Missed stops and nearly re-kindled connections

Sometimes the trains here, particularly the train that I rely on just do not run according to anyone’s sense of rhyme or reason.  My train runs through Brooklyn, and unlike the web of other trains running in other places, is basically the only train in Brooklyn worth anything.  All of the hip yuppies that populate the place live on one side of the park, the side closest to Manhattan (  Prospect Park— like central park only smaller.  And in Brooklyn.) All of the traditional brooklynite workers live on the other side of the park.  Woody Allen’s type of Brooklyn family lives where I live, south of the park, on the same train line as the hip yuppie marrieds.  That means me, the hipsters, the marrieds, and the future eccentric film directing icons all depend on one train line to get us into Manhattan and back.  You can see why this might be a bit of a hassle at times.  So, entirely inexplicably, the train I was on today decided to skip a few stops—but not to worry, the conductor very loudly informed us, another ‘F’ train was right behind who WOULDN’T be skipping stops—making the argument that the train I happened to be on was skipping stops due to construction entirely invalid.  The train skips two stops total; mine included—they refer to this as running express—quite the opposite if you ask me, but clearly no one ever does.  Usually when this happens, I just get off at the stop after my stop and walk.  Today, and I am not entirely sure why, I got off at the stop before my stop to wait for the next train.  Maybe I wanted to see if it was true?  Or perhaps ponder what type of construction would cause one train to skip my stop but the one right behind it no to?  As the next train pulled up alongside the platform, I stood to greet it.  When I looked inside of the train I saw several heads, one of which was propped up on a hand attached to a wrist wearing a very distinctive chunky watch.  Further more, I noticed that the head had a shiny black cap of a hairstyle.  This head and this wrist belonged to no one other than my admirer from the restaurant.  I balked, like a donkey, looked around for an escape, decided I was being an idiot, and that I could be mistaken, and that I only had one stop to go and if it WAS indeed my admirer, his back was to the door and he wouldn’t see/ recognize me, as I was hooded.  (usually I am—I’ve become quite the hoodie connoisseur.) Right, all of this in the 22 seconds it takes to step on the train.  And, though it is probably not necessary to point out the incredulity of this coincidence, I have to do it.  If this was indeed my estranged admirer, this marked about 4 months since I had spoken to him.  In those 4 months, he tried to contact me via instant messenger which I didn’t respond to.  The last time he tried to im me was about a week ago when he told me he was moving to
Spain within the next couple of weeks.  Either because I am heartless, a coward, shy, or not to be bothered, I didn’t respond to this, even though I wanted to.  So I thought I would never see him again and though happy for his future wasn’t really bothered by it. But today, Sunday, May 06, 2007, I did something out of character, twice, in fact, usually I take a different train home entirely and walk pretty far to get home (the exercise, I needs it!).  But because the paper store was closing in soho, and I needed ridiculously expensive hand-made paper for no good reason I went there and took this train essentially accidentally, and instead of walking the extra stop, which I was planning to do anyways, I got off and waited.  Out of all of the interrupted travel plans, all of the trains and all of the stations and all of the cars he could have been on today, he was on THAT one.  WHAT does that MEAN?  At this point, I am inclined to go against my more fatalist instincts and just subscribe to chaos theory—everything is by chance.  So to make a short story longer, I almost made it to my stop unnoticed, when I heard my name.  Expecting this to happen, I don’t feel that I feigned the appropriate amount of surprise, so I tried to make up for it with false enthusiasm, immediately followed by even falser confusion when he said, Courtney, I am moving to Barcelona next week!  Me:  YOU ARE?!!!!  Oh, this is my stop—completely cutting him off in miring in the coincidence, how happy he was that he could say goodbye.  Me:  Good luck!  And she’s off.  Entire encounter clocked at under 5 minutes.

Am I terrible?

The Luckiest Girl in the World

Who is it? Me, that’s who!  And if that isn’t a change in tune from my last post, then we live in an entirely toneless world. Oh what a difference a month makes.

I am just saturated with gratitude that I walk this earth and see through these eyes today– and it is true, I am. 

I was fortunate to spend this holiday weekend in southern California with two old coots that love me: my mom and her best friend, whom, I may add she hasn’t seen in over 30 years, and who has also followed my life and loved me by association for every year I have been alive. For someone who was suffering from a few maladies, including homesickness and a feeling that I am sentenced to eternal spinsterhood, spending the weekend with two such spinsters whose friendship survived the test of time and distance was perfection. The other malady from which I suffer is mass confusion– in the form of what my life is doing with me at the moment– which was soothed by mom’s best friend Joan who offered good advice, and good praise of my writing. She is a writer and assured me that I had the talent to have a career in writing. Allah be praised.

I also worry about what I am doing with my internship, which I still love, but is still an internship, not a job. This evening it all came flooding back to me as I realized that I am truly blessed to be so close to something so great– youth changing the world. Essentially my organization is a philanthropic enterprise that gives money to under 25 year olds to help them to be the change in the world. I was privileged to spend the entire day with the future leaders of this global movement, the generation that will end poverty, and it is really so monumental that I cant really put it into words. I just feel very lucky. And that’s really all.

If anyone does happen to read this, you should make sure to find out more about these kids by watching the BRICK awards, Thursday on the CW network at 9 eastern/ 8 central.

Oh, and not to downplay the fact that there is a 24 hour fruit stand right at my new subway stop.  I don’t think it gets much better.

Sometimes things just suck

All lives are balanced with both joy and sorrow, success and pain.  Not surprisingly, my life is no different.  Each and every day each and every one of us experiences small personal triumphs as well as small defeats—some of which can crush us.  The oddity, however in the human experience is our one sided perspective of these daily wins and losses.  The fact of the matter is that we are all quite one dimensional in our view of things.  At least that is how I see it.  If I talk about all of my triumphs, those of you that are far away will think all I am encountering is unbridled success, like a virtual Midas of
New York life.  But if I were only to talk about my failures, then I fear the worst—people would worry that I was failing at everything and (ooooh it hurts just thinking about it) pity me.  Just as if any of my friends were to call me and tell me about a particularly bad day they were having—I would think that since they took the time and energy to lament to me that they must be completely saturated with misery.  If they constantly were telling me of rewarding endeavors I would think that they were doing exceptionally well.  And then there is always the fear that comes of seeing ourselves as we are through the eyes of others.  While I feel that I in particular am sensitive to this view point—sort of living up to the me that others see, I also do not like to admit weakness to others or, for that matter myself because I feel that if I give in to a little weakness, a little vulnerability that I will only perceive myself as vulnerable and weak.  SO perhaps the shallowness with which people tend to view the actions of their friends and acquaintances is only a reflection of the shallowness with which they perceive themselves.  That seems entirely unwise, because we should all know that no man is an island, much as we would like to be, and will not act exactly the same in different environments to similar situations.  Just as science needs a control for every experiment, why don’t we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and leave room for that critical margin of error?

SO all of that philosophizing really only leads up to my festival of self pity—so far consisting of listening to sad music on my ipod while stocking shelves at trader joes—even going so far as to bring tears to my own eyes at work, so pressing was the need for me to be sad.  Next action was to convince myself that since every other female drowns their sorrows in ice-cream, that it was okay for me to also do so.  Now, my final act is this list of things that suck. . .

It sucks that I got laid off from Two Boots,
Brooklyn. I was only scheduled for one shift, and it wasn’t busy enough there for me to make money along with everyone else who worked there, so it makes sense and all.  It would be better if I didn’t have such suspicions of fowl play.  It’s this girl I (used) to work with. She is an unhappy lesbian.  No really—she just broke it off with her girlfriend and had to move out into her own apartment.  She is unhappy and a lesbian.  She is unhappy because of her failed lesbian relationship.  Yes there is a little relish behind this because I am convinced that she is behind this whole incident.  And there is a possibility that I am formulating this opinion because I didn’t like her to begin with and I am confused as to why I am not working there anymore.  Okay—moving on.  There are two reasons I don’t like this girl.  One is that she is a lawyer.  It is not because she is a lawyer that I do not like her, it is because of a behavior pattern I have come to notice and despise in some lawyers—the need to ALWAYS be the one who is RIGHT and SMARTER THAN YOU.(Again, if you are reading this and you are a lawyer, remember its not you– think of colleagues you don’t like– its them)  This results in a speech pattern with sentences often beginning with the word No.  Like, “no you should do such and such this way”, “no I don’t need any help”, “no I think it should be”—you get the picture.  Now how can a sentence end well that begins so badly?  That’s exactly right, it can’t—it just can’t.  So this girl did not like being a lawyer—she stopped.  Now she is worried about student loans etc, and I am sure very unhappy in general—which might be the reason behind the other reason I didn’t like this girl.  She never smiled.  I don’t mean her mouth never turned up to bear teeth, or smile like gestures were not made—we do after all wait tables—smiling is necessary—but her eyes never smiled.  And therefore her facial expression never really changed.  Not to mention that her natural expression was rather bland and when mixed with her contradictory nature very unpleasant.  This mix created a sort of disingenuousness which did not sit well with me at all.  Apparently I am the only one that felt this way.  Other people seemed to be friendly with her—except for the smarmy Mexican busser who told me he had a fake birth certificate to make him younger so that he could go to high school.  He came up to me one night and said “do you like (this girl)?”  The next night I over heard the owners talk about how he mouthed off to her and was fired.  So, even though I never mouthed off to this girl, I think she is behind this, and cannot be convinced other wise.  That sucks.  I REALLY liked that place.  I suppose though, if this girl is behind my unexpected parting of ways though that there are things I might not have liked.  After all, thought most people irritate me, there are very few that I just outright don’t like.  But this isn’t about looking at the bright side of things, which it seems I am inherently programmed to do, it is about giving audience to things that suck.  That girl sucks.

It sucks that I quit smoking and am the unhealthiest I have ever been.  Right now I am laid up with a kidney infection.  How bizarre, you say, and I agree.  I have been healthy as a horse up until now.  Although I am more than aware that this has nothing to do with my not smoking, I just think it is a little funny, just a little, that I am not at all healthy right now, and not at all a smoker. It also sucks a little that with said kidney infection comes high fever, meaning I can’t go to work. And my high fever isn’t even producing any good delirium either.

It sucks that there is no real furniture in my apartment.  (made all the more apparent by the fact that for the duration of the fever I have that wont go away, I have to sit in my dorm room type furnished apt.—I mean futon and folding chairs ewww. I just want to be a grown up!).

It sucks that one of my roommates never seems to leave the apartment.  I don’t know why that sucks, but it does.  Its not that I don’t like the guy or anything, he’s really nice, but why doesn’t he ever leave the apartment?  It’s a really small apartment, inhabited by a lot of people.  Since I’ve been laid up, I have been in the apartment for a few days, and I see no particular charm to never leaving the apartment.

So there you have it, an amalgamation of things that suck. But, like I said, not everything sucks. Also, I started composing this bog a week ago, so I am over my fever, have left the apartment lots, have gone back to work, and have decided to move into a different apartment that has real people furniture.
Ill let you know how that goes, right now I have just begun the search . . .

I do not know where I am in Brooklyn, but neither does anyone else

I had a suspicion that no one ever left their neighborhood in
Brooklyn.  Not just because the same thug on the same corner wishes me a good morning every morning, or because there is a different thug there at night who invariably says, have a blessed night, when I come home late.  It isn’t really because I never ever see the same people at the same times waiting for the same trains as me.  Nor is it because it is impossible to transverse
Brooklyn itself by train—i.e. if you live on one side of the park, it is impossible to get to the other side of the park underground, even though the park is only about a mile and ½ wide.  Aside from the fact that everything you need is within one
Brooklyn block—food, laundry mat, dry goods type or what I call ‘stuff’ stores.  And then there are a slew of random store front restaurants where you can get cuisine depending on the demands of the neighborhood.  For example in my neighborhood you can go into any number of
West Indies/ Jamaican restaurants, and never ever have a problem finding some variation of fried chicken.  (which, for me, is almost equal to starving to death.)  Ah, and coffee.  On every corner, and this is not an exaggeration, on my block there are four, there is a bodega—this is a deli of sorts, also a convenience store.  So they make sandwiches, sell small grocery items, beer and cigarettes.  And coffee.  So you can always get a cup of (albeit) sometimes shitty coffee.  (aside—in
Manhattan the solution to this is carts that sell coffee, bagels and Danish till about noon.  Then there are news stands which are different, like the bodega split into hot and cold—they sell cold beverages, candy and news materials).  It is precisely because of coffee that my suspicions were confirmed.

 

I have an obsession.  I have a few obsessions, but one of which is Hazelnut coffee.  I LOVE hazelnut coffee, and for some reason do not feel that I fully enjoy my coffee unless it is hazelnut flavored.  This habit has gotten progressively worse to the point now that if it is morning I will go out of my way to have hazelnut coffee over any other type of coffee.  Worse yet, I am not satisfied with hazelnut creamer or flavoring, the coffee has to be hazelnut flavored before I get it.  This makes my morning coffee habit a little more complicated.  Fortunately there is an Au Bon Pain right when I get off the subway to go to my internship in the morning, but what if I am not going there?  What if I am having an at home day?  Like today?  Well, a while ago I discovered that Duncin’ Donuts has hazelnut coffee.  And also Styrofoam cups, which causes me a moral dilemma daily.  Anyways, somehow I discovered a Duncin donuts close to my house, it is maybe 4 blocks worth of walking, just across the large park way.  The blocks here are short so it is less than I’d say a five minute walk.  Here is the clincher—almost every time I come back to my neighborhood parading my giant, guilt laden Styrofoam Duncin donuts cup, someone is like, hey—where there a Duncin donuts around here?  When I go into the shops on the block they ask me, when I go into the laundry mat people ask me, and when I tell them its just across Eastern parkway they look at me like I’ve just returned from mars.  No joke.  Its people who clearly live here, and the Duncin donuts, by my estimation is not a new phenomenon.  And it is literally across the street, yet somehow, I am the only one who has discovered it.  I feel like modern-day Magellan, my only motivation to find the new world being the sweet warmth of hazelnut coffee.

 

Because I have begun working in
Brooklyn, and I have been here for a while, I have started to explore the area a bit more.  Which is not to imply that I have any solid sense of where I am, ever, but now I know where other things are—i.e. the YMCA in relation to the restaurant I work in, and really that’s as far as I have gotten.  I do not know where exactly I live in relation to all of this, but I know it is much closer than the two trains I have to take to get to either place.  But I am coming along slowly.  And when it stops being so obscenely cold, I will be able to actually get on my bike to get a better above ground sense of things.  Since it is hard to get from where I live to essentially anywhere cool in
Brooklyn via train, sometimes I have to take a car service if it is late at night.  Last night I was watching the super bowl commercials at my friend’s house, and called a local car service to pick me up, not because it was late, but because it was arctic.  So I called, gave the address, and popped over to the window every few minutes to look out for it.  After about 6 or so minutes my phone rang with an unfamiliar number.  I answered it to a man shouting at me in I think Bangladeshi—to which I replied

567 Twenty Street

.  And he replied in some garble, so I said again

TWENTY STREET

.  Then I think he said OKAY OKAY I COME NOW I COME NOW.  So I said OKAY.  Ten more minutes passed and the only thing I saw out the window was a
Toyota corolla, so I called back the dispatcher, and said that I thought my guy was lost.  So he said OKAY I COME NOW.  And I said OKAY.  So five more minutes passed and my phone rang again, once again Bangladeshi shouting, to which I replied, YOU ARE HERE?  OKAY?  And I looked out and saw a black car, which still didn’t look like the typical car service car, but I thought I’d chance it and get in anyways.  So I did, and when I got in he pointed at the
Toyota corolla I had seen earlier, which wasn’t even black, and said, there he is, there is your driver.  So then they started shouting at each other and I was instructed to get into the corolla.  Well, this was the driver that didn’t speak any useful English.  He said, WHERE YOU GOING.  I said, FRANKLIN AVE AND EASTREN PARKWAY.  YOU KNOW IT?  OH YES, YES.  Where I was going was not far from where I was; I can testify to that because I had previously ridden my bike around the area.  However, that does not mean that I knew where I was or how to get to where I was going, I left that up to the expertise of the driver.  Big mistake.  So he asked which way to go, and I said, I don’t know, go toward the park. 

PARK STREET

?  No THE PARK—for you St Louisans, this is like Forest Park, it is THE PARK, the big park in Brooklyn, and I live just on the other side of it.  SO he proceeded to take me all around
Brooklyn, until finally I said

PROSPECT
PARK, WHICH WAY IS PROSPECT PARK? 

PROSPECT
PARK?  YES!  OH, THE OTHER WAY.  GO THAT WAY THEN! So approx. 30 minutes later, I finally got home, by my own volition, I had to figure out how to get there because the driver finally confessed to me that he had only been in
Brooklyn for one week.  ONE WEEK?  I have been here for almost four months and I still don’t know where the hell I am EVER.  But I am not alone.  In my neighborhood everyone knows where they are, but they don’t know where anything else is, and my drivers (cause this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, the language barrier was just the worst this time) neither know where they are OR where they are going.  So I give up.

Questions?

Okay, a few pertinent questions have come to my attention just this week:

1. Why can’t I just have one job at one time in New York City?

As we learned in the last blog, I, albeit inadvertently, rid myself of my restaurant job, fortunately just in time for NYC restaurant week, known to tourist and impoverished alike as give-a-restaurant-you-usually-cant-afford-a-go-utopia, and to servers and impoverished restaurant workers as the worst week ever.  What happens is that whomever participates in this venture does a price fix three course meal for 24 dollars at lunch and 35 dollars at dinner—by all intensive purposes a steal, but for us, it means more work for less money.  But, not for me, cause I don’t work in that no control all chaos zone any more!  I am free!  And now, for the world of retail grocery at Trader Joes!  So, I suppose I got the best case scenario, I got to make a lot of money and suffer greatly through the holidays, but now I can be in conscious consumer paradise!  AND buy groceries that I would go out of my way to buy anyway for less money.  Tickled pink! 

Right, so since I was taken back at TJs, of course I was offered another job—at the most DELIGHTFUL little restaurant in
Brooklyn.  They only really need a fill in person though, not a full timer, maybe 1-2 shifts a week—how perfect is that!  And right here in
Brooklyn, my very own borough—which I am growing to love more and more with each and every minute that passes.  I heart
Brooklyn, its yippies and their children, the counter culture that can’t afford
Manhattan, the cheaper beer, the diversity.  Sigh, so happy!  And double employed, not to mention my internship which is still chugging right along.  While I was at it, I asked them to pay me too, so we will see how that goes.  And here I am again—over employed.  This has got to stop, really—no time to enjoy anything when working so much!  But to the credit of my new employers, both are truly places which I can respect, and respect myself for working for them.

1. Does quitting smoking have a side effect of facial swelling?

I seem to have tricked myself into not smoking.  On Sunday I went out with a friend of mine to a bar that you can (illegally) smoke inside of, and just smoked myself silly, hating the way I smelled when I got home.  The next day I didn’t even think about smoking until very late, and it was cold outside so I didn’t.  The next day I didn’t do any smoking cause I worked at my internship then hung out with my friend I work with—smoking is a big no no in the making-a-difference-in-the-lives-of-teens-world—so I have made conscious effort to hide my yucky habit. ( But maybe not so yucky– our presidential hopeful is a SMOKER!) I got home and just went straight to bed pretty much that night, no smoking.  Then comes the third day.  According to my mother, the physical addiction to nicotine is out of the system within three days.  So I thought I’d give it a go.  Among other things, the ancy-ness, the speaking really really fast (I can’t believe no one has noticed!), the racing heart, the physical pain in the lungs, I feel like my face is swelling, like my eyes are literally bugging out of my head.  I am in day four without any of this letting up, so mom—you were WRONG!  I am not anywhere near out of the woods, and it is the end of the FOURTH DAY!  I am however, near the bottom of a large bag of jolly ranchers—the low calorie solution, because I would much rather have lung cancer than be fat—and that’s a fact.  (To be as callous and honest as possible).  That is in fact what has always halted me from the thought of quitting, I do not want to replace smoking with eating—it’s difficult because two factors are at work here—first of all, one of the effects of smoking is that it dulls the taste buds.   Of the sensations that return, the sense of taste is the quickest.  Combine that with a compulsive oral obsession that all smokers have, and you get exactly what I don’t want, a porker.  (Also have very negative feelings right now—my sincere apologies).  But the facial swelling?  I’m not too sure about this, plus I have a headache.  But that could be from the sugar.  In order to help combat all of this, and to exercise despite recently freezing temperatures, I joined the YMCA in
Brooklyn, which brings me to my next question:

1. Is there anything cooler than having individual TV’s attached to cardio-equipment?

Really, is there?  You plug in your head phones and you have your own control over the channels, the volume—AND you get cable, AND HBO.  How large can you live!  How large, son!!  So this, I feel, this will be the single most influential aspect of developing my distance running.  I can run AND watch a movie at the same time—whatever movie I want.  And no one else is watching me because they are all watching whatever they want!  SO BRILLIANT!

So, since surely no one at all reads this anymore—since I did after all go on blog hiatus for the holidays, I am probably posting these rhetorical questions to a rhetorical audience, but if anyone does read them, your input is much appreciated.

Just an other manic Monday (oh yes I did!)

*** This blog was actually composed last week– one week ago today, in fact, that is how behind I am. . .

 

 

If I recall correctly, I did post a forewarning that I am too easily distractible to do anything on a consistent basis. Anything, that is besides work my little behind off. I also believe I mentioned that most of the time, working so much is not fun, and not something I think anyone would be interested in. But that is silly, because what is a writer if not a person that turns the mundane into the fascinating. After all all of us who read spend our time reading books essentially about other peoples lives that they may or may not find interesting. That said—my life actually HAS been a little interesting lately, and here is why.

I have an admirer

At the restaurant we have lockers. Because I live in
Brooklyn, I utilize my locker as an extra closet, and because I was there all the time, not a day really passed that I didn’t look into my locker. (note the use of past tense, that wasn’t a grammatical oversight). One such day, a bad day because I had to work lunch—not the type of volunteer work I would normally sign up for, I opened my locker to find a card with my name on it. Upon opening the card, I discovered that it was a ‘Between you and me card’. Hmmmm, what a lovely surprise, much nicer than what I usually find deposited in the locker by my former pack rat of a locker mate. The card began this way: “I can’t get you out of my mind. . .” went on to say such things as “You must be something really special” and ended with “You’re one of the very best things that’s happened to me in a long time”. A vignette by Rene Duvall. The card wasn’t signed, but included a written note instructing me to send the placer of the card a text message. The mystery was quickly uncovered as I had gotten word that one of our runners was asking about me. He, in fact, created an alliance with my former locker-mate to place this card, and also asked everyone at works advice of how best to express his apparent undying devotion to me. This kid is adorable. He is from
Peru, and has tons of style, also lots of class, and he’s cute as can be to boot, seriously. He is also an aspiring soccer player, and just the day before he exclaimed that I must go to a game with him—ASAP, both of us forgetting that a football match in January, no matter how unseasonably warm, just doesn’t happen. Plus what a crazy thing to happen! A real secret admirer! Never in my wildest hopelessly romantic dreams could I even conceive of such a thing. So now I am trying to figure out what to do about it because of course, as usual, I was too stupid to realize that he was actually interested in me. Not to mention that any guy who is actually nice and pays attention to me is automatically ejected from my dating pool. I much prefer to a. be ignored, or b. get myself into impossible situations. However, we did end up hanging out after work a few nights later and we held hands on the subway platform.

I was unintentionally saved from my hated restaurant job

I hated that job. I hated the people that owned the place. I hated the people that I waited on. I only liked the actual restaurant sometimes because running up and down the stairs made my ass smaller. All of my friends quit. They didn’t hire anyone when we needed people, so I had to work 7 days a week, but now that we are slow they hired 7 people. My manager was a very pleasant yutz. I don’t even fully believe that my owner was even a real person, because I cannot conceive of anyone who could be so entirely lacking in compassion and common sense. So I did what any self respecting person would do and started looking for another job. I have on friend left there who put in her notice at the end of the holidays and hated the place as much as anyone else. Since we are friends and I am truly naive about such things, I discussed with her my plans to find another place to support myself. I didn’t even really care if anyone knew that I was looking for a job, honestly I thought it didn’t matter, forgetting cardinal rule # 1—don’t tell people you are looking for another job, they won’t keep you around. No matter how much you’ve put up with. Sooooo, on Sunday this week I went in at 9 am for brunch, worked straight through dinner, a highly unpleasant experience as we had the table who honestly could care less that they were the last table in the restaurant at midnight on Sunday night, made no better by the fact that all of us had plans to go out after work in my beloved borough of Brooklyn. So the bartender, one of the line cooks, one of the pastry cooks, myself, my friend, and my manager were all waiting on eachother, waiting on this table sos we could go out and get our drink on closer to home. Finally, my yutzy manager said he would set the table so I went downstairs to afore mentioned locker to change. While changing he called to me to come into the office. Once in the office he essentially said that he had heard I was looking for another job, that he knew I would quit anyways, that we had all of these new people and I clearly was unhappy, so he advised me to quit then. After working for 14 hours. Of course, of course he couldn’t have informed me of this at 9 am when I got there or even 5pm when I was starting my second shift. So I was robbed of posting my thesis of reasons to reform that place on the office door but assured a reference, after all, by all intensive purposes I quit. I just thought I would get to be the one who did it. But NOOOOOO. However, all things aside, I feel much better about not having to go back there and as far as being asked to leave goes, it could have been much worse. To be quite honest, it’s a good lesson learned—never stick with something that makes you so unhappy. Not to mention the fact that my plans with my friends there still held so I got to get fantastically drunk and vent about it directly after the fact instead of stewing at home by myself. My Peruvian admirer is not at all happy about this, though, I have to say.

Susan Sarandon is speaking at the event I organized on FridaySUSAN SARANDON IS SPEAKING AT MY EVENT! Nuff said.

Big trouble in little China

So I was enjoying myself and the company of my new friend immensely while perusing Chinatown knockoffs when I got a phone call, a Manhattan number, which struck me as odd, because I only have one friend.  Okay, I have more than one friend, but I only have two that actually call me.  I was with one, and just recieved a text from the other.  Who could it be but Herman, my manager calling to inform me that despite working sick as a dog (seriously– all week I have been in sinus hell) WITHOUT calling in sick, that I was getting called in to work.  So I threw a temper tantrum.  In Chinatown.  5 alarm,
New York style language and gestures– really an all out rager.  But there were so many people around and so much going on that nobody noticed, I don’t think, except for my new friend who was agog that I was getting called in.  Her question was– do you ever not work?  A valid question, a sad, sad response– no.  No I do not ever ‘not work’.  Except for during the week of Christmas and New Years, when I will be in St Louis, for my manager tried to sweeten the deal by telling me that I did get all of my requested time off off.  This is actually very good news as I booked my flight to include New Years eve– a source of controversy because supposedly everyone works new years eve.  But I guess I logged enough miles running up and down the stairs to earn the night off, cause I got it, and I am coming home, and returning to a paid position.  Pshew!

I am learning some things I don’t really like about society here in New York City.  In fact I am in a pretty interesting position socially as by day I work for a not for profit organization who gives grants to young people who have solid plans to change the world, while by night I serve people who work hard to keep it the way it is.  The people of whom I speak are investment bankers or just wealthy Upper East Side pricks.  What they all share in common is that they have un-godly amounts of money for no useful reason.  The whole investment banking phenomena is completely lost on me– it is an endeavor that makes money off of nothing else but money.  Money making money.  When did currency– that which is used to represent the exchange of goods become a good?  When did paper dollars printed with dead presidents become the most valuable thing to have, for no other reason than just to have it?  Let us refer to The Little Prince in its infinite wisdom– in The Little Prince; the Prince comes across in his travels a planet inhabited by a business man.  This business man counts the stars and writes down the numbers on a piece of paper, stowing it away in a drawer.  His big line is ”I am concerned with matters of consequence”.  These matters of consequence are nothing more than keeping count of the stars so that he can put them in a bank to buy more stars.  His entire life is consumed by his perception of ownership of something that cannot be owned.  When asked what he does with the stars, he says, “Nothing, I own them”.  Sounds completely ridiculous right?  But as I live and breathe I am watching the celebration of the same ludicrous idea and for the life of me, I just don’t get it.  Furthermore I fail to understand why these strange money movers are so worshiped by everyone– they don’t do anything!  And yet at the same time, they do everything, because they keep what everyone needs to survive, paper.  This worship of currency seems preposterous to me, and in my esteemed opinion, ought to become obsolete. After all, the American dollar is based on the gold standard, but truly, what good is gold to anyone anymore?  All precious things are open access at this time, and the fact of the matter is that I could go out and buy a gold brick with my credit card without actually paying for that gold, using supposed money that gold is backing, and ending up paying far more than that gold is worth.  That don’t make no damn sense!

New York is turning me into mini Marx . . .  but I can say this much, by experiencing such diametrically opposed view points on money and what it is worth– recap– raising money for grants to give kids who have projects like running refugee camps in Darfur vs watching people throw money around as a status symbol is teaching me alot about the true value of money, and the true worth of a person.

I promise to post more on more fun stuff later– for example my own obsessive consumerism– lots of working= lots of income= lots of shopping.  Add to little time for a social life to spend my money on, and what do I have?  Stuff.  Plenty of stuff. 

Not the type of marathon I signed up for

I decided last week that I was in the perfect position to fulfill my dream of becoming a marathon runner.  I even found a running coach at my internship.  However, I have not had time to start my training because in fact the marathon I am doing now is of slinging gratuitously expensive pasta dishes and running up and down a single flight of stairs 700 times a day.  What sort of crazy marathon is that you ask?  Well, it’s the Jovia 24k– starting at the front door and ending at the front door 10 hours later after running up and down stairs and across the dining room.  The other event is the plate relay wherein I take a plate of hot food from a food runner from the top of the stairs to a table, also the used plate relay where I take a plate of eaten food remnants off the table and pass it off to either food runner if I am lucky, or run down the stairs to pass off to the dishwasher.  Restaurant calisthenics are kicking my ever loving ass.

All of these voices!

Lately I’ve had more trouble than usual corralling my thoughts into something that makes any sense.  So much is going on that I am not sure of how to keep up, much less move forward.  That said, I am making an effort to live in the present and here are some highlights.

I met Fran Drescher!  How I met her is not all that exciting, apparently she is friends with my boss, the CEO of Do Something and she was in the conference room, you know, having a conference.  Two things about meeting Fran Drescher were particularly funny, well okay actually three– first of all, yes she does sound like that, second, yes she does laugh like that– bringing me to the third funny thing– apparently I have a sub conscious habit of doing a tiny curtsy when I meet someone or thank someone.  I knew I did something, I was aware of a slight bobbing motion, however, I never was aware that the bobbing was not only my head, but also my knee, at which point I put one foot slightly in front of the other and yes, I actually curtsy.  So of course upon my introduction to Fran Drescher, I did the bob-curtsy combo causing my boss to exclaim– “Did you actually curtsy!”– I nonchalantly attributed it to my ‘mid-western’ upbringing- which made Fran Drescher laugh– yup, that glorious, nasal whinny that we have all come to know and love from watching thousands of episodes of ‘The Nanny’, (its okay, I know and you know that you watch it, and you like it)  and there I was, witnessing it in the flesh!  How extraordinary!

The rest of the week I was working like the proverbial dog, or the rat of
New York– which, while very bad because it had a terrible effect on my temper and the endurance of my patience, was really business as usual.  New York seems the most likely of all places to struggle, and also perhaps the only place I have found this struggle to be somehow romantic.  Everyone here is working, commuting, running and it’s the rhythm that keeps us all going.  I know I have mentioned it before, but the beat of life here is something to take note of, because its part of the magic.  Elsewhere the beat is present, but it’s so faint that you have to get pretty quiet to hear it.  Here you have to get quiet just to shut it off.  But just as the base on a dance floor becomes a part of you after a while or the noise of an amazing live show still rings in your ears when you leave the venue,
New York City drums its way into your very soul.  This could be part of the issue I am having clearing my head; I am always sort of humming along with the city.

Yesterday was particularly remarkable because lo and behold, I had a day off!  On my day off I had to squeeze my entire weekend, and all of the things I wanted to do this week into one day, and I did it!  Here I have to post an aside, one I have been meaning to address– all of this not being a tourist business is fine and good, and in fact I am the first to admit that I never want to be a tourist– but the problem is that when you are not a tourist you a) don’t have time to do tourist things, and b) don’t know what exactly you are supposed to do.  If your agenda is taken up with living in a place, actually seeing that place is rather difficult.  So here in New York, I have been so busy living that I haven’t been able to see the sights, and quite honestly, since I am on a life path and not a tour bus, I don’t know where to begin.  So I haven’t even been to such places as Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, the UN (which is slowly killing me, I MUST make it there this weekend!), or the Met, or even Central Park!  AND I work three blocks from Central Park– (everything else is down town, surprisingly nowhere near Central Park).  How sad is that?  So I digress– every day I have off I try to make a point of riding my bike around Brooklyn– this is difficult because compounded with everything else, my sense of direction is entirely shot here, and I always get lost– on the way back none the less, when I am ready to go home.  My expedition on Sunday was to ride to Coney Island, which I did, and I got to see the ocean for the first time!  The Atlantic Ocean, upon whose shores I stood at this very time last year all the way across the world in Ghana–amazing isn’t it?  Not nearly as warm, but still, the very same ocean, the very same time of year.  Coney island is not so hoppin this time of year but I didn’t have a chance to explore much ’cause when I got there I was in danger of darkness falling without leaving me enough time to get lost and find my way back– which I did.  One would think that if I simply followed the same path back I could avoid getting lost, but no, of course not.  Brooklyn is ass-backward to me for some reason, and I have the same problem in Manhattan.  I think part of it is my own trouble with resolving the fact that I am on an island, that there is water to the east, west, north, and south of me, and I simply cannot get through my head how that can be.  Growing up in
St. Louis, water always signifies east, but here it usually means west, as the
East river is WEST of Brooklyn and EAST of Manhattan.  Not to mention the
Hudson on the other side of Manhattan and the Atlantic ocean to the east and south of
Brooklyn.  Yeah, just what I needed, another excuse for my head to spin.  Chalk up another reason why I find it difficult to focus, 50%, wait, not to sugar coat it, 90% of the time I have no idea of where the hell I am, or for that matter, where exactly I am going.

Lastly, get excited! (Jamie—cause I am convinced that you are the only one reading this!)  I officially booked my flight home!  Yay!  I am flying in on Christmas day and out on New Years day!  I can’t wait to actually know where I am for once!

On the Reals

I admit there is a lot of stuff going on here in the big city.  I have never been particularly proficient at absorbing and regurgitating knowledge– I usually am only able to do one or the other, and the fact of the matter is that the entire time I’ve been here I have turned into a large sponge.  Usually the easiest way for me to do it is to turn concrete information into abstractions, thus the oddity of the little blogs I keep producing.  This is likely why I usually am drawn to the more creative forms of expression.  However, for everyone’s sake, I am going to try and write a mundane, everyday sort of account of what is happening in my life right now.

It is unseasonably warm in New York today, 70 degrees and absolutely beautiful.  If anyone watched the Colbert report last night you would also know that yesterday it was POURING down rain, all day long to the point where I swore the entire island of Manhattan was on a very large arc, and we were all filing along in pairs toting umbrellas.   Yesterday too, as everyone is aware, was a momentous and splendid victory for democracy, although I am still shocked and amazed that this country is so equally divided between good and evil.  Still, the dark ages are coming to an end with this fresh perspective, and I am aching to see results, dammit!

My internship at Do Something is going smashingly well.  So well in fact that I have been recruited to organize our annual youth summit in January.  That’s right– January, so it seems as if I will not be returning in December.  Good news that I don’t need my backup plan, but still tears a bit at the old heartstrings.  I am learning so much that I can’t even begin to quantify it.  I am learning about the not- for- profit world, I am learning about the ins and outs of publishing a magazine, I am learning about writing, I am learning about networking, I am learning that people can and DO make a difference, I am learning that the world can be changed, and how those changes can be executed.  I am learning about my own generation and what we care about, I am studying all of the ways in which the younger end of it can influence and institute a better world, and how to bring to the attention of a rather fickle and attention deficit rampant generation that we can do it, we can be the change.  I am meeting incredible people all of the time.   More, more and so so much more.  There is so much that its having the opposite effect on me that one might expect.  You would think I would be bursting to tell everyone about all of these amazing things I am learning, but instead I have accepted the fact that the magic just continues so I am just trying to keep up with it all.

As far as the paying job/ career front, there is talk around the office that new funding will be coming in by the new year– at which time they will be hoping to hire someone else for the magazine (!)  They need someone to sell ads– so if anyone knows a great way for me to convince them that I am the person they need, please let me know!  Do Something is a perfect fit for me, and so far, I for them, so I would like to stay there.  Another opportunity has been brought to my attention– a woman who runs a different not for profit is looking for an assistant with strong writing skills to help her organization which helps kids get into college.  So I am forwarding my résumé to her through a colleague at Do Something.

I am making plenty of money at the restaurant, and it seems some good acquaintances.  There are two people there who I definitely think will be my friends, so I am looking forward to that.  The chef who got me hired is a really good guy and I am glad to be working with him.  Other than some bizarre frustrations that come with all restaurants (I can go into detail about those later) everything seems to be running smoothly.  Except for the fact that they do have a Sunday brunch, and I swore to myself probably 6 years ago that I would NEVER work Sunday brunch again, ever, anywhere.  Never say never I suppose.  So I am finding myself on Sunday, not resting, but slinging coffee and fancy egg dishes, trying to convince people to drink heavily before noon to up my check average.  Ouch.  I suppose a small sacrifice in the entire scheme of things.

My friend Alan and his girlfriend Stephanie are here in New York this week, so I had a fabulous time hanging out with them last night– one of my only nights out (sniff!).  They are here to visit a guy I used to work with at Red Moon who just finished a culinary program here in the city.  It seems that he is staying in the city, but we have a bit of an odd history, so I don’t know if I will be seeing him, considering I haven’t already, which is actually fine.  Leaving it at that.

So that’s my normal life here in the city.  Oh!  The most exciting recent development– my yoga class!  I found this place called ‘Yoga for the People’– a donation based studio in the hip west village.  I heart yoga for the people, especially donation based– meaning that at the end of each class they hold out an empty Kleenex box, suggesting that you put 10 dollars per class in it.  But you don’t have to if you can’t!  My first class I just went in to check it out, and upon admitting that I had no cash or yoga mat, they said, just come in, and I got to do a whole session.  So of course I went back and over donated– I won’t bore anyone with the technicalities of the practice, but I will say that they do an AMAZING class, and I am beside myself with joy that I found them.

I am looking into the graduate program at the New School for Social Research, and I am stoked.

So that’s a bit of what’s what– there’s more, much more, but I am so so tired. . .