I was glad when Junior introduced himself, because I don't know many of my neighbors, and unless I'm asking someone for photo permission, I'm not much of an approacher. It's also been refreshing to have an exchange with one of the guys on the corner that didn't involve a comment about my appearance. Apart from Junior, it's generally that or silence.
He has the bad posture that sometimes comes with being skinny and tall; his head hangs a little too far forward, so that his body forms the letter P. He's always standing within a 20-foot strip of sidewalk; I can count on seeing him when I leave for work in the morning, and again when I return home in the evening. He is a fixture, as sure as the spraying fire hydrants or the Latin music blaring from crackling car speakers.
Junior helped open a small unpromising ice cream store on my block about a month ago, which stands exactly in the center of his 20-foot domain. I think he did some of the carpentry work inside, and he's been doing his share of marketing (to me, at least). "You gotta come have some ice cream when the store opens," he made me promise (repeatedly) back in April, and May.
Recently he stopped trying to convince me, and we no longer put effort in our conversations. Hi Junior. Hi Lisa. I almost want to avoid him to save us the embarrassment. Or I guess I could eat some ice cream.
The males were dressed in kilts, and the majority of them had accents that curled up at the ends like Christmas ribbon. The priest seemed bashful when I turned the camera on him, but later he asked whether I had any photos of him wearing his robe, and could he have a copy. The little boys, one of whom was dotted with stale chicken pox, brightened when they saw me focused on them, and the staff shrugged and smiled when I turned in their direction. People went out of their way to be friendly to me, sometimes asking questions about my camera, mentioning how tired I must be, or suggesting that I eat something, have a drink, relax.
The day started in a hotel room, where the bride and her sisters got ready while I documented their progress. Later, at the church, I crept around the sides of the sanctuary dressed like a burglar, and tried to take as many photos as possible without being noticed. Also at the church: I accidentally dipped a few strands of my hair in holy water. I was using an innocent-looking post as a makeshift tripod, and when I tilted my head down to look through the viewfinder, my hair soaked up a gulp of the blessed liquid. (As soon as my hair got heavy enough for me to notice, I bolted upright, looked around for witnesses, and waited to get struck by lightning.)
The bride and groom took a yellow cab to the reception. I sat next to the driver and positioned my camera at the edge of the partition window, reluctantly intruding in the newlyweds' sole moment 'alone' together. When they eventually climbed out of the cab decked out in wedding attire, random pedestrians gathered around them and began to applaud and whistle.
Toward the end of the reception, I could feel the muscles in my right hand beginning to cramp, but I had no idea what was in store for me today. Somehow, every single muscle in my body has turned against me, making it hard to even sit, or lie down, or think. Who knew, that taking photos for 8 hours was more of a workout than, say, actual exercise? It doesn't make any sense to me.
David's fight started right after I arrived, and so I didn't have a sufficient amount of time to become jaded. (I'd kind of hoped that I would first get to watch two strangers kick each other in the head for a while, at least long enough to raise my threshold for other people's pain.) When David's opponent leapt on him and started boxing him in the ears, I thought, "Don't do that! That's my nice friend David," like I was David's mother, or like I'd expected kickboxing to be all hugs and friendly pats on the back.
It didn't take very long before the two people in the ring became cartoons, and the violence seemed as inconsequential as an episode of Itchy and Scratchy. It didn't even look like it hurt all that much, because no one seemed to react the way you'd expect them to when getting knee'd in the stomach; they just kept stubbornly going, bouncing back like inflatable punching bags.
David's opponent spent all of his energy in the first round and sort of wandered around the ring in the second and third, while David got even. In the end, they'd pummeled each other equal amounts, which seemed pretty fair. I kind of wanted all of the subsequent opponents to work out a similar arrangement, so that fighting partners had exactly the same number of bruises and undereye gashes: pain twins, who would leave the ring as best friends. (Or, failing that, I would've been okay with a Ralph Macchio moment in its place.)
I didn't know any of the other fighters, but I always chose someone to pull for, which I based on scientific criteria like the name of the guy's gym, the color of his shorts, and whether he seemed likely to brag. And since I ultimately sided with whoever was getting his ass kicked, I was disappointed with the outcome of pretty much every fight. In conclusion, I think I would make an excellent referee.
Hey, I posted some photos from my trip to Europe, the first set of three. Go look.
My parents visit me each summer. They drive from North Carolina to the Jersey shore (where my grandparents live), and then they travel by train to Penn Station. From there, they take the subway and meet me at my office, and then the three of us divide their bags and head to Brooklyn. That part never changes. What else doesn't change: my father insists on sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, my mom inevitably offers to make everyone sandwiches, and whenever we end up at my aparment for a brief break from the city, my parents sit by my modest metal fan and pant, their bare feet propped on stools.
I feel sort of guilty for making them run to catch the subway and bus so often. I somehow kept forgetting that I had suburban 60- and 58-year-olds tagging along, and that it's asking a lot, to suggest that they regularly sprint and throw their bodies between closing subway doors, especially while they're supposed to be on vacation. The fact that I'm just realizing it now, two days after they're gone, says something about what good sports they are.
We did a few structured things (dinner, brunch, a museum, a comedy show), but mostly we ended up talking, and hanging out with people I like, in places that—now that I think about it—are too hip to serve regular condiments or have any teas that don't involve at least three types of organic berries. That part was kind of an accident, but we made up for it, by eating some lard at Coney Island, and by watching a man insert a screwdriver all the way into his left nostril, just for us.
The graphic design class I'm taking is fun, so far. It reminds me a little of kindergarten. Yesterday we were told to make something out of basic shapes, by moving them around in Illustrator. Fernando make a clown face (it was originally meant to be a dog, but it didn't work out), Kate made a flower in a vase, and I made a robot with a speech bubble. The robot was obvious, but I preemptively explained the speech bubble part, because it was composed of a pitiful, single black triangle. It actually looked more like an arrow pointing at my robot's head: There it is! There's my robot.
On Tuesday, the first day of class, there were only four of us, and no professor. While we waited, we introduced ourselves, explained why we were there, and talked about school and work. At one point, two of us left the classroom (separately) on reconnaissance missions, but neither returned with an instructor. Should we go back to work? Ferdinand wondered out loud. How long should we wait?
I pictured a scenario in which we used the time constructively, to teach each other things we happen to know a lot about, like maybe Italian, or juggling, or karate. I'm not sure what I would've taught, but it didn't matter, because I had no intention of letting that idea leave my brain. Instead, when we ran out of things to say, we turned toward our monitors and opened browsers.
At 30 minutes, we learned that our entire course had been canceled. At an hour, three of us were in the office of the head of the department, offering a friendly complaint. And less than one hour after that, the course was (miraculously) reinstated.
(Brooklyn, 5/13/05)
While the cab that would take me to the airport was waiting outside, I was on the floor, with my ear pressed to the wood, shining a weak flashlight into corners and beneath furniture. It smelled like something had died in my apartment, and it was important that I find it before I left for Germany. I walked from room to room, deeply inhaling something terrible, trying to pinpoint its location. Eventually I had to give up, or risk missing my flight or making my cab driver vanish.
I haven't had a mouse in my apartment since Jane died, perhaps because I no longer keep a bowl of food on the kitchen floor. But only a day before, I'd thrown out a sack of garbage (out back, where the trash for my building is collected), and just as the bag landed on the ground, I heard a loud, offended squeak, like I'd hit a mouse. It was a confusing moment, as I didn't know whether to cringe, nervously laugh, or apologize. "I'm sorry!" I whispered, and ran away. I felt sure that this was the very rodent that had found its way to my apartment to die.
I thought about the decaying mouse while I was in Europe, and I dreaded the moment that I'd eventually have to open the door to my apartment. (I considered never going back at all, and just finding a nice, new corpse-free home.) I imagined that in my absence, my neighbors would call to complain about the smell, and a forensic team would investigate my place to make sure it wasn't the tenant who'd died. When I returned, however, not only was there no yellow caution tape decorating my door (disappointing), the place smelled like petunias and doughnuts (awesome).
(Krakow, 5/19/05)
Mike did most of the talking. Whenever his facts got sloppy, Ewa corrected him. "It was six months ago, Mike, not a year." "Was it?" he'd ask, before correcting himself and continuing his story. He told us about his movie collection, (slowly) learning Polish, and his move from Toronto to Dublin to Krakow, in his strange mish-mashed accent. Ewa was from a small town in western Poland, but she sounded almost British.
[Whenever I meet someone because of a random series of events, or due to very specific timing, I'm almost nervous for the past: what if I wouldn't have gone to X exactly at X o'clock? I replay the events in my head as if doing that will glue them in place.]
They seemed excited to show us around, and to introduce us to things we wouldn't have discovered on our own, such as the salty brown cheese that looked like it was made out of wood. Mike carved off flakes of it for us, by drawing a pocketknife toward his thumb. At the time, we were in the middle of a smoky dance club, and were probably about to dance to A-Ha, or Guns'n'Roses, or Nena. It was my favorite night of the whole trip, I think.
