You know when you have one of those weeks where you don't even know what the date is? As evidenced by the post below, I'm having one of those weeks. Apparently, it is still January. Here is a more appropriate "From the Archives" post from four years ago today:
Saturday, January 24th, 2004
After work yesterday, I waited for the N or R train to come along and whisk me uptown toward home. To my surprise, a Q Express Train came in on the local track, and since the Q stops at 14th Street, I got on. The train ran us up to City Hall Station, at which point the conductor said, “This is City Hall, next stop Canal Street. Stand clear of the closing doors please.” The only problem with this statement was that the doors had never opened in the first place. Those people waiting inside the train started banging on the doors, but it was too late. The people on the platform waiting to board just stared, dumbstruck, as the train pulled away from the station. I was laughing quietly to myself in amazement. Who would have thought it—just when I thought there wasn’t anything new left to be seen, the doors don’t open on a subway train.
Showing posts with label From the Archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label From the Archives. Show all posts
Thursday, January 24, 2008
From the archives: Tuesday, February 24th, 2004
This morning, Shawn and Donna left the apartment at about 8:00. I locked the door and then started ironing my clothes for work. About ten seconds later, Shawn called and told me that there was a bum sleeping in the small area between our front door and outer door. I asked if she wanted me to come down and escort him out, but she declined and delicately stepped around his sleeping form.
As I got ready over the course of the next half hour, I hoped that the bum would be gone when I left for work. In case he hadn’t left, I prepared myself for the various scenarios that might occur when I found him there. I decided that I would first ask him to leave nicely, saying something along the lines of, “Sorry friend, you can’t sleep here.” If that didn’t work, then I’d try a rougher approach, “Let’s go, get up, get out of here!” And then, if that didn’t persuade him, a little manual encouragement would be my technique of choice.
When I trudged down the stairs at 8:30, the bum was leaning against our mailboxes, and when I looked through the door at him, he looked away, and I saw that he was afraid. He was about my brother’s age, maybe a bit younger, and for some reason, that disarmed me. I did not say anything that I thought I would say. Instead, I said, “How are you?” and he said, “Okay.”
I left him there in the space between doors because it was cold outside, because there was snow in the forecast, and because seeing a kid instead of an adult really took the fight right out of me.
As I got ready over the course of the next half hour, I hoped that the bum would be gone when I left for work. In case he hadn’t left, I prepared myself for the various scenarios that might occur when I found him there. I decided that I would first ask him to leave nicely, saying something along the lines of, “Sorry friend, you can’t sleep here.” If that didn’t work, then I’d try a rougher approach, “Let’s go, get up, get out of here!” And then, if that didn’t persuade him, a little manual encouragement would be my technique of choice.
When I trudged down the stairs at 8:30, the bum was leaning against our mailboxes, and when I looked through the door at him, he looked away, and I saw that he was afraid. He was about my brother’s age, maybe a bit younger, and for some reason, that disarmed me. I did not say anything that I thought I would say. Instead, I said, “How are you?” and he said, “Okay.”
I left him there in the space between doors because it was cold outside, because there was snow in the forecast, and because seeing a kid instead of an adult really took the fight right out of me.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
From the Archives: October 17, 2005 - Age 26
This week we had a momentous “first” from Reilly—she laughed! Shawn was holding her, and her dad and mom were making silly noises and faces, and then Reilly wiggled and said, “ah-ha!” I mocked her, and said, “ah-ha” back at her, and it wasn’t until Shawn said, “She just laughed!” that I realized what our little girl had done. Though Reilly has yet to repeat this feat, Shawn and I have not let up in our acts of silly persuasion.
Reilly has decreased her spit bubbles this week, instead increasing her “conversations” with us. She will talk to anyone and anything. She will talk to her mom, she will talk to her doll, she will talk to her dad cooking dinner and she will talk to the pot that he is stirring on the stove. Her favorite thing to do is stick all four fingers in her mouth and then talk a blue streak.
We’ve been watching with interest and some trepidation as Reilly becomes more adept at rolling herself over. Though she has yet to complete the process all by herself, she seems on the verge. This morning she nearly had it while she was playing in her crib. She threw up her leg, twisted under her arm, and made it to her side, teetered there for a moment, then fell backwards and cried in frustration. As a result of this soon to be developed skill, Shawn and I have to watch Reilly closely when she is in her swing, her changing table, and on the bed, lest she finally decide to roll over when we’re not looking. Yet another thing to worry about!
At 14 weeks, Reilly has become proficient at taking a bottle, a duty that usually falls to me, since Shawn has to pump simultaneously. As parents, this new development is key, as it now allows Shawn to leave her baby for more than four hours at a time (not that she ever wants to). In fact, I write this entry as Reilly sits next to me in the swing, drowsing in the warm room, as her mother has dinner with her friends Kristi and Christi, who came to visit this weekend. (More spoiling from her “aunts!”) Reilly’s ability to take a bottle is also important for her transition to daycare, which is coming sooner than we all want to admit.
Shawn and I toured our first daycare (FedKids) this week, and though we felt comfortable with the location, facility, and teachers, it was still difficult to imagine her all alone at the place. Of course, this is not a hang-up for Reilly, but for her parents. Shawn and I still can’t believe we are parents, and it would be nice to get used to the idea before we begin to let others parent our baby for two days a week. Then again, if we don’t get going, we’ll never find a place to enroll Reilly anyway—FedKids declined our application—the daycare was already full for January 1, 2006!
“Full?” we asked.
The woman who had led our tour looked back at us. “Yes, we’re full until next September.”
“I guess we should have started earlier,” I said.
The woman looked at me with arched eyebrows, and it made me feel a bit unworthy to be a father. This parenting stuff never gets easier, does it?
Reilly has decreased her spit bubbles this week, instead increasing her “conversations” with us. She will talk to anyone and anything. She will talk to her mom, she will talk to her doll, she will talk to her dad cooking dinner and she will talk to the pot that he is stirring on the stove. Her favorite thing to do is stick all four fingers in her mouth and then talk a blue streak.
We’ve been watching with interest and some trepidation as Reilly becomes more adept at rolling herself over. Though she has yet to complete the process all by herself, she seems on the verge. This morning she nearly had it while she was playing in her crib. She threw up her leg, twisted under her arm, and made it to her side, teetered there for a moment, then fell backwards and cried in frustration. As a result of this soon to be developed skill, Shawn and I have to watch Reilly closely when she is in her swing, her changing table, and on the bed, lest she finally decide to roll over when we’re not looking. Yet another thing to worry about!
At 14 weeks, Reilly has become proficient at taking a bottle, a duty that usually falls to me, since Shawn has to pump simultaneously. As parents, this new development is key, as it now allows Shawn to leave her baby for more than four hours at a time (not that she ever wants to). In fact, I write this entry as Reilly sits next to me in the swing, drowsing in the warm room, as her mother has dinner with her friends Kristi and Christi, who came to visit this weekend. (More spoiling from her “aunts!”) Reilly’s ability to take a bottle is also important for her transition to daycare, which is coming sooner than we all want to admit.
Shawn and I toured our first daycare (FedKids) this week, and though we felt comfortable with the location, facility, and teachers, it was still difficult to imagine her all alone at the place. Of course, this is not a hang-up for Reilly, but for her parents. Shawn and I still can’t believe we are parents, and it would be nice to get used to the idea before we begin to let others parent our baby for two days a week. Then again, if we don’t get going, we’ll never find a place to enroll Reilly anyway—FedKids declined our application—the daycare was already full for January 1, 2006!
“Full?” we asked.
The woman who had led our tour looked back at us. “Yes, we’re full until next September.”
“I guess we should have started earlier,” I said.
The woman looked at me with arched eyebrows, and it made me feel a bit unworthy to be a father. This parenting stuff never gets easier, does it?
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
From the Archives: September 27, 2001 - Age 25
(This was the first of many "Mafia Den" entries.)
Here’s an idea of how small our new apartment is:
When we wash the dishes, the fragrance from the soap pervades our whole apartment. Even with the windows open.
Here’s an idea of how long we have been without TV:
I finally got the TV to work today around six, and we have but one fuzzy channel—CBS. It has been on since then.
Here’s a story for you all:
Between 206 and 208 Sullivan Street, there is a double door painted black. Its only decoration is a large brass padlock. The place blends so well into the surrounding buildings that a person walking by would hardly notice it. Perhaps this is for a reason. At first I found the doors nondescript. Then they became complex and curious.
One day when I was walking by the place I was startled to see the door open. The room was simply decorated and looked not unlike a small, out of date diner, shut down around 1973. The focal points were a few recliners, a sink in the back, and a card table with four chairs.
In the four chairs were four men, barrel-chested and meatball-stomached Italians who were smoking cigars and throwing cards. I got all this in a long smoke-tinted gaze before a man glared out at me and shut the door.
Shawn passed by the place a day or two after me, and took in a similar scene. A man was in the back doing dishes, two men were reclining, another two were standing nearby.
Now, one could assume this is a 55+ gay bar, or simply a group of friends hanging out in their co-op apartment basement, but Shawn and I are convinced of a more romantic plot…they’re Mafia men.
We now call the place “The Mafia Den” and like to slow our step and let our eyes linger when we pass by the unmarked black door, imagining what business is taking place inside.
Stay tuned for further developments…
Here’s an idea of how small our new apartment is:
When we wash the dishes, the fragrance from the soap pervades our whole apartment. Even with the windows open.
Here’s an idea of how long we have been without TV:
I finally got the TV to work today around six, and we have but one fuzzy channel—CBS. It has been on since then.
Here’s a story for you all:
Between 206 and 208 Sullivan Street, there is a double door painted black. Its only decoration is a large brass padlock. The place blends so well into the surrounding buildings that a person walking by would hardly notice it. Perhaps this is for a reason. At first I found the doors nondescript. Then they became complex and curious.
One day when I was walking by the place I was startled to see the door open. The room was simply decorated and looked not unlike a small, out of date diner, shut down around 1973. The focal points were a few recliners, a sink in the back, and a card table with four chairs.
In the four chairs were four men, barrel-chested and meatball-stomached Italians who were smoking cigars and throwing cards. I got all this in a long smoke-tinted gaze before a man glared out at me and shut the door.
Shawn passed by the place a day or two after me, and took in a similar scene. A man was in the back doing dishes, two men were reclining, another two were standing nearby.
Now, one could assume this is a 55+ gay bar, or simply a group of friends hanging out in their co-op apartment basement, but Shawn and I are convinced of a more romantic plot…they’re Mafia men.
We now call the place “The Mafia Den” and like to slow our step and let our eyes linger when we pass by the unmarked black door, imagining what business is taking place inside.
Stay tuned for further developments…
Monday, September 11, 2006
From the Archives: September 11, 2001 - Age 25
(It feels odd, being away from the City this year, on the five-year anniversary of September 11th. Somehow, I can't bring myself to write about it it. In some ways, this is a good thing. In the past, I felt compelled to write, so overwhelmed was I with the emotions from that event. This year, I will post something old, to show that though this day lives with me, it is a wound that is closing.)
Tuesday, September 11th, 2001
Of course, I write this entry with a heavy heart. Usually when I relay my writing from paper to print, a certain amount of editing is done. Today, I will copy my entry exactly as I wrote it in my journal because it clearly shows the chaos and panic infused in each second. There were two TV’s, several radios, and a few working internet lines and phone lines where my information was coming from--so much of it is incorrect now. The quotes are overheard conversations. All errors are in brackets. After-the-fact commentary is in parenthesis.
Well, if this isn’t a journaling opportunity, I don’t know what is. For once this is outside of my experience.
On my way to work this morning [saw] as I hit 47th and Madison, someone yells, “My God! The World Trade Center is on fire!” I looked up and stopped dead in the middle of the street gaping, every hair on my body on end.
When I got to Bear Stearns the news was flooding in—people were panicking, calling wives, friends, all huddled around one office TV.
On the radio the panic was evident, all airports, bridges and tunnels were closed, rumor of hijacking spread, I wondered if the 737 had people on it.
The sight is still with me, my heart remains somewhere digesting in my stomach, to see such an immense building the fire and smoke was tremendous from some 50 [?] blocks away. I wondered why I heard no sirens, then when I got to work I found that it happened just minutes before I saw it. (I witnessed the event at 8:55am, right between the two plane crashes). The ambulances had yet to respond.
I hope everyone at the trade center was late for work today, but I know this to be impossible.
The radio broadcasters are panicked and spreading panic blaming Guiliani, blaming FAA, calling on the president, calling for war.
The sirens are constant now.
I'm at Bear Stearns—no one is working, the market is closed, our Internet, which runs through the trade center, is down, the phones ring but no one answers, we’re all in shock.
The sirens are constant.
“My wife is…”
“My sister is…”
“My ______ is…”
“…working there today.”
“I can’t get through!”
“The Pentagon is closed.”
“The White House is evacuating.”
“I saw it on TV. The second plane, it went right through the floor!”
“I can’t work. John, I’m going home, my husband…I can’t work. I CANNOT WORK! It’s too creepy.”
“The whole city is shut down. Good luck, then.”
“Okay, bye.”
People are in shock, people are crying on the radio. The Pentagon was hit by a plane now. People are calling for a nuclear strike.
This is out of hand.
“The biggest travesty of our lifetime.”
“This appears to be escalating very rapidly.”
United nations has evacuated.
My thoughts turn to my brother.
“It’s getting ridiculous, it’s getting bad.”
“My cousin…”
People’s faces are slack, pale.
My greatest fear, justified, is that right now someone’s finger is hovering over a big red button.
“My son’s school is across the street.”
The secretary is frantically ransacking her desk, crying. I hear shuffling and sniffles.
“I can’t get through.”
“Hello, Fred McConkey’s office” (That was me.)
“This is his brother, is he in?”
“No.” (Me)
“Is this unusual?”
“I don’t know.” (Me.)
“He lives in Greenwich Village, is he safe there?”
“Yes, I live there, he’s out of immediate danger.” (Me.)
“Okay, thanks, take care.”
“Did he leave a number? DID HE LEAVE A NUMBER?” (The secretary, looking for her son, who goes to school next door to the WTC.)
“Two more planes just hit the South Tower!”
No one is working but the secretaries, who are frantically fielding phone calls from family.
I hear a radio in the background. I want to turn on mine but was yelled at for doing so.
I’m getting news now that the building has collapsed.
“If we haven’t declared war, someone is at war with us.”
“We’re getting reports of a suspicious airplane.”
“The capitol was bombed—car bomb at state department.”
“I think they just bombed a building in Jersey.”
The second building just fell. I saw this one live on a black and white TV.
“Part of the Pentagon has collapsed.”
“Large plane crashed in West Pennsylvania.”
“Hijacked plane circling Virginia.”
Suddenly this is starting to feel very, very real. Just yesterday I was telling someone how cool it was to see the Twin Towers and Empire State from my street.
Second plane heading for Pentagon.
People are walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to get out of The City.
This is not real. This is real. This is not real.
Nervous tittering. Hysterical laughter.
I’m afraid the [bu]fire will spread. We’re only a mile or two away from there.
Again I fear for my brother.
I hear war cries everywhere.
This is a terrible day to forget my cigarettes.
Shawn is okay, according to Craig. I just can’t reach her.
MoMA was evacuated.
Soot has reached Canal St., which is at Ludlow.
Amazing that I could think of it at a time like this, but I am afraid I won’t be able to get work.
People are growing numb.
“What about Charles? Charles works in the Trade Center?”
Thank god I wasn’t temping there today.
I think of the plane passengers—I think many do.
“Taliban news conference soon.”
People are [assaying] assigning blame.
This will change everything.
I’ve heard Palestinians are celebrating in the streets.
Almost everyone around me knows someone who is dead.
“The mayor witnessed people jumping from windows when he arrived at the World Trade Center.”
We’ve been released from Bear Stearns. I’m going to get Shawn at MoMA, the streets are wild and we want to stick together.
Pay phone lines long, no cell phones working.
All [Arab] jewelry stores on 47th closed.
People huddled on sidewalks reading the FOX (electronic) news banner.
Bars are full of people, shoulder to shoulder.
People in the streets look stunned.
We have heard from Chirag, Cindy, Shannon, Jason. Still waiting to hear from Rae and Ian. (We would later find out all immediate family and friends survived.)
Fighter jets circle overhead, which rattles everyone’s nerves, but especially Shawn’s, since she heard the first fatal jet fly right over our apartment as if right on top of her, heard the explosion, called her dad when NPR cut out, and then heard the second explosion, louder. Craig told her what all of America has seen by now, the second plane flying directly into the WTC. She took a picture of the burning building, moments before it would stand for the last time. And so when planes fly overhead it makes her a bit nervous. (This condition has persisted, for both of us.)
Jennifer and Jordan’s. (Shawn’s cousins. We were afraid to go back to our apartment, as the fires were still raging.) I envy Olivia. At age one she has spent the last half hour playing with blocks, blissfully unaware of today’s events.
The streets are empty, it’s like a ghost town. No traffic anywhere, especially (heading) downtown—eerie. I just walked across Broadway. (Without having to pause for traffic, since there was none. This is the rarest of all New York experiences.) Radio City has its lights off (also very rare), Rockefeller closed, everything closed with the exception of a few restaurants and bars.
After visiting Cindy and waiting for the fire to die down a bit we walked through the nearly empty streets to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th and 51st St., the only busy place in the city. Shawn went inside to light a prayer candle and I watched a news conference with some religious authority figure (on the front steps) outside.
We took the S Train home—the subways were free to ride. I feel like I’m in an altered dimension. It is easy to watch this disaster on TV, but very hard to see the plumes of smoke live as we walk down the street, burning buildings and buried people. It is very sad for us. (And we both cried openly on the street, just totally fucking overwhelmed. Curse words were the most frequently used modifiers today, by all.)
The police are (on every corner and) in riot gear. Looting is always an unfortunate factor in situations such as this.
We spent the rest of the evening catching up with family via the jammed phone lines. Neither of us can imagine what tomorrow may bring. Neither of us can fathom sleeping tonight.
I met George, a neighbor. He offered me a Valium, which I refused, but he looked awful happy with his dose.
“They flew a fucking plane through the World Trade Center.”
This is real. This is not real. This is real.
Tuesday, September 11th, 2001
Of course, I write this entry with a heavy heart. Usually when I relay my writing from paper to print, a certain amount of editing is done. Today, I will copy my entry exactly as I wrote it in my journal because it clearly shows the chaos and panic infused in each second. There were two TV’s, several radios, and a few working internet lines and phone lines where my information was coming from--so much of it is incorrect now. The quotes are overheard conversations. All errors are in brackets. After-the-fact commentary is in parenthesis.
Well, if this isn’t a journaling opportunity, I don’t know what is. For once this is outside of my experience.
On my way to work this morning [saw] as I hit 47th and Madison, someone yells, “My God! The World Trade Center is on fire!” I looked up and stopped dead in the middle of the street gaping, every hair on my body on end.
When I got to Bear Stearns the news was flooding in—people were panicking, calling wives, friends, all huddled around one office TV.
On the radio the panic was evident, all airports, bridges and tunnels were closed, rumor of hijacking spread, I wondered if the 737 had people on it.
The sight is still with me, my heart remains somewhere digesting in my stomach, to see such an immense building the fire and smoke was tremendous from some 50 [?] blocks away. I wondered why I heard no sirens, then when I got to work I found that it happened just minutes before I saw it. (I witnessed the event at 8:55am, right between the two plane crashes). The ambulances had yet to respond.
I hope everyone at the trade center was late for work today, but I know this to be impossible.
The radio broadcasters are panicked and spreading panic blaming Guiliani, blaming FAA, calling on the president, calling for war.
The sirens are constant now.
I'm at Bear Stearns—no one is working, the market is closed, our Internet, which runs through the trade center, is down, the phones ring but no one answers, we’re all in shock.
The sirens are constant.
“My wife is…”
“My sister is…”
“My ______ is…”
“…working there today.”
“I can’t get through!”
“The Pentagon is closed.”
“The White House is evacuating.”
“I saw it on TV. The second plane, it went right through the floor!”
“I can’t work. John, I’m going home, my husband…I can’t work. I CANNOT WORK! It’s too creepy.”
“The whole city is shut down. Good luck, then.”
“Okay, bye.”
People are in shock, people are crying on the radio. The Pentagon was hit by a plane now. People are calling for a nuclear strike.
This is out of hand.
“The biggest travesty of our lifetime.”
“This appears to be escalating very rapidly.”
United nations has evacuated.
My thoughts turn to my brother.
“It’s getting ridiculous, it’s getting bad.”
“My cousin…”
People’s faces are slack, pale.
My greatest fear, justified, is that right now someone’s finger is hovering over a big red button.
“My son’s school is across the street.”
The secretary is frantically ransacking her desk, crying. I hear shuffling and sniffles.
“I can’t get through.”
“Hello, Fred McConkey’s office” (That was me.)
“This is his brother, is he in?”
“No.” (Me)
“Is this unusual?”
“I don’t know.” (Me.)
“He lives in Greenwich Village, is he safe there?”
“Yes, I live there, he’s out of immediate danger.” (Me.)
“Okay, thanks, take care.”
“Did he leave a number? DID HE LEAVE A NUMBER?” (The secretary, looking for her son, who goes to school next door to the WTC.)
“Two more planes just hit the South Tower!”
No one is working but the secretaries, who are frantically fielding phone calls from family.
I hear a radio in the background. I want to turn on mine but was yelled at for doing so.
I’m getting news now that the building has collapsed.
“If we haven’t declared war, someone is at war with us.”
“We’re getting reports of a suspicious airplane.”
“The capitol was bombed—car bomb at state department.”
“I think they just bombed a building in Jersey.”
The second building just fell. I saw this one live on a black and white TV.
“Part of the Pentagon has collapsed.”
“Large plane crashed in West Pennsylvania.”
“Hijacked plane circling Virginia.”
Suddenly this is starting to feel very, very real. Just yesterday I was telling someone how cool it was to see the Twin Towers and Empire State from my street.
Second plane heading for Pentagon.
People are walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to get out of The City.
This is not real. This is real. This is not real.
Nervous tittering. Hysterical laughter.
I’m afraid the [bu]fire will spread. We’re only a mile or two away from there.
Again I fear for my brother.
I hear war cries everywhere.
This is a terrible day to forget my cigarettes.
Shawn is okay, according to Craig. I just can’t reach her.
MoMA was evacuated.
Soot has reached Canal St., which is at Ludlow.
Amazing that I could think of it at a time like this, but I am afraid I won’t be able to get work.
People are growing numb.
“What about Charles? Charles works in the Trade Center?”
Thank god I wasn’t temping there today.
I think of the plane passengers—I think many do.
“Taliban news conference soon.”
People are [assaying] assigning blame.
This will change everything.
I’ve heard Palestinians are celebrating in the streets.
Almost everyone around me knows someone who is dead.
“The mayor witnessed people jumping from windows when he arrived at the World Trade Center.”
We’ve been released from Bear Stearns. I’m going to get Shawn at MoMA, the streets are wild and we want to stick together.
Pay phone lines long, no cell phones working.
All [Arab] jewelry stores on 47th closed.
People huddled on sidewalks reading the FOX (electronic) news banner.
Bars are full of people, shoulder to shoulder.
People in the streets look stunned.
We have heard from Chirag, Cindy, Shannon, Jason. Still waiting to hear from Rae and Ian. (We would later find out all immediate family and friends survived.)
Fighter jets circle overhead, which rattles everyone’s nerves, but especially Shawn’s, since she heard the first fatal jet fly right over our apartment as if right on top of her, heard the explosion, called her dad when NPR cut out, and then heard the second explosion, louder. Craig told her what all of America has seen by now, the second plane flying directly into the WTC. She took a picture of the burning building, moments before it would stand for the last time. And so when planes fly overhead it makes her a bit nervous. (This condition has persisted, for both of us.)
Jennifer and Jordan’s. (Shawn’s cousins. We were afraid to go back to our apartment, as the fires were still raging.) I envy Olivia. At age one she has spent the last half hour playing with blocks, blissfully unaware of today’s events.
The streets are empty, it’s like a ghost town. No traffic anywhere, especially (heading) downtown—eerie. I just walked across Broadway. (Without having to pause for traffic, since there was none. This is the rarest of all New York experiences.) Radio City has its lights off (also very rare), Rockefeller closed, everything closed with the exception of a few restaurants and bars.
After visiting Cindy and waiting for the fire to die down a bit we walked through the nearly empty streets to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th and 51st St., the only busy place in the city. Shawn went inside to light a prayer candle and I watched a news conference with some religious authority figure (on the front steps) outside.
We took the S Train home—the subways were free to ride. I feel like I’m in an altered dimension. It is easy to watch this disaster on TV, but very hard to see the plumes of smoke live as we walk down the street, burning buildings and buried people. It is very sad for us. (And we both cried openly on the street, just totally fucking overwhelmed. Curse words were the most frequently used modifiers today, by all.)
The police are (on every corner and) in riot gear. Looting is always an unfortunate factor in situations such as this.
We spent the rest of the evening catching up with family via the jammed phone lines. Neither of us can imagine what tomorrow may bring. Neither of us can fathom sleeping tonight.
I met George, a neighbor. He offered me a Valium, which I refused, but he looked awful happy with his dose.
“They flew a fucking plane through the World Trade Center.”
This is real. This is not real. This is real.
Thursday, September 7, 2006
From the Archives: September 7, 2001 - Age 25
(What interested me about this entry, and the reason I'm posting it, is how amazingly free our lives were the first year we lived in New York City. With Reilly, our lives are so different--but no less amazing.)
One of the topics that Shawn and I have conversed on lately is that of the people who hand out flyers on the streets of The City. They all have various techniques, and some are more successful than others. These men and women (and children too) hand out flyers offering a variety of products, from clothing sales to bands that are playing. Some we see every day, like the girl who hands out pink slips of paper in front of her father’s jewelry store (at least, that is the story we’ve built around her).
There are many different colors and shapes of the flyers; most are either plain white or some fluorescent color, like pink or yellow. There are also many different techniques for handing out a flyer. Some people are timid and just turn out their wrist from their sides, while the people on the other end of the spectrum fully extend their arms and snap their wrists at you. Some stand still, some dance, some walk with you. The occasional person will approach you, tell you what the flyer offers, and then hand you one. Establishing this rapport is successful, but not time efficient. So, after careful study, I have devised the ultimate way to hand out a flyer. Flyer hander-outers take notice:
1) Though neon is more visible, I hate it. Especially fluorescent pink. I think most people will agree. So, screw the visibility—use white paper with black type, card stock. People will be less inclined to throw away a classy piece of white card stock than a cheap, thin piece of eye burning yellow paper.
2) Full arm extension, with a wrist snap. The paper should make a rustling noise, which will draw a person’s attention to the article.
3) Eye contact, when possible. This is the most time effective way to build a rapport.
4) Speaking of which, 99% of the people who we encounter handing out flyers, do NOT tell you what is on the flyer. So, the final, and critical rule here is to cry your wares, 19th century style. If people know what you’re offering, they’ll take a flyer.
Now, maybe these people don’t cry their wares because they’re selling pig ears. Or maybe they’re getting paid by the hour, and don’t really want to give away their flyers, because then they’d be out of work. That’s what I’m doing now, after all—writing in my journal when I should be working, trying to fill time because yesterday I almost finished what it was supposed to take me two full days to do.
After lunch Shawn and I (we are both temping at MoMA, but in different departments) got coffee at Au Croissant, an awesome cafeteria-style café with dirt-cheap goods. For example, our café au lait is $1.05, and no, it is not a thimble full of coffee. There are croissants, cookies, and all kinds of pastries for less than $2. The reason they keep their prices so cheap is because the place does brisk business at all hours. Now, other than the unusually cheap prices, there is another point of interest about the place. Though it is labeled as a French Café, the cooks are Asian and the cashiers say “Gracias” after you place your order. Very international. Very New York.
Since my job ended at 1pm, I read in Rockefeller Plaza for several hours, at one point interrupted from my studies by a black man crowing. Yes, imagine the sound the bird makes and put it in this man’s mouth, turn up the volume and set it on repeat. He even wore three feathers on the front of his ball cap. Everyone hated him. This was my second experience with The Crow, and though he is noteworthy, and decidedly a New Yorker, I didn’t much care for him either. Had he not he not crowed to draw attention to himself, no one would have noticed him. Perhaps that is why he did it. Well.
After Shawn got off work we decided to walk to the Met (Metropolitan Museum) for a drink at the rooftop garden. The walk to the museum was beautiful, up 5th Ave., along the east side of the park, tree-lined, cool breeze, cloudless sky—distinctly pre-fall. But before we even reached the park we saw a foot-traffic stopping sight on 5th Ave. I would have missed it if the two gay guys in front of me hadn’t stopped to gawk. In the two storefront windows on either side of the entrance were two bathtubs with two towel-clad models pseudo-bathing. I looked at the left, a young lady washing her arm, while the gay guys looked to the right, a handsome fella scrubbing his back. I don’t know what they were selling, but they certainly were getting the attention they wanted, as a crowd was gathering. After getting an eyeful, we walked on to the Met.
The view from the rooftop was incredible, the trees of Central Park so green and blanketing the activity beneath—all framed by the New York City skyline on three sides. After our drink, we strolled away feeling refreshed and relaxed, and took the 6 Train to Astor Place.
There we ate dinner at a Hawaiian joint called Marion's. Shawn liked it for the name, of course, (that's her middle name) but the food was very good and the martini’s cheap.
After dinner we finished our evening at the home base, Liam was working the bar, and working hard, as he was by himself on a Friday night (this makes my analogy from an entry ago more relevant than I had intended). We sat and watched him work; we talked, debated, and people watched. We talked quite a bit with Deanna, a girl who was helping out Liam and who also designed the website for the Keltic Lounge. She took a quote from us to add, “The BEST jukebox in The Entire City!” (It’s true.) We also chatted with two underage girls from Israel, who were going on a tour of the US. I tried to talk politics with them, but they were rather dull. I expected more converstion and personality from world travelers. Maybe they were just shy.
We walked home arm in arm, very merry.
One of the topics that Shawn and I have conversed on lately is that of the people who hand out flyers on the streets of The City. They all have various techniques, and some are more successful than others. These men and women (and children too) hand out flyers offering a variety of products, from clothing sales to bands that are playing. Some we see every day, like the girl who hands out pink slips of paper in front of her father’s jewelry store (at least, that is the story we’ve built around her).
There are many different colors and shapes of the flyers; most are either plain white or some fluorescent color, like pink or yellow. There are also many different techniques for handing out a flyer. Some people are timid and just turn out their wrist from their sides, while the people on the other end of the spectrum fully extend their arms and snap their wrists at you. Some stand still, some dance, some walk with you. The occasional person will approach you, tell you what the flyer offers, and then hand you one. Establishing this rapport is successful, but not time efficient. So, after careful study, I have devised the ultimate way to hand out a flyer. Flyer hander-outers take notice:
1) Though neon is more visible, I hate it. Especially fluorescent pink. I think most people will agree. So, screw the visibility—use white paper with black type, card stock. People will be less inclined to throw away a classy piece of white card stock than a cheap, thin piece of eye burning yellow paper.
2) Full arm extension, with a wrist snap. The paper should make a rustling noise, which will draw a person’s attention to the article.
3) Eye contact, when possible. This is the most time effective way to build a rapport.
4) Speaking of which, 99% of the people who we encounter handing out flyers, do NOT tell you what is on the flyer. So, the final, and critical rule here is to cry your wares, 19th century style. If people know what you’re offering, they’ll take a flyer.
Now, maybe these people don’t cry their wares because they’re selling pig ears. Or maybe they’re getting paid by the hour, and don’t really want to give away their flyers, because then they’d be out of work. That’s what I’m doing now, after all—writing in my journal when I should be working, trying to fill time because yesterday I almost finished what it was supposed to take me two full days to do.
After lunch Shawn and I (we are both temping at MoMA, but in different departments) got coffee at Au Croissant, an awesome cafeteria-style café with dirt-cheap goods. For example, our café au lait is $1.05, and no, it is not a thimble full of coffee. There are croissants, cookies, and all kinds of pastries for less than $2. The reason they keep their prices so cheap is because the place does brisk business at all hours. Now, other than the unusually cheap prices, there is another point of interest about the place. Though it is labeled as a French Café, the cooks are Asian and the cashiers say “Gracias” after you place your order. Very international. Very New York.
Since my job ended at 1pm, I read in Rockefeller Plaza for several hours, at one point interrupted from my studies by a black man crowing. Yes, imagine the sound the bird makes and put it in this man’s mouth, turn up the volume and set it on repeat. He even wore three feathers on the front of his ball cap. Everyone hated him. This was my second experience with The Crow, and though he is noteworthy, and decidedly a New Yorker, I didn’t much care for him either. Had he not he not crowed to draw attention to himself, no one would have noticed him. Perhaps that is why he did it. Well.
After Shawn got off work we decided to walk to the Met (Metropolitan Museum) for a drink at the rooftop garden. The walk to the museum was beautiful, up 5th Ave., along the east side of the park, tree-lined, cool breeze, cloudless sky—distinctly pre-fall. But before we even reached the park we saw a foot-traffic stopping sight on 5th Ave. I would have missed it if the two gay guys in front of me hadn’t stopped to gawk. In the two storefront windows on either side of the entrance were two bathtubs with two towel-clad models pseudo-bathing. I looked at the left, a young lady washing her arm, while the gay guys looked to the right, a handsome fella scrubbing his back. I don’t know what they were selling, but they certainly were getting the attention they wanted, as a crowd was gathering. After getting an eyeful, we walked on to the Met.
The view from the rooftop was incredible, the trees of Central Park so green and blanketing the activity beneath—all framed by the New York City skyline on three sides. After our drink, we strolled away feeling refreshed and relaxed, and took the 6 Train to Astor Place.
There we ate dinner at a Hawaiian joint called Marion's. Shawn liked it for the name, of course, (that's her middle name) but the food was very good and the martini’s cheap.
After dinner we finished our evening at the home base, Liam was working the bar, and working hard, as he was by himself on a Friday night (this makes my analogy from an entry ago more relevant than I had intended). We sat and watched him work; we talked, debated, and people watched. We talked quite a bit with Deanna, a girl who was helping out Liam and who also designed the website for the Keltic Lounge. She took a quote from us to add, “The BEST jukebox in The Entire City!” (It’s true.) We also chatted with two underage girls from Israel, who were going on a tour of the US. I tried to talk politics with them, but they were rather dull. I expected more converstion and personality from world travelers. Maybe they were just shy.
We walked home arm in arm, very merry.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
From the Archives: August 30, 2002 - Age 26
The thing about a pedestrian city is that one is exposed to his environment. In yesterday’s case, I was unsheltered from the elements, and my eyes were unshielded from some homeless guy’s balls. Exposure has two effects: one, is that a person grows numb to otherwise significant events: drug deals, two men kissing, dog shit on the sidewalk. The other effect is tied in with the sun. Exposed to the sun for too long, skin will burn. With the sun, I can wear sunscreen. But there is no screen in The City—nothing to shield me.
Today as I walked down 6th Avenue, I came upon a scene: three people waving frantically in the street, flagging down a wailing ambulance. As I sped closer to them and the crowd that had gathered outside a restaurant, I was interested in the situation only in finding a path around it. Someone must have choked, or had a heart attack, I thought. Nevermind though, the scene didn’t interest me, and the stairs to the 14th Street subway station were on the other side of the crowd. I weaved through them.
At the bottom of the stairs was a cop crouching over a man in tattered clothing. Underneath the prone man was a dirty crutch. At the crown of his black head was a thick pool of blood the size of a dinner plate. I was on the third step when the numbness sloughed off and I became cognizant of what I was witnessing. The paramedics passed me as I backed up the steps.
At about 11:00p this evening, Brittany and Mike arrived. The six of us (Drew and Sara were there too) sat around and drank some wine and Sam and I swear we were all talking at once. A short time later we hit the street, walking down Bleecker to Mercer and then south until we arrived at Bar 89. In a rare move, the doorman loosened up with us, commenting on our two friends and their Georgia licenses. I forget the joke, but in the end we were all laughing as he ushered us in.
Since this is a holiday weekend many NYkers have left town, and for this reason we spent only 10 minutes at the bar before we were seated at a window table near the front. The boys settled in with their beers and the girls with their ‘Tini’s, and we just talked and talked—with occasional breaks in the conversation to visit the coolest bathrooms in The City. We celebrated the arrival of our friends with much good cheer and laughter; raising hell and turning heads to our little corner table. And with the arrival of my friends a flux of old memories flooded my brain, finally pushing out the image of the man at the bottom of the stairs.
Today as I walked down 6th Avenue, I came upon a scene: three people waving frantically in the street, flagging down a wailing ambulance. As I sped closer to them and the crowd that had gathered outside a restaurant, I was interested in the situation only in finding a path around it. Someone must have choked, or had a heart attack, I thought. Nevermind though, the scene didn’t interest me, and the stairs to the 14th Street subway station were on the other side of the crowd. I weaved through them.
At the bottom of the stairs was a cop crouching over a man in tattered clothing. Underneath the prone man was a dirty crutch. At the crown of his black head was a thick pool of blood the size of a dinner plate. I was on the third step when the numbness sloughed off and I became cognizant of what I was witnessing. The paramedics passed me as I backed up the steps.
At about 11:00p this evening, Brittany and Mike arrived. The six of us (Drew and Sara were there too) sat around and drank some wine and Sam and I swear we were all talking at once. A short time later we hit the street, walking down Bleecker to Mercer and then south until we arrived at Bar 89. In a rare move, the doorman loosened up with us, commenting on our two friends and their Georgia licenses. I forget the joke, but in the end we were all laughing as he ushered us in.
Since this is a holiday weekend many NYkers have left town, and for this reason we spent only 10 minutes at the bar before we were seated at a window table near the front. The boys settled in with their beers and the girls with their ‘Tini’s, and we just talked and talked—with occasional breaks in the conversation to visit the coolest bathrooms in The City. We celebrated the arrival of our friends with much good cheer and laughter; raising hell and turning heads to our little corner table. And with the arrival of my friends a flux of old memories flooded my brain, finally pushing out the image of the man at the bottom of the stairs.
Monday, August 28, 2006
From the Archives: August 27, 2005 - Age 29
Shawn and Reilly flew home to Florida on Wednesday of this week, and will be gone through September 5th. I’ll join them on September 2nd for a quick trip home. The nine days that I’ll be apart from my wife are, without question, the longest time we’ve been apart since we were married. Obviously, this is also the longest period of time I’ve ever spent apart from my daughter.
As a boy, I did not mind spending time alone. I was shy, true, but I also had such an active imagination that I could fritter away hours by myself, absorbed in some daring rescue or swashbuckling adventure. A vestige of that old self remains. The first day Shawn was gone, I enjoyed a sort of euphoric freedom. I was emperor of the apartment, free to hang out in my boxers, have chips and beer, and flip between football, Sportscenter, and a Yankees game on TV. Yet with all that freedom, when it came time to go to bed, I found myself staring up at the ceiling, studying a crack in the plaster that snakes from the window to the kitchen.
When we first moved to The City, I remember returning home to our apartment on Ludlow Street and finding it surprisingly empty and quiet. What we were missing was our dog, Leia, who we had grown so accustomed to greeting us each time we set foot in our Tallahasee townhouse. Leia lives now with the Tewksbury’s, and is trying to get used to her new visitor—Reilly. (Shawn reports that Leia likes to lick her feet.) My second day alone left me with a similar sensation. For the last few weeks, I have rushed home from work, burst through the door of the apartment and announced, “Dad’s home!” Now, I linger at work a little longer, and walk a bit slower back from the subway, knowing that when I unlock the door, the only thing to greet me will be the hum of the air conditioner.
By the third day, a certain amount of longing had set in. I spent fifteen minutes at work forcing a co-worker to watch as I browsed through a few weeks of Reilly’s pictures. Later that day, I found myself humming the “Robbers Song,” a tune I made up one day when I was alone with Reilly for the first time. Shawn had been away from the apartment for a quick errand, and when Reilly would not stop crying, I began to panic, trying every position and nursery rhyme to cheer her up. Finally, I set her on my knees, and made up the “Robbers Song” on the spot. It goes a little something like this:
Verse 1 – (Jog baby’s legs)
You’ve gotta run, run, run, run from the robbers
Gotta run, run, run, run from the robbers
Gotta run
Gotta run
Verse 2 – (Jump baby’s legs)
You’ve gotta jump, jump, jump, jump from the robbers
Gotta jump, jump, jump, jump from the robbers
Gotta jump
Gotta jump
Verse 3 – (Grab baby with both hands around ribs)
And then the robbers catch us!
So…
Verse 4 – (Punch with baby’s fists)
You’ve gotta fight, fight, fight, fight with the robbers
Gotta fight, fight, fight, fight with the robbers
With a left and a right
You’ve gotta fight
Verse 5 – (Tickle baby’s face with fingers)
And then you chill…
The song kept Reilly calm for twenty minutes, until Shawn returned.
As I sit here in my apartment, remembering that day, I’d trade the quiet and calm of her absence for an hour of crying, just to get her back in my arms. I miss my girls.
Can you tell?
As a boy, I did not mind spending time alone. I was shy, true, but I also had such an active imagination that I could fritter away hours by myself, absorbed in some daring rescue or swashbuckling adventure. A vestige of that old self remains. The first day Shawn was gone, I enjoyed a sort of euphoric freedom. I was emperor of the apartment, free to hang out in my boxers, have chips and beer, and flip between football, Sportscenter, and a Yankees game on TV. Yet with all that freedom, when it came time to go to bed, I found myself staring up at the ceiling, studying a crack in the plaster that snakes from the window to the kitchen.
When we first moved to The City, I remember returning home to our apartment on Ludlow Street and finding it surprisingly empty and quiet. What we were missing was our dog, Leia, who we had grown so accustomed to greeting us each time we set foot in our Tallahasee townhouse. Leia lives now with the Tewksbury’s, and is trying to get used to her new visitor—Reilly. (Shawn reports that Leia likes to lick her feet.) My second day alone left me with a similar sensation. For the last few weeks, I have rushed home from work, burst through the door of the apartment and announced, “Dad’s home!” Now, I linger at work a little longer, and walk a bit slower back from the subway, knowing that when I unlock the door, the only thing to greet me will be the hum of the air conditioner.
By the third day, a certain amount of longing had set in. I spent fifteen minutes at work forcing a co-worker to watch as I browsed through a few weeks of Reilly’s pictures. Later that day, I found myself humming the “Robbers Song,” a tune I made up one day when I was alone with Reilly for the first time. Shawn had been away from the apartment for a quick errand, and when Reilly would not stop crying, I began to panic, trying every position and nursery rhyme to cheer her up. Finally, I set her on my knees, and made up the “Robbers Song” on the spot. It goes a little something like this:
Verse 1 – (Jog baby’s legs)
You’ve gotta run, run, run, run from the robbers
Gotta run, run, run, run from the robbers
Gotta run
Gotta run
Verse 2 – (Jump baby’s legs)
You’ve gotta jump, jump, jump, jump from the robbers
Gotta jump, jump, jump, jump from the robbers
Gotta jump
Gotta jump
Verse 3 – (Grab baby with both hands around ribs)
And then the robbers catch us!
So…
Verse 4 – (Punch with baby’s fists)
You’ve gotta fight, fight, fight, fight with the robbers
Gotta fight, fight, fight, fight with the robbers
With a left and a right
You’ve gotta fight
Verse 5 – (Tickle baby’s face with fingers)
And then you chill…
The song kept Reilly calm for twenty minutes, until Shawn returned.
As I sit here in my apartment, remembering that day, I’d trade the quiet and calm of her absence for an hour of crying, just to get her back in my arms. I miss my girls.
Can you tell?
Sunday, August 20, 2006
From the Archives: August 20, 2005 - Age 29
This entry is from Reilly's sixth week. What interests me in this post is how we were beginning to introduce our daughter to the usual suspects we come across each day, and how, just a few weeks ago, these people were truly crushed to find out we were moving. (Yes, even the guy at the donut cart.)
Reilly loves to ride around town in her baby Bjorn. If she is awake, she will grasp onto Shawn’s shirt and just stare up at her mom. If our baby is sleepy, she will nestle down on Shawn’s chest and drowse away. Shawn has found this development to be quite wonderful. She started off making short, local trips around the neighborhood, but now Shawn will go most anywhere, from the post office on 4th Avenue and 10th Street to the MoMA in midtown.
Since we are outdoors all the time now, Reilly has been meeting all of her neighbors. This week she met the guy from my donut cart on 5th Avenue and 16th Street. I’d been talking to him about my new baby for a couple of weeks now, so he was thrilled to meet her. When I made my usual order of one plain donut, he put an extra one in the bag, and said, “I put another in there for your little girl.”
Reilly also made friends with the drycleaner, Mr. Park. He had been commenting on her little clothes for the past few weeks, “so small—and so many colors,” and asking when I would bring her in. Shawn walked with me to drop off our laundry one morning, and Mr. Park just lit up with excitement. He said, “She looks like her father.” I had to smile at that, as he is the only one who seems to think so!
Normally, on Sundays, we walk only on the north side of our street, to avoid the soup kitchen line that forms at the church across the street. However, with Reilly in tow, we have to avoid the sun, and since the shade was on the south side of the street, we had to make an exception. As we strolled by the many characters in front of the church, one of the men asked “New baby?” Shawn and I nodded and he said, “Well, God bless her!” We thanked him, and moved on.
At home there is the Old Monk, who always stops to look at Reilly and smile. He sits on the third floor in his chair, in the corner of the hallway. He spends his time there praying, and it is impossible to break his concentration. Shawn and I used to leave for work, tromp past him, and he would never blink an eye. But now, with Reilly, he will stop right in the middle of his prayer and get up to see our baby girl. In fact, the one time we left without her (my dad was babysitting) the monk said, “Where baby?” which is the most English he has ever spoken in our presence.
This week, Reilly has also continued her visual development. When she’s in her crib, she spends more time watching her mobile. In the past, she would only stare left or right, but now she looks up and follows the black and white objects as they circle above her. She also shows interest in the mobile on her swing.
My favorite visual moment this week was when I said goodbye to Reilly as I left for work Tuesday morning. As I walked away from her, she turned her head to follow me with her eyes.
Shawn’s favorite visual moment this week was when Reilly sat in her lap and looked at her Organic Style magazine for ten minutes. The picture we have of that moment is too cute, and is the attached photo of the week. Enjoy!
Reilly loves to ride around town in her baby Bjorn. If she is awake, she will grasp onto Shawn’s shirt and just stare up at her mom. If our baby is sleepy, she will nestle down on Shawn’s chest and drowse away. Shawn has found this development to be quite wonderful. She started off making short, local trips around the neighborhood, but now Shawn will go most anywhere, from the post office on 4th Avenue and 10th Street to the MoMA in midtown.
Since we are outdoors all the time now, Reilly has been meeting all of her neighbors. This week she met the guy from my donut cart on 5th Avenue and 16th Street. I’d been talking to him about my new baby for a couple of weeks now, so he was thrilled to meet her. When I made my usual order of one plain donut, he put an extra one in the bag, and said, “I put another in there for your little girl.”
Reilly also made friends with the drycleaner, Mr. Park. He had been commenting on her little clothes for the past few weeks, “so small—and so many colors,” and asking when I would bring her in. Shawn walked with me to drop off our laundry one morning, and Mr. Park just lit up with excitement. He said, “She looks like her father.” I had to smile at that, as he is the only one who seems to think so!
Normally, on Sundays, we walk only on the north side of our street, to avoid the soup kitchen line that forms at the church across the street. However, with Reilly in tow, we have to avoid the sun, and since the shade was on the south side of the street, we had to make an exception. As we strolled by the many characters in front of the church, one of the men asked “New baby?” Shawn and I nodded and he said, “Well, God bless her!” We thanked him, and moved on.
At home there is the Old Monk, who always stops to look at Reilly and smile. He sits on the third floor in his chair, in the corner of the hallway. He spends his time there praying, and it is impossible to break his concentration. Shawn and I used to leave for work, tromp past him, and he would never blink an eye. But now, with Reilly, he will stop right in the middle of his prayer and get up to see our baby girl. In fact, the one time we left without her (my dad was babysitting) the monk said, “Where baby?” which is the most English he has ever spoken in our presence.
This week, Reilly has also continued her visual development. When she’s in her crib, she spends more time watching her mobile. In the past, she would only stare left or right, but now she looks up and follows the black and white objects as they circle above her. She also shows interest in the mobile on her swing.
My favorite visual moment this week was when I said goodbye to Reilly as I left for work Tuesday morning. As I walked away from her, she turned her head to follow me with her eyes.
Shawn’s favorite visual moment this week was when Reilly sat in her lap and looked at her Organic Style magazine for ten minutes. The picture we have of that moment is too cute, and is the attached photo of the week. Enjoy!
Sunday, August 13, 2006
From the Archives: August 13, 2005 - Age 29
This entry is from Reilly's fifth week. In retrospect, I want to go back and tell myself that it will all get easier. Really, Brian. It will.
On Sunday, I decided it was time to clip Reilly’s fingernails. For the last couple of weeks, I’d been filing each nail, but with all the milk she’s been drinking, those little daggers are growing longer by the day. I have to say, I was a bit nervous going in for the first nail, but it came off with a quick snip, and feeling my confidence swell, I went after the others. I focused my attention on the thumbnail on her other hand, gave the clippers a squeeze, and totally missed. I pulled my hand away and grabbed her little thumb. She had a raised white line on the skin beneath her nail, and I was relieved to see that I had only pinched it. As I was inspecting the mark, I gave her thumb a squeeze, and a little drop of my baby’s blood came out. She began to wail. I felt like doing the same. Oh, woe to the father who hurts his little girl.
Later in the evening, after life had settled back into its normal chaos, I turned to Shawn, and said, “Parenting is hard.” I mean, I knew that raising a child would be difficult, but honestly, I had no idea that it would be this hard. I said the same thing to Ron Loose over steak and fries last night. Everyone at the dinner table protested that surely the hard times are worth it, and of course, they are right. I just wanted to make the point that the “problem” of a child is not one easily solved. Two plus two never equals four, and five diapers are enough to smell up the nursery.
It is worth it. I really is. When I was in my early twenties, I often wondered on the topic of Life, specifically, what it means. The conclusion I came to was that our purpose to procreate, and that having love in one’s life is the key to living well. Reilly brings both those things into my realm—I have a child, and with that child, I have much, much love.
After a long week, Shawn and I decided today to pack Reilly up in the Baby Bjorn, and beat the heat by taking a bus up to MoMA for some photography. The bus trip went brilliantly. To define “brilliantly” I will simply say that Reilly slept, the bus was air conditioned, and we got a seat. We arrived at MoMA about thirty minutes later, and toured the museum’s photography exhibits for about an hour and a half, including a very interesting collection of shots of Mt. St. Helens. The pictures reminded us of our road trip back in 2000, when we toured the mountain ourselves. We were there off-season, so it was desolate and we slept at a campground where our only visitor was a deer. We slept fitfully. Those fitful nights have returned.
Reilly is so great in the daytime, and is happy to play, dance with mom to Coldplay (her favorite band), or hit the town in her Baby Bjorn. This Thursday, she had her one-month check-up with Dr. Zullo, our pediatrician. Reilly weighed in at 8 lbs, 8 oz, and 21 and a half inches. She is in the 25th percentile for her weight and head circumference, and 75th percentile for her height. Dr. Zullo was very happy with Reilly’s weight gain, and asked Shawn if her father was tall and skinny. Ha! Reilly left with a prescription for Vitamin D drops (to help with bone growth) and for an ultrasound on Monday. Dr. Zullo is concerned that Reilly might have a little hip displacement from birth, and so Shawn will take her into NYU next week to get everything checked out.
The doctor also said that Reilly would be working on her visual abilities and would start displaying a social smile soon. That very same evening, when I was holding Reilly, Shawn got up to go into the kitchen. I watched Reilly follow her mother with her eyes, and when Shawn got out of sight, she raised up a cry. Another item off the checklist. Then, the next morning, when I was talking to Reilly as she woke up, she opened her eyes, looked at me, and gave me her best, biggest smile. She stole my heart.
On Sunday, I decided it was time to clip Reilly’s fingernails. For the last couple of weeks, I’d been filing each nail, but with all the milk she’s been drinking, those little daggers are growing longer by the day. I have to say, I was a bit nervous going in for the first nail, but it came off with a quick snip, and feeling my confidence swell, I went after the others. I focused my attention on the thumbnail on her other hand, gave the clippers a squeeze, and totally missed. I pulled my hand away and grabbed her little thumb. She had a raised white line on the skin beneath her nail, and I was relieved to see that I had only pinched it. As I was inspecting the mark, I gave her thumb a squeeze, and a little drop of my baby’s blood came out. She began to wail. I felt like doing the same. Oh, woe to the father who hurts his little girl.
Later in the evening, after life had settled back into its normal chaos, I turned to Shawn, and said, “Parenting is hard.” I mean, I knew that raising a child would be difficult, but honestly, I had no idea that it would be this hard. I said the same thing to Ron Loose over steak and fries last night. Everyone at the dinner table protested that surely the hard times are worth it, and of course, they are right. I just wanted to make the point that the “problem” of a child is not one easily solved. Two plus two never equals four, and five diapers are enough to smell up the nursery.
It is worth it. I really is. When I was in my early twenties, I often wondered on the topic of Life, specifically, what it means. The conclusion I came to was that our purpose to procreate, and that having love in one’s life is the key to living well. Reilly brings both those things into my realm—I have a child, and with that child, I have much, much love.
After a long week, Shawn and I decided today to pack Reilly up in the Baby Bjorn, and beat the heat by taking a bus up to MoMA for some photography. The bus trip went brilliantly. To define “brilliantly” I will simply say that Reilly slept, the bus was air conditioned, and we got a seat. We arrived at MoMA about thirty minutes later, and toured the museum’s photography exhibits for about an hour and a half, including a very interesting collection of shots of Mt. St. Helens. The pictures reminded us of our road trip back in 2000, when we toured the mountain ourselves. We were there off-season, so it was desolate and we slept at a campground where our only visitor was a deer. We slept fitfully. Those fitful nights have returned.
Reilly is so great in the daytime, and is happy to play, dance with mom to Coldplay (her favorite band), or hit the town in her Baby Bjorn. This Thursday, she had her one-month check-up with Dr. Zullo, our pediatrician. Reilly weighed in at 8 lbs, 8 oz, and 21 and a half inches. She is in the 25th percentile for her weight and head circumference, and 75th percentile for her height. Dr. Zullo was very happy with Reilly’s weight gain, and asked Shawn if her father was tall and skinny. Ha! Reilly left with a prescription for Vitamin D drops (to help with bone growth) and for an ultrasound on Monday. Dr. Zullo is concerned that Reilly might have a little hip displacement from birth, and so Shawn will take her into NYU next week to get everything checked out.
The doctor also said that Reilly would be working on her visual abilities and would start displaying a social smile soon. That very same evening, when I was holding Reilly, Shawn got up to go into the kitchen. I watched Reilly follow her mother with her eyes, and when Shawn got out of sight, she raised up a cry. Another item off the checklist. Then, the next morning, when I was talking to Reilly as she woke up, she opened her eyes, looked at me, and gave me her best, biggest smile. She stole my heart.
Monday, July 24, 2006
From the Archives: July 23, 2005 - Age 29
This archive entry is from Reilly's second week. When I look back on this entry now, it is so easy to see that Shawn was suffering from post-partum depression. Unfortunately, it would take us at least a month to get her help, and six months before she was well again.
Our second week as parents has been an emotional one. Of the two of us, Shawn has been challenged the most. With her hormones crashing and having to be awake every couple of hours to breastfeed, tearful outbursts can happen at any moment. She’s prone to cry at any little thing, rational or not. For example, she had a good cry about the fact that Reilly will never be two days old again, and that one day (eighteen years from now) our daughter will move away from us.
I have been struggling with the emotion of Reilly’s birth myself. With Shawn, I had months—years, really—for my love for her to develop and grow strong. I had time to get used to the idea of committing to someone with all of my being for all of my life. With Reilly, the love I feel for her is so strong, and so sudden, it is truly frightening. I have had to distance myself from that emotion several times this week to prevent myself from entering the space that Shawn has been forced to dwell in. Shawn does not have the luxury of being able to distance herself, so strong are her hormones, and so intense was her experience, to carry this child for nine months and to give birth to her, a new life, all by herself. It is impossible for me to understand the depth and charge of the emotion that event must have carried for her.
The third member of our family, Reilly, seems as happy as an infant can be. At her “weigh in” at the pediatrician on Monday, we found out that she put on eight ounces last week. She officially grew out of her preemie clothes on Thursday, which Shawn found to be a happy development. We have many outfits to try on our little diva!
Reilly is averaging three to four feeds per night depending on when we start “the night.” Her favorite activity is to be fed in the rocking chair, and then drowse on her mother’s chest. We’re happiest when she falls back to sleep immediately after the feeding, but there is something wonderful about having her awake and alert at 4:00 in the morning, with the world around us quiet. All we can see are her little dark eyes. We wonder what she can see.
Reilly is getting to know our faces, probably because we stare at her at every moment we have, studying every detail of her face and body. She returns the favor by staring right back at us. Her neck is growing stronger, so she is able to direct her gaze at mom or dad, depending on who is smothering her at the moment. As Reilly puts on weight, it seems to me that she is beginning to look more and more like her mother did as a baby. Reilly also appears to be gaining coordination in her arms and hands. Some of her movements seem concentrated, as opposed to the random, jerky arms and feet she was born with. This is most apparent when Shawn is talking to Reilly and the baby reaches for her mouth or hair.
During her awake time, we talk, sing and read to Reilly. Our favorite book is “Mommy’s Best Kisses,” as it gives Shawn and excuse to kiss all over her baby’s little body. Because of all this kissing, we keep Reilly rather clean. She enjoyed her second and third bath this week. Mom is the official baby washer, and dad is the photojournalist. Reilly loves spending time in her crib and looking at her mobile, her stuffed animals, or at herself in the mirror. We’re surprised at how independent she is. She rarely cries just to be held, and isn’t afraid to hang out by herself in her bedroom. When she does cry, it is typically only to say that she is hungry. With those cries, Reilly now has tears, which was an interesting and heartbreaking development. The biggest development of the week, however, was when Reilly’s crusty belly button stump fell off. (We promptly tossed it in the trash. Yuck!)
The cutest moment of the week was on Tuesday morning. Shawn and I woke up before Reilly and propped ourselves up on our elbows so that we could look at her sleeping in the crook of her mom’s arm, swaddled in a pink blanket. While we were looking at her, she stirred in her sleep, said, “Ma-Ma-Ma,” then fell back to sleep. Shawn and I nearly melted at her pseudo-baby babble. All this cuteness has earned Reilly a number of nicknames, including: boo, bubaloo, and baby dinosaur. The last nickname she earned from her propensity toward emitting strange reptilian noises at any hour of the day.
Reilly’s second week with us has flown by, and I am chagrined to know that I have to leave her and return to work on Monday. Many things have come to pass this week, including Reilly’s original due date, which was Sunday. We’re so glad that she came early—we could barely wait to meet her. We can’t wait for everyone else to meet her too.
Our second week as parents has been an emotional one. Of the two of us, Shawn has been challenged the most. With her hormones crashing and having to be awake every couple of hours to breastfeed, tearful outbursts can happen at any moment. She’s prone to cry at any little thing, rational or not. For example, she had a good cry about the fact that Reilly will never be two days old again, and that one day (eighteen years from now) our daughter will move away from us.
I have been struggling with the emotion of Reilly’s birth myself. With Shawn, I had months—years, really—for my love for her to develop and grow strong. I had time to get used to the idea of committing to someone with all of my being for all of my life. With Reilly, the love I feel for her is so strong, and so sudden, it is truly frightening. I have had to distance myself from that emotion several times this week to prevent myself from entering the space that Shawn has been forced to dwell in. Shawn does not have the luxury of being able to distance herself, so strong are her hormones, and so intense was her experience, to carry this child for nine months and to give birth to her, a new life, all by herself. It is impossible for me to understand the depth and charge of the emotion that event must have carried for her.
The third member of our family, Reilly, seems as happy as an infant can be. At her “weigh in” at the pediatrician on Monday, we found out that she put on eight ounces last week. She officially grew out of her preemie clothes on Thursday, which Shawn found to be a happy development. We have many outfits to try on our little diva!
Reilly is averaging three to four feeds per night depending on when we start “the night.” Her favorite activity is to be fed in the rocking chair, and then drowse on her mother’s chest. We’re happiest when she falls back to sleep immediately after the feeding, but there is something wonderful about having her awake and alert at 4:00 in the morning, with the world around us quiet. All we can see are her little dark eyes. We wonder what she can see.
Reilly is getting to know our faces, probably because we stare at her at every moment we have, studying every detail of her face and body. She returns the favor by staring right back at us. Her neck is growing stronger, so she is able to direct her gaze at mom or dad, depending on who is smothering her at the moment. As Reilly puts on weight, it seems to me that she is beginning to look more and more like her mother did as a baby. Reilly also appears to be gaining coordination in her arms and hands. Some of her movements seem concentrated, as opposed to the random, jerky arms and feet she was born with. This is most apparent when Shawn is talking to Reilly and the baby reaches for her mouth or hair.
During her awake time, we talk, sing and read to Reilly. Our favorite book is “Mommy’s Best Kisses,” as it gives Shawn and excuse to kiss all over her baby’s little body. Because of all this kissing, we keep Reilly rather clean. She enjoyed her second and third bath this week. Mom is the official baby washer, and dad is the photojournalist. Reilly loves spending time in her crib and looking at her mobile, her stuffed animals, or at herself in the mirror. We’re surprised at how independent she is. She rarely cries just to be held, and isn’t afraid to hang out by herself in her bedroom. When she does cry, it is typically only to say that she is hungry. With those cries, Reilly now has tears, which was an interesting and heartbreaking development. The biggest development of the week, however, was when Reilly’s crusty belly button stump fell off. (We promptly tossed it in the trash. Yuck!)
The cutest moment of the week was on Tuesday morning. Shawn and I woke up before Reilly and propped ourselves up on our elbows so that we could look at her sleeping in the crook of her mom’s arm, swaddled in a pink blanket. While we were looking at her, she stirred in her sleep, said, “Ma-Ma-Ma,” then fell back to sleep. Shawn and I nearly melted at her pseudo-baby babble. All this cuteness has earned Reilly a number of nicknames, including: boo, bubaloo, and baby dinosaur. The last nickname she earned from her propensity toward emitting strange reptilian noises at any hour of the day.
Reilly’s second week with us has flown by, and I am chagrined to know that I have to leave her and return to work on Monday. Many things have come to pass this week, including Reilly’s original due date, which was Sunday. We’re so glad that she came early—we could barely wait to meet her. We can’t wait for everyone else to meet her too.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
From the Archives: July 23, 2002 - Age 26
Today I was looking out the window of my office, down 8 stories to 60th Street, where the cars, trucks, and busses were congregating. The street drew my attention because of a commotion—a fire truck trying to navigate the traffic, sirens screaming, one of those double-decker open top tourist busses blocking the way. The most immediate color was yellow—taxicabs cruising by despite the jam. Eventually the fire truck slipped through and rumbled off to its destination, yet I did not turn away from the scene. I was not really looking at anything specific any longer, absorbed instead in the thought that there I was, looking out over midtown Manhattan, at my job, in my city. Though it has been a year now, there are still moments that I am amazed that I am here, in a place I never predicted nor expected to become my home. A smile and a shake of my head in wonder, and then back to my desk I went.
Friday, July 7, 2006
From the Archives: July 16, 2005 - Age 29
Well, we're off to Cape Cod for a week. Hope this tides you over until we return...
First journal entries are hard. It is difficult to select a single topic from a week full of firsts: first child, first diaper change, first burp, first bath. For this reason, I’ll begin this entry on the second day of our new daughter’s life. On that morning, I awoke in my apartment to a quiet room, the air conditioner humming from the window. I felt no early morning drowsiness, but rather an instant alertness, and within that frame of mind, I thought of the first thirty seconds after Reilly was born—right after I cut her umbilical cord, and the doctor put her to Shawn’s chest. Shawn looked down at Reilly, then over to me, and in those few seconds, as our eyes met, we connected a way in which the whole world fell away, and all that remained was intense love. When someone asks me how it feels to have a new baby, I say, “awesome,” and when I say that word, what I think of was that moment.
That morning, as I lay in bed, I also felt another emotion, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the feeling was. All I knew was that I felt different. The first time I had felt this difference was when we were still in the labor and delivery room. Shawn was having difficulty delivering her afterbirth, and I was holding her hand and rather fruitlessly trying to comfort her. When all the blood made me feel a little queasy, I stepped back from the bed for a moment. When I turned around, the hospital bassinet was there, and in it was Reilly, jerking her arms and legs. The sight of her caught me by surprise, and I realized that I had forgotten she was there. In fact, I had forgotten that she existed at all. I thought, Oh yeah. Wow. I have a daughter.
Soon, I got out of bed, and walked over to St. Vincent’s hospital to reunite with my wife and baby. I made my way up to the ninth Floor, and then over to the room labeled “S. Overcast.” When I walked in, Shawn was there with Reilly. She debriefed me on how her night went, and then asked me how I was feeling. I told her that I felt proud, and happy, and in love with our new daughter. I also told her that I felt different in some way, though I wasn’t quite sure what the emotion was. She smiled at me. I think she knew, intuitively, what I was trying to express.
As my first week with my new baby daughter has progressed, I’ve learned so much about her, what her patterns are, what her diapers smell like, how angelic she looks when she sleeps. I have felt her warmth as she napped on my chest and I have felt my heart jump as she made eye contact with me for the first time. That day in the hospital when I forgot Reilly was in the room seems distant, because everywhere I go—every minute of the day—she is with me. I realize now that I feel different because I am different. In my life, I have been a son, a brother, a husband. Now, I am a father.
First journal entries are hard. It is difficult to select a single topic from a week full of firsts: first child, first diaper change, first burp, first bath. For this reason, I’ll begin this entry on the second day of our new daughter’s life. On that morning, I awoke in my apartment to a quiet room, the air conditioner humming from the window. I felt no early morning drowsiness, but rather an instant alertness, and within that frame of mind, I thought of the first thirty seconds after Reilly was born—right after I cut her umbilical cord, and the doctor put her to Shawn’s chest. Shawn looked down at Reilly, then over to me, and in those few seconds, as our eyes met, we connected a way in which the whole world fell away, and all that remained was intense love. When someone asks me how it feels to have a new baby, I say, “awesome,” and when I say that word, what I think of was that moment.
That morning, as I lay in bed, I also felt another emotion, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the feeling was. All I knew was that I felt different. The first time I had felt this difference was when we were still in the labor and delivery room. Shawn was having difficulty delivering her afterbirth, and I was holding her hand and rather fruitlessly trying to comfort her. When all the blood made me feel a little queasy, I stepped back from the bed for a moment. When I turned around, the hospital bassinet was there, and in it was Reilly, jerking her arms and legs. The sight of her caught me by surprise, and I realized that I had forgotten she was there. In fact, I had forgotten that she existed at all. I thought, Oh yeah. Wow. I have a daughter.
Soon, I got out of bed, and walked over to St. Vincent’s hospital to reunite with my wife and baby. I made my way up to the ninth Floor, and then over to the room labeled “S. Overcast.” When I walked in, Shawn was there with Reilly. She debriefed me on how her night went, and then asked me how I was feeling. I told her that I felt proud, and happy, and in love with our new daughter. I also told her that I felt different in some way, though I wasn’t quite sure what the emotion was. She smiled at me. I think she knew, intuitively, what I was trying to express.
As my first week with my new baby daughter has progressed, I’ve learned so much about her, what her patterns are, what her diapers smell like, how angelic she looks when she sleeps. I have felt her warmth as she napped on my chest and I have felt my heart jump as she made eye contact with me for the first time. That day in the hospital when I forgot Reilly was in the room seems distant, because everywhere I go—every minute of the day—she is with me. I realize now that I feel different because I am different. In my life, I have been a son, a brother, a husband. Now, I am a father.
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
From the Archives: July 5, 1989 – Age 13
Note: for context, this was written in my first ever journal, a blue, single-subject notebook with college ruled white paper. My mom, brother and I were spending the summer as we always did, in Cape Cod. This entry is not particularly interesting, but does give a view of what was important to me as a 13-year-old boy. The “skills and drills” I refer to in the first line were a series of soccer drills my father had outlined for me to do every morning in preparation for club soccer tryouts at the end of the summer.
Did my skills and drills in the early hours as usual. Played capture the flag at the ball field. Ate lunch. Fluff and Oreo’s. Ya! Played waffle ball. Mike and I vs. Drake and Andy. Score: 40-5. We won! What a cremation! Watched a tennis doubles match for awhile, then watched Mike beat Super Mario Bros. II without warping! Wow! Then we ate dinner. French bread pizza! Yum! After that we went to Andy and Dave’s. I had to babysit Stephen at 8:15. Then I had to write in my journal. Here I am. All caught up! Syanara!
Did my skills and drills in the early hours as usual. Played capture the flag at the ball field. Ate lunch. Fluff and Oreo’s. Ya! Played waffle ball. Mike and I vs. Drake and Andy. Score: 40-5. We won! What a cremation! Watched a tennis doubles match for awhile, then watched Mike beat Super Mario Bros. II without warping! Wow! Then we ate dinner. French bread pizza! Yum! After that we went to Andy and Dave’s. I had to babysit Stephen at 8:15. Then I had to write in my journal. Here I am. All caught up! Syanara!
Friday, June 23, 2006
From the Archives: June 23, 2001 - Age 25
The solstice has ushered in summer, and with the sun comes America’s favorite pastime—no, not baseball—garage sales!
In the book Travels with Charley, Steinbeck traveled across the country in search of Americans that define our nation. I say, “Mr. Steinbeck, no need to travel the country. If you want to meet a true cross-section of Americans, just have a garage sale.”
Shawn and I had never held a garage sale ourselves, but moving from our Tallahassee townhouse to a single-room apartment in New York City necessitated the event. Armed with our first-timer enthusiasm and the faint memories of our parent’s garage sales (crinkled bills, jingling silver, and the painful, forced sale of old toys), we set out to unload four years of accumulated college-quality junk.
6:00am - Met my wife with a tired look as NPR clicked on our clock radio. We had been up until 2:00am the previous night pricing, which brings me to my first tip. We had many items. After realizing how long it would take to price each one, we began to throw like items into shallow cardboard boxes and put a single price on the outside. Then, as each item came up, I would ask Shawn, “quarter box, or dime box?” Shawn would glance at the item and pass down her verdict.
Near the end of the night, I said, “Shawn, 25 cents or a quarter on this one?” We both laughed so loud it woke up the dog.
6:15am – The coffee pot is rumbling as I walk out to Ocala Road to strategically post our garage sale signs. When I return to the house, there is a Cadillac parked parallel to our driveway and a bleary-eyed, white-whiskered old man standing in my empty carport. “Am I too early?” he asks. I check my watch. 6:30am. The garage sale ad in the Tallahassee Democrat stated 8:00am. This leads me to tip #2: If you don’t want early birds, you must state it in your ad. Then, they’ll come anyway.
Shawn and I drag items out the sliding glass door of our porch and arrange them in a semi-circle with the priciest items in the front, the nickel box in the back. The old man gathers together a pile of our things, thoughtfully smoking a cigar and sipping his coffee.
“Where ya’ll movin’?”
“New York City.”
“Hmph. Let’s talk.”
We move to his pile. He has our framed poster prints, blender, and some stuff from our quarter box. At a quick glance, I calculate $14. I soon find that the old man has another price in mind.
“These posters aren’t worth much. Frames are good. I’ll get money for them in the junk shop I own.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll give you ten bucks for the lot.”
“Sold!”
7:03am – A mother and daughter show up. Shawn and I now have our coffee and have abandoned our planned breakfast of bacon and eggs for hastily eaten granola bars. The young girl and her mother root through the 50 cent and 25 cent boxes, take a few items, and then the daughter tries on some of my wife’s clothes. The entire time they speak softly to each other in Spanish. Though I just graduated with a Spanish minor, I understand nothing.
When it comes time to buy, we bag up their items and I say to the couple, “Is this all?” The daughter—I guess she is about ten—shyly translates my sentence for her mother, her eyes downcast. The mother then says something to her daughter in Spanish.
“We would also like the dresser,” the daughter says. The mother nods at me, confident that her daughter has translated her desires.
“That’ll be twenty-two,” I say. I round down.
“Veinte y dos,” the daughter says to her mother.
The mother pulls the bills out slowly, weighing the purchase in her mind. She hands them over, and I help her load the dresser into her pickup truck. I step back into the carport and reflect on the quiet pair as the truck grumbles to life.
7:34am – Two cars pull up at the same time. Neither driver chooses to park in the empty spaces of our apartment parking lot, instead parking side-by-side, effectively blocking all avenues of exit for my neighbors. I cringe.
One lady, a middle-aged African American, looks over our electronics, asks us of our camera works, then buys a glass flower vase and a table cloth instead. She leaves.
The other woman, a 30-something blond with equally blond armpit hair goes straight for Shawn’s clothes. My wife is a size 2. This lady was not, yet she tried on several items, desperately trying to button a shirt over her massive boobs. When she asks me my opinion, I tell her it looks great on her. Shawn tries to conceal her laughter.
After choosing a few shirts, she turns to my old radio that is softly playing The Morning Edition on NPR. Though it is still early, she takes the liberty of changing the station to country and cranking up the volume. I cringe for the second time, and sell it to her for $2 so to have an excuse to unplug it.
8:04am – Our second male arrives, buys my ghastly PEZ collection for $2, and asks us where we’re going.
“New York City.”
“Cool.”
He then purchases the only other poster frame that our first customer didn’t buy and wishes us luck.
8:15am – Our neighbor, Hazel, comes to sit with us on our porch. We engage in casual small talk, from our plans in New York to her dog’s allergies. She doesn’t shop our sale, which is fine because there are others browsing. When she leaves we understand she didn’t come to shop. She was just being a nosy neighbor and that was fine with us—she didn’t complain about the people milling about or their inability to park between two white lines.
8:30am – Two sisters show up in a SUV. One eyes our barstools with the blue velvet cushions. She picks at a gold tooth in her mouth.
“Just $6 for both of these?”
“Yeah,” I answer, wishing I hadn’t just marked them down from ten.
“That’s cheap.”
“Priced to sell,” I say.
She stops picking at her tooth. “I’ll take them!” she says, and hands me the $6.
“What! I saw them first!” her sister complains to me. Shawn smartly walks away while a sisterly argument erupts. I shrug my shoulders and they fight all the way back to their car.
8:43am – “So, when do all the students leave?”
The blond lady with the equally blond armpit hair is still here, talking to me as she picks through the dime box. The “students” as she calls them, already left two months ago at the end of spring term, but I am trying to get rid of her because she is boisterous and annoying the other customers.
“Oh, they’ll be leaving in late July,” I say.
“Ok, because when they leave they throw out all their stuff and I like to pick through it.”
“Oh,” I say, at a total loss for words.
She buys a few dime items and grabs her radio and too-small shirts and leaves. Shawn and I jointly roll our eyes and smile, then spend the next half hour gossiping about her.
10:25am – A red Saturn coupe pulls up and out pops a short lady with running shorts on and a crop of black hair.
“Where ya’ll moving to?”
“New York.”
“What part?”
“Manahattan.”
“Oh, I just came from there. I grew up in Brooklyn.”
We talk with her quite a bit. We learn that her husband works with the university at putting new student housing up. She shops garage sales for gifts for her friends, and is an admitted candle freak, which proves true when she buys every one we have.
“I’ll take this lamp too,” she says, “even though I don’t have a place for it. It is so cute!”
I find this statement interesting since we are selling it because we don’t have a place for it ourselves. This is the beauty of selling items at a garage sale. People will buy things they don’t need if only because they are cute. She leaves with three bags of stuff.
“Good luck.”
10:36am – Two African American women show up.
“Do you have any furniture for sale?”
We show them our table inside our townhouse and offer it to her for $20. She seems really excited, says that it’s just what she’s looking for, and that she really needs it. I wonder how she will get it back home since she arrived with her friend in a small Honda.
“I’ll have to see if I can borrow my neighbor’s truck. I’ll be back at noon.”
1:00pm – The women still haven’t returned for the table. We have learned a lesson, and offer up our next tip: If someone wants something but doesn’t have the means to move it immediately, get a deposit.
Shawn begins consolidating items into the quarter boxes.
2:15pm – We haven’t had a customer for an hour and fifteen minutes. Shawn cuts the prices on all remaining items in half. As if they could hear our marker slashing prices, two cars show up. An elderly, heavily wrinkled white lady buys a hoard of quarter items. The other, another old lady with a soft black afro buys our wicker baskets, a mixer, and both our computer chairs.
2:23pm – A man shows up with his daughters, one about 17, the other a preteen. They quickly glance over our dwindling possessions, frown, and they complain that they couldn’t see our garage sale signs as they sped off.
A lady who was browsing through Shawn’s clothes watches the whole scene.
“I didn’t have any trouble finding it,” she offers. The way she says it sounds like an apology, trying to make up for the rudeness of her fellow shopper. When her total comes to $6.85, I round down to six. Both of us are happy.
2:50pm – A door slams next door and our Cuban neighbor comes out.
“When you moving?”
“Mid-July.”
“Where you going?”
“New York City.”
“Oh, I’m moving soon too—to Texas. New York is a great place. Are you going to settle there?”
“No, we’re just going for a few years.”
“Well, it’ll be a good experience. Too expensive for my taste, though, and the city is too busy for me.”
“Yeah,” I say, though the busyness is half the reason we’re going.
He buys our Polaroid camera and some duffel bags, and then goes back next door. In the five years I’ve lived here, that’s the most he’s ever spoken to me.
3:05pm – A woman arrives with her daughter. She had bought a few items earlier in the day, and has returned, as promised, to let her daughter try on a few of Shawn’s clothes. They buy a dress, and leave.
3:30pm – I have taken down the signs and Shawn has consolidated what remains of the sale into three cardboard boxes. I load the boxes into the trunk of my car for a later drop off at Goodwill. Shawn’s leftover clothes will be taken to the local Women’s Abuse Shelter of Tallahassee.
4:00pm – Shawn is asleep on the couch and I am writing this entry, reflecting on our day. We had declared it a success, over $200 richer and having reduced our stuff from a carport to a car trunk.
I think of…[At this point, the pen scrawls across the page and the entry ends, as I have also fallen asleep.]
In the book Travels with Charley, Steinbeck traveled across the country in search of Americans that define our nation. I say, “Mr. Steinbeck, no need to travel the country. If you want to meet a true cross-section of Americans, just have a garage sale.”
Shawn and I had never held a garage sale ourselves, but moving from our Tallahassee townhouse to a single-room apartment in New York City necessitated the event. Armed with our first-timer enthusiasm and the faint memories of our parent’s garage sales (crinkled bills, jingling silver, and the painful, forced sale of old toys), we set out to unload four years of accumulated college-quality junk.
6:00am - Met my wife with a tired look as NPR clicked on our clock radio. We had been up until 2:00am the previous night pricing, which brings me to my first tip. We had many items. After realizing how long it would take to price each one, we began to throw like items into shallow cardboard boxes and put a single price on the outside. Then, as each item came up, I would ask Shawn, “quarter box, or dime box?” Shawn would glance at the item and pass down her verdict.
Near the end of the night, I said, “Shawn, 25 cents or a quarter on this one?” We both laughed so loud it woke up the dog.
6:15am – The coffee pot is rumbling as I walk out to Ocala Road to strategically post our garage sale signs. When I return to the house, there is a Cadillac parked parallel to our driveway and a bleary-eyed, white-whiskered old man standing in my empty carport. “Am I too early?” he asks. I check my watch. 6:30am. The garage sale ad in the Tallahassee Democrat stated 8:00am. This leads me to tip #2: If you don’t want early birds, you must state it in your ad. Then, they’ll come anyway.
Shawn and I drag items out the sliding glass door of our porch and arrange them in a semi-circle with the priciest items in the front, the nickel box in the back. The old man gathers together a pile of our things, thoughtfully smoking a cigar and sipping his coffee.
“Where ya’ll movin’?”
“New York City.”
“Hmph. Let’s talk.”
We move to his pile. He has our framed poster prints, blender, and some stuff from our quarter box. At a quick glance, I calculate $14. I soon find that the old man has another price in mind.
“These posters aren’t worth much. Frames are good. I’ll get money for them in the junk shop I own.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll give you ten bucks for the lot.”
“Sold!”
7:03am – A mother and daughter show up. Shawn and I now have our coffee and have abandoned our planned breakfast of bacon and eggs for hastily eaten granola bars. The young girl and her mother root through the 50 cent and 25 cent boxes, take a few items, and then the daughter tries on some of my wife’s clothes. The entire time they speak softly to each other in Spanish. Though I just graduated with a Spanish minor, I understand nothing.
When it comes time to buy, we bag up their items and I say to the couple, “Is this all?” The daughter—I guess she is about ten—shyly translates my sentence for her mother, her eyes downcast. The mother then says something to her daughter in Spanish.
“We would also like the dresser,” the daughter says. The mother nods at me, confident that her daughter has translated her desires.
“That’ll be twenty-two,” I say. I round down.
“Veinte y dos,” the daughter says to her mother.
The mother pulls the bills out slowly, weighing the purchase in her mind. She hands them over, and I help her load the dresser into her pickup truck. I step back into the carport and reflect on the quiet pair as the truck grumbles to life.
7:34am – Two cars pull up at the same time. Neither driver chooses to park in the empty spaces of our apartment parking lot, instead parking side-by-side, effectively blocking all avenues of exit for my neighbors. I cringe.
One lady, a middle-aged African American, looks over our electronics, asks us of our camera works, then buys a glass flower vase and a table cloth instead. She leaves.
The other woman, a 30-something blond with equally blond armpit hair goes straight for Shawn’s clothes. My wife is a size 2. This lady was not, yet she tried on several items, desperately trying to button a shirt over her massive boobs. When she asks me my opinion, I tell her it looks great on her. Shawn tries to conceal her laughter.
After choosing a few shirts, she turns to my old radio that is softly playing The Morning Edition on NPR. Though it is still early, she takes the liberty of changing the station to country and cranking up the volume. I cringe for the second time, and sell it to her for $2 so to have an excuse to unplug it.
8:04am – Our second male arrives, buys my ghastly PEZ collection for $2, and asks us where we’re going.
“New York City.”
“Cool.”
He then purchases the only other poster frame that our first customer didn’t buy and wishes us luck.
8:15am – Our neighbor, Hazel, comes to sit with us on our porch. We engage in casual small talk, from our plans in New York to her dog’s allergies. She doesn’t shop our sale, which is fine because there are others browsing. When she leaves we understand she didn’t come to shop. She was just being a nosy neighbor and that was fine with us—she didn’t complain about the people milling about or their inability to park between two white lines.
8:30am – Two sisters show up in a SUV. One eyes our barstools with the blue velvet cushions. She picks at a gold tooth in her mouth.
“Just $6 for both of these?”
“Yeah,” I answer, wishing I hadn’t just marked them down from ten.
“That’s cheap.”
“Priced to sell,” I say.
She stops picking at her tooth. “I’ll take them!” she says, and hands me the $6.
“What! I saw them first!” her sister complains to me. Shawn smartly walks away while a sisterly argument erupts. I shrug my shoulders and they fight all the way back to their car.
8:43am – “So, when do all the students leave?”
The blond lady with the equally blond armpit hair is still here, talking to me as she picks through the dime box. The “students” as she calls them, already left two months ago at the end of spring term, but I am trying to get rid of her because she is boisterous and annoying the other customers.
“Oh, they’ll be leaving in late July,” I say.
“Ok, because when they leave they throw out all their stuff and I like to pick through it.”
“Oh,” I say, at a total loss for words.
She buys a few dime items and grabs her radio and too-small shirts and leaves. Shawn and I jointly roll our eyes and smile, then spend the next half hour gossiping about her.
10:25am – A red Saturn coupe pulls up and out pops a short lady with running shorts on and a crop of black hair.
“Where ya’ll moving to?”
“New York.”
“What part?”
“Manahattan.”
“Oh, I just came from there. I grew up in Brooklyn.”
We talk with her quite a bit. We learn that her husband works with the university at putting new student housing up. She shops garage sales for gifts for her friends, and is an admitted candle freak, which proves true when she buys every one we have.
“I’ll take this lamp too,” she says, “even though I don’t have a place for it. It is so cute!”
I find this statement interesting since we are selling it because we don’t have a place for it ourselves. This is the beauty of selling items at a garage sale. People will buy things they don’t need if only because they are cute. She leaves with three bags of stuff.
“Good luck.”
10:36am – Two African American women show up.
“Do you have any furniture for sale?”
We show them our table inside our townhouse and offer it to her for $20. She seems really excited, says that it’s just what she’s looking for, and that she really needs it. I wonder how she will get it back home since she arrived with her friend in a small Honda.
“I’ll have to see if I can borrow my neighbor’s truck. I’ll be back at noon.”
1:00pm – The women still haven’t returned for the table. We have learned a lesson, and offer up our next tip: If someone wants something but doesn’t have the means to move it immediately, get a deposit.
Shawn begins consolidating items into the quarter boxes.
2:15pm – We haven’t had a customer for an hour and fifteen minutes. Shawn cuts the prices on all remaining items in half. As if they could hear our marker slashing prices, two cars show up. An elderly, heavily wrinkled white lady buys a hoard of quarter items. The other, another old lady with a soft black afro buys our wicker baskets, a mixer, and both our computer chairs.
2:23pm – A man shows up with his daughters, one about 17, the other a preteen. They quickly glance over our dwindling possessions, frown, and they complain that they couldn’t see our garage sale signs as they sped off.
A lady who was browsing through Shawn’s clothes watches the whole scene.
“I didn’t have any trouble finding it,” she offers. The way she says it sounds like an apology, trying to make up for the rudeness of her fellow shopper. When her total comes to $6.85, I round down to six. Both of us are happy.
2:50pm – A door slams next door and our Cuban neighbor comes out.
“When you moving?”
“Mid-July.”
“Where you going?”
“New York City.”
“Oh, I’m moving soon too—to Texas. New York is a great place. Are you going to settle there?”
“No, we’re just going for a few years.”
“Well, it’ll be a good experience. Too expensive for my taste, though, and the city is too busy for me.”
“Yeah,” I say, though the busyness is half the reason we’re going.
He buys our Polaroid camera and some duffel bags, and then goes back next door. In the five years I’ve lived here, that’s the most he’s ever spoken to me.
3:05pm – A woman arrives with her daughter. She had bought a few items earlier in the day, and has returned, as promised, to let her daughter try on a few of Shawn’s clothes. They buy a dress, and leave.
3:30pm – I have taken down the signs and Shawn has consolidated what remains of the sale into three cardboard boxes. I load the boxes into the trunk of my car for a later drop off at Goodwill. Shawn’s leftover clothes will be taken to the local Women’s Abuse Shelter of Tallahassee.
4:00pm – Shawn is asleep on the couch and I am writing this entry, reflecting on our day. We had declared it a success, over $200 richer and having reduced our stuff from a carport to a car trunk.
I think of…[At this point, the pen scrawls across the page and the entry ends, as I have also fallen asleep.]
Friday, June 9, 2006
From the Archives: June 09, 2004 - Age 28
Note: For context, this entry was written three days after Shawn and I completed the San Diego Marathon.
Today is the first day that I was able to walk without a limp, though I still have quite a bit of pain in my left foot and a sore back. As Shawn said to me last night, while I was rubbing down her legs, “Every day it’s the same pain in a different place.” For whatever reason, our pain migrates to different body parts each day, (making sure nothing gets left out, I suppose). Don’t take this as too much of a complaint—it’s part of the deal, and please understand, we have no regrets. The pain, though, is a constant reminder of our trek, echoing with every move we make.
I was on the train home today, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on the hard subway bench seat, when the man across from me dropped his coffee. It spilled out on the subway floor right as the train pulled away, causing the puddle to stream down the car. The man, quite reasonably, said, “Shit!” At the next stop, he got off, out of embarrassment more than anything, I suppose. It was when I looked back to the puddle, and then to where he was sitting, that I realized he had forgotten his bag. It was just a grocery bag, and from what I could tell, its only content was a carton of ice cream. But this old man, with a day-old beard and wearing a Yankees hat over his coke bottle glasses, I mean, I felt bad for the guy. At the same time, I felt better, for all I had to worry about was soreness.
Today is the first day that I was able to walk without a limp, though I still have quite a bit of pain in my left foot and a sore back. As Shawn said to me last night, while I was rubbing down her legs, “Every day it’s the same pain in a different place.” For whatever reason, our pain migrates to different body parts each day, (making sure nothing gets left out, I suppose). Don’t take this as too much of a complaint—it’s part of the deal, and please understand, we have no regrets. The pain, though, is a constant reminder of our trek, echoing with every move we make.
I was on the train home today, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on the hard subway bench seat, when the man across from me dropped his coffee. It spilled out on the subway floor right as the train pulled away, causing the puddle to stream down the car. The man, quite reasonably, said, “Shit!” At the next stop, he got off, out of embarrassment more than anything, I suppose. It was when I looked back to the puddle, and then to where he was sitting, that I realized he had forgotten his bag. It was just a grocery bag, and from what I could tell, its only content was a carton of ice cream. But this old man, with a day-old beard and wearing a Yankees hat over his coke bottle glasses, I mean, I felt bad for the guy. At the same time, I felt better, for all I had to worry about was soreness.
Sunday, June 4, 2006
From the Archives: June 04, 2004 - Age 28
I was out the door by 7:30a, needing to get to Pfizer early to correct a major fuck-up that was hanging over my head.
The back-story: It has been my job since last week to prepare everything required for an important 25-person training session held by one of my executives. Yesterday I was putting the final touches on everything, setting up the conference room, confirming the food delivery, finding flipcharts and markers, setting up the A/V equipment, and so on. It was at about 4:30p that I realized that the Facilities Department had failed to deliver the 10 chairs I had ordered for the conference room. No problem, I thought, I’ll just give ‘em a call. The thing was, was that the Facilities Department closes at 4:30p. They have no voicemail. I began to panic, seeing that the meeting started at 8:30a the next morning. I was also filled with a sense of irony, in that I was at the receiving end of a Facilities mistake. (If you’ll remember, my 5-month tenure at Sotheby’s was in the Facilities Department, and if someone asked for chairs, they got ‘em.)
So, here is the picture: a perfectly set up conference room, the tables in order and everything in place, all of which meant nothing because there was no way for the attendees to sit down. Never before have I more clearly understood the value of a chair. So, I ran around and stole chairs from other conference rooms (which I was strongly instructed NOT to do), hoping that I could get to the office early enough in the morning to get a hold of Facilities, have the chairs delivered, and return the chairs to their proper conference rooms—all before 8:30a.
So this morning I was speed-walking down Bleecker Street to the subway station, my brain working frantically to decide the course of action to take in each potential situation that might arise. The streets were nearly empty, save a few elderly people walking their dogs and a garbage truck stopping intermittently to pick up dumpsters. I saw a school bus pick up some kids on the corner of Mercer—something I had never observed before. At Broadway the Hey How Ya’ll Doin’ Homeless Guy said “good morning” to me and I returned the gesture. He was just setting up his egg crate. In a sense, we were doing the same thing—both of us going to work.
But back to the story. So, I rocketed up to Grand Central, walked over to Pfizer, and just as I hit the 205 building, I noticed with a frantic grappling at my pants pocket that somehow I had lost my ID. DRAT! I cannot remember if I mentioned it in a previous entry, but the security is Fort Knox tight here. I went into the building anyway, and pleaded with the security guard to let me in.
“Do you remember me, I’m temping on the 3rd floor?”
“Sure, I remember you,” he said.
“Can you let me up, I forgot my ID.”
“No sir, you’ll have to get a new pass.”
“Even if you remember me?”
“Even if I remember you.”
“What if someone comes in who knows me. Can they let me up?”
He thought for a minute. “Sure, you can do that.”
“Great.”
So, I went outside and waited by the revolving doors in the hopes that someone would come along to save the day. Sure enough, in 5 minutes someone did come along, the very man who was leading the meeting that I was trying to get upstairs to set up for.
“Why are you here so early?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, just making sure everything is set up okay,” I answered.
So, up we went, and I was off to the races. I got Facilities on the line right away, and knowing how to deal with them, got the chairs upstairs in 5 minutes. Fuck-up averted. World saved. Still, one important point of interest remained—whatever happened to my ID card?
Later, when I caught my breath and had a little free time, I instant messaged Shawn and asked her if I had left my pass at the apartment.
“Well, sort of,” she replied.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I found your ID in the toilet.”
“How did it get THERE?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing!”
The back-story: It has been my job since last week to prepare everything required for an important 25-person training session held by one of my executives. Yesterday I was putting the final touches on everything, setting up the conference room, confirming the food delivery, finding flipcharts and markers, setting up the A/V equipment, and so on. It was at about 4:30p that I realized that the Facilities Department had failed to deliver the 10 chairs I had ordered for the conference room. No problem, I thought, I’ll just give ‘em a call. The thing was, was that the Facilities Department closes at 4:30p. They have no voicemail. I began to panic, seeing that the meeting started at 8:30a the next morning. I was also filled with a sense of irony, in that I was at the receiving end of a Facilities mistake. (If you’ll remember, my 5-month tenure at Sotheby’s was in the Facilities Department, and if someone asked for chairs, they got ‘em.)
So, here is the picture: a perfectly set up conference room, the tables in order and everything in place, all of which meant nothing because there was no way for the attendees to sit down. Never before have I more clearly understood the value of a chair. So, I ran around and stole chairs from other conference rooms (which I was strongly instructed NOT to do), hoping that I could get to the office early enough in the morning to get a hold of Facilities, have the chairs delivered, and return the chairs to their proper conference rooms—all before 8:30a.
So this morning I was speed-walking down Bleecker Street to the subway station, my brain working frantically to decide the course of action to take in each potential situation that might arise. The streets were nearly empty, save a few elderly people walking their dogs and a garbage truck stopping intermittently to pick up dumpsters. I saw a school bus pick up some kids on the corner of Mercer—something I had never observed before. At Broadway the Hey How Ya’ll Doin’ Homeless Guy said “good morning” to me and I returned the gesture. He was just setting up his egg crate. In a sense, we were doing the same thing—both of us going to work.
But back to the story. So, I rocketed up to Grand Central, walked over to Pfizer, and just as I hit the 205 building, I noticed with a frantic grappling at my pants pocket that somehow I had lost my ID. DRAT! I cannot remember if I mentioned it in a previous entry, but the security is Fort Knox tight here. I went into the building anyway, and pleaded with the security guard to let me in.
“Do you remember me, I’m temping on the 3rd floor?”
“Sure, I remember you,” he said.
“Can you let me up, I forgot my ID.”
“No sir, you’ll have to get a new pass.”
“Even if you remember me?”
“Even if I remember you.”
“What if someone comes in who knows me. Can they let me up?”
He thought for a minute. “Sure, you can do that.”
“Great.”
So, I went outside and waited by the revolving doors in the hopes that someone would come along to save the day. Sure enough, in 5 minutes someone did come along, the very man who was leading the meeting that I was trying to get upstairs to set up for.
“Why are you here so early?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, just making sure everything is set up okay,” I answered.
So, up we went, and I was off to the races. I got Facilities on the line right away, and knowing how to deal with them, got the chairs upstairs in 5 minutes. Fuck-up averted. World saved. Still, one important point of interest remained—whatever happened to my ID card?
Later, when I caught my breath and had a little free time, I instant messaged Shawn and asked her if I had left my pass at the apartment.
“Well, sort of,” she replied.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I found your ID in the toilet.”
“How did it get THERE?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing!”
Monday, May 29, 2006
From the Archives: May 29, 2004 - Age 28
Shawn and I started our day with a trip around the Farmer’s Market. It was a somewhat different trip, in that we passed up on our usual staples—bison and goat cheese—and chose instead to buy ourselves a ficus tree ($15), sugar snap peas ($4 lb.), and currant scones ($1.50 ea.). Of course, we bought asparagus ($3.50 lb.), as it is still in season, and further added to our bag yellow zucchini ($1.40 lb.), which emerged for the first time this week.
After we had made our way around the square, we doubled back to pick up our ficus, and carried it back with one of us holding each side of a blue plastic bag. (We also bought a little begonia plant, the steal of the day, for $2. Once we had unloaded our groceries, we quickly tidied up our apartment and showered in preparation for the arrival of Donna and Marion.
Our two guests arrived a bit after noon, and after showing off our pictures of Captiva (we’re loving our digital camera, by the way), we left the apartment. I have yet to mention the weather of this fine Saturday, but it was one of those perfect spring days that you get in the northeast, blue sky, a little chilly in the shade, a little warm in the sun. Everything flowering and green. High of 72. It was to be the sort of day in which I repeat the phrase: “What a beautiful day!” so many times, yet the phrase never gets tired or becomes untrue.
Our first stop was at ‘wichcraft, where we picked up sandwiches and drinks, all dutifully loaded into Shawn’s striped beach bag. From there we took the 6 Train all the way up to 77th Street, surfaced, and walked past a quiet demonstration to Central Park. (No idea what was being protested against.) We entered the park and walked down a shaded path to the boat pond, where we quickly found an available bench. After lunching on our sandwiches, we stayed a bit to talk and watch the miniature sailboats race across the pond.
On the far end of the pond was what appeared to be a film crew, so when we got up we walked over to check out the scene. Much to my surprise and delight, the film crew was actually the birdwatchers of Central Park, all of whom were closely watching a nest perched high on one of the grandiose buildings of Central Park East. In the nest were three new red tail hawk hatchlings, and we spent the next fifteen minutes watching the mother and father hawks soar about, capture prey, and deposit the prey into the eager beaks of the hatchlings. It was a thrill for me to see this scene still going on, as I had read a book recommended by my mom about a year ago, titled: “Red Tails in Love” which tells the story of these hawks.
After our dose of nature for the day, we walked up through the park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We got our purple buttons and meandered our way through the sculptures to the elevator, which we promptly took up to the rooftop. It was a great day for the rooftop of the Met, warm enough for a Corona, but cool enough that we didn’t have to sweat. There are two new installations up there of stacked rocks that are surrounded by a wood beehive-like structure. Very cool. We took some pictures and watched the hawks soar about some more, then descended back to the ground level and made our way back to the street.
From there we walked all the way back down through the park via the rowboat pond, down through the mall, over to Sheep’s Meadow, and finally out via The Pond. Along the way we saw some Indian tribal dance, the weirdo violinist, the hackeysackers, the skateboarders, the disco rollerbladers, and any other number of interesting people and groups of people that inhabit the park. The park was bustling and full of spring-like energy.
We caught the F Train home from the park, crossed the street fair on 6th Avenue and picked up a bottle of Sancerre at the wine store. Then we walked back to the apartment, had a fruit and nut plate, and enjoyed our wine. As you might imagine, we were all a little worn out and drowsy, but we soldiered on, leaving once more for a nice quiet dinner at Friend of a Farmer, over on Irving Place.
After we had made our way around the square, we doubled back to pick up our ficus, and carried it back with one of us holding each side of a blue plastic bag. (We also bought a little begonia plant, the steal of the day, for $2. Once we had unloaded our groceries, we quickly tidied up our apartment and showered in preparation for the arrival of Donna and Marion.
Our two guests arrived a bit after noon, and after showing off our pictures of Captiva (we’re loving our digital camera, by the way), we left the apartment. I have yet to mention the weather of this fine Saturday, but it was one of those perfect spring days that you get in the northeast, blue sky, a little chilly in the shade, a little warm in the sun. Everything flowering and green. High of 72. It was to be the sort of day in which I repeat the phrase: “What a beautiful day!” so many times, yet the phrase never gets tired or becomes untrue.
Our first stop was at ‘wichcraft, where we picked up sandwiches and drinks, all dutifully loaded into Shawn’s striped beach bag. From there we took the 6 Train all the way up to 77th Street, surfaced, and walked past a quiet demonstration to Central Park. (No idea what was being protested against.) We entered the park and walked down a shaded path to the boat pond, where we quickly found an available bench. After lunching on our sandwiches, we stayed a bit to talk and watch the miniature sailboats race across the pond.
On the far end of the pond was what appeared to be a film crew, so when we got up we walked over to check out the scene. Much to my surprise and delight, the film crew was actually the birdwatchers of Central Park, all of whom were closely watching a nest perched high on one of the grandiose buildings of Central Park East. In the nest were three new red tail hawk hatchlings, and we spent the next fifteen minutes watching the mother and father hawks soar about, capture prey, and deposit the prey into the eager beaks of the hatchlings. It was a thrill for me to see this scene still going on, as I had read a book recommended by my mom about a year ago, titled: “Red Tails in Love” which tells the story of these hawks.
After our dose of nature for the day, we walked up through the park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We got our purple buttons and meandered our way through the sculptures to the elevator, which we promptly took up to the rooftop. It was a great day for the rooftop of the Met, warm enough for a Corona, but cool enough that we didn’t have to sweat. There are two new installations up there of stacked rocks that are surrounded by a wood beehive-like structure. Very cool. We took some pictures and watched the hawks soar about some more, then descended back to the ground level and made our way back to the street.
From there we walked all the way back down through the park via the rowboat pond, down through the mall, over to Sheep’s Meadow, and finally out via The Pond. Along the way we saw some Indian tribal dance, the weirdo violinist, the hackeysackers, the skateboarders, the disco rollerbladers, and any other number of interesting people and groups of people that inhabit the park. The park was bustling and full of spring-like energy.
We caught the F Train home from the park, crossed the street fair on 6th Avenue and picked up a bottle of Sancerre at the wine store. Then we walked back to the apartment, had a fruit and nut plate, and enjoyed our wine. As you might imagine, we were all a little worn out and drowsy, but we soldiered on, leaving once more for a nice quiet dinner at Friend of a Farmer, over on Irving Place.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
From the Archives: May 25, 2000 - Age 24
Note: For context, this was day 21 of our 37 day cross-country road trip.
Tonight, after dinner, Shawn said, “Let’s go home.” We both laughed at that. On this trip, we have no true home—we don’t dare call our car or our tent home—so wherever we are is our home. I guess home is where we pitch our tent, or lay our heads at night.
Now, we’re at a bed and breakfast, and a testament to its superb quality would be that Shawn called it “home” tonight, thought it was probably just because it was a house we were returning to, instead of a tent.
Tonight, after dinner, Shawn said, “Let’s go home.” We both laughed at that. On this trip, we have no true home—we don’t dare call our car or our tent home—so wherever we are is our home. I guess home is where we pitch our tent, or lay our heads at night.
Now, we’re at a bed and breakfast, and a testament to its superb quality would be that Shawn called it “home” tonight, thought it was probably just because it was a house we were returning to, instead of a tent.
Monday, May 22, 2006
From the Archives: May 22, 2000 - Age 24
Note: For context, this was day 18 of our 37 day cross-country road trip.
At Clearlake State Park in California, our campsite was populated by a very large group of black ants. They worked throughout the day in a line crossing our entire site. The colony consisted of a central area that was very busy, and a few outlying areas that were more sparsely populated. It struck me that the ants moving to the outer areas were the misfits of the group, but Shawn reminded me of all the misfits we saw in San Francisco, which is a densely populated city. So, maybe the ants that moved to the outskirts were the ones who just wanted a bit of peace and quiet at the end of their day—the suburbanites, or country ants.
In San Fran, we were surrounded by the drug culture, from weed to psychedelics to cocaine. Now, I don’t care either way whether people do drugs or not. It’s their own choice, and their own business. This is not about that. What interested me was the sadness and desperation of the people, especially the coke users. They gritted their teeth, waiting for their fix, took their snort, then were absent from the room; drifting. And they were guilty, trying to justify their reasons, some even admitting that they hated what they were doing. But they did it anyway, and it made me sad, and I wanted to see my dog.
This is more than a single-threaded observation. I’ve been reading “On the Road,” on this trip, and in his book, Kerouac often glorifies the all-night parties, drinking, and booze, while also writing often about time, and how to make it stand still. Yet all of this wastedness is only killing time—or wasting time, even—because though the vacancy of the cokehead’s eyes might indicate time has stopped, nothing happens while they’re gone. Wasted people wasting time.
The only way to keep time moving, to feel every second, is to keep moving oneself. Perhaps that was what Kerouac was trying to say—travel, keep moving—only then can you absorb every moment, to feel life more deeply.
At Clearlake State Park in California, our campsite was populated by a very large group of black ants. They worked throughout the day in a line crossing our entire site. The colony consisted of a central area that was very busy, and a few outlying areas that were more sparsely populated. It struck me that the ants moving to the outer areas were the misfits of the group, but Shawn reminded me of all the misfits we saw in San Francisco, which is a densely populated city. So, maybe the ants that moved to the outskirts were the ones who just wanted a bit of peace and quiet at the end of their day—the suburbanites, or country ants.
In San Fran, we were surrounded by the drug culture, from weed to psychedelics to cocaine. Now, I don’t care either way whether people do drugs or not. It’s their own choice, and their own business. This is not about that. What interested me was the sadness and desperation of the people, especially the coke users. They gritted their teeth, waiting for their fix, took their snort, then were absent from the room; drifting. And they were guilty, trying to justify their reasons, some even admitting that they hated what they were doing. But they did it anyway, and it made me sad, and I wanted to see my dog.
This is more than a single-threaded observation. I’ve been reading “On the Road,” on this trip, and in his book, Kerouac often glorifies the all-night parties, drinking, and booze, while also writing often about time, and how to make it stand still. Yet all of this wastedness is only killing time—or wasting time, even—because though the vacancy of the cokehead’s eyes might indicate time has stopped, nothing happens while they’re gone. Wasted people wasting time.
The only way to keep time moving, to feel every second, is to keep moving oneself. Perhaps that was what Kerouac was trying to say—travel, keep moving—only then can you absorb every moment, to feel life more deeply.
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