Ingredients
1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 10 lemons) 1 cup superfine sugar (or use as much simple syrup as you like to reach desired sweetness)
2 cups water
Directions
Strain lemon juice into a pitcher and mix with sugar; stir until sugar dissolves. Add water; stir again until well combined. For pink lemonade, stir in cranberry juice.
Tips
If you’d like pink lemonade, add some cranberry juice! If you like sparkling lemonade, you can use sparkling water. If you put some vodka in there, you’ll have a Vodka Collins. You can put a sprig of lavender in there for some lavender lemonade, or even some basil, if you’re feeling it.
Last night, I wrapped a fluffy robe around myself and sank back into the pillows of my hotel room bed. I’ll do the same tonight. I still don’t have a home, but tomorrow I may. The management company has been working with me and though we may not invite each other to any Christmas parties anytime soon, I think we’re going to find a solution soon.
As I looked at company’s available properties that could potentially work until I leave D.C., I thought about luck. Many well-intentioned folk commented yesterday that I “couldn’t catch a break” or said that “bad luck is following you!” I am in no way criticizing these comments; every single person meant the absolute best and I’m mentally bear hugging everyone, here. But I disagree about the bad luck part.
Well, mostly. Renting an apartment with rat infestation and a bunch of other problems that seemed to be problems before I moved in is pretty bad luck. But I had to think hard what other events people were citing as such. The breakup wasn’t bad luck; it was a breakup. Heartbreaking and deeply disappointing, of course. But I don’t think falling in love and then needing to step back and go, “Hang on, is this right, right now, like this” is a stroke of bad luck. It’s just the way love goes, sometimes, and we heal and scar and do it again, usually.
And intensely disliking living in New York City wasn’t bad luck; I just didn’t like living there. And remember, I knew New York. I anticipated loving it there, and tried to, but it didn’t take. Now, if I had closed my eyes, plunked my finger down on a map and said, “Ah-HA! That’s it. I’m moving to Reno!” and once in Reno I drove my car into a cactus, got shingles, lost all my money in pinochle and got married to a dude that turned out to be a convict on the lam, that would be lousy luck. But taking a chance and then being honest about the dead-end of the chance, I don’t see it as bad luck so much as Stuff That Happens To A Person. Does this make sense?
Losing my Kindle could count as bad luck, but I should’ve been paying attention.
Today was really hard. It’s pouring rain and I have to walk to my hotel; I came back to the house to get a few more things. But I maintain am a wildly lucky person and have always considered myself as such. The mere fact I was born in America in the latter half of the 20th century is a lot that is far luckier than the vast majority of the billions of humans on this planet. That I have brains to figure this apartment thing out as an independent woman with decent credit and a cell phone, that I have a roof over my head at all is pretty good. I absolutely adore Washington, DC. The architecture, the sky over the city, the fact that I live in the same county the Lincoln Memorial are all reasons to be crazy happy. And it’s not New York. Man, I really hated it there.
My housing situation is beyond lousy and okay, a little on the unlucky side. But I will have a roof over my head and that is never to be taken for granted. Heck, with all the luck I have in my life, perhaps it was time to balance those scales.
Portrait of George by Gilbert Stuart Williamstown. Not another town! Gah!
Moving to a new city means relinquishing your card to the People Who Know Where They’re Going club. Because you don’t. Know where you’re going. Even with Google Maps, sometimes.
And now, a quick history lesson with creepy details:
Several hundred years ago, America’s forefathers formed a more perfect union. Around the same time, the urban planners of Washington, DC drew a circle around all that hot, democratic action and built a city around it. Washington is organized into four quadrants (NE, NW, SE, SW). To have a city divided like that, you have to have a central locus point. Are you ready to freak out?
The central locus of DC is a crypt.
Did you know that?! Turns out, to properly navigate your way through DC, you gotta pivot on a skeleton. Well, sort of. Here’s the deal: the Capitol Building has a rotunda, which is the inside of the big, beautiful Capitol dome (currently covered in scaffolding because it’s having some work done.) The Capitol crypt is located directly below the rotunda and was made to be the entrance to George Washington’s tomb, two levels down. I know!
George Washington politely declined to be entombed in the Capitol Building, however. Since he was dead when he expressed his wishes, he got whatever he wanted. (Just kidding; his wishes were in his last will.) Washington is actually buried in Mount Vernon, VA, on the family’s estate. But the crypt and tomb are still the smack-dab middle of DC and you can tour the place, which I’m going to do as soon as The Great Holiday Goof-Off officially ends. (I love The Great Holiday Goof-Off but it’s cutting into my DC museum time.)
From the crypt, the streets in DC are numbered going east, from 1st to 2nd, to 3rd, and so on. They are also numbered the same as they go west: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on, but these numbers are claimed by different quadrants. The same system goes for the north and south, but the city planners used letters instead of numbers or names. To go north of the crypt, you hit A, B, C, etc.; heading south, you do the same thing, but — and I know you’re getting this, students — you’re in a different quadrant. To go to 4th and F Street, you need to know which 4th and which F Street you need. Because there are two of those.
This system makes a lot of sense as long as know which way is north. If you get turned around, you’ll end up on the other side of town pretty quickly. (Ask me how I know.) Then there’s the matter of all the state-named diagonals that cut through the grid. Thinking of those right now gives me a headache. I slightly hate Massachusetts Avenue; it has foiled several of my expeditions. It goes down but it heads west! It’s… I can’t talk about it.
One of my favorite writers died of cancer a few years ago. He made the comment that the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a bromide with essentially zero truth behind it. If you’re in a car accident and walk away without a scratch, you might have a little swagger. If you learn from mistakes that were painful, you may become wiser. But chemotherapy, round after round, doesn’t make anyone stronger: it makes you weaker. If you have surgery after surgery on your abdomen (ahem) your abdomen is not stronger, suddenly; it’s fragile. It’s delicate. It’s at risk.
I’ve been wondering if that thinking might apply to having to frequently figure out the layouts of new cities. It’s something that I’ve had to do a lot in the past eight months. Does it help my sense of direction to be constantly thrown into a new place? Or are my navigational skills compromised because, for example, I just figured out which streets in Manhattan have bike lanes and no longer need that information but I must learn quickly whether the Glenmont Red Line train heads to the NE quadrant of town or the NW quadrant. Am I strengthening my brain or scrambling it?
Have map, will use brain cells. Because I need groceries.
There once was a girl with a wrist, and desire she couldn’t resist, To ink a tattoo
In an inky black hue Right there, so it wouldn’t be missed.
To the needle she’d been twice before;
She’d walked in the head shop front door;
The tattoo artiste was a bit of a beast,
But he’d do just what you asked for.
“Tonight, I want an airplane,”
Said the girl (who we will call “Jane”);
“Make it real big,” and she took a large swig
From a bottle of decent champagne.
The burly man started the gun;
And no, it wasn’t much fun —
To have something placed that can’t be erased;
It stings and it burns as it’s done.
Once over, the girl floated out;
She felt, without a doubt,
Her stunning new ink was the long-missing link,
Announcing what she was about.
For months, she often admired,
That which she had so desired;
But her inked up forearm was losing its charm;
The girl had become mostly mired.
“I’m afraid I have some concern,”
Said the girl, who began to burn
With chagrined regret; she went on and let
Herself the tattoo to spurn.
“Would you please give me some info?”
Said Jane Elizabeth Doe;
“Your ad says that you w-will remove a tattoo”;
“Yes,” the man said, and “Hello.”
So she booked three sessions with John,
Who removed what the needle had drawn;
The prick of the laser never did faze her —
She said, “I’m just happy it’s gone.”
To every young laddie and dame,
I say to you both just the same:
Skip that tattoo and then maybe you
Can avoid the ink made of shame!
Fons & Co. has congregated in Chicago for Christmas this year and I am presently nestled in my hotel room in slippers and a fluffy bathrobe. I am swaddled, you might say. Swaddled as the Christ child on Christmas morn! Alarums, excursions, etc., etc.
Speaking of excursions:
My family decided to meet at the mighty Field Museum today for the exhibit on Haitian Vodou. The museum did a great job with the exhibit and of course it was chilling, but not because “voodoo” is creepy in the way you think it is creepy; that’s all goofy Hollywood stuff. The art and pieces from the collection were frightening because the history of the Haitian people is steeped in slavery, torture, and bloody revolution. Compared to the reality of Haiti’s situation throughout most of history — including now — vodou is downright breezy. Anyway, if you’re in Chicago, go see it. Lots of cool skulls and hey, it’s the holidays.
I took the #146 bus on Michigan Avenue down to the museum. I began the trip reading on my Kindle, but then remembered my beloved city was outside the window, so I set my Kindle down and just gazed out the window at all the gorgeousness of Chicago on a winter’s day. The bus arrived at the Field and I hopped off. I took ten steps toward the Field and my heart sank: I had left my Kindle on the bus. I whirled around; the #146 was already turning the corner far away, headed to Soldier Field. I actually cried. I love my Kindle. I read so much. I loved that little Kindle. Oh, little Kindle in the blue case. Be good, little Kindle. Maybe someone had a Christmas wish for a Kindle to drop from the sky and I made it come true.
I dragged my feet all the way to the Field, up the big staircase, and plopped on a bench. My family members were all late. I sat on that bench for 45 minutes before anyone showed up, so I had time to go through all the emotions about my Kindle. I was extremely sad. Then I checked my purse again, for the ninth time, because surely I hadn’t left it on the bus. I called the CTA to let them know. I raged at myself. And then, with a few deep breaths, I reminded myself that it was only a thing. Just a thing like so many things, though if you have a Kindle you know it’s kind of a personal thing. Still, it is only a thing and things can be replaced.
And I felt better also because it could have been worse: I watched a young man introduce his new girlfriend to his dad and his grandmother. The dad and grandmother were on a bench about as long as I was. When the people they were waiting for finally showed up, it was clearly the man’s son and someone who had come with him.
“And you must be Krista,” the dad said, and gave her a hug. “This is my mom, Joyce.” The girl did the “Hey, let’s hug” thing with the dad and grandma. Losing my Kindle was bad, but I was deeply grateful that I was not introducing my new girlfriend to my dad and grandma. I was deeply glad I was not the new girlfriend meeting my boyfriend’s dad and grandma. I was glad I was not the grandma, in my mid-eighties, meeting the new girlfriend of my grandson, especially because they were forty-five minutes late. I was glad I was not Dad, too. Dad looked tired.
The new girlfriend was wearing spandex leggings, the super-shiny kind from American Apparel. Her shirt did not cover her derrier, so she had some serious butt going on. Skin-tight, painted on pants, man. I watched the group gather their things and set off for the ticket line and sure as I was sitting there moping about my lost library, that grandma looked at Krista’s tights and made a face like she had forgotten to put sugar in the lemonade.
Sometimes, the universe cuts you a break and life’s cheese grater is swapped for a feather pillow. This morning, I flew into NYC to have a procedure that would determine the health of my intestines.
Diagnosis: awesome.
There is no detectable inflammation. My pouch is scarred, it’s too small, and related aspects of all this will cause me discomfort from here on out, but how could I possibly care when the doctor tells me I’m not bleeding internally? My long-lost colon literally ate itself to death, but it appears my j-pouch don’t even want a snack.
When you think you’re on a bullet train to very bad news, it colors everything you do. Having a bad day? It’s worse than it would be, because in the back of your mind, you think, “This day is lousy and also I’m dying.” When you think the clock is ticking toward bad test results, a good day is tinged, too, just a little, because you find yourself fleetingly thinking, “This day is fantastic; I don’t even care that there may be something terribly wrong with me.” O, pernicious subconscious; how ye thwart joy and gladness.
That this burden is lifted from me for the foreseeable future… It’s hard to express my relief. To be absolutely honest, the tiny August Strindberg in me does wonder how long the good news can last, but the Chiquita Banana in me is beating him down with a banana.
The Dining Room at Hillwood. I’d like a grilled cheese, please! [Photo Credit: Hillwood Museum & Estate.]I stood in line waiting to board my first flight of two today and my heart sank for a moment, thinking of landing in LaGuardia and maneuvering through New York’s soul-sucking taxi lines. Then I remembered that no, Manhattan was not where I was headed, that I would sleep tonight in a fluffy white bed in the District of Columbia. I was so happy, I mouthed Michael Jackson “shamone” and did a tiny version of the Thriller low-snap with the stanky leg. Possibly I did this all this out loud and more visibly than I intended, which would explain why suddenly I had more room in line.
I’ll only be in town a few days — New York for a nasty procedure on Friday, Chicago for Christmas — but I have sworn to avail myself of a Christmas-centric D.C. delight before they’re all over. I have many options. There’s the Russian Winter Festival, but that would make me miss Yuri terribly, so I can’t go to that. There’s a Norwegian Holiday Toy Train exhibit at Union Station that I will totally go to because I live two blocks from Union Station and I come from a long line of Vikings.** I could go to various tree-lighting ceremonies, but I want something D.C. specific. Serious research is rewarded; I found a neat thing to do on Saturday afternoon.
The marketing message for Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Garden is “Where Fabulous Lives.” Nice work, slogan people, because that’s darned good. Hillwood, located inside the city in its northwest quarter, is indeed an extremely fancy place. The person who bought it and made it that way was Marjorie Merriweather Post. You know the Fruity Pebbles you ate for breakfast this morning? Yeah, she was that Post. Her father started the Post cereal empire in 1895 and when he died, it was Marjorie — an only child — who took the reigns and actually made the whole General Mills deal happen. Marjorie was brilliant, clearly, and beautiful, and she had taste like Coco Chanel had taste, though it seems she was far more pleasant at a dinner party.
Marjorie bought Hillwood in 1955 and planned from the start that it would eventually exist as a museum. There are vast gardens, Faberge eggs in lighted, inset, cherrywood shelves, staff quarters — all the stuff you would expect from a billionairess’ fifth home or whatever Hillwood was for Marjorie. And during the holidays, the curators do a lot of neat exhibits, including a showing of Marjorie’s collection of Cartier jewels that “inspire” the decorations all over the house. I think this means that there are either real diamonds or excellent facsimiles hanging from Christmas trees in every room. They also said something about Cartier dinnerware for heaven’s sakes, all set up at the dining room table.
It’s not the crazy wealth I’m interested in seeing. It’s seeing sparkly things. It’s seeing what a woman’s home looks like when she can buy everything in the world but knows better. I’ll go to Hillwood to get into the Christmas spirit, D.C. style, and perhaps I will mark the occasion by purchasing a commemorative Honey Bunches of Oats pin at the gift shop.
**This is actually true. I’m half Scottish, half Norwegian, which should mean I have the soul of a Norse god and an iron constitution. The former is clearly true; the latter must skip generations.
I went on a walk through Capitol Hill this morning and at the base of the front steps of the Capitol Building, I wept.
It’s fair to say that the widespread use of irony has flattened huge tracts of human experience in our culture. What I mean by that is that we say stuff all the time in an ironic way (e.g., “C’mon, I love fruitcake,” or “A rainstorm is exactly what I hoped would happen on game day,” or “Nothing like a pleasant stroll through Times Square on New Year’s Eve!”) and for the most part, we all recognize that irony (at least our American version of it) is happening. Art does this, too: Jeff Koons, though I really like his stuff, is totally ironic (e.g., a sculpture depicts the Pink Panther hugging a busty blonde; there’s a series of photographs where Koons is engaged in explicit sex with his wife, but it’s all styled in romance novel memes.) But one of the results of this style of communication is that it’s risky to have a genuinely sincere moment of vulnerability or sensitivity.
For example, when I say I wept at the steps of the Capitol, it would be easy to be like, “Yikes, that is really cheesy, Fons”; it would be easy to cringe a little because being touched by architectural beauty and the grand symbols of our democracy has so been done before.
Yo, irony: suck an egg. I was a grateful, wobbly, sincerely weeping American this morning and it felt fantastic. Not indulgent. Not grody. Just honest.
And as I stood there and gazed up at the dome and cast my eyes all around at the fountains and the sculpture, at the wide open space of Washington, D.C., I knew that later today, there would be crowds of protesters, exercising their right to protest. I loved that the grand space was so open; there are no gates to the Capitol, just sidewalks that lead right up to the door. I felt good to be a taxpayer and that definitely does not happen often. (“I love paying quarterly taxes, don’t you??)
Leaving New York was hard. The breakup was harder. But one has to trust oneself. I’m so much happier here it’s almost shocking. There are wide-open spaces, there is clean air, there are trains where you can find a (clean) seat.
WWII propaganda poster by Fougasse; ironic appropriation by me.
“Why’s it called ‘PaperGirl,’ grandma?”
“Sit on my knee, child, and I’ll tell you.”
“Can I have a another cooky first? You tell long stories.”
“Here. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Good. Okay, then, PaperGirl. Well, once upon a time, long ago, I wrote a poem.”
“What was it called?”
“I’m getting to it. It was called ‘The Paper Poem,’ and it was an extended metaphor about the nature of existence being fragile like paper, but beautiful, too, like paper is beautiful.”
“What’s paper?”
“Before your time.”
“Oh. Your poem sounds cool, grandma.”
“I liked it. Other people liked it, too, and I performed it in many places all over the country.”
“Like in Bismark?”
“No, never actually in Bismark, I don’t think. Maybe. It was a long time ago. Anyway, there’s a verse where I say ‘I will be your paper girl,’ and that’s where ‘PaperGirl’ comes from.”
“What’s the verse?”
“You want to hear the whole verse?”
“Is it long?”
“No, it’s not long. It’s the second-to-last verse of the poem and it goes like this:
But if you are a paper doll, too, then I shall know you on sight,
And if you are with me, come with me tonight; I will match up our bodies
by the tears in our arms —
We will form paper barricades against matchstick harm;
I will make paper love to you for as long as I can in this shreddable world;
I will be your paper girl.
“That’s nice, grandma.”
“Thanks.”
“And you named your blog that because of that poem?”
“Yes. And PaperGirl is the name of my LLC, too. And that small island I bought. And the Beaux Arts building you like so much in Paris. And my foundation in Dubai and all the vineyards in Spain. Everything in my empire, it’s all under the PaperGirl umbrella.”
“I wanna go to the zoo and see a rhinoceros.”
“Get your coat.”
[NOTE: I’ve been asked lately why the blog is called what it is, so it seemed fair to offer this again, an entry originally posted on this date.]
After the Bath, Woman Drying her Nape, by Edgar Degas, 1898. Pastel on paper; Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The best shower you can take is a post-move shower. If you set it up correctly, this can be an almost ecstatic experience. Here’s how to do it.
1. Push yourself to make just one more pile of objects disappear.
2. Repeat No. 1 until you put your hands on your hips, survey your home, and go, “Nice.”
3. Because of No. 1 and 2, your bathroom should be primo at this point, but double check: your shampoo, conditioner, almond oil, back brush, shower pouf, exfoliating scrub, shaving cream, and bone-handled razor should all be in place.
4. Turn on the shower. Start with warm water so that you’ll be able to slowly increase the temperature as your body adjusts. You’re going for lobster, here.
5. For dramatic effect, to absolutely no one at all, shimmy out of your robe and wink over your shoulder as you step into the shower; swish the curtain closed with a flourish.
6. Scrub, soap, lather, clean, cleanse, and otherwise scour thyself into a wholly new creature.
8. Exit shower.
9. Wrap yourself in a fluffy robe and put slippers on your feet; pad downstairs to the living room and sink into overstuffed easy chair.
10. See another pile over by the side table.
11. Repeat No. 1.
“The moving gods giveth, the moving gods taketh away.”
–– A cold, wet me @ 6:08am
Several weeks ago, when I moved out of the apartment Yuri and I shared, my sister and I loaded and re-loaded a hand-truck with boxes and hoisted duffel bags over our shoulders. We schlepped my stuff six blocks or so, from the sad and quickly emptying unit at 2nd Ave. and St. Mark’s to Nan’s place at Ave. A and E. 11th. Back and forth, back and forth we went till the job was done, sister pack mules. Every time I move (and I seem to have a knack for doing it all the time lately) I am reminded why some people find a place to settle and commence growing moss. Moving is like… Well, imagine if you had to put all the things in your house into boxes — absolutely everything. Then imagine you had to carry all those (heavy) boxes out of your house, and load them into a vehicle. And then imagine you have to take those (heavy) boxes out of the vehicle, carry them into a new house, and then unpack everything! Ha! It’s like, “No way! That would never happen!” and “That doesn’t even make sense! All your belongings?? In boxes?? Please. How would you know where anything was?”
Moving is kinda like that.
When we moved my things to Nan’s, we had good weather and were grateful for it. But the moving gods are fickle. Around 5:00 this morning, a cold, hard rain began to pelt Manhattan. This was unfortunate, as our plan was to load everything into the kidnapper van at 6:00 sharp. Nan had jury duty today and had a limited window to help me. Moving quickly, pre-dawn, we got the van loaded in about 40 minutes. Just as we were finishing up and I was wondering what to do with the van until it was time to leave several hours later, a parking spot opened up and I successfully parallel parked the beast for the second time in two days.
It rained all the way till the New Jersey Turnpike; a driving, hard rain, washing the roads in water that was clearly trying to be ice. In New York, even the rain is a hustler.
D.C.
When I got to Washington, D.C., I swear, the sun broke through the clouds for the first time all day. The rain stopped. I found my street. I got the keys from the lockbox. I stepped inside…and positively squealed with delight. There’s an upstairs and a downstairs! There’s a fireplace! There’s a big, long table in the dining room that has already been converted to my sewing table! Sure, the upstairs is just the bedroom, the fireplace isn’t functional, and my dining room is small now that I have appropriated it as my sewing studio, but I couldn’t possibly be happier.
I unloaded the entire kidnapper van all by myself in about an hour. Pure adrenaline.
There is nothing easy about ruthlessly, relentlessly dedicating yourself to the pursuit of happiness. You will cut your dry fingers on cardboard boxes, you will get mud on your boots and your jeans, you will say goodbye to people at airports and, over time, you will misplace or break everything that is possible to break or misplace.
When you sit down, though — when it’s finally time to sit down and you make a cup of tea with honey — that’s when, just for a minute, it stops being so damned hard.
This morning, I walked from Avenue A to 11th Ave (that means I walked the width of the Isle of Manhattan) got my U-Haul “kidnapper” cargo van, and then drove back to Avenue A. I had never driven a car in Manhattan before today. It was cool. I was all right. I even parallel parked. Cranking the wheel back and forth to get it right was so intense my biceps hurt by the time I got in the spot. I need a massage.
I move to Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning. I’m counting minutes.
Or I would be counting minutes if I wasn’t currently coasting on a ladylike amount of pinot grigio. Never blog when you’ve split a bottle of pinot grigio with your older sister — or when you’ve split a bottle of pinot with your sister and then gone ’round to the pub across the street from the apartment to have one more glass each while a jazz quartet plays in the back of the house. Never, never blog when this has happened. Who knows what silly, unladylike things could happen.
The only thing harder than defining “existential crisis” is doing it in Pictionary.
Define “reality.” Define “said.” Define “jump.” So hard, right?
Defining object nouns is easier. “Mozzarella” isn’t too bad; “Denmark” is doable. But the verbs and the gerunds and past participles are crazy-making. By the way, one of the five definitions of “jump” is “to push oneself off a surface and into the air by using the muscles in one’s legs and feet.” The definition of “said” as an adjective is “used in legal language or humorously to refer to someone or something already mentioned or named.”
Definitions are so hard to do (for me, anyway) that looking them up for even common words is one of my favorite activities. And now, I present to you definitions that are shaping my life these days, each edited for length. All definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary, except where noted.
peripatetic (adj.): traveling from place to place, esp. working or based in various places for relatively short periods
breakup (n): an end to a relationship, typically a marriage
moving (adj.): relating to the process of changing one’s residence
existential (adj): of or relating to existence
crisis (n): a time when a difficult or important decision must be made
work (n): activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result; mental or physical activity as a means of earning income; employment
yo (exclam.): a slang way of saying hello, usually friendly and casual [Urban Dictionary]
hustler (n.): an aggressively enterprising person; a go-getter
1. Learning to spell my middle name in kindergarten (“Katherine” is long)
2. Opening a Roth IRA in my mid-twenties (I was a waitress and it wasn’t much of an investment but I did it, anyway)
3. Being included in the first-ever Best of Write Club anthology (out this month.)
Write Club is a live lit show started in Chicago a few years ago by writer-performer-genius Ian Belknap. The show goes in three bouts, with two writers per bout. A week in advance of the show, Ian pairs up the writers and assigns each pair two opposing ideas, e.g., Rain vs. Shine, Hello vs. Goodbye, Fire vs. Water, etc. One writer takes “Hello” and the other takes “Goodbye” and they go off and write a piece extolling the virtues of the side they drew. You get seven minutes up onstage to deliver the piece you’ve written, onstage, at the mic. No props, no costumes. There’s a clock that ticks down from seven minutes. There’s a packed house every week. The bouts get ferocious and amazing and heated. The audience goes crazy with love and loyalties. The winner of each bout is picked by the audience; whoever gets the loudest, frothingest cheering wins and the winner’s fist is hauled up into the air by Ian, just like you’re a boxer and the crowd goes wild. If you win your bout, you get to name any charity you want to give your prize money to and that’s what happens with your prize money.
I can’t describe how incredible Write Club is because it’s late, my contacts are crunchy, and I have to be on a plane at 7am tomorrow morning. The best I can do tonight is to tell you that Write Club will leave you breathless. There is astounding writing talent in Chicago. We have so many brilliant people writing here, it approaches embarrassing. We’re stinking, filthy rich with good writers who are alive, which is to say nothing about all the ones who are dead (e.g., Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Studs Terkel, Lorraine Hanesberry, etc., etc.) I’m honored to call many of these (alive) people my friends and I’m goofy, nerdy, tripping-over-my-feet happy to be able to write alongside them every once in awhile. Write Club has expanded to San Francisco, Atlanta, L.A., and Toronto; more cities are sure to come, and I hope they do. But the show was born here in Chicago and it will always have the imprint of Chicago’s meaty fist in its forehead. Chea.
Anyway, The Best of Write Club anthology has come out and I’m in it. I haven’t stopped pinching myself. There are 24 writers in there and my friend Chloe and I start the whole book off with the essays we did for our bout, “Foreign” vs. “Native.” I drew “Foreign”. I won the bout that night, but a) Chloe’s essay is amazing and b) my first time at Write Club, I lost my bout. It’s a hard game.
I have a book sale going on right now and you should take advantage of that. But if you’re like me and you buy .8 books a day, get The Best of Write Club at a bookshop called The Book Cellar, or Amazon, or lots of places online. You’ll pay under $20 and get some of the best, freshest, most exhilarating writing you’re going to read this year. I saw a lot of it happen live and I’m telling you: these words are electric.
Note: I was at the Chicago Book Expo today to read my essay. That’s why I keep saying “here.”
The Royal We, by Mary Fons, 2013. It’s in my book.
Last night, I had the pleasure of speaking at a quilt guild in the Chicago suburbs. Everyone was gracious and awesome. There were many pans of bars. A merry time was had by all and I was honored to be there. Thank you, ladies.
When you do public speaking, there are a few loose rules to follow. You want to start out with thank you’s to the audience and the organizers, calling out specifically (albeit subtly) the person who will be signing your check; you want to keep things clipping along, so watch those tangents; if it’s a slideshow have lots of slides; and always have a closer.
This last thing is something used more by comedians than Toastmasters, but it’s a smart move for anyone who has the attention of a large, seated group of people for more than thirty minutes. A closer is the last bit a comedian does before leaving the stage. This closing piece is typically the comedian’s biggest joke and receives the biggest laugh.
I have a closer. Slays ’em every time. Wanna hear it? This comes straight from Marianne Fons, who, you’ll remember, is hilarious. It’s really better in person, so you’ll have to invite me to your guild, shop, or event so I can bring the house down with it, okay? You might have to be a quilter to really get it, but I assure you, this illicits howls of laughter for those who know.
How To Wash a Quilt In 6 Easy Steps
(The Fons Way)
1. Get your hands on some gentle detergent. Orvus paste is good, even a gentle lingerie detergent would do.
2. Find a front-loading washer with a gentle cycle. (The front-loader’s agitation is better for a quilt than the spinny, top-loading model.)
3. Get a large, oldish towel. This could be a beach towel, or something else from the linen closet or garage.
4. Fold the towel several times long-ways. Place towel at the base of the machine, right there at the front.
5. Load your quilt. Load detergent. Press “start” on the machine.
6. Get down on your knees on that towel, woman, and pray.
The first time, I had it against my will. This was 2009, and things were not good. The malnutrition, the double-barrell medicine regimen they had me on, the surgeries, the infections, the stress — after all this, my hair follicles were like, “You’re kidding, right?” and they quit. I remember sitting on the bench in the shower of my mother’s house as the water pelted down. I was maneuvering around the tubes and the ports in my body so I could wash my hair; it was among the first times I had been able to do so myself since going into the hospital almost two months earlier. It was exhausting, but I was stoked to be in a shower alone again (orderlies with sponges are appreciated but not ideal.) I was rinsing out the shampoo and felt something strange:
My hair was coming out.
I gently ran my fingers through the length of my hair and long strands came out, too, smoothly detaching from the hair that was still secured to my head. My jaw dropped and water came into my mouth. I spit the water out and shook the clump from my fingers. Splat, on the shower floor. My hand went back to my head to make sure what had just happened had just happened. Another long, wet rope of hair attached itself to my fingers. Splat. The clumps were too thick to go down the drain, so I saw them gather there as the water pelted my head and ran down into my eyes. I sat there a long time, watching that shower floor.
There can be no doubt that it’s hard for men to lose their hair. But I don’t think many would argue that it’s harder for women. I’ve had an ostomy bag twice, accidents of various kinds (in public and private) and the very nature of my condition means I wind up talking about the bathroom way, way more than most people could bear, but none of these dignity-crushing experiences have been quite as hard on my femininity as it was to lose my hair. I don’t know why this is, but it made me so sad and it still does.
There were bald spots. I had to do something, so when I was next in Chicago, I went to a nice salon and told the stylist my situation. I told her I needed to just cut my losses, literally, and that she had full permission take it down as far as she needed to to make me look more like a girl with a cute pixie cut and less like a girl with mange. I left with very little hair. A month later, my mom and I filmed a DVD called “Learn To Quilt.” I can’t bear to watch that video, though it’s very good. I can’t watch it because when I’m cutting or looking down at the patchwork we’re making on the table, you can see my scalp. We talked about getting me a wig for that shoot but decided that was overreacting. We should’ve done the wig.
Well, I’ve cut my hair again. I took a picture of Anne Hathaway to Yuka, my stylist in New York, and I said, “Yuka, my relationship has failed. I have many work projects to focus on. Please make me look like this,” and I showed her the picture of Anne Hathaway.
“Ah! Yah!” sweet and awesome Yuka said, in her very thick Japanese accent. “When you come in, first time, I think-ah you look like her! We can do.”
It’s a cliche, I realize, to chop one’s locks when a relationship ends. I’m that cliche right now and it’s fine; I’ve been all kinds of cliches in life (e.g., white chick into yoga and sushi, etc.) and will be many more (e.g., fortysomething woman with interesting eyewear and a masters degree, etc.). My short cut won’t last long; the moment Yuka was done, I began the grow-out process. But right now, I need the focus that short hair brings. There’s less attention from men when a gal has short hair, I think. There’s less primping for me to do. Short hair, in our culture, is a way to distance oneself and I guess I feel like doing that in ways I don’t completely understand.
Trudging through Kmart yesterday, my sister and I both had the same disorienting experience at the exact same time: we both caught a whiff of Electric Youth perfume. Here’s what that moment looked like:
MARY: “Dude. I just smelled Electric Youth.”
NAN: “Dude. Me too.”
Electric Youth was a perfume (never a “parfum”) unleashed on the marketplace in 1989. The target demographic was the tween, though that term had not yet been coined. Back then, it was the mighty “teeny-bopper” dollar that the fragrance was trying to capture, and capture it it did. Those out to profit were the record executives who ran the career of pop sensation Debbie Gibson. Electric Youth was the first in a long, long line of celebrity-inspired fragrances and I, for one, had to have it. I loved Debbie Gibson and had a cassette of her album. I believe that album was called “Electric Youth.”
There were two dueling pop stars when I was in fourth grade: Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, whose last name was withheld in hopes Barbara and Judy would more quickly recognize her as one of their own. I was on the fence as to who I liked more and my neutrality came at great peril: it was expected by one’s elementary school peers in those days to choose sides. Debbie Gibson was the good girl. She was blonde, blue-eyed; kind of a white-tube-socks-with-white-Ked’s girl. She wore scrunchies and boxy vests printed with geometric shapes. Tiffany, on the other hand, was understood to have weaker moral fiber. Tiffany was a redhead, for one thing. Nothing but trouble there. And her first (only?) hit was a cover of the Shondell’s “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which contained the lyrics:
“We’re runnin’ just as fast as we can/holdin’ on to one another’s hands/tryin’ to get away/into the night/and then you put your arms around me and we tumble to the ground and then you say: “I think we’re alone now…”
Tiffany had a little curl to her lip when she sang her song and she put a little stank on the “into the niiiiight” part, which clearly meant she was having sex. She also wore acid washed denim jackets, so… Mothers did not like Tiffany.
They dug Debbie, though. Debbie’s first single was the docile, sweet “Only In My Dreams,” which pleased these mothers. With Debbie, their daughters’ sexual fantasies were happening exactly where and when they should be happening: while they were fast asleep, alone, locked in the house.
If Tiffany had had a perfume, it would’ve smelled musky, with notes of Aqua Net and a car dashboard. But Tiffany never had a fragrance; only Debbie signed that deal. Electric Youth perfume was a deeply synthetic, fruity floral with no “notes” of anything, no “low end” of wood or caille lily or moss. This was candy in a spritzer. The fluid itself was colored pink — an easy decision for the executives, I suspect. And inside the clear bottle was a pink plastic spring, clearly showing the exuberance — nay, the electricity — of youth. And we loved it. We sprayed it on with wild abandon and our parents’ headaches meant nothing. Nothing!
Electric Youth is not made anymore. You can find it on eBay and Amazon, but these are bottles of old perfume; as you can see by the picture above, the pink has faded and reviews are mixed as to whether the scent is still any good (or there at all, for that matter.) But in its prime, Electric Youth left its pink, sticky fingerprints all over the limbic systems of young American girls across the nation and when Nan and I smelled whatever we smelled in Kmart yesterday, it transported us back to a simpler, cheaper time.
I have learned this evening that the Jean Luc Picard character from Star Trek enjoyed Earl Grey Tea, also.
Today, my sister Nan and I moved boxes of my belongings to her place about four blocks away. It was cold and it was not what either of us would call fun, but we love each other and we got to feel that special closeness two people feel when the dolly full of boxes you’re pushing dumps over on Avenue A. Twice.
We took our last load over this evening, stopping the Trail of Tears long enough for me to stop into my go-to coffee shop for an Earl Grey tea. Nan waited outside with the dolly and my suitcase and I went in with my carpetbag.** I briefly waited in line. The gal in front of me paid and stepped to the side for her drink.
“Earl Grey tea, please,” I said to the bearded coffee guy working the counter. “Large.”
“Sure,” he said, then he half-turned to the other guy working with him (also bearded) and said, “That’s always kinda weird, when two people, like, totally independent of each other, order the same, somewhat less-usual thing.”
“Oh,” I said, turning to the girl who had gone before me. “Did you get a large Earl Grey tea, too?” She said that she had. “Yeah, that’s cool,” I said to the bearded men.
“Yeah, but what’s really weird is that this exact thing happened earlier today, too,” said Bearded Guy No. 1. “We had two girls order large Earl Grey teas, both in line by each other, but not together.” His eyes got big and so did mine.
“That’s like, statistically crazy,” I said. Everyone nodded. “I mean, it’s not magic. It’s not woo-woo. It’s just statistically nuts! If it happens again tonight, you guys should get a Lotto ticket.”
“If it happens again,” Bearded Guy No. 2 says, “I’ll just shut down the shop. That would be too weird.”
If a fashion magazine raises a barn in the woods and no one is there to photograph it, does it still shelter livestock?
High-fashion runway models are strange-looking creatures, indeed.
I am not criticizing these women. They came out looking how they look and no one should be made to feel bad for how they look, even if some of us get taunted in school and some of us end up with Ford Modeling contracts worth millions, all by luck of the draw. No, I don’t wish to make anyone feel bad, but I see models around this town, frequently around Union Square (there must be an agency over there, the area is so thick with tall, bony women in platform boots and stocking caps) and I’m here to tell you: they are a kind of physical oddity. Spotting one is like spotting a cat with six toes or a parakeet with a second tail; you look, you look again, and as you walk away, you think, “Woah! Weird!”
My mailbox plops out Vogue to me each month. I don’t know why. I have never subscribed to Vogue. I like to think they send it to me because there’s some roster in the sky listing All The Editors In America and down in the “Q’s,” I’m there. Probably I accidentally clicked a “Gift With Purchase” when I made a dinner reservation or something and that’s why I get it. My feelings toward fashion magazines these days could best be described as cold, but sometimes I flip through Vogue, anyway. There on the pages are the women I see around town. (I’m not saying I run into Joan Smalls or Karlie Kloss at the store; I see who I think are probably models. They all buy bananas and sparkling water, by the way.)
To look dewy, lithe, and fierce in a picture means to be gangly, stick-like, and strikingly angular in real life. In order to have a leg that is deemed worthy of plastering on a billboard a half-mile wide in Soho, you need to have a leg that is about as big around as your six-year-old niece’s wrist, assuming your niece is small-boned and physically active. My point is that to look even somewhat normal in fashion pictures, you have to look abnormal in person. More than abnormal. What is more than abnormal? Hypoabnormal. Hyperabnormalis.
They look like aliens, okay?? I’ve been trying to avoid saying that, but they look like bizarre, insect-like aliens who wear mostly black and have expensive cell phones. Don’t believe the lies!
Take heart, ladies. I know the fashion spread voodoo. I, too, have looked at fashion spreads and thought, “Wow, she looks so good in that outfit; I must lose weight.” But you are not (and I am not) an insect alien. If either of us were, we would know it. And we would be working as models in New York. They have a secret society, I think, so we would’ve been contacted by now.
Just be happy you’re healthy, if you’re healthy. If you’re not, see a doctor. Make those biscuits from yesterday either way and then eat them.
**Note: The picture in today’s post is from Vogue Italia. They used the Amish people as inspiration for their shoot. I found this so ridiculous when I saw it, the rotation of the Earth slowed for a moment.
It has a fireplace, bookshelves, a stove, tall leaded windows, and, from what I can see from the pictures, a fluffy bed ready to be outfitted with a quilt. I have done the math. I have signed the lease. I won’t break even living in Washington, D.C. for the next few months, but it’s not going to be too bad; being a freelancer all these years has taught me something about saving. I have moved things mentally, financially, and physically and I am ready.
Austin was a good guess; Portland, too. I liked my friend Lance’s suggestion of Philly and I considered Pittsburgh after being pleasantly surprised by it while there for Spring Quilt Market. But early on in the troubles, I knew I’d go to our nation’s capital, a city I have long had great feeling for. In 2010, I spent a month performing with the Neos at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in D.C. I remember walking home from the theater so many frosty nights, stars twinkling, the light on the Washington Monument slicing the black glass sky. Being with friends was the best part of the trip; living in the seat of our democracy came a close second. What can I say? I’m a patriot.
In April, I have a Quilty shoot in Chicago and leave immediately after to film TV in Iowa. May brings my sister’s wedding up at the lake house. Depending on just how much I love or dislike D.C., I’ll be there for sure four months, possibly six. I doubt I would want to be away from my beloved Chicago any longer than I have to, but as I have come to learn, un-learn, and re-learn lately, anything’s possible.
The breakup has been awful. Awful because our emotions go through the spin cycle on a daily basis. I love you, it’s over, it’s not over, you’re selfish, you’re selfish, this is crazy, this hurts, we’re making a mistake, I’m leaving, leave, fine, fine, fine. No breakup is fun, but I have experienced only a couple of real gullywashers and this would be one of the two. (I do take a certain pride in the fact that an actual dish was broken during all this, and I assure you it was not because someone dropped it on the floor.)
Someone I told about my move was surprised. She said, “What?! Like Washington D.C. is less crowded or cheap than New York??” I was surprised right back. The National Mall is wide and clear as Lincoln’s Reflecting Pool and the apartment I found is far prettier and roomier than anything here for the price. It will be cold there, but I’m from Iowa. I can take it. D.C. exceeds all my criteria; I can bundle up for that.
Me, showing off my quilt from the upper level of the Arnie J. Richter ferry boat, Washington Island, WI. It was about 10 degrees that day.
Picture me in barrister’s robes and one of those funny wigs, pacing back and forth on the wood floor as I offer for your review, ladies and gentlemen, a quick look at the facts:
1. Yuri and I have agreed that living together is not what we should do right now.
2. My condo in Chicago is unavailable, as I have tenants in the unit through mid-June.
3. I do not wish to stay in New York.
If you’d like to consider with me Option One, you’ll need to read the full post here. Now, in your mind, please take this wig off me and get me out of those barrister robes and into something sensible as I proceed with what, as I see it, is my second option:
Option No. 2: Sunrise Cottage — Washington Island, WI My family has blood ties to an extraordinary place called Washington Island, a 23-square-mile island seven miles off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. My grandparents are buried there. My great-grandparents are buried there. My aunt and six cousins live there. My mother taught quilting at the fiber arts school up there; two summers ago, I taught quilting there, too. As children, my sisters and I would spend weeks of our summer vacation, splashing in the lake waters and lazing around watching VHS videos, trying to get MTV on some old TV set. Even through the divorce and on through all four years of college, every summer we were (and are) playing and relaxing and communing with WiWi. (W.I. = Washington Island, W.I. = Wisconsin, ergo, “WiWi.”)
About six years ago, my family finally made a home up there. We had been cabin renters through the years, but now we have a cottage — a cozy, beautiful, light-filled, perfect cottage on the lake. Because of this happy event, we can now have Thanksgivings, Christmases, and winter escapes up there, too. There’s a fireplace, a boathouse, and lots of board games and if heaven is real, it probably looks a lot like a snowy afternoon on WiWi while a pie bakes in the oven and you’re smack in the middle of an amazing book. Sounds brilliant, right? Why not go there, sink into the comfort and joy of this magical island?
What are you, nuts?!
I can’t be on an island in the middle of winter! I travel for work a good 40% of my time! It’s a good thing I love airports because I’m in them a lot. Getting to and from the airport, to and from a gig, to and from a shoot, etc. is always a bit of a schlep. Adding an icy ferry boat ride, a 2-hour drive to the nearest airport (Green Bay) and Wisconsin weather from October through about May is not my idea of a wise plan.
The other problem with WiWI is that it is a remote place in psychic terms as well as geographical ones. Just 660 people live there year-round. I wrote most of my book up there during a two-week stretch in the winter of ’13 and I got a little squirrelly. The frosty, starry sky is beautiful at night, but the land is plunged into pitch black starting around 5pm until the sun rises around 6am. Staring into a roaring fire is super over a four-day weekend up there; staring into the fire night after night and you start becoming the one-woman sequel to Altered States. Mom and Mark aren’t there year-round for this very reason. Six months on WiWi and I might end up curled up on the couch, listening to the all-Catholic talk radio station, eating jumbo marshmallows out of a wicker basket.
New York out. Chicago out. Iowa out. Wisconsin out. Tomorrow, Option Three.
*Note: I cannot believe all of the gracious offers I have had since yesterday from people offering me to stay in their home or come to their city. Thank you.
You can see Robert James Waller’s face in the side of this covered bridge if the light’s just right.
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people who care about each other to terminate the living situation which has connected them with another and to assume among the powers of real estate, the separate and hopefully equal apartments to which the Leases and Landlords and/or Management Companies grant them, a decent respect to the considerations of mankind suggests that they should declare the options before them as to where exactly in Sam Hill they plan to go.”
Of course, I can only speak for myself. Here are facts:
1. Yuri and I have agreed that living together is not what we should do right now.
2. My condo in Chicago is unavailable, as I have tenants in the unit through mid-June.
3. I do not wish to stay in New York.
Fact One on its own is manageable enough: find separate apartments. Unfortunately, Fact Three renders this possibility D.O.A. I don’t want to find another apartment in New York, especially one that I would be able to afford on my own. Sharing a one-bedroom is great in this city (or any other) because two can afford something together that one couldn’t possibly swing. I did the research. The furnished apartments I found that were within my budget made me extremely depressed. Did I look in every nook and cranny of the city? Did I look in Queens? No, I didn’t, because I don’t want to live in Queens. No offense to Queens, I just don’t want to live there.
All right, then just go back to Chicago. A fine idea, but for Fact Two. Sure, I could tempt my adorable med students with a free month’s rent and some cash to vacate early — everyone has their price and second-year med students are probably happy to let you know what that number might be — but I don’t like this plan. It’s disruptive to them and it would be painful for me. My relationship has failed and my move to New York has failed. Returning to Chicago before the one-year-gone anniversary would be too painful. I picture myself with a little hobo stick, riding into town on a broken-down palomino.
I could get a little apartment in Chicago and wait out my tenants till June, but that would maybe be more depressing. “I can see my house from here!” I’d cry, holding my hobo stick.
So no New York, no Chicago till June. Six months. Six months to go. Over these painful weeks, I have been weighing options and crunching numbers and going over and back over what my best course of action is, here. And now:
Option No. 1: Mom’s House — Winterset, Iowa
Winterset is my hometown. I was born there. My sisters were born there. I know all the bank tellers and the bank tellers’ kids. Lots of people move back home. A large number of people never leave in the first place.
There are many upsides to Option No. 1., including but not limited to; cost of living (essentially nil), being able to hang out with Mom and Mark a lot, a big kitchen, access to cars, Des Moines is a short 35 minutes away and Des Moines is alright, I would get to be with Scrabble (Mom’s dog who I love), I could say hi to the bank tellers, their kids, etc.
Downsides? Numerous. There is no public transportation system to use, so I have to drive everywhere and I don’t particularly like driving in Iowa on account of all the deer. Add to that that I love my mom and stepdad so much but six months is a heckuva long time. I’m more worried they’d get annoyed with me than the other way around. Besides, all those bank tellers remember watching my car die in the Homecoming parade. Turns out you can go home again, but do you want to?
The main problem with Winterset is that I need to save it. See, if I’m going to be at Mom’s house for six whole months, I want to be suffering from a bonafide nervous breakdown. I want to save the “I’m Going Home For Awhile” card for full-on crazy. I want people to ask my mom, “Did I see Mary at the grocery store the other day?” so Mom can go, “Oh, yes. Mary’s… Mary’s home for a little while.” Then the person will say, “Oh, is she okay?” and Mom will say something like, “I think Mary just needs a little…rest.” And I’ll be at home on the couch watching 19 Kids and Counting in the fetal position, combing my hair with a fork. It sounds amazing. I don’t want to blow that opportunity now, when I feel sad but otherwise totally functional.
So Iowa is out. Tomorrow, the next sensible option explored.
New York served 54.3 million tourists in 2013. Some of these people live here, though. Photo: Wikipedia.
I have tried, but it is plain: I cannot live in New York City.
Instead of falling in love with this place — my plan from the start — I have grown to resent it and am itching to leave. The itching could be bedbugs, but I don’t think so.*
New York City doesn’t care what I think of it, of course. New York didn’t notice when I arrived and it has stayed utterly ambivalent toward me since. Anything I have to say about New York will fall on the millions of deaf ears here, which is part of my problem with this place: aren’t two deaf ears enough? Not for New York.
For the past few months, I have been doing research. I’ve been watching interviews and reading essays and op-ed pieces by people who say New York is dead. I realize this is not a good strategy if your goal is to fall in love with a place, but when I hit Month Four and began feeling outright hostility toward the city, I launched my gloomy search. I had to find out if other people didn’t get it, if other people here were walking around perpetually sour like me. The things I liked about New York when I would visit my sister over the past fourteen years were there, but the bottom dropped out entirely when I had my own mailing address. Why?
I had a feeling my problem had to do with the way New York is now, in 2014; perhaps I might’ve had a different experience with a different version of New York. Maybe it would’ve been perfect for me in the weird and dangerous 1970s, or the wild and dangerous Jazz Age. Maybe I would’ve done better as a New Amsterdam colonist, scouring my washtub. It’s a bad skier who blames the slopes, but I’m blaming the slopes on this one: I don’t think New York in 2014 is so fantastic. The research I did showed me I am not alone in feeling this way. I’m in a crowd, in fact, which is annoyingly appropriate.
If you adore New York or if you’ve already made up your mind that I’m a weenie who just couldn’t hack it, I hope you’ll stay with me. I agree that there are valid arguments supporting New York as awesome and I’m perfectly willing to grant you that I’m a weenie.
But first.
Fran Lebowitz (lifelong New Yorker, cultural Cassandra, personal hero) has plenty to say about 2014 New York being awful. For years, she’s been watching her city turn from the intellectual and artistic capitol of the world into a theme park. (I think Lebowitz was the first to make the New-York-as-Disney Park analogy and it’s a little worn, okay, but it fits too well to ignore.) Former mayor Bloomberg — a billionaire, remember — had a goal when he took office. He wanted to increase tourism and commerce in his city. To do that, he had to make it a kinder, gentler version of itself. The safer folks felt New York was, the more of them would come here, which would bring in money. Bloomberg served three terms (he changed the term-limit law to make that possible), and thus had years to work on his New York Beautification Project. And indeed, the place is Disney-fied. You must wait in lines for everything you want to do. Extras are never included in your ticket price. Grand, sparkly attractions replace smaller, older rides because they photograph way better and push ticket prices up. And it seems that, like the planters and fences at Disneyland, everything in New York these days is rounded, never sharp, for liability reasons.
And then there’s the matter of housing. If you tried to rent a one-bedroom apartment on Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland, in the shadow of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, I reckon it would probably cost you about $4000/month. They don’t rent apartments on Main Street in Disneyland, as far as I know, but if they did, that’s probably what they’d go for. And this is what it costs in New York for a one-bedroom, give or take several hundreds of dollars, depending on how good (read: sneaky) your broker is. If you want to live cheaper in Disneyland, you’ll need to find a room for rent way out in Toontown (a.k.a. Jersey City) or maybe further than that. Maybe just hit the parking lot and skip the broker and your silly visions of Main Street altogether.
But here’s the thing. All that can be fine. It is fine for millions of people (at least a few hundred thousand) because they have a dream. They have a dream of making it in New York or they simply want to be in New York to escape a life they couldn’t stand. That’s great — and that dream is the crucial. It is the key; it is precisely what allows the young man to squeeze into the subway at rush hour, what zeros out the rage of the woman who sees that the checkout line at Trader Joe’s begins at the door of the Trader Joe’s. You gotta want to be in New York real, real bad to put up with the bullsh-t and if you do, it can work for you. In summation: to live in step with New York, it would seem that you need either lots of money or a dream so dear you don’t care about living with four roommates in Toontown.
Well, I ain’t got Bloomberg money and I ain’t got no dream, New York. I’m gonna have to dip.
I came here for an adventure, and I’ve had one. But I can’t stay. It’s wrong for me. I never felt like I had to make it in New York City to Feel Whole. I feel more or less pleasant at least half the time in other places, but I grit my teeth and steel my face when I’m “home,” which, admittedly, isn’t that often. Perhaps I haven’t bonded with New York because I haven’t been in New York enough, but try telling that to the part of me who almost started yelling at someone on the street the other day. A woman was trying to open the door to her garden apartment on a really hairy section of St. Mark’s. There was garbage that had caught in the doorway and on the cement steps leading down. She had a baby in a stroller with her. I saw the baby and the woman and the trash and the crappy doorknob to the basement apartment that she couldn’t get into and I had to stop myself from screaming, “Have you lost your mind?? Get that child out of here! Are you insane? This place is filthy!”
There’s more to the story. More reasons why I have to leave. Where shall I go? Ah, now that is a very good question. But I think I’ve said enough for now.
At Heather’s house, I’ve been reading from a Dorothy Parker anthology and a book of Emily Dickinson poems. I don’t have much time before we have to leave for the second day of the Quilty shoot (which is going well) but I made a poem in the time I had.
Being in Chicago is hard. I miss this place very much. New York is not taking, I’m afraid. More on that later. For now, a poem about the day I left.
June 1st, 2014
by Mary Fons
We sped down Lakeshore Drive that day —
The train giving way to a taxi drive —
Me and my luggage were whisked away,
Around a quarter to five.
Through grimy windows my eyes did see
Steel and glass buildings standing so sure;
Chicago’s a hard and imposing city,
But its heart is pure.
What have I done to my favoritest lover;
Leaving like this, my purse grabbed in haste;
Off to new visions and a new city’s cover,
What a waste.
For mercy and grace, I shall grovel and beg,
Come June, when weather is fair;
Chicago, lash at at the back of my leg
It proves you care.
Mother Hubbard and her dog; illustration in Traditional Nursery Songs of England, Ed. Felix Summerly (1843)
While I’m in Chicago, I’m staying at my friend Heather’s house. She shares the house with her terrific husband, Sam, and I have very recently discovered they have many terrific books.
For instance, they have a full set of the Childcraft “How & Why Library.” I didn’t have Childcraft books growing up, but I’d seen them before. The volumes have names like, “How We Get Things,” “What People Do,” and “About Dogs.” They’re a kid’s first encyclopedia, basically.
I wanted to read all of these books, but “Poems and Rhymes” came first in the set, so I went with that, and the first page I opened to was the tale of Old Mother Hubbard. Have you ever read the entire Old Mother Hubbard poem? It’s not good. It’s not just that it lacks substance — it does lack substance — but it is also is confusing in frustrating ways, as opposed to being confusing in delightful ways, e.g., the work of Lewis Carroll.
Let’s take a look at this thing. The first verse everyone knows and it’s fine, albeit a bummer (if you’re the old lady’s dog):
Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard To get her poor dog a bone; But when she got there, The cupboard was bare, And so the poor dog had none.
Okay, fair enough. But buckle up. Next verse:
She went to the baker’s To buy him some bread, But when she came back, The poor dog was dead.
The dog died?? Her dog died while she was running errands? Perhaps your dog died, Mother, because you chose to neglect your pantry. Just when rigor mortis begins to set in, however, the dog suddenly feels much better, not that the author helps his audience prepare for that:
She went to the fruiterer’s To buy him some fruit, But when she came back, He was playing the flute.
Ol’ Lazarus is playing the flute, eh? That is super, super creepy. And whose flute is it, anyway? The old lady can keep expensive woodwind instruments but no kibble? She should be ashamed of herself. The good news is that the word “fruiterer” is new to me and I like it.
She went to the fishmonger’s To buy him some fish, But when she came back, He was licking the dish.
We have an issue here with the conjunction. The word “but” is used to introduce something contrasting with what has already been mentioned. For instance, “She went to the fishmonger’s/to buy him some fish/but when she came back/he had made himself tacos.” There is no contrasting idea in the verse as it is up there but the author uses “but” and it’s driving me bonkers.
She went to the barber’s To buy him a wig,
A what?!
She went to the barber’s To buy him a wig, But when she came back He was dancing a jig.
So … He couldn’t put the wig on. Because of the jig. Perhaps she couldn’t catch him in his jigging to affix the wig properly? See above problem with conjunction. I have a headache.
She went to the cobbler’s To buy him some shoes, But when she came back, He was reading the news.
She went to the tailor’s To buy him a coat, But when she came back, He was riding a goat.
Sloppy! These thoughts are not congruent in any way! I realize children’s poetry isn’t trying to be Yeats. But the minds of children are typically more fit than adults will appreciate or admit. Don’t you foist this goofy stuff on me, Childcraft. You’re lucky I’m staying in Heather’s guestroom and spied you on the shelf. It could be years before someone else comes along and gives you a fair shake. Okay, last verse:
The dame made a curtsy, The dog made a bow; The dame said, “Your servant,” The dog said, “Bow-wow.”
Introduction of a new character. Totally out of left-field. Maybe this work needs another draft, Childcraft.
