Friday, December 27, 2013

The Super

Right now I can hear the Super yelling. He’s down on the street, I’m four floors up, but he’s doing a fair job of making himself clear to the entire block. 
“NO NO NO NO NO, YOU LIFT LIKE THIS YOU HURT YOUR BACK. NO NO NO, YOU HURT YOUR BACK. YOU LISTEN, I LIFT HERE, YOU PUSH LIKE I SHOW YOU. I DO IT, NO WORRIES. UP, UP, UP.” 
Henry is always enthusiastic. He welcomed us with a bar of chocolate each and an energetic assurance, “GIRLS, YOU HAVE PROBLEMS, YOU CALL HENRY. YOU CALL, I FEEX. NO PROBLEMS.”
He is originally from Eastern Europe but he’s been the super in this building in Queens for over twenty years. The landlords trust him completely. Rent checks under his door and everything. The children in the building run squealing at him whenever they see him, beside themselves with joy. He usually has a candy stowed away, like I remember my great-grandpa did.
Yesterday as I was leaving the building, Henry was perched on a ladder in the front door. The door was propped open and sparks were flying everywhere. He stopped to let me pass and said, “Soon this door no slam so loud!” I thanked him profusely as the sound of that door slamming could raise the dead. And some poor girl lives right next to it.
Ten hours later, I came back and ran into Henry on the street. I asked how it went with the door. “I FEEX IT, I FEEX IT,”  he said jubilantly. 
As I walked in and heard the familiar ungodly slam at my heels, I knew Henry’s way of fixing things maybe wasn’t always what anybody else would call fixing. But lord can he make a person feel welcomed home.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

People of the City: Central Park

He is thin, wiry, the septuagenarian's version of gangly. He looks ready to be puffed away, like the puff of his white hair which despite his best attempts is escaping from beneath a beige baseball cap, like the fluff of milkweed pods bursting. Black pants, running shoes, faded plaid shirt under a gray down vest. His face is pale and deeply lined. Tired. His face is a sigh at the end of a long day. His face is a sigh for a memory that lies down next to him every night. A memory that turns to a bitterness in his coffee the next morning, when light comes in his kitchen windows and the comforting dark of her memory can no longer be drawn about him. His face was a sigh for her.

Right now, though, as he passes the bench where I sit in Central Park, the memory lines break into lines of frustration as he gives a sharp tug to the red leash in his left hand. The Scottish Terrier at the end of it has sat down on the sidewalk, facing the way they just came, and is refusing to move. With a barely audible huff, the man walks gingerly back to his dog. He bends down to lift it, turns it around to face the right direction, sets it back down, and begins his forward journey again. Immediately the Scottie turns and pulls in the opposite direction. This is repeated four or five times, each time they get a foot or so nearer to my bench.

As I chuckle, the man looks up. Wearily, even apologetically, he smiles and says, "He doesn't want to go home."

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

"Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself," by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. Copyright, Word Press 2005.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Subway Fare

[This is a weekly post where I talk about whatever I happen to be reading at the moment. No book too great or too small to be read. Since most of my reading happens on my subway commute, I'm calling it Subway Fare.]



Yesterday a friend gave me this book. There's nothing better than having a friend over for breakfast and she turns up with a bag full of books for you to read on your commute. She put this one in my hands and in retrospect I guess I went all Frollo on her, mustering a pained face full of distaste and saying something peevish like "What---is---this---peasant---trash." On the strength of her masters degree in literature, she rolled her eyes and said, "Ignore the cover, you'll finish it in an afternoon."

OK, I will say to no one's surprise and with no animosity to our author Ms. Clare, this certainly did not hit the New York Times list on account of the exquisite writing. Here's a taste of the exposition technique:

He'd asked her to stop calling him Uncle Luke about a year ago, claiming that it made him feel old, and anyway reminded him of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Besides, he'd reminded her gently, he wasn't really her uncle, just a close friend of her mother's who'd known her all her life.

GEE, THANKS FOR MAKING THAT CLEAR, EXPOSITION. "Besides, he'd reminded her gently for the sake of any third party who might ever read the story of their lives and wonder how he and Clary are related since obviously there is no way she has FORGOTTEN unless she is like that girl in 50 First Dates and can't remember ANYTHING, he wasn't really her uncle."(Also, Uncle Tom's Cabin!? Is it possible that a human person who has been alive on the human earth for any amount of time could have only ONE association with the word "uncle" and that it would be a 19th century sentimental protest novel?? Like, how long did you ponder that one, Clare?)

With that minor caveat, I am ready to admit that there are a lot of sexy magic people, which is really why YA fiction exists and NOBODY is complaining about that. Certainly not this girl.

So I've been reading it on the subway. (And in parks. And in my apartment.) But I usually hide the cover.

(Because I still care about what people on the subway think of me because most of them are so well dressed and might be models. I'm sure this is something I will grow out of when I have children.)

P.S. I just read a line that says, "Her voice was like honey poured over ice." Ugh.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Too Late the Phalarope

"Yet it comes to me that it is not the judgment of God but that of men which is a stranger to compassion; for the Lord said, go thou and sin no more." -Alan Paton, Too Late the Phalarope

The feeling of finishing a book that tips you into a better world and a better self and a greater heartbreak.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Valentine's, Tina Fey Style.


Some of us don’t really go in for Valentine’s Day. Because it’s annoying and cheap and the wait to check out at Walgreens is at least five minutes longer than usual. 





So this year, thanks to Tina Fey’s 30 Rock, I have decided to celebrate Anna Howard Shaw’s birthday!

To brush you up on women’s history: Anna Howard Shaw was a bold and courageous leader of the suffragette movement in the United States and a staunch defender of peaceful civil disobedience. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Obvi worth celebrating. So, on this the 166th birthday of Shaw, I present to you: 10 Ways to Celebrate Anna Howard Shaw Day.

1.      Reconsider your current life goals. If you are a woman, and alive, you owe it to us all to win and keep on #winning. You should be the winningest broad you can possibly be. Think you like where you are right now? THINK AGAIN. Until you have started a movement of suffrage, got an MD, and become the first female to be ordained into the Methodist church, you are just not trying hard enough. I mean, seriously, look at yourself and ask yourself are you living up to the life Shaw died for you to have? (Technically she died of pneumonia, but the main thing here is that she is dead and she would want you to do some epic shit.)

2.       Play Famous Women of the World Trivia! Make face flash cards and play it with all your feminist friends! Or try THIS incredibly difficult Famous Firsts in Women’s History trivia. If you ace this, I hope you work for the government. It would make me feel better about our collective future.



3.       Call your mom/grandma/aunt/surrogate. Unless you’re Kyle XY, your family is largely responsible for who you are today. So I’m betting that – even if you don’t realize it – there is a woman in your family whose strength, tenacity, wit, charm, guts, overall badass factor brought you here today, O great feminist that you are. And yeah, housewives of the fifties were some strong-ass women. So thank her. And spend time with her.

4.        Go to TheMonastery.org. Get ordained.

5.         Refuse to acknowledge when people say “Happy Valentine’s Day!” to you. At most, give them a, “What? OH! You mean Anna Howard Shaw Day!? Yessss, dahhhling.” Then kiss them on both cheeks and walk away quickly.

6.       Dot your “i”s with hearts. THIS IS THE ONLY DAY that you, as a self-respecting feminist, can get away with such indescribably appealing behavior. Scribble those hearts with the full force of all your hatred towards the entrenched crises of everyday sexism and Kim Kardashian.



7.       Stop trying to sabotage that girl that you can’t stand just because she’s a teeny bit smarter, prettier, funnier, and has more friends than you. You know the one I’m talking about. The Venn diagram of this girl’s friends and your friends overlaps fairly significantly, but her circle tends to be slightly better dressed and more musical than yours. But on this glorious day of feminine self-actualization, seriously, you have to let this go. Because you know when you hate on her, you’re really just cock-blocking yourself. Stand by the sisterhood.

8.       Have a DIY “Consent” Panty Party! Everybody picks a consent-themed slogan (such as “Ask First, DUH" and adheres it onto their favorite pair of underwear! Because, ladies (and gents, because you guys can fight for rights too) – we all know the suffrage movement of our day is fighting rape culture. And that I am actually serious about.

9.         Write 1,000 love notes to Tina Fey thanking her for recognizing Anna Howard Shaw Day and setting all of us free from the chains of February 14.



10.      If you are over 18, BE SURE YOU ARE REGISTERED TO VOTE. Seriously, I’m ashamed of you. Everything she died fought really hard for.


Feel free to share your own ideas of how to celebrate in the comments!