Maine: A Haiku

rain poured down on us

so we poured beer down our throats

and cooked with wet wood

Night:

When I breathe, eat, talk, forget, remember, and sleep.

I breathe the crisp, welcoming, familiar Brooklyn air, swirling with bits of student laughter and Starbucks wafts, wind from behind bicycles and sighs from the swaying ginko trees.

I eat immediately. Vegetables and carbs, full cartons of baby tomatoes, quesadillas stuffed with sharp cheddar and red pepper and chicken-less chicken. Briegorgonzolaparmeseancreamcheese. Carrot ginger soup and chili, avocados, gazpacho and take-out sushi. A glass of pinot and a few episodes of This American Life.

I talk to whomever is on my mind: Nina, Dad, Hannah, aunts, uncles, old friends, new lovers, new friends, old lovers, from all ends and stretches of my mind, via all forms of communication.

I forget, or try to forget, the emails and the invoices and the contracts and the lists and the meetings. The banter and the formalities and the one-two-three of the day.

I remember everything else. For 6 hours at the end of it all I remember - and finally, I am beginning to be here, and make things worth remembering: plays, cafes, Scrabble in the park, concerts, commiseration over pints, and dancing.

Queens

As I sat in the cab outside the FedEx warehouse in Queens the other night I was pleasantly reminded of the movie Castaway.  Except in the movie, Tom Hanks' character stands in a Russian FedEx warehouse.  The area of Queens I was in, a flat, vast spread of warehouse upon warehouse, factory after factory.  Lauren says the area we were in is what runs New York City.  Water, electricity, etc... She had to go to the FedEx to pick up some concert tickets for a concert she wasn't even going to go to, and I waited in the cab with Aziz, the Turkish cab driver.  We sat in silence for about five minutes while I pretended I was busy playing with my phone.  He took a cat nap, and woke up suddenly, turning around abruptly to ask me if I wanted to listen to music.  I told him I hadn't lived here long enough to know any radio stations, and he told me he could tell I like the Beatles.  I do.  He flipped the dial and "Paperback Writer" played loudly from the back seat speakers.  After that, a commercial came on and Aziz turned the volume down, and turned abruptly to me once again.  He asked where I came from, why I was here, and where I live in New York.  After answering each question in turn, I asked him the same.  His family lives in Istanbul and he moved here for an American woman he fell in love with while she was studying at the University near where his parents lived.  He doesn't want kids, thinks Queens is the closest thing to heaven, and told me how the cab business works.  He simply pays rent on the car, $628 per week, and the money he makes after that, is all his.  He claims that he makes quite a bit of money, and I would imagine that if he drives around in the right areas of Manhattan, tips probably can be rather lucrative.  Maybe if publishing falls through...

Y sigo pensando

A heartbreaking song from a movie of a book about love.

Airborne Nostalgia

{Penny Lane} After shoving my carry-on into the overhead bin, squeezing my Timbuk2 under the seat in front of me, letting the skinny, big-sweatshirted girl into the window seat next to me, making sure my seat belt was securely fastened, my seat back and tray table was in its upright and locked position, I popped in my earbuds and turned on Shuffle.  Of course, "Weary Memory" turned on and I was forced into airborne nostalgia.  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to hide the tears.  When you fly west from New York to Wisconsin at night you chase the sun, so the sky stays periwinkle the whole time.  When you fly east from Wisconsin to New York you chase time, and an hour escapes your life, leaving no trace and leaving you an hour older without living it.  Why is it that airplanes make me so nostalgic?  It's always in this space between places I have been and will be soon that I think the clearest, that I feel closest to epiphany?  It must be the altitude, the thinness of the air, the hours that escape into passing infinity.

On this particular journey east, I thought about how there's an infinite number of things that one can learn if they just open their eyes and ears to their surroundings - especially when those surroundings are new, or out of the ordinary.  I learned that it costs almost a thousand dollars to stuff one deer head.  That the earth's water table has been dropping for the past few decades.  That a "45" means that the bullet inside the gun is 45 millimeters in diameter.  That if there is a motor on your boat, it must be registered, or the DNR will come at you like bats out of hell on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.  That everybody's happy in the fast-food restaurants of Antigo.  That deer ticks are the really bad Lyme-disease ticks and wood ticks aren't so bad but their abundance this time of year is bewildering.  That face cards have different personalities.  That my sister-in-law is an avid ATV extraordinaire.  That if knots in wooden ceilings are stared at long enough, they turn into animals.  That one way to unclog a pond is to throw a stick of dynamite in it.   That Robert Pattenson is actually of British descent.  That the unassuming, unyielding hospitality of a childhood friend is absolutely priceless.  That long walks in the drizzling, mid-western rain are worth it.  That I dish out platefuls of sarcasm, but can't take it.

Cupcaking in Williamsburg

There seems to be a general obsession for cupcakes in this town that I wasn't fully aware of until last night. It's like an underground clique, that only the true lovers of small cakes wrapped in paper are abreast to. I attended a Cupcake Contest at the Union Pool tavern, where white Christmas lights dangled above 60 different types of cupcakes, their creators, and quite a few mingling voters. Flavors ranged from chocolate-rum-coconut to PB&J to bacon-mashed potato. Voters paid a dollar for a ticket (some bought many tickets to support friends) and the proceeds went to a local soup kitchen in Williamsburg. Weaving through the hoards of white cardboard boxes full of deliciousness, I found my favorite: coconut carrot cake with, of course, cream cheese frosting. As voters taste tested and the sky grew darker, the din was raised a bit - not because of the amount of PBR in people's bellies, but rather the amount of sugar pumping through everyone's systems. Hysterics ensued. The winner (I was too sugar-high to remember what the flavor was) won one of those Kitchen-Aid electronic mixers in a big white box almost bigger than she. After the award ceremony, (which really was no more than a dude standing on a chair shouting the runners up and winner), the happily full voters came down from their sugar rush and, crashing, returned to their cozy apartments.

My New Girlfriend

In movies, when people move to New York, there always seems to be this magical montage of everything all at once - wheels splashing through puddles, cigarettes departing hardened lips, blurred colorful lights, tower after tower after statue after bridge after sweeping air shot of a certain park... I'm not saying these things aren't New York - they all are in their own, mass-individual way. New York is a great actress in thousands of movies: charismatic and sad, shiny and drab. You can't take your eyes off her. I had the feeling like I was meeting a famous movie star when I drove the U-Haul over the Verrazano Bridge on that foggy night in September- my heart beating fast and my words all a-jumble.

While she's still beautiful and surprising to me every day I live here, she's also showing me her other sides. Her drinking habits and her ugly bits. Her dirty past and the fact that she is physically and financially sinking, the weight of hundreds of buildings along with America's ever-present burdens on her shoulders. But just when I've had one too many pleas for food from dirty hands outstretched, one too many unbearable farts on the crowded subway, one too few friendly acknowledgements on the street, she up and surprises me with an incredible view from a different vantage point, a flirtatious smile on the bus, a $20 bill lying lonesome on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. Just when her dark corners seem to be as dark and frightening as they could possibly be, she lets the sunlight shine on angles off glass paneled skyscrapers at the right time of day and I'm blinded by her glamour, her serenity, her perfection...

When I see her on the big screen, I still get that giddy "look, there she is!" feeling welling up in my stomach.