green-ness in the middle west

when i left this city, it was march; cold, gray, spirit-crushing march. and oh, how i was ready to go, broken hearts notwithstanding. it was time, after a year and a half of living at home with my family, through two minnesota winters, one brutal and harsh, one less so, dampened by the soft pedal that is love. still, the long cold took its toll on me, and when life exploded in new york springtime bliss, it was a great relief.

now the sunlight is soft and reaches the ground mottled and stirred by the rich leaves. i am surrounded by my family again, although tonight there's even more family than before. my grandparents are asleep next door, in minnesota for what may prove to be their final visit. it was my birthday present to myself to come and see them here, and it was especially exciting because i decided not to tell them. seeing my grandmother's jaw drop and tears begin to flow at the airport was so wonderful. my aunt and uncle are asleep across the hall, my folks are in the basement and my sister is still up doing the i.m. thing. i don't have much left in me today after a day of badminton and wrestling my cousins on the trambopoline, so i'll be joining my family in a long, quiet night of sleep.

goddamn it's quiet here!

hot hot heat

i've always wondered what it would be like to be cooked alive. after the past few days, i've got some inkling.

yesterday it closed in on triple digits with a heat index of 105. for some reason, i decided to spend the afternoon running errands for work, which damn near killed me.

DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.

that is the lesson i learned. and now i am basking in the freon glaze of my a/c and getting ready to pack.

did i forget to tell you? i am going to minnesota tomorrow!

yes to summer vacation. yes to lakes and kayaks. no to blackflies and mosquitos.

yes to family!

i have a counter now. scroll down to the very bottom of the page and you can see how many people have read my blog.

current status: zero.

yes to blogs that no one reads!

to non-existent local readers: party at my house july 29th for my birthday. potluck!

to non-existent far-off readers: sorry you're missing out.

lebanon

what in the hell is going on over there? it came out of nowhere, didn't it, this all-out war? it's so sad, they've finally rebuilt beirut after decades of civil war and now it's ravaged again. i'm just keeping my fingers crossed that israel doesn't bomb any further than the syrian border. it's all so jumbled -- hezbollah isn't really lebanese, they're mostly syrian, but their weapons are iranian, probably some old soviet gear too. syria might have been pressed out of front and center political power in lebanon for the assassination of hariri, but they still control the bekaa valley in southern lebanon, a region with the second most lucrative opium yield in the world next to afghanistan. so israel isn't just bombing lebanon to attack hezbollah, they're attacking syria and forcing the lebanese people to confront hezbollah, which is hard considering they're integrated into the fragile national pact lebanese government, in which governance is based on population percentages and supposedly balanced between christians and muslims.

obviously israel has to defend herself, that's not unreasonable, but the scale of their retaliation shocked me. if they continue their assault into syria, there's a good chance that iran will get involved in more than just back-end supply and start lobbing missles.

let's hope that doesn't happen. i'm going on vacation this week and a nuclear war would be such a downer.

oops i did it again

i've been so damn busy that i've forgotten all about this blog thing. and to leave it on such a dark, depressing note, that's just not right. i haven't felt like that since that day, which is good.

something exciting: i've upgraded from barback to bartender and switched bars. now i work at magnetic field, the bar below my apartment. monday nights, which, so far, have not been the best of nights. but i'm taking over from a girl who was mean and a terrible bartender, so i have some rebuilding to do. hopefully once everyone in the neighborhood finds out there's a cute boy working behind the bar, they'll come in all the time. i'm considering making one monday a month a vassar night -- there are enough of us in the hood to fill the place. barbacking was a great test of physical endurance, but i'm glad i've upgraded. and the commute is a whole lot better. now i just have to watch myself -- free drinks at the bar below my apartment is a dangerous game.


so much has happened since my last entry that i can't even keep track.

i spent all day at the met, communing with the tiffany windows. when i walked out onto the pavillion, i realized that i hadn't seen any of the banner exhibits. damn that's a big museum.

then 24 hours later i joined MoMA and saw the dada exhibit and now i can go to MoMA whenever i want. new york readers, you're welcome to join me.

july 4th i had a huge barbeque on my patio and it was SO much fun. jessie came with a load of friends and there were two things that made the party stand out -- one, there was almost noone from vassar, and two, all the folks from the bar and the tattoo parlor downstairs came to hang out. they're all excellent people and it was such a validation of this being my new home, this brooklyn, this atlantic avenue, this block between henry and hicks. no stalkers, please.

last weekend my friend elizabeth invited us up to her parents' house in the hudson valley for the best party ever. there was a whole roast pig (too bad president bush wasn't there, i hear he loves it). i made drinks for everyone. we played badminton. we played croquet. we played ping pong. we had an epic four square tournament. we swam in the pool, we got naked in the hot tub. the quakers danced. i got to see friends who i love SO MUCH. who could ask for anything more?

today i am headed back to coney island for the siren music festival after a bbq in prospect park. as long as i can beat the cold that has gripped me the past few days, it will be lots of fun!

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR LOCAL READERS: PLEASE COME TO MAGNETIC FIELD ON MONDAY NIGHTS!

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR LOCAL READERS: I AM HAVING A BIRTHDAY PARTY ON JULY 29TH. YOU SHOULD COME.

life at the field:

sometimes i feel lonely

even with the excitement of the crosstown ride and the parade, i came home and things went downhill. i've been struggling with how to interact with such a huge city. with so many things to do, where do i start? and this weekend, what i guess i'd call depression got the best of me.

this morning i started reading the 1937 polish novel "ferdydurke" by witold gombrowicz -- nothing like an eastern european black comedy to lift my spirits.

even page one seems appropriate after a rough patch:

i lay in the murky light while my body, unbearably frightened, crushed my spirit with fear, and my spirit crushed my body, whose tiniest fibers cringed in apprehension that nothing would ever happen, nothing ever change, that nothing would ever come to pass, and whatever i undertook, nothing, but nothing, would ever come of it. it was the dread of nonexistence , the terror of extinction, it was the angst of nonlife, the fear of unreality, a biological scream of all my cells in the face of an inner disintegration when all would be blown to pieces and scattered to the winds. it was the fear of unseemly pettiness and mediocrity, the fright of distraction, panic at fragmentation, the dread of rape from within and of rape that was threatening me from without -- but most important, there was something on my heels at all times, something that i would call a sense of inner, intermolecular mockery and derision, an inbred superlaugh of my bodily parts and the analogous parts of my spirit, all running wild.

fears and shenanigans

we all have our fears. sometimes we let our fears control our lives, we let them take hold of us with a crushing grip.

i was nine years old. i flew head-first over the handlebars and when i hit the asphalt,
i absorbed the blow with my face. it wasn't pretty. they made sure my nostril and lips would stay attached to each other. i couldn't look at myself in the mirror.

it took me a few years to get back on the bike. when i did, i crashed again. years later in st paul i found some confidence. i started mountain biking. i came to new york.

today i got on a bike for the first time since last fall.

don't worry i wore a helmet.

so i walked through the rain and i borrowed ameet's bike and went to prospect park, where i met my sister and some of my friends but mostly her friends primarily, anyway,we rode through the park and onto ocean parkway, which is a parkway that goes to the ocean. and coney island.

i have never been to coney island.

there were about ten of us. our gang was called the shenanigans. our rallying cry was
YIP yipyipyipyipyip UH HUNH, UH HUNH.
you know, like those aliens on sesame street.

we rode a long way. we fixed flat tires and ate apples.

today was the mermaid parade, which is a parade of mermaids. it's for neptune. there were egyptian zombies dancing to thriller. and pixies. and sexy tattooed sailors.

when was the last time you swam in the atlantic ocean? we did. the waves pulled off my boxers. luckily i grabbed them just in time. even though a little kid was shouting TAKE IT OFF. i think he was talking to my friends who were girls and not me. but i showed him my ass anyway. was that illegal?

it was wet. it was raining, just a little, so even the parts of us that were out of the ocean were wet. strange apocalpytic clouds crept from the sea, a low moist air surrounded us.
an embrace from neptune.

we had french fries. we spun around in circles.
we got back on our bikes, and we left coney island.

the rain picked up. it went from the soft hands, to the snapping and the clapping.
then the pounding, the stomping, lightning and thunder and new oceans of rain.

Avenue Z. Boom!
Y. X. flashBoom!
W. V. U. boom!
T.S.RQPONmlkboom
jihgfedcba.

we parted at grand army plaza with a final YIP yipyipyipyipyip Uh HUNH!

i rode alone, soaked to the bone, to a hot shower, pajamas and my guitar.

that is how they play in england.

the solstice is fast approaching and the summer is taking hold. the street clocks said 95 yesterday, tho' i think they were exaggerating. still, it was damn hot.

but tonight things are cooling down and a soft rain is falling. i'm sure it's making that wonderful hushed, palms-together sound which i love. but i can't hear it because a truck is idling right outside my window.

seriously, people, never live across the street from a hospital.


i've been sick the past week with an intense fever:


WORLD CUP FEVER!

it's a terrible sickness, to be trapped in front a tv screen in dark, cool living rooms and bars while the world bakes outside. i'm trying to stop it from taking over my life.

the best match i've seen so far was ghana v. czech republic, but watching us v. italy in a bar packed past standing room was amazing. the us is not very good but i think i have to support them, if only that a us advancement would get more americans tied into this global game.

the global game as i've caught it:

kampala, uganda -- a match between manchester united and arsenal, and man u. ended arsenal's 49 (!) game win streak. the streets that night, my god, you'd think it was a national holiday, fireworks in the street, gunshots late into the blackness that is night without electricity. all this for a game 10,000 miles away.

nkhata bay, malawi -- a local league is playing on a rock-hewn, grass-bereft pitch. it's not even summer yet, and already the equatorial heat is punishing. there, on the hands of the players, what are they wearing, i ask my friend. they are gloves, of course, he explains. but it's so hot, why are they wearing gloves, and he replies, that is how they play in england.

but no crumpets?

i can't wait

there's a longer entry in the works, but for now, this is exciting. From the NYT Sunday Magazine interview with Jack Black:

NYT: Your next film, which comes out this fall, is called "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" and sounds like a documentary about your band.

JB: No. It's not a rock-you, mock-you-mentary. It is the story of how we came to be, and our first epic journey to become the greatest band on earth.

turns out feeling old runs in the family

from hannah, my youngest sibling's blog -- here

i don't want to grow up. i don't want my parents to get old. i don't want my grandparents to get older. i dont' want to outlive all my loved ones. i don't want to not have friends for the rest of my life.

amen.

modest mouse:

"i'm the same as i was when i was six years old/and oh my god i feel so damn old/i don't really feel anything."

we will become silhouettes

yesterday i returned from my five year college reunion. yes, we revisited the drunken haze, the riotous four am screaming laughter, the instant social groups (just add liquor). it was a joy to have the crew back together.

but as i walked through the seemingly unchanged landscape, what struck me most was looking at the classes of 96, 91, 86. are these fat balding men my future? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! now granted they didn't all look like shit, but it was a terrifying confrontation with my own mortality, which, closing in on 27, i have still not confronted.

still, i love my friends, and it's always special to see the ones from far away.

on the way home from work today, i walked down to the promenade with a freshly purchased copy of the new yorker, where i sat and watched the boats while i read about the security of new york harbor and wished more paper was as soft silky smooth as that mag. seriously, i'd subscribe just to feel the pages.

so i'm journaling, detoxing, and listening to the polyphonic spree. i plan on writing far more regularly, for those of who have joined the adventures recently. so keep one eye on the lengthening solstician (solstical?) days and the other in brooklyn.

a quickie at work

i probably shouldn't be doing this, blogging at work. it's gotten some people in trouble.

tonight i head up to vassar for my FIVE year college reunion. i told my grandmother it made me feel old. she laughed.

running red hot errands today, walking down margaret sanger to joey ramone place, i passed a wall of graffiti. one banner read

if you can make it in new york, you made it!

that felt good.

recognition is due

last night, i sent out the email which may well have drawn you here. as soon as i sent it, i read it over and started to feel awful. on this day of mourning, a day which recognizes the terrible sacrifice made by so many, here i go sending out a cheery email, celebrating myself in the self-aggrandizing way which i seem to love. i know so many people all over the world who do amazing things and they don't seem to email all their friends to share. i don't think i'll ever send another mass email.

also, i should have mentioned that the piece some of you might listen to today was overseen by marco werman at the world. marco gave me the opportunity to share this story with a national audience and was instrumental in putting it all together, along with his co-producer helen barrington. their guidance was essential and i can't wait to hear the mix that helen has put together.

i've struggled my whole life with my own self-obsession, and sometimes it gets the better of me. i hope you don't mind putting up with it from time to time. please tell me when i cross the line, won't you?

the tourists

i live on the second floor above atlantic avenue, just a block off the brooklyn-queens expressway. atlantic is a major thruway and the neighborhood is historic. the bank a couple blocks down has a huge plaque to mark the spot where washington watched the battle of long island. and so the tourists come.

from my second story window, i'm even with their open-air seats on the double-decker buses. they pause from time to time in front of my apartment. they're outside when i watch tv, when i stretch up into mountain pose, when i'm writing.

i don't know why it strikes me as funny every time i see them. once, a family was standing up in the stopped bus, filming the brownstones and downtown highrises. they pointed the camera in my window, and i waved. they waved back and were gone.

the uu world

i should be happy. i should be proud. the article i started a year ago is finally done and published. i received my pre-release copies this afternoon. it's available at uuworld.org, if you're interested.

so why do i feel bad? well, for one, they requested that i write a cover story, which i did, 4000 words of it. and then they took me off of the cover for flower art by andy goldsworthy. a little disappointing, but whatever, it's still in the magazine.

more importantly, i don't think it's good. maybe i spent too much time with it, maybe it's been edited into the ground, but reading my own words, i don't care about them at all. i don't know, i think it just percolated for too long.


coming home today, catching the four at brooklyn bridge/city hall, i stood close to the incoming and watched my shadowed reflection pass in a blur. life can feel like that sometimes, like a fleeting reflection on a moving train, a sense of presence but devoid of any real substance beyond metal and flourescent light.

home sweet home!

i feel a little anti-social, having spent nearly the entire weekend at home. but let me tell you, i just unpacked the last box and am all moved in, and that's worth sacrificing a weekend. it's so wonderful to have my life all set up here, a routine that i'm thoroughly enjoying in a place that i love. the noise is still challenging, but i'm adjusting to it.

no crazy stories this time around, unless you count installing drywall anchors as crazy and exciting.

it's not, but i couldn't have mounted a bookcase without them.

oh i just can't hold back any more:

PICTURES!

to my five or so dedicated readers:

i most humbly apologize for the long hiatus. it’s been a hectic move and my writing has fallen off the table. i promise to those brave five who type adventuresinbrooklyn or click on their bookmark (those are the true heroes) that the adventures will soon return in force.

for now, let me just say that i love:

my apartment, my neighborhood.

the sunsets down atlantic avenue and across the water, through the rising steel haze at the port.

the mets. i have a hat that has a funny mixed up N and Y.

the slate sidewalks, the avenues of stone, brown and blue and grey, the green of ginkgo plane tree chestnut cradling the firm earth.

i don’t love the trucks, the hospital loading zone across the street and the late night drunks from the bar downstairs. i try not to sleep with earplugs, but i do sometimes. i’m getting used to it.

but i love my job and so much else and every time a truck downshifts or a car rides by with the boomin system, i think wait, this city has embraced me, welcomed me with a little luck and put me exactly where i want to be.

over the next weekend the development of my room will make some real progress. i already managed to find a small desk that fits into a corner, an AC and a set of mounted wall shelves. the final piece of my bed and a new mattress arrive tomorrow morning. i only wish i could take the day off and put everything together. soon enough.


like. blogging i hope so – blogging
– oh my god is it okay to mention know if any of you really care about what my room looks is



blogging in a blog? i don’t

good night.

pack it up pack it in let me begin

just finished packing and i move tomorrow. i decided instead of borrowing a car to just make a half dozen or so walking trips to my new apartment about six blocks away. i really don’t have a whole lot of stuff, so it shouldn’t be too bad. the paint is dry and looks fantastic, so much better than before (two dark brown walls facing each other, the others sky blue and bright orange – what they hell was this guy thinking?). i plan on sleeping in my new place for the first time tomorrow night, as long as the paint fumes aren’t too bad.

i found out a couple things about my neighbors over the weekend. there’s a tattoo parlor moving in next door and the bar downstairs is doing a major soundproofing renovation. how nice is that?

speaking of bars, i’m officially hired on at the black door, the bar in chelsea (even though a local informed me that 26th street is more like south midtown). i’ll be working every tuesday night from 4 to 4, but since i only work at red hot on monday, thursday and friday, i’ll have some time to recuperate. hopefully i’ll still be able to fit in volunteering at the yoga studio, but since i’ve taken a break to move it’s been nice to not be there. the trade is a great deal, but there’s really not a lot to do there and i don’t feel like spending five hours a week just sitting around.

i never had a chance to mention that last week i went to the final night of the marriage of figaro at the met. we were in the last row of the top section, so high that we could touch the magnificent gold ceiling above us, and it was still magical. it might be a crowd-pleaser, but it’s still my favorite opera. mostly i just got a ticket to hear the sextet in the third act. and it was worth every penny.

upcoming: cinco de mayo, a return to the red hook farm, and jonathan lethem’s fortress of solitude!

today what i wrote in my gernal

may. day. mayday. protests everywhere. a day of illumination, and everything being in that state, illuminated, and finishing a book about everything being illuminated and crying on the subway, tears on joralemon street. a new week, new challenges. may. day. another day of painting, nearly the last. this incredible feeling of ownership; my place, my city, my home. my friends, my new life, new days. it feels so right and yet still so unreal, with no routine set, no established norms of eggs-and-bacon-and-go-to-work. i don't even eat bacon any more. but i can feel it, not bacon but normalcy, (bah bah, bah bah) i can hear the sound of settling (bah bah, bah bah) breathing down the hall, scrambling down delancey, crawling alongside the brooklyn-bound four train, exiting at borough hall and heading west down atlantic avenue to the room with one blue wall.

and there i am, waiting. i never wanted a ninetofive, or even a parttime tentosix. i even thought i'd never want it. somehow, there i am, waiting. i smile when i notice the sign "EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS" -- oh, wait, that means me. i get giddy when my hands touch the long brushed metal cylinder attached to the tall glass door between lafayette and broadway. i grasp the handle, i open the door, i press the silver button. the elevator is slow and unruly and stops randomly on floors with no one waiting there and everyone just lets the door stand open in silence. but eventually, that elevator will come down to the first floor. the doors will open. i will take it to the sixth floor. and my new life.

sailing the concrete rivers

my friend hernan came over this afternoon because i felt helpless and knew that if i made these color decisions on my own i would totally fuck it up. so we measured, and discussed, and went to the paint store, and got color samples, and cut and taped and applied. and looked, and discussed. and threw some out. and discussed further. this is an absurdly roundabout way of saying that i have decided the following.

my new room will have three white walls ("mountain snow") and one accent wall in a medium deep blue ("lagoon blue"). the accent wall will frame the window that looks out towards brick and blue sky. with the old maps i've got and the captain's bed, i think it'll have a nautical feel. maybe later i'll put in some sailor wallpaper. a giant oar might look nice.

tomorrow is the final day of priming and then sunday i paint.

in other news, it was hernan's birthday today. and ameet's. and damien's. and i spent time with all three. i don't think i've ever done that, three in one day. happy birthday.

i need your advice

as i said in the last post, i'm designing my new apartment. it's a tiny little room and i want to be sure and do it right.

here's the bed i'm thinking about:

the bed is part of a set, so i can get matching pieces. the question is, what color best matches the wood?

i'm thinking about a gray green but haven't firmly decided on anything. i'd like to do some sort of interesting trim, but the room has baseboard heating running the length of every wall, and my roommates advised that dark colors don't work for painting on the metal baseboards. would a light wall color work with a light trim? if i left the trim white with green walls, i'm worried that i'd have a minty sort of effect which sounds awful.

thoughts?