all day on the airplane

cafe sketch in January

somehow the horrible outfit looks ok in this drawing! pen and ink makes everything a bit more elegant.

every birthday brings you one year closer to the end

one morning almost ten years ago I was up at 4:30 a.m. wandering the towering hulk of midtown on my way to work. building after building of lumbering concrete towering over me, but at 4 a.m. it was a ghosttown with lonely lamps to guide my way. the homeless guys were passed out on trash bag mattresses.

I had a radio show that year that nobody listened to. I would come in in the heat of the summer inbetween jobs, rummage through the piles and piles of tapes and cds and vinyl records. I loved playing the 7" singles the best. There were fanzines and promos and band photographs and weird graffiti scribbled on the tables and the walls. I could never segue the songs correctly. If I had been more static, if I had had more time and money, I could have become a DJ. My voice was usnteady and uncertain, so thankfully the radio show recordings are lost.

On this one morning, I passed by a cluster of gorgeous hip-hop boys and girls trying to get into a club. I remember the girls' tight minidresses and their go-go boots, draping themselves around boys in bulky clothes. Why at 4:30 a.m. at that time, I wonder? The girls and boys were separated from me somehow, by music and by the scene, and I was listening to other things at the time, although I was also constantly listening to the Wu Tang Clan.

But for some reason that summer, the most important thing in the world (besides working) was tryin to learn how to ollie. I would always be horrible at skating, but I had weird delusions, and people kept trying to teach me, but it was futile. We skated on empty streets where parking attendants watched us, and we hung out in front of Grant's Tomb, and a few years later my roommate just shook her head in disgust and gave up on me. The conversations at that time were thoughtful and haunting and beautiful, but I have forgotten everything we discussed.

When you are older, why does it always seem like life was simpler then? Because it really wasn't. It was quite difficult, but perhaps it was that my desires were simpler. I couldn't see more than two or three years into the future, and even then, life involved love and music and art. I was too trusting, too naive, not yet burned, but even now I cling to a hopelessly optimistic view of the world, even after living in a pessimistic culture for many years. Some things are not so easily changed.

One of my bosses in Germany sighed once and said, after I had asked "Why?" too many times: "There are a lot of bad people out there. You just have to watch out for them." And while this person was right, there are still many, many good ones.

Elizabeth introduced hard apple cider to me. I
haven't had any of those things in years. I miss her and I miss a lot of my friends. Walking into the park at night with M and being scared, passing by a subway tunnel entrance gouged into the side of one of the cliffs and staring back at the people who lived there, their eyes blinking passively back at me between the bars.

It was also a time of excess: I remember being surprised at how much men I knew spent on expensive designer ties and underwear. Not even a whole suit. Just a tie! I was taught how to eat in expensive restaraunts; how to sip soup properly, although if I am too lazy I embarass myself. The first time I went to a very, very fancy French restaraunt, where the waiters rearranged my forms and spoons if I fiddled with them, so many spoons! so many forks! Someone was always taking me somewhere nice.

At the same time, people screamed at me at my job about the coffee, about waiting in line, about the company's policies that I didn't even know about. But that job was beautiful in many ways. I spent a lot of time talking to a Russian immigrant, freshly American, who had studied literature and we spoke about Russian poetry as we cleaned the toilets, both of us exhausted. A beautiful trinidadian woman opened up her heart to me and told me her life story. At my other job a young girl showed me her journal and told me that i was the only one who understood her, she was so misunderstood by everyone. I didn't know what to say. I wonder where they all are now.

When the night shift was over, I remember young boys coming to the door ready to get our leftovers, which we had to seal in big clear plastic bags. We were not allowed to give them the food directly, as they could sue us. It was unsettling that they were so hungry. I ate so many muffins for dinner at that time, walking home and enjoying the empty streets of Manhattan to myself, noticing how different the people were on the train depending on what time of day you went.

there were dreams of going to Europe and Asia and Africa, but those destinations were so unreachable back then. and I am glad to see that many of those dreams came true.

Prospero Año Nuevo

Prospero Nuevo Año Prospero Año Nuevo
Frohes Neues Jahr
Happy New Year