Bixi was a Hunter

Moving Is Good for the Soul

Is there a diagnosis for the horror and revulsion one can feel when confronted with physical evidence of the enormity of the debris created by one’s sprawling, uncontrollable, unmanageable life?  The sensation is accompanied by paralysis, and a tendency to lift things, consider them half-heartedly, and put them back down again.  Our move itself was relatively unplagued by this brand of disgust, even as we ran armloads of unboxed books, toys, photographs, unfiled receipts, notes with important passwords on them, extension cords, valuable electronic equipment, falling-apart furniture, and bags of spices up and down the stairs.  But now it’s scattered around me, this uncatalogued, unclassified stuff, and I can’t rid myself of it, but it brings me no pleasure.  I have taken a harsher attitude towards my various belongings in moves of late – high school cross-country t-shirt, gone! Radcliffe Rugby t-shirt, gone! theory books that only remind me how much reading I didn’t do in college – gone! – but I’ve been unable to part with two shirts from my early youth that are literally in gross, stringy tatters, and an almost never-worn butter yellow velour jacket with short sleeves is hanging unperturbed in the new closet.  And so many summer clothes that are in no way offensive, but never get worn, and same thing about pairs of pants…

The new place is nice; we’re among the treetops.  Of course, now, all I can do is wish I had the second-story view – strangely, the view on that level was greener, as we stared right at the trees, including one fir for which I’m now too high.  We also had a particularly stately, storybook-like view of the sweet little houses across the street from us, whereas now we just see rooftops and sky.  I know, it sounds better, but it isn’t, at least not right now.  I miss the pattern in the pressed tin ceiling in my old room, and notice that the ceilings are just a bit lower.  Chiefly, though, there is now no noise around me but the rattling of the hot-water pipe and the chirping of birds, which was all we wanted, and now what we have.

If moving could be good for the soul at all, it would only be insofar as it reminds me again how astonishingly wonderful my friends are.  As the going gets rougher their general good spirits take on a madcap chipper tone.  Our laughter becomes a touch tinnier but it’s more frequent.  My parents and I get along best when their visit coincides with some kind of home improvement project, when there’s manual labor involved and I’m not trying to impress or entertain them.  The same quality is evident in my dearest friends, too.  Our friendship is an intentional, desired thing, but we can draw heavily from the bank when we need to, and sometimes you can’t tell the difference between credits and debits.

Park Slope Diary #2: Coping Strategies I Have Known

I find myself hating New York somewhat less often, or less virulently, not sure which. The coping strategy I hit on, I think, is to have allowed my life to get smaller and smaller.  I don’t even try to go to museums anymore, nor do I berate myself for failing to organize hikes or picnics or going to book readings.  On Saturdays and Sundays, I content myself with running in the park, cleaning my apartment, or chasing down an errand or two, even the ones that send me to Target.  What keeps me from quaking in front of the empty expanse of time is (Saturday) that I must pick up my Ronnybrook Farm yogurt from the farmers’ market before they run out of plain flavor like they did today and (Sunday) yoga class at 10:30, which I try to precede with a run. When friends from out of town visit, and they ask what I like to do, they seem surprised that there is very little on the list. Earlier in the fall, the list included sitting in the park with the paper; now that it’s winter, cooking brunches (or cleaning up after people who generously share their brunches with me) may join the list.  The upside is that I much less often take to my bed, with nothing but Dykes to Watch Out For to comfort me.

I was in the 14th Street 1/2/3 station this morning, holding three bags, one of which included a muffin rapidly bleeding berry juice, another holding two pristine white boxes I had just purchased for a pretty penny from the Container Store, which I was trying to protect from the berry juice, the third of which contained dirty underwear and the sweater a woman had dumped red wine all over last night at dinner, and I was in everybody’s way, and I somehow ended up holding the dirty underpants in my hand, outside the bag, and I was embarrassed and tears sprang to my eyes, and I thought again, I hate this city, and I vowed again never to leave Park Slope on weekends.

It is very strange, this state of affairs.  For many years I have had nothing but bewilderment and more than a bit of impatience for people who lack boundless energy for adventures, social engagements, ambitious plans.  My appetite both for being with others and for plotting out complicated endeavors was never satiated; not that I always got such high marks in the following-through department (well, I think the problem really lay in the plotting-out; I tend to be very committed once the plans have been laid), but my appetite was there, and I could make life various degrees of unpleasant for the people, like a one-time girlfriend, who I felt didn’t adequately nurture my ability to carry out these complicated endeavors.  I relished the scribbles and check marks all over my planner and only bitterly crossed out an evaporated plan (well, that part’s still the case). 

Now, not a few times, I have found myself at home on weekend nights. I am sometimes invited to parties, but unless I am quite good friends with the host, I seldom go.  When the kids upstairs and the kids downstairs are hosting a track meet in the their apartments and their parents are having movie night and talking loudly on the phone, I feel distracted and faintly homicidal.  When I am surrounded by quiet, my contentment is thorough-going.

How did I get this way?  The easy answer is New York, environmentally exhausting, constantly overstimulating, etc.  Another answer is a recently-born gulping, grasping sense of professional ambition and impatience that squeezes out the mental energy needed for advanced social planning.  Another, sadder, is that often when I would go to these sorts of activities I once I loved, in the New York context, I just didn't have as much fun. Another, perhaps the best explanation, is that with this approach, I am permitted to laze about the house with those I really love.

Irony of Ironies

Irony of ironies, when I used to live in Boston, my New Yorkers arrived smartly on Mondays or Tuesdays.  Now I live in Brooklyn and I wait until Friday or Saturday or later to get the week's issue, by which time I have usually stolen my girlfriend's and/or had the big stories spoiled for me by friends and blogs.  Customer service is not sympathetic to my plight.  Clearly, customer service is not actually a New Yorker reader, or she would understand the agony of watching the world spin in knowledge far ahead of her.

I haven't quite had the post-election crash I expected, but nor did I experience election jubilation.  I felt flat all night. I shy away from reading "where were you then" posts 'round the web, as they are all full of people's joy and tears.  I haven't managed to cry about it yet.  Now and then I try to, but it hasn't quite worked.  My mom said when she woke up on November 5 she felt like an American for the first time in her life.  Considering her German citizenship was rudely and traumatically stripped from her over the summer, this is good news.

Two Bs and I went to see Amy Ray last night. It has been a bumper fall for me in terms of concerts. Tegan & Sara at Terminal 5; Amy Ray at the Bowery Ballroom; Julianna Hatfield, same; Lucinda Williams, at Madison Square Garden (no not THE Garden, some auxiliary venue).  I would be hard-pressed to pick my favorite; they were all enthralling in their own ways (except for Julianna Hatfield, whom I could have done without, even though one of the Bs and I gave it our best shot).  But Lucinda Williams is a prophet living in our time.  Some bigger-than-human voice is speaking through her songs.

At the Amy Ray concert for a moment I looked right and left and thought to myself, hey, you're doing it.  Consuming, demanding job, and look, I can have friends and go with them to cultural events too.

But oh, how grinding and awful midtown was today, is everyday.  The 4/5/6 could not be more stuffed, the air could not be more choked with exhaust.  It's all pharmacies and Starbuckses (whose profits, I am so happy to hear, are down 97% this quarter). 

Apparently, change is ahead at work.  Apparently in order to usher in change one must hire a consultant to help one vision and pay her lots of money.  It is frightening when what you have longed for is given to you.  It can be the biggest psychological manipulation you ever asked for.  It is like Sarah Schulman says:  it's nice when people are non-homophobic, but the fact that some people are homophobic and some people are not means that gay people are constantly guessing what kind of treatment they're going to get. The mind-fucking of gauging when you're safe and when you're in danger is still flaring in the background.  In a way, it's easier when you can just leave your defenses up.  (I don't think she makes the conclusion, but I will.)

Lucinda is just not nearly good enough through my crappy computer speakers (picked up from the sidewalk in front of 3 Sac Place lo these many years ago).  She deserves to be live every time.

Buy the Rest

I was in Europe for a week, and for the first time in a long time, I almost cried in the airport flying home. I have dozens of pages in various journals – I write about it every time – about how much I actually hate international travel, weaned on it though I was; how poorly I handle, say, road signs in different fonts (let alone languages), foreign food packaging, the foreign highway roadside. But this time, for some reason that probably included the fact that the duties, each day, were limited to walking six to eight miles and making lunch along the way, I was able, in large measure, to delight in where I was, and also able, in some non-negligable measure, to escape the questions that insist themselves daily in my ears. Should I go to law school? How will I get some power? Everyone else is getting ahead; when will I? And how on earth will I survive the hours?

Now I’m back in front of my iBook; it’s getting light enough outside for a run. The voices are at it again, and they’re not only in my head. Someone who puts power over love is in charge and telling me the rules. Foucault? No silly, someone else! Life repeats itself, I go on holiday, and when I come home, everything glows with slightly more benevolence and detachment than before.

New York – midatlantic as it is – feels rewardingly like Baltimore does after a summer trip in Europe. Hot, thick with humidity, the smell of asphalt rising off the street, trees wilted and leaning. I came home last night to an on-the-street run-in with a neighbor and a dinner in the window table at Applewood – a worthy successor to a four-course prix fixe (St. Pierre – that’s a fish – in hollandaise sauce!) at the Hotel du Mont Collon that capped off our week in the Alps. The trip was glorious. And I’m glad to be back.

The Bus Brings Me Home

In Gmail – in G life – it is very easy to find the most recent substantive correspondence you’ve had with a friend who lives far away.  And, I have discovered, this keeps me more honest than I would otherwise be.  Really?  I felt that way in October of 2006?  That’s not the story I’ve been telling for the past two years. 

Vicky and I did two four thousand footers this weekend, camping in Tuckerman Ravine and climbing the summits of Washington and Monroe, two of the excellent Southern Presidential Range, by day.  Late Sunday night, I took the bus back to New York from Boston.  I expected it to be miserable but instead I set my iPod to the H songs and took a great deal of pleasure at squinting at Motherless Brooklyn until we reached Manhattan.  At that point, the bus surged into being as a marvelous creature before whom all advancing armies fall.  All of 5th Avenue seemed to be on silent, frozen parade just for us; each light we approached would turn green, the bus would gather itself up and charge through the intersection and another tableau of fancy shop models, or quiet, hulking museum, or opulent apartment interior, would come into view. I couldn’t drink enough in; it was like I had never seen Manhattan before.  The streets were almost entirely empty, but the buildings were aglow.

There is no Citgo station at the Citgo sign, in Boston.  I hadn’t known that.  Now my willingness to defend the sign diminishes somewhat.