Expensive Hobbies

Although I may be reluctant to admit it, I am notorious for knocking things before trying them.  I make my opinions about certain practices and habits known, and yet I am pretty slow to turn around upon myself to judge.  As some of my regular readers can attest, (and you know you know who you are...) arguing with me is a bit like wrestling with a relentless, rabid, three million-toothed hammer head shark.  More often than not, though, I end up swimming away with my tail between my ... fins.  Whatever.  I've learned recently that I should keep my mouth shut 9 out of 10 of the times that I have an opinion.  

As we slow-quickly rounded the jagged edges of a twisting tree-lined driveway, I reveled.  This was not just any mountain vista.  This was slice after snowy slice of paradise.  The tangerine sun looked about ready to descend, and the spread-out city of Missoula stretched and yawned, waiting to catch its long, angling rays.  The sky: periwinkle.  A welcome change from the nickle-colored sky I see every day in New York.  As I lost myself in the view, and we came closer to the lodge that Mark calls home, I began to hear an unfamiliar noise that ricoched off the once sleepy looking mountains.  The mountains woke up, standing tall at attention. I cringed.  

Four puffy-jacketed boys and their loud, long, and metallic toys welcomed us as we climbed up to the wrap-around deck.  Mark shoved earplugs into my innocent ears and I positioned myself far back from the action.  My nerves heightened, my judgments soaring, I watched.  With the expanse of the snowy, tree accented yard before them, the boys played with their toys.  Clay pigeons were flung, bang.  Fling, bang, fling, bang bang.  The sliding clicks, the shells falling, the vegetables exploding... The more I watched, the more I secretly wanted to try.  Shyly, I inched toward the table strewn with guns and ammo, and the red-headed, baby-faced gent named Ty could see it in my eyes.  He handed me his AK-47.  My conscience cried as my finger wrapped around the trigger of deadliest hand-held weapon I had ever heard of.   Power got the best of me.  After one shot, I didn't want to stop.  .22: check.  30-30:check. 12gage: check.  etcetera.  I tried them all.  I bruised up my shoulder.  My heart beat faster than it does when I run.  From across the country, I had judged this Saturday afternoon activity for long enough.  Frankly, I can judge no more.  It's fun.

Regardless of how much fun it was though, I must say that I still think it's a silly waste of money, and dangerous as the lapping fires of hell (which await the people who use these things on their fellow man), but I guess you could say that about most people's hobbies.  Knitting... golf... scrapbooking... 

Thank you

Hello,

I apologize for not responding via Facebook, but I had been meaning to tell you about the job via email all day.  I kept thinking to myself, EMAIL HER.  So. Here it is.  Here is the full circle account of how you saved my life, or made my life what it is at this moment.  You gave me the best contacts there are in New York.  I chatted with all of them, got my feet wet a bit.  Then Dana Isaacson emailed me in September, with the name "Writer's House," and I jumped on it, got the internship from an interview over the phone, and moved to NYC.  That internship, through which I gained SO much knowledge of the industry that I thought I knew so much about but didn't at all, landed me a friendship with Jennifer Kelaher and the famous Maja Nikolic.  I worked under these women, these fabulous, inviting women, who taught me what it to sell the rights of a book and to love a book so much that we must sell it EVERYWHERE.  I was, in fact, the Foreign Rights intern.  The internship ended, and I was lost.  I had been nannying throughout it, since October, and am presently doing so, making peanut butter and jelly's and crepes and wiping buggary faces for 4 adorable, intelligent French-American children who I adore but know that I need to move on from.  I didn't move to NYC to nanny.  So, ever since Christmas, when the internship ended, I have been putting my name out there, my resume flying around like wild fire, and I had a bite.  I heard from Nature Publishing Group, and they wanted me to be their Customer Service Coordinator, and I was about to take it because it was a job (not because it was what I wanted to do).  Then, Scholastic fell into my lap.  A girl from Writer's House who had worked for Maja, who quit about a month after I got there, (and consequentially gave me her office!) emailed and told me a friend of hers at Scholastic was in desperate need of a Foreign Rights Coordinator.  I sent my resume.  Next day, I had an interview.  Next day, they asked for references. The next week, (this week, allll this week), I waited and waited and waited and my stomach was in the most horrible twisted knots it has ever been in.  I literally couldn't breathe.  This morning, as I stood in the kitchen at my nannying job, before the kids got home from school, I got the call. I screamed into the phone as Rachel Horowitz, my savior, screamed back.  We screamed and screamed for a while because this was no ordinary hiring.  She had managed to finagle a hiring during a hiring freeze at Scholastic.  After all had settled, we chatted about the logistics, and yada.  And the possibility of me going to Bologna, Italy in March with them.  (AHH).  I start Thursday.  I start Thursday the next chapter of my life.

I wish we were back at the zoo in Madison together, laughing about the sea otters with Charlie and talking about how to get "in" to New York.  It's happening now, and I can't wait until I can give you a big fat hug and a high-five for what you have done for me.  I really mean it.  Thank you.

SINCERELY, 

Lisa Mattingly

New Friends

During the past 4+ months as a solo apartment dweller, I have come to let a number of complete strangers into my home.  DSL technicians, electricians, plumbers... if their boots are extraordinarily dirty and they have no company badge on their coat, I'll let them in.  Most of the time I know they're coming, but it's usually a vague stretch of time that I just have to sit there waiting, either 8:00-12:00 or 2:00-6:00... No problem.  I've got nothing better to do.  What gets me is that when I least expect it, either at 11:59 or 8:01, some extremely large, disgustingly sweaty or otherwise imposing gentleman graces me with his (this is honestly in ALL cases for me, I don't want to generalize) ill-mannered presence. 

 The "gentle"man who set up my TV and internet in September was on his cell phone speaking Spanish to his girlfriend for the entire time as he jostled and tipped my television around, while I stood in the kitchen cringing and looking at his crack and love handles.  He hung up the phone abruptly after having a bit of an argument about something pretty raunchy.  He didn't think I understood Spanish, but I did.  He leaned back and slammed the phone down on my floor, and said something that rhymed with DUCK.  A few times.  I was startled at his word choice and busied myself with the dishes.  He stared out the window for a while, and when I got up the courage to ask him if there was something wrong with the internet connection, he said, "DUCK this."  Then he asked me to use my bathroom.  When he left, everything worked fine and I enjoyed the lingering stench of his BO while happily logging on to Facebook.  

The Time Warner service that I had received from this kind, considerate soul gave me solid basic TV and internet for about 3 months until there was an outage in the box that my entire block shares and I was without for a good month.  During that time, my life consisted of books, old Lost DVDs, and phone calls.  Internet became a thing of my past, as well as a thing I knew I would appreciate more in the future.  The harbinger of the great world wide web this time called me out of bed at 7:59am with the obnoxiously loud buzzer I have in my apartment.  I sleepily climbed down the stairs to let him in, his long ponytail glistening in the morning sun.  He made a considerable puddle of gray slush in the corner of my kitchen, messing with wires and pliers.  Then, as his kind always does, he asked if he could "take a leak."  I politely motioned toward my clean bathroom.  While he was in the bathroom, I got a phone call from a number I had recognized from 7:45 that same morning, from that same man who was in my bathroom.  Puzzled, I answered. When I did, all I could hear was the sound of streaming pee.  Of all things, this gem had called me from his pocket (accidentally?) and allowed me to have a clear audio experience of what he was doing in my bathroom.  I almost vomited, and then sat on my couch staring at the floor as he finished connecting my phone line and eventually left.  If this is what I have to endure in order to have sweet, marvelous, uninterrupted access to the internet, I guess that's ducking fine with me.

Coney Isle

The train stays above ground for the most part on the long ride down to Coney Island.  The helter-skelter mess of incongruent triangles and leaning squares painted in graffiti keeps my gaze busy.  The Jewish graveyard spreads from each side of the tracks - each headstone has a small patch of snow on top of it, each body quietly shivering beneath it.

Coney Island boardwalk: my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean since I've been in New York.  As I walk eastward, the ocean and a snow-dusted, seagull congested beach spreads out to my left.  To my right, a faded, peculiar mix of shapes and colors.  In it's heyday, during the light hearted days of the 1920's, Coney Island was a loud, bustling series of amusements.  Even Gatsby asks Nick Carraway to join him here.  The Wonder Wheel, the Parachute tower, cotton candy, freak shows, sideshows, peep shows, puppet shows, bumper cars, balloons - it was the place to be.  I can only imagine what it must have looked like from afar - ships out on the Atlantic must have seen the lights of New York City in the background, and then the twirling, flashing rainbow of lights in the foreground, reflecting itself in the water.  An age of excess and happiness before a decade of downspirals.  I've always been a little wary of amusement parks, circus folk, and the dirty fingernails of the booze-stinking men who help you onto a Ferris wheel.  It was the pivotal scene in the movie Big that put me over the edge - at the age of 8 I was officially afraid of amusement parks.  But to be at one that hasn't really been open for over 50 years, (sure, some people still come down here for bumper cars and to eat 49 hot dogs on the 4th of July) is even more eerie.  The colorful metal rusting and creaking, the low income housing surrounding the once-bright signs to "shoot the freak" and to "free fall at Deno's!," the strange silence of it all gives me minor goosebumps.  The only sound is the occasional call of a gull and the placid movement of cold waves.  I can definitely feel the nostalgia, and think that the condos they are planning on planting here would be out of place, but I also feel pretty disconnected.  The history isn't mine.  I take a few pictures of men on the pier fishing with their hoods up and their teeth chattering, watch a man poke at garbage and put it in a bag, think about having a hot dog from Nathan's, and help a woman from somewhere far away find her way up into Manhattan.  I wonder if she thought this was Ellis rather than Coney? 

I was inspired to go to this island (which is actually a peninsula) because of a Death Cab For Cutie song aptly named "Coney Island," which goes:

Sitting on a carousel ride

without any music or lights,

everything is closed at Coney Island

and I could not help from smiling.

I can hear the Atlantic echo back,

rollercoaster screams from summers past.

And everything was closed at Coney Island

and I could not help from smiling.

Brooklyn will fill the beach eventually,

and everyone will go except me.

 

"Home"

Elsa lazily sucks her bottle of warm milk, drifting into her nap, her head lolling against my chest as we sit on the couch on this rainy January afternoon.  Her fingers twirl slowly through my hair until they finally stop and curl up, her breathing loud and steady, mine long and relaxed.  My "work" is generally done in this room, but there are usually three more occupying it.  They're off at school for now, soon to be gathered with their heaping, paper-painting filled backpacks and their wet winter jackets.  The quiet room will soon be filled with shouts and dance moves and lego battleships.  For now, it's just me, Elsa, and the sagging Christmas tree.  Strings and haphazard lights hang from its long branches.  The paper chains we made for it weeks ago look squished and forlorn.  Blue lights crumple around its base and one or two still unopened gifts have been abandoned on the floor.  Behind the tree, two windows stand watch of the damp street below, one with olive green curtains and one with teal.  An enormous antique globe waits in the corner to be spun by sticky fingers.  A blue and white porcelain lamp braces itself to be knocked over by a nerf ball.  A box full of dinosaurs with their legs tangled with the legs of naked barbies sits on the worn hardwood floor.  Four guitars stand alert, some with all of their strings, some missing one or two.  Two large Barack Obama stickers are slapped on an otherwise empty white wall, and an Etch-a-Sketch with an "I love you" written on it lays next to a stuffed panda bear on the rug.  A stringless upside down banjo hangs from the wall above the rarely used TV, and a taxidermed frog hangs next to it. A bookshelf-which I pluck from sometimes while Elsa sleeps, stands tall, from floor to ceiling, proud of it's contents: Ecotopia, India:A History, American Photography, Crimes of War, Tropic of Cancer, Iraq: the Space Between... along with Cat in the Hat and Where the Wild Things Are.  All of the shelves are filled to the brim.  All but one at the very top, where a number of oblong, dusty, earth-colored vases sit with their secret origins held inside of them.  With no backyard and the cold air blowing outside, this is where the children spend their evenings, wrestling and reading, laughing and growing up.  They, and I, will always remember it.

Delayed Gratification

My connecting flight from Cincinnati to Milwaukee was one of those tiny planes that you feel instantly too close for comfort with the 20 other people on board.  We sat on the plane at the gate for an hour and a half after our departure time due to the door being too frozen to shut properly.  So, I got to spend an hour and half listening to 20 imbeciles hoot and guffaw at the jokes they continuously made up about the "situation."  Next to me sat an old woman with her hair perfectly tied into a perfect bun with her perfect shoes and her perfect manners.  She kept asking me what was going on and I perfectly explained our status about 6 times.  Then I said, TURN UP YOUR HEARING AID.  No I didn't.  An enormous Latino gentleman with his wife who was enormous but a lot smaller than him, took turns trying to fit into the seats and yelling at their 3-year-old chunker of a daughter who shrieked for minutes at a time.  One girl with a thick drawl thought it would be a good idea to tell everyone her life story, even though nobody asked.  Her husband, in Oklahoma, wouldn't ever buy anything not made in the USA.  She informed everyone that she hates her step mom, and "who doesn't?" (me). She loudly stated that she manages a McDonald's and wouldn't put up with any one of her employees who spit in the french fry grease anymore.  Comforting.  An old man next to her waxed poetic about how airlines used to serve free champagne.  I didn't even want to think about what this girl would spout off if she had any of the juice in her.

We deboarded after they told us the plane wasn't fit to fly, so we headed over to a different gate, and the McDonald's manager of the year did cartwheels down the vacant hallway, flopping backpack on her back, screaming "Merry Christmas, everybody!!!"

Amen

I came upon St. Patrick's Cathedral with great surprise, Madison Avenue was closer to the train stop than I had thought.  It reminded me of a cleaned-up Sagrada Familia.  I walked in because I hadn't been to church in over 6 years and also because I wanted to breathe in the warm smell of incense enclosed within thick pillars and stone statues.  Squeezing in between a gentleman who was emailing from is Blackberry and surreptitiously checking the Jets score, and a couple who wouldn't stop groping one another's thighs, I looked around at the rest of the crowd.  They looked uncomfortable, not too calm, squished betwixt their enormous fur coats and their bulging shopping bags full of consumerism.  Around the hundreds of people seated, there were people literally milling around the pews as 12:00 mass was in session.  Big boots, hats, and cameras flashing, as the words of Isaiah, Luke and the Thesselonians were being spoken.  The scene reminded me of Notre Dame, where I was appalled at the amount of loud, crazy tourists who hung out at one of the most sacred buildings in the world, screaming in mid-day drunkenness and scaring the pigeons. At St. Patrick's, a woman who looked and sounded like Toni Braxton did the readings, her strong voice shouting into a microphone.  The priest, clad in red, had a thick New York accent and had the tone and imposing inflection of Bob Uecker - instead of saying how many outs there were, he's telling people how important it is to go to confession, his voice reverberating, echoing off the long lines of the towering walls.  As the service carried on, I remembered when I was really young and my mom would bring a bag of stuff for me to do at St. James: coloring books, puzzles, snacks... I was really getting the word of God while eating Cheerios from a Ziploc and finding where Waldo was and yelping loudly as my sister repeatedly pinched my arm.  These are the real religious experiences that stick with you forever.  It's interesting how last weekend at this time,  I was at the Museum of Natural History, staring at exhibits of how monkeys turned into men, and this week, there I was sitting on a hard, wooden pew at St. Patrick's Cathedral, crossing myself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit listening to a guy tell me about how God created all things and all men.  After exchanging "peace be with you's" and germs directly before receiving the body of Christ, I walked out, thinking that this holy visit would be sufficient for the next six years.