So it's the city.
It's THE CITY. And "if you can't find it here, it doesn't exist."
("Unless," I think, "it's mountains, pine trees, solitude, silence, peace, calm, elk, deer, viable ecology, fresh powder, lightning storms, corn fields, socialism, communism, cheap beer, bonfires, roaring rapids, high altitude, whistle pigs, people who know what a gaper is, people who know what forest succession is, people who like country music, people who don't think taxidermy is horrifying, people who don't associate Hunter Orange with ignorance, people who don't associate the South with ignorance, country music, taxidermy, forest succession, sandstone that's not a counter top, limestone that's not a shower sill, quartz that's not a necklace, shale that's not in a conversation about oil extraction, livestock, wildlife, evidence of the Pre-Columbian era, or Palisade Peaches....")
So, if you can't find it here, it doesn't exist. So sit back, get comfortable, and order in. There's great Chinese on Flushing that delivers.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
In my veins
November 19, 2008
Today, I am in Maryland, going to the Eastern Shore to visit Nana and Pops. I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college, living in New York City, working as a coffee shop barista and an after-school tutor. I have two Bachelor’s degrees, some neat stories from some great international trips, and I speak two languages.
My grandparents are 91 and 93 years old. They are from Mississippi, met when they were my age, and started a family soon thereafter. Pops was good student and a diligent worker, and a soft-spoken, caring, and thoughtful man. He began as a surveyor, and worked his way up in Bell Laboratories, innovating the technology of conductors, helping to bring electricity to America, and gaining at least one patent to his name, until as an executive he was able to create his own spin-off company, Lindburg. They raised four children, affording a suburban lifestyle and private schools. Their children fought wars, traveled and lived internationally, created businesses of their own, and raised their own families. Nana and Pops owned a home on the Gulf Coast, a condo in Steamboat, and an island cottage in the Bahamas. Now, at the sunset of life, their condo sold, the Bahamas getaway given to the next generations, the Mississippi home destroyed by Katrina, they live in a retirement community in Maryland, playing bridge, visiting with other retirees, reading books and watching Fox News.
Who they were and are is a product of place and time. They were the children of a proud and cultured Southern class, Pops in line to a drugstore legacy, and Nana the second daughter of a town mayor. They came to maturity in the Great Depression, and have remained frugal and opportunistic ever since. As testament to the liberal progression of our nation, they were more racially open-minded than their parents, Nana attended the first women’s university in Mississippi, and they considered moving out of the state, northward.
My life has been quite different from theirs. I was born to free-market Clinton hippies, who had left their places of origin and upbringing, trotted the globe, and landed in the mountains of Colorado to ski, hike, raft, chop wood. We dragged a pine tree into the living room each Christmas, but did not whisper prayers to the baby Jesus. We grilled elk that we had hunted instead of carving a roast beef. We decorated eggs and ate Grammy Rolls in the April sunshine, but never had to hold the fork with our right hand, shine our shoes, or eat the host. I learned to whip Brookie-laden streams with a 4-foot leader, scout rapids, and field dress an elk.
And all this time, my grandparents remain role models to me. They have built such a beautiful life around them, a sort of kingdom, which they reign over as matriarch and patriarch. My grandmother’s piercing blue eyes inspire fear, bitterness, and respect. My grandfather’s patience and deliberation was unparalleled and I remember watching him maintain his tidy workshop or pot plants in his immaculate garden. At dinner, Nana would tell stories or dole out advice, and Pops would silently pull flakes of crab meat out of the tiniest legs. At the right moment, Nana would pause from her story, and Pops would serve his poke onto her plate. She would thank him silently, invisibly, lovingly.
Today, I am in Maryland, going to the Eastern Shore to visit Nana and Pops. I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college, living in New York City, working as a coffee shop barista and an after-school tutor. I have two Bachelor’s degrees, some neat stories from some great international trips, and I speak two languages.
My grandparents are 91 and 93 years old. They are from Mississippi, met when they were my age, and started a family soon thereafter. Pops was good student and a diligent worker, and a soft-spoken, caring, and thoughtful man. He began as a surveyor, and worked his way up in Bell Laboratories, innovating the technology of conductors, helping to bring electricity to America, and gaining at least one patent to his name, until as an executive he was able to create his own spin-off company, Lindburg. They raised four children, affording a suburban lifestyle and private schools. Their children fought wars, traveled and lived internationally, created businesses of their own, and raised their own families. Nana and Pops owned a home on the Gulf Coast, a condo in Steamboat, and an island cottage in the Bahamas. Now, at the sunset of life, their condo sold, the Bahamas getaway given to the next generations, the Mississippi home destroyed by Katrina, they live in a retirement community in Maryland, playing bridge, visiting with other retirees, reading books and watching Fox News.
Who they were and are is a product of place and time. They were the children of a proud and cultured Southern class, Pops in line to a drugstore legacy, and Nana the second daughter of a town mayor. They came to maturity in the Great Depression, and have remained frugal and opportunistic ever since. As testament to the liberal progression of our nation, they were more racially open-minded than their parents, Nana attended the first women’s university in Mississippi, and they considered moving out of the state, northward.
My life has been quite different from theirs. I was born to free-market Clinton hippies, who had left their places of origin and upbringing, trotted the globe, and landed in the mountains of Colorado to ski, hike, raft, chop wood. We dragged a pine tree into the living room each Christmas, but did not whisper prayers to the baby Jesus. We grilled elk that we had hunted instead of carving a roast beef. We decorated eggs and ate Grammy Rolls in the April sunshine, but never had to hold the fork with our right hand, shine our shoes, or eat the host. I learned to whip Brookie-laden streams with a 4-foot leader, scout rapids, and field dress an elk.
And all this time, my grandparents remain role models to me. They have built such a beautiful life around them, a sort of kingdom, which they reign over as matriarch and patriarch. My grandmother’s piercing blue eyes inspire fear, bitterness, and respect. My grandfather’s patience and deliberation was unparalleled and I remember watching him maintain his tidy workshop or pot plants in his immaculate garden. At dinner, Nana would tell stories or dole out advice, and Pops would silently pull flakes of crab meat out of the tiniest legs. At the right moment, Nana would pause from her story, and Pops would serve his poke onto her plate. She would thank him silently, invisibly, lovingly.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Rightist Rant Continued
One question that I'm trying to answer is "Why on earth did 100% of New York City vote for Obama?" Everyone? Really? In the rest of the country, half of everyone I know and love voted for McCain, but something else occurred in NYC. Unquestioned unanimity. And it wasn't just New York; urban centers everywhere were the same story.
In this human context, everything is provided. Every service is an arm's length away. And people like it that way. It becomes normal. The concept of the Great American Man, the Rugged Individual, seems weird and confusing. I ask if anyone has clippers to buzz my hair, and people crinkle their brows. "Why don't you go to a barber?" they ask, dumbfounded. I invite people over for homemade pizza, and people push it around their plates, not sure if they can trust it. "I just didn't know it was possible to make pizza at home..." says Phil, deliberating over some cheese and green pepper.
"There's no way you can walk from here to there," warns Doug. "It'll take like thirty minutes! AND it might rain!"
Joe gets up in the morning. He gets his news. He gets a bacon-egg-n-cheese-on-a-roll. He takes the L-train to work. He comes home and drinks with friends and goes back to sleep. He's that cog. Somebody gets him his food. Somebody drives the transport. Somebody sweeps the streets. Somebody signs the check. Somebody brews the beer. He doesn't even think about those people, even think about the commute or the job. He just dreams about his artwork, which he's hoping to get into a gallery show someday.
This is the city. These people are energetic, talkative, opinionated. They eat chips and salsa, rhyme, talk about books, movies, music. They have cool shoes. But "killing my own deer so that I feel connected to the land" sounds like a joke from a West Village stand-up comic.
To be continued...
In this human context, everything is provided. Every service is an arm's length away. And people like it that way. It becomes normal. The concept of the Great American Man, the Rugged Individual, seems weird and confusing. I ask if anyone has clippers to buzz my hair, and people crinkle their brows. "Why don't you go to a barber?" they ask, dumbfounded. I invite people over for homemade pizza, and people push it around their plates, not sure if they can trust it. "I just didn't know it was possible to make pizza at home..." says Phil, deliberating over some cheese and green pepper.
"There's no way you can walk from here to there," warns Doug. "It'll take like thirty minutes! AND it might rain!"
Joe gets up in the morning. He gets his news. He gets a bacon-egg-n-cheese-on-a-roll. He takes the L-train to work. He comes home and drinks with friends and goes back to sleep. He's that cog. Somebody gets him his food. Somebody drives the transport. Somebody sweeps the streets. Somebody signs the check. Somebody brews the beer. He doesn't even think about those people, even think about the commute or the job. He just dreams about his artwork, which he's hoping to get into a gallery show someday.
This is the city. These people are energetic, talkative, opinionated. They eat chips and salsa, rhyme, talk about books, movies, music. They have cool shoes. But "killing my own deer so that I feel connected to the land" sounds like a joke from a West Village stand-up comic.
To be continued...
Saturday, November 15, 2008
My First Rightist Rant
There are certainly many differences between the Dems and GOPs in terms of platform, and I will never condone the ignorant and outright mean social dogma of "moral Republicans." That said, tonight I begin my first rightist commentary.
I don't know what "the best" is, or how to ultimately find happiness, but here in the post-modern, post-industrial hip-strip between Williamsburg and Bushwick, kids are really doing something strange. These kids are really skinny. Skinny like "skeletons with a condom stretched over," according to Patrick. These kids are from Ann Arbor and Nashville and Colombus and New Haven, but now they're here and like the wonderfully adaptive creatures they are, they are morphing into a brand new thing here in Brooklyn. They are energetic, talkative, and opinionated. They work hard and have interests in art, music, and politics. They pay extra for organic potato chips. Inter-drainage water diversion, Beetlekilled pines, or invasive cedars are nowhere near interesting. International development, Fair Trade coffee, and Eating Local are like brand names, to be printed in cool font next to a Dolce & Gabanna model.
The thing is, this is an entirely human environment. It's just people and people and more people, and turn the corner and it's more people, and go to the next block and it's more people, and get off at the next stop and it will be bodegas and barbershops and groceries and restaurants and people, people, people. Littering is ok because you are employing street-sweepers. The rain is just a reason to buy an umbrella. Rivers are just reasons for bridges.
And in such a place, wonderfully adaptive creatures come to see themselves as part of the human matrix, a cog in the great machine of the city, buying coffee from the Cafe, bagel from the bakery, gyro from the deli, juice from the Bodega, beer at a bar. Ten blocks is an unnecessarily long walk since the Subway is right here. Cabs are just so damn convenient. I am like this, and those folks live over there, and those people are like that. Everything is bought and sold; everything comes from somebody, and I pick it up every Wednesday when it's fresh, and I don't know what I'd do without that restaurant!
To Be Continued...
I don't know what "the best" is, or how to ultimately find happiness, but here in the post-modern, post-industrial hip-strip between Williamsburg and Bushwick, kids are really doing something strange. These kids are really skinny. Skinny like "skeletons with a condom stretched over," according to Patrick. These kids are from Ann Arbor and Nashville and Colombus and New Haven, but now they're here and like the wonderfully adaptive creatures they are, they are morphing into a brand new thing here in Brooklyn. They are energetic, talkative, and opinionated. They work hard and have interests in art, music, and politics. They pay extra for organic potato chips. Inter-drainage water diversion, Beetlekilled pines, or invasive cedars are nowhere near interesting. International development, Fair Trade coffee, and Eating Local are like brand names, to be printed in cool font next to a Dolce & Gabanna model.
The thing is, this is an entirely human environment. It's just people and people and more people, and turn the corner and it's more people, and go to the next block and it's more people, and get off at the next stop and it will be bodegas and barbershops and groceries and restaurants and people, people, people. Littering is ok because you are employing street-sweepers. The rain is just a reason to buy an umbrella. Rivers are just reasons for bridges.
And in such a place, wonderfully adaptive creatures come to see themselves as part of the human matrix, a cog in the great machine of the city, buying coffee from the Cafe, bagel from the bakery, gyro from the deli, juice from the Bodega, beer at a bar. Ten blocks is an unnecessarily long walk since the Subway is right here. Cabs are just so damn convenient. I am like this, and those folks live over there, and those people are like that. Everything is bought and sold; everything comes from somebody, and I pick it up every Wednesday when it's fresh, and I don't know what I'd do without that restaurant!
To Be Continued...
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Good Money
I'm making good money.
No, it's a lot of bad money
it comes in little bits
doesn't look like fun
doesn't feel like a payoff
In fact, I haven't gotten paid yet.
No days off.
A couple slow mornings a week
Tutoring is now my rest time
I fell asleep tonight while teaching
while eating a taco
while reading multiple choices.
I'm building a life
filling a schedule.
It's not wandering
It's not debting.
I am putting in work, putting in days
showing my dad that I can do it
learning about America
No, it's a lot of bad money
it comes in little bits
doesn't look like fun
doesn't feel like a payoff
In fact, I haven't gotten paid yet.
No days off.
A couple slow mornings a week
Tutoring is now my rest time
I fell asleep tonight while teaching
while eating a taco
while reading multiple choices.
I'm building a life
filling a schedule.
It's not wandering
It's not debting.
I am putting in work, putting in days
showing my dad that I can do it
learning about America
Monday, November 3, 2008
Overwhelmed
What is fear? What does it feel like when it wells, and pushes at the seams and into bones and corners and is so thick, like heat, like bananas, like couches with wooden feet...
Anthony didn't want to come out of this room when the tutor came. His mom tried to reassure the tutor: "oh, he'll be just a second..." she said, "...oh, just a minute... I can't imagine what could be the issue." And the tutor sat in the tile living room by the bouquet of dried flowers, by a bright turquoise wall, watching on Telemundo as a Florida family cried, begged a brother to quit shooting up. The addict cried, silently, not looking up. In perfect fashion of the immigrant community, the younger siblings didn't speak spanish, and the show's host had to translate for the sobbing audience.
I sat there and watched with my student's grandma, drinking water, thinking about how clean and new everything always seems to be in latino houses. Wall-to-wall cream tiles that smell like Tilex, dangerously slippery. Floral print high-backed couches. Polished glass-inlaid dining table. Finally Anthony came out of his room, puffy-faced from yelling, crying- holding it all back and not knowing- shoulders at his ears, telling me his name through closed lips.
I had gotten off the train a few stops early and walked twenty minutes to get to the house. It's 40 minutes outside Manhattan, a world away. I walked by parking lots, down sidewalks squeezed by five-foot-tall weeds, past paint cans dumped on a corner. There were as many police as civilians on the street. It's so airy, spacious after weeks in Manhattan... industrial and bodegas and graffiti. I turned right at the McDonalds into a residential area, passed a Catholic school, two Green Thumb gardens, an outreach center, lots of halloween decorations. From the piles of pink plastic shit leaned against buildings, it seems that Wall Mart was having a sale.
I had been nervous outside the Capellan house, pausing at the gleaming silver and gold gate, feeling out of breath. I ate a fun-size Butterfinger and that was delicious. Then I went in, ready to scare tears into Anthony's bones.
Anthony didn't want to come out of this room when the tutor came. His mom tried to reassure the tutor: "oh, he'll be just a second..." she said, "...oh, just a minute... I can't imagine what could be the issue." And the tutor sat in the tile living room by the bouquet of dried flowers, by a bright turquoise wall, watching on Telemundo as a Florida family cried, begged a brother to quit shooting up. The addict cried, silently, not looking up. In perfect fashion of the immigrant community, the younger siblings didn't speak spanish, and the show's host had to translate for the sobbing audience.
I sat there and watched with my student's grandma, drinking water, thinking about how clean and new everything always seems to be in latino houses. Wall-to-wall cream tiles that smell like Tilex, dangerously slippery. Floral print high-backed couches. Polished glass-inlaid dining table. Finally Anthony came out of his room, puffy-faced from yelling, crying- holding it all back and not knowing- shoulders at his ears, telling me his name through closed lips.
I had gotten off the train a few stops early and walked twenty minutes to get to the house. It's 40 minutes outside Manhattan, a world away. I walked by parking lots, down sidewalks squeezed by five-foot-tall weeds, past paint cans dumped on a corner. There were as many police as civilians on the street. It's so airy, spacious after weeks in Manhattan... industrial and bodegas and graffiti. I turned right at the McDonalds into a residential area, passed a Catholic school, two Green Thumb gardens, an outreach center, lots of halloween decorations. From the piles of pink plastic shit leaned against buildings, it seems that Wall Mart was having a sale.
I had been nervous outside the Capellan house, pausing at the gleaming silver and gold gate, feeling out of breath. I ate a fun-size Butterfinger and that was delicious. Then I went in, ready to scare tears into Anthony's bones.
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