first of all, why is this coffee shop called Esperanto? And why is the hot chocolate twice as expensive as the coffee? If this place wasn't littered with great couches and hot guys, it'd be over. As it is, it's the only place open late in New York that I can use a computer and not feel like a twit, so...
New York is great, of course. It's been a good week here. Everything is always moving moving all around me. I was alone for maybe 30 minutes today, taking a shower in my brother's apartment, and I come out again onto the street in Little Italy and it hits me all of a sudden that everyone outside was still going going going while I was taking it slow. Iowa, Ojai, and, yeah, Seattle, I go outside and I feel like I'm the only person awake, maybe.
What to say about what I've been doing? Wandering, mostly, just looking and people and soaking up smells and places and all this texture before I head back to Iowa's sloped earth and flat buildings. I've done the hit list of museums (Whitney Biennial, Guggenheim, the Met, Brooklyn Museum to see Judy Chicago's piece, MOMA) and found a place that sells 50 dumplings for $12. Monday night I got drunk with friends in a Brooklyn Heights mansion, then played both boccee ball and Big Boggle at a bar. Tuesday was - what the hell did I do? - oh, a friend from school and I took the L train the hip part of Brooklyn, just sat watching people walk by and tried to identify what the hot trends are these days. NYC Stylewatch 2008! We decided: vests, giant sunglasses, funny patterened hoodies. When we felt overwhelmed by our uncoolness, we decided to find people less hip than we are so we walked over to the Hassidic Jewish neighborhood and ate Purim cookies on their street instead. Then I spent the night at a different friend's apartment, met her roommate who's a sailor on a tugboat and through the thin wall next to me, their elderly neighbor died in his sleep while I dreamed on the futon. We woke up to EMTs and went out to a diner that gave us cookies and oranges before our meal.
That's what New York feels like to me: interesting, incongruous occurrences strung together day in, day out. I'll be happy to get back to school, where life has more narrative to it.
Everyone hates this coffee shop - Jesus H. Christ, they don't do refills of hot water for tea and the barista looks at me in a way that makes me want to run to the Hassidics again. This town seriously needs some more places that let you sit on their sofas.
Here is the conversation a man is, honest to god, shouting into his cell phone right now next to me:
"(chortle) So did you smack her around? Haha ... no seriously, does she have any bruises she can prove? ... do you need a criminal lawyer? ... uh huh, so it's being done the New York way? I highly approve."
...
I'm moving to Portland 100 percent. I don't think I really do the New York way.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Both popular and tall
Today is the first day of spring, I think, and it started off raining here and wound up snowing. My dad and I basically spent all day preparing dinner, since we have nothing better to do up here. My grandma drew us a funny map with only two lines on it and an "X" marking fish. "That's the fish market in Bucksport," she explained, "it's over the river."
So we drove out there and got clarifying directions at the book store and wound up in the front yard of a trailer marked "Scallops Shrimp + Haddock". On the inside was one refrigerator full of haddock and giant three plastic trash cans full of shrimp, so we bought the haddock.
We wanted to make a pie for dinner, but when my grandma heard, she didn't quite understand our plan to cook everything for her, so she made the pie instead. Also, she informed my dad, we wouldn't know how to make it right. She does do things differently, like not using butter and measuring crisco by dropping it into water like icebergs. I made lentil soup from Soup Night two weeks ago and the little pita chips Dayna taught me how to make. My grandmother insisted we set the pie to cool out on the front porch.
Finally we all sat down to dinner and my grandpa lit the candles and poured the wine. We four are the four most silent people in my family, so we sat at the table mostly being quiet and talking about the soup. Then, all of a sudden, a fireman in full gear burst through the front door.
"Your gas alarm has gone off! Get out of the house while we test the place for gas!" he yelled. My grandpa got up and told him he was being silly, the house most certainly wasn't filling with gas, but the fireman was insistent the way men with axes are, so we all soon got up except for my grandmother whose hearing aid had gone out and had no idea what was going on.
We stood on the front porch and soon enough the fire truck roared up, sirens blazing through the snow. The whole crew jumped out and rushed inside. The guys on the porch with us confessed this was the only call they'd had all week, being only the fire department of this little Maine town. They got all excited about taking out their gas recording gear and radioing back to headquarters that everything was fine - false alarm.
Then they let us back inside and, obviously not wanting to go back to the station, stood around instructing us how to use the smoke alarm. "When it blinks, that means it's working," one of them explained. So there we stood, four of us Mirks and three burly firemen, looking up at the living room ceiling waiting for the fire alarm to blink. It took a long thirty seconds or so, we all let out a little "aha!" and then my grandma offered them pita chips.
"These won't ruin your appeteite!" she said. "Thanks!" said one of the firemen, "I'll have to find false alarms more often! I'll remember you - I never forget a pretty face."
I picked the lock on my grandmother's diary from 1947 after everyone went to bed last night. This wasn't the most ethical thing to do, but I am a snoop. The diary is hilarious and boy crazy. My favorite bit is that the telegram announcing her birth is taped in on one page. It reads, "Phillida Campbell Bond born at nine oclock perfect little tike full of ginger lots of black hair Lois got thru beautifully in less than two hours and is feeling fine greatly pleased with dr smith and the nitrous oxide hope you like granddaughters."
and, her writting at age 15 in 1942, "I can’t figure out why I’m not popular. I don’t think I have b.o. or haliotosis or anything. Of course, I am awfully tall, but I don’t think that has anything to do with it. Look at – well gosh – I don’t know anyone who is both popular and tall."
So we drove out there and got clarifying directions at the book store and wound up in the front yard of a trailer marked "Scallops Shrimp + Haddock". On the inside was one refrigerator full of haddock and giant three plastic trash cans full of shrimp, so we bought the haddock.
We wanted to make a pie for dinner, but when my grandma heard, she didn't quite understand our plan to cook everything for her, so she made the pie instead. Also, she informed my dad, we wouldn't know how to make it right. She does do things differently, like not using butter and measuring crisco by dropping it into water like icebergs. I made lentil soup from Soup Night two weeks ago and the little pita chips Dayna taught me how to make. My grandmother insisted we set the pie to cool out on the front porch.
Finally we all sat down to dinner and my grandpa lit the candles and poured the wine. We four are the four most silent people in my family, so we sat at the table mostly being quiet and talking about the soup. Then, all of a sudden, a fireman in full gear burst through the front door.
"Your gas alarm has gone off! Get out of the house while we test the place for gas!" he yelled. My grandpa got up and told him he was being silly, the house most certainly wasn't filling with gas, but the fireman was insistent the way men with axes are, so we all soon got up except for my grandmother whose hearing aid had gone out and had no idea what was going on.
We stood on the front porch and soon enough the fire truck roared up, sirens blazing through the snow. The whole crew jumped out and rushed inside. The guys on the porch with us confessed this was the only call they'd had all week, being only the fire department of this little Maine town. They got all excited about taking out their gas recording gear and radioing back to headquarters that everything was fine - false alarm.
Then they let us back inside and, obviously not wanting to go back to the station, stood around instructing us how to use the smoke alarm. "When it blinks, that means it's working," one of them explained. So there we stood, four of us Mirks and three burly firemen, looking up at the living room ceiling waiting for the fire alarm to blink. It took a long thirty seconds or so, we all let out a little "aha!" and then my grandma offered them pita chips.
"These won't ruin your appeteite!" she said. "Thanks!" said one of the firemen, "I'll have to find false alarms more often! I'll remember you - I never forget a pretty face."
I picked the lock on my grandmother's diary from 1947 after everyone went to bed last night. This wasn't the most ethical thing to do, but I am a snoop. The diary is hilarious and boy crazy. My favorite bit is that the telegram announcing her birth is taped in on one page. It reads, "Phillida Campbell Bond born at nine oclock perfect little tike full of ginger lots of black hair Lois got thru beautifully in less than two hours and is feeling fine greatly pleased with dr smith and the nitrous oxide hope you like granddaughters."
and, her writting at age 15 in 1942, "I can’t figure out why I’m not popular. I don’t think I have b.o. or haliotosis or anything. Of course, I am awfully tall, but I don’t think that has anything to do with it. Look at – well gosh – I don’t know anyone who is both popular and tall."
Monday, March 17, 2008
Spring Break Road Trip
Part One of the "Sarah reconnects with her family road trip 2008" is off to a mediocre start. Nothing worth writing a play about, but I did linger on the edge of tears in the Met, hiding behind a giant ionic column to avoid the crowd.
All weekend I felt like my relationship with my dad was foundering. We get along alright, so I've never really sat down and thought about our relationship before. Now that I am, I realize that it can be summed up as such:
I talk. He digests.
Here's a frustratingly typical interaction:
we have arrived at the Met, obtained a cup of coffee and are standing at the balcony, surveying the entire museum - the best art the world has to offer! - at our fingertips.
me: So what are you excited about seeing?
he: I don't know.
me: well. I think I'll see the modern stuff.
he: I think I'll just go back to the hotel and read a book.
So he left the museum and I hid behind the column, feeling awful, fielding phone calls and ducking into the Impressionism room when the guard glared at me for talking too loudly. It's there that I saw some Monets and felt better all of sudden, staring at the water lilies. I like being in museums alone, where I can stand for as long as I want in front of a piece or pass the famous ones by. And I don't have to explain what I think of a work and try to articulately justify my reaction.
And that's what my dad and I do exceedingly well together: sit quietly absorbed in our own thoughts. We go out to eat and do crosswords instead of talking or ride the subway 100 blocks together, both silently reading different papers. Today we took the train from Penn Station to Boston and most of the way I was getting silently angry about the way he never laughs at my jokes or responds to my ideas. We talk about food, dogs, architecture, anything but anything important. I got coffee from the cafe car and came back and took a deep breath. It felt the same as when I work myself up to tell a boy I like him, so before I could stop myself, I tumbled out some words about breaking up with Anand. And it really changed things, a little. From there through the day, across Boston and the Maine border, up through the pine trees and across Casco Bay, every once in a while, we'd pick it up again and start talking about relationships. No kind of heart-to-heart, but a solid comfortability.
The farther north of the Maine border you get, the more the population decreases and the roadside store puns increase. In Wiscasset we hit "Maine-ly sewing" and I started to get genuinely nervous, realizing we were almost here to my grandparents house. I haven't seen my grandparents for... I figured this out earlier ... 6 years (?), due to nothing more than mutual lethargy and apathy. I made us stop at the grocery store and buy flowers. Holding them on my grandparents' small front porch, I felt like I was beginning a blind date, grasping the flowers in front of me for protection as the door opened.
My grandmother doesn't acknowledge any of the time or mutual benign neglect, of course, greeting me after six years with, "Oh, you shouldn't have brought flowers." - pause - "I thought your hair would be more blonde." I'm surprised to find, though, that I like my grandparents. I don't think I've ever gotten their sense of humor before, which I've discovered now is slow and dry and sharp. "Where did you get that sweater?" my dad asks politely over dinner. "Oh," my grandma replies, "My son and his wife sent it to me." You see?
Thus the "Sarah reconnects with her family roadtrip 2008" is swiftly becoming the "Sarah acknowldeges the strengths of distance and independence within family relationships and resolves to let the whole desire for a close family thing go SPRING BREAK LOBSTER ROLL YES! TOUR 2008."
That's my theme recently, my mantra. "Let it go"
... or, more realistically "Let it fucking go already, you overthinking fuckwit!!!"
"It" being boys, expectations and Want in general.
All weekend I felt like my relationship with my dad was foundering. We get along alright, so I've never really sat down and thought about our relationship before. Now that I am, I realize that it can be summed up as such:
I talk. He digests.
Here's a frustratingly typical interaction:
we have arrived at the Met, obtained a cup of coffee and are standing at the balcony, surveying the entire museum - the best art the world has to offer! - at our fingertips.
me: So what are you excited about seeing?
he: I don't know.
me: well. I think I'll see the modern stuff.
he: I think I'll just go back to the hotel and read a book.
So he left the museum and I hid behind the column, feeling awful, fielding phone calls and ducking into the Impressionism room when the guard glared at me for talking too loudly. It's there that I saw some Monets and felt better all of sudden, staring at the water lilies. I like being in museums alone, where I can stand for as long as I want in front of a piece or pass the famous ones by. And I don't have to explain what I think of a work and try to articulately justify my reaction.
And that's what my dad and I do exceedingly well together: sit quietly absorbed in our own thoughts. We go out to eat and do crosswords instead of talking or ride the subway 100 blocks together, both silently reading different papers. Today we took the train from Penn Station to Boston and most of the way I was getting silently angry about the way he never laughs at my jokes or responds to my ideas. We talk about food, dogs, architecture, anything but anything important. I got coffee from the cafe car and came back and took a deep breath. It felt the same as when I work myself up to tell a boy I like him, so before I could stop myself, I tumbled out some words about breaking up with Anand. And it really changed things, a little. From there through the day, across Boston and the Maine border, up through the pine trees and across Casco Bay, every once in a while, we'd pick it up again and start talking about relationships. No kind of heart-to-heart, but a solid comfortability.
The farther north of the Maine border you get, the more the population decreases and the roadside store puns increase. In Wiscasset we hit "Maine-ly sewing" and I started to get genuinely nervous, realizing we were almost here to my grandparents house. I haven't seen my grandparents for... I figured this out earlier ... 6 years (?), due to nothing more than mutual lethargy and apathy. I made us stop at the grocery store and buy flowers. Holding them on my grandparents' small front porch, I felt like I was beginning a blind date, grasping the flowers in front of me for protection as the door opened.
My grandmother doesn't acknowledge any of the time or mutual benign neglect, of course, greeting me after six years with, "Oh, you shouldn't have brought flowers." - pause - "I thought your hair would be more blonde." I'm surprised to find, though, that I like my grandparents. I don't think I've ever gotten their sense of humor before, which I've discovered now is slow and dry and sharp. "Where did you get that sweater?" my dad asks politely over dinner. "Oh," my grandma replies, "My son and his wife sent it to me." You see?
Thus the "Sarah reconnects with her family roadtrip 2008" is swiftly becoming the "Sarah acknowldeges the strengths of distance and independence within family relationships and resolves to let the whole desire for a close family thing go SPRING BREAK LOBSTER ROLL YES! TOUR 2008."
That's my theme recently, my mantra. "Let it go"
... or, more realistically "Let it fucking go already, you overthinking fuckwit!!!"
"It" being boys, expectations and Want in general.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
rubbish
Hey! I'm feeling good again. The snow is melting and I lost my voice from talking so much to friends and friends and friends over the past week. Seriously, every afternoon it's lunch with friends and every night it's dinner with friends and then it's friends in class and friends in the library. I need them right now. I need spring right now. I need homemade burritos and good music. I need bike rides. All of these things - thank you.
God, though, it's weird being single and flirting (?) with boys. How unstable this kind of life is, where you're not sure from one day to the next whether you'll feel wanted or rejected. I've been relying a lot on the constant support, appreciation and admiration of a stable (and wonderful) boyfriend. Now, building that same kind of self confidence has to come more from within - I have to make it for myself rather than receiving it. Otherwise I end up gauging myself by how much others want me and, goodness, that's no way to be. Do people really stay single for, like, years? I find this constant uncertain back and forth stressful. But I also have very little desire to get back together with my boyfriend? There's something really good here that I can't articulate yet.
It's midnight in the library - everyone's heading home. That's the good thing about having no one at home waiting to fall into bed with you! I can stay out late and do what I want without any guilty pangs. Hell! Maybe I'll go eat nachos! Maybe I'll start drinking! Maybe I'll write my history paper! It's a wild wild wild world.
Three nights from now, I'll be in New York City! Five nights from now, I'll be at my grandparents' house on the Maine coastline! Moving quickly between spaces always blows my mind.
Here's the thing about my grandparents and my very conscious (?contrived?) desire to create some sort of relationship with them:
Over winter break, I was home for seven days. I spent the first night home rummaging through the closet in what was once my bedroom and is now the day room. Shoebox full of letters from my dad to my mom, written while they were dating and worked long hours away from one another. Reading through those notes on the bed made the realization collapse on me that there's so much I don't say to my parents. I feel like our relationship is full of awkward, private holes where we all three don't talk about certain subjects for no other reason than we're cowards and it's out of character. Individually, as humans, we are all cool and candid discussing sex and big decisions like marriage and kids and big mistakes like things we regret. But together that dialogue stagnates before it even gets started. It's less tiptoeing around the conversation than breathing in and out during car rides, staring out the windows and talking about dogs and weather and politics. I have never ever talked to my grandparents, really, more than "Happy Birthday" but they're all over those letters. In my dad's handwriting, they have opinions, ideas and influence that I've always ignored out of tradition.
I want to get casual with my family. I've never before felt like I need my extended family in any way at all and I still don't. ... . ... . ... . ... but I do need to understand that feeling some more and figure out whether my family's absence from my life is ... . I don't know. A deficit. Some people get so much joy and identity from their family's and what I get from mine is a sense of independence, more than anything.
... . ... . ... ... . . . . .. . ...
Anand and I ended it on facebook today. That was rough. I've had a lot to say about everything recently. Melt, snow.
God, though, it's weird being single and flirting (?) with boys. How unstable this kind of life is, where you're not sure from one day to the next whether you'll feel wanted or rejected. I've been relying a lot on the constant support, appreciation and admiration of a stable (and wonderful) boyfriend. Now, building that same kind of self confidence has to come more from within - I have to make it for myself rather than receiving it. Otherwise I end up gauging myself by how much others want me and, goodness, that's no way to be. Do people really stay single for, like, years? I find this constant uncertain back and forth stressful. But I also have very little desire to get back together with my boyfriend? There's something really good here that I can't articulate yet.
It's midnight in the library - everyone's heading home. That's the good thing about having no one at home waiting to fall into bed with you! I can stay out late and do what I want without any guilty pangs. Hell! Maybe I'll go eat nachos! Maybe I'll start drinking! Maybe I'll write my history paper! It's a wild wild wild world.
Three nights from now, I'll be in New York City! Five nights from now, I'll be at my grandparents' house on the Maine coastline! Moving quickly between spaces always blows my mind.
Here's the thing about my grandparents and my very conscious (?contrived?) desire to create some sort of relationship with them:
Over winter break, I was home for seven days. I spent the first night home rummaging through the closet in what was once my bedroom and is now the day room. Shoebox full of letters from my dad to my mom, written while they were dating and worked long hours away from one another. Reading through those notes on the bed made the realization collapse on me that there's so much I don't say to my parents. I feel like our relationship is full of awkward, private holes where we all three don't talk about certain subjects for no other reason than we're cowards and it's out of character. Individually, as humans, we are all cool and candid discussing sex and big decisions like marriage and kids and big mistakes like things we regret. But together that dialogue stagnates before it even gets started. It's less tiptoeing around the conversation than breathing in and out during car rides, staring out the windows and talking about dogs and weather and politics. I have never ever talked to my grandparents, really, more than "Happy Birthday" but they're all over those letters. In my dad's handwriting, they have opinions, ideas and influence that I've always ignored out of tradition.
I want to get casual with my family. I've never before felt like I need my extended family in any way at all and I still don't. ... . ... . ... . ... but I do need to understand that feeling some more and figure out whether my family's absence from my life is ... . I don't know. A deficit. Some people get so much joy and identity from their family's and what I get from mine is a sense of independence, more than anything.
... . ... . ... ... . . . . .. . ...
Anand and I ended it on facebook today. That was rough. I've had a lot to say about everything recently. Melt, snow.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
God I hate this month
Ha! I'm eating cereal and listening to Dar Williams "Iowa" with no pants on. This is some sort of cliche, but I'm not sure which.
Done in the last 48 hours:
- two bottles of champagne
- a lot of pot on Main 4th
- MarioKart playing
- Daft Punk Dance Party
- drunkenly buying and immediately consuming 4 muffins sold by friendly Christians
- dressing up like a Newsie
- all that rum
- bumping and/or grinding
To do in the next 48 hours:
- Seminar paper proposal
- Neuroscience presentation
- Neuroscience paper
- Art portfolio
- make a tree out of string
- paper about Viennesse art
shiiitttt.
ALSO, I need to remind myself again and again until I believe it that waking up alone does not mean the whole night/my whole life was a bust. Gawd I want someone to sleep over so we can make biscuits in the morning together.
... does "make biscuits" sound like some sexual slang? I meant literal biscuits. Preferably flaky.
My roommate just walked in wearing a bright green floral mumu. Things are looking up. (1 comment |
Done in the last 48 hours:
- two bottles of champagne
- a lot of pot on Main 4th
- MarioKart playing
- Daft Punk Dance Party
- drunkenly buying and immediately consuming 4 muffins sold by friendly Christians
- dressing up like a Newsie
- all that rum
- bumping and/or grinding
To do in the next 48 hours:
- Seminar paper proposal
- Neuroscience presentation
- Neuroscience paper
- Art portfolio
- make a tree out of string
- paper about Viennesse art
shiiitttt.
ALSO, I need to remind myself again and again until I believe it that waking up alone does not mean the whole night/my whole life was a bust. Gawd I want someone to sleep over so we can make biscuits in the morning together.
... does "make biscuits" sound like some sexual slang? I meant literal biscuits. Preferably flaky.
My roommate just walked in wearing a bright green floral mumu. Things are looking up. (1 comment |
Monday, March 3, 2008
Midwestern Bratz
Today instead of soup night, I'm hosting pie night. I'm hoping we can dye the dough and make the top of the crust into pie charts.
I'm secretly happy every time I need to buy something not available at the closer, more upscale grocery store McNally's (e.g. 2 pounds of Crisco) because then I am forced to go to the farther away Fareway despite their horrible business practices. I love going to Fareway for three reasons:
1. Developing nation prices! Today I bought a dozen eggs for $1.00 and 5 pounds of flour for 50 cents! I still think fondly of the time last spring when I bought 2 dozen bananas for 50 cents and then my friend Alex ate half of them alone on the 3rd floor of the library.
2. The only pasta sauce they sell is Prego!
3. Charming townie staff and clientele! While I desperately rifled through the frozen fruit looking for rhubarb, the cashiers discussed the best way to get their 25 year old friend to break up with his 48 year old girlfriend. As I came out of the store, an old guy with no teeth and a baseball hat looked my bike over and said, "You must look pretty smart riding that."
Riding back through the snow and against the wind with a huge plastic grocery bag banging against my wheel, I didn't feel too smart at all. I also failed a Neuroscience quiz, refuse to do my sculpture homework and don't have a seminar paper topic. smart smart smart!
All I've been thinking about recently is relationship stuff and boys. It's weird being single because there's no one to come home to and fall asleep with even when it's raining outside and that's all I want to do. Anand was at a funeral all weekend for his grandfather. The funeral reception served three kinds of Jello, one mixed with LETTUCE and MAYONNAISE. Please, Lord, when I die, let it be outside the Midwest.
Myself, my roommate and two friends ran away to Chicago this weekend. I feel like a weekend in any city moves at top speed, since every block is interesting and every foray outside an expedition.
Friday Saturday
cheeriosinthecar truckstopatthemississippi blastingdisco windowsrolleddownonhighway watertowers spanishradio skylinetraffic downtown jailinthecity officepeople suitsheelsstoplights 24hourrestaurant cheesyfriesbluemoon metalshow? barshapedlikeabarrel singingamazinggrace wearingfunnyhats makingconversation talkingaboutthefountainhead? rainbowstreetsigns citymorning healthycereal metrocard$2 ridingthroughthecity Pilsen greasyquesadillawalkingdownthestreet mexicanartchupacabras buyingburritos dunkindonutscoffee michiganavenuefurprotest calder'sworks widewindowedmuseums vanhomesunsetoverthecity playingNeverHaveIEver?
We stayed with a friend of mine whose parents work for the Salvation Army. I didn't realize how far the Salvation Army takes the Army metaphor - everyone calls her parents "Major" and they live within the walled compound of the Salvation Army officer's training academy. Everyone wears white uniforms to class.
Her sister lives there, too, with her 4 year old son. He has big eyes that you can tell are absorbing the whole world. He loves Bratz and no one knows what to do about that.
I'm secretly happy every time I need to buy something not available at the closer, more upscale grocery store McNally's (e.g. 2 pounds of Crisco) because then I am forced to go to the farther away Fareway despite their horrible business practices. I love going to Fareway for three reasons:
1. Developing nation prices! Today I bought a dozen eggs for $1.00 and 5 pounds of flour for 50 cents! I still think fondly of the time last spring when I bought 2 dozen bananas for 50 cents and then my friend Alex ate half of them alone on the 3rd floor of the library.
2. The only pasta sauce they sell is Prego!
3. Charming townie staff and clientele! While I desperately rifled through the frozen fruit looking for rhubarb, the cashiers discussed the best way to get their 25 year old friend to break up with his 48 year old girlfriend. As I came out of the store, an old guy with no teeth and a baseball hat looked my bike over and said, "You must look pretty smart riding that."
Riding back through the snow and against the wind with a huge plastic grocery bag banging against my wheel, I didn't feel too smart at all. I also failed a Neuroscience quiz, refuse to do my sculpture homework and don't have a seminar paper topic. smart smart smart!
All I've been thinking about recently is relationship stuff and boys. It's weird being single because there's no one to come home to and fall asleep with even when it's raining outside and that's all I want to do. Anand was at a funeral all weekend for his grandfather. The funeral reception served three kinds of Jello, one mixed with LETTUCE and MAYONNAISE. Please, Lord, when I die, let it be outside the Midwest.
Myself, my roommate and two friends ran away to Chicago this weekend. I feel like a weekend in any city moves at top speed, since every block is interesting and every foray outside an expedition.
Friday Saturday
cheeriosinthecar truckstopatthemississippi blastingdisco windowsrolleddownonhighway watertowers spanishradio skylinetraffic downtown jailinthecity officepeople suitsheelsstoplights 24hourrestaurant cheesyfriesbluemoon metalshow? barshapedlikeabarrel singingamazinggrace wearingfunnyhats makingconversation talkingaboutthefountainhead? rainbowstreetsigns citymorning healthycereal metrocard$2 ridingthroughthecity Pilsen greasyquesadillawalkingdownthestreet mexicanartchupacabras buyingburritos dunkindonutscoffee michiganavenuefurprotest calder'sworks widewindowedmuseums vanhomesunsetoverthecity playingNeverHaveIEver?
We stayed with a friend of mine whose parents work for the Salvation Army. I didn't realize how far the Salvation Army takes the Army metaphor - everyone calls her parents "Major" and they live within the walled compound of the Salvation Army officer's training academy. Everyone wears white uniforms to class.
Her sister lives there, too, with her 4 year old son. He has big eyes that you can tell are absorbing the whole world. He loves Bratz and no one knows what to do about that.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
sqaubbers
Yesterday I found myself facing a meat counter in the underbelly of Pike Place Market. Rows and rows of cut, roast and curried flesh, but they didn't have what I was looking for. "Do you sell pigeon?" I asked the mustached man with the bloody apron from over the metal scale.
It wasn't for me, it's for my chef-obsessed friend Nathan, who was hell bent on making a dish called Toad-Like Squab.
He succeeded:
look at those gaping caper eyes!
Nathan followed up with this email:
I find myself outdone, again.
It wasn't for me, it's for my chef-obsessed friend Nathan, who was hell bent on making a dish called Toad-Like Squab.
He succeeded:
look at those gaping caper eyes!
Nathan followed up with this email:
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for helping me find those squabs. It's too bad that we couldn't get any squabs on Sunday, but, as you know, people must observe the squabbath.
I hope the squab monger you sent me to is a fair and honest man. Otherwise we might have a squabble over the price. I might not not understand his pigeon English and would need to clean out my ears with cotton squabs. I might become so upset that I start to squab uncontrollably. I might then go home demoralized and console myself with deadly sins like gluttony and squabth. And we all know how Squab hates sinning. Remember how Squab's Angels destroyed Squabom and Gomorrah? That's why Texas has anti-squabomy laws. Some people see this as contradicting the idea that Squab is love. But my religious beliefs are difficult to pigeonhole. I always like to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson here: "A foolish consistency is the squabgoblin of little minds."
I find myself outdone, again.
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