insomnia haiku

Come on Irene, please don't rock us like a hurricane

Someone at Weather.com is super excited to be breaking out the adjectives today.

Are all these alarmist, hyperbole-filled news reports succeeding in scaring me? Yes. Yes, they are.

I've spent the last several days trying to get rid of food, not acquire any more; so in the event of an evacuation I was prepared to eat lots and lots of tuna and a couple cans of tomato sauce. But I caved and headed to the store for batteries for my old boombox, and in the process also bought way too much bottled water, some canned fruit and a box of White Cheddar Cheez-Its. I am ready.

Living in interesting times

Well! I'm packing up my apartment, taking care of various details related to moving, looking for a job, and now there's a hurricane coming. It's possible that I'll have to evacuate -- or that my parents, who are flying in to help me pack, won't be able to make it after all. As the Chinese say, "May you live in interesting times." Interesting they are indeed.

Since my stuff will be in storage for a month, I opened a PO box today. Put that down on my list of "things I've never thought of having to do before." And here's the rub: In order to open -- and, presumably, keep -- a PO box, you have to have, and prove, a physical address. But the whole reason I need a PO box at all is that I won't have a physical address. It's a head-scratcher.

In order to sidestep the issue, I dumbly handed the guy my lease and kept my mouth shut. After all, I do live here... right now. He nodded, handed the lease back to me, and a few minutes later gave me the keys to my very own PO box. And I thought, whew! I pulled a fast one on a federal employee just there. (I'm just kidding, I didn't think that. Much.)

I'll be couch-surfing for the month of September. This will also be "interesting." I'm a notorious over-packer, so the concept of living out of a single suitcase for a month is daunting, to say the least. As usual, I play out all these scenarios in my head regarding the kinds of clothes I might need, and I pack things like, a pair of sneakers, a fancy black dress, four skirts and a short-sleeved jacket (all of those things are in the suitcase right now), which means that I will be making some perilous fashion choices all month, or else not wearing any of it except for the same t-shirt and pair of jeans every day, all the while pining for the polka-dotted dress and flip-flops I packed in a box I'll never be able to find again. I would make a terrible nomad. Check that: I will make a terrible nomad.

Well, I don't really have much else to say right now (I gave in to temptation on the way back from the post office and let myself eat Popeye's for dinner, and ate it at the "wow I really am old" hour of 5:50 pm, which means I have felt disgusting and regretful for the last several hours yet am now screamingly hungry), but I did want to write something here, just for the hell of it. And now I have.

I will leave you with some of my favorite things from around the Interwebs recently:

Ryan Gosling Breaks Up Street Fight. Yet one more contribution to the increasingly solid body of evidence that Ryan Gosling is, in fact, the man. 

Say Something Nice. My favorite: "Hey, you with the umbrella! I like it! It's pretty!" A close second favorite: the little Asian kid. I won't spoil it for you by telling you what he says.

Craziest Beard Ever. What really makes this video is the yelling offscreen. "OH MY GOD, A BEARD DOOR!"

The Daily Show: The Poor's Free Ride Is Over. This went viral, so you may have seen it already. Jon Stewart is on fire here. "That's the problem with poor people. They still have some of their skin." Make sure to get to the 4:30 mark... I'll admit I did get jealous of "poor" people when I saw that 25% have a dishwasher. I don't have a dishwasher. They are so lucky.

Anderson Cooper Gets the Giggles. A week old by now. Already a classic. I love Anderson Cooper. In fact, if I could make one news anchor my new best friend -- Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams -- I'd have a tough call to make.

Pictures of Recent East Coast Earthquake Devastation -- here and here. The first link practically gave me a fit of Anderson Cooper giggles, and I realize from the time stamp that the picture may not even be from this week's quake, but it's funny all the same.

I did feel the earthquake, and since we never get them here, my first thought was that my building was falling down, or (more likely) I was experiencing vertigo. I got up because I figured if there was something wrong with me, maybe walking around would help me shake it off. I then listened for clues from people outside, but I seem to live in a nighborhood of nonchalant Brooklynites, because there were no shouts, no sounds of distress -- and by the time I thought it might be an earthquake and vacillated between ducking under the table or bracing myself in the doorway, it was over. (I picked the doorway, only to realize later that standing in the doorway is so 20 years ago, and I should have gone under the table instead. This is what happens when you leave California and don't get earthquake refreshers.)

I watched New York 1 and CNN for the next couple of hours, and I know it's a cliche to mock East Coasters for their/our reaction to the quake, but I found the news coverage faintly ridiculous. Yes, I get that if you've never lived through an earthquake before, it can be scary. But, as a Californian, I've certainly felt worse (most notably the 1989 quake that halted the World Series), and while this one was alarming, no one died. No one was even injured that I can tell. All those people running outside in a panic? Faux pas!

The anchor on New York 1 kept telling viewers how terrified she'd been. Ma'am, I appreciate your suffering, but after the tenth use of the word "terrifying," you may want to keep that to yourself. Or pick a new word. And watching Hour 2 on CNN with Wolf Blitzer in DC interviewing his second straight "Dude at Train Station Who Felt the Quake" ("Where were you? What did you feel?) was a little too much for me, and I had to turn the TV off.

That's why the most amusing things I saw in the aftermath of the quake were tweets like "We will rebuild" -- linking to a picture of a recycling container tipped against a wall. We East Coasters are self-important wimps... but at least we have a ball making fun of ourselves.

The conversations you have with yourself about packing

It's funny -- not "haha" funny, more like "you belong in a funny farm" funny -- the conversations you have with yourself when you're trying to pack up your apartment, and decide which of your things you're not going to see for a while. For example:

 

Me: Could I live without my pasta pot?

Myself: Sure, maybe.

Me: OK, putting it in the box...

Myself: No. Hang on. Wait, I don't think I can...

Me: Are you insane?

Myself: I use it all the time!

Me: It's a pot and a strainer.

Myself: I love my pasta pot! It is awesome. And what if packing it makes me stop cooking pasta? Pasta is cheap and easy! I should be making more cheap and easy meals. Stop! DON'T PUT IT IN THE BOX.

Me: Sigh.

 

***

 

Me: I can live without the salad spinner, right? 

Myself: Sure. I mean I've used it twice in a year.

Me: Fine. That one's easy.

Myself: Wait.

Me: Oh Christ.

Myself: Well, I've used it twice in the past month -- once I remembered I owned a salad spinner. And it made me eat greens, so that was good. It made me feel virtuous. So... maybe don't pack it yet?

Me: You are a moron.

 

***

 

Me: Wow, I have too many books.

Myself: Yes, once I pack them all I will feel as though I've made progress.

Me: All these big, heavy hardcovers are going straight into boxes.

Myself: Oh, totally. But wait. Don't pack Infinite Jest.

Me: ARE YOU INSANE?

Myself: Well, I was just saying last week that maybe I would read it soon. Didn't you hear me? Last week?

Me: Yes, but it's like, 3,000 pages long, and 20 pounds.

Myself: But I might read it! Soon!

Me: You say that every year.

Myself: What if I pack it, and then I am sitting here with nothing to do because I already packed everything, and I think, now I finally want to start Infinite Jest, but oh no, I packed it, and now I am filled with regret? 

Me: So rather than pack it, you're seriously going to carry this behemoth around with you in your suitcase?

Myself: Maybe.

Me: Sigh.

That fleeting sunset

I don't always tell you everything.

Sometimes, a lot of times lately, I feel sorry for myself. I think life is unfair. I wonder why good things happen to other people and not to me.

I don't say any of that because it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Plenty of good things have happened to me. More than to most. And anyway, look at my life. A roof over my head (for the next 21 days). Many offers of couches on which to sleep. Family, friends. Sympathy, kindness, food, clothes on my back. Money in the bank, or enough of it, anyway. When it comes right down to it, I want for very little.

So many other people feel so much pain of which I can't even comprehend. Poverty, death, disease, persecution. And me? Just because I don't have a job or leads or a place to live -- in some ways by choice -- I feel as though my life is shit? Please. White people's problems, they say, even though I'm not white.

I don't know what's wrong with me sometimes. I really don't.

I've been a little down lately. But tonight, as I walked through Tribeca toward Locanda Verde, where I had dinner plans (yes, go ahead and say it, lucky me), I walked down cobblestone streets straight toward the sunset, the sky a spectacular shade of pink, or as a friend of mine once wrote to me, the color of peach merengue.

I looked at that sky and I thought, this is here and now, and I am present, and I am grateful. How can I feel anything but wonder, when there is this? Looking at that breathtaking sunset shimmering between the buildings of New York... I felt lucky. I felt lucky to be here, and lucky to stay and live in this great city if I should be so fortunate. Come what may.

Then I had a wonderful dinner at Locanda Verde with my former boss and his wife. I can still taste the crispy artichoke and yogurt on my tongue; it was tangy and sweet and God knows what but it was fantastic.

And then, on the way home, something happened -- I read an email or I stumbled on a cobblestone or the sky changed color, it doesn't matter -- and as I came home, the sunset and the dinner shrank away, and I was sad. I tried to get it back, but it was gone. The weight of my life, of self-pity and injustice and irritation and rage, pulled me in and down. I felt resentful and sorry for myself and my feet dragged like they were in cement, and all I could think to myself was, "Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? Why can't you just be happy that good things happen to other people? What the hell is wrong with you? Just be happy for other people."

This is a public space, the Internet, and so I seldom say what I feel, especially these days. I am writing this because it's what I feel right now. I know what it sounds like. There is a 95% chance I will delete it tomorrow. Scratch that. 99%.

Don't feel sorry for me. That is not the point.

Tomorrow I will keep packing up my boxes and I will look for a job and I will think about the future and I will persevere, but today I am weak and I am hurting and I am small, and for once I wanted to say it. That's all. Forgive me. I am human.

Can Five Guys hold up to one In 'n' Out (and one Shake Shack)?

I have a wedding to attend in a few weeks. Having some other things on my mind, plus depreciating funds, I still haven't gotten around to buying a dress.

Out of desperation, I headed to the Banana Republic in Brooklyn Heights on Sunday, hoping to find something passable and not too expensive. Sadly, not only were a lot of dresses not in my size, but the ones that were in my size made my arms look like tree trunks. (Note: I have come to realize that unless I start working out multiple times a day, and doing 60 pushups every morning, or perhaps moving someplace I can surf nonstop, then the tree-trunk arms are just going to happen. Dealing with it. Eating, and living with this body, is much more fun than exercise.)

I got stuck in a top, gazed upon a body that appeared pregnant, counted the lines of cellulose on my upper arms. Sigh. No dress for me today. "I will go running every day," I vowed. Yes, that should do it. But... there was a Five Guys across the street. And didn't I promise, at the beginning of this year (which seems oh, so long ago... "achieve a better work-life balance," bwahahaha... you know I really meant "quit my job," right?), that I would eat a burger from Five Guys before the year was up?

So across the street I headed, getting a Five Guys hamburger "all the way," which meant getting two patties (this was a bit of a surprise) with a bunch of condiments including ketchup, mustard, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, mayo and other stuff. Fries, I didn't really need (arms! like tree trunks!), but I'd heard they were good, so I nodded. Coke, too. Can't have a burger without Coke.

After a bit of a wait, I picked up my burger and brought it home. Here's what the fries and burger looked like:

(And yes, that is a Hello Kitty figurine wearing a Dodger uniform in the background, why do you ask?)

The verdict: Well, there's quite a bit of burger here. Too much, I'd say. The meat in the burgers was tasteless and even a little dense and dry (I really didn't need two of them); the variety of condiments, while nice, made the burger unwieldy, difficult to eat. Things kept falling out of it. And I suppose it's my fault for not getting cheese, but there was nothing that really bound the burger together into a pleasing whole.

In the end, doesn't touch In 'n' Out for ease and joy of eating -- that burger sits so neatly and comfortably in your hand, imparting pleasure in every bite -- and doesn't come within a million country miles of Shake Shack, still the best-testing fast-ish food burger I've ever had, that will always occupy a special place in my heart. That place in my heart reserved for things made of meat.

Picture in picture

I'm fascinated by this site -- it comprises pictures of old pictures, taken at the original location. (You'll see what you mean when you click on the link.) Makes me think of sneaking back onto the driveway of the house where I grew up, just so that I can take a picture (of a picture of) me and my brothers there.

Dear Photograph

Let's go surfing now, everybody's learning how (sort of)

I have had the following paragraph up on my screen for a week:

I am not remotely athletic. Not a whisper. Not a syllable. When it comes to anything involving dexterity, speed or grace, I am all thumbs and two left feet. (Someday I am going to draw a picture of that.) When I was younger and other kids were out playing sports, I was inside reading a book.

That's it. That's all I have managed to write about my week in Barbados. Blogging FAIL.

At any rate, this is what I tell people when they ask, "Did you surf?": Whether or not I "surfed" depends on your definition of surfing. If by surfing you mean standing up on the board, I did that. If you mean being able to catch your own wave, I did that, too. 

But if your definition of surfing means catching your own wave and standing up on the board in the same sequence, well...

I'm kidding, for the most part. I kind of did manage to catch my own wave and then stand up on the board a couple times, though not gracefully. Those times I was attempting it on my own, we were at Surfer's Point, which I'm told can be lovely and smooth and full of baby waves, but which on these particular days had fast (for me) waves and a strong current. It's the current that exhausts you; all that paddling to get back out there, or even stay in one place, is murder -- i.e., excellent exercise -- on your arms. If only I could surf every day here in New York, my arms would look like Jennifer Aniston's.

Far better and more fun were the times we went to Freights Bay (pictured above) with the surf school, with which I took four lessons in all. The two days we went to Freights were the best for me. They had the babiest, gentlest waves there, and no current, so you had all the time in the world to paddle out and float in the beautiful clear water waiting for the waves to come.

And sure, it's much easier to stand up with an instructor holding your board and giving you a push and yelling instructions to you, but when you do manage to stand up and relax and comfortably ride that wave forever, so at ease on that board you feel like you're just standing up in the middle of your kitchen, it's a great feeling. One time at Freights, I caught a wave by myself (if "with the instructor standing next to me telling me what to do" counts) and rode it all the way, turning on purpose to follow that wave along the shore until it petered out. It was glorious. I felt almost like a real surfer.

Of course, I ended the week covered in bruises (also insect bites), of which this was by far the most impressive:

So that was surfing in Barbados. Am I a natural at it? No. Certainly, it was dismaying to look at the little kids easily picking it up after 20 minutes, whereas it took me a good three days. (Three days seems to be my learning curve -- it took me three days to learn to snowboard, too.) But for someone who's never been remotely athletic, and who usually does my best to avoid playing sports of any kind, I consider the enterprise a success. "Surfing" was fun. Bring on the baby waves.