I'm her Hume Cronyn, she my Jessica Tandy

Hello, favourite

2007-02-23T12:31:00.000-05:00

I am *very* fond of a Windsor Terrace resident.

You and Only You

2005-07-19T00:59:00.000-04:00

Brooklynites waiting for the B63 bus reminisce on love found, and lost.

From a series of interviews spanning three days.

Louise P.

SA: Louise, who was your first love?

Louise: (Laughs) My first love? Well...when I was a girl, 16 or 17, I loved a boy named George. He was my first love! Oh my, that was a long time ago. It was 1941. . George was a gentleman for a boy of his age. They moved up here from Georgia, I believe, and he had manners like that. Southern. He called me Miss Louise. Aw, that made me laugh! We don't talk like that in Brooklyn. My family is Italian. He would bring me little trinkets, flowers. We'd go up on the roof of the building I lived in, my family lived in. Oh my parents liked him fine, but they would send my younger brother up there with us, to keep an eye on me! (Laughs)

SA: Have you ever thought about trying to find him?

Louise: Oh no...no. Never. He's married with a family, I'm sure. The memories I have of George...I wouldn't think of touching that. I want it just the way it is. They say you never forget your first love. I guess I never will. If I haven't by now,then I never will.

Arthur R.

SA: Arthur, how did we meet?

Arthur: Cathy (a mutual neighbor from my 5th Avenue days) introduced us. She said, "Arthur, this young woman is a whiz at
making ice cream. I though to myself, "Shoot! I thought you were bringing her by to be my new girlfriend!"

SA: Arthur!

Arthur: (chuckles) And later, you brought me some ice cream. It was peach.

Sarah: I made peach ice cream for most of the neighborhood last summer. I was buying peaches by the dozens.

Arthur: (pointing to a car going by) There goes Mike Mancuso. They live on Carroll Street. He has a beautiful wife, just beautiful.

Sarah: Arthur, what has life taught you about love?

Arthur: Oh my...Well...the big thing is, you have to look for real love. Not some flavor of the week. I married my wife because she we laughed together and she could dance. (Laughs) I knew it was real. And we were married 54 years before she passed on. And we had such a life. We saw California, Canada, Mexico, Arizona, Florida. We raised four good kids. She was such a woman. Beautiful and with a head on her shoulders. We laughed all along the way, through our life together. Danced too. Can you dance?

Sarah: I know how to merengue.

Arthur: Let's see what you're made of.

(Arthur and SA dance together next to the bus stop as incredulous teenagers look on)

Sarah: Arthur, where are you taking the bus today?

Arthur: Doctor.

Man with a cane, about 75, name unknown

SA: What can you tell me about love?

Man: Love is a very deep thing. It's very personal, and it's private.

(Several minutes of silence. The bus pulls up. Man gets up to get on the bus, but at the last second turns and grips my hand, hard.)

Man: If you find love, you hold on to it. Hold on to it.

*This update typed while listening to the Beach Boys.

There is only air

2005-03-21T01:49:00.000-05:00

Australia, Part II.

Cameron dashes around the house with one shoe on, hair rumpled, phone ringing, mumbling and cursing under his breath. There are only three trains out of Yarraville every hour. From the kitchen table, still on my first cup of tea, I sit watching him. The house is suddenly quiet and I think he's left. But here he is in the kitchen again. I look up from the trashy Australian tabloid magazine I'm reading. "I've missed the train again," he says sheepishly. He fills the electric kettle, flicks it on. That's when we start laughing. On the days that he works at home, I never leave him alone. I bring him bowls of cherries, fresh loaves of sourdough from the bakery in town, chunks of Toblerone. I wave to him from outside the kitchen windows, startling him, to come out to the backyard and hear a woman two houses down singing "New York, New York" loudly in her living room. I pop into the office room, where he's busy on his laptop, just to show him something silly in a magazine, or tell him what the Italian lady down the block said, or to ask him to walk into Yarraville with me. I adore him. "Tell me everything" I say to him once, on the train. But he just laughs; Birdy is secretive. "Guess what, Birdy?" I say over and over during those two weeks, before I blurt out my latest inane little bit of news. Like a little kid. Sweet Birdy: if he minds these constant interruptions, he's too kind to show it.

I walk all over Melbourne, miles every day, all kinds of neighborhoods. I start a new vacation hobby: talking to people who work at hair salons. From the fanciest salons to the loveliest old barbershops, I go in to chat and to ask questions about Australian hair trends and the secrets people reveal when they're getting their hair cut. Sometimes someone offers me tea. One place gives me a beautiful comb, which I accidentally leave at a park.

The house in Yarraville is haunted. We are sure it is. There are odd sounds when it's dark, and Jess and her friend saw an old man. Or maybe it was an old man and old woman. Ghosts? In any case, I'm terrified to walk around at night. One evening at home, we are about to sit down to dinner and I tell Jess and Birdy that I had a dream there was something bad about the little ceramic head that's in the backyard. (The head must be from a little lawn statue owned by previous tennants, but there's no sign of his body anywhere). Jess puts her hands on my shoulders and begins jumping up and down frantically. "When we found that head," she says, out of breath, "I had the feeling, this is where it's all coming from." She says, "We have to get rid of it." Silently, we all stand up together. It's a ceremony now, a mission. We're laughing, but I believe it too. The head must go. It's sitting innocently on the ground there in the backyard. We scoop it up and walk purposefully to the front yard, where the bin is. The path to the front yard is dark. I reach for Jess's hand. The head is tossed in the bin, the three of us all peering in to watch it drop. It makes a deep clanging sound when it hits the bottom. Back in the house, we rummage around for candles. It seems like the right thing to do, a kind of farewell for the ghosts. And protection from them. The beer is poured and dinner begins. We're giddy by now. Loud and ridiculous. The feeling of relief is palpable.

At the end of a long alley in Chinatown, there is bar with samosas and a bartender with a lisp. Inside it's one of those bars that's so dark it makes you forget what time it is outside. It's hot and I'm there for a beer. I strike up a conversation with a man at the bar. He works in an office, thinks New York is overrated. And he has a car, he says, it's just outside. We could roll down the windows and drive out of town. We could go to the beach. And it's not the thought of driving off with a complete stranger that is the immediate reason I say thanks so much, I'm sorry, I have to be going. The real reason is ridiculous; this man is wearing a Richmond Tigers shirt, I am a brand new but already avowed St. Kilda fan.

Everyone else who stayed over at his house last night has gone home, and I am watching Connal Parsley make us breakfast. Eggs and bacon, tomatoes fried in just a bit of pomegranate oil. And maybe it was that last scotch as the sun was starting to come up, or the records we listened to last night, or that it's summer outside, but by the time Connal turns around something has changed. And he can see it in my face. He stops talking suddenly, plate in his hand. "Are you alright?" he asks. I tell him yes. Yes, I'm fine. See, I'm smiling. We sit down to eat. Later, when he drives away in that battered old car, I watch from the sidewalk in front of his house until it's gone. Then I turn and sprint down the sidewalk in the other direction to catch my tram.

On my last Saturday in Melbourne, Cameron and Jess and I drive up into the Dandenong Mountains outside the city. And it becomes, without meaning to, one of those perfect days you remember for years, the details getting blurrier and blurrier but that feeling of everything being exactly right still intact. It's so easy to forget what fresh air is like, what it tastes like. But it's all I can think of while Jess and I are chasing Cameron down a steep path, all of us laughing, on our way to a waterfall. We climb up on a big rock to eat the cake we've saved from lunch, an amazing lunch. The water is freezing. Cameron dips the top of his hair in it and then shakes his head all over like a golden retriever, laughing. There are kookaburras here, and some kind of green and red bird that looks amazing to me, just flying around wild, in such vivid color, but they don't impress anyone else; they're common here. The afternoon's ending and we need to get back. And there's something about driving on a day like this that seems to makes music sound better than it ever has before. Song after song. From the back seat, Cameron says suddenly, "It's the penultimate day of summer." Sunlight is streaming through the trees, dappling the road in front of us. Valleys and hills and the bay glistening in the distance. It's so beautiful I'm speechless. When I look over at Jess and Cameron I can tell that the same thing has happened to them. The car is quiet until we're almost back to Melbourne.

Jess drops me off at the airport. I make her go to all the stupid gift shops, just to keep her with me a few more minutes. But it's time to go. It's time. I step through the silver sliding doors that lead to customs. She's still standing there, my friend Jess, just a few feet away. And she's lovely. I pause for a second to wave goodbye one more time, and I'm thinking about the backyard at Hodgkinson Street, Connal's basil plants, the bike rides in the middle of the night when no one else in the world was awake. All the little things that brought me to Melbourne, the little twists of fate. The things we know and don't know about our friends. The things we'd do for them. I smile at Jess, blow her a kiss.

Only when the doors close do I bury my face in my hands.

*Typed while listening to The Zebras (Thanks, Marky).

The Fog of Trujillo

2005-03-16T23:13:00.000-05:00

Australia. Part I.

The electronic doors in customs slide open and we step through, exhausted and blinking in the sudden sunlight; it's early in the morning here in Melbourne. And suddenly Jess and Cameron are there, right in front of me, and everything's all blurry with joy. I throw my arms around them. Outside, only 20 feet away, it's summer. Jess is holding the list of things she and Cameron have planned for us to do. The possiblities are endless. Jess puts her arm around my shoulder. "Time for breakfast," she says.

I ride to the end of every train line, just to see what's there. I write my favorite station names on the back of my hand with a pen I stole from Cameron. Diggers Rest. Batman. Sunshine. Craigieburn. Crowds of teenagers fill the platforms in the afternoon. Uniforms and ipods and glitter nail polish. I love the old ladies with tanned faces and flowered sundresses, sitting primly at the Yarraville station. I ask them questions, anything, to talk to them. "What's that?" I ask a tiny, ancient woman with a cane, pointing out the train window at an ugly and non-descript building. "That's a meat pie factory, Dearie" she says sweetly.

Marky and Marty meet me on the train platform. They have been in the studio for days, finishing their new album, and they are tired. We have lunch at the only cafe near the studio, the amusingly named New York Tomato, on the corner of New and York streets. The waiter will tell us several times in the next few days that his boss is thinking of changing it.
There are months and months of gossip to catch up on: babies on the way and sloppy seconds and mutual friends who get in hilarious scrapes. I sit across from them, laughing, at this sunny table here in the middle of North Richmond. In the middle of nowhere. I love them. These boys I so rarely get to see.

We spend the afternoon in the alley behind the studio, drinking bottle after bottle of beer and silkscreening t-shirts for the upcoming Candle Records showcase. Sunlight filters down between the buildings. When the shirts are done and drying on the line, Marky and I look around for random things to attack with the screen. There is now a very weathered old armchair in that alley that says, in bright white letters, The Lucksmiths. Inside the studio, we sit with Pilko and listen to the same songs over and over and over. And it's funny how different their hearing is than mine; so close to music, they hear blips and sounds and glitches that I would never notice. To me, these new songs sound perfect.

Cameron's band, Architecture in Helsinki, is playing a free show in the park. Marky and I walk there together, singing little made-up songs. It's dusk, the end of a day at the end of the summer. The most beautiful night in the world. Jess's grandmother is there, an octogenarian birthday girl sitting calmly in a lawnchair in the middle of a noisy crowd. She squeezes my hands and smiles up at me. Jess's family has spread a picnic out on blankets. They order me to eat. Later, a chocolate cake will be pulled out, secretly, and candles lit. "Turn around!" everyone will call out. And I tell myself fiercely that I am never allowed to forget her face, how beautiful it is, when she sees that cake. When we leave, she pulls me in close for a kiss. She smells like lavender. "Happy birthday," I whisper in her ear.

The Lucksmiths play a show later that same night. I haven't seen them play for more than a year, and I'm happy, really happy, to see them play again. So it's a mystery why there are tears streaming down my face in the middle of the set, tears I'm trying hard to hide with the help of a crumpled cocktail napkin. But it's not really a mystery at all; these songs are old memories. I am standing in Melbourne, Australia and I'm acutely aware that things can be thrown off by a split second, a missed glance, the wrong season, lack of experience, bad friends, heartbreak and happiness. The way things turn out is so tenuous. So gorgeously precarious that I have to cross my arms across my chest to keep from shaking. If things hadn't happened the way they did, I wouldn't be here, in the summer, laughing like crazy with Marky and Marty, with a sunburn and fingernails caked with paint from the the t-shirts we screened earlier that afternoon. There wouldn't be Jess and Birdy, muddy-kneed, planting succulents in the front yard on Sunday afternoons, Tropicalia on the record player and the jar of Tasmanian honey and loaf of fresh bread on the counter. There wouldn't be Julia, and how she makes me laugh, and the way we joke about my ridiculous crushes, and how I always feel like dancing when I see her. And I wouldn't be standing here with you in the back in the dark with these bottles of Coopers green and those loud girls in front of us laughing with Darren Hanlon. This first night of not knowing you. I was thinking about all of these things and how they worked out so beautifully when I turned to you and said "This is perfect."

And you nodded. Perfect.

Marky is late for dinner. But this is the final night to finish the new album; Marky leaves for Tasmania tomorrow, and everything needs to be done before then. Here on Hodgkinson Street, Erin is making pumpkin risotto, Connal makes fresh corn and guacamole. I make cocktails. Marky and Kellie get home, and the kitchen gets loud with laughter. I have brought vodka and blood orange juice over, and I make them drinks. "What's this called?" Marky asks. "A paper moon," I tell him, making the name up on the spot. "Really? he asks, and I say yes. Really. But he's giving me such a funny smile. He can tell I'm lying, but it's warm outside, and it doesn't matter. We decide to eat in the backyard. Kellie fiddles with some plugs. "Look!" she says, and suddenly there are stars everywhere; the giant palm tree in the backyard is glowing with little fairy lights. "It's amazing," I tell her. "I know," she says. She and I slip out the back door and under the palm tree where there are old railroad ties that serve as benches. Squinny the cat is furiously hunting mice in the vines and plants at the edge of the yard, but when I pull him onto my lap he decides to stay for a while. Marky appears in the doorway, balancing two plates and a glass. Grinning. "Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends" he says.

The house has been shared by this extended group of friends for seven years, but now it's being packed up and dismantled room by room and everyone is moving. Marky is in love; a few months from now, he'll be living in London. Things are looking so good for you, I tell him in the note I leave in his bag the next morning. But tonight is a little wistful; it's his last night in this house, the last night in his old room. Late that night, before we all go to bed, Marky puts a copy of the just-finished Lucksmiths songs on the battered old stereo and he and I stand there, silently, arms crossed, listening to them. When the last song ends, he walks quietly to his room to finish packing.

*This update typed while listening to Country Got Soul.

Frenchy, I'm faking

2005-02-14T09:07:00.000-05:00

It's summer here in Melbourne. Valentine's Day.

Jess has gone off to work, wearing the new clothes we picked out for her yesterday. Cameron and I are sleeping in.

There's lavender growing in the front yard. Succulents growing in the back. We bought some native Australian grasses yesterday to plant along the side of the house. And everywhere, it's sunny. Summer. "I can't even tell you how happy I am to see you," I tell Jess after dinner last night. So I don't. I just put my arms around her shoulders and squeeze as hard as I can.

*Listening to The Salteens.

Second Hand News

2005-01-29T18:10:00.000-05:00

The late afternoon light is fading in Brooklyn. Cold air slips in from the spaces around the air conditioner; the cat's fur crackles with static electricity. The neighbors are kissing on the fire escape. In the area where our backyards all meet, there is a gray cloud; someone has burned their rice. My friend Ben and I are lying on my bed, looking up at the tin ceiling. He has made us cinnamon toast and we are balancing mugs of tea in the crooks of our elbows. On the way over, Ben passed a stack of Seventeen magazines out for recycling, and we are reading them now, flipping through pages which are still ice cold from being outside. I like the embarrassing stories, the tragic "it happened to me" narratives, the candy colors of everything. Ben is frowning his way through fall fashion spreads and skin care guides. It is a teenage sleepover scene, magazines and plates spread all over, Rumours playing softly in the background on repeat, my socks not matching. "The only thing missing is nail polish," I tell him.

As I'm starting to fall asleep, he begins the sad story of his friend E., whose boyfriend left the apartment they shared in October. All of the boyfriend's things remained there until December. Haunted relics gathering dust. Right before Christmas, he showed up suddenly, hand in hand with a friend of hers. The three of them stared at each other. In October, the friend had been the first to say, E. recalled, that the break-up was a good thing. Quietly, the boyfriend and friend packed up his stuff, while E. wept in the bathroom. "Then what happened?" I ask Ben. "That's it," he says. "That's the end."

It's an awful story. I should be cringing, frowning, shaking my head. But I start laughing. Ben stares. I am laughing and laughing, my tea sloshing dangerously in its cup. He starts to laugh too, hesitantly, then louder. He knows why he's laughing, and he doesn't. And then we are laughing hysterically, we can't stop, laughter crashes around the room. Magazines flutter to the floor. Ben looks up at the ceiling again. To no one in particular he says, "This is the most beautiful time of day in the winter. And the most tragic." He turns back to his magazine. I smile into my mug of tea. The last bit of sunset has caught the curtains, and for a moment, they are glowing. The room is flooded with these last little shreds of light. I reach over to turn the volume up. And then, suddenly, it's dark.

*Typed while listening to Jens Lekman.

Everyone needs an editor

2004-12-31T16:25:00.000-05:00

The sun sets around 3:30 in Wisconsin.

My parents have met many people I know in Brooklyn. But today, we are sitting around the kitchen table, playing a game I made up called "What do you think of my friends that you will probably never meet?". The table is covered with photos. We are drinking gin and tonics.

Jess

Mom: She's pretty.
Dad: Cute girl.
Mom: The girl from Australia, right?
Me: Yeah. She's lovely in every possible way. And she makes the most amazing porridge.
Mom: I like porridge.
Dad: Do people still eat porridge?
Everyone else: Yes.
Brother: What's up with the strange expression?
Me: These pictures were taken all together (brings out polaroid of Fred and one of me) at a show. The opening band was horrible and played for an hour and a half. So these are pictures capturing our misery.

Fred

Dad: He's anguished.
Mom: He's tormented!
Me: It was a *really* bad band.
Brother: What band?
Me: Don't remember. We were there to see the Handsome Family.
Dad: Jon, you should ask Fred how to grow a good beard.
Me: Yeah, patchy. Your beard makes it look like you have malaria.
Brother: Shut up! What does that even mean?
Me: You know, like you're stranded in the jungle, sick, with a bad beard. "Oh my God, it's that explorer we all thought was dead! But he's alive and he's all gaunt with malaria and he has a horrible beard!"
Brother: You're insane.
Mom: Pass the salsa please.
Dad: So what does Fred do?
Me: Advertising. And he's a heart throb in Asia.
Dad: Who isn't?

Alex

Brother: What's he doing?
Me: Cooking. That's ravioli. He makes them.
Mom: Good cook?
Me: Yeah. But his wife is better.
Dad: I used to dream of having a bunch of friends who are all good cooks. And all I'd have to do is bring the wine.
Me: That's your life. Your dream has come true.
Mom: So Alex lives in Brooklyn?
Me: Yeah. But he's from Georgia.
Dad: (singing) Nobody knoooooows, the trouble I've seen...Nobody but Jeeeeeeesus.

Mario

Mom: He looks nice. Why is his shirt over his mouth like that?
Me: Dunno. Just for fun.
Dad: Maybe he's hiding a horrible scar.
Mom: Mario is Japanese, right?
Me: Japanese and Mexican.
Dad: Why 'Mario' then?
Me: He was named after the doctor who delivered him.
Dad: No one ever names their kids after me.
Brother: 'Cause your name is Herb.
Everyone: hahahahahaha
Mom: Do you think Mario likes canoeing?
(pause)
Me: Um, I really have no idea? Probably? Everyone likes canoes, don't they?
Dad: What's Mario like?
Me: Wonderful.

Gary

Mom: He looks 18!
Me: Really? He's much older! But maybe he'll be flattered you said that.
Dad: He has a nice profile. So he's a soccer player? (He's holding a soccer ball in the photo --ed.)
Me: He has a bad back. But when he does kick a soccer ball around, it's great, because he's like 50 miles of limbs all jogging and kicking and passing.
Mom: Yes, he's tall.
Dad: He's looking off to the side. (In deep thoughtful voice) What are you looking at, Gary? What are you thinking about?
Me: One of Gary's songs is being used in a Kleenex commercial.
(Note: Kleenex is made in my hometown. It is sacred.)
Mom: Oh! Wow!
Dad: He is a friend to paper products everywhere.

Peggy

Mom: And who's this?
Brother: Give me her phone number.
Me: This is Peggy Wang.
Dad: Peggy Wang. What is Peggy's secret?
Me: I don't know. But one thing about her is that she is the Peggy Wang of the East. I know another Peggy Wang in San Francisco, Peggy Wang West. And they know each other! We thought when they met, the world would blow up, but it didn't, and now they're good friends.
Dad: Why is she drinking PBR?
Me: Peggy's young. She doesn't know better.

Dad: So why are we probably never going to meet any of these gorgeous children?
Me: Who knows? Maybe you will. In Brooklyn someday.
Mom: If they're ever passing through Neenah, tell them to stop by and say hello.
Brother: No one "passes through" Neenah, Wisconsin.
Me: (laughing) That's very sweet though, Moms.
Brother: Who wants another drink?
(Everyone raises their glasses)

*This update typed while listening to Dressy Bessy.

"She just keeps getting bigger and bigger"

2004-12-05T10:22:00.000-05:00

Another lovely school year is under way in Brooklyn! In this fall's adventures, first graders ponder Australians, Sufjan Stevens reduces second graders to tears, and Flin Flon scares the living daylights out of a sweet kindergartner.

"The Owls Go"
Architecture in Helsinki

Raj: Architecture is buildings.
Delly: Skyscrapers.
Martha: I heard a...a...! (holds up pretend trumpet)
Raj: A ostrich?
Miss Sarah: I think it's a trumpet.
Martha: Yeah.
Miss Sarah: What's the song about?
Delly: I think that it is about a people, a person.
Raj: No, it is about architecture.
Delly: There is no songs about architecture.
Martha: This song makes me so happy I want to go sing all over the world. I want to hear this song at my house all the time and I never want to stop hearing this song.
Raj: This is my favorite song that I ever wanted. Did you ever see the Simpsons?
Miss Sarah: Yes, I love that show! Delly?
Delly: I like this one (pointing to Essex Green album). I like this one a little bit.
Miss Sarah: This band is from Australia.
Delly: That's where there are kangaroos.
Martha: And koalas.
Delly: And, um...I think there are cats and dogs there. Big dogs.
Raj: Do they speak the same as us?
Miss Sarah: They speak English too, but it sounds a little different than us.
Martha: Do they comb their hair?
Miss Sarah: I'm pretty sure they do.
Raj: What color socks do they have?
Miss Sarah: Many colors, I think.
Raj: Oh maaaaaan!

"Say Yes! to Michigan!"
Sufjan Stevens

Mead: That is a weird name!
Elizabeth: (sounding out) Soooof. Jan. Soof-Jan! What is a Soof-Jan? (laughs crazily)
Miss Sarah: That's his name.
Taneesh: I never heard that name before! Is it a name in China?
Elizabeth: A name in China is upside down.
Mead: Which song is this?
Miss Sarah: "Say Yes! to Michigan!"
Mead: Michigan is a state!
Miss Sarah: Yeah.
Mead: You can't say yes to it! A state can't even talk!
Taneesh: Maybe it could talk.
Mead: No it can't!
Miss Sarah: Let's unroll the map of the United States and I'll show you where it is. Ok...right here. And I am from the state next to it, right here (Wisconsin).
Mead: You live next to Soof-Jan Stevens? Did you go to his house?
Miss Sarah: No. These states are next to each other, but they're big. It's really pretty far between them.
Taneesh: Miss Sarah, Elizabeth is crying.
(It was really much more like whimpering. --ed.)
Miss Sarah: Elizabeth, what's wrong?
Elizabeth: I don't want you and Soof-Jan Stevens to move to Michigan.
Miss Sarah: Oh! Don't worry, sweetheart...I live in Brooklyn. I'm not going anywhere. And Sufjan lives somewhere in Brooklyn too.
Taneesh: I thought he lived in China.

"Brooklyn Bridge"
Darren Hanlon

Arlyn: We went on the Brooklyn Bridge!
Jahmel: When we were in kindergarten.
Miss Sarah: What can you tell me about that bridge?
Arlyn: It's BIG.
Jahmel: A lot of people made it.
Arlyn: It was invented.
Jahmel: We walked on it, with our class. You can see the water under the wood! I thought I was going to fall through on the water! Aaaaaaaaah!
(both laugh hysterically)
Arlyn: Does he live in Brooklyn?
Miss Sarah: He lives in Australia.
Jahmel: AUSTRALIA?!
Arlyn: (laughing) That's in a solar system!
Jahmel: Why did he say about the Brooklyn Bridge?
Miss Sarah: He visited from Australia and went to see it.
Jahmel: But he's from Australia!
Miss Sarah: But people from all over the world come to see the Brooklyn Bridge.
Jahmel: Oh yeah. It's famous!
Arlyn: Does he have to give us money to see it because he's from Australia?
Miss Sarah: It's free!
Jahmel: I'm gonna make him give us a hundred dollars!
Miss Sarah: What would you buy then?
Jahmel: Game boy games! And a bird!
Arlyn: A hamster.
Jahmel: A hamster.
Miss Sarah: What do you think of the song?
Elizabeth: I love this song.
Jahmel: I love it a little bit.
Miss Sarah: Show me how much with your hands.
(Elizabeth holds her hands so close together they are almost touching; Jahmel stretches his out as wide as possible.)

"Odessa"
Flin Flon

Remy: This is bad music.
Miss Sarah: Why do you think so?
Remy: This is heart-heart music. I am DARK. This is Dracula.
Miss Sarah: Is this music scary?
Remy: Yes. I am going to break this all up (picks up cd player).
Miss Sarah: Remy, wait! Wait! I'll turn it off!

"You don't have to be bored anymore"

2004-11-30T20:42:00.000-05:00

From across the subway car, I can tell he's watching. That he's going to come over. He's dirty and there's something off; it's unclear whether this is mental illness or something else. I am thinking about getting up, going to a new train car, escaping, but it's too late; he is already there, shuffling into the seat next to me. His voice is low. He mumbles something, a question.

This has happened before. I've been here almost 7 years, after all. It has happened to everyone. Someone, a stranger, says something crazy, or disgusting. Sometimes both. The difference is that this time, I am not moving, not getting up, no half-smile to the other passengers that says, "what a nut, eh?". I tell him to fuck off. Furious. He's furious. He's on his feet, shouting and bouncing and waving. I am on my feet now too. The other passengers, the Christmas-shopping tourists, tired day-shifters, hooting teenagers, are moving away, escaping to the other side of the train. And it's hilarious that they're moving away, in part, from me. From what I might do. I would laugh, but I'm scared out of my mind. The man is pushed up against me, shouting, his hand on my shoulder.

My hands are clenched. Everything's blurry and I'm so hot it's hard to breathe. I barely recognize my own voice when I snarl it. When I shout it. Go ahead and hit me. I dare you.

How can it be that only an hour later my friend Fred and I are sitting down to pumpkin ravioli at the kitchen table. I don't point out to him that my hands are still shaking as I pour the wine. And when I try to explain what happened, I can't do it. Explanations are lost on Fred tonight anyway. He is Fresh Off the Jet from Korea and Japan, where he was famous; there are pictures of him thronged by girls as he signs autographs. He's hardly slept in two days and he is beginning to forget the words for everyday things. At O'Connors, over the budweisers I guarantee him will help him sleep through the night, his eyes begin to quiver, to shimmy ever so slightly. It makes me laugh. He laughs too, but by the time I drop him off at the Q train, his face has gone blank and his hat is sweetly crooked. He wakes up 14 hours later, ready for pancakes.

*This update completed while listening to Tito Puente.

And Don't the Kids Just Love It

2004-11-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

The Michiganders.

They're a lovely older couple from Eastern Michigan. A dairy farmer and a teacher, visiting their daughter. We met them at a bar. They bought our pumpkin ale and we offered to show them Brooklyn. We were boastful, loud; we guaranteed them they would love it. "You need to see it up close," I told them. "We'll pick you up in the morning." Which is how I find myself, exhausted, sandwiched between them in the back seat of a little hatchback early on Saturday. We take them to Tom's for breakfast, and Gus gives me a kiss and asks, "Has our little Australian gone back?" and he is wistful when I tell him she has; it's so easy to love Jess. The Michiganders are amazed at the variety of pancakes and ponder sweetly what a cherry lime rickey might be. She calls him Dad. He's shy, and quiet. I wonder aloud if he misses his farm.

We buy them cheese fries and hot dogs in Coney Island, and they don't mind that the wind and drizzle is messing up their hair; they're good sports, and they laugh with big, booming midwestern laughter. They like Kensington and Flatbush and Sheepshead Bay, and even Bay Ridge, though I tell them they don't need to. In Rockaway, Dad kicks at the sand and has a smoke as they both marvel at the unexpectedness of these little beach houses, at the quiet. "This is New York City?" they ask. "Are you sure?"

Mario.

With our friend Peggy, we've climbed up to the loft of the giant Williamsburg apartment that he's playing in. For a different view, a new view. It's a strange party; pop bands alternating with hardcore ones. The crowd has been eyeing each other suspiciously since it started. The last band is playing and the music is deafening. I squeeze his arm and shout, "I think my head is going to explode." He stares at me blankly; his hands are covering his ears and he can't hear me at all. Outside, the JMZ train is clattering by, back and forth. It's so close we can see people looking out the windows of the train cars; when I wave at them, a little boy waves back.

Mario is a friend from Oakland. I only see him once a year, at the most...long enough to tell him my secrets and for him to give me advice on children's behavioral modification and long enough for us to gossip, laughing hysterically, on an empty roof under the Williamsburg bridge. Long enough for him to find my soccer game on Sunday despite the enormity of Prospect Park. Mario is the cat's namesake (as is Jim Flood). When the veterinarian's receptionists call "Mario Allen!" at the annual check-ups, they must wonder why I'm laughing, Mario, and it's because I'm thinking of you. How you sing along with the radio. How you remove the onions from a burrito with the skill of a surgeon.

*This update typed while listening to Air Miami.

It's only a paper moon

2004-11-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

Jess.

The night before she left, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, too drunk and too tired to get up and sit in a chair. Next to me was a friend of ours who had come over at three that morning and also seemed happy to be on the floor, with a wall behind him, and the center of gravity flattened and simple. Jess and I love that some of our favorite people in the world are scattered all over: in Chicago and San Francisco and Madrid and England and the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. But somewhere between the Australian ghost stories she was telling and the cookies I made at 4 that morning and the stories we all told about the very old people that we love, I start to wish that the world was smaller. That she didn't live so far away.

There's a house on Marlborough Road that we both love for its giant front porch and I know that when I dive into the leaves in the yard that she'll dive into them too. I like the way she stomps around in leaves, kicking her feet up high to get them off the ground. The way she tosses them into the air so they drift down onto her head.

When I get home from school the house is dark and her things are gone. I'm happy that she left, happy for her sake; it was time for her to start making her way back to Melbourne, and I knew it even while we tried to convince her to stay. I fumble around in the living room looking for the note I'm sure she's left when I remember that she always leaves notes on the table. And I am only halfway down the hall to the kitchen when I know exactly what I will find with the note: a potted amaryllis. I'm sure it will be there as much as I've ever been sure of anything. I only mentioned them once to her, days ago, passing a bodega. "Those are my favorite," I told her, as we walked past, quickly, on the way to the subway. And it's just like her to remember that I love them.

The apartment is a ruin of half-finished bottles of wine and the rinds of good cheese and cracker boxes and clementine peels and empty bottles of Lithuanian and Australian beer crammed like a crowd of tourists on the end table. She slept in the middle of all of this, in the pull-out bed, and she slept like a rock, even when the sun started streaming through the curtains and the bus brakes shrieked and the Puerto Rican men who are always having a party in the back of their parked van start playing bailar-bailar music early. And it amazed me that she could sleep so soundly and then suddenly leap out of bed and be ready 5 minutes later to seek out wonderful old diners in Greenpoint, and to chat with hilarious subway conductors in the middle of the night, and to search for gospel music in Harlem on an early Sunday morning. When she was here, the possibilities of every day were a little more beautiful and the people we met were a little more fascinating and every moment was bursting with strange and lovely potential. These are the best things a friend can give to you. The sun is coming up and I can't wait for the day to begin. Wake up, Jessie, we've got so much to do.

*This update typed while listening to a compiliation of songs about the subway.

Rhiannon

2004-11-09T20:53:00.000-05:00

It's the way my hands are covered with little knicks from cutting linoleum.

And it's the early sunsets and the brief moments of panic they cause.

And it's the scuffling sound of walking through leaves on the sidewalk late at night.

And it's saffron and cinnamon and pumpkins. Garlic and sage and nutmeg.

And it's the heat coming on, and the heat failing again.

And it's third graders, and the way they laugh like crazy at my bad jokes.

And it's the leaves drifting down at the park with the sunlight filtering through.

And it's steam rising on the Gowanus on cold mornings.

*This update typed while listening to Nico.

She serves them whiskey and wine

2004-11-04T17:36:00.000-05:00

It starts with a memory, a particular summer night in Wisconsin, when I was eight or nine. Whole years of childhood are blotchy or missing to me, and yet the feeling of one minute from this particular night is crystal clear. It's very dark and the sky is full of stars. The smell of the lake is everywhere, a green and heavy smell that I love. We are playing ghost around the graveyard, as we do every summer night. My friends are hiding somewhere behind my house, in the dark, waiting to tag me, and it's terrifying, even though it's only a game. I am looking down at my feet with astonishment; they are speeding over the grass and the world is gliding by at a perfect and even speed. Superhero feet. Gazelle feet. I am so fast, for that minute or two, that I wonder, in an eight or nine year old way, if there was something magical about the burgers my dad had grilled for dinner that night. Or the potato salad my mom had made.

On Saturday night, my feet are gliding, nimble and light, in exactly the same way. I am in Greenpoint. Once again I look down at them with astonishment. I am trying to find some Polish chocolate before a show starts and it seems like far too ordinary a moment to feel this fast. It was my fault that a Cadillac hit me while I was on this walk. It is a little known fact, however, that I was hit because I was trying to remember the verse of "Brandy" that starts, "Brandy wears a braided chain...". This so distracted me that I walked into an intersection with a two way stop, thinking it was a four.

And then suddenly I am on the ground, looking up at a street light, and I am thinking: I've got it. The line in Brandy I am trying to remember is suddenly clear as day: "Made of finest silver from the north of Spain." I sing the whole verse in my head, triumphant. I decide, in the next moment, that I will go back to the North of Spain, soon, to the Basque country. I will rent a bike and ride around near the sea, stopping to drink the local honey wine and to eat tapas. I decide that there are some secrets I have waited too long to tell and that I am going to tell them now. I decide to never get so lost in a one hit wonder again. I decide to sit up. The Polish man from the car is standing above me. He smells like cold air and cigarettes and vodka. He speaks to me in Polish, he doesn't speak English, and he is pleading and angry at the same time. As he is looking down at me, a wheezy sob escapes him and because I can't bear to see anyone cry, I start crying too. Not because of my left leg, which is throbbing, or because of the shock of getting hit by a car, but for reasons I can't put into words. I just don't know how to say it. We gaze at each other for a moment, tears streaming, and then I climb to my feet. It is up to me to show this man that I am fine. That it is not his fault.

#2 is to ride your bike your foot dragging the leaves in the gutter. Columbus, Ohio 1992

*This update typed while listening to Christine McVie.

San Sebastian

2004-10-28T18:44:00.000-04:00

#1: Get drunk and call someone. Submitted by Chris from Chicago.

After a friday teacher happy hour...

Josie: Hello.
Me: (shouted) Josie!
Josie: Hello?
Me: It's me, Sarah.
Josie: Oh! How are you?
Me: I'm good. How are you. I was just...picking a rose out of someone's yard. I was taking a walk. And I felt so guilty for picking it. Hold on, I need to sit down. OK. So I stuck a dollar to the plant, through a thorn. To pay for the rose. Now it's in a glass in my room. It's really pretty. Do you like yellow roses?
Josie: Yeah, they're ok.
Me: I like the way they look when they're on the way out, you know, when they're all...fluffy. And the petals are starting to fall off. I really like that. Do you think I should make some chutney? Like a bunch of different kinds. Should I send you some? Do you like chutney?
Josie: Sure, I like chutney.
Me: I'm love the world of condiments. I think I'll make some ketchup too. Catch up, ketchup. Getcha ketcha. Ha ha.
Josie: (pause) Are you drunk?
Me: Yes.

#2: Visit Mrs. DiClementi. Submitted by Catherine Noble, Mrs. DiClementi's neighbor.

I am standing in front of Mrs. DiClementi's apartment, holding a bunch of flowers from the bodega on the corner. She likes to put them in a giant old jam jar in her window; she waits until they are brown and all the petals are on the floor before she goes on to the next bunch. Inside, there seem to be empty cigarrette packs on every flat surface. They are the generic kind of cigarettes, the ones that are three dollars less than the famous ones, the kind on special at gas stations. Her fingers are brownish at the tips, from smoking them. Once the flowers are in the jam jar, she pulls a plate of peanut butter cookies out of the refridgerator, and even they taste faintly of cigarettes. I tell her about my class and my parents' visit and about the leaves changing at the park. There are faded pictures all over the walls; by the shag carpeting and the clothes, I know exactly when they're from. I like Mrs. DiClementi to tell me about the people in the pictures, especially about her brother in law, Nicky, who loved chicken cutlets and turned the backyard into a miniature farm, right there in the middle of Carroll Gardens. Mrs. DiClimenti makes some tea. Behind her, in the backyard, a neighbor has strung flowered housedresses out to dry. The breeze is making them sway and dance, which I point out to Mrs. DiClimenti. She takes a long drag on a Target brand cigarette and laughs, a smoker's laugh, an expert's laugh. There are ancient newspaper photos taped on the walls with yellowed tape. I start to count them as Mrs. DiClementi continues to laugh, and I'm not sure she's laughing about the dresses anymore or if the joke is private now. The sun is starting to set, and the tea is growing cold.

*This update typed while watching a documentary on the history and making of hot dogs.

Motorcars, Handlebars

2004-10-24T09:49:00.000-04:00

The heat has come on at 295 5th Avenue, and the dusty, smoky smell of the ancient furnace fills every room.
The air grows dry, crackles with dryness. The pipes clang and pop, startling me out of my nap on the couch. My book has fallen out of my hands, onto the floor; my glasses are askew. It was the heat that drove me out onto the street, and it's fall, there on the sidewalk, that fills my lungs with sharp air and makes my heart pound.

There are old men sitting on their usual stoop on Carroll Street. The one in the thick dark-rimmed glasses I have known for years. This man speaks maybe 10 words of English, and I speak only a few more in Spanish, but what needs to be said, is said, and understood, and we are always happy to see each other. Today he looks a bit glum, and I know it's because the Yankees broke his heart the other night. Acorns, falling from the trees above, roll along the sidewalk.

Walking over the Gowanus Canal, there is a man standing on the bridge where I usually stop to look down into the water. I have seen him there before. I stand next to him for a minute, and we are both looking at the leaves and tiny silver fish go by. "Do you remember when the jellyfish were here?" I ask him. "Oh sure," he says. "They get washed in by the tide." We stand for a while longer, quietly. Before I turn to go, he says, maybe to me, maybe to himself, "I come here every day, and every day the water looks different than the day before."

By five, I am at O'Connors, the only one in the place for a little while, besides the bartender, who is an old friend. I spend every late Saturday afternoon here lately, talking to the Irish guys who come in to toast Ireland and God, and the old men who sit quietly, wrapped in loneliness, drinking budweiser from the fancy old glasses Pat bought in the '70s. Outside, the street is growing darker, and I have a glass of my own in front of me. I am drinking to make the fall last longer, to keep the winter at bay. To keep the leaves on the trees a few more weeks.

Wine and cheese, wine and cheese

*This update typed while listening to John Denver.

Sweater weather

2004-10-19T16:37:00.000-04:00

The third graders are restless. They are trying to invent their own language, but there are problems. Is a pen a squidge or a croops? They laugh, argue, fret and fight. They apologize and forgive on tiny slips of paper which I find crumpled on the floor at the end of the day. One of them says, "I'm sorry I said your words was not good. Sorry sorry sorry! Do you forgive me?" On the back is written, simply, "Cha." Which is how you say 'yes' in the language they are making up.

Why did you become a teacher, people want to know. They assume the answer is honorable, that I am honorable. Sometimes they don't even wait for an answer. "That's so nice," they say, their faces sincere. They say, "good for you" and "I could never do that, but I'm glad you can." They say, "Sorry, I shouldn't swear around a teacher". They look at me curiously, their eyes wide. I wonder, at these moments, if they are comparing me to their own third grade teachers, with floppy bow shirts and buns and Halloween sweater vests covered with pumpkins. The truth is, I am not so honorable or world saving. For me, it started with monkeys. The monkeys in question were eating the apples and corn in a little village in northern Japan, where I was volunteering. We were assigned the task of shooting fireworks near the monkeys, to scare them away. It was a farming village, remote and poor, and they were desperate. When we got there, fireworks in a large burlap sacks, the monkeys were not a problem anymore, though they still skulked around, bitter and gray and screechingly loud. We shot the fireworks off at night on the beach of a lake, at each other, into the trees. For lack of anything else to do, we herded cows, made birdhouses and were sent to elementary schools. There were three schools in the village, and all of them were tiny. We were told to "internationally educate" the children there. So we did. We went to these sweet and kind children, with their spiky, bed-rumpled hair and their neatly pressed school uniforms. They smiled at us with black and grey teeth, which startled us at first; there is no flouride in the water in northern Japan. These children had never seen white or black people before. ("What's wrong with her nose?" one of them asked a Japanese teacher, about me. He translates this with great embarrassment, but it makes me laugh. Some mornings, years later, I stare at the mirror, at my nose, pushing it from side to side, wondering what she meant.) We taught them to make pancakes and to say words in English and to dance to hip hop. They taught us how to make rice balls and salted cherries and black eggs. How to sumo wrestle, which I still do, at least the stomping part, in the living room when no one else is home. The cat looks on, blinking, unimpressed.

The feeling of a small hand slipping into mine outside before school, in the rain. The look of raw fury and frustration on the face of a child that has been pushed too far. The tears shed, the genuinge grief, at the death of a goldfish or the sight of a sick pigeon on the sidewalk, the awkwardly scribbled notes of love, covered with crooked hearts and smiling faces. After school, I walk out the back of the building, where the school buses are, and around the corner towards the front. My class is standing outside in front of the school, waiting to be picked up. They are plucking yellow and red and orange leaves out of puddles, and laughing, and pushing each other. They have last year's ratty hats pulled down over their heads, scarves tied around their necks. One of them sees me on the sidewalk, then some others. Someone screams; it must be Dalma, she's always screaming. My name is shouted. They gallop towards me, dragging backpacks and little sisters. It hasn't even been five minutes since they last saw me in our classroom, but it would never occur to them that this is a small span of time. They live in the moment. I hold out my arms.

*This update typed while listening to the rain hitting the air conditioner.

The sun comes up

2004-10-10T02:48:00.000-04:00

1.
Sal owns a little coffee shop across the street from the school I work at. There's no name on the outside of it, or anywhere inside either. We just assume it's called Sal's. In the window, there is a light up neon coffee cup and the word "rolls", also neon. Sal never opens the gate that protects the windows, so except for the door being open, and the crowd that sits on the bench outside, the place always looks closed. Inside, there are two large tables and some plastic patio chairs, and almost always between 9 am and 5 pm, there's a big card game going on. The card gamers, and the crowd watching the game, are friends of Sal's, men from the neighborhood between the ages of 50 and 70. They nod at me when I come in. It's cluttered inside; there are statues of the saints scattered around, and the walls are covered with framed posters of Frank Sinatra at different ages and points in his career. And the Pope. There are pictures of the Pope behind the counter, on the back wall next to Frank's pictures and on the wall and next to the cooler, which is filled with Manhattan espresso soda that no one ever seems to buy. Beyond the front room, through a little doorway, Sal's house begins. His kitchen is right there, you can see right into it, and his mother is there, always, in a flowered housedress. She is in her seventies, maybe early eighties, and watches a little black and white television and waits. There is no menu at Sal's. When I go there for lunch, I just ask Sal, "Whadya got today?" I say it with a not very good Carroll Gardens accent. Sal tells me the special that day. "We got meatballs, real good, on a hero" or "I got chicken cutlets, all breaded and with sauce" or "we cooked up a whole roast beef for today". Sal's mother makes everything herself: the sauces, the meat, sometimes she bakes the rolls too. She is a wonderful cook. She makes what she feels like making, on any given day, which I like. I like walking in not knowing what I will leave with. Outside on the bench in front of Sal's, Ronny sits in his sunglasses, whatever the weather, and wants to talk about books. He reads books about the most obscure topics in the world. The life of ants. The history of the necktie. How roads are planned in rural communities. I'm never able to add anything to his explanations, but I ask questions and I'm interested, and he likes that. Ronny thinks I should marry a good Italian boy, one of his nephews, or the son of friends. He has photographs of them in his wallet, big thick-necked men with crew cuts, grinning in front of birthday cakes, or at the beach, or in bars on Long Island. I tell him I'll think about it. The man with the fruit truck sits on this bench for much of the day too. I don't know his name, and he doesn't know mine. He always asks about my family and my job and whether I go to mass regularly. As he organizes the apples and mangoes in boxes on his truck, he worries about souls. "There's a church right there," he always says, pointing across the street. "But I'm Episcopalian," I tell him. "They won't even let me go to mass in there." But this excuse doesn't seem to faze the fruit man. "God don't see it that way, honey, ok? He just wants you in there." The fruitman plays with his worn baseball cap as he talks. He taps his knees nervously with his hands.

We were sitting in the grass, and I was looking at your feet and feeling shy. You asked me what I did all day, and I told you about school. But I forgot to tell you about the other people I see every day, these people I don't know, but love anyway.

2.
My parents are visiting from Wisconsin for the weekend. They got in late last night and this morning they took the subway down to Park Slope. I watch them as they cross the street, my mom such a sweet smiler, hurrying across the street, my dad, grumbling and purposeful in his street crossing. They get to the corner where I'm standing. We are all grinning. "It's our Sesa," my mom says, using my childhood nickname. I throw my arms around them.

We spend the early afternoon at the farmer's market and walking through the park, my arm around my dad's shoulder for a while, then my mom's. It's a lovely fall day and we are walking and laughing and I'm so happy to see them I feel shaky. In the park, we run into two kids in my class, or rather they run into us; we are talking on a park bench and making fun of the recumbent bikes. My parents, as always, are charming conversers. They talk to the kids' parents, offering advice and anecdotes and kindness; the kids, for their part, are completely floored by the fact that not only do I have parents, but I go to the park, and I drink apple cider. Talking to them, I remember a time I saw my third grade teacher buying broccoli at the grocery store and was shocked for days that she had a life outside of school. And that it involved something so specific as the cooking and eating of vegetables. My mom walks through the park observing little things everywhere. Today I notice the way she talks about these things the way someone else might suddenly realize they have their mother's eyes or their father's nose; I see the same kind of things she does and I talk about them the same way. We are both fascinated with small things, and little changes: the leaves turning red on just one branch of a tree, the way the bees have slowed down in the cooler weather and seem to be flying in slow motion, a picnic basket being carried by, the dragonflies flitting crazily around the meadows.

Later in the afternoon, my parents go off to a show near Union Square with a friend of mine, and I go off to meet friends at Greenwood cemetery. The catacombs are open today, which doesn't happen often, and I want to see them again. We wander through the graves, not talking much. There is mysterious piano music coming from somewhere, and we walk over hills and down little paths, making a game out of finding it. The music leads, as we suspect, to the Steinway family tomb, which is open today too. There is a piano player outside (the source of the music), and we consider asking her to play some Billy Joel. The catacombs are beautiful, and today, they echo with the voices of people helping out with the tour; they are reciting the names of people interred there. Gary takes my picture in one of the little rooms that line the corridor, and the result is the kind of camera shy moment I've gotten used to after this many years: eyes ridiculously wide and a little wild. Uncertain whether to smile, what kind of smile.

We throw ourselves down in the grass for a while, reading the inscriptions on ancient tombstones and looking around. Using my bag as a pillow, I lie back and look up at the sky, which is gray and bright at the same time. The grass is soft and long. I think: it would be so easy to fall asleep now. But I don't have time. It's quiet here, and beautiful, a perfect fall afternoon, and I can't stop smiling.

I meet my parents in the city for dinner, and afterwards, we stroll through the East Village. They are full of questions about the neighborhood and the buildings we pass. Then it gets later and they are ready to leave for their old and familiar hotel on the upper west side, the one they have been staying in since I was 7. I am going back to Brooklyn, and I am eating the cream puff I just bought from the Japanese cream puff shop on Broadway, Beard Papa's, and as always, I am clumsy and full of pastry concentration. There is powdered sugar everywhere, drifting down onto the platform where I am waiting for the subway. Then there is movement in the corner of my eye and I look up, startled. My mom is standing across the station, on the opposite platform. She is beaming. Through the artificial glare of the subway station lights, my parents and I wave and wave to each other. Then the uptown R train thunders into the station, and out again, and they are gone.

*This update typed while watching bad movies with Troy, Katie, Brian and Jacob.

I sometimes forget just how seldom you cry

2004-10-03T17:26:00.000-04:00

A fall Saturday.

Sean Howe manages to get us two precious film festival tickets to David Gordon Green's new film, _Undertow_. He knows what a nice gift this is to me, but doesn't say anything; Sean Howe is modest. George Washington (the first movie by this same director) is my favorite movie, so dearly loved that my hands sometimes start to shake while I watch it. Sean has trouble sleeping lately. He is up early, exhausted, and stares at the ceiling, thinking. On the subway, his eyes are heavy-lidded. Loafing back in his seat so far it looks like he might fall out, he speaks of sleep longingly. The movie is good, but not great, and the image of a nail going through a boy's foot haunts me through the entire thing, and all the way home on the subway as well. On the 2 train, I watch as newcomers at each stop blink in alarm at the bright lights. Some seem to wake up in the light, bursting into conversation. Others seem to be shut down by it, frowning and slouching and closing their eyes. A group of teenage girls, on their way to a party, start singing. The song fills the whole car. It could go either way for us, the other riders in this car; we could accept this late night intrusion, maybe even embrace it. Or we could frown, mutter, try to stop it. I glance around at the other passengers. There is a pause. It's a nice night, warm and calm. Slowly, everyone begins to smile, and nod.

It's two in the morning, and there are cds scattered all over the floor. I make myself a drink and dance alone, biting my lower lip in concentration, while a Tommy Dorsey record plays. After a while, the drink is missing, and I'm still not sure even now where I set it. I spend a while looking, clapping my hands as I walk from room to room, as if the drink will respond. Then, rather suddenly, I swoop up my keys with one palm and walk out the door for a walk in the neighborhood. I've been taking walks like this a lot lately. On Seventh avenue, late at night, it's hardly different than the downtown of my small hometown; only a few cars go by, even fewer people, and there's a calmness so startling the air pressure seems to have changed. Tonight, I head around the corner of Second street, past the flowers that have been set there in memory of someone who was shot the other night. From my bed, in the early morning hours, the gunshots sounded like firecrackers. The playground at PS 321 sits deserted in the brown light of Brooklyn nighttime, and I sit down on the slide and read a pizza menu that's on the ground. It's getting cooler, which fills me with autumn giddiness, but makes me tired too, and I lean back on the slide and look at the sky and listen to plastic bags and newspaper blow around the school yard. I close my eyes and suddenly it's half an hour later. I brush a hand across my face, to wake up, and my lips have gotten cold. There's a gray and white cat sitting by the entrance of the yard, watching me. Before I get up, and walk home again through quiet streets, I lay still for a moment, looking up at the tops of the trees next to the school. The wind has picked up even more, and if you close your eyes, it could be the middle of the park, the middle of the woods. The middle of nowhere. When the sun comes up, the Packers will lose again, and brunch will be served, and this slide will be covered with books and political buttons for sale at the flea market. But for now, there is just this wait, this quiet, my tired feet dangling from the end of the slide.

*This update typed while listening to George Baker sing Little Green Bag, over and over.

Adelaide

2004-09-27T21:02:00.000-04:00

1.

My friend Gary came over for a dinner that was supposed to include the planning of our long-awaited Prospect Park Autumn Olympics, but no one else could be coaxed into joining us, until the last minute, when Sean and his friend Mark showed up. I make a bunch of bruschetta, and we pack everything carefully into plastic bags and begin the precarious climb up the rickety rung ladder to my roof. The moon is bright, but not bright enough, and there is loud clattering as we (mostly I) collided with various rusted chairs, metal grates, pipes and old beer bottles. The neighbors have a roof deck and the roof deck has a table; we make our way over to it, and in the dark, more wine is poured and bruschetta is unpacked and placed on lids and plates and tupperware trays, until the whole table is covered with little glorified pieces of toast. John Cale is in the cd player. I put it in there as a favor to Gary, and he knows it. On some buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan, there are little houses built right onto the roof, mysterious little one room cottages with their own windows and roofs, perched high above the city, out of view unless you're right next to them. There is one down the block from my building, and we can see into it now, a woman in a blue shirt, laughing on the phone. Gary and I climb up to the overhang of the building, lying flat on our stomachs and leaning over the edge, our chins resting on the back of our hands. It's an excellent view of the sidewalk below, and a little scary. "Look," I tell Gary, pointing down, "it's way too hot to be dressed like that." Below, a man about our age but with a completely different life is sweating his way toward a cab in a three piece suit. We laugh. Neighbors are returning from the gym, and from movies, and evening walks with dogs. The skyline of Manhattan stretches across our view, and the Statue of Liberty glows faintly in the distance. From my roof, tonight, I can see more stars than I ever have before in New York. In two hours, it will be Gary's birthday.

2.

At the afterschool program on Mondays, I take the kindergartners and first graders outisde to play in the schoolyard. Today they invent a game called "turtle fish", in which pieces of chalk are dropped off a little stairwell onto the ground and collected by children waiting below. They rig up a complicated system of jump ropes tied to buckets for this purpose, and scamper around the steps with great purpose and concentration, whispering things about fish and turtles and boats as they work. A tiny girl, sliding around in too-big shoes passed down by an older sister grins up at me with a smile filled with more spaces than teeth. "Do you got a hamster?" she asks. The new hamster in my room has become legendary in a week. "Yes," I tell her. "Do you want to visit him sometime?" She does. What's your name, I ask her. Her mouth is covered with Oreo crumbs. Her name is Frances, and she likes the color pink and her birthday is April 16th. She sputters all this out in one breath. The playground is an enclosed courtyard, but a little sunlight filters down onto the chalk drawings that cover the ground. I sit down to tie an endless procession of little shoelaces. "I don't want you to fall," I tell them all cheerfully. They study me carefully. Their hair is damp from running so long, and their eyes are wide. They are not exactly sure who I am, and they're not pleased that I've interrupted their play with something as practical as shoelaces. Frances, who has been tossing a pen up in the air and catching it, sits down next to me and writes something on my forearm. I don't see it until later, when I'm at home, making an apple pie for Monday night football, with my sleeves rolled up. In perfect first grade block letters, it says FRANCES BOYLAN APRIL 16.

3.

We're at the park on Sunday afternoon, lying on a bamboo picnic mat. It's a section of Prospect Park I've been reading in for years, situated in a valley of sorts,with trees rising up around the edges. Ridiculously pretty. Exactly the sort of thing Frederick Olmstead was aiming for when he designed the park. Today, inexplicably, the area is full of giant dragonflies, hovering and careening around crazily. They are flying so close we can hear the clicks and hum of their wings. "Why are they all here?" my companion demands. I like bugs, but I don't know. It's too far along in the summer for them to be mating, and there's nothing here for dragonflies to eat; maybe, like me, they're just desparately loving the last days of summer, before it's too late.

*This update typed while watching Die Hard With a Vengeance and getting ready to leave for St. Marks.

The taste of summer

2004-09-26T13:29:00.000-04:00

Previously posted to the March records list.

One of my favorite things about New York in the spring and summer is getting Mr. Softee ice cream. Mr. Softee ice cream trucks are the most common ice cream trucks in New York City, with a catchy, sweet summer song, and a smiling ice cream headed gentleman painted on the side. I'm one of the only grownups I know who will race out in the street when the trucks go by (alerted by the jingle) shouting, "SOFTEE! SOFTEEEEEEE!," with a desperation and love people my age feel very rarely for ice cream. I love watching the milkshake machine, and the noisy hum it makes, and the way a dipped cone gets visibly soft in the hot sun. I grew up in a place where there weren't any ice cream trucks, and I can't get enough. I am making up for lost time.

#1
Morningside Heights

A rumor was going around that the Mr. Softee on the corner sold drugs out of his truck. My friend Hillary decided to find out for sure. She asked the Softee, "do you have any drugs?" He said, "yeah. but not for you, pretty." Later that summer I saw a guy mysteriously hand the softee a "book". The softee handed him back a black "water bottle." They caught me watching them, and the softee winked at me and said to the other guy, "she's cool, man." I felt proud that I looked dubious enough to witness ice cream drug exchanges (previously in my neighborhood I had been called 'whitesey' and 'narc-o'). My cherry cone was free that day.

#2 Cumberland St., Brooklyn

My old roommate Marc and I used to keep stacks of quarters on the bookshelf by the front door, so that we could race outside as soon as the music sounded (this Softee didn't linger long on the block sometimes and had to be chased). I ordered more ice cream in the summer of 2001 than I ever have in my life, so i got to know this Mr. Softee pretty well. This exchange happened in August, 2001:

Mr. Softee: Hey, cherry cone (my nickname, due to my favorite order).
Me: Hey, Mr. Softee. One vanilla sandwich and one cherry dipped cone, please.
Mr. Softee: Hey, you want to go for a ride sometime?
me: IN THE TRUCK??!!! Oh my god! Yes!
mr. softee: (scornfully) No, I got a Toyota.
Me: Oh. But I want to ride in the TRUCK.
Mr. Softee: You can't ride in the truck. It's against the policy.
me: Not even just to make one milkshake?
Mr. Softee (getting a little upset): No.
me: Awww.
Mr. Softee: Forget it.

Sometimes on hot summer days as I'm trudging around the city, sweating, I wish Mr. Softee would give me another chance. That he'd come by in his toyota with air conditioning, and a chocolate sundae ready for me in the drink holder, and drive me where I need to go.

#3
5th ave. and 2nd street, Brooklyn

This is my current apartment. This Mr. Softee doesn't seem to be the best promoter of his own product. In one memorable encounter, he said, "these cones got a lot of calories in them, ya know". I gave him a kind of "thanks a lot" look and said, "luckily, my gym is right there on the corner of Union!" He said, "Phew, that's good, cause if I ate one of these cones, I would head RIGHT over to the gym." Out of some kind of misguided revenge, I said, "I'll ALSO have a great white bar (which is shaped like a shark)". His eyes got really wide but he didn't say anything. I ate both ice creams with giddy happiness, felt really, really horribly full, and went to The Gate to have a beer. Going to the gym didn't even cross my mind.

*This update typed while listening to Peanut Butter Wolf.

Something you don't see every Christmas

2004-09-20T19:21:00.000-04:00

3 reasons to cry this weekend:

1. Chorizo the hamster had a rough Saturday night (see www.bearswillattack.com). He continued to frolick around the bathtub, seemingly oblvious to his missing ear, which made it all the harder to see it gone. I set my head down on the edge of the bathtub and wept. The next day, still fine, Chorizo received the very best in hamster guilt toys...a plastic ball to careen around in, a top notch salt lick, and not just the average little hamster box for sleeping, but a hamster duplex with a window, french doors and a blue roof. Tomorrow he goes to school to meet his third grade caretakers, who were thrlled out of their minds to hear that he was soon to arrive. Donovan the cat, the ear eater in question, is much loved despite the (very natural) act of eating a hamster ear and in fact, slept with his front paw on my cheek last night. His time in New York is coming to an end soon; he is waiting for the closing on his newly purchased apartment in DC. I asked friends what I should tell my class about the missing ear. One said, "tell them that if they screw around, the same thing will happen to them." Another said, "tell them that some animals look different, just like some people look different." The PC commentor was laughed at by the jerk commenter. Another friend said, "make him a little Mets hat and you won't even have to deal with it at all." We left it at that.

2. All of my pants, except the pants that I am wearing, were lost by the laundromat. I didn't actually cry, but I did bite a pencil anxiously a few times. My friend Gary kindly offered to give me his designer Swedish jeans, which don't fit him quite right. As we stood hip to hip, I noted that his legs are skinnier than mine. This is because he is a vegetarian, and I eat candy all the live long day. If you have pants you would like to give me, please contact hoipollloi@yahoo.com. If my pants were put in your laundry bag by mistake, please return them. If you have any candy in the shape of pants, I would like to try it.

3. Yesterday afternoon, I got out of the subway near Times Square and as walked up the stairs to 48th St., one of those Central or South American bands with the variety of panflutes and the ponchos suddenly launched into a loud song. I had to wait on this corner for a few minutes for a friend that was soon to arrive, and found myself getting teary eyed. Not for reasons you'd suspect, though. The real motivation was explained in this exchange between middle aged woman with a fish shaped purse and myself.

me: (lower lip trembling)
woman: excuse me, are you alright?
me: oh! (trying to laugh) Yeah. It's just this music.
woman: Does it...remind you of something, or--
me: No. I just really hate it.
woman: Ah...excuse me?
me: I just can't stand this kind of music.
woman: (not rude, but very disconcerted). OK. Well, take care.
me: Thanks.

The fact that a stranger in New York even noticed such a mild degree of unhappiness is incredible. I myself have passed sobbing people on the sidewalk and said nothing, then headed for home and a bottle of wine and the chance to feel bad about my unkindness in private. Talking with friends last night, I tried to trace the reasons that such music could bring tears of dislike to my eyes, and came up with this. When I lived in England, I spent many Saturdays walking around London. Once, I was supposed to meet my friend Daniel at a certain point in a very public square. I was running late. There were panflute musicians just like the one I saw the other day on at least two corners of the square (it seemed like there were 10 different ones). Because such bands always look quite the same, and sound definitely the same, I couldn't get my bearings and it got later and later. It was like an episode of the twilight zone, where everyone in the world becomes a Central American flute player. That, and the kind of nightmare where you need to get somewhere and simply can't. And furthermore, I don't like panflutes. At all.

But for every reason to be unhappy, there are millions of reasons to be happy in New York. Friends return from long trips to Scandinavia bearing gifts of the world's best lip balm, bocce is played, dinners are cooked for multitudes of people, bars are open late, new third graders arrive at school with shiny new shoes and giant adult teeth filling their smiles, Mr. Key is smiling on his usual bench, the sun filters down through trees in such a way that means fall is starting, and everywhere, there are good, good people.

*This update typed while listening to REM.

Message to the masses: Women of New York, please, give up your dumb sweater ponchos.

Holding hands on a dark street

2004-09-13T20:25:00.000-04:00

Mr. Sit.

Mr. Sit is an elderly man who spends sunny days on a lawn chair on the sidewalk in front of his apartment. He has a shock of white hair that flips boyishly onto his forehead, and a smile that makes my heart feel like it's being squeezed. His voice is soft and wavering, like Mr. Key's, and you can tell by his accent that he's lived in Brooklyn a long time. His clothes are impeccable. Whenever I walk by with a man, any man, he says exactly the same thing: I say, "Hello!" He studies me for a moment and then says, "Helllllloooooo. Have a nice day!" Then, when I'm almost past him, he says, "you make a lovely couple". Except with Sean Howe; we make merely a handsome couple. I brought some friends to meet him this weekend. They knew about his lovely couple comments and wanted to earn one for themeselves. We greeted him, and as we passed him, it seemed that he wasn't going to say anything else. At the last moment, though, they got his best comment to date: "Hubba hubba!" Mostly, though, i see him when I'm walking alone. Sometimes he'll say, "You're on the way to Hollywood!". But usually, we just chat about the weather and shoes and stiff knees and the newspapers. I'm making him a linoleum print of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sergeant John.

We stumbled on Sergeant John's stoop sale on a Saturday of otherwise bland stoop sales, making his seem all the more extraordinary. When we walked up, he said, "It's September 11th, remember those who died, stop and shop, it's my birthday!" Scattered around the stoop and sidewalk is a huge assortment of junk and treasure and bric-a-brac. A rubber Nixon mask from the 70s has been placed over the end of the bannister. There are ladies' hats from the 50s, a velvet Elvis (which I bought), newspapers from six different decades, including Nixon's resignation headline, toys, silver candlesticks, cookie tins, and fixtures he tore out of old L trains that were being chopped up for scrap. Sergeant John has a special love for trains. He speaks with love about the old subways, gently touching the maps and metal signs and route destination signs, and shows us the toy trolleys. Picking up a paper trolley, he tries to demonstrate the electric attachment at the top, but it falls inside the trolley and he can't recover it. "I broke your trolley pole!," he exclaims. Then he picks up a metal Japanese trolley, and says, "The Japs made these in the 60s. Who else would make a toy trolley with rubber wheels? The Japs control the money of the world." Then, quickly, "but more power to 'em. They've had a hard time. Look what we did to them." Sergeant John flits from subject to subject, but not lightly. It's all very fast, and very random; the thoughts and words of a man who is bursting with the kind of life I haven't ever thought to ponder before today. "Look at this!" he barks. "I'm 64 years old today and look at this." He flexes his muscles, over and over, the biceps bulging when he squeezes his fists. "I got a full head of hair," he says, pulling off his Vietnam Vet hat. The grayish brown hair is thick and tussled. It's a source of obvious pride, but a source of fear as well. "Ronald Reagan had a full head of hair too. And the Alzheimers...I don't want to end up like that". He shakes his head and takes off his sunglasses, peering up at us. His eyes are shockingly blue, something we will mention later as we are eating sandwiches at a restaurant a few blocks away. Sergeant John fought in Vietnam, as a sniper. He clearly relished the job, as he describes it, even the time when he was expected by a Cambodian village leader to eat moneky brains right out of the skulls. "I was drunk on some local stuff they had, so I didn't even care. I just reached down and..." He makes big scooping gestures and loud eating sounds. What did monkey brains taste like? "Popcorn," John says. In Saigon, he bought a $500 bulletproof vest from a German who had been in the French Foreign Legion. The Sergeant relates the experience, giving the German a deep, gruff voice. "So, this German says to me, "Zee Vietnamese tried to keel me years ago. And now they will keel you. I says to him, 'Look, Krauthead, I have American money to spend.' And I pull it out. And suddenly, he loves me. 'Ooooh, show me zee money!' that krauthead says. We took that vest out and tacked it up to a tree. I shot it 20 times with an AK-47. Afterwards, there were 20 bullets on the ground and the vest was totally unmarked. 'I'll take it,' I said. That vest saved my life when my helicopter went down. I was the only one in my regiment who survived that crash." Sergeant John shows us shrapnel scars on his wrist. When he was wounded, though,he healed quickly, which he attributes to parsley. He eats a lot of parsley. "Parsley is full of your vitamins. It's good for, you know, anything. The Trojans ate it, and their wounds healed really damn fast." John also gives parsley the credit for his youthful vigor. He flexes his muscles some more.

There was a special woman in Sergeant John's life once. "She's up at St. Charles cemetery now," he says. "She smoked a pack a day." He pauses. "I got a lot of money. All I ever wanted was one thing. You know what that was? A woman who wanted me, for me. Not for my money" He taps his chest. His voice gets softer. "This woman, she could have cared less about my money. She didn't want to go out for a fancy dinner. All she wanted was this." He lifts his right arm. "To hold my arm when we walked. Everywhere we went, she held my arm."

Meeting someone like Sergeant John is a rare and sacred thing. It's the kind of encounter that leaves you shaken afterward, happy and sad alike, and all the mixed up ways people feel when they meet someone that makes the world a little brighter and more lovely for a few hours. As we eat lunch, Sean and I are almost completely quiet. I know he's feeling the same thing.

After lunch, I bring the birthday cake Sean and I bought for Sergeant John over to his house. I walk close to the hedges so he can't see me. A few buildings down, I stop on the sidewalk and crouch down to light the candles. Some neighbors and people walking on the sidewalk gather around me. "It's John's birthday today," I tell them. They walk along with me toward his stoop. The candles flicker wildly, threatening to go out. A few feet from where John is sitting, we start singing Happy Birthday, quietly first and then louder as we reach him. Sergeant John, Vietnam vet, self-professed rogue and professional bachelor, lover of junk and history and parsley, leans forward, grinning, to blow out the candles.

*This update typed while getting ready to watch the Packers game with friends.

The way you smile

2004-09-12T18:17:00.001-04:00

The sun was shining, the liquor was bountiful. Teeth were sparse but happiness abounded. In this weekend's adventures...

Two parties.

Friday night. There was a party at Sarah Brennan and Adrian Tomine's apartment, to celebrate my friend Fred's 30th birthday. I made a big batch of vodka lemonade and then Sean and I drank almost the whole thing ourselves. It was about 100 degrees, so we crowded around the air conditioner, sitting on a desk with our feet swinging. Fred was glowing with birthday happiness. For his birthday, I gave him a copy of Colonel Sanders autobiography, _Life as I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin' Good_. Adrian read the first line of the book aloud to Fred: "Dadgummit!" There were funny little comics tacked up on a bulletin board. Rough draft Optic Nerve.

Saturday night. The lovely Troy and Katie celebrated their first wedding anniversary. I invented a ridiculously strong drink called the Headache, and Sean and my friend Jeff made me a drink which had no name but had a lot of cruddy pineapple vodka in it. The music was perfect, and there was dancing, except for Marc Balgavy, who doesn't like to dance very much but has a lovely beard. I went to O'Connors afterwards, but I don't really remember it. Sean and I ate slices from the newly redone pizza place next to Southpaw on the way home. This morning, The Headache proved true to its name.

One hour in the City Lights Diner.

The City Lights is on Atlantic Avenue and the corner of 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. It's what I would call a typical Brooklyn diner: giant menu with colorful headings like "Very Delicious Sandwiches", waitresses that won't put up with any crap, plastic glasses that still smell a bit like dishwashing detergent, a clientele that looks tired but calm, coffee that's simple. I used to spend quite a bit of time here; my first year of teaching, I would take homework papers there at night to grade. This afternoon, churchgoers filled a few of the booths, talking and laughing. In their Sunday best, they looked out of place in a grimy diner, but they gave the City Lights a dignity that it deserves. The waitress has a head of wild, curly hair and a boisterous laugh. I order cinnamon toast, and then, before I can say it, she says, "chocolate egg cream?" Which is exactly what I was about to order. I don't remember her from my nights of chocolate egg creams in the second window booth, the same one I'm in now. "Do you remember me?" I ask her. "How did you know that was what I wanted?" She looks taken aback. "Goes good with toast" is all she says in response.

Two policemen come in. They are the Laurel and Hardy of cops; the tall, skinny one teases the fat one for putting a lot of sugar and milk in his coffee. The fat one laughs and shakes his head. How are things in Brooklyn this afternoon? "Quiet," they say. "Everybody's watchin' football," says Laurel. Hardy proclaims that he will kill the Jets himself if they have a bad season, and what the hell, he'll kill the Giants for the same reason. A woman and a little girl, about 7 or so, come in and share a grilled cheese deluxe. "How big is your heart?" the girl asks. "It fits right there," the woman says, tapping on the girl's chest. "It pumps your blood." But how did it get in there, the girl wants to know. We're born with it in there, the woman tells her between french fries. "But," the girl says, starting to get impatient, "How do we move?" "I don't know, baby," the woman says, laughing, "I just don't know."

Outside, the sun is glittering on the cars going by and the sidewalk is full of shadows. An elderly man and woman come in and order burgers. "Hello," I say. "Hello, my dear," says the woman.

Tomorrow: The stories of Sergeant John and Mr. Sit.

*This update typed while watching the end of _The Royal Tennenbaums_, and listening to Al Jolson.

Valentine

2004-09-08T20:59:00.000-04:00

A peaceful Labor Day Weekend in Brooklyn.

1. The Barbecue

The Barbecue was in Prospect Park, held by my sweet friend Fred, who has a giant bushy beard and wears crazy ties. He is also king of the mini Weber, crouched down near the ground, gently turning ears of corn and closely watching burgers. We walked over together: Sean Howe, my friend Frank, four Swedes in a touring pop band, and me. Finding the bbq proved to be daunting. Fred and I called and texted each other more than 10 times, as we wandered around the lake, scanning the horizon and sidestepping swampy puddles. The Swedes' perfectly primped hair started to wilt in the heat. "Can you see an orange buoy out in the lake?" Fred asked. "Yeah," I tell him, "it's right across from us." But everything, from every angle, is right across from us. "The buoy, the fishing area and the barbecue are an equilateral triangle," Fred says with authority. I haven't thought about equilateral triangles for a long time. "Are you the apex?" I ask him, without really knowing what I mean. Fred doesn't know what I mean either. But eventually he guides us to the right spot, a pretty area by a little inlet of the lake that features a large moldering pile of mowed grass and lake gunk by the shore. It doesn't bother me. It's really lovely. Sean and I occupy ourselves by throwing some large sticks into the water by lifting them with our feet. Then, this:

Me: Want to play with the football?
Sean: No.
Me: Want to run around?
Sean: No.
Me: Want to make boats out of leaves and race them?
Sean: Not really.
Me: (pause)
Sean: (pause)
Me: I'm going to go steal that remote controlled truck (which is being raced around by some men near us and is making a really loud and grating whine)
Sean: Then you can throw it in the lake.
Me: No, I'm just going to take it and run away.

So I run off toward the truck, and my feet feel ridiculously light, as they did when I was a kid, sprinting around my house at night in the summer during a game of Ghost Around the Graveyard. The truck, it turns out, is fancy, and thus, it is fast. I try to edge up to it, but the impulse to grab it and flee is fading fast, and the truck is speeding up, racing around a makeshift obstacle course. And the men holding the remote control are eyeing me suspiciously. When I get back to the grill, the Swedes have thrown themselves down in the grass and stretched out like golden retrievers. They are still jet-lagged.

2. The New York Times

Frank is in charge of rushing the Swedes around (they are staying at Gary Olson's house, then that changes, they are staying with Jeff Baron). He stays with me and Brian, where there are fewer grape arbors and less coolness, and more cats. Frank and I lounge around the apartment, reading the Sunday paper. We get into a routine: Frank will say, "Oh my God!" when reading a story. Or he will say, "Wow." "Oh Man." Or "Jeez." Not looking up from what I'm reading, I say, "Hmm" in response to these exclamations, and Frank explains what interesting bit of information he has just come across. Frank is from Boston and says "awesome" a lot. Brian reads the paper with a deep intensity; he frowns as he studies The Week in Review. His cat sits on the arm of the chair while he reads, her eyes half-closed. I read the city section every Sunday with an overwhelming love for New York City: the interesting neighbors, the quirky situations, the stink, and the monuments to people long forgotten.

3. Mr. Key

Mr. Key, in his soft, gentle voice, agreed to have lunch or dinner with me. But now he is nowhere to be found. The weekend was sunny, and now it's rainy, and Mr. Key's bench has been empty the whole time. Mr. Key, where are you?

4. The phone call

In July, I called some random 718 numbers to get ideas for this blog. The first two hung up (one after saying, in the background, "God damn kids and their prank calls"). The third number, T. Ramirez and her friend K. (both aged 15) was more helpful. Wonderful, even. They told me to eat Puerto Rican food, and then kindly offered some ideas about how to cook rice and beans, and what brand to buy. With Tito Puente playing in the background, I make rice, beans, plantains and mango fritters. The Puerto Rican kids in my class two years ago (all 14 of them) were so proud of the food they ate. Most of them could cook, and they brought amazing platters of fried and spicy and sweet things to our winter party. "This is what Puerto Rican people eat for Christmas," one of them said. "We don't eat no fruitcake. We eat OUR food."

They would have been proud of me, those kids, even if my rice was a little burned on the bottom and my plantains were oversalted.

5. Fall

Suddenly, there are a few rusty colored leaves on the ground in Brooklyn, clogging the gutters in the rain and crunching underfoot on the sidewalk. The air is heavy with the scent of end of the summer flowers, the ones I'm allergic to. The summer has turned rotten. At home, the cats all stretch out on the rug together, as I pack and crate and seal up magazines and books and records. A handful of wet leaves I picked up are drying by the window. The house fills with the damp and sweet smell of autumn. I think: "The apples are almost ripe now." I think: "where are my sweaters?"

*This update typed while listening to Slowdive, and re-edited while planning which stoop sales to hit this morning with Sean.

The Greatest of Great Men

2004-09-05T16:17:00.000-04:00

This is the North Korean Central News Agency press release in October, 1997 that prompted my favorite New York Times article ever:

Kim Jong Il, son of former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, was confirmed
as general secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea on October 8. Mysterious natural phenomena
are being witnessed in different parts of Korea as provincial party conferences adopt resolutions
recommending Kim Jong Il as general secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea.
White flowers came into bloom on a pear tree, attracting butterflies and bees at a factory in
Pyongyang on September 27. On their way to work, factory workers witnessed this phenomenon
and said nature welcomes the festive event. More than 100 blossoms opened on an apricot tree
near a film-processing plant in the city on that same day. Eighty-five blossoms were witnessed
on apricot trees at a stock farm in Sangwon County on September 25. About 400 blossoms came
into bloom on a twenty-year-old wild pear tree in a park in front of the Kaesong Municipal Party
Committee building in thesame period. On the morning of September 22, fishermen of the fishery
station in Rajin-Sonbong city caught a 10-centimeter magical white sea cucumber while fishing on
the waters off Chongjin. They said the rare white sea cucumber has come to hail the auspicious
event of electing Secretary Kim Jong Il as party general secretary. Seeing the mysterious natural
phenomena, Koreans say Secretary Kim Jong Il is indeed the greatest of great men produced by
heaven and that flowers come into bloom to mark the great event.

*This update typed while listening to and half-watching a horrible Lifetime movie.

The Size of Your Life

2004-09-03T16:54:00.000-04:00

Ask someone what time it is in a British accent. Submitted by David Greenberger.

Me: 'ello, do you 'ave the time?
Guy at the deli: Um, yes. It's almost 1:30.
Me: Ta.

Ask someone what time it is in a southern accent. Submitted by David Greenberger.

Me: What tahm is it, please?
Lady at Associated Grocery Store: 1:45.
Me: Thahnk yoo, Ma'am. I just love these northern grocery stores y'all have.
Lady: (raises eyebrows but says nothing)

It's funny. Every time I try to say something in any accent, it almost always comes out sounding at least a little bit Russian. This is likely because my old roommate and I spoke to each other almost exclusively in Russian accents for about six months. It is, even now, unspoken as to why we did that, and why it lasted so long. He would come home from work every night and turn Russian and demand, "What you are making for deen-er?" and I would instantly turn Russian and reply with something like "Tonight I am making for us burgers" or "why you are never cooking for me instead?". Even now, if I try to imitate Trace, the bartender down the street, who's from Wales, or my Yemeni doctor, or a snooty French accent, someone invariably says, "you sound Russian."

Follow a squirrel around. Submitted by Chris.

I find a friendly squirrel on second street. He walks towards me on a metal gate until he's right in front of me. I can see his whiskers quivering. But when it becomes apparent that I don't have anything to feed him, he runs out onto the sidwalk. I follow him. He runs up a stoop. I wait. Someone's put a bunch of free stuff out on their stoop. I take a little wire basket, thinking, it will be perfect for the rulers in my classroom. Someone has dropped part of an ice cream cone on the ground and the ants are in heaven. The squirrel races up a tree trunk. I squint up at him for a while until it's too bright to look anymore and realize that there's a little girl standing next to me, looking at me looking up. "What?" she says, pointing up to the sky. "Just a squirrel," I say, smiling.

Get a malt. Submitted by Ivan. Aie nako!

I wander down to Louie G's for a strawberry malt. The afternoon light is different than it was a few weeks ago. Muted and paler. It's not very close yet, but fall is looming somewhere, and I can't wait. I'm daydreaming along, thinking that malts are one of the best inventions of all time, and wondering who left a bra next to the mailbox on the corner of Union Street, when I see Mr. Key up ahead, for the first time in days. He's sitting on his favorite benches, with his cane, outside the coffee shop. I walk up to him, and he turns to see what's caused the sudden shade. "Hello," I say. "Hello, he says. His voice is always quiet, and a bit melodical. I sit down next to him.

TO BE CONTINUED

*This update typed while listening to workmen hammering in the new restaurant downstairs (it's almost done!) and a Snow Patrol album.

Neenah with pride

2004-08-31T10:51:00.000-04:00

The story of Neenah, Wisconsin.

With a shout out to Dan Donahue, who like me, is a Brooklyn resident who left his heart in the Neenah-Menasha metro area. And also his stomach, which loves beer brats.

By the way, it was my friend Mark's idea to write this in a bikeride narrative style, so if it's really cheesy, the blame goes to him.

We start out from my house, on Yorkshire Road. It's the solar house, though you can't tell from the front. My parents designed it themselves in 1979. That's why we almost froze in the winter of 1982. There was only a woodburning stove and some panel heaters to keep it warm through a Wisconsin winter. I remember huddling together in front of the wood burning stove, cooking hot dogs on it, and thinking we were all going to die. An emergency furnace was soon installed. But it's a beautiful house on the inside, ask anyone. That's my dad outside, pacing around and muttering into a tiny dictaphone. From even a short distance, it's really hard to tell what he's doing. Which is why, in junior high, the girl across the street told her friends that my dad talked to the grass.

From here, we're heading down Bayview road, my favorite road in the whole town. One way, it's a five minute walk to the lake (longer if you're carrying a canoe on your shoulders). The other way, it's bordered by a lot of really beautiful old trees, and a boggy marsh, full of cattails and frogs, and sometimes deer. We used to run around in there a lot when I was a kid. The cattails are so dense, you could hide just inches away from whoever was it in a game, and they wouldn't see you. On the right is the oldest house in Neenah. First it was a mill, then a brothel, then at some point, my seventh grade English teacher moved into it. The boat launch and city pool are next. Then around what's called The Point, where the lighthouse is, and where a lot of people catch fish, which I expect are mutant fish, because the lake is full of all kinds of fertilizer runoff. My friends and I spent hours here at night when we were in high school, sitting on the swinging benches and, for reasons I cannot remember, smashing cream puffs and other pastries in each other's faces. As you ride around the rest of the point, the road forks. If you go straight, you go past the Bergstrom museum, which has the largest collection of paperweights in the world. We're very proud of that. If you curve to the right, you go into Riverside Park, which was a part of every Neenah kid's childhood. The park was the source of many family stories, including The Time a Squirrel Ate Our Peach Pie and The Time Your Brother Got Stung By a Bee. There's a giant metal rocket on the playground (rockets are the town mascot), which is where most of us made out with someone for the first time. The ladder to get onto it was recently taken down and it's been condemned due to rust. Poor old rocket. Now we're heading downtown. There's the harbor on the right. A lot of people in town have a sailboat. Here's the public library. My mom will give you a tour, if you want one. She helped plan and raise money for the library (it's only a few years old) and she loves it.

Further down are the foundaries. I've told many of you, sometimes multiple times, and usually when I've been drinking, about how most of the manhole covers in the world are from Neenah. It's a story I tell like an old man; I'm bursting with pride when I tell it and I talk about it over and over. And over the years, many of you have called me, also while drinking, to announce that you are standing next to a Neenah manhole cover in Brooklyn, or L.A., or Stockholm. Another thing of which we are immensely proud is that Kleenex is also made in Neenah. Some residents are very picky about the word Kleenex only applying to actual Kleenex. Anything else is just a tissue, and must never be called a Kleenex. I wrote to them a few months ago, pleading for a handout, because my class last year had more allergies than is humanly possible. They kindly sent me a giant case of free Kleenex. You might have noticed that we've passed about ten bars already. There are more bars than churches here, that's what people say around here. Some of them say it scornfully. Most say it like this: "There are more bars than churches here! Wooohooo!" A lot of the bars around here have a very established clientele, and don't want some nerd in a stereolab shirt drinking their Old Style. One of the bartenders told my friends and me this winter, "I think you'd be happier at the bar across the street." I said, really tough, "No, we're happy here. We like THIS place." So that earned us a sort of grudging respect, at least for a few minutes. I like the way they freeze their beer mugs.

Ok, now we're circling back to Commercial Street. There's sometimes a very odd older couple that takes walks in their pajamas, but I haven't seen them in a few years. That tobacco discount store used to be the Mr. Donut. It was the only 24 hour place in town. It was really gross. But we loved going there at night. But then the owners tried to burn it down for insurance money. They didn't succeed completely though, because here's the tobacco store.

Further down a ways are the grocery stores. We spent a lot of time just walking and chasing each other around them in high school (there aren't a lot of nighttime activities in Neenah). I was here earlier today, buying the ingredients for quesadillas. Which the man in the dairy department called kay-sah-dillas. Speaking of pronunciations, my Wisconsin accent has come back a bit again. That happens every time I come home. By the time I leave, I'm saying "yah" exclusively, and my more refined mother is curtly reminding me to say "yes" instead. Now we're headed back home, past the drive through restaurant that has good brats and also deep fried cheese curds. There's my elementary school, Coolidge Elementary. All the elementary schools here are named after undistinguished former presidents. And now it's only a two minute ride back to Yorkshire.

And that ends our tour of Neenah, Wisconsin. Please put your bike away in the garage.

*This update typed while listening to NPR.

I'll be your mirror

2004-08-30T11:03:00.000-04:00

Or, What I Did This Weekend

We spent Saturday in Madison, WI, where my little brother lives, where I went to college, and one of the favorite cities of my whole family. We picked up my brother at his apartment. He was waiting on his rickety back porch, and crushed me in one of his hulking and enormous hugs. No one is sure how my brother turned out so towering and huge. My parents are both significantly shorter than him; my dad, as my mom points out, looks like a little thumb, now that he has started indulging his lifelong dream of shaving his head. My parents suspect some long ago giant of a relative is responsible for my brother's size, I think it's the hormone jacked-up milk we both drank all day when we were kids. We got back in the car and drove to Monty's Blue Plate Special, a sort of old timey diner, but because it's Madison, a lot of the food is vegetarian or vegan. In the car, my brother and I laid out the untouchable subjects of conversation: the need for haircuts, the fact that my brother's shoes are falling apart despite the undeniable truth that my dad gave him money to buy new shoes, sex, proper interview techniques, financial security, and the need for my brother to stop using an envelope wrapped in duct tape as a wallet. For their part, my parents request that we don't act like idiots.

The conversation topics greatly reduced, my brother and I are left hooting over favorite Mr. Show skits, while my parents lament over the Republican idiots (including a local car dealer with hokey commercials) in Wisconsin trying to beat their beloved Senator, Russ Feingold. But they quickly get sidetracked by my brother and I laughing uproariously and try to join the Mr. Show conversation. This occurred just as my brother, a little too loudly, I thought, for a family diner, said, "have you seen the cockring warehouse episode?" And I said, "Yeah, it's hilarious!" And then, simultaneously, "Any cock'lldooooooo!" The rest of the conversation, which will go down in R-rated family history, went like this:

Mom: What are you talking about?
Jon (my brother): Cockrings!
Me: (laughing) Shhhhh!
Mom: Cloth rings?
Jon: (whispering) No, cockrings!
Dad: (authoritatively to Mom) Hot...hot wings, like chicken.
Jon: (forehead hits table due to laughter) Cockrings!
Dad: (finally hearing right) Ohh! (chuckles)
Mom: Cockring? What is that?
(Siblings are unable to speak due to convulsing laughter)
Dad: (quietly) I'll tell you in the car!

The rest of the day was spent walking around favorite old bookstores and record shops and the student union, which has a terrace on a lake and is still one of my favorite places in the world. Jon had to leave for work, so we gather on the sidewalk outside my dad's favorite record store to say goodbye. My brother, who has always been wonderful, has somewhere along the line become a sweet and sensitive giant of a boy. He puts an arm around my shoulder and says goodbye in a kind voice that has been ridiculously deep since he spoke his first words, and I feel my eyes fill with tears, because I get to see him, and my parents, so rarely. My parents and I are smiling as we watch him walk away. On the way back to Neenah, we sing along together to the oldies station, my mom in her high warbling voice, my dad in his deep, booming voice, and me in a voice which is simply off-key. The sun is setting over the farm fields, and glistening on the tops of the trees, and the highway stretches on in front of us, full of potential.

*This update typed while listening to Stan Getz.

Sylvia, enough's enough.

2004-08-26T21:02:00.000-04:00

In Neenah, Wisconsin sometimes you find opportunities and sometimes they find you. Some of these activities were sent in by readers, others just came up.

Buy some cheese. Then, eat it in front of the cashier (well, at least some of it). Submitted by Kevin, who is abundant.

I got the cheese in question at a cheese shop in Oshkosh. It was fresh colby. I bought it, (and a piece of chocolate in the shape of Abe Lincoln), and then I tried to open the cheese. But I started to get nervous for some reason at that point, and I couldn't get it open. I twisted and tugged at the wrapping and was just about to try to bite it open when I looked up and saw the cashier was staring at me. "Do you want to open that?" she asked increduously. I said yeah. She motioned for me to hand it to her, and cut the top of the wrapper off with a pair of scissors. She handed it back and it was time for the big moment. I took a huge bite out of it. All I could think to say was "Mmmmm!" The cashier looked baffled. "I hope you enjoy it" she said. I ate another huge bite in the parking lot. That one was just because it was delicious cheese.

Go to a department store and try on the dumbest dresses they have. Submitted by Nicole.

I knew exactly where to go. There's a store at the mall with a fancy dress section, and a lot of the fancy dresses are sequined, gaudy messes. I headed up the escalator. The sale rack in the fancy dress section had some real doozies. I picked three to try on. One had a smattering of sequins down the sides. Another had a crazy belt that wrapped around it. The third looked like a hooker's outfit. After each dress, I came out to check myself out in the hallway mirrors. A nice, plump little lady came over to help me. I think her name was Linda. "Well isn't this darling on you!" she exclaimed. It was such a sweet, sad lie. I looked like Liberace. The second dress just looked wacky. The third dress, the slutty one, made me look busty, so I had to spend some extra time parading that one around and checking myself out. "To what kind of event would someone wear this?" I asked. "Oh, to a party...or some kind of mix and mingle" she said. "A mix and mingle of streetwalkers maybe!" I said. She laughed nervously and seemed kind of hurt. "I'm just kidding," I told her, feeling really guilty. "I love it." Two can play at this lying game, Linda.

Have lunch with a 103 year old birthday girl. This just came up randomly.

Louisa was celebrating her 103d birthday. I got to sit near her while she ate her chicken salad. She was feisty and funny and really sweet. She had the prettiest hands in the world. These are some excerpts from our conversation:

Louisa: I went to the doctor, because I'd been having these stomach aches. I asked him, "Doctor, what can I eat?" He said, "Louisa, you can eat whatever you want." I said, "Suppose I want a cocktail." He said, "go right ahead."
Louisa friend, who was only eighty something: What if he'd said no?
Louisa: I'dve had one anyway! Ha ha ha!
Me: What kind of cocktails do you like?
Louisa: I like martinis. And drinks made with brandy.

Me: What kind of games did you play when you were a girl?
Louisa: Our entertainment was up to us. It was our concern. We played kick the can (Brian Minter is the only person who didn't play it --ed.), we chased each other all around, we made dolls, oh, we had a lot of fun.
Me: The kids in my class like video games.
Louisa: Oh, I'd like to try those.

Louisa: Where do you live, dear?
Me: I live in New York. In Brooklyn.
Louisa: Oh, Brooklyn is where they have that giant field...what's it called?
Me: Prospect Park?
Louisa: No.
Me: Ebbets field, the old baseball field?
Louisa: No.
Me: I'm not sure.
Louisa: Well, you don't know that much about where you live, do you?

Invite the neighbors over for birthday cake. Submitted by me.

It's a surprise for my mom. The doorbell rings, and I rush to the kitchen to prepare the secret surprise cake. As my mom answers the door, my dad hisses, "what are we going to give them to drink?" We're out of wine in a box, which my parents love, but somehow they still make fun of my brother and me for drinking cheap, bad beer. But no one wants any beer tonight, though we did locate some; they just want to eat a lot of cake and make a lot of noise. One neighbor, who is moving to the town of Neenah, where you can have farm animals, offers to house a goat and some chickens for me. I love chickens. My mom shakes her head no, but I catch his eye and nod, grinning, while she's not looking. The neighbors tell a lot of funny stories about pets, and their kids, and how children have crazy names these days (Taylor or Dylan can be a boy OR a girl, that amazed them all) Then they all take off into the night, which is warm and lovely and loud with crickets.

Happy birthday, Marilyn Allen.

*This entry typed while listening to the dog snore.

You're my Coney Island Baby

2004-08-25T15:04:00.000-04:00

Moments in literature...from the life of Bubblegum & Taffy. Thank you to Marilyn Allen for keeping excellent scrapbooks.

Age 6, first grade

My name is Sarah Allen. I am a girl. I live at 761 Yorkshire Road. I like animals.

Age 7, first grade (totally flipped out over the recent discovery of punctuation, which I STILL love).

One. day. John's tooth was feeling loose. When he ate. an apple. it came out!!! He put it under. his pillow!!!! The next day. there was a quarter. The End!!!!!

The Witches, by Sarah Allen, age 10.

For as long as I can remember, I had been a witch for Halloween. My Mom suggested I be a goblin or a pumpkin, or ANYTHING but a witch, but I wanted to be a witch again. My brother Jack and I set out to collect our candy. I walked slower than usual behind him and my Dad. All of a sudden I felt a boney finger tapping my shoulder. I turned around and discovered another witch! She looked just like me! She had a long green nose with warts that didn't pull off when I pulled them. "Trade places with me" she hissed. She grabbed my candy bag and jammed her broom into my hands. All of a sudden I shot into the air. I held on as best I could, but I almost feel off. I discovered I didn't really have to steer the broom. It just went by itself. Then the broom gently floated down next to a black cauldron. (Etc. etc. This story is longer than I thought. To summarize, I have a wild time being mistaken as the witch and she as me, and I'm left wondering, Good Lord, what will happen if I'm a goblin next year?! The End.)

There is no sign in the scrapbooks of my three chapter masterpiece from fifth grade, which featured such mature topics as a teenager that drank beer and was rude to her parents and then was brought back to living a wholesome life when she realized she had magical healing powers and wanted to help the world. It was called _The Healer_. I bet my mom threw it away when she saw there was beer drinking.

*This update typed while listening to the Brooklyn Doo Wop Collection (thanks to Sean Howe, Park Slope wireless internet thief).

And then we'll quietly grow old

2004-08-24T22:19:00.000-04:00

Hearts are sunny and Miller Lite flows like ambrosia. In today's adventures...

BE A KID AGAIN. Recommended by Nicole Stoops.

What could be better?

#1: Spend time with (other) kids.

I spent the afternoon with an old friend I hadn't seen for more than 10 years, and her 3 year old son, Alec. He insisted on removing all his clothes for the whole day, and though I couldn't get away with that, I did follow the naked little monkey as he careened crazily around the driveway on his big wheel, with a bucket on his head. The bucket covered his whole head, and he kept bumping into walls and bushes. Have you ever talked to a three year old? They don't make any sense, and they're absolutely wonderful.

Alec: That's amazing!
Me: What's amazing?
Alec: The power! It's my power!
Me: Oh!
Alec: I can ride with that, I don't want to eat my sandwich.
Me: You should eat your sandwich so you're not hungry!
Alec: No! I'm a fish!

He asked me to dance with him, and we spun around in circles on the driveway, kicking our feet up at crazy angles. I laughed until it was hard to breathe.

#2: Run through the sprinkler.

I used to spend hours in the sprinkler. The art of the sprinkler is in anticipation. My favorite kind is the waving fan, where you can lie in the grass on one side of it, with your friend lying on the other side, and your stomach cramps up with nervousness while you're wating for the water to hit, even though you know exactly how great it's going to feel when it does. It was kind of a cloudy day, and not very warm, but I pulled the car over next to a sprinkler in someone else's yard, on the other side of town, and raced into it, holding my breath. It was freezing, the way sprinklers always are before you get used to them. I waited till the streams of water were spraying straight up again, and let it hit my forehead for a second before I jumped through to the other side again. A man came out from the house and stood on his stoop. He was wearing a Packers shirt, the unofficial uniform of the entire state (I wore mine yesterday). "Hi!" I shouted, gleefully, and sprinted back to the car. "Thanks!" I was screaming a lot louder than I had to. As I drove away, I checked for him in the rearview mirror. He was waving goodbye.

#3: Eat a popsicle.
When I was small, popsicles were a big part of the summer. Our favorites were banana, root beer and blue raspberry. I always had sticky hands from the dripping; popsicles melt fast in the summer. But today I was far away from the grocery store. And popsicles are so much more delicious when it's hot. There was a gas station by the lake having a brat fry, so I stopped for that instead. Bratwurst is serious business in Wisconsin. Neighbors have criticized my decision to live in New York, based on the relative unavailability of bratwurst there. Connoseurs marinate them overnight in beer. Some people insist on stuffing them with cheese. The meat section at the grocery store has a whole row dedicated to them (I've taken pictures of it). My personal favorite is a beer brat on a toasted bun with a lot of mustard. At the gas station, everyone was drunk, including the man grilling the brats. He tripped as he was handing me my brat, and dropped it in the dirt. "Holy balls!", he shouted. "I am WASTED!" He tried to get me to have a beer. I said I couldn't, I was driving. He said, inexplicably, "that didn't stop Jesus!" Before I had the chance to ask what he meant, a fight broke out by the beer cooler. One of the men involved suddenly keeled over like a tree falling over. It was something that everyone there, including me, had seen before. People in Wisconsin drink like champs.

*This update typed while listening to the dog chew his squeaking toy, until it drove me crazy and I had to hide it.

I'm looking through you

2004-08-22T20:57:00.000-04:00

Where we left off...

Dinner with Mr. Key never happened, as Mr. Key was AWOL, and I left for Wisconsin early. One of the last times I saw him before I left, someone had put an old excercise bike out on the curb for the Wednesday garbage pick-up. Mr. Key propped his cane against a pole, got on the bike and began pedaling serenely. He was still pedaling, a dreamy look on his face, when we walked by again. I look forward to taking Mr. Key to dinner when I get back to Brooklyn. It's his choice where we go. I'll take him anywhere he wants. Maybe we'll dress up a little; I'll wear lipstick and my hair back and he'll wear his best shoes. What will we talk about at dinner? If he'll tell me, I want to hear his story.

With Mr. Key nowhere to be found, I spent the time leading up to my departure on reading, and drinking outside and eating outside and on wandering and riding rollercoasters. Sean Howe and I spent part of an afternoon reading at Barnes and Noble, and started laughing uncontrollably in the cafe as we looked at the pile of ridiculous books I was paging through, all with titles like, _Letting Go When He Leaves_. Some friends I hadn't seen in a while dragged me out of the house and over to Coney Island, where the smell of funnel cake and salt air made me dizzy with the love of summer. I rode the Cyclone five times. And for the first time, I sat in the very front.

And now I'm home in Wisconsin, and it's such a familiar place in the summer that I can't believe I wasn't here last month, or last week. Everything is exactly the way it always is. I only see my family two or three times a year; when I do see them, I can't contain my happiness. I start acting silly. Really silly. This exchange with my Dad was typical of what happens every summer; someone always ends up having to tell me to cut it out.

Me: (singing) Who's walking down the streets of the city, smiling at everybody she sees...
Dad: (reading) Hmmph.
Me: Everyone knows it's WINDY! And Windy has starry eyes...(forgetting lyrics) and Windy has...thunder thighs, and Windy--
Dad: Sarah.
Me: (chanting) It's Windy! It's Windy! It's Windy outside! (picking up dog) And the dog loves the wind! And the wind loves the dog!
Dad: Sarah.
Me: Windy dog! And Windy dog has soft, soft fur, and Windy dog likes to chase birds, and Windy dog--
Dad: SARAH. Settle down and knock it off!

The dog and I walk down to the lake after dinner. The lake is murky and green and stinky and I've been swimming in it as long as I can remember. The smell of it is probably my favorite smell; when I was a kid, there were always little specks of algae in my hair from it. My clothes smelled like it. The air on the soccer fields down the street was heavy with it. Tonight, it was such a relief to see it and smell it that a little laughing sob escapes. Luckily there's no one there to hear it but the dog, and he's busy trying to eat cigarette butts. It feels like the lake looks different every time I see it. Sometimes it's still and green, sometimes gray and cloudy, sometimes it shimmers in the sun. Tonight, it's windy and the water is choppy and dark. Growing up, when we got hot, we would run all the way to the lake sometimes and just run right into it with our clothes, and then walk home dripping. I once left an old boyfriend standing squeamishly on this same little shore, next to the smelly fish skeleton that had dissuaded him from swimming, as I waded out to say hello to neighbors who drag their lawn chairs into the lake, and then sit in them, only their heads and their cans of Old Style out of the water. (They'll probably be in there tomorrow when I go swimming). I see some of these neighbors along my walk. They're out in their yards, and walking around, and fiddling with gardens. Some of them just stand at the end of their driveways, ready to talk to anyone who walks by. It's like a giant, midwestern receiving line. Everyone is still riding high from last night's Packer victory, though it's just a preseason game and doesn't mean anything. I stop to talk to the man who feeds the deer. I'm not sure if we ever met formally, or even who he is. His hands are old and rough and creased with a lifetime of ice fishing seasons and gardening."It's wonderful to see you," he says, and I say, "It's wonderful to see you too." And I mean it.

The Summer Adventure Project will continue tomorrow. Please send any suggestions to hoipollloi@yahoo.com. Submissions are always welcome.

*Typed while listening to my parents watch the Olympics. And the crickets outside.

Let that show

2004-08-19T14:18:00.000-04:00

First, I would like to apologize to Ida, for shouting at them multiple times to hurry up and start their encore last night. I haven't eaten much for more than a week, and things are a bit fuzzy. I'm not even sure where I am half the time. Second, it was very nice to see Aden play again, after a long, long absence. It always pleases me that former Senator Gramm produced such a nice, round-headed boy, who sings indie pop.

In yesterday's and today's adventures...

DO THREE NICE THINGS FOR OTHER PEOPLE, suggested by a very nice individual who has requested anonymity.

#1: I was staring at the menu at Uncle Louie G's, trying to decide if some of the new icie flavors would be good or not, when a little boy, about 8 or 9, walked up and ordered a scoop of ice cream. Uncle Louie can be misleadingly expensive, especially when you're a kid. He was a dollar short. He just stood staring at the teenage girl behind the counter with a look that said both, "I'm helpless to change this" and "I REALLY want this ice cream". i had a dollar. hell, i had SEVEN dollars. I stepped up. Smiling at the boy, I put four quarters on the counter. The boy turned to me. "Thank you very, very much," he said, with as much dignity as a British Duke. It was sweet. It made me giggle. "It was my pleasure," I told him. I watched him walk off, scooping up his ice cream in giant spoonfuls. I can't wait to meet my new third graders.

#2: There are little leagues of older people in this neighborhood, who spend hours a day on their stoops or in lawn chairs commiscerating. They're wonderful. One particular groups sits out on chairs talking about their children and grandchildren and if it will or won't rain. If you ask, they're glad to tell you about the old days in the neighborhood, when an apartment on Union street was $75 and the kids played stoop ball and everyone hated the Korean man who worked at one of the delis because he fiddled with the scales and cheated them out of money. They have a little frumpy dog, some mutty blend that probably includes Lhasa Apso. I've never seen that dog move. I wondered if it would like a walk. "I'll take your dog on a walk around the block, if you want" I told the lady. They all stared at me like I had asked them in Arabic. "You know, for a little excercise. I have to run an errand anyway." "That's nice, honey," she said finally. The dog, Albert, didn't even own a leash. "Maybe I should tie a string to his collar, so he won't run away?" I asked. "Oh, he won't run away. He'll just follow you." Which he did, when I called him, for about 20 feet. Then he turned around and looked balefully at his owners and the others in their lawn chairs. "Go on, go on! You'll be ok, give it a try!" they all urged, like parents trying to detach a five year old from their leg on the first day of kindergarten. Albert obeyed. He followed me around the corner and past the pizza place and up to the dry cleaners. And then he stopped. And sat. And wouldn't budge. "Come on Albert, baby, good boy!" I urged, showering him the terms of endearment. "Sweetie Pups, peach pie, dog, let's go." But Sweetie Pups had a different plan in mind. A kid on the corner tried to give him some potato chips to move, but he just moved to eat the chips and then sat down solidly again. Passers by smirked. Finally, I picked him up. He cuddled right in and licked my chin. It was a victory lick. "Damn dog", I muttered and staggered back to his corner, trying to avoid his breath. Around the corner from his street, I set him down. "No messing around now Albert, LET'S GO." The little cheater trotted right up to the senior league and jumped up on his owner's lap. "How was his walk," she crowed. "Good," I said. "It was good."

#3 This one hasn't happened yet. Tonight, I want to take Mr. Key out to dinner. Mr. Key, so-named because he was first spotted peeing on a truck in front of Key Food, is a familiar and elderly neighborhood sight. I'm not sure where he lives. He's outside in the neighborhood, all day, every day, and he always very sweetly says hello. If he'll let me, I'm going to let him choose the restaurant and treat him. If it works out, update to follow tomorrow.

*These adventures typed while listening to Donovan purr and a Joanna Newsom album.

Hello Hello Hi

2004-08-13T17:15:00.000-04:00

This is something I tried on my recent driving tour of the south, which featured a whole lot of minor league baseball, cheap beer, good barbecue, great friends, tons of excellent music (especially Versus and The Positions), weird motels and what was probably the last time I will ever be expected to sing to the confederate flag (God Bless Kodak, Tennessee).

GREET STRANGERS IN REALLY WEIRD WAYS. Submitted by Jill, in San Francisco.
Jill, I have absolutely no idea who you are, but I really like your idea.

#1: In Kodak, TN

me: Yippee tie yie yo! Could I get a nachos, please?
teenage beverage girl: Whuuuut?
me: Can I get some nachos?
teenager: Uh, Ok.

#2: In Nashville, TN

me: Who put the bomp in the bomp shoo bomp shoo bomp? Would you like my extra coupon for a hot dog?
elderly gentleman: (Baffled silence)
me: I ordered these family pack tickets that come with free hot dog coupons, but well, I'm from Wisconsin originally, and I'm getting a bratwurst.
elderly gentleman: You want to give me your coupon?
me: Yep!
elderly gentleman: What was all that you said before?
me: bomp shoo bomp?
elderly gentleman: Yes. When you were going on like that.
me: That's how we say hello in New York.
elderly gentleman: I never did understand how they do things in New York!

#3: Back in Brooklyn

me: Cawwww! Cawwwww!
teenage boy: What the *&;#$% ?

If you have gum, you have friends

2004-08-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

Two sunny summer adventures about giving and getting.

#1: Follow someone around Manhattan. But don't tell let them know you're following them. Submitted by a fellow Metro Napper (see previous post).

Where we left off, I had just had an exhausting Metro Nap, a spicy Korean lunch, and was headed to the East Village. When I got to E. 7th Street, I picked out Morose Guy with a Jean Jacket and proceeded towander behind him down 7th toward the park. But almost immediately, he turned around and asked if I had a cigarette. Cover blown! No cigarettes, but I offered him a sprinkle of my freshly purchased Nerds candy (he requested grape). As he tossed them into his mouth one by one, he said, "I forgot how good this shit is!" I found a wall to lean on casually as I cased out other people to follow. Classy Older Woman was walking on Avenue A; I gave her 15 feet and then started walking behind her. Classy Older Woman walked quickly, for three or four blocks, then reached her car and started to get into it. For a thrilling moment, I considered hailing a cab, shouting, "follow that car!" and trailing her to wherever she was going next. But instead I stood in the street watching her drive away.
Next, I followed Enormous Bearded Gentleman into Odessa, which was a huge cheat; I was waiting for someone to go into Odessa so I could get a milkshake there. EBG joined a friend in a booth and I struck up a conversation about the importance of sweating with a man waiting for takeout food. I told him about my summer and asked if he had any suggestions of things to do. He said, "What you need to do, OK, is, I'm going to call my aunt, she lives right here in the neighborhood, and see if she needs help with anything." He borrowed my cellphone and stepped outside to make the call. He was gone for such a long time that I started to think I had just idioted myself out of my cellphone. But he came back. The aunt wanted me to come over. She lived only a few blocks away, between Avenues B and C. I rang her buzzer and she padded out in pink slippers and what my grandmother calls a housedress. When she saw me she crinkled up her eyes in a huge smile and started waving frantically before she'd even opened the door. "Hello! Hello! There you are!" she exclaimed. She had an accent (maybe Polish?). We started a slow descent upstairs. She stopped on one landing for a moment to exclaim, "your hair is very black!" Her apartment was small and clean and dim and though I didn't ask her, I had the feeling she'd lived there for decades. She brought me into the kitchen and pointed up to a lightbulb. "You can do that?" she asked. I said I could, no problem. I brought a chair over to the spot and she handed me an ancient lightbulb. I replaced the old bulb and when she flipped on the switch, only the dimmest light came out. "You need a brighter bulb!" I told her. She was unclear about what I meant. At least I think she was. "I'll be right back!" I promised her. That she understood. I ran out to a deli and bought a two pack of 100 watt bulbs. I'd propped the door open with a phonebook so she didn't have to walk down and up the stairs again. When I knocked, she took a minute to come to the door, and when she saw me she said, "Hello!" three more times. I climbed back up on the chair to change the bulb to a brighter one. She flipped the switch and 100 watts poured down on her. "Aaaaaaaaah! No, no, please!" she barked, squinting up at the light. Too much light. I put the dim bulb back in. There wasn't anything else that seemed to need doing in the apartment, though I did wash the two pans that were in the sink. Afterwards, she gave me a mug of milk. As I was leaving, she handed me a little paper bag and squeezed my hands. "Take it! Take it! I don't need!" she said. Which is how I ended up with three ancient maxi-pads.

#2: Leave a giant tip for someone. Submitted by Andrea, Park Slope resident and mother of Nicholas, 6 months old.

Stopping at a little sandwich place on third Avenue to get a drink, the staff was so sweet and pleasant that I decided this was the moment for the giant tip. I bought a fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and stuffed $14 into the tip cup. I wasn't sure if they had even seen me do it. I hoped they hadn't, in a way. There was an unexpected feeling of shame when I put it in, an almost patronizing feeling. They didn't know, after all, that $14 is a lot to me. I sat down inside to read the paper and drink my grapefruit juice. 20 minutes later, I realized two of them were standing next to the table, smiling down at me. "A nice thing for a nice thing" one of them said. Which is how I ended up with the beautiful little bouquet of wildflowers that's in the kitchen.

thrill of the chase

2004-07-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

In Tuesday's adventures...

#1: TAKE A NAP AT METRONAPS. Submitted by four different people, including a hungover guy sitting in front of a Park Slope coffee shop.

Metronaps is a new place in the Emprie State building. It features special napping pods in which you take a 20 minute nap in the middle of your workday and leave, they claim, feeling refreshed and revived. As a New Yorker who often finds herself wanting to take a mid-day nap while out in the city, but is hesitant to camp out on a bench (the one time I did try that, on a Broadway median strip bench, a cop shook me awake with the inexplicable words, "Whyncha wake up, honey, and go play some tennis". I arrived for my appointment with great expectations. Everything about the place, as you'd imagine, is quiet. The attendant said, "Welcome to Metronaps" in a voice that was barely audible. The room was very dark and full of sleeping pods that look 2001-ish and also like the egg chair on the cover of that Luna album. The attendant explained that a light would come on when my nap was over, and that the chair would vibrate. He tucked me in with a fleecey blanket. Being tucked in by someone you don't know at all is a funny, sweet feeling. And so my nap began. I had to control the desire to whisper toward the socked feet napping in the pod next to mine the eternal sleepover question: "Are you asleep yet?" I put on the headphones, which were playing Nature Sounds New Age music, and listened as loons and trickling water were tortured by Casio keyboards and harps. I was so excited to be lying in a white pod in a dark room that I couldn't come close to sleeping at all, until the last two minutes or so, when I started to get sleepy and closed my eyes. The lights in my pod came on then, and I staggered over to the "refreshment station" to splash some lemon spritzer on my face, about a hundred times more tired than I had been when I came in. It took some really spicy Korean food for lunch, around the corner from the Empire State, to wake me up again.

#2: FOLLOW SOMEONE AROUND MANHATTAN. BUT DON'T LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE FOLLOWING THEM.
Submitted by Alex, napper in the pod next to mine.

This was by far the craziest and funnest summer adventure so far. I'm not going to start writing about it now, though, because I need to pack. I leave tomorrow for a driving vacation around the south. But be assured, I'm bringing the summer list along and my adventures will continue south of the Mason-Dixon. Hopefully I can update along the way; if not, I'll have a lot to write about when I get back.

But what, I don't know, makes a girl

2004-07-22T17:33:00.000-04:00

In Wednesday's adventures...

#1: BUY SOMEONE A LEMONADE. Submitted by a dry cleaner in the East Village.

After one watermelon and one lemonade, I've come to the conclusion that giving free things to New Yorkers is one of the hardest things in the world. But for meeting interesting people, it's pure gold.

(Person 1, an old lady on 8th street, east village)
Me: Would you like a lemonade?
Spinster: No! I would not! I don't know you from Adam!

(Person 2, skinny hipster, 11th street)
Me: I'd like to get you a lemonade.
Him: Excuse me?
Me: Would you like a lemonade?
Him: Are you flirting with me?
Me: No!
Him: Good, because I like boys.
Me: So...do you want a lemonade?
Him: It burns my throat. But thank you.

(Person 3, teenage boy with thin, mousy moustache, St. Marks)
Me: Would you like a lemonade?
Him: A lemonade? Are you gonna make me join your church or somethin'?
Me: No, I just want to get you a lemonade. You look thirsty.
Him: Um...OK.
Me: OK, wait here.
(rushing to return from deli)
One refreshing Snapple lemonade. And I got you some M&Ms too.
Him: Cool! Ah, I don't have anything to give you!
Me: (laughing) That's OK!
Him: I'll probably see you around here again sometime, and I'll buy you, like, a taco or something.

#2: GO TO THE PARK AND SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYIN'. Submitted by an elderly gentleman, nicknamed Mr. Key, (as in Key Food grocery store) on 5th Avenue, Brooklyn.

As I was wandering around the area anyway, I went to Union Square Park to see what the people are talking about. There was a certain ominous feeling in the air, due mostly to a very loud, heated arguement about democracy occuring behind me. What about democracy was being argued was unclear. Only snatches of the conversation would come through, very loudly, including "I'M TALKING ABOUT _DEMOCRACY_!", "THAT'S NOT DEMOCRACY! YOU ARE CRAAAAAAAZY!" and "YOU'RE ONLY ALIVE BECAUSE OF DEMOCRACY!" This arguement impacted greatly on what the other people in the park were saying. Many cell phone conversations went something like this:

Girl: Yeah, so that's my right, right? I can ask him where he was and who he's with. Yeah. I KNOW! Uh-huh. Oh damn, the people behind me are fighting! Ha ha ha! They're so loud! They're like, screaming and turning purple!

In the section of benches I was sitting in, reading, with about 10 other people, also reading, there was a feeling of danger in the air. One guy turned to me and said, "Democracy has never been so loud!"

But for others, the fight was just background noise, if they even noticed at all. A man sitting across the path from me was absorbed in his book, and in eating a giant slice of pizza with the other hand. Every few minutes he would slap the book on his knee, roll his eyes and say something sarcastic, like "Yeah, RIGHT." Despite repeated attempts, including pretending to tie my shoes and drop my book, I couldn't get a good look at exactly what book he was so sarcastic about.

And for some, the park was just a chance to enjoy summer. A girl who looked about six, walking by with a man who was likely her father said, "I got a Mr. Softee cone today, I had a playdate and outside, it's hot. I'm so happy I could jump over a skyscraper."

Francie

2004-07-21T23:51:00.000-04:00

Tuesday's Adventure...

CALL ME, submitted by Francie Ellis, 9 year old future fourth grader. Who kindly provided me with at least 10 copies of her phone number so that I could complete this request.

(sound of phone being dropped, squealing, boy yelling)
francie: hello?
me: hey francie, it's Ms. Sarah!
Francie: Ms. Sarah, Ms. Sarah! Where have you been my whole life?
me: Francie, I've been loving summer. Do you love the summer?
Francie: Yeah. We went to the beach last weekend.
Me: Nice.
Francie: Guess what my new obsession is.
Me: Gray wolves.
Francie: MS. SARAH, I haven't been obsessed with wolves for a long time (editor's note: she was still talking about them when school ended in June!)! I really like weasels now. Do you want to be in the weasel fan club?
Me: Sure.
Francie: Alright, I'll make you an ID card. What color weasel do you want on your card?
Me: What do you recommend?
Francie: Ummm...I think I'll give you a...white one.
Me: Great.
Francie: Well, my brother is still driving me CRAZY.
Me: Just remember what I told you about having no reaction. That works a lot.
Francie: Yeah, but not ALL the time.
Me: Hopefully, you know, Jonah will grow up and mature a little in the next couple years. He's only 7.
Francie: I want to sell him for about 50 cents! No, 10 cents!
Me: My little brother turned out to be great. I think yours will too.
Francie: Did you see _Two brothers_?
Me: Nope.
Francie: Did you see Spiderman 2?
Me: Yeah, I liked it!
Francie: Me too! OK...pick a color.
Me: Um, yellow.
Francie: OK, on the chart I made, that means your husband is going to be a cook. And you're going to die of cancer!
Me: Oh...ok!
Francie: And you're going to have 3 children. Do you like apple pie?
Me: I do.
Francie: My mom and I made an apple pie together. It was really good.
Me: Mmmmmmm.

Good morning, Starshine

2004-07-16T13:26:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's Adventures:

#1: EAT MUFFINS FROM BLUE SKY BAKERY. Submitted by Adrian Tomine, Optic Nerve Comics,
part-time Brooklyn resident, and part-time O'Connors drinker.

Blue Sky bakery is on 5th Avenue in Park Slope. It looks a little like an old-timey ice cream parlor. I ate a muffin for Adrian, and then I ate most of the other things they had too. I staggered out swollen and sleepy. My brother once complained, after I had eaten the last brownie in the pan, "you're a pastry whore."

#2: On the way to the bakery, I fulfilled the following submission: WALK AROUND THE BLOCK WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON BACKWARDS (submitted by David Greenberger).

I was wearing a t-shirt and running shorts, not really a backwards stand-out. When the very nice lady at the bakery asked what I wanted, she followed it by saying, with sweet concern, "Oh! Your shirt is on backwards!" I said, "Yes, so are my shorts!". She didn't know what to say to that. It occurred to me as I strolled toward the Tea Lounge, that on a street where I recently saw a man wearing a garbage bag and a pink vinyl shirt, backwards clothes will be overlooked. So I told the guy at one of the delis, as i bought some water, "My clothes are on backwards." He said, "backwards, forwards, you gotta do what you want to."

The rest of yesterday's adventures arose spontaneously, suggested by my friend Sean Howe, and by me.

#3: (at Prospect Park) "OK, let's play that we have to stay in the shade all the time."

Even at a park, this was not especially easy. An auxillary rule had to be made that we could take three large steps to get to the next patch of shade. I couldn't stop laughing. When we reached a point where there was no shade down the path to run to, I pretended to die a horrific blistering death in the sun. As we walked toward the nethermead, I told Sean that I had been the Wisconsin state champion tree identifier in junior high. And that I had worn my gold medal to SCHOOL the next day, thinking that everyone would admire me. Sean said, "I was a dork in junior high, but I wasn't STUPID!" The walk became a preoccupied one. Sean was quiet because he was worried about moderating a discussion last night for a panel of authors that wrote essays for his book. I was preoccupied thinking about where I would live if I was homeless (Prospect Park, in the summer) and then preoccupied by creating ice cream recipes in my mind (how can I incorporate gingersnaps without them getting soggy?). We walked on in silence until we decided...

#4: "LET'S GO ON THE PADDLEBOATS!"

And we will, maybe next week. But it was getting late, and it was hot. So then...

#5: "Let's eat icies!"
Eating icies is the best thing about many summer days. When I was a kid, we were allowed to eat one popsicle every day, on the back patio. We loved banana, rootbeer and blue raspberry. In the hot sun, they would drip sticky juice onto our knees. In most of my earliest memories of my brother, he has popsicle blue lips and blue teeth. If you were really unlucky, a chunk of the popsicle would break off and land on the bricks, where it would be mobbed by ants. Which wasn't so bad because ants are interesting. Now it's years later, and flavored ice is still a huge part of my summer. Uncle Louie G's stands are scattered around Brooklyn, including at the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium. Uncle Louie G is a quiet, kind man. He sits on a bench outside the Union Street stand a lot of the time, and his yellow hummer with the license plate ICES is always parked nearby. There are more than thirty flavors at Uncle Louie G's. The peach has real peach chunks in it. It tastes like summer.

Louie G made some good summer suggestions a few weeks ago, which will appear in future updates.

*These adventures typed while listening to The Doo Wop Box Set, Volume 1 (with thanks to Matt Raphael).

Everything is everything

2004-07-15T10:46:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's agenda:
HAVE CONVERSATIONS WITH THREE STRANGERS. Submitted by a guy sitting on a stoop at 3 a.m. on my walk home from the Union St. R train station.

#1: 6 year old I went ice-skating with yesterday (part of a camp class from Berkeley Carroll).

kid: Help me, lady!
me: Here, hold my hand!
kid: (frustrated) I can't even do this!
me: You're getting better and better. Keep trying.
kid: My legs won't stand!
me: Here, I'm going to hold you up.
both: AAAAAAAAAAGH!
kid: We fell on our butts!
me: Ha ha ha!

#2: Guy on a bench in front of Ozzie's coffee.

guy: It's gonna storm tonight.
me: Yeah.
guy: I can't find my umbrella. I think I left it at my sister's house.
me: I think I left mine at a movie.
guy: Movies are so expensive now.
me: Yeah.

I always fall for that one...

2004-07-12T19:00:00.000-04:00

Today's agenda:

#1: Buy a pack of tic-tacs in every borough.
Submitted by Christian Scanniello, web designer, Washington D.C..

#2: Eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Submitted by Caterina Megan, Brooklyn 9 year old, who would like you to know that she made up her own pseudonym and that it might one day be the name of her future daughter. Who will be born when she is 30.

Staten Island gets taken care of, right off the bat. I like Staten Island, but it's not easy to get around without the car. I don't even leave the ferry station. The first pack of tic-tacs (cinnamon) are from the newstand right there. I'm on the next ferry back 45 seconds later. Everyone on board looks exhausted.

Then it's up to Jackson Heights for kulfi, delicious Indian ice cream. I wander around looking in at the wedding shops with fancy saris, jewelry shops and Pakistani restaurants. A variety store has a handwritten sign in the window "BUY A PRESENT FOR YOUR MOMMYDADDY". I find a newstand with kulfi, and buy a cardamom flavored bar with almonds (breakfast). It's excellent. So good, in fact, that I buy a pistachio one on the way back to the subway. The second bar is Rajbhog brand ("taste of the east") and when the kulfi is gone, the stick underneath has a 718 phone number printed on it. I buy a pack of orange tic-tacs from a Pakistani sweetshop, and also some unidentifiable candy, from a refrigerated case full of neat little rows of squares. The candy was really good: spicy and sweet and chewy. The man behind the counter was SO eager for me to like it, it seemed like my whole reaction to tasting it would either validate or dismiss Pakistan. I told him I loved it and said, "If I ever go to Pakistan, I'll get some more." He said, "No. Do not go to Pakistan. Just come back to my store."

After Queens, I head over and up to 231st street, for some Bronx tic-tacs (green) and some gelato (lunch). I gave the green tic-tacs to a homeless guy on the subway platform.

Back to Manhattan. I buy white tic-tacs at K-Mart. When we were small, my little brother and I played games in which white tic-tacs had medicinal or magical properties, and sometimes both. I distinctly remember, when he was about 5 and I was about 10, "prescribing" him a few white tic-tacs and him asking, "So I can fly now?" and me saying, "Yes. And also your strep throat is cured.". Ice cream dinner is at Cones, on Bleeker. I get almond cream and dark chocolate. Dag. Their ice cream is so good. I'm so absorbed in eating it that I don't notice the rain has washed a lot of it onto my jacket. A little girl walking by with her mother points at me, a grown-up living the third grade fantasy of eating as much ice cream as you want all day long, and wearing a lot of it too, and says, "she made a mess".

Back in Brooklyn, I buy the last pack of tic-tacs at a deli on my street. Pulling out the ice cream stick from my first stop, I dial the number for Rajbhog. A woman answers. I say, "Your kulfi is really good. It's delicious." There's a silence and then she says, quietly, "thank you," and hangs up.

Watermelon killer, car counter

2004-07-09T15:50:00.000-04:00

Today's agenda:

1.) COUNT ALL THE RED CARS THAT GO BY IN HALF AN HOUR, submitted by David Greenberger, of Duplex Planet.

2.) PASS OUT FREE WATERMELON TO PEOPLE WALKING BY, submitted by Todd, the only other person in the theater when I saw _Napoleon Dynamite_.

Originally, I planned on doing both at the same time, but the watermelon is hard to manage, even before it's cut up, so I can that idea. I buy the watermelon on the way to lunch at Tom's restaurant in Prospect Heights. I sit it across from me at the table, which the waiters think is hilarious. I get apple pancakes. The waiter wants to know what the watermelon wants. He brings a glass of water for it. "Water for a watermelon!," he jokes, and we both laugh like fools. I planned horribly for the watermelon. I didn't bring anything to cut it with and nothing to serve it on. I finagle a plastic knife from a guy at a bodega, but I have to buy some lemonheads to get it. I get the watermelon over to a good corner on Underhill near two public schools with playgrounds, so I think people will come by. Sure enough some kids come over to see what I'm doing. I offer them some watermelon. One of them says, "we got to ask". They run off. In a couple minutes I see them coming around the corner with two women. The women don't look especially happy. At that moment, I remember that there was some kind of bacterial food poisoning outbreak at a school in the midwest that was traced back to unwashed watermelon. I didn't wash my watermelon. In fact, I somehow got cinnamon butter on it at Tom's. I start to sweat. I can see the cover of the Post: "WATERMELON KILLER TARGETED CHILDREN". Or "BROOKLYN TEACHER GETS AN 'A' IN MURDER". And then the kids' Moms are there. "What are you doing?", one of them asks. She's not angry, but she's far from happy. "Do you live around here?" I stammer that I live close to there. I tell them that I'm on my way home from Tom's, which seems to put them at ease a bit, since everyone in the neighborhood knows and loves Gus. Then, ridiculously, I add, "Watermelon really has a lot of water in it". One of the moms says, "Hunh." It's clear they don't want their kids eating my watermelon. The little girl, about four, has been winding herself around her legs while I talk. She kisses my knee. The moms don't tell her to stop; in fact, they do seem even more at ease. Kids have a good sense of who to trust. We talk about schools, teachers, watermelon, sunburns, garbage collection, car alarms and anxious children. The kids and I talk about soda, the summer, and I tell them a little bit about what it was like to be a kid in Wisconsin. One of the boys in the group of kids asks if I want to ride his bike. I look at the Moms. The laugh, and the one that I assume is the mom of that kid says, "Honey, if you can fit on it, you can ride it." I can't fit on it. Well, I can, but it creaks in an about-to-fall-apart way and my knees jut way up into the air when I peddle, like a clown bike. But it's SO fun. I leave the kids listening to my ipod and ride down to the next block and back. There's something about riding a bike when you're a kid that you can never quite get back again as a grownup, but this is so close. When I get back, one of the moms has bought three coronas in the bodega. She holds one out to me. "Could we get in trouble for just drinking these out on the sidewalk?" I want to know. They laugh at me, "No one is gonna care!". I try to pay them for the beer, but they won't let me.

I try to give some watermelon to squirrels, but they ignore it. So I eat a huge piece by myself and throw the rest away. My fingers keep sticking to my ipod on the way home.

I walk back over to Park Slope to count red cars, on President Street. A woman comes out on her stoop to ask if I'm OK. I tell her I'm counting red cars and she says, "They say people that drive red cars tend to speed" and goes back inside her house. It's a quiet block. In 30 minutes, only six red cars go by. I wave at each one of them.