Pure Klass

(I meant to write about how I visited the East Village and felt old, unstylish and out of place because I don’t own even a single pair of leggings that I wear with ugly boots and a tee shirt. But it turned into something else.)

The intersection of 9th Street and 3rd Avenue is one of those places that sticks a little more vividly in my head than your any-old-intersection. There’s that sushi place, where the young man and I had one of our earliest very-late-night-sushi dates, complete with too much sake. (There is a much better sushi restaurant for the same purpose on 23rd near 8th, but for some reason, that intersection doesn’t sit as memorably in my brain.) And there’s the asian market, full of brightly packaged and insane foods, one of the places where I’ve idled with at least a few friends. St. Marks Bookshop anchors the corner, feeling like City Lights does in San Francisco – intensely, unapproachably of the place. You can be nowhere else but here, when you are here.

I found myself there the other night after a St. Marks hiatus of several months. The only reason I’ve gone back since last fall is to drink too much at Holiday, an activity that can only be undertaken every six weeks at most, since the aftermath is something like the emotional equivalent of being stubbed out in a dirty ashtray. Holiday is physically much too close to a place I try to avoid, and emotionally just as close to the bar where I waited tables in Highland Park – the aging walls hold dark memories rather more bitter than beer. I’m a relative newcomer to Holiday (it’s a bar that has surely seen its share of newcomers) but I tend to superimpose old characters from the films I carry from my time at Mr. T’s Bowl. Beef Boy and Arlo could easily be the ghosts in a transcontinental Holiday.

But I wasn’t making my way toward Holiday the other night. I think of paths I follow as being etched into the map of the city I hold in my head, the more frequently used the path, the deeper and more inexorable. The path I was walking the other night is one of the deepest paths I’ve cut, although perhaps worn over with a patina – I hadn’t been to Leah’s apartment since, probably, the spring. She’s been going to college upstate, finishing a long-postponed B.A., and in that void, the life she’d built in the East Village started to unravel.

Unravelled completely, really. I was on my way to be emotional support while she packed up what was left of life in the apartment she’d been sharing with her boyfriend for the last five or more years. That relationship is ending, in the kind of fireball you hear about on daytime television, or through the friend of a friend, and you always hope that it could never happen to you. I really hope it could never happen to you.

Leah and I have been friends since, as far as I can remember, the moment we first met. We were on the same soccer team, which started practices before the school year, in the summer of 1989. We were in the same fifth grade class. She was tiny, and adorable, and had recently transplanted from Oakland, making her an exotic factor in our very rural elementary school. We haven’t spent as much time together in the last decade or so as I would like, but she is one of the people I have loved most and longest in this world.

With other friends of hers, friends from the decade we didn’t see each other so much,  I spent several hours offering her what support I could. We all did. It was rather lovely to see this handful of people, strangers linked through Leah, pushing off the dreadful buzzing hum of why we were there and simply being supportive, hilarious, overcaffeinated, amusing. Keeping the spirits at bay.

Until the last of the new friends left, and I sat with her until it was time to go, time to clear out before the ex-boyfriend came back home to fill it with dark juju clouds. And when we said goodnight I put my arms around her and she cried for a moment, and she is so tiny I felt as though I could open up my chest like an armoire and she could curl up inside me.

Sorry if you’re not all that interested in music videos. I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately, listening to a lot more of it than I did for a while, exploring some new stuff and revisiting old friends.

That being said, this video for Gorillaz’ Stylo blew my mind to bits the first time I saw it. And honestly, pretty much every time since. The visuals are amazing and if you haven’t seen it, well, I don’t want to ruin it for you. But you should watch. It’ll take your mind off the vast expanse between “right now” and “the weekend.”

Back at the beginning of September, I bought tickets to see Rigoletto at the Met. The young man gave his enthusiastic approval of both the opera and the date selected, and we made plans to be fancy-pants people for an evening. I was excited! Even though I try not to be a raging snob, I do like opera. Rather a lot. It tends to be ludicrous, and totally over the top, which sits well with me. A while back, I wrote something somewhere else saying that “real life doesn’t fit my aesthetic.” Well boy howdy, opera life TOTALLY fits my aesthetic. I AM BETRAYED! I WILL JUMP FROM A TOWER!

The tickets were for last Tuesday, which means there was about a month’s notice between purchasing and attending. Not shockingly, then, I was sad when we had this exchange a few days before:

“So,” he told me, “it turns out I have to go to Toronto to prep this show next Monday and Tuesday. Leaving early Monday, coming back late Tuesday.”

At the time of this conversation, the show he had to prep still seemed like it was going to be awesome (as opposed to now, when it is, by all reports, a mindbending shit storm. Feel free to use that term!) So I replied with something chirpy – “awesome! Canada!” – and moved on until I connected dates and days.

“Wait. Next Tuesday? OPERA DAY?”

Normally, I try to be waaaaaaaay relaxed about things like this. I am not That Girl, you know, the one who whines because you aren’t doing what SHE wants you to – honestly, you can cancel on me as many times as you like. I’m not going to stamp my foot and get all huffy. I can’t judge or get huffy, because by the time you start canceling on me, I’ve already rescheduled our dinner four times. I consider these cancellations karmic payback for my social anxiety.

But this stung. Partly because I spent what can only be called “fucktons of money” on these tickets, and partly because, well, I was excited! As a life philosophy, I don’t let myself get excited about things. Excitement? Leads to letdown. I stay mellow, and nothing disappoints. At the same time, nothing is really particularly thrilling, either, so I’ve been trying to be a little more EXCITABLE. So I tried. And I was crestfallen!

Like a little kid, I was crestfallen. I went through irritation, and sadness, and after an initial, reasonable expression of “boo, I’m disappointed,” I kept the rest of my tantrum to myself and addressed the next question: what to do with these tickets?

Options included: inviting a friend, going by myself, selling the tickets or just setting them on fire. I quickly eliminated the friend option – I don’t really have any friends living in the city who both like opera and wouldn’t be a really super weird companion for the evening. I tried to give them away to a couple of friends, but no one was free. I tried selling them on Craigslist, but ultimately, around 5 pm on Tuesday, it became apparent that I was going to the opera. By myself. What a glamorous life I lead!

After work, I had a picnic with myself in the park (deli salad! Extravagant and wasteful!) and watched the sky get darker. I walked through Poet’s Walk and all the other lovely places in the middle parts of the park and ended up at the Met right as doors were opening. I fell in line to walk inside, when a very-foreign seeming young man (don’t ask me how I know these things, I JUST DO) wended his way through the line laterally and pulled out a little sign saying “Do you have a spare ticket?” It seemed like as good a message from the universe as any, so I handed him my extra ticket and continued inside without looking back to see if he was going to use it or not.

For some reason, I didn’t really process the fact that giving him that ticket meant that he would end up sitting next to me. It turns out, when you give someone a not-cheap opera ticket, they not only end up sitting next to you, but they end up wanting to talk to you. Awkward! Especially when the English is not good, and it’s  unclear whether the person is absolutely stark raving bonkers or just a little special. He turned to me after the second act and said something like “Ah, it is so beautiful, the love between a father and daughter!”

If you’re not familiar with the story of Rigoletto, in brief: a bunch of assholeish people do some really shitty things to each other and then lie about it. The father gets the daughter killed through mischance and the ultimate asshole totally gets away. Maledizione! The end. So it’s totally dark and horrible, but there is some beautiful music and, as I said before, opera life fits my aesthetic. But our young ticket-beggar kept wanting to talk about how beautiful it was. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

At the end, I picked up my bag and scurried out of the theater before the curtain was entirely closed. It was better than risking further conversation with my who-knows-maybe-he’s-an-axe-murderer neighbor. Hurrying out into the plaza in front of the Met, I was reminded of Moonstruck, and how Cher’s character always wanted to go to the Met. Man, you know, it’s a really ugly building. Really! She’d have been better off just sticking with the symphony.

I considered getting in a cab, but I’d already spent half a month’s rent on an evening that I couldn’t call anything other than a bust, so I took the (slow, slow, slow) train home, trying not to hum any arias on the way.

Lessons learned? I’m a giant elitist who will go to the opera by herself, and also, sometimes there aren’t any lessons to be learned.

The other day, a blogger I occasionally read totally lost me by saying something like “man, will OK Go just stop putting out these lame, gimmicky videos?” I mean, I guess it’s good to be reminded that not everything is for everyone (for more in that vein, you could also read this really well-written, totally heartbreaking op-ed from the New York Times.)

You might be one of those who find OK Go gimmicky and annoying. You’re welcome to have that opinion. I just know that some days, this song really makes a difference in the quality of the moment I’m having. Enjoy, or not, as you see fit.

I gave myself a photography assignment on our most recent camping trip.

Photographing fungus.

Where I grew up, conventional wisdom said that mushrooms explode from the forest floor after the first serious autumn rain. Guess what? That applies on the east coast, too! I didn’t see the mushrooms I’m familiar with (chantarelles, amanitas, hedgehogs, shaggy manes) but that’s fine, because I’m seriously not about to pick and eat anything mushroomy without a Very Serious Expert by my side. As much fun as it sounds like, I don’t want my liver liquefied.

Still, it was neat. It gave me a focus, and allowed me to see a lot of things I don’t think I’d have noticed otherwise. The ones above, here, I can’t take credit for noticing. I was photographing something very much larger when the young man pointed out these tiny, tiny, tiny mushrooms. So small. The blade of grass should give you some sense of scale.

In all, it was a beautiful weekend. There is a bittersweet quality to knowing that it was the last camping trip of the year, and both of us are taking on life changes that mean that next year might not allow us so many free and easy weekends to go on overnight hiking trips.

But that’s ok. We grow, we change, we live and we breathe and we hug our possessions – be they spiritual, material or something greater than I am capable of saying.

Change is often afoot. Change is ALWAYS afoot, for god’s sake, because the foot is made of change. (What? I don’t know. Don’t ask.)

Here’s the thing: I just wrote 750 of the vainest words (not here) a creature has ever written, and I expect to look at it tomorrow (after the requisite settling time, that is) and still see something that another person might read. That is to say: might be willing to read without actually losing lunch. VAIN, right?

I miss writing. I miss feeling witty and zingy and as if there was a possibility that I might open my mouth or tap some keys or even – gasp – put pen to paper and something amusing, engaging, interesting might come out. It seems so unlikely, right? Especially if you’ve been reading this blog! (Hey-o.) But come on. My boyfriend thinks I’m funny! My mom thinks I’m funny! (For the record, those are also the people who think I’m cute. They might be in league with each other?)

I don’t know where I’m going with this. And I won’t subject you to any personal statements. But it’s a Monday night and I’m ready to go drink at least ONE high ABV beer in celebration of my coworker’s thesis defense. Are you?

This picture was taken in June of 1997. I was seventeen, and the girl dancing with me here, Arianna (names changed, of course,) was a year older. This was a ridiculously fun little dance number, a fun way to end what was an awesomely challenging year. I found a whole stack of pictures from this concert when I was visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago. Many of them are less embarrassing than this (because tap costumes are inherently embarrassing) but this is the one that has sparked the most webs of thought over the last few days.

The other night, I was staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. About half of my nights are like this – which is a vast improvement from when ALL of my nights were like that. (Taking B vitamins before bed wasn’t my best idea, it seems.) To kill time, my brain started making connections about this photograph. At the time the picture was taken, Arianna was either already pregnant or about to get pregnant. It was, of course, mildly scandalous in the way unwed teen pregnancy always is. She gave the baby up for adoption, and the baby was adopted within our tiny town by a couple who owned a rather prestigious (no, really) restaurant.

The baby, Mia, was adopted into privilege. Not only did her adopted parents own this restaurant and have a fair amount of notoriety in the food world of Northern California, but the man’s family owns a castle in Austria. Yes. A castle. The woman has written several cookbooks, and her name comes up in association with Alice Waters and others of the Chez Panisse-whole-food movement. They were middle-aged, compassionate, passionate, interesting and, well, well-off people.

A few years later, the man ran off with the restaurant’s former business manager – my mom’s best friend, Elena. Elena and my mom have been friends for nearly 40 years. It was, now that I think of it, probably because of Elena that my older brother’s first job was working at that restaurant – he was a prep cook and then sous chef, starting when he was fourteen. He met his (now ex-)wife while working there – she was a waitress. They were together for nearly 20 years, before splitting last year. She had gone back to waitressing, and ended up in a relationship with – shockingly – the restaurant manager. Restaurants are a dirty business – don’t get involved if you want to be respected as a human being. (I could tell you about the dirty scum that restaurant managers tend to be, but that wasn’t the sort of story my brain was spinning the other night.) Are you keeping up with me here? Baseline: a bunch of people are shitty to each other.

So Mia. Mia is in middle school now, and is a student in my older brother’s science class. He’s the middle school math and science teacher at the K-8 school that serves that part of the region. (There are not a lot of kids in that isolated part of the world.) I was thinking about her the other night – I’ve never met or even seen her, so she’s more of an abstract concept than a real person. I wonder if she looks like Arianna, if she’s a good dancer, if she likes the woman her adopted father ended up with. (For the record, I like Elena a lot. And from what little I know of them, I like both the adopted parents, too. None of them were bad, just maybe made some bad decisions at bad moments.)

I do know this: she thinks my older brother, her science teacher, is unserious. “Mr. S, you shouldn’t joke so much.” “Mr. S, that isn’t funny.”

My brother is, indeed, rollickingly unserious. In the best kind of way. He’s the science teacher I wish I’d had – someone who’s excited and interesting and funny and actually pretty damn cool. Not even “cool for a science teacher” but straight up “cool.” It’s funny that this little girl looks out at Mr. S and sees someone who shouldn’t joke so much. I wonder if she knows that he worked for her parents 20 years ago, when he was only a little older than she is now. I wonder a lot of things about a person I have never met.

This is the magically strange part of being from a small town. There are lines drawn between us all, lines which are ineradicable, lines which fill my brain and give me something to think about on a night I can’t sleep.

Even weirder is that fact that if I really, really tried, I could probably summon up a few small sections of the dance in the picture. I couldn’t actually do them, because dancing went out the window when I was 21, but I could probably, if really pushed to it, hum a few bars and tap my toes appropriately. So. Weird.

You know, sometimes a girl just wants to be driving too fast in her beat-up 1992 Volvo sedan, smoking a cigarette and balancing a cup of coffee and listening to Tori Amos howling and banging on her harpsichord. Sometimes a girl would not only like to do this, but to do it unironically.

That is to say, I’m feeling very old and jaded and dull.

I went to visit the place I grew up for a few days, and it was strange and nice and heartbreaking.

It all felt very unfamiliar and far away and sweet and sad, perhaps like a half-remembered birthday cake. More precisely, though, it felt like a sweater that you used to love, and then you store away for 15 years, and when you find it again it isn’t comfortable or familiar at all, even though you know full well that it once was.