We are so related. I just wish I had some cool shades, too.

I've blotted you out
of the pictures,
or tried very hard,
out of curiosity more
than the desire to
have lived alone.

How much more
would we have had
if you weren't
introduced one day,
expected by
everyone but me?

I didn't understand
where you came from,
and beyond the science of it
(there's so much more),
I still don't.

We are different, but
the same at a myopic glance.
Is it any wonder
we sing the same songs
from separate and distant
playlists?

I've blotted you out
of the pictures,
or tried very hard,
but when I have
attempted an elimination,
forged a void,
I, too, have disappeared.

So the sound quality isn't the best, but the overall idea is here.

"That was then. The who-I-was who would become the who-I-am. These poems are from that hobbled when."
- Sandra Cisneros

It's Saturday night and the regulars are already there. They move to the beat, stand in lines to purchase drinks, and eye everyone who comes through the door.

A man brushes against me and says, "Excuse me," but he's not sorry. I instinctively move away, and he grabs a box of Cheerios from the shelf.

It's Saturday night and I live in New York City and I'm young and energetic, but not enough to go anywhere but Club D'AG to get some of those $2.99 pints of Haagen-Dazs and a package of cheese sticks.

Oh, winter makes me rub dryer sheets on my head (the only thing that stops the static in my hair), arrange and rearrange my drawers with the scarves and gloves, and burrow into my bed in tank tops and shorts. I can't bear the thought of having to put on pants and layers right now.

In Austin, I spent many a weekend day entirely in the dorm. I ordered food, wrote, cleaned, slept, talked on the phone. Work was home. Workplace was home. I was preparing myself for NYC hermit winter nights - nights like these when Tyrhonda at the register is the only stranger I have a conversation with. When I eat and read and eat and read.

I wouldn't have it any other way tonight.

From Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants by Jill Soloway:

STOP THE EXPLOITATION OF SANDWICHES. Please, folks, no more of those giant-sub-sandwich mascots waving at cars in front of the Subway sandwich shop. In New York, I think you guys have waving hot dogs. It seems really hot in there. I can't help searching the netting for the humiliated eyes, like a woman in a burka. If they keep it up, we should stop buying our sandwiches there, no matter how low they pretend their trans fat grams are.

Wowie. I'm moved by a good well, movement.

Dude, it's such a small world, like for reals:

AUSTIN - A University of Texas student found a substance that has tested positive for ricin, a potentially deadly poison, in a roll of quarters she was using to do laundry in her dormitory, officials said.

The student and her roommate were being treated for potential exposure to the poison, although neither has exhibited symptoms, said Dr. Theresa Spalding of UT Student Health Services.

The student told university police she found the chunky powder Thursday as she was doing her laundry at the Moore-Hill dormitory, Spalding said. Preliminary tests for ricin came back positive Friday.

Not only did I go to the University of Texas, but I was an RA. Let me assure you that if any dorm at UT is silently killing a bunch of college students with poison, it's Moore-Hill.

I worked in San Jacinto, the dorm of privilege. We had some guy that stole panties from the dryers in the laundry room and one time a homeless guy with a gun, but other than that, nothing ever happened except for underlying classism and racism. We killed people with mean words and backwards ideas, dammit!

Another note: I do believe Dr. Teresa Spalding may have once performed a Pap Smear on me. Woohoo.

Sometimes the ones you love will do you a favor and give pieces of yourself back to you.

They will forgive, and instead of forgetting, remember how hard times were, shake their heads, and keep loving you despite your tendency to be a fallible human being.

Someday I hope somehow says to you, "You know, I really wanted to hate you and stay angry, but I want to be your friend. I'm going to be your friend."

Every time I did something bad as a teenager, my parents would double-team in their disappointment/punishment of me. I hated it. It really was the only time I ever wished they were divorced. Alas, mind games that pitted one against the other were impossible. They were steadfast walls of "we raised you better." They also agreed that yard work was a very suitable task for someone as fussy, freckled, and scrawny as me. Notice I didn't say "melodramatic," which I assure you I was as a teenager. (Big surprise, right)? Had my parents known the depressing poem I was composing in my head called "Godforsaken Rake Of My Soul" or that I wanted to run out in front of a train to at least stop the callouses from forming on my fingers, they'd have put me in the house on floor scrubbing duty.

The return to normalcy was so sweet. My callouses would heal, my mom would call me darlin' again (which I LOVE), I'd regain my internet privileges. Things would get comfortable and cozy and safe...and then I'd smart off again or break curfew or some such you-know-better-why-can't-you-quit-while-you're-ahead nonsense.

But it's kind of retroactive that way. I don't realize I'm ahead sometimes until I'm pulling up weeds in my parents' backyard. Besides, I'm not a head. There's a girl attached to the head.

She's imperfect and will do you wrong. But she'll also do you right. She will laugh when you trip and fall, but will also help you back up and ask if you're okay, once the giggles subside. She will stop pointing at the wet spot on your butt after you accidentally sit in a stranger's bodily fluid on the subway once you threaten to let her get lost in Brooklyn.

I promise, I promise!

I'm glad you're my friend, despite, nonetheless, and because.

Disclaimer: I do not think cancer is funny. The crux of my joke is an IMAGINED rivalry between Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong over a cancer diagnosis. They recently broke up, he's known for those yellow Livestrong bracelets, perhaps he wants to keep all the limelight for himself. If Sheryl Crow made headlines after getting a bike endorsement or qualifying for a prestigious bike tour (read: doing something Lance is known for), I'd have made a similar joke. This entry is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I know it takes an irreverent sense of humor to laugh when terminal illness is any part of the joke. That being said, I believe writing is meant to provoke emotion and action. Sometimes it's positive; sometimes it's negative. Thank you for reading and responding.


It's now been announced that Sheryl Crow, that leather-faced former arm fixture of Lance Armstrong who's written a few too many songs with inane lyrics, underwent surgery for breast cancer this week. The last headline she had on Yahoo!, of course, announced her split with Lance Armstrong, that yellow bracelet peddling, testicular cancer remissioned, Austin cyclist who's won the Tour de France a bazillion times.

Hmmm... Looks like Lance didn't have the ball to handle some competition in the raising cancer awareness/publicity arena.

"But Sheryl! Cancer is MINE! I let you cameo on SNL, but you can't have cancer, too!"

Sigh. All she wanted to do was have some fun...

It's Friday night, and I'm buzzing in a cloud of media stimuli. I suppose the situation is not unlike ADD or some drug-induced state. Wait, this is America - those are synonymous.

I'm reading a book, listening to Nancy Sinatra, writing, considering watching a movie, and trying to decide what to do for dinner all at once. Why this burst of energy?

If these walls could talk, they'd make fun of my dancing. I drop it like it's tepid, if that.

My dad and I went to see "Altar Boyz" at the Dodger Stages Monday night. This musical will not change your life. It rests on a number of oft-repeated jokes, mainly hinging on the flamboyant homosexuality of the "closeted" boy bander Mark. (The character Mark is, of course, the peppiest, most darling little queen that you ever did see. And maybe the actor is, too). This musical doesn't even skewer the Christian machine and expose it as an industry as much as I would, but...

How can you not like a musical with a snarky ballad called "Jesus Called Me On My Cellphone"? And it mentions roaming charges, or a heavenly lack thereof.

Hallelujah.

I have one of these now. Her name is Gladys.

Rate-A-Date

Occupation: Businessguy in a small investment banking firm (I don't know his official title). Since this was a second date, I'll go ahead and tell you his name is Nick.

Length of date: 3.5 hours

What we did: I met him downtown in his neighborhood. We went to Cafe Reggio, where I had a hot chocolate and he had hot tea. We then went to Comedy Cellar and saw the best comedy lineup I've ever seen.

High point: The comedians were on! Nick and I share very dark, nasty senses of humor, as well as general silliness. I found five dollars in the cab on the way home. Score!

Low point: I bonked my head on the hanging lamp over our table when I stood up to let this girl sitting with us get into her chair. It sounded more painful than it actually was, but I had to reassure everyone I was okay.

Overall impression: Nick really is a people person. He quickly became good pals with Gabe, this guy from New Jersey that we sat with. He has a very easy charisma. A charEASEma, if you will. I admire that.

Reason I went on the date: Nick's a good guy, and I love live comedy.

He stipulated: [As I got into a cab] "I'd kiss you on the cheek, but I'm sick." I let him kiss me anyway. The gentlemanly behavior is such a departure from the ordinary.

I learned: Comedy Cellar's late Friday night lineup is awesome.

Chance I will see him again: Definite.

According to the NYC public school calendar, mid-winter break began last Saturday. I, however, have been on a mid-winter break for a few weeks. There's been a lull, because students have completed (and likely bombed) the state English language Arts test and have had time before the state math test. Starting Monday, students and teachers will reluctantly return to school, ready for hasty and ill preparation for another test.

This is not an entry about how the country and NYC, in particular, have set our young minority students in urban public schools to fail. Nope. It's about how I have been in a pedagogical hibernation at work. I love my reading group. I love teaching my special ed kids. I love Saturday school, for the most part. The rest of the population I work with, though, got more and more unruly as the holiday neared. I was disciplining more than discussing, and I hate that. I remember the last few days as long, drawn-out criticisms of the educational system with random co-workers. Delightful. I'm never lazy at work, certainly not, just off-focus.

Anyhow, I was jonesing for something to read and came across the librarian's copy of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. I tend to shy away from anything related to Oprah's Book Club, because I don't think she is a demi-god. Crucify me now, if you must. I love Toni Morrison's body of work, but not because The Big O told me to, okay? [Insert ghetto snap of fingers here].

So I had read that The Reader is morally devastating and was lauded long before Oprah decided to pimp the print out of it. I read it, and found myself transfixed. The chapters are short and easy to keep reading, because the psychology of short chapters is so compelling - you really feel like you're accomplishing something grand when you can read so many chapters in a short sitting. You read another and another and another and feel like one super-literate badass.

What most intrigues me about The Reader is the life cycle of the romance in the first part of the book. Schlink's details of it almost painfully relatable and wonderfully written:

"Often enough in my life I have done things I had not decided to do. Something - whatever that may be - goes into action; 'it' goes to the woman I don't want to see anymore, 'it' makes the remark to the boss that costs me my head, 'it' keeps on smoking although I have decided to quit, and then quits smoking just when I've accepted the fact that I'm a smoker and always will be. I don't mean to say that thinking and reaching decisions have no influence on behavior. But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided. It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions."

"Did I fall in love with her as the price for her having gone to bed with me? To this day, after spending the night with a woman, I feel I've been indulged and I must make it up somehow - to her by trying at least to love her, and to the world by facing up to it."

"Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?"

"I asked her about her life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers."

"When an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight. Airplanes don't fall out of the sky like stones. They glide on, the enormous multi-engined passenger jets, for thirty, forty-five minutes, only to smash themselves up when they attempt a landing. The passengers don't notice a thing... That summer was the glide path of our love."

"From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal."

"We did not have a world that we shared; she gave me the space in her life that she wanted me to have. I had to be content with that. Wanting more, even wanting to know more, was presumption on my part."

"But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?"

"...The finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her. I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible."

"...If something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feelings of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one of top of another that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive."

My dad has been in town the last few days, and I've been more places and eaten more meals in this time than I have in a while. It's not that I let myself starve or fester in the apartment, but there are nights when I just eat cereal and read myself to sleep. O, ye glamorous New York life!

My dad tried a lot of new things whilst in the city, and I had a great time with him. We ate at Lombardi's not once, but TWICE together. With two visits this week and one last weekend with Jonathan, I think it's safe to say I don't need to eat coal oven pizza for a few months. My dad and I also had waffles at Diner 24 twice.

We waited for an hour in the cold for an improv comedy show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and then endured standing room only accommodations. (I was lucky - I'm somewhat of a contortionist and got to sit on the stage). We saw Freedomland and discussed it over lasagna and skewers of steak and chicken. I suspect it made national news - my dad, the pickiest eater in America, pickier than me, dined in an Italian restaurant. We schlepped over to the Target in Brooklyn so I could get a Luella Bartley skirt with cowboy boots. We = me and a devoutly Southern man who says "L train" in more than two syllables.

Daddy, you did good.

I spent some time yesterday on Fashion Avenue, surrounded by the of the minute window displays at major NYC department stores, and I'm disgusted.

I've succumbed to the trends before, oh yes. I hated capri pants for the longest time, and then eventually wore them in all their incarnations - pedal pushers, clam diggers, etc., etc. I mildly rocked the peasant look, then the boho, but I stop at the bozo.

I WILL NOT WEAR SKINNY JEANS. NO!!!

Do you know anyone who actually looks skinny in skinny jeans? Me, neither. I'm a size 0-2, and I'd feel like a sausage stick in high-water natural cellulose casing in skinny jeans.

Before you are offered the chance to imbibe, just say no. Avoid the embarrassing photographic documentation that will occur should you buy into this trend.

Thank you and goodnight.

I'm not dead - I'm just being visited.

More blogging to come.

The scaffolding from the facade of the church on my block has finally been removed. Reverent walls brightened my walk to Broadway this morning. The sidewalks pulsed with life, veins in concrete weaving at storefronts. Somewhere a jackhammer pureed a melting sheet of ice.

I thought of how much like a smile, post-braces, the church is - beautiful, dazzling in its reclaimed smoothness after a length of being tracked in metal, encumbered by beams. I ran my tongue over my own teeth then, recalling the dramatic movement that brought each rebellious tooth to order, slowly, but efficiently. It took longer to grow crooked than to straighten up and get in line.

This story is one of the most radical, yet subtle, changes. Each step I take, shift happens.

Clouds hang heavy,
sagging low like teats -
rain is set to spill.
The clean, unfamiliar
smell a friendly warning,
the way you sigh, roused
before the shrill cry
of the alarm, the way
my mother would wake me.

Days like this,
wherever I am,
I am there.
Dew on the grass is
destined for a reunion
with its cousins.
I hear the hum of
a day not fully
realized.

Coffee makers sputter
and hiss, a flower
relaxes a tight bud
self-consciously,
the cat wearily rubs
against my chair
at the table.

The pregnant sky
grumbles.
We all wait
to be delivered.

I read at least one book each week. This week I finished Bless Me, Ultima and Guess Again by Bernard Cooper. The latter was recommended by David Sedaris.

Cooper's stories are a lot like a pack of Golden Oreos. Each is composed of the same thing - gay males and their identity struggles, rather than white cream and vanilla cookies - but reading one story is so tasty that one keeps consuming until...the book is finished and the New York Public Library can't keep up the supply.

Behold, the crumbs in my head:

"The salesman, as speechless as a valedictorian in a nightmare, turned to Laura." How much like "The Glass Menagerie" is this?

"It was a solace and a terror, this prospect of being forever attached to a person who entered the world from inside you."

"If there was one thing Laura hated, it was searching for something to say, the way your brain became a big echoing vault, your entire life too humdrum to mention."

"...Frank helped him edit his galleys, impressed by Booth's exactitude, his rigor with every syllable and image. Each page was a portal to his lover's inner life, a place inviting and forever separate."

"Dancing beneath the speakers is like being shaken by a great voice. Even if he can't understand what it's saying, the volume is a kind of conviction, and the lyrics seem to come from inside his chest... When Nelson is high, he finds it easy to probe a stranger's mouth, and to feel his wanting boomerang back. He think of everything 'X' can stand for: 'X's' is the eyes of men knocked senseless, kisses strung at the end of a letter. 'X' is for the unknown man in his arms."

"...His audacity, like a file baked in a cake, freed him from the cell of himself."

"Even from a distance, Rick could hear the strain of people trying to keep the ball of small talk aloft."

It's a small, small world.

I've just been informed that Dick Cheney's injured huntin' buddy is on the mend at none other than the Corpus Christi hospital where my mom used to work. How could I not have known?

I cut my proverbial teeth on those gurneys (well, maybe not), and now Cheney's millionaire, idiotic, Republican friend is wheezing back into shape right there. Bush and Cheney have both visited their friend, slapping each other on the back, laughing at the inequalities they aim to perpetuate, and scoffing at women while thumbing through much-creased hospital magazines they can't possibly read. Oh, to have a few more big [gun]shots around with no conservative left behind...

You know if I still lived in Corpus Christi, I'd have volunteered to be the most spiteful candy striper around, right?

"More jails-I mean, jello- Mr. President? Can I get you guys some fresh cups of oppression?"

I frequently exasperate people when I refer to anything from the 1970's as "vintage."

I'm sorry, but I was born in 1983 and reached consciousness in the 1990's. Until my dying day, the America I romanticize will remain an America led by Bill Clinton, fed on Pizza Hut and Betty Crocker while wearing bootcut jeans and listening to Third Eye Blind. Oh yeah, and with "amber waves of grain" or something.

I kind of remember life before the Internet, but apparently there wasn't much worth remembering. My mom was unable to blog about my first steps, words, teeth, bra... I guess people referred to phone books to look up business or home phone numbers. They made phone calls to book flights. They just went to the store to buy whatever they needed.

But I wasn't kidding when I spent months over the summer looking for my first apartment in NYC, spending weeks of those months breathlessly schlepping through the entire borough of Manhattan with my poor, heat exhausted dad and asked, "How did people find places to live BEFORE Craigslist?"

It was hard enough to find a decent place WITH Craigslist.

I imagined that back in the olden days before the Internet, most people were born and died within the confines of the same apartment walls. Your home was your caste, unless you were incredibly ambitious and had lots of time on your hands, because moving was El Dolor En Su Ass Numero Uno. And then if you found a new place, upon the planets aligning just so, how did you find someone to move your stuff? Did businesses pick up the phones back then? Whoa. It's hard to imagine.

How did people move from Texas to NYC before the Internet? Or before the Internet and nationwide long-distance on cell phones? I imagine some bow-legged cowboy type shuffling around with a big carboard box amongst the darkly clothed city slickers. (Without the Internet's ability to proliferate trends and culture, there would be an even greater style divide in this country. In fact, stirrup pants would still be en vogue as business casual dress throughout the Bible Belt). The cowboy would huddle in his improvised new twist on the mobile home, alley-hopping until he found a really unconvincing and inauthentic barbeque restaurant dumpster.

My point: there are so many things we do now on the Internet - banking, commerce, apartment hunting, pizza ordering, corresponding... I can't imagine life without it. I spend so much time each week reading, researching, and writing online. I don't ever track flights, packages, or my bank accounts online, but I could, and I could do it religiously.

Today, I realized a new tracking capability. I can look up my account at the New York Public Library website and see which books I placed on hold are in transit. I actually know four books that are being sent from libraries in other boroughs to my library in Morningside Heights. I'm so excited! I imagine my four books rubber banded together, jostling in a large, white van. They come from Staten Island and Brooklyn and some tiny library tucked on the corner of a Lower East Side street.

They are my tired, my poor, my huddled masses. And they never would have met, never would have arrived on a shelf together in Morningside Heights with a piece of paper with the first three letters of my last name binding them, had it not been for the Internet. Or Craigslist. Or Third Eye Blind, by God.

I click my mouse beside the golden search engine.

Tonight, at 8 pm on February 14th, I don't have a Valentine.

But...I do have the sniffles, congestion, and violent sneezes to keep my heart racing and my eyes misty. Nyquil, be mine. Won't you say you will (with relatively few side effects please)?

My life is not like Sex and the City. Honestly, that show was too unrealistic, materialistic, and glib for me. I appreciate the one-liners, but the show was as much an artificial gloss as that junk on all of the actress's lips. No single, thirty-somethings who AREN'T bequeathed huge sums of money from a dead, investing miser can lead the lives that Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte did. Or do, if you watch reruns on TBS.

Despite my firm grasp on reality (and a nice, vintage purse), any time my butt hits the upholstery of a cab more than twice in one week, I get this tickle inside and think, "I'm living the life now. Oh yeah, I have arrived." I get to thinking I'm foxy and invincible and free.

And then IT arrives: Sick in the City. Again. When I sneeze, stretchy, iridescent tassels swing from my nose onto my sweater and those of passersby. Car alarms go off. Subways are delayed. Traffic stops...and not in the good way.

But that doesn't keep the man on the sidewalk from saying, "How you doin', cutie? Wanna be my Valentine?"

I get to thinking maybe I'm still kind of foxy and invincible and free.

And congested.

Rate-A-Date

Occupation: Businessguy in a small investment banking firm (I don't know his official title)

Length of date: 3.5 hours

What we did: We met at Madison Square Garden for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. We perused the room of showdogs and sponsors that competed on Monday, visiting the English bulldog aisle twice. Afterwards, we went to Limerick's and chatted before sharing a cab to our next destinations.

High point: He was really, really polite and chivalrous. He was friendly with all the people at the Garden, took my picture with a bulldog, took another bulldog picture on his camera when I was out of my own film, helped me with my coat, and insisted that I ride a warm cab up to Columbus Circle at least, even though I'd already said I was going to take the subway home. When we were walking outside and cautiously stepping over huge, slushy puddles, one random man joked to him, "Don't you know you're supposed to take off your coat, put it on the ground, and let her walk on it?" That's the only outdated, ridiculous, but oh-so-thoughtful gesture my date didn't make. In sum, he's a really nice guy.

Low point: He's a really nice guy?

Overall impression: The date was fun. He was easy to talk to, very friendly, and mature. He also likes to just get out and try new things We made tentative plans to hang out again downtown to see a comedy show.

Reason I went on the date: Free tickets to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show - HOLLA!

He stipulated: [When I told him I'd pay my own cab fare] "No, you can just buy me fries...when we go to the comedy show." He thinks I'm funny, smart, and attractive.

I learned: English bulldogs are the best dogs, but I already knew this. Also, there's no monetary prize for the winners of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show - it's all about the prestige of a title.

Chance I will see him again: Highly likely with an 85% chance of observational humor.

Happy Valentine's Day?

Well, isn't this special?:

"With 26.9" of snow in Central Park, New York City has set a record for greatest snowfall from a single storm. Heavy snow this morning helped the Big Apple eclipse the previous record of 26.4" set in 1947. Although the snow in New York is winding down, blizzard warnings remain posted for southeastern New England as a powerful Nor'easter slams the Northeast with heavy snow and high winds. Blizzard warnings have also been issued for far eastern Maine. In Boston, 16 to 24 inches are forecast. Drifting and blowing snow will make travel difficult if not impossible in many areas from New York City to eastern Maine over the next several hours."

Source: The ever-reliable (ha!) weather.com

I lost my words
somewhere
here.

They may be
buried in a
glistening pile of snow
or folded up, tattered
in my down coat pocket.

Someone suggested
I might look amongst
the Campbell's soup
cans (3 for $2) on
aisle five of Gristedes.

Yes, I seem to
remember laying
them down there.

Rate-A-Date

Occupation: Attorney, aspiring writer, mensch

Length of date: 5 hours

What we did: We met in Chelsea, where he is subletting until Thursday. I stood in front of a Vitamin Shoppe and watched the incipient stages of the blizzard. We took a cab to Lombardi's, ate my favorite pizza ever, and hung out and wined at Savoy.

High point: He's the epitome of a New York Jew - the uber-Jew, if you will. He's super clever, funny, and animated. He helped me find the clasp to my chain belt when I lost it in the bathroom at Savoy.

Low point: He smokes, and excused himself multiple times to go outside and take a few puffs.

Overall impression: I'm not physically attracted to him (which is cool, because the date was platonic anyway), but he's good company, a good writer, and knows NYC. He's also a nice guy, because he sent me off in a cab so I could meet up with a friend in the Village. He lives in Bangkok now, but comes into the city every few months. I would love to keep in touch and hang out when he's in town.

Reason I went on the date: He seemed funny, nice, articulate, and not creepy.

He stipulated: Come hang out with me at the Paramount before I leave on Thursday. "Amanda, you're a good egg."

I learned: I really like red wine.

Chance I will see him again: I'm going to make it a point to meet up with him before he leaves. He's a good person to know.

Best lines:

Me: I need to get myself to the Target in Brooklyn.
Him: Oh, I don't go to Jersey or the outer boroughs - they reject me like a bad kidney.

Him: [An acquaintance of his] had a pair of fantastic dalmations.
Me: Fantastic dalmations?
Him: Yes, one was named Pie.
Me: As in P-i? 3.14?
Him: No, pie as in sweetie.

I must say, New York certainly does attract an interesting type of person. Well, some people come, because you know, "They would have KILLED ME in Kosovo!" But I feel the people who come from somewhere else and chose to migrate just to be here - some of them are pretty special.

On my near loss of my belt clasp and complete loss of an earring: Given your apparent inability to mix accessories with alcohol, I suggest you simply wear a Tyvek flight suit the next time you go drinking.

So NYC is all blizzardified. The snow is gorgeous and crisp. I ventured outdoors this morning to buy some water, soup, and yogurt. I stopped to refill Kathy's metrocard and sit at the bakery and eat a muffin, as well. My mom would be proud of me in my multiple layers and gray snowboots. I was the warmest person out there!

I'm off to plod around again. I think I'm going to walk many, many blocks to get another pair of brown earrings from a boutique. I've now lost two halves of brown earring sets. It's a curse.

I really want to make a snowgal. Maybe I can use my useless leftover earrings to accessorize her?

Breaking News: I also speak.

Has it died or merely shed its leaves?

I hear a tremor in your voice.
Are we bound for regeneration?
And if we are, will it be as one?

Or shall I grow alone,
smaller independently,
but just as alive, hardy?

We were always
blossoming and withering,
living and dying,
at once.

Only after
complete devastation
could we acknowledge the
inevitability of the cold.

I shiver in solitude,
scratch every surface
I can reach, content
in my gnarled peaces,
ready for the next
springtime.

A peace has washed over me in the last few days. There are some possible explanations, like better sleep, decent weather, new neighborhood cronies, good music, a return to my regular job after days of substituting...

I feel better. My head is clearing. I've signed up for some courses at The Learning Annex. My dad is visiting in about a week. I'm feeling a rededication to my goals of growth.

I'm ready to read, write, laugh, seek, watch, and do more. Now.

This is a picture from the 2005 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. I'll be going to this event this upcoming Monday night, and I'm super-excited.

It'll be televised on USA, so you might want to look for me. I'll be the crazy fool security Tasers after running up and hugging the Grand Champion English bulldog. That or some Old English sheepdogs.

I'm squealing at frightening decibel levels right now - eeeek! The cuteness!

Woof.

When you live in most parts of the country, most major events are accessed only through the Internet, a newspaper, or tv news. It's easy to forget about these events, and why not? They make us think, question, and feel. It hurts. In the sixties, Timothy Leary encouraged people to "turn on, tune in, drop out," but nowadays most of society would agree that it's better to turn off, tune out, and throw away.

When I lived in Texas, the only national news coverage my hometown ever got involved natural disasters and a single slain Tejano singer. These became short-lived Corpus Christi claims to fame. We weren't so much tuning out as we were tuned out - we couldn't even pick up most frequencies.

In NYC, one still learns to tune out, but in a different way. It's not that huge national crises don't affect people here daily - they certainly do. It's that they choose not to dwell on them. Drama is constantly unfolding, barking and running underfoot, like a manic Yorkshire terrier. People defend themselves by plugging up their ears and automatically saying, "Sorry, I don't have any change," when a stranger approaches them on the street.

When this happens, I think, "Maybe I should have change." Or maybe we should all just change.

So a national event is always is my proverbial backyard here in the city. Rather, my front stoop. On Sunday, some people on my block created a makeshift shrine to some guy, complete with posters, framed pictures, slow-burning candles, and bottles and bottles of whiskey and beer. The shrine is on the outside wall of my apartment building, feet away from the trash receptacles.

Since Sunday, revelers have started drunken vigils around 7 pm. They're still around at midnight. When they get cold, some people go into the lobby of my apartment building to warm up before returning to the shrine where they rap and cry and joke. Yesterday was the dead man's birthday, so there was a party with balloons, cards, flowers, cake, and lots of marijuana. The dead man would have been thirty.

The people outside aren't menacing, but they aren't in the safest states of mind, either. Police set up barricades during the day, sometimes patrolling the area. At night, they drive by in packs. The dense crowd at the shrine keeps on hanging out. It's more of a party than a funeral.

Last night, Ethan and I discussed the mysterious ghost on my block. We looked at his pictures. He looked like someone I could have seen before, but who really knows? His notoriety is posthumous for me. On his poster, someone wrote "Fallen Soldier." I thought his death was gang-related perhaps or maybe he was another American needlessly killed in Iraq.

I was wrong.

I looked him up online. Weird. He lived in my apartment buildig, but I only know him now. I probably passed him on the stairs. Maybe those were the noises of his everyday life - the stomps, shouts, music, and running water - that flowed into my apartment through the walls and ceiling. What if he was the guy that used to sing and rap really loudly, much to my chagrin?

He was shot in the chest early on Sunday.

He died and left behind a wife and three children.

He was Busta Rhymes's bodyguard.

He was my neighbor.

_________________

* Since I wrote this in the morning, I've learned that Israel Ramirez grew up in my building, but I think only his mother lives here now. His father used to be the superintendent. His family lives on the fifth floor.

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking refers to a lot of interesting research. It discusses both the power and problems that come from first impressions made in a blink. Consider size. Humans equate size, particularly height, with power and leadership. In the U.S. population, about 14.5% of all men are six feet or taller. In the Fortune 500 CEO population, 58% of men are six feet or taller. I had heard something like that before, so I wasn't surprised.

But then I read this: "Not long ago, researchers who analyzed the data from four large research studies that followed thousands of people from birth to adulthood calculated that when corrected for such variables as age and gender and weight, an inch is worth $789 a year in salary. That means that a person who is six feet tall but otherwise identical to someone who is five foot five will make an average $5,525 more per year... Have you ever wondered why so many people find their way into positions of authority in companies and organizations? It's because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think. We see a tall person and we swoon."

Hmmm... My first thought is that this would affect men more than women, but it's very intriguing. I'm 5'6", by the way. And skeptical.

I was walking to the 125th Street station after work today and had to pass some indolent mechanics on my way. As I passed, one of them said, "Miss, you've got some nice legs!"

I kept walking - it's what I always do. I would have said, "I know," but I'll have to walk by these guys again, and I am not conversing with the objectifiers. No sir, not on the day of Betty Friedan's funeral! I smiled, though. I like my legs, too. I like when others like my legs.

When I didn't reply, one of the guys said, "Dang! No 'thank you' or nothing."

Ugh. "They should have thanked me," I thought.

Her name was Mrs. Anderson, and she had a moustache. She went into our Texas History class to substitute one day in 1995, and I'm sure she still hasn't recovered.

I was always the sweet, helpful student. Substitutes and regular teachers alike would cling to me like a life raft - a life raft afloat in a deep, vast, shark-infested ocean. But I disappointed poor Mrs. Anderson. I tittered when all the other kids scornfully eyed her and coughed "Moustache!" I knew children shouldn't treat adults like that, but Mrs. Anderson was less than an adult somehow. No threat of punishment emanated from her doughy visage. She looked more like a child. A mustachioed child...or maybe a hamster.

So I kind of lived vicariously through the others. I'd never have spoken "moustache" aloud myself, but I died laughing at everyone else's rudeness. It was the same thrill you get at a smart-alecky zinger thrown at a bully on a movie. Don't you sometimes wish you had that kind of nerve? You identify with the little guy who strikes back after being perpetually dominated by the big guy.

Size, age, and facial hair aside, though, Mrs. Anderson was the little guy. She'd only been at Odem Junior High a day, so everyone else had seniority over her. She didn't know anyone's name, and it turns out, the sweet, helpful-looking girl with freckles turned out to be a shit. Just like the rest of 'em.

Fast forward eleven years, and I'm the sacrificial lamb circling the wolves, trying to get them to start the first drafts of their essays. I don't have a moustache or an extra fifty pounds sloshing around my middle, but I'm still the new kid. I've never substituted for the second floor academy, so the students hardly know me. I don't really know the assistant principal or all the quirky procedures of the floor.

Today was the second day I've substituted for Mr. H.'s class. Now that all the students know my name at least, things are easier. Nonetheless, this is not my job. I am not a substitute teacher. Today I had to fight with one boy about getting on the computer. Then a boy tried to look up my skirt. And of course, lunch and homeroom dismissals were rife with controversy. And most students wouldn't do any work. Yep, not such a bad day.

Mrs. Anderson, I'm sorry. Really.

"You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun."
-Fiona Apple

This person doesn't
sneak about in
broad daylight
breaking into homes,
careful not to bump
into furniture but
not careful enough to
remove squeaky shoes.

This person hears you,
though you don't even
say anything - that would
take confrontation, which
contrary to what you
espouse, scares you
sometimes. The
biggest bulk of
you shrinks away.
You know what you
say is wrong, twisted
out of context. You
needed someone to
beat down and
found it.

This person doesn't need
a fight, especially with a
caricature.
This person was never so
wrong to think she was
above reproof, but never
so wrong to think you were,
either.

Look what I found on Craigslist just now:

If you are a castrating bitch, let me buy you lunch (seriously) - m4w - 34

I know it's weird, but something about attractive but cruel women with a contempt for masculinty just do it for me. I am not expecting sex or anything like that, not really sure what I am expecting, just that I used to date a truly cruel woman and find myself weirdly missing it.

On my end, 34, educated, fit (not tall, though that can just serve as fodder for barbs should you choose) and enjoy a good meal.

[Insert joke about me finding my dream man here].

A few months ago, Gap had an ad campaign for its jeans wherein singers reasoned, "Your favorite song is like your favorite pair of jeans." Alanis Morissette had a spot, and I don't remember her favorite song, but I do recall there was this young pianist I'd never seen before who sang the beginning of Todd Rundgren's "Hello, It's Me." I thought he had a beautiful voice, but the commercial never said his name and I never tried to find out who he was.

Three weeks ago, I found out the Gap introduced me to John Legend. Today I bought his album Get Lifted, and I'm thoroughly impressed. Normally, I don't buy cds unless I have a Best Buy giftcard. Most modern music stinks, and what doesn't stink is downloaded and burned onto a cd for me by my sister. That's the way I roll.

John Legend has changed me, though. I've already listened to the album numerous times today and watched his dvd. He writes and sings his own music - holla. And I'm convinced John and I should hang out sometime, because we live in the same city and despite all his talents, "we're just ordinary people..."

John Legend, will you be my valentine?

Saturday School attendance has dropped dramatically. Last week, I only had my three students from Yemen. We finished the lesson and spent the rest of our ninety minute block comparing and contrasting schools in America and in Yemen. The boys argued that I.S. 666 is better than the school they attened in Yemen. Yikes.

Yesterday, my sole student was Claudio. He was in one of my original groups, but stopped attending after a few sessions. My first impression of him way back when wasn't so positive. I introduced myself and went into a spiel about the zero-tolerance discipline policy. He was speaking as I spoke, so I told him to stop talking. He muttered, "Lick my ass." I raised my eyebrows and gave him my deadliest glare, "Don't you EVER speak to ME like THAT. You do not have to be here." Claudio spent the rest of the time in class trying to redeem himself by volunteering to read and answering questions.

A lot of my male students have very sexist attitudes about women. We can blame it on rap music, the men they are exposed to (usually not committed fathers or husbands), their peers, but this country isn't good to women...still. Feminist Betty Friedan's death didn't get nearly as much press as that of the founder of the Crips. Or Paris Hilton's second, less thrilling sex tape. Women get more press for taking off - scruples, tops - than gain or putting on, well, unless we're talking pounds. The media loves to point out which woman are getting too fat.

We still overall don't make as much money as men with the same credentials. And men are making the big decisions about women's reproductive health and...I meant to get off the soapbox a few sentences ago, but it's hard. My soapbox is small, but powerful - a credit card of criticism for this country, this status quo.

Back to Claudio-who-will-never-degrade-me-again. We read an article about people who live underground. We somehow got to talking about drugs and maquiladoras and his birthday. He turned 13 yesterday, and his dad called during our class to postpone the celebration plans they had made. Claudio looked disappointed. It was so great to talk to him in-depth. I love lonely Saturday school sessions. I pulled him aside later and asked if he wanted me to get him something from Taco Bell or McDonald's for his special day. (The kids eat nasty, cold, cafeteria lunches at Saturday School). Claudio shook his head no, and wouldn't tell me what he liked at either of the places I named. I told him not to be shy or polite. Then I asked do you like tacos? Big Macs? He finally said, "Well...I guess you can get me a Pepsi...if you want." I got him a Pepsi with a bag of chips.

After Saturday School, I finally faced my fears and did something I've needed to do for a long time. I went to the dry cleaners. Somehow, I knew that once I did this, I would be a real grown-up. It was so easy, too. I took a coat and two sweaters in a bag to the Chinese lady at the counter. She appraised them and got out a receipt pad. She asked my name, and when I told her, she laughed and wrote it down with a price. Apparently my name sounds sort of like the Chinese phrase for "can't do laundry worth a damn." I'm going to pick up my laundered items tomorrow afternoon. I'm afraid that once you go dry clean, you can never go well, back to what I was doing - wearing dry clean only items without ever washing them. EVER. I'd just wear extra deodorant and make sure I wasn't going to eat Roti Roll or interact with children. I practically shimmied out of the dry cleaners Pinocchio-style, "I'm a real [grown-up], Gepetto! I've got no strings to hold me down!"

So then I went home and read Hemingway. It rained on and off, so I put off my errand running for Sunday. I didn't even want to put on matching clothes to procure food, so I ate from the drawer o' goodies my parents stocked. With all the candy, cookies, and chips, I could easily operate a bodega out of my bedroom. I love care packages from Texas!

I ended the evening by watching the original Alfie with Michael Caine. The film was released in 1966, so skirt-chasing Alfie is a lot tamer than say, 50 Cent. Hell, he's tamer than Claudio was. Nonetheless, I was disgusted by the title character. I don't care if he questions his ways at the end or feels bad that the "bird" he knocked up had to have an abortion. What a putz. Then again, movies nowadays don't even really show that kind of remorse or questioning of behavior/character/gender relations. And God forbid, a domestic film make abortion part of the storyline. The last movie I can think of that glossed over abortion was Coach Carter. That mention surprised me even more than the fact that I was watching such a sappy piece of crap.

Sigh. My credit card soapbox keeps reappearing in this entry. It's everywhere I want to be...and not.

I don't leave home without it.

There's this pesky camera crew that's been hanging out on my stoop since this morning. Earlier an ABC van was parked on the street and some overly coiffed lady was running her hands over and over her undisturbed do. Now guys with heavy bags of equipment and boom mikes are hanging out, no van in sight. They keep looking at me as I leave, return, leave, return on my Sunday errands.

Yeah, I'm just getting back from Filene's Basement and the grocery store, but I'm ready for my close-up. Again.

The times when I most wish I had a partner in New York are commercial holidays (hello, Valentine's Day!) and when I'm running errands. Errands can never be run all at one time - I can only carry so much. If I had a boyfriend here you can bet I wouldn't be the one making a mad dash to get to the library 96% of the time. Oh, no. Boyfriend could pick up and return the library books if he had some time off during the day, which I never do. Or imagine if I divided up the errands and he ran the downtown ones and I ran the uptown ones? How much easier things would be. He could carry the heavy, wet laundry in the cart up the 39 steps.

I'm not abandoning my feminism here, and I know men are more than pack-mules. I'm just being honest. I want someone bigger than me to carry the heavy stuff. I want someone closer to Gristedes to pick up a quart of milk for my cereal. I want another schedule to manipulate and mark up.

But, you know, this is New York City. I could hire that.

But could I pay in cupcakes and smiles? Hmmm...time to scour Craigslist?

Lately, I find myself craving the written word even more than usual. I look through the mostly unread books at my school library, in the classrooms, in boxes of trash on the sidewalk. I hoard all the interesting matter I can find, copying phrases I like into notebooks and onto post-its. It's like the way a pregnant woman craves foods she's never been that crazy about - cranberry sauce or pickle spears dipped in milk - and feels compelled to seek out this nourishment. Nutritionally, it all makes sense. The body understands what she cannot - that she needs some nutrient she doesn't normally get, one that she doesn't normally need.

This is the same way I lifted The Old Man and the Sea from a classroom library. The students at I.S. 666 can't read complex sentences, much less Hemingway's modernist, iceberg theoried terseness. I don't even like Hemingway...or machismo...or fishing. So why do I need to read about pathetic Santiago and the one little boy who loves him? Well, why not?

I read at least one book each week, and this last week I read Jose Saramago's Blindess. Wow. It was awesome in the brain rockingest way! Saramago won the Nobel Prize for the breadth of his work, but he's most famous for Blindness. He's also kind of infamous for his disregard for standard style in his writing. Blindess has no proper nouns, nor does it follow standard punctuation or attribute dialogue to characters. This is hard to get used to. It's a parable about the kind of humanity realized only when the world falls apart after an epidemic of blindness. It's very relevant in our post-Katrina world. It was relevant in the post-tsunami and post-911 world. Ever notice that the world is perpetually churning in upheaval, but surviving? The book is eternally relevant, as are compassion and empathy and responsibility. Here are my favorite quotes:

On society: "This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice."

On the one seeing person watching the blind struggle: "For the first time since she had arrived there, the doctor's wife felt as if she were behind a microscope and observing the behavior of a number of human beings who did not even suspect her presence, and this suddenly struck her as being contemptible and obscene. I have no right to look if the others cannot see me, she thought to herself."

"...If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt."

"Fear can cause blindness."

"Why are you holding hands as you go, it simply came about, there are gestures for which we cannot always find an easy explanation, sometimes not even a difficult one can be found."

"And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, When what is still alive is already dead."

My favorite part: "How old are you, asked the girl with the dark glasses, Getting on for fifty, Like my mother, And her, Her, what, Is she still beautiful, She was more beautiful once, that's what happens to all of us, we were all more beautiful once, You were never more beautiful, said the wife of the first blind man. Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that cannot bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armour, we might say."

"Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see."

Me: You met the school nurse?
Bobby: Yeah.
Me: I've never seen her. What's she like?
Bobby: I think the only thing she's been nursing is a forty ounce.
Me: Oh...niiiiice.

Me: [On one of Bobby's students transferring to another school after a suspension] Did you get to tell her goodbye?
Bobby: No.
Me: That's too bad. You didn't get any closure.
Bobby: Oh, I got closure.
Me: You "closured" the door on her face and were over it?
Bobby: Uh huh!

I have a bizarre question that Hints from Heloise doesn't have an answer to.

Today I bought a groovy chain belt accessory made of copper-like links. The links are engraved and everything. Anyhow, the belt has that musty smell of old pennies that have been in the bottom of a change purse for too long. You know that smell. It's not so pleasing.

How do I de-stank my belt? I'm wearing it tomorrow, stanky or not, but I need to know for the future sake of the people next to me on the train, my students, and the rest of the smelling public.

I may as well introduce myself to the man sitting at the next table in the crowded sandwich shop. He is facing my profile and is two feet away. His sandwich crumbs intermingle with my sandwich crumbs and make a mess of the wobbly table where I sit. The man could brush the hair out of my face without having to lean forward. I keep expecting a kiss on the cheek.

I face the window, because it's a screen of moving images that are ever-changing, but monotonous enough to calm me. Stroller. Couple. Man with newspaper. Stroller. Woman on cell phone. Woman with child. Elderly man with cane. Jogger. I mentally pen the sidewalk's travelers into a guestbook. We have all walked down this sidewalk many times, but never in this combination. Thanks for coming.

Suddenly a dog walker passes my window - at least seven different breeds of dogs are the charms on the twisted, jangling necklace of a leash he keeps them on. He's lucky that it's a beautiful day outside. He's lucky the dogs are all around the same size.

The movie that is Broadway at 3:30 in the afternoon begins to loop. Another dog walker appears. Then another. They all have at least seven dogs. I've never seen so many labradors lift their legs at once. The dogs are being perfect New Yorkers, ignoring each other despite their proximity, shared experiences, and need for contact, until one cannot resist smelling another's butt. Despite how forward the gesture seems, I'd venture to say he shyly smelled the other dog's butt. I imagine this is the equivalent of a soft, shaky hello to a stranger on the street.

Such fine manners are contagious. Soon all the dogs want to smell each other's butts. Platonically, romantically, practically. "Don't I know you from somewhere? You smell like someone I used to know. Has anyone ever told you that you smell just like _________? Come here often? Where have you been all my life?"

One dog rejects another's advances...or something. A fight breaks out. A golden retriever jumps up and nearly knocks over a stroller with a little boy in it. (The nanny had been busy rummaging in a diaper bag for something). Everyone stands transfixed by the canine social drama unfolding. All the men behind the counters of the shop run to my table to look out the window. The man next to me laughs. The tiff becomes an all-out dog brawl. All the dog walkers are forced into it, because all of the twenty-something dogs start squabbling and chasing each other.

The fights end as suddenly as they began, but a tangle of dogs is left. The leashes of one dog walker's dogs are twisted into the leashes of another dog walker's dogs. The third dog walker has been encircled by more than one pit bull mix and is squeezed tightly.

Everything is eventually sorted out. Two of the dog walkers round the corner to 104th Street. The other crosses to the other side of Broadway. I wipe my crumbs onto a napkin, scrape back my chair, brush past my dining companion I never knew, turn to him, and say goodbye.

Bertram, the new permanent substitute at I.S. 666: You know, I have the reading virus. I'm hoping to infect these kids with that virus. Yes siree, I'll give them a dose of that!

Me: [stifling a laugh] Ummm...I love to read, and even I want to mock you.

*Heh. Bert took it the right way and I know he means well, but I'm definitely going to have to break him from that habit of pumping his fist when he's excited and saying things like, "Golly gee, kids!" This is the hood, yo.