joni mitchell could have sung about it

finally today, fulfilling a long-held fantasy, i went to coney island. the cars had all been stripped from the ferris wheel and the roller coaster was only bones. little puddles of snow flecked the beach. the whole place, in fact, looked frozen, packed away in a freezer to be brought again and thawed and fed to the masses in may.

it was an incredible feeling to be there with the gulls, the photographers, the occasional old russian couple and young orthodox family. the water was a bold, thick blue. what body of water is it, anyway? i don’t know my geography. i would have liked to stop and write something by the anonymous water’s edge but the wind kept whipping me around and i could see the sun setting above nathan’s hot dog stand so i came home.

from an american history perspective, you know, coney island is a treasure. when it was built over 100 years ago it was one of the first places young men and women could go to mingle. in public and with no chaperones and incurring no disgrace. essentially it was the beginning of dating. women could scream as loud as they wanted if they were on a roller coaster, and anything was permissible to say in the tunnel of love. coney island killed the parlor.

or maybe i’m making all that up; i didn’t pay that much attention in seminar. anyway, it’s pretty out there. you should go.

like FIFTY femme points!

it’s been a while since i accumulated femme points. moving to a new city, adjusting to a new job, cooking in bulk, taking long walks … none of these activities lend themselves well to the enterprise. well, except the rare occasion when my boss asks me to fetch him coffee. even that is only a palty two or three femme points. more when the coffee includes cream, or a preassembled bagel with cream cheese.

but today! today i went to the dirty-place doctor. not femme-y in and of itself, although they did dress me up in a peppermint pink gown and keep me waiting for a while. i giggled to myself, feeling femmer than i had in a while, tossing my hair for effect and thinking about boys and shoes.

then a nurse came in and pointed to the scale.

my blood pressure skyrocketed (+3 femme points, right away). that’s been my response to scales ever since i moved out of my weight-obsessed high skool phase and stopped weighing myself first thing each morning. i never developed a mature relationship with scales: i went from kowtowing and living in fear of their power to pretending i was past it and living in repressed fear of their power.
do i really have to? i asked the nurse, trying to sound cool, joking, unflustered and succeeding in sounding exactly like a panicked fifteen year old. +7 femme points. yes, said the nurse, unswayed.

i walked onto the scale like it was the plank and i was about to be forced into the water without even captain jack sparrow for company. before i could drown in my own anxiety, however, the nurse muttered the numbers to herself and i returned to reality with a start. i double-checked for myself and indeed it was true: somehow, without trying, i was back to my high skool weight. my peak-of-weight-obsession high skool weight! without a single angsty poem, draconian dietary restriction, or transition to all black clothing! i was so stunned i barely felt the dirty place exam.

this is our last weekend in this apartment. next week we move, mr. ben and i. i will miss the village but i will love my new peace of mind more.

“but what good is a book without pictures?”

what made today better than yesterday, i think, was that i spent a good chunk of today laughing breathlessly at pictures of celebs. of course slate has a point that websites like these have contributed to a culture of red carpet timidity and fashion has been dulled as a result. but contrariwise, that culture couldn’t be too entrenched, or such earthshattering faux pas as hers couldn’t be possible. (check out the pic where she looks like a giant hen!)

the shot of chelsea clinton and a coked-out courtney love is now my desktop background. you know how to spell that, my friends? s-c-h-a-d-e-n-f-r-e-u-d-e!

this person pushed me yesterday. she hurried by, ignoring me, and in her hurry, pushed me and passed without a word of apology. a curious thing happens to little over-articulate me in these sort of situations: i lose my voice entirely. i gawk. i’m stunned. my heart starts beating at twice its usual rate, my appetite disappears. indeed subsequent to the Pushing Incident, i didn’t eat dinner, the way i’d planned to, even though i’d been starving only fifteen minutes earlier while contorted in yoga class.

i plan intricate reprisals. i forget to breathe. ultimately i do nothing. this is, i’m afraid, why i’d make a shoddy superhero, and why maybe i have so much admiration for the people who OWN witty retorts, especially in the situations that matter. le sigh.

“pain, marty? try prison.”

i must have walked my way into the 22nd century this weekend. i virtually walked straight into march without looking. march! oh god, the joy. you can virtually smell the sunblock on the horzion.

as far as i’m concerned, february was better than january and march will be better still. not because i’m an optimist, or because i think history only moves in one direction — although i sort of am and i sort of do — but because, goddamn it, how could it be much worse? especially as the clothes get thinner and the birds return and people start painting their toes again and you know that this is only the beginning, spring will NOT STOP THERE, it will KEEP GOING until it reaches summer and new york city won’t miss the gates anymore because it will have sunshine.

but for now, i’m stuck on february 28, a strange day, and it’s blizzarding outside again and the fading glow of oscar provides all my vitamin D. i watched with my friend shira, who has cable and an impressively nice room, and we ate pizza and drank beer and gaped at beyonce’s hideous eye-makeup like good americans. no surprises really, in fashion or in the ceremony. no bitter disappointments either. i cheered loudest for charlie kaufman.

i will spare you my martin scorcese rant; suffice it to say, even though i thought the aviator was a fine film, i was aggressively pleased marty didn’t walk off with the trophy that mattered. giving him an oscar would only serve as positive reinforcement of his recent and nauseating effort to make Spectacles rather than films. it wouldn’t change the fact that he was unjustly overlooked, more than once, many years ago. but join the club, marty. if it’s good enough for hitchcock, it’s good enough for you.

hoooo-boy

as i’ve been obligated to spend increasing amounts of time out of my apartment, i haven’t been able to blog, read, lounge, watch old episodes of quality television, watch new episodes of reality television, or play snood. what have i learned in my forced excursions into the city? i’m glad you asked.

– walking is super fun. technically i already knew this. having covered large swatches of brooklyn heights, park slope, prospect park, central park, the financial district, chinatown, the village, times square and midtown west on foot, however, i feel particularly well qualified to state: yes, walking rules.

– subways are the second best way to get anywhere, after walking. today i got to explain the intricacies of the n,r,q,w line to a nice old lady from maine. turned out the nice lady’s father founded heifer international.

– just because an author is featured in a reading/discussion at barnes and nobles does not mean their writing is any less pedestrian than stuff you can hear at open mikes at college. maybe swat just had some really kickin open mikes, i don’t know.

– sometimes policemen kick homeless people out of subway stations and, as they watch them shuffle off, say, “well, i may be down and out, but at least i’m not sleeping on a subway bench, you fucking pathetic homeless …”

– the aviator isn’t nearly as wretched as gangs of new york. frankly it’s not wretched at all: it’s an enjoyable popcorn movie elevated by catchy period music, plane crashes, and cate “lit from within” blanchett. leonardo dicaprio is helped by not being hideously miscast this time.

– avenue q is fantastic, even with a hatted woman in front of you and a vodka-swigging, tittering old couple next to you! the parallels to team america: world police are almost eerie — the puppets, the puppet sex, the irony, the thick-accented asian character — but in a head-to-head, avenue q would win, hands down. for one thing, its heart is in the right place.

– park slope would be a lovely place to live. people who call it “yuppie” have clearly never been to bethesda. it’s looking like the studio in brooklyn heights though. our approval came through and everything. my time on the town is fueled by dreams of that dotted line.

i’ve also learned, independent of my prowling, that thriving in a white-collar environment requires a particular kind of intelligence. just street smarts or just book smarts won’t do: you need office smarts. the ability to hide your intelligence when the situation demands it (a friend of mine calls this “playing marilyn,” in respect to marilyn monroe). an aptitude for obedience mixed with an instinct for seizing those few opportunities for bold thinking. an excellent memory for pointless tasks and a terrible memory for slights and insults. a bottomless stomach for coffee. a sixth sense for when there’s free food anywhere and how to get it. an excellent relationship with the truly powerful folks in the building: the IT personnel. an arsenal of websites. strong eyes (for the monitors), thick skin (for the papercuts), and, above all, the ability to swallow hard, smile, and work towards that paycheck.

a day in new york

despite recent upheavals and unpleasantnesses, ben and i decided that yesterday we would do as planned: spend the entire day together, alone, in new york, doing the things we like to do, in celebration of our turning 4 years old.

our day began early. we left the apartment while metal grates protected still-groggy stores. and we walked south. down the bowery, past lil italy (which barely registers anymore), into and through chinatown with a detour into the most self-serious and ceremonial bank i’ve ever seen. eventually we stopped for dim sum and we decided to eat with impunity. although we couldn’t bring ourself to order pork buns outright, we feasted on all kinds of dumplings and rolls and our bellies were content with our minor rebellion.

from there, down to the brooklyn bridge, and over it. the sky twinkled on the water; it was that sort of day. also it was around 25 degrees. the wind stayed quiet though and we had a giddy crossing. once in dumbo, we turned right and headed up to the movie theater in brooklyn heights that shows weekend matinees for $6.50. we were just in time! hooray! the movie theater, unfortunately, had no heat, so we couldn’t remove any of our bundling. the movie, fortunately, was good enough that the cold didn’t reach us. in fact the only problem with the movie was that i was waiting for the twist that a nyt headline had warned me would come.

afterwards we required hot drinks to revive us. we found them at a cute-ish place on montague street and indeed we liked them so much, and had found such an excellent cushioned corner just for us, that we remained there for two more hours, reading, before heading out again.

uptown! this time not on foot. we caught the last half-hour of a fantastic jazz memorobilia display before the action in the time-warner building: ella fitzgerald’s performance gowns, dizzy’s trumpets, miles’ letters to his mother. hobnobbing with rich new yorkers, appreciating the droppings of success, was kind of awesome frankly. we topped that off with dinner downstairs at whole foods and a nighttime walk through the gates. ben hadn’t seen them before and at night they looked like a benevolent standing army, awaiting orders. two weeks is too short a time to have them up. i think the city should petition for another two, at least.

some wrangling with the subway led us back to the east village where we settled in a bar to watch the john grace band. two accordians on stage at once! they were fun to watch. but at that point we’d been on the go and out of the house in the increasing cold for 12 hours and i was beat. when they finished we wound our way back home.

take this moment, mary jane, and be selfish

it’s official: ben and i will be moving out. where to is not yet official but we & our roommate decided it would be for the best for all involved to terminate the lease early. i’d already started looking at places — in the spirit of adventure, i’d roamed far and wide, considered apartments in exotic locales an hour away in both directions. in the end, what i decided, like dorothy before me, was that my heart’s desire was in my own backyard: i want to be a neighborhood i’ve already lived in and loved. the village, then, or brooklyn heights.

moving will be a pain but the breath i will draw when it’s done, when ben and i are settled somewhere sans keyboard-mauling cat, will be worth it.
actually that’s pinning an awful lot on the cat which it only somewhat deserves. i’m not comfortable discussing anything besides the cat in detail yet.

people have been great about this. as of press time, both my brothers, my mom and my dad were all willing to drop what they were doing and drive to new york for the sole purpose of helping me move. once the blooms make that happen — and compared to rosh hashanah open houses and pesach seders, brunches and shabbes dinners, what’s a little shuffling of furniture? — then we’re going to take my friend claire out to dinner, cuz rather than let me go through a second day of apartment shopping alone, claire offered herself as wingman. indeed, she was there when i saw the place that might be It.

& of course, my valentine, who trusted me go apartment shopping alone in the first place, and who has been nothing but supportive and understanding even when he didn’t have the time to be.

i’m hoping: new place, new start. sometimes it is that simple.

some conclusions, after much thought

it is better to be in love than not to be in love on valentines day. similarly, it is more enjoyable to receive lillies than it is not to receive them. but in general, experiencing (finally!) a valentines day in which my b.lov’d and i are healthy and co-situated does not amount to much. it is nice to look into someone else’s eyes and bill and coo, but if one does that on most days, there is very little difference. except perhaps an extra added sense that one is fortunate.

last valentines day, my b.lov’d was across the pond and my friend k-ross gallantly squired me around. k-ross is currently across the pond, whatever pond lies between new york and india. two valentines days ago, i woke in the campus hospital. the present my b.lov’d brought me was a bottle of nyquil and the news that he was off to a concert with k-ross, if that was all right. (it was. i GUESS.) and three valentines days ago, i was across the pond, recovering from substance abuse and moping the even-shorter, even-drabber danish day away in a pub.

four valentines days ago, my b.lov’d and i had only vague knowledge of each other. he had just been spurned; i was feeling cynical about all things romantic. but we started on a collision course and aww. here we are. on thursday, we’ll have been here four years.

to be fair, along with nyquil that year he brought me a double cd of beatles songs he had compiled in an order particular and significant. i do like the beatles now, which i didn’t once, thanks in some part to him. but i still like lillies more.

fingers like sausages

i’m sure you’ve seen the pictures, but nothing compares to walking under the gates themselves. speaking as someone who isn’t easily impressed with modern art and whose least favorite color is orange, i thought they were fantastic. somehow the industrial hugeness, sameness, and proliferation through the park contrasted perfectly with the park itself, and the gently billowing curtains contrasted perfectly with the hard-edged arches. walking under one after another, i felt a bit like i was in wonderland.

it made me cry, a little. something about it. the scale, maybe. or just the success of it as an endeavor. there’s something about human achievement, success, that makes me cry, i guess because i want that so badly. i’m a sucker for those applause, or “slow clapping,” scenes in movies — the prototype is, imo, Mr. Holland’s Opus. you know what i mean: often it’s one person who starts the applause, shooting up bravely like a flower among weeds, until he’s joined by others, slowly, always slowly, and then at last the whole courtroom/auditorium/sports arena is alive with the recognition of the hero’s achievement and general awesomeness. i hate it as a movie cliche, and i really really really want it in my own life.

my travels today cut a nifty shape of the map of manhattan: east village to central village, up all the way to 181st around washington heights, back to the upper west side, over to the upper east side, back down to the village and over again back home. phew!

spewing obscenities

the fucking cat just fucking ripped the w key off my keyboard and misaligned the q. i’m incoherent with rage. & the past two days have been pretty good. i’ve had several problems, see, and i finally got license to be proactive about the solution to a major one: and voila! o, the sweet, sweet sense of control that floods one when one gets to be proactive …

at least until one’s W is RIPPED from one’s KEYBOARD!! rip my heart from my chest while you’re at it, you hostile animal.

never again will i live with a cat. here, before god and country, i swear it. and every time i type a word with a W, my resolve hardens. never again with the cats.