when I was little(r), I spent hours designing my future house, either in my imagination or on the much more restrictive confines of blue-lined graph paper. I changed my mind a lot about the kind of interior designer I would grow into; I went from coveting a canopy bed (when I was seven) to envisioning a whole house where all the beds and chairs were suspended from the ceiling hammock-style (when I was nine) to specially-engineering my furniture to slide in and out of the walls to leave the floors wide open for dancing and tumbling (eleven). but there was always one constant in my fantasy houses: a room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves, equipped with one of those rolling ladders that could whiz around the room on a track, and the shelves themselves overstuffed with books (novels, encyclopedias, picture books, photo albums) and music (cds, lps, stacks of cassettes, a gliding turntable). the shelves covered every inch of wallspace, leaving only the ceiling to be decorated with paintings and pictures. now that I am, for the first time, about to live all by myself in a (thus far) unfurnished apartment, I want to know -- what happened to that girl, and why doesn't she own a single bookshelf?
[ 28.12.03]  ·  [ ]



my favorite present this year was from my sister. it was all a bit mysterious because the package was set apart from the other gifts, on top of the turntable instead of under the tree. ("I never get fragile presents!" I said, but this time I guess I did.) they turned out to be (unsurprisingly once I had them in my hands and could feel through the paper) photographs, nicely framed black & whites that she took and printed herself. the first one I unwrapped was a picture of my brother and milo, his special-needs kitten, whose upper eyelids are not all there. "aw, that's so cute," I said, because if your baby brother with a baby cat isn't the very definition of cute, I don't know what is. the next one had a silver frame; I accidentally popped one of the fastening-braces out of the back while I was peeling the paper off, so the picture stayed face down on my lap for a few moments while my mom helped me fix the frame and the first photo got passed around for everyone else to see. I was distracted by all the talk about cuteness and wasn't even really looking at the picture when I finally turned it over and pulled the wrapping off. "it's lucie!" I heard myself say, almost before I truly saw her face looking back at me. it was lucie, my camera-shy lucie dog, staring straight out of the picture with a serenely pleased expression, her floppy bat-wing ears pricked up and out, wispy whiskers gently framing her muzzle. in the eight by ten inch print, her photograph face was nearly life-sized; for all her birr and bluster, lucie is still a little dog. "for your new apartment," my sister told me when I got up to hug her. I couldn't take my eyes off the picture, only partly because I suspected I might start crying if I moved them. for my new apartment, where my dog will finally be allowed to live with me in brooklyn. and in the meantime, while we both keep up our schooling in separate cities, I'll have at least a facsimile to keep me company. homemade presents are the best kind. lucie and I played fetch for a long time this afternoon. it's so unseasonably warm here that I was wearing just a sweatshirt and my winter hat, and lucie didn't need the new fleece jacket that she unwrapped this morning. (lucie loves opening presents! hers had treats hidden inside the tissue paper for incentive, but she gleefully helped with some of the others as well, tearing the paper away with her teeth as she pranced and tossed her head like a sprightly little pony.) over and over she sat next to me, intently watching the ball sail away across the muddy ball field, fairly trembling in anticipation until I released her into the chase. she tore away like a shot, her extra-long leash snapping between her legs and wriggling along the ground behind her like a rhythmic gymnast's twirling ribbon, but she always came straight back to me. I didn't even need to call her.
[ 25.12.03]  ·  [ ]



rockefeller center, though lavishly decorated and almost overwhelmingly festive -- between the wreaths, tree, heralding angels, bunting, shiny gold-red-green flags, lights, and tourists, it's almost impossible to see the buildings themselves -- was not quite as big and grandiose as I expected. that's probably partly the result of the natural distortion that comes from my major impressions of manhattan being formed and then frozen when I was less than four years old, but I've visited rockefeller center plenty of times since then. just not at christmas. for some reason I was surprised that the tree wasn't at least half as tall as the skyscrapers, that the skating rink didn't stretch out to cover the entire width of the block between 49th and 50th streets. what the decor lacked in scale, though, it made up for with the thickness of the throng surrounding it. the crowd of people was solid from the ice all the way up the steps and back along the plaza to the 5th avenue sidewalk, full of strangers trading cameras to take pictures of each others' families in front of whatever little sliver of the scenery might be visible in the background. more often than not, the exchange took place in pantomime, while the families chattered in separate languages to each other, though it was easy enough to guess what they were saying: move over there; stop making faces at your sister; get your hand away from your face; smile! all along the plaza, the rows of angels, with their arms raised for trumpeting, were echoed by the rows of people with their arms raised for photographing. I scrambled up to stand tiptoe on the round edge of a pine-shrub-filled planter, one arm stuck between the needly branches for balance, to take a picture of the mass photography on the last saturday before christmas. perhaps a little bit of the scenery made it through the cracks between bodies and the spaces inside bent elbows. next to the skating rink, on the south side, I took a camera from a man so that I could snap a picture of him with his two toddler-young sons standing in front of the railing. after I handed it back, all four of us crowded up to the edge to look over and watch the awkwardly overcrowded ice skating below, which was accompanied by "santa baby" piped in through a loudspeaker. the boys, who'd trekked all the way from new jersey to see the animatronic store windows at saks, were confounded by the presence of an ice rink in the middle of commercial manhattan. "these people come here just to skate?" they said, and their father pointed out, again, the immense christmas decorations, the embodiment of the holiday spirit in eight stories of lights and ribbon. "just think," he said, "your mother sees all this every day when she comes to work." the boys were amazed. all this is here every single day? there are so many people here every day? as if they couldn't even imagine that many people, that much extravagance, existing in all the world. christmas in the city is an exercise in extremes: inside, the petite trees that will fit in the corners of small apartments; outside, whole buildings wrapped up like presents, lines to see department store window displays trailing around the block, the doors to st. patricks open and spilling constant music into the street, the fountain at city hall overflowing with trees draped in construction paper garlands. I'm twenty-two and I live here, without the protective buffer of the long island suburbs, and even I still find it a little hard to believe.
[ 24.12.03]  ·  [ ]



in chile and spain, and sometimes in certain subway tunnels, when I found myself alone amidst a crowd of spanish-speakers, I always felt particularly conspicuous. not sticking out like a sore thumb so much as throbbing like one. I could understand nearly all of what was being said around me, and I felt like a spy whose cover was about to be blown. I was sure everyone could tell just how flat my accent would be, how inarticulate I would sound if I opened my mouth. but in brooklyn, when I find myself alone amidst a crowd of russian-speakers, I feel totally invisible. I'm so completely clueless that not even my internal monologue can give me away. on wednesday I stood quietly at the pharmacy counter counter for twenty-eight minutes with a box of bandaids in my hand, waiting for someone to notice me. (maybe I should have said something in spanish.)
[ 17.12.03]  ·  [ ]



I needed superballs for one of my lessons last week, and for some reason the only place I could find them was packaged as pairs inside cheap toy jacks sets. so now I have a sandwich bag full of silver plastic jacks, and I need to do something with them. ross convinced me that it wouldn't be littering if I left them in careful, special places where they would be appreciated by whoever found them. so, now I need your help. where should I hide my treasure-jacks? they have to be places in central to southern brooklyn, or mid- to downtown manhattan. (maybe cambridge and boston too, if I still have some left by next week.) they have to be places where the jacks can't possibly hurt or annoy anyone, including wild animals that might try to do something stupid, like eating them. they definitely have to be places I won't be arrested for visiting. tell me what you think. I promise to personally deliver the jacks to my fifteen favorite spots (I get to do five myself), and if I get any good stories out of it, I'll bring those back with me. bonus points for you if you're in new york and you find any of my left-behind trinkets. we can have our own little minimalist perfomance art thing going on here. (cross-posted to the lj, which may likely house much of the follow-up, if I get enough respondants.)
[ 15.12.03]  ·  [ ]



really, you'd think that after three months, people -- and when I say people, I mean my students, other students, assistant principals, the principal, the people who work in the copy room, secretaries, guidance counselors, school safety agents, lunch ladies, teachers who don't know me, my science department colleagues, and strangers on the street -- would have gotten over how funny it is to tell me, "you look like a student!" if only I could grow a beard... but that might create a whole new set of problems, no?
[ 12.12.03]  ·  [ ]



usually when you're heading home on the subway after midnight on a tuesday, you don't pay much attention to the other people in the station. it's late, everyone's tired; there's no need to acknowledge each other's existence except to avoid knocking one another on to the tracks. but it's hard to ignore someone who leans over and throws up on the bottom step just as you're trotting down the stairs to the platform.

she was my age, plus or minus a few years, and her vomit was a funny pinky-red color somewhere between salmon and cranberry. she threw up very quietly, with her arms braced against her knees, and didn't look up at all when I stepped around her to the brooklyn-bound side. what a wretched place to be at 12:04 in the morning: huddled under fulton street with your nose just inches above the grimy, smelly, sticky station floor. she looked like she wanted to die.

no one said anything, but everyone was looking, and I saw them thinking the same thing I was: are we supposed to do anything? I had a little bit of water left in the bottle I'd bought from a vending machine at school, overpriced at two dollars, and I thought that even after having been sipped from, it was probably the cleanest thing in the station. when she straightened up I approached her tentatively and started out in exactly the stupidest way possible: "I'm sure you want to be left alone, but..."

...if she wants to be want to left alone, why the hell am I bothering her?

"but, I thought maybe some water would make you feel better."

she looked at me as if I were speaking ancient greek.

"I mean, maybe, just if you want it, I'm not sick or anything." I held it out between both my gloved hands. she looked at it, looked at me, and slowly unfolded one arm from where it had been clutched around her waist. her hand stopped just above the bottlecap.

"are you sure?" she whispered. her skin was frighteningly pale. I wondered if I would be able to catch her before she fell when she fainted.

"of course. take it. it's okay, I don't need it anymore."

she took it, and her whole body seemed to melt a little bit, eyes opening wider at the edges, shoulders dropping into a slump inside her coat. the tension between us dissipated.

"thank you," she said, and my heart eased out of my throat. she doesn't hate me for talking to her. "I have the flu, and I'm so nauseous... I just want to go home and go to bed."

"I can imagine," I said, because I could, and did. "I hope you feel better soon." I smiled, and the train came.

inside the subway car we were separated by the midnight rush crowd, and I carefully avoided looking back over my shoulder to see if she was drinking my water. I was so nervous I thought I might throw up myself, just to get the raging jitters out of my stomach. if someone had done that to me, I thought, I'd be so mortified I'd start crying. but she seemed genuinely grateful, maybe even glad to have someone to talk to for a few transient moments.

it's hard to figure out how to be a nice person when you're also a pathologically shy freak-girl. I hope I did okay.
[ 10.12.03]  ·  [ ]



the explosion came from nowhere. I was walking east on avenue p, just after 7:00 this morning, looking alternately up at the grey sky and down at the grey snow, and then everything was just noise: deeper than a crash, shriller than a scream, a fuller, wilder roar than any animal could have made. there was so much sound that I thought I felt it knock me backwards, the way an unexpectedly large wave crashing over your head throws you onto the beach. I looked up and there was a huge tractor trailor simultaneously rushing forward and falling apart. its upper edge had struck the underside of the elevated train tracks on sixteenth street -- some luck that the early morning rush had filled none of the four tracks just then -- and as the truck kept moving forward, the metal trailer peeled apart like it was nothing more than a little aluminum can. glass burst from somewhere in a sudden forward spray, spilling onto the street in front of the truck to be ground under its massive wheels, and still the trailer was splitting, opening wide to the sky even as it crumpled from end to end. it was over in thirty seconds; there were shards of glass and corkscrew-twisted metal spread for a full block in both directions, strewn across the slushy street like sprinkles on a frosted birthday cake. the trailer sagged behind the truck's cab, walls splayed sideways, with the entire ceiling hanging backwards onto the street in a crinkly, jagged curl. after I had walked past the wreck, I looked back along the trajectory of the accident. on the side of the green train crossing, a set of wires and pipes had been ripped away from the metal, exactly above the big sign that said: clearance 10' 11". I thought: so now I can tell everyone, the truck was at least eleven feet tall. and then ...that probably isn't why they put that sign there. the world is weird when you tell stories in your head all day.
[ 9.12.03]  ·  [ ]



my teeth, except for being naturally crooked and overcrowded (and unnaturally straightened), have always been fairly healthy. sure, I broke a couple of them playing soccer or face-planting off my bicycle, and now two of them are permanently attached to each other with what looks for all the world like a bent staple. but they are healthy. I've only had one cavity, no root problems, no weak or soft or stained enamel. but my gums -- my gums are a bloody nightmare. and I mean that literally, since I am not british enough to adopt its slang at my whims (unless I do so unconsciously). the combination of autoimmune dysfunction + medicine-exacerbated blood disorders makes it so that, no matter how vigilant I am about flossing and poking myself with that hideous gum-stimulator, my mouth always bleeds when I try to make it clean. I'm used to the way toothpaste tastes with the salty, metallic hint of blood running through it. If my dental floss didn't come out stained red, I would think I'd somehow died without noticing. what I'm not used to, what I think I'll never be used to, is the way the blood pools inside my mouth. it runs from the cracks between my teeth and my gums, drips down the sides of my cheeks, and makes small hot puddles on either side of my tongue and all around the inside of my jaw. when I open my mouth wider to floss my bottom molars or to brush the back of my tongue, I can see my blood collected in the hollows atop my teeth, outlining every buckle and dimple and groove, sliding over the white curves in a slow viscous crawl. I look like I've just eaten an animal raw, torn the flesh with my teeth and sucked the blood from the veins, all without getting so much as a drop on my face.
[ 7.12.03]  ·  [ ]



thank goodness for the subway, unhampered by the snow even though the cars on the elevated tracks are dressed in windswept white. for the moving platforms at 14th street that slide in and out like a horizontal portcullis; for the brooklyn-bound 2 train every bit as crowded at 12:15 am as it is at 4:30 in the afternoon twilight; for the passengers that wait, nonplussed, as a small electrical fire makes the air smell hot and smoke-stung; for the mta worker who ambles along the platform to say that yes, of course, the trains are still running. those big squealing wheels held together by dirty wooden bars, the three-color spectrum of the oldschool plastic seats, the dirty, dirty metal poles touched by seven million people every day. the best-ever public drug transaction I've ever seen, conducted across the stretch of the snow-puddled aisle on the q train, complete with hand signals and an enraptured toddler. my arms will never be long enough to reach halfway across a subway train to lock fingers with someone on the opposite bench.

the cold weather must make me cuter, perhaps because of the combination of pink nose+cheeks and my tassel hat tied under the chin. whatever it is, people seem to smile at me for no reason, and give me things I didn't ask for. on the train today, the conductor was standing in his little cubicle with the door open, I guess because it was frigid in the cubicle with the window sliding open at every stop. I tried to make my glance past him at all the lights and buttons inconspicuous, but clearly I failed miserably, because he grinned and invited me in to take a closer look. (must this not be completely against mta regulations? what if I were a terrorist?)

most of the words were worn off the button labels, and the microphone was so high on the wall that I could never have announced the station stops without a stepstool. (when we pulled into atlantic, though, I recited perfectly into my cupped palm: "atlantic avenue; change for the 2, 3, 4, n, r, w, and m trains. connection to the l-i-double-r. this is a manhattan-bound q train, next stop will be dekalb ave." no 5 train on the weekends.) it was darker in the cubicle than in the traincar, and somehow noisier, clattery and rumbly at the same time.

the conductor asked, "do you want to close the doors?"

"really?" I felt like a ten-year-old being shown the cockpit of an airplane; fingers tingling with wanting to touch, breath caught high in the back of my mouth, every physical inch of me waiting for the moment when the grownups woke up from their spell to realize that this child is not supposed to be here.

"yeah, sure," he said, with his head halfway out the window to watch the boarding passengers. "just wait till I say it."

I held my thumb over the button, looking only at the striped metal wall, imagining the last feet stepping over the yellow line to track grimy ice into the train. childrens' snow boots, teenagers' wet sneakers, construction boots, at least one pair of high heels.

"stand clear of the closing doors," said the conductor, and I pushed the button, ringing the warning ding-dong just like I had pressed a doorbell. with my hand against the wall I could feel the vibrations of the doors sliding shut, thumping together at the rubber seal, all that physics rippling through the metal and into my flesh.

I was grinning like a total moron. "thanks," I said. "I always imagine that I would like to drive a train." and then, emboldened by his amused smile, I asked, "do you like your job?"

the conductor shrugged. "it's a job," he said. "but you see some crazy stuff sometimes."

(me too, I thought. new crazy stuff at my job every day. but when he asked, "what kind of work do you want to do?" I answered, laughing at myself, "I have no idea.")
[ 6.12.03]  ·  [ ]



oh, the cold! attacking my cheeks and fingers with icy fangs, sending the last leaves that were clinging to the branches freezing and falling away, so that now you can look up the train tracks and see the green-and-red glowing empire state building all the way from the bottom of brooklyn-by-the-sea. chilling the clouds so that our predicted sprinkles and flurries turned into a swirling swath of thick white snow, which came blowing in our open classroom windows to pile in drifts against the floor, melt on the hot metal radiators, turn all our noses pink and lovely. oh, I love it.
[ 2.12.03]  ·  [ ]



the terminal improvement project at atlantic avenue seems to have brought the mice and rats out in droves. at most subway stations I see just a few mice scurrying between the rails while I wait for the train, but lately when I'm standing above the 2-3 tracks at atlantic avenue I see dozens of mice a day, all running in random directions. they swarm and flow across the dirty cement floor almost like worms or electrons -- their movement is so fluid -- seemingly oblivious of one another, just moving and whiskering and disappearing into hidden holes. if I look across the tracks to 4-5 platform, the quiet commotion they make in the lower edge of my peripheral vision makes it seem like the trackbed itself is moving, squirming under its railties, getting ready to heave itself up and throw us all into the sky.
[ 1.12.03]  ·  [ ]





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