…another brand-new white sneaker experiences a narrow brush with fresh shit. I had run down the stairs and then up them again, having forgotten to pack my sunglasses. Certain moments of the day are reserved for careful attention to detail. Certain moments of the day are reserved for blind, forward charging. If not for the hitch in the plan, blurring the lines between these two energies, I would not have Oh God! Third step from the bottom, Stage Right. Good morning.
Tag Archive: spectacle
the cloudy crystal ball
I attended a lecture at a well-known university last night. The lecture was from one of my favorite authors, a woman with an impish grin and a gnarled wooden cane. I had been planning to go for months and had marked the event on my calendar with several exclamation points. A friend was coming along, and we set a place and time to meet up before the lecture. As fate would have it, I was kept late at work. This never happens. When I arrived at the top of the station stairs to catch my connecting train, I had a text message from said friend: “Late as usual, still waiting at X station.” I gasped to myself, seeing her familiar brown hair, just down the platform. It must be a sign.
the brochure looks nice
I am admittedly anti-technology. Ha, ha, ha, Olivia, what are you doing on a laptop computer, then, posting a web-log to the internet? How fast your fingers move across that shiny silver keyboard, how rapidly you copy and paste using keyboard shortcuts! Well, I pick and choose my modern marvels. Computer, yes, internet, yes please, laundromat, a necessary evil. I blow dry my hair in the winter and heat up tortillas on my electric stove. I have been known, on occasion, to answer a telephone call on my mobile wireless device. Sometimes I even send a text message to my email. All I eschew are the following: Facebook, Television, and Microwave. And the only thing I really need, like, desperately crave, leave all else behind, desert-island list: that silver rectangle more potent than nicotine, the iPod.
On historical cross-referencing
So the other evening I was making my way to something cultural, oh I don’t know, a book signing or something. I am a lady of society and therefore was wearing a long coat. Also it is winter outside, and it always will be. I am proud of this long coat, because it is cutting-edge. By “cutting edge” what I mean is that it has an “interesting shape” which is just a fancy way of saying “it doesn’t look that good on me”.
you have what it takes
Being a New Yorker is built-in preparation for long-distance travel. Anywhere I go, on a normal city day, I go dressed as a pack mule. I might have a yoga mat, diagonal across my back. I will have a purse full of regular purse things, all of which are extremely heavy. Maybe I will have an attaché case (read: canvas bag) for my laptop computer, and an additional canvas bag, just in case. I will have packed my lunch, because New York City is expensive. I will have packed a change of shoes, because New York City is huge. I will have packed toiletries, because Brooklyn is far and I’d hate to go all the way home to come back again, just for a fresh twirl of mascara.
the vacation conundrum
The better your trip, the worse your real life will seem upon your return. Because I live in New York, I automatically find it to be the superior dwelling place of Planet Earth. I like to come back from a trip kissing the tarmac at JFK, gulping in the stale subway air, talking to myself in a crowd and rejoicing in my sustained anonymity.
There will come a time, New Yorkers, when you will be tested.
the morning death wish
The beautiful thing is that you just never know, like, you just don’t, you are getting dressed in the morning and feeling very strongly the privacy of your space. Your apartment is your cocoon and never mind the other eight million people in the city who may also be getting up, trying on a shirt, buttoning it the wrong way and throwing it on the floor. Never mind the million other cups of coffee getting splashed on a skirt, never mind the million frantic watch-glances, just around the middle of eight o’clock AM.
a tale of two tweezers
I have my spies now, intrepid reporters, walking the streets and riding the public transportation of America’s finest cities with their eyes wide open; both in eager anticipation to – and in abject horror at – what they see.
Lately, a text message from a friend in Boston.
wherein I offer no answers
I know the second, unwritten tag-line of this column is: “you just can’t make this stuff up.” It’s true. You can tweak it or gloss it or set it in another city, you can re-name everyone and claim events for your own that happened to others, but you really cannot pull this stuff out of thin air. I mean, there’s just no need to. Take a walk with me, my friends, keep one eye to the ground and the other wide open and blood-shot-edly unblinking and you, too, will revel in the ever-unfolding quilt of madness that is the human race.
leave my earrings out of this
On New Year’s Eve, New York City floods with eager beavers. Little buck-toothed, semi-aquatic rodents, gnawing their way onto the couches of their more urbane friends. Like the cluster of young people from New Hampshire, bedecked in detachable mustaches, that I had the pleasure of waiting for the subway with. Sloppy on champagne and full of expectations, they made a great show of waving to the trains passing on the express track. Like toddlers at a construction site, attempting communication with the big vehicles.
love thy neighbor
In honor of the holiday, let’s take a note from the birthday boy, right? I mean, at this point in the Christian calendar he’s a screaming infant but he grew up and advised us, well, the royal we referring to the ancient Jerusalemites, to practice The Golden Rule. I will posit that when thy neighbor has a seventy five pound Rottweiler on a metal chain this can be a difficult edict to follow. I am a friendly person. I love a good chat. A shared glance, a courteous nod. The problem is: after years of city living, my trust tank has grown rusty and dry. As far as I am concerned, everyone is up to no good. Especially that neighbor with the dog.
you don’t knowww me
Having grown up with access to American television, and having attended an ‘inner-city’ public school, I find myself with indignant, urban catch phrases racing through my mind at points of public turmoil. A basic one would be the title of this week’s post. See above. Because you don’t. You don’t know me, sir. Youuuuoowwwnknowwwwwwwme. It is the older and more urban version of “You’re not my father!” which, considering some of the things men say to me on the street, I should certainly hope not.
under the microscope
It’s a small world, after all, (repeat, repeat, tiny multi-ethnic children in rainbow tunics spin around a two dimensional world map.) Small world, big city – New York. Anonymity is the first sentence in the fine print, it’s the escape clause, the shadow side of the deal. Bright lights, big city, The Rockettes, hot dogs, well, that’s tourist stuff. Day tripper. If we’re talking about signing a lease here, we’re talking about a fantasy of rebirth. A return to our probiotic origins, teeming protozoa, subdividing and swarming, teeming through the streets, each watery blob hardly different from the next. Racing toward some evolutionary goal, a competitive claw to the top, aberrations in the pool allowing for maximum growth. Hedge fund manager by day, drag king star by every third Saturday night.
the scholar and the actor
It is natural, at times, to feel that the world is against you; no one understands you, everyone is insane. I find myself saying that exact phrase, sometimes aloud, as I navigate crowded public spaces. “Everyone is fucking crazy,” I mutter, under my breath, shuffling along. Ha! Look at me! Sunglasses on a cloudy morning, carrying multiple canvas bags, paint splattered sneakers, well; it would seem that I am the object of my own disdain.
simple gifts
It is Black Friday; so for today, I give thanks that I was safely snug in my bed at 4AM, not clutching a styrofoam cup of Dunkin Donuts and waiting in line at Sears. I give thanks that my inherently greedy nature does not ask of me to elbow middle aged women at the shopping mall and stampede through automatic glass doors to fill my craving for discounted power tools, flat screened televisions, sweaters with oversized holiday decals on them, glued by the agile fingers of foreign children. I am extremely grateful that, as someone who lives in New York City, I am expected NOT to know what “Kohls” is. “Oh, you mean the eyeliner of Cleopatra?” I will say, if questioned on the subject.