All posts by ester

houzin, park slope

Stasis again

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We have moved! And I have a new mantra, or a new blessing, rather: May everything that goes wrong be minor and manageable. We were lucky enough in that respect. A tire went flat only once the car it was attached to had come to rest close to 4th avenue, a street with not one but TWO tire shops in the immediate vicinity, as well as a couple gas stations.

The movers showed up a half an hour early, definitely before we were ready to receive them, but my mother, the brigadier general of Venezuela, preceded them and threw the apartment into shape.

The movers also asked, on the spot, for twice as much as we had agreed on. Luckily that had initially agreed to perform for so little that twice as much — which we bargained down anyway — still felt like a good deal.

Nobody broke anything or even really scratched anything. Nobody was lamed or maimed, although we were shamed a little when my mom saw the filth that accumulates in a fridge that goes uncleaned for years. Nothing we couldn’t survive. In my head I am still the teenager who would recycle clothes rather than go to the bother of doing laundry, so I feel proud of myself that I voluntarily do dishes as soon as I’m done with them, even if scrubbing fridge shelves with regularity remains beyond me.

The new apartment feels somewhat magical. Doors! Who knows where those could lead? Doors are a slippery slope. For now we leave them all open. The first morning I ventured OUT of the bedroom to eat my cereal; and Mr. Ben followed me, knotting his tie while standing behind me. When I looked around and smiled at him, he replied sheepishly, “It’s weird being farther away from you than this. I’m not used to it.”

I haven’t yet asked the washer/dryer to dance. It makes me shy. But the new stove works! And the backyard works! It sits there and looks pretty, just like it is supposed to. You know what also works? The free cable and the free wireless internet. Though both, I accept in advance, are probably temporary, for now I thumb my nose in the direction of Time Warner. Who needs you, Mr. Man? I got rhythm, I got music, I got our WEDDING VIDEO in three versions — tall, venti, and super-sized — and who could ask for anything more?

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mini splurges

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Ira Glass is coming! He who in my head looks like the nice nerdy guy from the Verizon commericals will be speaking at NYU and I will be there looking on adoringly. Although I don’t usually manage to listen to the show on WNYC, the podcasts make for diversion at work. (As do, by the way, the Lovecasts. Dan Savage is so much more gentle with people on the phone than you’d expect.)

This makes for a great pop-media live troika for me this spring, since I’m also seeing Nellie McKay at Joe’s Pub and Shalom Auslander at BAM. Have you read SA? You should! Unless you’re my father, in which case, Dad, I apologize again. He bought the memoir Foreskin’s Lament after I raved about it and he couldn’t get through the first chapter; he ended up exchanging the book for two Klezmer CDs. (Oy.)

Mr. Ben and I are living in a construction site, or so it seems. We’re moving this weekend and prep makes a mess: empty boxes from the liquor stores, half-filled suitcases, stuffed full bags of clothes to be donated. To add an extra frisson of tension, while I was cooking on Sunday night the gas went off. We called Con Ed yesterday and they informed us that they don’t provide our gas.

Neither does our building, as further probing discovered.

So who does? Why have we been enjoying free gas for three years and why is it abruptly stopping now, a week before we move out? These and other stressful questions answered when we return.

purchasing peace of mind

i am what’s wrong with this economy

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Today I’m wearing a pair of jeans that fits. This may not mean much to many of you, but I have this problem with money where I feel guilty if I spend it. Money, to my mind, loooooooooves to live in the safety of the bank. If I separate it from my checking account, in my head I hear the screams of a chimpanzee being torn apart by a hyena. And if I separate it from my savings account? You don’t even want to know.

But I managed to pass my debit card (no credit card for me!) over the counter of an actual, retail store this past weekend and in exchange I have a NEW PAIR OF JEANS. It’s weird cuz I can feel them, which I can’t with my jeans, since they are usually at least a size too big.

I’ve tried to talk to my older brother about my problems with money when he calls me from his iPhone on one of his weekly snowboarding jaunts. For some reason, he can’t relate.

Now that I have been spared the opportunity to deliver my money to Brooklyn College like so much frankincense and myrrh, though, I’m thinking I can spend it on other things that might make me happy. My brainstorming has produced pitiful results, from lack of practice, I think:

– increase Netflix subscription from one movie at a time to TWO
– get cable (??)
– yoga
– acupressure/massage
– more jeans that fit. And maybe skirts!
– help keep this guy from getting elected

And here I begin to flail and sputter, my imagination overloading. What splurges have greatly increased your happiness?

bad luck, disappointment, resignation

a little ball of ester

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A chronicle of death foretold:

WEDNESDAY
Having gotten tired of sitting passive waiting for the phone to ring, I called the school. An automated message reported that it was very sorry, but the admissions staff hadn’t shown up for work.

THURSDAY
The admissions staff showed up! But they could tell me nothing. Could they transfer me to the English department? Certainly. But the English department knew nothing. Who would know something? The MFA people — and they don’t come in Thursdays and Fridays.

MONDAY 9:00
The MFA people don’t get in til 12:30. (Wow, it must be nice to be an MFA person.)

MONDAY 12:30
Yes, we can tell you over the phone if you like. We’re going to stutter and sound apologetic. No, you have not been accepted.

Now I am sad and would like to curl up in a corner. Unfortunately I am at work where corners are wanting and anyway are in full view of everyone; everyone would be rather curious. Being as it is St. Patrick’s day, I should go off to a corner in a bar and get drunk. I will not, though. I will go home and, as I promised myself I would a few weeks ago, when I realized I wasn’t going to get to rub shoulders with Michael Cunningham and Myla Goldberg after all, I will do some writing.

grad skool, politix

the art of sitting still

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Goddammandblastit, I’m gonna go crazy at some point from the waiting. Brooklyn College did a round of notification by phone in late February during which I was *not* called; they have emitted not a peep since. I know because, so help me, I’ve started reading the frequently and frantically updated 2008 Admissions Blogs.

I am trying to remind myself of the following details, all of which are only Lightly to Moderately True:
– I don’t care whether or not I get in (light)
– Whether or not I get in I am a worthwhile person (moderate)
– I can still be a writer without an MFA (moderate)
– An MFA program can’t teach you persistence and dedication, which are the fundamental building blocks for an actual writing career (moderate)

What is very true is that I cared a lot less, and was a lot less nervous, before I did some rudimentary wandering around the internet two weeks ago and discovered the actual acceptance rate. Friends, why did I do this to myself, apply to only one really good really selective program with no back-up plan to help soothe the savage ego-beast?

It’s enough to make a person consider finding peace in a $5,000, life-ruining embrace. (Mr. Spitzer, I vomit on you from a distance. You have THREE DAUGHTERS, you arrogant, irritating, disappointing, testosterone-driven douchebag. I hope your relevant sexual organs shrivel up like old carrots, not that I wish you any harm.)

I am also worried for friends who are hearing from other programs. Oh, March, what a blustery and frustrating month you are.

femininity, wymyn

reader: marry him

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It is make or break day for Hillary Clinton! Even Bill says she needs to win both Texas and Ohio to stay in the race; carrying Rhode Island (little ol’ Rhode Island) won’t be enough. New Hampshire seems so long ago now, and though I distinctly remember how much I wanted her to win under those circumstances, I have fallen out of touch with my intense sympathy for her. At this point I would like her to bow out gracefully. If only such a thing were possible. However, I am also glad that retains certain supporters — Tina Fey, for one — because I don’t think, for example, that she’s been such an utter embarrassment, such a miserable mistake, that she alone has set women back fifty years.

That article, by the way, turned me into a cartoon: my jaw dropped and my eyes bugged out as ten alarm clocks jangled loudly in the background. In that, I wasn’t alone. As of right now “How Dumb Can We Get?” has generated over a thousand comments on the Post website. Its author, Charlotte Allen, exemplifies what I don’t trust about women who don’t have female friends, women who, like Maureen Dowd and Ann Coulter, are disdainful of “women” as a whole and get to think of themselves as “brilliant outliers.” Isn’t that convenient for them? And mustn’t their mothers be proud?

As long as I have my Outraged Feminist hat on (and I’m hoping my hair looks okay when I take it off), I may as well mention an Atlantic Monthly article Marry Him. This has been around long enough for the controversy to simmer, boil over, and then fade to quiet, occasional snufflings of anger already but it’s worth checking out if you haven’t subjected yourself to its mind-boggling leaps of logic. In short, Lori Gottleib argues that because she, as a 40-something, never found the perfect man and had to proceed to the Plan B of single motherhood, anyone who is still single should settle, and ideally they should do so while they are hot (read: young) enough to command a high price on the open market.

Gottleib’s use of the word “settling” is what makes her argument hard to take seriously, but I don’t think her overall point — that some women are led by our Disney-fied American culture to have unrealistic expectations of perfect romantic love with a perfect tall, rich, handsome man that will last forever — is entirely wrong. I do think everyone learns at some point to adjust expectations to reality. When I was 16, I wanted either Rhett Butler or Noel Airman to rescue me from the doldrums of teenage virginity, depending on the day. Did I hold out for that? Clearly not. And I am extremely happy that I didn’t. But if someone had described my going out with a guy who was not dapper, older, cruelly brilliant and forceful as settling, I would have bought a really mean incontinent dog just so the dog could piss all over the idiot’s new shoes.

Gottleib gets on the Assumption Train and waves at us as it drives her straight into Crazytown. All women want children, she declares; all women must want what her, Gottleib’s, friends want; and being married to a man you don’t love is better than being alone, as long as you have a family. It’s perplexing that she didn’t consider why, if she’s right and no married woman would trade places with a single one, the divorce rate is so high in this country. The truth is that people aren’t willing, as a general rule, to be unhappy anymore. Women who aren’t crazy about a man know that they’re not going to be a happy chained to him for eternity, and why should they pretend otherwise? They’ll just end up leaving those lackluster husbands for the handsome fiftysomething divorcees they meet and have a smoldering affair with at age 47.

Also, who says that these men want to marry women who are settling? Has anyone asked them? I thought American men these days, in the popular imagination, were the world’s happiest bachelors.

Don’t you think these ladies should have a picnic? Coulter can bring the salad, Gottleib the alcohol, and Allen the tart of self-hatred, and they can help themselves while gossiping about how they alone have it all figured out. Woody Allen can drop by about midway through the meal so that they can make eyes at him; then he’ll catch a glimpse of Scarlet Johannson and go scurrying after her. They will murmur and nod and call this only natural.

movies

don’t wake me; i plan on sleeping

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The Oscars! The Film Experience Blog pretty much captures my feelings about it. It was an international year, with all the acting awards going to (deserving) Europeans for small movies that nobody saw, so, naturally, I was happy. There was no Crash this year, or even a bloated, self-important genre picture like Dreamgirls or the Departed, to suck up some of the valuable energy and even-more-valuable awards.

The women generally looked like they had all received a memo from Gil Gates to participate in a virtual checkers match: half were black and half were red. My favorite from the red team was Her Majesty the Queen, Helen Mirren. I had no favorites from the black team. They were dull as dirt, even adorable little Juno MacGuff.

I was giggling at some of Jon Stewart’s lines for a while: who, after all, can resist a good Gaydolph Tittler joke? He seemed to find himself pretty funny, too, or at least he seemed amused by the whole evening’s endeavor, even as he was Trying more than he did in ’06 to play the game. He was responsible for my single favorite moment of the evening, when he brought Marketa Irglova back onstage to give her short, eloquent speech about dreams.

Which brings me to the subtext of the evening. Barack Obama! Everyone was harping on “dreams” and “change,” and what with the various languages and accents issuing from the microphone it really seemed to be his night.

movies

developments

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Post Brooklyn hipster haircut, I have a new celebrity doppelganger! We are not quite twins, as she is a blonde. (Also she is a mother and grieving ex-girlfriend and she’s probably taller too.)

I’m finally catching my breath a bit having hosted 3 friends over the last 2 weekends and celebrated a V-Day and an anniversary. The last included good food and a trip to the Natural History museum where we had the following conversation:

E: How did they figure out what the speed of light is again?
B: I don’t know. It must say here somewhere …
E: (after fruitless searching) That’s okay. I’ll just go home and look it up on Wikipedia!

I also rounded out my viewing of the Best Picture contenders. I enjoyed and appreciated There Will Be Blood, which I thought was on a par with, and eerily similar to, the Coens’ No Country For Old Men. Mysterious American monsters! The untamed West! The pointlessness of everything! Search for money, search for god, search for justice — it all comes out in the wash. TWBB was less scary, more grim, and made me laugh out loud at points, while NCFOLM was concise and terse. Neither passed the Ms. test but both were interesting and intelligent enough that I didn’t really mind.

Still, for my money the best movie of 2007 was 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, which brilliantly captured life under a fascist regime that renders the smallest personal decisions needless complex and potentially life-threatening. If only the Academy, not to mention public opinion, didn’t value men killing each other over women doing anything.

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did i mention … ?

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“Dear Ester,

Our records indicate that you have submitted an application for the 324 Creative Writing – Fiction, M.F.A. for Fall 2008.

Your application is currently being reviewed by your graduate program. Please allow 14-21 business days for a decision.

NEXT STEPS…

1. Admissions will notify you of the decision on your application via mail.
2. Continue to check your application status for further updates.”

14-21 business days! Yikes. It would be a part-time thing since I am currently quite happy with my secret internet full-time job, but a part-time thing I’d be excited about. The program hosts Michael Cunningham AND Myla Goldberg and it’s a really good deal, money-wise. Starting April 1, I will live even closer to it too. Well, we will see. I’m practicing being calm about everything. If it happens, great; if it doesn’t, then I’ll gear up to finish my second draft on my own, sans guru.

Basically I’m trying to pretend, in a godless universe, that there is a god who will guide my path if I allow it. Anything to help me relax.

Meanwhile, happy distractions abound. Obama’s winning more primaries, I just saw Eddie Izzard’s new show live in Union Square, and my swatfriends keep rolling in. Two last weekend, including one all the way from Seattle, and another this coming weekend. The one from Seattle and I basically spent the two days holed up in my apartment laughing. Not a bad way to plow through time.

houzin

apartment apartment apartment

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We are $6000 poorer but one rental apartment richer. Starting April 1, you must come over and live in our backyard, because did I mention we have a backyard? And a washer-dryer that’s ours, just ours? Free laundry — now that’s worth $6000, just by itself.

I’m feeling nostalgic about Brooklyn Heights already. You’ve been a lovely neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, or, as I’ve called you, Barely Brooklyn, or One-Foot-in -Manhattan Brooklyn. Still, I feel like we’ve taken full advantage of you. We’ve eaten at your restaurants, even the overpriced ones on Henry St. and the aggressively mediocre ones on Montague; we’ve crossed and recrossed the Brooklyn Bridge; we’ve watched the fireworks from the promenade. We’ve prayed in your one small Conservative synagogue. We’ve paid homage to the scattered statues of neighborhood hero Henry Ward Beecher. We’ve pointed out the Statue of Liberty to visitors and mooned over the beauty of the brownstones, and now it’s time to move on.

Farewell, happy peaceful bourgeois neighborhood! Farewell, Egyptian greengrocer who knows our names and once asked me if I was Jewish and then, later, whether Jews were allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving. Farewell, Sahadi’s and Perelandra! Farewell, kind neighbor with whom we share wireless internet and occasionally access to cable TV! You’ve been good to us and we’ll miss you.

Hello, Target, Beacon’s Closet, Oko, and to having more than one room! Hello, doors! Doors EVERYWHERE. I’m going to spend the first couple weeks opening and closing them just for the sheer wanton hell of it.