Tuesday, 30 March 2004

 

 

Sunday, 28 March 2004

Doug once tried to throw away a flower that looked reasonably healthy to me, so I asked him to give it to me instead. It was—I now know—a lily, which reminds me a little of a funeral home. It's not really that I wanted the flower; rather, intercepting it made me feel like I was rescuing the thing, delaying its imminent death in the pungent compost bin.

I kept it on my desk until it fell apart, dropping bombs of leaves and stamens next to my keyboard. I'd actually forgotten about it sitting there, until someone pointed out the sad dead stem poking up through the vase.

On Friday, he had more of them, this time a whole batch, and he was marching them to their grave. To me, they looked very much alive, if a little crinkled and browned at the edges. As he passed by me, he asked, "Are these dead enough to throw away?"

"Just put them on my desk instead," I answered.

"Oookay."

Within ten minutes, Emily stopped by my desk to comment on the bouquet. Not knowing that they were part of a rescue operation, she said, "Lisa, I know you like keeping flowers a long time, but maybe it's time you let these go."

"But I just got them," I protested.

She reconsidered. "Well, I guess the lilies still look okay."

"Um...which ones are the lilies?"

It was the first I'd actually looked at the flowers, and not merely assessed their place on the death scale. Before leaving for the weekend, I optimistically gave them a shot of fresh water.



A helmet! When I accepted a ride home from Bryan, I'd forgotten that it would be on his new motorcycle, until he handed me the sparkly orange armor for me to slip over my head. We live in the same neighborhood, so the ride to my place was quick. But to my relief, we didn't stop when we reached my apartment, but instead sped past. "Oops! There's your apartment!" he said, and then proceeded to drive me all around Williamsburg before finally dropping me off. It was late and there was no one out whatsoever, which made me feel like I was zipping through a quiet graveyard, unusually mortal and alive. I made him promise another ride.

Saturday, 27 March 2004

Wednesday, 24 March 2004

Matt said he found the bike in the trash and had had to rebuild it; he gave me a lesson on the quirky gears before handing it over to me to borrow. The convention center was a hilly 20- to 25-minute ride away, the sky was white and damp, and the air was chilly, but the hills and my thighs kept me warm. It was the first I'd had to rely heavily on brakes since that day in September, the day when I squeezed the metal bars like tough lemons and was catapulted through the air.

As I coasted down hills on Matt's bike, vibrated over a railroad track, and paused at traffic lights, I imagined that I was about to do it again, that I was about to go over. My hands were poised on the lords of the tires—the metal bars that control how fast or slow the tires rotate—and suddenly I didn't trust my own body anymore; it was as if my hands belonged to someone else entirely—a malicious person, even. I could feel my nerves twitch with a hint desire welling up in them, wanting to take the power they'd been given. The formulated sentence, "don't do it" recycled itself in my head, a command directed specifically at my rebellious hands.

That's what I was thinking when I saw her. I'd just pedaled up a hill and was gliding through an intersection when she walked out in the street to meet me.

"Do you like hats?" she barked. She was wearing a long tan-colored wig and she smiled at me seductively, exposing two gold teeth. In her hands, she cradled a black felt hat that resembled the one worn by Indiana Jones.

"It's worth a hundred dollars, but I'm only asking for four." She didn't seem deterred that I was on a bike and showed no signs of stopping. "No, thanks," I called as I passed her.

From that point on, I began thinking about her question and the logic behind it. "Do you like hats?" is nearly as difficult to answer as "Do you like food?" It was strange that she'd phrased it in a yes/no fashion, and funny, the way she tried to reel me in with a lead-in question. I wondered where she'd acquired the $100 hat, how much it was really worth, and how she planned to use the $4 she wanted from me.

When I parked Matt's bike at the convention center, I realized she'd distracted me long enough that I'd forgotten to sabotage myself with the brakes. So, uh, thanks, hat lady.

Sunday, 21 March 2004

In a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn, someone had scooted twelve mattresses together—three mattresses by two mattresses, stacked two mattresses high—and had draped a thin piece of silky red cloth over top of them. People were jumping on the mattresses like a large (and inferior) trampoline. Generally I'm not much of a joiner, I don't like unnecessary pain (including pillow fights, even), it was 3:30 a.m., and I barely knew anyone there, but: I bounced around and did modest forward flips and fell onto the floor and into the wall and I got back on again and bounced some more. It was fun.

Also this weekend: I walked in (and took pictures of) a giant peace march in Manhattan, I helped my friend Scott make a short Super 8 film, and I posted my Austin/SXSW pictures. I did not, however, unpack, nor did I get nearly enough sleep. I think that reveals something about my priorities; apparently jumping on a pile of mattresses in the middle of the night trumps sleep. Hmm.

Thursday, 18 March 2004

SXSWi is repeatedly (and rather accurately) compared to summer camp. You leave town by yourself for a week or so, you sleep near people you probably wouldn't know had you not met them there, many of your activities are pre-planned (in this case, drawn out for you in a slick-looking program), you help generate a bank of inside jokes, and, after you leave, you attempt to keep in touch with other "campers" who shared the experience. Unlike in summer camp, however, attendance and bedtime are not enforced, and you can eat whatever you want (which is essentially the difference between childhood and adulthood anyway, right?).

Now that I'm back, my old schedule and purpose have emerged, and the people who briefly surrounded me have disappeared; they have taken airplanes in different directions like an exploding firework, and, I imagine, have landed back in their regular lives, just as I have. I'm having trouble remembering what consumed my thoughts before I left for Austin, and the recently dialed numbers in my cell phone have distant area codes. Perhaps the most unsettling thing is that I was wearing short sleeves on Tuesday and could feel the warm sun on my skin, and now I'm buried in snow, with more on the way.

[Highlights and pictures to follow.]



There's a desperate guy in Brooklyn and he has my phone number. He's called me twice before, leaving messages for a girl with another name, marking each message as urgent. I didn't realize he was desperate, though, until tonight, when he called, asked for Leslie, and called back again thirty seconds later. "Hey. Who is this?" he asked. "Lisa." "Lisa, where you live? Is that rude of me to ask? Where you live? Are you in college? You go to school? Don't you wanna see who you're talking to?"

I politely declined, just before warning him, "Um...I'm going to hang up now."

Tuesday, 16 March 2004

Here's the short Super 8 film that I made for 20x2, in which I answer the question: What's the big idea?. It may take a while to download, so go make a sandwich or something while you're waiting (or five sandwiches, if you're on dial-up like me). If you have any problems viewing it, feel free to let me know, and I'll see what I can do, though I can't promise I'll be able to fix whatever it is. (You'll need QuickTime and sound.)

Friday, 12 March 2004

The professor sat in a chair at the front of room with a jacket draped over her legs. I sat at the back, where I'm happiest, next to a friendly and observant girl from Brazil. I counted the students: 18 females, five males.

A red-headed guy sitting next to the wall had ball-point words written on the back of his hand, all of which had been crossed out. The Israeli girl on the other side of the room played with her long bangs, twisting them around her finger, tucking them behind her ear, and letting them fall over her eyes like drapes. After the break, she noisily crumpled her bag of food, the brown paper singing like hushed fireworks. A girl with messy short blond hair and a fuzzy heather gray ensemble took notes, her shoulders curled over like a dying leaf. To my right, a soft-spoken girl drew rounded flowers with a hot pink pen all over a page in her notebook.

"You aren't in this class, are you?" the Brazilian girl whispered, when she noticed that I wasn't writing down the assignment for the mid-term. I shook my head no. "I'm just sitting in, to see whether I want to go to school here," I whispered back. She gave me a warm smile and nodded.

In the elevator on the way up, a hefty girl with cornrows carried a professional movie camera on her shoulders. In the elevator on the way down, a bent-over man peeked through the viewfinder of his professional movie camera, which was sitting on the elevator floor, presumably recording feet.

The street outside looked different than it had before I'd gone in, at least in that moment. It felt like a campus, and I entertained the idea that all of the people around me—those wearing suits, those wearing denim and leather, and even those who were homeless and stuffed up against stairwells—were students. I entertained the idea that I was a student.



I'm in Austin, Texas for SXSW again this year, from today until Tuesday. If you're going to be here too, come see me at 20x2 on Monday; I'll be showing a short film that I made.

Tuesday, 09 March 2004



The problem is that I want to be and do everything. (That used to include wanting to have an array of personalities, until I realized that my brain didn't change as easily as my clothing.) I want to be successful, poor, surrounded by people I like, and alone. I don't even mind bad experiences, as long as they're not too terribly bad and that they're somewhat reversible. I like absorbing it all, and recording what I can of it. I want to know a lot about a library of subjects and learn them from the ground up. I want to be a member of various social and ethnic groups and a member of nothing. I want to live just about everywhere, in big cities and in remote corners of the world. On stage and totally invisible. I stretch myself from the beginnings of my days to the ends like a worn rubberband, hoping to encircle everything within reach. Lately it's been worse, and I'm really, really tired.

Which makes it even nicer that when Z. met me at my place, he quietly surprised me by doing the overdue dishes and making me pita and hummus mini-sandwiches when I complained that I was about to pass out. He listened to me babble and set the cat on top of me while I rested my head on the arm of the couch. Later, when I mentioned a tiny desire for chocolate, he slipped out and bought me some plain M&Ms. Now I feel silly for complaining about anything.

Like minor but impossible things such as not having a million lives or enough time or that I can't train my body to live without sleep. Though it's certainly not for a lack of trying.

You know what? I'm never going to know what it's really like to be one of the black guys who breakdances at Union Square, or a Scottish bagpipe player, or an Aborigine on a walkabout, or a trapeze artist in the circus, or someone from the distant past, and I think that sucks.

Sunday, 07 March 2004

Yesterday I rode my bike for the first time since my bike and I flipped over each other in September. I was more nervous about it before I got on my bike than when I was actually in the process of pedaling, waiting in a line of cars at a traffic light, or coasting down the modest Brooklyn hills. I've missed my bike, especially since it's arguably the best way to get around my borough when the weather's nice: no waiting for the phantom G train, and no zig-zagging along indirect bus or train paths. Instead, you sail past street corner-life and old architecture, absorb wind and sun, and cut into your travel time like paper snowflakes. I don't, however, plan to ride over the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge again, which isn't even all that significant, since I never used to do that anyway.



I didn't want to eat the hard-boiled egg yolks and I didn't want to throw them away yet, because I'd just taken out the trash. Without thinking, I grabbed an empty photo envelope, I put the yolks and shells inside, and I placed the envelope on a shelf in my refrigerator. It immediately occurred to me: this is something my mother would never do.

Wednesday, 03 March 2004

Tuesday, 02 March 2004

His first experience taking the bus was bad. We were way out in the heart of Brooklyn—past the heart of Brooklyn, even—and I (foolishly) thought it might be a good idea to take the bus all the way to the northwest corner of Brooklyn, because that way we would get to see buildings and people and busy sidewalks, rather than the lights and concrete and bathroom tiles that the subway offered. We weren't in a hurry, and we could make out the approaching bus lights in the distance. Anyway, sometimes going a new way is pleasant exactly because it's new, right?

It was crowded. We were sitting on the back row on top of a heat source of some sort, and the air smelled of ketchup and diesel. The bus seemed to stop every five seconds, squeeling to a halt and expelling a pack of bodies, only to absorb more of them and lurch to a slow start. We rode it for an hour before giving up and transferring to the train. Lesson one: don't take the bus long distances, especially when it's crowded and it smells like ketchup.

He didn't take the bus again until I suggested that he give it another chance, months later. We unfolded the bus map, traced the route with a finger, and waited a total of five minutes before we saw the bus lumbering up the road toward us. It was nearly empty, and it smelled like nothing. "See? The bus can be good," I told him.

It whisked past the stops one by one, behaving more like a cab than a bus, taking us almost directly to our destination. It hugged the park on the left, and, at the end of the park, it was supposed to turn right and circle back around, bringing us a block from where we wanted to be.

By this point we were the only people on the bus, and we were seated behind the driver. Perhaps he didn't see us? He never made the anticipated right-turn; in fact, the first turn he made was in the wrong direction, which was after he'd plowed straight ahead for several minutes. Our unfamiliarity of the bus route kept us doubtful and quiet for too long.

I approached the driver. "Excuse me, aren't we supposed to be going back the other way?" "Oh! I'm just goin on my break! Sorry bout that! ... If you just wanna wait, I'm gonna go back in that direction, after I'm done with my break. Should only be about 20 minutes, and you’re welcome to stay on the bus while you wait!" He advertised it as if it were a bonus.

We climbed down the stairs, and spent the next 30 minutes walking in the path of the bus, back the way we’d just come. Lesson two: if you're the only people on the bus, make sure you sit where the driver can see you.

On Sunday we tried a third time. The wait was again five minutes, during which we were entertained by a throng of little girls jumping rope, double-dutch style, at the base of a collection of high-rise projects.

It was quick and efficient, and the driver stayed on-route. And, barring the smell of vomit that hovered like a cloud on the bus, it happened: his first positive bus experience.

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