5/27/2014

three paragraphs i like

Like a Big Bang in reverse, I shrink up into a single point of mass and light.  This is a new escape, prompted by crowded moments on the subway or city streets.  New York is an economy seat, and I am suddenly aware of the length of my legs.  ¶

How do you live in a place where you can’t hear crickets out of a summer window?  I wrote this line down as nostalgia, but it is now a vital ecological concern as I have tried to integrate insects into my diet.  Laura is convinced I am a vegetarian, and she is unimpressed by my consistent denials.  My claims that cereal and salad are just cheaper have fallen on deaf ears, so I pleaded guilty and am awaiting sentencing. ¶

There is a new roommate whose name might have been Camel but is actually Camelle or something like that.  He is French and polite and shy in the normal way, not the I just got off a plane from another continent way.  He had not heard of Michigan, which is a forgivable offense.  He is here for a horrifyingly dull internship in supply-chain management in Westchester, which might not be. ¶

5/26/2014

I ended up in Montauk like this:  As a resident of the Great Lakes State, I like to pretend I don’t care about oceans.  Superior, Michigan, Huron, Ontario, Erire--those are bodies of water enough for me.  But I am not sure that I mean it.  There is something about The Ocean, capital t capital o.  There is something about the idea of looking out at a horizon and seeing a mass that runs uninterrupted across the entire planet, something that maybe can’t even be matched by a mass that runs uninterrupted until Milwaukee.  Whatever the something might be, lakers and oceaners can agree:  It is something that the Hudson River simply cannot provide.  So I headed east.

I took the Long Island Railroad and I misjudged which way the train would be heading.  I sat facing backwards, so instead of watching new scenery appear I watched old scenery disappear.  I successfully staved off motion sickness until I had the opportunity to switch seats and then I could pay attention to the new:  From the Koch-era graffiti of Jamaica Queens to the deadmalls and pawn shops of inner ring suburbs to the backyard tennis courts of the Hamptons.

I got off at Montauk, the last stop on the line.  I got off the train and I started walking.  The train would not take me all the way to The Ocean, so I would have to do it myself.  With the modern day compass Google Maps, I wove through a neighborhood on my way to a parkway on my way to The Ocean.  Six miles later, I was close enough to smell the salty air poking its way into the trees.

I had lived up to my end of the bargain, and The Ocean lived up to its.  If you can look at the Atlantic and avoid a broad grin, I don’t want to know you.  The immensity I sought was there.  It was 70 degrees and party cloudy and mostly windy, and it was a moment worthy of a three hour train and a six mile walk.

I circled along the beach, reaching the tip of Montauk Point, on broad rocks and fine sand, in doing so pleasing my eight year old self who loved lighthouses and my fifteen year old self who loved Brand New references.  The water’s collisions with the rocks were cyclically violent.  It would start quiet, reaching the shore almost apologetically and retreating silently.  But each new attack brought a new sense of urgency until the pretense was dropped entirely and a cannon shot created ocean spray.

I had seen what I came for.  So I walked back.  On the way, I passed another walker, one heading toward the park.  It was the most validating interaction I have ever had.  “Hi!”  “Hello!”  “How much further?”  “About a mile.”  “Right on.”  Walking is easy.  Sure, biking is easier and driving easier still, but walking is easy.  But it helps to know that someone else gets it.

I am writing this on a Long Island Railroad train headed west, west from Montauk back toward New York City.  I was not certain how I would do, travelling alone.  But here I am, writing this on a Long Island Railroad train headed west, west from Montauk back toward New York City.

5/25/2014

I got sunburnt on Staten Island, which seems about right.  The day was a pleasant kind of mess.  I woke up too late but recovered quickly.  I made good on my intention to go to Governor’s Island, which was pleasant enough.  Dodging goose shit along the edges of a fort’s outer wall has always been a pastime of mine, and Fort Jay provided that opportunity.  My plan was to find a shady spot on the island and sit and read, but the island’s lack of drinking fountains sent me to plan b.

This is how I ended up on Staten Island, from a ferry chock full of teenaged girls ducking into restricted zones for the sake of better Instagram angles to the s44 bus in search of what Ahmed swears is the best pizza he’s ever had.  The waitstaff at Denino’s seemed surprised to see me, and I was surprised to see them. The pizza was served on a paper plate.  It wasn’t the best pizza I’ve ever had, but I’ll believe Ahmed when he says it’s his all time high--not all of us are lucky enough to live within delivery distance of that juggernaut Goomba’s.  The highlight was the guy on the bus, on his way to a grocery store job, trying to give away coupons to a coffee shop while talking up how much he loves coffee.  “Don’t even bother me before I’ve had my coffee!” he said, and the thing is, I’ve never heard anyone so earnest. I'm not going to bother him before he's had his coffee. He told me not to.

5/24/2014

The rain held off for as long as it could.  I was pregnant with sweat not quite ready to burst, and so was the sky, but the sky came to term.  So I had to head back from Brooklyn.

Brooklyn felt different, or at least, I felt different in Brooklyn.  It felt like the stakes had been lowered.  On Manhattan, you are trapped in an endless maze of towers.  It’s the maze aspect that’s most important:  You will only walk in straight lines, turn perpendicularly at predetermined nodes.  Central Park’s zigs and zags somehow reinforce that--planned spontaneity is still planned.  And Manhattan’s endlessness ends abruptly.  The East River and Hudson are thick black lines, nothing gets past them.  There are infinities of various sizes, and Manhattan’s is a very small one, when you get down to it.

Brooklyn was still a maze.  Brownstone streets met other brownstone streets and the network of slightly-too-narrow sidewalks were my only means of traversing them.  But there was something lush, something wrung, something contorted.  The word I am looking for is sprawling.  I got off of the station and headed down Flatbush Avenue, the Botanical Garden to my left and Prospect Park to my right.  Trees covered me intermittently from intermittent sun, idyll stinking of motor oil.  And I could not turn, I could only move forward.  But it was different than Manhattan.  I could not see nor even imagine where Flatbush ended.  I could not see where the garden on ended, where the park ended.  I felt in the midst of sprawl, splayed out on the page and stretched thin across the map.  There are infinities of various sizes, and Brooklyn’s is a very large one, when you get down to it.

5/23/2014

I’ve been talking about myself a lot.  I am going to continue to do that.  I’ve been reaching contradictory conclusions a lot, feeling mutually exclusive feelings a lot.  I’ve been starting sentences in one place and finishing them in another.  I’ve been starting paragraphs with one goal in mind and finishing them with another.  And this is just in writing, where I a free from the tyranny of linear communication, where I can go back and edit and reframe and limit, if not eliminate, the pregnant pauses and especially egregious midsentence 180s.  You can only imagine how embarrassing I am in person!

I hope I am embarrassing myself.  I hope I come across as someone who has no idea what he is talking about, because in truth that’s what I am.  I am confronted with a world that is larger than I can comprehend, larger than I can even begin to comprehend, and this insurmountability makes its presence known.  I have thoughts in a million directions, and so when I try to choose one, I hope I appear indecisive.  I am in possession of so many more feelings than I know how to name, and so when I try to, I hope I stumble.  

I like the idea of successfully hiding this confusion and wonder and uncertainty, of confidently passing it off and going about my days as if I am in command of my mind, I think I like more the idea of laying it all on the table, of naming all that I can name and pointing stupidly but emphatically in the direction of what I cannot.  That’s where this idea of being a writer is coming from.  Ta-Nehisi Coates put it like this:  “I am here to see things as clearly as I can, and then name them. Sometimes what I see is gorgeous. And then sometimes what I see is ugly. And sometimes my sight fails me.”  

If I believe in anything, it is that.  The misdirected sentences with far too many em dashes containing Carl Sagan paraphrases and Frontier Ruckus references and half-baked conclusions I’ll disagree with tomorrow if not the next paragraph--they are me, they are who I am.  Along with my kidneys and my memories of middle school and my failures to wake up as early as I would like to and my everything else.  And I don’t know what to do with me, but I am eager to find out.  We are the universe learning about itself, Carl Sagan said.  Well, I am me learning about myself.  And I don’t know what that means, but I know that it makes me feel.

5/21/2014

Ahmed is getting married tomorrow, which the woman yelling at him on the phone of course doesn’t know.  He’s also running incredibly late for a tenant’s meeting, which she does know but just doesn’t seem to care.  We’ve been waiting to enter the 86th street station for about ten minutes when Ahmed gives in, signals a cab.  It’s my first taxi ride, so I’m not displeased.

To do this line of work means being yelled at on the phone a lot.  Not just on the phone, of course--by email and in person are also perfectly reasonable options.  I have not yet seen an angry fax, but the summer is young.  But no matter the medium, this anger finds its way out.  This is the strangeness of public work.  To place yourself on the side of the people is to place yourself between them and power.  And that means to place your eardrums in the midst of the shouts.

Ahmed doesn’t mind the woman yelling at him on the phone, it doesn’t shake him at all, in fact.  He’s quickly become a friend of mine, and it’s for all the usual reasons--he’s funny, we’re nerdy in similar ways, it’s a good fit.  But it’s also for this reason, for the way he hangs up the phone, after a half hour of verbal abuse, and then picks it right back up to make a phone call on behalf of the abuser.    

Not everyone yells, of course, in fact most people, the vast majority of people, are so gracious, so graceful.  But those who do, it would be easy to give up on.  It would be so easy to say fuck off and wash your hands of the whole thing.  Their humanity is easily disguised within their anger.  But Ahmed sees right through to it.  He has placed himself on the side of the yellers.  

5/20/2014

Here’s a fun thing to do:  Go to New York and spend all your time dreaming about Michigan.  I am not being sarcastic.

I do not miss Michigan, at least not in the sense that has anything to do with homesickness.  But I am spending an awful lot of time actively loving my home.  

What does this look like?  It’s walking around Central Park with Frontier Ruckus in my ears and a smile on my face, thinking about the first time I drove outside of Plymouth, when I drove up Haggerty Road all the way to Walled Lake to buy a typewriter from that old woman.  

This does not mean that I am not loving every minute I am spending in New York City.  It does not mean I am not actively scheming all the other places on earth I want to, I need to see.

Helen admitted that she doesn’t keep in touch with Michigan all that much anymore.  This made me sadder than I ever thought it could.  

Not angry, mind you, not anything directed at her--she seems very happy with her life and she is amazing here.  But the sadness filled me.

It filled me because I don't want to lose touch with home. I didn't know that I felt that way.