Friday, 30 April 2004

I like it when:

... restaurants and bars open their doors and windows impossibly wide, like they're giving birth to springtime.

... Union Square fills with people simultaneously doing different things—singing, yelling about the president, riding skateboards, breakdancing, playing guitars, sitting, eating, and watching. (I was watching, wishing there was a way to consume it, and wanting you, dear reader, to be there too, because words don't often work so well.)

... the pet store beneath my apartment lets the macaws out of their cages and out onto the sidewalk. They look and move like something I would never imagine, had they not already existed. I'm told they're smart, which, for some reason, makes me want to communicate with them. I quietly say hello, they stare at me and bouncily creep across the top of their cage as if they're sneaking away. If I put my hand near their bright blue tails, they bark out a warning—they've communicated. I like them. They make me forget that I was once mad at that pet store.

... I walk within five blocks of my apartment and am immersed in three entirely different cultures. In the first, the children stare at me as if I've got two heads. They stop whatever it is that they're doing, and they clear the sidewalk while I walk past. I can almost feel their eyes burning into me; they aren't at all covert. In the second, the kids don't see me; to them, I am an adult, or perhaps merely an object to be run around. Sometimes they run right into me, step to the side, and keep on going, their eyes focused straight ahead. In the third, there are no kids at all.

... old Puerto Rican men sit across the street from my apartment and play chess. When there's one, there's a pack of them, hovering over the board, laughing and talking, their skin brown and creased around the corners of their eyes. Sun hats and canes.

... there is so much going on that it's impossible to choose. I think it's made me more accepting of not being able to do everything all the time. Sometimes it's clear what activities I should sacrifice; other times, I'm forced to choose like a drunk with a gun.

... the trees on my street fill with tiny white flowers, whose round petals decorate the sidewalks like hole-puncher debris. The first time I noticed them, I wasn't sure if they were trash or part of nature.

... my bike becomes a transportation option, and I don't just use it to get from A to B, but to explore. Sometimes Brooklyn feels endless, as if it took over the rest of the planet with itself, and I just didn't notice because I was already inside of it.

It's a different city in the spring.

Thursday, 29 April 2004

Sometimes I like telling the story about how I wrecked my bike on the bridge, how I was put back together with metal parts, and, hey, you wanna feel the metal? It's here. Sometimes I'm aware that I got really lucky and that I could've gotten hurt much worse; sometimes I remember that my physical therapists once told me that my progress was exceptional.

And sometimes, even though I remind myself that there are people so much worse off than me, I'm frustrated and even pissed off that I can't straighten my arm, that it often hurts considerably (even when I'm barely using it), that I'm embarrassingly weak, and that there are things (I fear) I will never be able to do again.

It really depends.

***



(By the way, this website is three years old today.)

Tuesday, 27 April 2004

Today, instead of going to work, I packed up my laptop, two books, a magazine, and a notebook and headed to downtown Brooklyn to "participate in the delivery of justice." The bus route, the people, that part of town—all of it was relatively unfamiliar, and it woke me up in the way that only new cities (and new experiences) know how to do.

After weaving through the security line and packing myself into the elevator, I located the room where I was going to spend the rest of my day. It was ugly. It had uncharacteristically low ceilings, rows of uniform black chairs facing the front, and a rectangle of windows on the far wall, and was not unlike a classroom. Its 75 (or so) students were in the midst of watching a video when I walked in.

The video held us by the hand and walked us through the history of the U.S. jury system, as well as advertised that system as the very best. Not having studied law, and not knowing a lot about alternative systems, I don't have strong opinions about the subject, but it seems like there must be a better way to come to important conclusions than to call upon twelve random people who very possibly are opinionated, ignorant, unconcerned, tired, racist, or anxious to return to work. Perhaps it's just the word "best" that makes me wary.

The clerk who was in charge of the room sat at a desk at the front. Occasionally he would leave his post—to turn off the video, or, later, change the channel—but mostly he sat there quietly, perking up only to bellow statements that were somehow both friendly and stern.

On one of his trips to the TV, I noticed he was shaped like a balloon, and that he neglected to bend his knees when he walked, almost as if he were on exceptionally short stilts. His graying hair and goatee stood out against his dark skin, and his face was wise and pleasant.

It was clear that he had lots of experience with people who don't follow directions. "...If what I just said applies to you, come tell me now. Don't come tell me later cause I'm not gonna listen to you later." (Something in his voice made his toughness seem a little like an act, however, and, when we eventually left for the day, I heard him say something nice to each person in the room.)

The video was followed by some morning shows that I didn't recognize, a soap opera I didn't recognize, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. (When the first TV commercials began to play, I heard one guy near me complain, "Can you not escape commercials in jury duty? Can you not escape commercials?")

For the most part, the room was quiet. People read, watched TV, ate snacks, and a few mumbled. Every thirty minutes or so, a man would come over the intercom and tell us to ignore the fire alarms, due to some tests they were performing. Every thirty seconds or so, the TV would black out for two seconds and then reappear. Time dripped by in regularly spaced intervals.

I didn't use my voice all day, except to order a sandwich and make one phone call at lunch. One older guy from my room and I held the door for each other a few times, but neither of us spoke to each other. Not many people did. Mostly, I quietly worked on my laptop or read or wrote or (by the end of the day) uncomfortably rested my head on my knees. At lunch, I sat on a wall in the much appreciated warm sun and watched people permeate the cell of downtown.

I was never called to be a juror; I never even got interviewed.

The closest I came to a court room was after lunch, when a bad court TV show popped up on the screen. After Judge Mathis was over and another show had taken its place, a man in the back of the room yelled to the clerk, "Channel 4! C'mon! Judge Brown! Judge Brown! ... I'm tryin' to be a juror!" The clerk conceded but warned it was the last time he was changing the channel. Later, when the TV judge read the verdict, there was a smattering of applause in the room.

The clerk sent us home at 4, apologizing for not keeping us busier, while conversely noting that we'd been lucky and had come on the right day. I was a little disappointed that I didn't do or learn anything, but, based on the elated sounds from the rest of the room, I seemed to be alone.

As I was dismissed, the clerk handed me a sheet of paper to verify that I'd been present. It read: "Thank you for your participation and contribution to the delivery of justice."

Thursday, 22 April 2004

I put up pictures from my day at the Jersey shore. According to Freddy, it's called the "shore" instead of the "beach" due to the regional impact of the fisherman vernacular; since fishermen see the strip of sand between the land and water from the perspective of the water, they see it as the "shore," as opposed to the land dwellers, to whom it's the "beach." Hmm.

Wednesday, 21 April 2004

Somehow I convinced Martin to take the train with me to the Jersey shore for the day on Friday, despite the fact that it was his birthday. Not that there's anything wrong with the Jersey shore, but it meant hanging out with my mom and my grandparents for a few hours. Not that there's anything wrong with my mom and my grandparents, but hanging out with someone else's mother and grandparents is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when considering how to spend your 29th birthday.

The journey from my apartment to Belmar (via Penn Station) took three hours, even though the two are techinically only 40 miles apart (over the river ocean and through the woods). Through the train's big windows, I was reminded that there are large swaths of space that are inhabited only by wildlife and insects and foliage and water, and that the horizon doesn't naturally start hundreds of feet in the air. I wish I left the city more often, because that's a bad thing to forget.

Mom was standing on the platform next to her brother when we arrived. Her face had been replaced with a digital video camera; she smiled and waved from beneath it. My uncle stood there quietly with his hands hidden in his pockets, looking a little like Abraham Lincoln, like he's apt to do.

Mom cooked flounder while I poked around, looking at the items in my grandparents' house that never change. Remembering them doesn't take any effort. For example, in the den, there's a clear house-shaped 3-dimensional frame with pictures of my grandfather and his now-deceased hunting dogs, two paint-by-number dog paintings that my mom made when she was in high school, and, well, more frames, full of kids who haven't been kids in years. No items change places, none of the people in the images age, and nothing gets dusty.

I wandered outside and accidentally met the next door neighbor. I met the neighbors across the street, too, the ones who have a trampoline in their yard, but that was on purpose. The man who gave me permission to jump called his two boys over to watch me do flips. I could still do the gymnastics, but I felt like I was made of lead, and I was panting after only a minute. My bad arm suffered through stubborn back-handsprings, and my entire body was sore for days afterward. It made me wish that I could preserve my younger body the way my grandparents perserve their den.

In the afternoon, Mom, Martin and I walked on the boardwalk and the beach, which is only about a mile from my grandparents'. We convinced my mom to drive us the 10 miles to Asbury Park, so we could see the ghost of an amusement park, which was little more than lots of chipped paint, rusted signs, and caving in buildings. Apparently I'd visited the actual amusement park, when I was three, just before its final decline. I can only recall a single still image of park rides, from the perspective of the beach. Er, the shore.

Both before and since the trip, Martin and I each have slipped up and called our destination "the New Jersey coast," "the New Jersey beach," and so on, and every time, each of us is corrected with a slowly shaking head or a wag of a finger. "You mean shore," we've been chided. However, none of the critics we've encountered can tell us why "shore" is the only acceptable term. Does anyone know?

Tuesday, 20 April 2004

Better late than never: a few pictures from the blackout (August 2003). If you want to see what I wrote about it, you can find that here.

Monday, 19 April 2004

On Wednesday I got an email that said I'd won two $20 tickets to a Grand Master Flash show. So, on Thursday, Z and I headed to the west side, to a club a few blocks away from the unofficial entrance to the High Line.

It was a giant maze of a club, and around every corner was a stoic-looking bouncer wearing a neatly pressed black suit with a black t-shirt poking up through the V. They stood with their backs to the walls, their feet shoulder-width apart and hands clasped together in front of their groins. So uniform, they almost don't have faces.

Ear pieces bloomed out of the left sides of the bouncers' heads; I half-expected to catch a glimpse of an important politician. Instead, I think I saw an important '80s rapper whom I didn't recognize, an assumption based solely on his age and the way that he dressed.

We snaked our way through the neon hallways and, eighteen bouncers later, spilled out into a spacious cube of a room with an island bar in the center. We each choked down a $7 Corona and surveyed our surroundings. The crowd was unusual: clean-cut white girls on a "girls' night out," young black guys sporting afros and baggy clothing, affluent middle-aged couples in cocktail attire, and scantily clad women wearing shirts that—as my dad would say—they were literally "falling out of."

It was hard not to talk about our observations, even though we both knew that we were being judgmental. We were flies; it was as if we were invisible. Other people appeared to be having fun. They were dancing and laughing and drawing looks out of each other. Meanwhile, Z and I were both (we later discovered) taking ourselves apart for analysis, and drawing comparisons. Could I have turned out differently?

My eyes kept drifting up to the video screens, where they were playing Wild Style, a classic hip-hop documentary, and showing a collection of the director's slides, taken in the Bronx two decades ago. The slides were more intriguing than they were beautiful. They made me want to better remember my first trip to New York in 1984. The slides in my head are blurry and are filtered through the mind of a 9-year-old. I wonder what it must've been like to be in the midst of that movement.

When the break dancing started I suggested that we move closer. A circle naturally formed around the people in the center, who took turns contorting their bodies in impossible ways while the music throbbed. It doesn't even look real.

One of the guys wore a motorcycle helmet when spinning on his head. He seemed frustrated with his performance; later I caught him trying to scratch up the top of the helmet, for better traction, I guess. There was a female break dancer, too. She was tiny and lithe and she could flip and fall into splits like a cartoon character, even while wearing pointy high heels. What must it be like to confidently strut into the middle of that circle?

I started using the movie feature on my digital camera to capture the dancers, the people, the lights, the music. It made me feel slightly closer.

It wasn't long before Z told me he was tired of watching other people (and confirmed that no, he wouldn't rather that they be watching him). I agreed. On the way back to Brooklyn, I began to feel my identity pour into me again like a tall drink.

Sunday, 18 April 2004

Wednesday, 14 April 2004

My body is very sleep-confused. Part of the problem is that I (figuratively) wake up around 11 p.m., no matter how little sleep I've gotten the night before, no matter how many times I've promised myself that I WILL GO TO BED EARLY TONIGHT, no matter how mad at myself I am as I sleepily trudge toward the subway each morning.

Naps take too much time, they further delay nighttime sleep, and (for reasons I don't understand) they make me cranky, but sometimes my body doesn't give me much choice but to take one. Yesterday I fell asleep for two hours, and, as a result, I ended up staying up until 4 a.m., which then turned into 5 a.m. because I was lying in bed wide awake, plagued by an internet of thoughts. Tonight I accidentally slept for three-and-a-half hours, which means I am doomed. Right now it's 2:30 a.m., and I feel like I just drank a pot of coffee.

Tuesday, 13 April 2004



A short film that my friend Scott made last summer premiered at an overpriced venue in Tribeca tonight. You can see it (minus the $7 pint) here. (I have a small role in the film, one that mostly involves chewing and nodding.)

Sunday, 11 April 2004

The bartender, who'd stuck her hand out and introduced herself as Fran, had dyed blond hair that was combed into wings on either side of her head, and she wore a white oxford shirt that hugged her generous proportions. She was frank but friendly, and told me she'd spent all of her life in New York, a claim supported by her distinct accent.

She revealed a few details about herself, like that she hates the city-wide smoking ban (she smokes Reds) and that she's proud of the fact that her establishment was included in a recently published guide to New York City dive bars. She seemed to know the other customers by name, and she chatted with them as if she sees them often. She didn't disturb the large woman who was asleep at the bar, whose head was pressed to the wood and sat like a heavy stone just next to a half-finished glass of white wine.

Martin pointed out the little hobo figurine near the cash register; not only did the artist of the figurine provide the little hobo with a bottle of booze, but someone on staff had also propped an airplane bottle against his body. He also noticed an aerosol can that had the words "Bullshit Repellent" stenciled across its metal body.

Scott pointed out the room toward the back that had a sign over the doorway that read, "The Judge's Chamber." He questioned Fran about it and learned that the mafia used to hang out in that room in the '30s and '40s. (After learning that, I stood in the room and tried to strip the walls of the past 70 years—years that had introduced fake wood paneling and thin synthetic carpet—but my imagination wasn't able to fully make the transformation.)

Danielle and I flipped through the pages of the jukebox and played literally all of the songs we thought weren't terrible (about fifteen of them). It was both challenging and refreshing. We played songs by Donna Summer and Tony Basil and Patsy Cline and Toto. We frowned at Scott when he played Phil Collins. We quietly sang along with Olivia Newton-John.

I went looking for Fran after she had disappeared for a several minutes. Instead of Fran, however, I found a woman in a tiny room, standing in front of what looked like a video game, chain-smoking (which I guess was easier to get away with in the back room).

"Get in here!" she said as soon as she saw me. "I'm not havin' much luck, and you're my new good luck charm!"

"Okay, sure." (I didn't bother mentioning that I don't believe in luck.) It was then that I saw the she was playing electronic poker, in which you earn credits rather than money.

I know very little about poker (I'm no gambler), so she told me what buttons to press: Bet. Discard. Draw. I seemed to be having no effect on her luck.

"I don't mean to be rude, orderin' you around and all. My name's Roseanne. What's yours?"

When her bad luck continued, she confessed that the poker machine "loves boobs." She proceeded to press her fully-clothed chest up to the screen of the machine and then stepped away again. "Okay, press the button now."

We won the next two hands.

Scott subsequently rescued me, and we all headed home, Soft Cell playing on the jukebox in our wake.

Thursday, 08 April 2004



I made a website for some friends. It's here, if you're at all curious.

Monday, 05 April 2004

His name is Benny, and he's been breeding pigeons on a Brooklyn rooftop for thirty years. On the day that I visited, a friend of his named Mattingly was keeping him company—sitting on the edge of the roof, calling out to his Doberman, and talking in circles. Mattingly comes to see Benny often, even though he lives in New Jersey and says he's sick of New York.

More than once, Mattingly pointed to the street in Williamsburg where he was raised ("back when it was dangerous") and kept repeating, "You're from North Carolina, and you wanna live HERE?!" We were surrounded by three-dimensional rectangles sprouting out of the ground like colorful concrete flowers, the sky was a pink and blue painting, and the Manhattan skyline glistened just across the river. The timing of his question made me as incredulous as he was. I just nodded.

The path to the roof (from the floor below) was a tall metal ladder and two square openings, the second of which gave way to the view. Mattingly's dog, "Red," had to be hoisted up through the hole with ropes. I really wanted to see the creature descend to the lower level via rope harness, legs stiff and useless, but, at the end of the day, they left him on the roof with the pigeons and with the chewed-in-half Ziploc bag that he trotted around with.

"You're a good dog," Mattingly would say, again and again. "Good for nothin'!" He always said the punchline with vigor, as if he'd just come up with it for the first time. He told us how he was sure Red would turn on him one day, just like his last Doberman did. He showed us the scar on his hand and said he didn't waste a second before putting that dog down. He talked like a faucet, unlike the pigeon keeper, who kept to himself unless asked direct questions.

It's breeding season, I learned. The pigeons sitting in and on the coop were only six weeks old or so, though they looked the same age as all pigeons look. Once they're old enough, Benny will swing a pole with a trash bag attached to the end, scaring them into flying in a beautiful swooping oval around the crown of the building. From the ground on clear a day in Williamsburg, you can see the pigeons of various keepers climbing and diving all around the edge of the sky. They fly together, turning from a black to white unit as they expose their backs then their bellies.

If you scare the pigeons too early, Benny told us, some of them will fly smack into the wall and die. September is when they'll be ready, when all of the pigeon keepers in the area compete with each other and try to steal each other's birds.

The pigeons sat plumply on the coop or had their tails poking up from the feeding trough. They strutted and ran and cooed in an unsynchronized choir. Once, when I stood on a step next to them, they suddenly launched by themselves and drew fluttering crescents in the sky. Standing at their starting point, I could feel them move past me and hear their wings beating, as if I was in the middle of the pack.

To my left, I could hear Mattingly mutter, "Why on Earth you wanna live in New York?!" "Good dog...good for nothin'!"

Sunday, 04 April 2004

Thursday, 01 April 2004

Three weeks ago, in Austin, I registered at SXSW next to Christina Ricci and Adam Goldberg. Last week, Natalie Portman (and her boyfriend?) walked behind me for a couple of blocks, talking in fake French accents and laughing. On Monday, I went to a party/event (for work) at which Robert Redford and Meryl Streep were guests. Today, while I was in a store near my apartment, the woman behind the counter flatly said, "There goes Will Smith," as a large trailer roared past the window.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure Jennifer Connelly glared at me today. She was on the set of Dark Water, a set composed of a block-and-a-half of trucks, lights, and camera equipment that cluttered the street outside of my office. Sarah and I had left the office to pick up some lunch, and we absent-mindedly walked through the middle of the set. (Well, we paused for a second on the sidewalk, just long enough for me to quietly say to Sarah, "Hey look, there's Jennifer Connelly." [I didn't point or gawk or anything.] "Wait, I think she just gave us an evil look. Did she just give us an evil look?")

People were crowded around the edge of the set, all facing the same point, watching. It reminded me of Yellowstone National Park, when spotting a buffalo or a bear. Finding the animal of interest was rarely difficult, because it would almost always be preceded by a throng of erratically parked cars and an audience of people—again, all facing the same direction, gripping their cameras and extending their pointer fingers.

Seeing famous people always makes me feel shockingly regular, and distinctly part of the masses. Which is probably one of the reasons I don't pay much attention to things like People or Access Hollywood.

After we'd gotten food and were on our way back to the office, I gestured toward the set and asked Sarah, "Shall we piss off Jennifer Connelly again or cross the street?" (something I probably won't have the opportunity to say again).

We crossed the street.

<<May 2004 | March 2004>>