to remember that apparently nothing really ever changes. Jeez.

Number 16 is wine.

I'm feeling pretty low today, round and heavy all through the middle, like I'm anchored in place by something at my core. I'm forever stood at the end of a splintered, wooden dock and it's always the twilight of a long day of me trying too hard. Like Gatsby before me, I'm staring at a green signal that is so far outside of myself that it seems like a satellite bound for Neptune, flicking off and on and off again in unpredictable patterns I'll never discern. It's lonely but that little light reminds me that there are people out there, at the other end of the pier and if I just reach out far enough, I might get to touch them. And I keep looking, checking to see if its time yet, hoping hard for just the opportunity.

What is it about the middle of the week in the middle of a month set aside for heart shaped candies and construction paper I love yous that does it to me? I don't even believe in that kind of love, the one with the office equipment visible just behind the plastic smothered roses in the pictures everywhere. I don't like roses. Or diamonds. I DO like those Smartie hearts that say things like coax me and let's do it in the bathroom and come out and pretend we weren't. I also enjoy valentines made by children because the hearts are usually lopsided and off kilter and my kind of love is weird and expressionist and kids can do that so well without even trying.

I don't want a pity party here tonight. I want to be cheered up. So I'm going to try to think about the things I do find romantic. Here's a random list of the first fifteen things that spring to mind.

Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
The final scene in City Lights
Lloyd Dobler (just the character, not necessarily the film Say Anything)
The Apartment (particularly the dinner scene and the Robinson Crusoe line)
Roxanne (even though I kind of deeply dislike Daryl Hannah)
Johnsburg, Illinois by Tom Waits
Lovesong by The Cure
First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes
Slow Show by The National
Chateau Lobby #4 by Father John Misty
One Day by David Nicholls
"For Grace, After a Party" by Frank O'Hara
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
"now all the fingers of this tree (darling)..." by e.e. cummings

Now, somewhere in this blog post I've hidden the easter egg of what number 16 would be. Eagle eyed readers will find it. When you do, send a self addressed stamped envelope to Pueblo, Co for your prize.

Ruining My Reading

Writing a book is ruining the way I read books. My friend Nancy pointed out that this is likely due to me writing my own book and learning how the sausage is made, so to speak. No matter how pretty the package is or how spicy the flavor, I've been there, twisting inside the cold metal spires of the grinder, emerging a bloody cocoon. And though I still feel that there is merit in reading something, even if I don't enjoy it or even if it downright aggravates me, I'm noticing that I have less and less patience for seeing where a story is going. It gets to feeling like I've read that book before, even though I haven't. It definitely feels like everything's been done before.

I used to treat the novels I chose to read like marriages: I took vows to finish and pay attention, for better or worse, to see it all through disagreements and periods of neglect, all the way to the end. Then I realized that I'm turning 40 soon and time keeps creeping through the neighborhood. As I sit in my room tonight and type this, I can see, without exaggeration, five piles of books on my floor, about 15 high each, not including the library books I have checked out or the e-books that are on my various devices. Ain't nobody got time for that. Still, I should probably be a bit more understanding about familiar tropes and debut novels. We can't all morph as seamlessly as David Bowie, after all.

Apropos of nothing in particular, I just checked the word of the day today on Merriam Webster and it is this:

jeremiad

noun jair-uh-MYE-ud

: a prolonged lamentation or complaint; also : a cautionary or angry harangue

And I realized that people with the name Jeremiah have names with roots that mean complaint. What does your name mean? It means complaint. Isn't that horrible? I mean why would my parents name me that? I really just feel it is unfair of them....etc, etc until it all implodes into a vortex of meta.

Then I started thinking about similar names with strange roots and/or alternate meanings and how they became names and I think I came up with a good roster of things to name my children despite knowing their origins and/or alternate meaning.

Jeremiah
Harry
Dolores
Tristan
Deidre
Jerkus
P.J. O'Pootertoot
Suxxcexx

That last one is the actual name of an actual child that was a library patron at one of my friend's libraries. Someone named their child Suxxcexx. I don't have a closing thought here.