dirty thirty

My friend is coming up to the city tomorrow for her birthday. What would you do if you were coming to New York City for your 30th?

ps. She's been to New York several times before.

photo courtesy of someone named Pancake's myspace page

happiest meal

My favorite thing about my old neighborhood in Harlem was the McDonald's, which had two defining features:

1. A parking lot (where do you see a parking lot in Manhattan?)

2. A walk-up Window. Yes, WALK-up.

It had a drive-up window too, but like most New Yorkers (except for cabbies), I have no car. So, the drive-up had no appeal for me. Actually, it had some appeal for me around 11:30 pm. when I'd get a hankering for a twisty cone. But McDonald's is closed after 10 p.m except for the drive-up window. No car, no drive-up, no twisty cone. (You cannot walk through the drive-up, yes I asked.)

Enter McDonald's greatest invention since special sauce: The late-night walk-up window. It's a tiny box, sort of like the kind they have at gas stations where it's just a dude behind a thick shield of plastic and you have to slide your cash under the window. But instead of old candy bars and chew, you can get a quarter-pounder.

You can imagine my delight when I saw that the McDonald's on my block just added a walk-up window a couple weeks ago. I'll admit, probably the only reason I would go to McDonald's is because I think the walk-up window is so genius. Late night twisty cones, here I come.

sun day

The payoff for the bitter New York City winter is that one day in April, it gets warm, and the entire city comes outside to play.

It's almost like a city-wide pact: When the day finally arrives that you can leave the house without a coat, you sit in the park, have lunch at a sidewalk cafe, walk your dog by the river. You get out and see your fellow New Yorkers who have been cooped up since late November.

The day finally came.

I ordered a lemonade with my lunch and the man behind the counter said, good choice--I'm going to have that with my lunch. The lady in line behind me said, I'll take one of those, too.

I sat next to a sunny window and got too warm for the first time in a long time.

The steps of Low Library were suddenly blanketed with people talking and laughing. People threw frisbees. Out of nowhere, the fountains that had been filled with dead leaves were clean and on again.

Late in the afternoon, I saw a girl coming up the subway stairs who had the blush of sun on her skin. Around her scoop-neck collar was the season's first tan line.

I came home and put on flip-flops. The evening was still warm, so B and Olivia and I walked down and got our first ice cream of the season. We got cones, of course, and walked home licking them.

earth day

I made some mini-resolutions for Earth Day. All of them take 10 minutes or less, and will help me feel less guilty about my consumer-ish existence. Many of them are things I've been meaning to get around to--Earth Day seemed like the perfect time.

1. Bought a Sigg water bottle to replace the parade of plastic bottles that lead from my home to the recycle bin every week. Sigg bottles are BpH-free (harmful chemicals found in plastic that can leach into food and drink), easy to clean, and made from stainless steel or aluminum with a leach-free liner. All the cool kids have them--both the directors of my program tote them. Plus, they're cuter than plastic (sorry Nalgene lovers).

2. Bought a re-usable grocery bag, so the parade of plastic bags from my house to the recycle bin can also cease. Emily hunted down a bunch of adorable versions here. These bags are way more stylish than the white plastic variety, and don't get stuck in treetops or landfills.

3. B called the unsubscribe number on the back of the catalogs that come to our home. Sometimes we get six or seven a day! It took like 30 seconds. A bunch of other ways to opt-out from junk mail, thanks to Ashley:

-Register for free with http://www.catalogchoice.org/

-Register with www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailing

-Call and ask to be removed from credit card companies central mailing lists 1-888-5-OPTOUT

Any other ideas? I still have a few hours of Earth Day left!

your legs grow

It's cold/
but not that deep/
'cause your legs grow.

Last night we went to hear Nada Surf, a band Ali turned me onto. Her favorite song (and mine, via her) is this haunting tune about recovery. I like it because it's kind of the way a kid thinks about dealing with heartbreak or seemingly impossible odds. Just when you think the cold water is about to close over your head...stretch legs to the rescue.

To take a listen, just hit the link over here to the right.

p.s. The other thing this song makes me think about is how cold water makes your leg hair grow. Your leg (hair) groooows....sorry if I just ruined the moment, but seriously, this is true, right? Some people argue that in fact your skin just tightens and makes the leg hair stand out temporarily, but I even asked an aesthetician (waxer) who confirmed this scientific FACT that ladies who shave their legs have always known.

the diving bell and the butterfly

To watch this properly, turn the volume on your computer up. Way up. There you go.

I can't get this scene from Julian Shnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" out of my mind. I could watch that hair blowing against the blue sky all day long. It just keeps playing over and over in my head like it's one of my own memories--which, in a sense, I guess it is. Anyone who has ever been young, driving in a car to rock music with other young, beautiful people while the sun is shining and wind is blowing has this memory.

The friend who saw this with me thought the film was hard to watch, but I found it completely life-affirming. If you haven't seen it, it's about Jean-Do Bauby, editor of French Elle who becomes a victim of "Locked-In Syndrome" after a stroke. His body is completely paralyzed, except for his eyes. Unable to speak, he communicates by blinking, eventually using this method to write a memoir about his life and experiences in his frozen body. The film captures some of the horror of his conditon, but also the amazing freedom of his imagination, where he takes flight through travels imagined and real, and revisits the richness of his memories and experiences.

I think what keeps me coming back to this hair-blowing-in-the-wind scene is that the mind so often drifts to painful memories or self-criticism, when it could more often drift to moments like this, of brief but perfect joy.

groped

I was groped on the way home from work today. The sidewalk was crowded with people coming home from work. I was lost in thought about pasta and Joan of Arc, when someone brushed past and squeezed my hand.

I thought it was my husband, who maybe spotted me on his way to the grocery. But as I turned I saw a stranger walking away; I could only see the back of his balding head. He was a small man, with longish gray curls. His walk struck me as jaunty before I snapped back around to join sidewalk traffic.

What just happened? A stranger grabbed my hand. No, he grasped my hand. Was it creepy? Was it aggressive? Did it feel like a prank? It felt like the gesture of a friend who might see you in a crowded room at a party, and passing, squeeze your hand so you know he's there, even though you're busy talking to someone else. That's it. It felt like a squeeze that said "I'm here."

Of all the touches that take place in a day, how many of them are for that purpose? I am here. I am part of this physical world--you feel me, I feel you. I am here.

Why me? I looked down at my hand. What about my hand made it the one, out of dozens, that he decided to reach for? Maybe it was because my hand is small. Maybe it looked like a good omen. Maybe to that stranger, my hand looked like it might bring a blessing or good luck, auspicious as the Blarney Stone, a smile from a first-born child, the fountain at Chapelle St. Jean-Baptise.

I thought about the hand-holder as I went through my front door, apartment door, and into my kitchen. It wasn't until then, after I got home, got a glass of water, started making dinner, that it occurred to me that it's possible the hand-holder didn't take my hand for him. It's possible that he took my hand because I looked like I needed it.