At 42nd, Port Authority…

At 42nd St. Port Authority, I stepped onto the one train as I usually do. The car’s center filled with people like a Twinkie fills with cream. A strange short man appears. Hunched and hooded, his age is ambiguous. He is gaunt in face and above the valleys of his cheeks rest a pair of cheap sunglasses. ”MAWWWAAAAH!!” Addressing everyone and no one and the car, he pushes between passengers vomiting incoherent noises with his face tilted unnaturally upward. “MAWWWAAAAH!!” I register him, consider him, conclude him to be crazy.

In an instant, the middle of the car is empty and I, who stood dreaming, am left as the foolish prey. The college girl. He may have thought. Look at her coat coordinated with her gloves and hat. The deliberate handbag and pointed shoes. 

“MAWWWWAHHHHHHHHHHH!!” He said, when my eyes — mimicking other passengers — darted in his direction. 

I want to say that I played “cool New Yorker” and stood 12 inches away from this man all the way to 110th Street, but the truth is: I didn’t. We reached 50th Street. I moved to the end of the car. “AAAAAAAWWMMA!” He took a seat. We reached 59th Street. An imposing bald white man spoke up.”Ay YO!” The crazy dropped many Jesus pamphlets on the floor. A man shifted places with his wife who exhaled, relieved.

We reached 66th Street. I moved to another car. Everyone was reading a book.

Janvier! Big Live, Big Love

Janvier/January is a particularly trying month.

I cannot remember a time in my adult life when I felt otherwise. Like many, I medicate my sun deprived body by fueling it with alternative energy:

1. Coffee
2. Beer
3. Chocolate
4. Lotion with Shea and Cocoa Butter
5. Men (restrictions apply/limited availability)

What is surprising to me however, are the ways in which random people in my life affect my sanity during this delicate stretch of 31 days. A Chinese Food delivery man in the doorway to my building –who I did not order from, and surely had never seen in my life– greeted me with a cordial “YEAA FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.” I exited the building and walked to EC, where I told my native New Yorker friend what had happened and she laughed in disbelief. Our next order of business was to watch BIG LOVE so I resolved to purge any disaffection with my day trying to comprehend the plight of the well-meaning polygamist — a burden I judged greater and more entertaining than my own fucked up interaction with that delivery man.

BUT THEN! TODAY AT 116TH AND BROADWAY BY THE M108 BUS STOP!

I was accosted by a young blonde woman with immaculate skin. It went something like this:

Blondie: “Hello!!”

Me: [confusion/disbelief/cold discomfort/face inconveniently obstructed by hat]

Blondie: I know, it’s weird for someone to talk to you on the street right?

Me: [...do I look that frickin' pathetic? ohhh no, no please, lordy she's a--]

Blondie: How would you like to invigorate your life with happiness by joining our Lord Jesus in eternal salvation with the Church of Latter Day Saints?

Worse than a canvasser, better than a homeless man — she was a Bible Gal!! And she followed me for a block, craning her neck to search my wind bitten face for sin! 

It all came full circle –disturbed by mean delivery man –> medicate with BIG LOVE —> recruitment by a real life LDS girlfriend. 

Perhaps every new year feels like some harmonic convergence of good or bad. I’m fortunately not quite at the Bible totin’ level of distress, though I will be reading all of Luke for my Anthropology class.

 

 

 

The Big Dance

thanks heather, for the project…the bottle is only phallic if you look at it for a long time I swear! Lordy, I don’t know what is wrong with me!

I often eat graham crackers and think of

the coming night.

It feels soothing and desperately youthful, especially in my childhood room. 

I have a habit of rearranging different life artifacts –photos and stuffed toys and plastic dinosaurs — to suit my “new outlook.” This happens once or twice a year.

It’s easy to tell when I don’t have my shit together: dust gathers on my trolls and wolf spiders make homes in the folds of my diplomas and the mouths of wine bottles and milk jugs.

I don’t have the insomnia problem as terribly as I did once, nights where I would watch the sunset and the dawn in what felt like the same breath, shivering and gaunt, reading with a flashlight like an earthquake survivor. 

A spider once crawled across my fingers as I tapped out my soul into the computer. 

I ran to the kitchen, where my cat was chasing a mouse and stood on a chair, anxiously awaiting somebody to bring me a fly swatter so I could terminate the mama wolf spider lurking in the juvenile madness of my Sailor Moon dolls. 

In the end, I just watched QVC until morning. I keep PC devices away from my bed in fear that their ambient lights will attract the night creatures that occasion my bedclothes.

The Birds are Buggin’

It’s snowing again and the birds are flocking to the front yard, gathering seeds and rocks they think are seeds. 

I saw a Pileated Woodpecker! 
I haven’t seen one in so long.

This one, or its mother has a nest somewhere in the neighborhood, and stops by to peck on dead trees and suck maggots out of the oaken core.

I squealed when I heard it pecking from my  room and ran to the front windows to feast my eyes on the little red head.

For once, I felt the need to take a picture — usually I feel like I’m scaring it by flashing at it. But the bird saved itself from whatever trauma the act would have caused. 

When I returned to the window: no where to be found…

The sanding truck just came. I am listening to Feist’s “The Reminder.” I am going to the city tonight. I am dressed and it’s 10:21 AM. Dad’s making coffee. Today will be fun; mostly because I’m wearing my favorite dress from Banana Republic.

….shameful, shameful photobooth/boredom experiment…….

FINALLY!

I made an animated movie in a non-ghetto way!

I now have FLASH (appropriately named). 

The movie is a blue ball moving across a lighter blue background with black squiggles (buildings and dirt clods).

It is NOT  a commentary on blue balls. But it is my first film.

When Jenna let on that a big change was coming, Brada Randy, in classic fashion, did it in style. 

The drive to New York accelerated with banter, tongues cracked like whips against slick lips. I was at the helm, trying my best to appease with an appropriate soundtrack. We began with punk but CSS was the final straw, Brazilian techno pop beating in our hearts as we entered Manhattan Island.

We parked directly outside my dorm on 114th St., and rode the waysub to Astor Place. Jenna, being a feminist, was very particular about the attitude of the tattoo artist. A tone of condescension was never appreciated, though I urged her to consider the fact that this was a tattoo parlor, not Planned Parenthood. Dicks are often the norm.

Given the ultimatum of a 6 hr wait, I suggested Yaffa Cafe on St. Marks. I was taken there on a date by a dashing Ukranian NYPD Officer, Yuriy, who bought me wine and cake, which were delicious, and then whisked me uptown where he serenaded me with Russian folk songs. On this particular day in January however, Brada Randy shared brunch and speculation on whether our waitress was gay…

Check paid, pit stopped, we walked across the street into “Tattoo and Cappuccino” or something to that effect, where a beautiful woman etched a tree into Jenna’s skin. The branches bled without a sound.

As dusk settled on Morningside heights, we sped home, forever changed.

When every commercial is about…

…TVs going HD, I start to get really concerned.

What if, when I lug my N64 to that 12 inch beaut’ in the lounge — something I have fantasized about for so long — I plug it in and it just doesn’t work at all!

Oh what a world what a world! This is like Y2K all over again and I’m an old bag lady with cats and dying plants, looking out over the fire escape hoping someone will explain what’s happening to the world.