the year of gettin’ loose.
hopefully later on i will look back on january 2010 and see it as a most pivotal month in my life. a year ago i was getting on a plane to germany, always a palliative effort to assuage my boredom. those two weeks were like a little pill that made me able to tolerate the rest of the winter. now i realize i don’t ever really want to live in a place that has winter, so a cure is in order. i am always talking about how i am going to do this or that- in that past few years i’ve had plans to move to chicago, to move to germany, to move to austin. that last one though, i meant it.
january 2010 was the month i watched my beloved dog of almost seventeen years die, on a metal table lined with a fleece blanket, where many other dogs had probably also taken their last breaths. i felt him die. i always insisted that i would not be there when he was put down, but in the instant that i had to choose, i rode in the backseat of the car and carried him into the vet’s office, holding back my sobbing as the woman at the desk asked, with a sympathetic face, ‘ozzie?’
my mom said to him, ‘well ozzie, they won’t have to weigh you this time, so it won’t be embarrassing.’
‘embarrassing for us, or for him?’ i replied.
we took him into the room and the vet talked to us for a few moments, he seemed so kind and gentle that it was sort of comforting, even though he was the one that would plunge a needle full of barbiturates into ozzie’s front arm that would stop his heart. they took ozzie away, to give him a catheter with sedatives. they brought him back moments later, he was panting and not at all sedated. his two front legs were bandaged, they had to stick him twice because they couldn’t find a vein the first time. then, my parents and i all gathered around him, all holding onto him, while the doctor tried to give him the shot- and ozzie, ever stubborn, charmingly obstinate until the end- yanked his paw away and yelped, one last time. the other vet tech came in and helped hold him still, and it is true what they say, it is fast. he died so quickly and stiffened up and peed all over the blanket. his eyes did not close, he did not collapse- the doctor gently laid him down and closed his eyelids and left the room to let us say goodbye. my mother wailed, ‘i will never have another dog again- ever. EVER. EVER.’ ozzie’s eyes kept popping open, in moments he had gone from an animal who had absolutely dominated our lives for so long, to a corpse, dead on the table. the room suddenly felt like a black hole, and i had to get out. i came home, and everywhere i looked there was evidence of him. so i left, and went to the city instead where i could concentrate on driving and the cold air freezing my fingers. i got an unwarranted parking ticket and ate a sandwich with serrano ham and manchego that i didn’t even taste, i went to whole foods and bought three bunches of lilies that eventually bloomed so large that their scent was the first thing i smelled when i walked into the house. i came home to an empty house, my first urge was to begin bawling but i didn’t, i opened up my cookbook and started to make dinner. i didn’t cry. i suppressed the grief for days, i had moments where i would begin to weep, and then quickly whip myself back into shape- i just wanted life to go on as normal again. i tried so hard, i knew for so long that his end was near, i thought that when it happened i would be prepared. i thought that my grief would be brief, but it is january too and by the end of the week my neck hurt so badly from the tension built up from holding it all in. but it came out, the proverbial floodgates opened, on a suburban street- i got in my car and started to wail so hysterically loud, and i couldn’t stop it. it was nighttime, thankfully no one could see me, i had to call my sister while i had a panic attack. ever the level-headed of us two, she calmly listened to me rant and eventually i was composed enough to drive myself home, while i talked to emily until my phone battery died. i guess i didn’t realize, life can’t go on as normal, because he was such a fundamental part of my normality, and i didn’t want to admit to myself how much life would change without him- how hard it would be to walk through the door and not see his little head whip around to see who it was, and then lay it back down to the pillow, indifferently (well, that was how he greeted me, anyway- he was always far more enthusiastic for my mother). even though i left him the most, to go away to college and brief stint living in chicago, as well as numerous vacations over the years- he was always there, and his absence is felt so strongly, it’s painful. it breaks my heart that i can still feel the contour underneath his chin, how silky his ears were, his short little legs and fat paws at the end.
the next morning, i applied for culinary school. in austin. so i guess that is happening. in april. there are a lot of logistical and financial matters that need to be figured out, but i am finally optimistic about life. i feel fucking ready. i had been saying that i was going to move after the summer, but there is no time like the present. or two months from now. i fell in love with texas in the summer, the thought of living there is so exciting that it keeps me up at night, giddy, thinking about how i am going to live in a little house and plant a garden in the back and yes, eventually, get a new little dog. in a way i am heartened by ozzie’s death, because it has finally galvanized me to make real changes in my life that i couldn’t before.
rest in peace, my favorite. you’ve meant more to me than anything else so far.
it is really hard going through life experiencing awesome things feeling this awful anxious dread knowing it will soon be over.
i am sitting looking at a cruise ship called the ‘elation’ and even though i don’t believe in such things, i feel like it is a sign from the universe. it is not often that i am content to just sit and be somewhere, but right now the sun feels medicinal and the pacific ocean is blinding me with its sparkle, i feel like i could stay on this bench forever and ever. the pigeons come within inches and the hoards of strollers are not even bothering me, i am waiting for it to be three o’clock so i can send a text message to the other side of the world. later on tonight i am going to sit and watch planes land from jenn’s balcony, she lives under the flightpath and i wish i could say i knew what to expect when she told me- but it is so much more awesome, the planes come so close and i hope she forgives me when i make the ‘did you ever think bugs bunny was attractive when he dressed like a girl bunny? ‘ joke.
2009 is almost over and in hindsight it was awesome, for the first time i feel like i might have some idea of what i want from life and i am ready to leave the ’00s behind. not in a ‘good riddance’ kind of way, but more of a: the sun is finally shining on me, my ship is coming in, the ocean looks like it goes on forever but i’ve been to where it meets the other side. happy new year, new decade, everything is sanguine.
jesus christ i am starting to go stir crazy. i am so glad this is my last winter living in the midwest (didn’t you hear?). since i keep obsessive tabs on the weather report i don’t know how i missed when they said it was going to snow like a fucking foot today, or maybe they didn’t? whenever the news stations decide to go apocalyptic with their WORST BLIZZARD OF 2KFOREVER coverage, it is always a flagrant miscalculation- conversely, when we get snow like today it is always kind of a surprise. not that i had planned on doing anything today anyhow, but when i get cooped up for long periods of time i start to think crazy thoughts like maybe all my friends secretly hate me and are all conspiring against me for some sinister joke, or i spend an hour dicking around on the qantas website convincing myself that it would be a totally great idea to go to melbourne for a week. which actually, it would be, except in a few days i am going to san diego which is somewhere i’ve never been to. the other night tony told me that san diego is nice but ‘for girls’, which is totally great because i am a girl. so that is the good news. additionally, jenn’s new apartment has a balcony and i can not wait to sit on it and watch the airplanes take off and land, also i hear you can get LOBSTER TACOS out there. since jenn is my long-distance wife, she knows what i like and she is going to get me nice and fat while i am there, and hopefully her boyfriend will play me tons of awesome records by obscure bands that replace the ‘i’s in their names with ‘y’s. actually, i am glad that winter is getting all this snow out of its system now, because if it did this when i had to fly in a few days it would throw me into a rage.
i guess it is time to stop watching slade videos on youtube and go to sleep, this day has come about as far as it can.
gobble, cluck, and quack
most of my memories of christmas eve involve us eating chinese food for dinner, not because we are jews but because it was always a way to get my sister and i out of the house so ’santa’ could come drop our presents off. i don’t know why we never opened gifts on christmas, maybe one day i will ask my parents. but it was always christmas eve, and my parents would call and order food and then me and my sister and my dad would go take a ride to get it and when we got back-quelle surprise!- our presents would have arrived. my dumb ass didn’t even figure out what was going on, what eventually tipped me off was that santa used the same wrapping paper that i found in my parents closet. i always liked christmas eve because it was just the four of us, christmas day was much less fun because it usually involved going to other relatives’ houses. now that i am almost thirty i guess my parents figure there is no point to exchange gifts anymore, a decision of which i actually approve. so this year i came to the realization that chinese food is actually pretty gross, so i figured i’d just make some pasta or something for christmas eve. a few weeks before christmas, i got a cryptic e-mail from my uncle, who is actually not my uncle but in fact my dad’s ex-boss/now good friend but is so awesome that i wish he was related to me, asking who would be coming for christmas dinner. he and my father are consummate gourmands, and while i think of myself as more of a gourmet, he loved that i am an enthusiast of food/eating/cooking. eventually he admitted that he was ordering a turducken for his christmas dinner and wanted to send us one as well. this was on the heels of me eating beef heart (which i have not been able to shut up about, because it was so awesome and i feel like maybe it imbued me with some kind of super human powers) so i was like, hell yeah send us a turducken, i love to eat animals! he said if we didn’t like it could take it to the homeless shelter since i had stolen a line from erin while railing against the gluttony and excess of gross traditional thanksgiving food proclaimed it to be ‘homeless shelter food’, which it totally is. or maybe tv dinner food.
so last week a giant box showed up on the porch, a huge styrofoam cooler with this giant frozen turducken. it barely fit into the freezer and it had to thaw for three days and it had to cook for twelve hours. that means it went into the oven at five fifteen am. the instructional brochure that came with it said that there were 20-25 servings. my aunt made turducken gravy from the juices (which made me excited even though i don’t like gravy, i do really get off on when things are homemade from scratch). i made mashed potatoes with caramelized onions and a chocolate cake with caramel-milk chocolate frosting and homemade vanilla ice cream. the turducken stuffing was just breadcrumbs and spinach, i think. you have to let the bird (birds?) sit and cool for an hour after they back that long, and then you have to pull out all the twine holding it together (which i tried to do as gingerly as possible with a kitchen shears, but the drumsticks just fell right off the body!). my dad sharpened our best carving knife and we got to work:
can you see how the thing steamed up my camera lens? geez. this picture showcases the copious amount of stuffing, it was hard to even see the meat of each bird inside the other, and my final verdict is that it was basically turkey, but really good. i love duck but was a little grossed out because i had to rip off a big piece of rubbery skin before i could eat it. also, you know how you always see pictures online of people who put like, bacon on their turduckens? and you probably think, now that is just going overboard. but honestly, a little bit of salty bacon (or maybe pancetta, mmm) would have really topped it off. we had nine people in total, which is the most people we’ve ever had over on christmas eve, so it was lovely and festive and there were no presents or candy in our stockings or white chinese food containers. there is of course a ton of leftovers, which i guess means we are going to be eating a lot of turducken meat sandwiches for the next few days.
i also think that all this meat made me dream that i went to the grocery store and at the deli counter they had guanciale, which i have been obsessed with ever since i had it on a pizza at spacca napoli last month. i have no idea where to find it but in my dream they had it at the jewel down the street and it was $70 per pound so i could only buy a quarter pound. i told my mom about this dream this morning and her response was: you need to get a hobby. what, like cured meats can’t be a hobby?
(big thanks to my uncle bill, your christmas gift fed a very thankful hoard that braved the freezing rain for the promise of a taste of this three-species behemoth.)
this post is looooong and mostly documentary
this is how i know i am a for real asshole, the other day i was riding in the car with my dad and i said in the snottiest voice, man i did not go like anywhere this year. so then i had to start to count on my hands the places i went: germany, new york city, austin (twice), florida, ohio (twice), wisconsin (camping). erin and i went to champaign for a weekend, and to dave’s lake house in northwestern illinois for the fourth of july. and i feel like that since i haven’t immortalized these places in writing somehow (not here, or in my own paper journals), that they are inconsequential, but the more i think about it the more i begin to see all these places as patches on my life-quilt:
january, delphos, ohio- we drove through indiana, stopping to have lunch with an old friend of erin’s dad’s who told us, while we ate salads, about how he used to be friends with fred hampton in high school. delphos, where we went to see a grave, and we saw a grave and more graves blanketed with january snow and stayed inside a brand new desolate microtel that had bright yellow and green walls, where we ended up eating all manner of fried foods for dinner because that is what you eat non-urban places in america, went to a shitty old man bar on the main street of town called ‘the chateau’ and i wrote ‘want me 2 fonger u’ on a dry erase board in the ladies room and the jukebox blared blink 182 or some other horrid radio pop-punk as erin’s dad gave us his analysis on what is considered obscenity and how we need to invent new ways to be offensive. the streets hadn’t been plowed and it seemed the whole town was at the high school for a basketball game. in the morning we went to a couple churches and tried to find breakfast but there was literally no restaurant open which drove us to this old giant antique store in a former hotel, which was room after room of old beer cans and soda bottles, toys, jewelry, furniture, everything. the place was so enormous that it wasn’t even heated throughout because it would have been too expensive so i wandered through with my coat and hat and gloves on, my hand over my face so i could breathe on my cold nose. the whole weekend made me feel like some kind of anthropologist, the place was so bizarrely unlike where i live- our waitress at dinner was so friendly that by the time we left we knew her life story and had seen cell phone photos of her kids and dog and had her tell us over and over to come back in the morning for breakfast. we ended up stopping at what proved to be the least offensive (to us) place for lunch on the way back- a tgi friday’s in some mall off the highway in fort wayne, and for me it was like being on another planet. i had a salad, it wasn’t terrible.
february, munich- i’ve written a lot about that already, after that trip i came the closest i’ve ever come to packing up and moving to munich. i applied for a course and was accepted and pazi’s mom told me as she smoothed my hair that i could stay with them because it would be easy to get to school from their house. i even walked from stachus along the sonnenstrasse, pretending like i was going to class, past the school and along to the sendlinger tor and back to the train. then i ended up wasting a bunch of money on an orthopedist, an mri, physical therapy that proved to be totally useless, in the end i was resigned to my fate of not being able to run, well, except metaphorically. my injury galvanized me to become healthier, i lost fifteen pounds and instead of going to germany i threw myself into learning how to cook. save for the week i was in austin (after which i could barely walk), i haven’t run for months, and sometimes i want to so badly it hurts, and seeing people running on the street sends pangs of jealousy through me. given the plans i have for 2010, i don’t know when i will get back to germany, but after eleven years of (mostly) annual visits, i am not afraid of if i will go back. but now, months later, i know it was good that i didn’t end up leaving.
may, new york city- i have only ever been to new york city in the warm months so i have blissful memories of it, of course that place is fraught with all kinds of other intense memories and it is hard for me to walk around union square and not think, i remember that hungover morning when ryan left me there- or the time i walked down lafayette so drunk i could barely put one foot in front of the other. this time on lafayette i almost hit anne hathaway in the face while heather and i were walking and i was telling some impassioned story waving my arms and heather stopped me and after we crossed the street she said, did you see who that was?? i was too excited that some people had asked me for directions, god, i don’t give a shit about celebrities and i look like i know where i’m going, i must be an honorary new yorker. we walked around a ton and ate a bunch of amazing food. after arriving like five hours later than we’d planned we headed to our perennial favorite, tamarind on e. 22nd and i had a lychee martini and samosa and lamb pasanda and walked back to our hotel in a state of euphoria. the next morning i had an amazing chocolate croissant and scrambled eggs with salmon, we went to the momofuku milk bar and i bought a bunch of huge cookies and had some red licorice soft serve. i dragged heather to get gelato at grom after eating huge bowls of pasta for dinner, and after splitting a pastrami sandwich at katz’s we made one final stop at dean&deluca on our way to the subway so i could buy such things as fancy truffle oil, a tub of duck fat, macarons and a tiny tin of herbes de provence (my mother told me,’ you are the only girl who would come home from new york with duck fat’- thankfully, i know other people who absolutely would do the same).
june, wisconsin- okay, wisconsin is not far. it is a true testament to my love for erin and that she is a good influence on me because i think she has gotten me to do a lot of things i wouldn’t normally do, with one of those things being CAMPING. it is a well known fact that i do not like fun, and i never really got how my friends were all so into sleeping outside on the ground for no reason and when i would say i had never been camping and the idea didn’t appeal to me, i was always met with disbelief and i just shrugged my shoulders like, there’s another thing on the long list of shit that everyone likes but me. so when erin asked if i wanted to go camping and i was for some reason really up for it, i don’t know what had gotten into me other than i like her so much that i will do whatever she asks me. so we reserved our campsite next to the one our other friends had rented. this was the weekend after i’d returned from new york city. a couple days after getting home i started to get itchy bumps on my stomach under my left boob. i became convinced that i had gotten bitten by bedbugs in new york, since i’ve read that that is somewhat of a problem (even though we didn’t stay at a crappy hotel and heather hadn’t seemed to have any bites). we were supposed to leave on friday after work to drive to wisconsin and by then i was totally miserable and itchy, the bumps had spread around my back and down my stomach, and at work i was running to the bathroom to rub benadryl anti-itch cream and some other kind of prescription steroid cream my mom had given me. resolving to just tough it out (but not looking forward to perhaps being bit by mosquitoes, which i never am, much to the chagrin of erin, who is like a flesh buffet for mosquitoes in summer), i picked up erin from the train and off we went, arriving in baraboo a little before dusk and of course while trying to find our way to the campground i got pulled over. the cop was a young guy and i think he was a little enamored of erin and me, or he believed that we really were more lost than we were, because he took my license and came back, telling me that he’d just write me a warning because it is hard for them to ticket illinois drivers (what the what?) and that he saw my license was clean and he wouldn’t want to blemish my record. which turned me into the most smug jerk ever the rest of the night, telling everyone- HA HA! silly cop, i’ve had like a hundred tickets that are not on my record! booooyah. at the campsite we ate bratwurst and string cheese and chocolate chip cookies and they passed around a bottle of jameson and we sat around the fire and i forgot about itching. we went to bed and when we woke up it was raining and freezing, so with no other options we drove into town and got breakfast, stopped at the grocery store and bought fake gold teeth from those machines in the front. we went back to camp and everyone drank vodka and pedialyte, i had some orange juice i think. the rain had abated so we decided to go for a hike around devil’s lake, which was sort of lovely and slow. soon it started raining hard enough that our thin ponchos were not enough to shelter us, so we decided to go to a bar called (i am not kidding) hooty’s. of course. it was gigantic inside and had a colorful elevated disco floor. we hung around for awhile and then the girls all decided we should go back to camp and try to have a shower since we were all pretty grody. so we did, it felt wonderful to wash my red tingling torso and rub a new layer of cream on it. we got dressed and decided to go back to the bar because the rain showed no sign of letting up, and on the way out of the campground i got pulled over. yes, i got pulled over twice in two days. that is truly a personal best (my previous being two tickets in the span of like a month, two years ago). i got pulled over by some kind of park ranger guy and i was like, oh shit. but can this guy even give me a ticket? because we were in the campground the speed limit was an absurd 15 miles per hour, my speed was clocked at 33 (18+ is like my speeding sweet spot, i think). the cop (cop?) wrote me a ticket which was an unbelievable $186. erin and jenny gave me some money, probably because they felt so bad for me and i shook back tears- i was so angry because i had decided to be the designated driver and i knew that the boys who we’d left at the bar were surely drinking and would surely be not sober when they’d drive back later. it didn’t seem fair, of course i know that is not related to me brazenly driving so fast on a road where i knew i shouldn’t, but whatever, i am a baby and i hate being rebuked. so we went back to the bar anyway and i sat and pouted and drank RC and ate cheese curds and mikey, after trying to buy me drinks and me refusing, gave me $20 and ordered me to put it all in the jukebox and choose songs for the rest of the night. which was timely because a gaggle of women had come in, all wearing pink shirts and mom jeans and like, payless heels, ordered shots and screamed like girls gone wild and went and tried to put songs on the jukebox, i don’t even remember what it was but it was probably like bon jovi or the dixie chicks so to teach these ladies a lesson i went and put on some pink floyd (piper at the gates of dawn-era, you know how i do) and the ladies actually LEFT, vanquished. i spent the rest of the evening feeling much better dancing to the small faces and the replacements and the hoodoo gurus. i still didn’t feel well enough to start taking shots of jameson around the campfire later though, so i went and laid down in our tent rather early. it was SO COLD, considering it was june, i remember waving my iphone around trying to get an angle where i could get reception and i looked up the weather and it was in the forties! i had a fitful few hours of sleep until around 3 when i woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. not wanted to disturb erin, i gingerly took my sleeping back to my car and laid in the back seat watching videos on my ipod until the sun came up. feeling unwell, i got up and showered again, hoping it would palliate my rashy condition. i walked up to get a cup of coffee. i was in the most fucked up sleep deprived state, i went down to the lake at 7 am, i didn’t know i was going there but i took a path away from the tents and voices. i like to be awake before everyone, it makes me feel purposeful, one foot in front of the other while everyone else is still asleep. i was the only one there, i had my choice of picnic tables on which to perch and eat my granola bar. in front of this vast lake that i would never want to be sailing on, swimming in, wading through. it was all placid except for a few birds hovering overhead, and i thought about how my dad had explained to me about finding a spiritual feeling with nature, and upon realizing his insignificance in the vast scheme of time and history on earth- a feeling of comfort rather than sadness, he was warmed by simply being part of it. i wouldn’t have to tell anyone about my morning walk, i knew the earth knew and for a small moment my footsteps lingered, imprinted in the dirt and my particles scattered among the grass. i walked along the shore where there were benches, each with a small plaque and inscription. alone, i would never need to be so cynical as in the company of others, i wept in the cold morning air while reading each one, ‘thirteen’ by big star playing sadly in my headphones- all dedications to lost loved ones, people who loved this place, i understand, i love places too and that will be my legacy. i started back towards our site, hoping that someone would be up soon. it was cloudy and seemed that it would be a repeat of the previous day- any kind of activity, swimming, boating, hiking- would probably not sound too appealing. after rousing erin (who woke up and said, upon seeing her disheveled hair, i look like russell brand!), we packed up our tent and made our way out of town, stopping at a mcdonald’s for hangover food, i ate half a quarter pounder, a few sips of coke and threw most of my fries away (that is the only time i ate mcdonald’s this year, which is something i am sort of proud of, although i know it’s not that big of a deal). by the time i got back to my house, i was in so much pain i couldn’t even scratch my stomach, i had to lay in bed with no shirt on and a fan blowing on my chest. by now you are thinking, okay dummy- probably not bed bugs! no, no it was not. the next day i went to the doctor and he told me, after taking one swift look at me, YOU HAVE SHINGLES! aaaaaand there’s nothing we can do for you! so that is the story of how i went camping my first time, with shingles. which ended up being the worst pain i’ve ever felt in my life. and as you can probably guess, i am not in too much of a hurry to go camping again!
june, ohio again- we went to ohio to have a few more days with my cousins before they went back to new zealand. we have to take every moment with them we can get, since they are so far and the financial cost of being together is so great that each time we meet they are completely different people, as i’m sure we also are to them. instead of the first time i met hannah, eight years ago when i sat her next to me on the air mattress in my uncle’s living room and wiped drool from her six-month-old face, she is now too big for me to pick up and throw around, as she loved for me to do when she was smaller. now she comes in the bathroom and asks for me to put makeup on her, and she writes me notes and is just as cheeky as i am. samuel is still tiny enough that he will never remember me, and he is the one who i get to roughhouse with- my legs were sore for days afterwards from lifting him up and bouncing him on my shins. he is a bit of a biter, but he is also tough, as the youngest of four he is understandably most independent, when they were at our house and everyone was outside eating hot dogs i came inside and found him sitting on the floor, gently petting ozzie. and though they say you shouldn’t pick favorites, abigail is undoubtedly mine, she is charmingly impudent and has a constant grin, like her teeth are too much for her mouth to handle. she has flaxen curls that rarely see a comb or brush, she is the most rugged little farm girl, but has a sweet side- when, joking around, her dad ran over to her mom and hoisted her over his shoulder and threw her in a kiddie pool, abigail began to wail uncontrollably and we all gathered around her to find what had spurred her howling, when she could finally compose herself enough to tell us, she said, ‘you aren’t supposed to be mean to each other!’ luke, as the next oldest middle child, is perhaps the most complicated- he is at times soft spoken but will have these bursts of growling or snarling, and he just loves to hit me, no matter how sternly i admonish him for doing so. he got a little ipod shuffle for his birthday and sat silently listening to it, and brought over an earbud for me and i listened to the songs that i knew his grandpa must have put on there for him. in ohio we ate reese’s cup cereal for breakfast and wrestled in the florida room, went to the dayton arboretum and threw footballs around. the whole time their belongings were strewn all over, and i was just reminded of how they would need to pack them all up for the long journey back to a place that’s so far i can’t fathom that i ever even went there. it’s like they were going back to their home in space or something. we left early and unceremoniously, the way i like it- it is too much for me to think about saying goodbye to them, and when we don’t see them i can almost not even bear to answer the phone when they call, those little voices are too much for me, me and those little voices both know how easy it should be for me to just buy a plane ticket, and fly far so i can kiss the faces they come from.
july-august, austin- before i went to austin i made these cds with a bunch of soul music on them, because i knew i would be driving around in the car with my mom a lot and i refuse to listen to the radio and i tried to bring music to which she wouldn’t object. now when i listen to those cds, the songs are stitched so tightly to my time in austin, i hear them and i am driving down lamar, or sitting in traffic on i-35, navigating my way around a town i don’t know, coming home at night in the rental car and it was so warm and the short palm trees in the hotel parking lot and the smell of cigarette smoke. it is making me sick to my stomach just writing it, it is coming back to me to hard that i want to faint. when i got to austin it was 102 degrees and i thought i would melt in the sun, but for some reason every picture i have of myself from this trip my complexion looks clear and dewy, apparently the extreme heat was good for me. i was in austin for nine days and by the end i had a real routine, i thought it was magical because i got up every morning and ran three miles even though i hadn’t run in over six months (though i would of course pay for it the following week) and my mom and i would sit in the pool, contented saying shit like, yes this is much better than working. i never put sunscreen on and got burnt on my right shoulder, i lost one of my favorite cardigans and broke my camera. we ran around the underbelly of the driskill hotel and drank outside, we trespassed and unlike on most of the vacations i take, i never had his anticipatory feeling of missing something i was presently a part of, it didn’t happen until i was sitting at the gate at abia, and we took off and i saw the city under me and i knew that as soon as i got home it would be mere days before i would buy another plane ticket to return.
september, florida- when i was counting off the places i’d been to my dad in a futile effort to show how few trips i’d taken, i completely forgot about this trip, probably because it was so short, tragically so. i only get three weeks of paid vacation and after austin i’d taken off four, so when i decided to go to florida it unfortunately had to be for only a weekend. i have only been to the northern part of florida, and i haven’t been for probably almost ten years. so when i decided to go to visit felix and amanda i told them i wanted the full south florida experience. i still don’t know what that is but if it’s what i got, then i can’t wait to have it again. once of my favorite parts of this year has been getting to know amanda, and becoming good friends with felix again, i feel like i love them more despite of how far they are and how little time i get to spend with them. i flew down to florida on a friday afternoon, i managed to sleep a bit even though i downed an iced mocha before and there were three of the burliest eastern european jugheads in the row in front of me, who talked the whole time and when i’d open my eyes i couldn’t help but stare at one’s hands, they were so tiny compared to the rest of his body. that somehow seemed like a good enough punishment for ruining my flight. when i walked outside of the terminal in fort lauderdale the hot air choked me, i mean i am not an idiot, i know that it is fucking hot and humid in florida, but it was 10pm and i thought it would have subsided a bit. felix and amanda took me the this 24 hour cuban restaurant (uh…24 hour? cuban? restaurant? SOLD) where we ate delicious sandwiches and fried plantains and the most cloying delicious sangria and cafe con leche. i think we stayed up sort of late talking, we never really did anything special, the next day amanda made a delicious breakfast and it was storming so we went to an art museum which was enjoyable but i couldn’t help but feel like i’d rather just be hanging out talking. felix and amanda call each other ‘babe’ like they are michael and jan but it is so endearing and it was great to be around two people whose relationship filled me with hope and love. we spent like four hours in whole foods, amanda and i hovering over the fish counter admiring the offerings like they were precious jewelry, geeking out about different kinds of oils and tasting wine and cheese and pushing felix to the edge with our food-nerdry. we had dinner and then we went to a costume party at their friend’s house where i felt sort of awkward because some dude started talking to me about his DUI (seriously dude? you are gonna mention that to some girl you just met?) and then some other guy said something that irritated me but i can’t even remember what it was now. sorry if i was an asshole to your friends, f&a, i don’t know what gets into me sometimes. we left the party and went downtown to some club that was so loud, somehow i got handed a drink like magic and felix and i had a really lovely conversation and we took a walk over to the water and i was satisfied just to be near the ocean. we went back home and stayed up so late even though amanda had made appointments for us the following morning to get massages (which was completely awesome, obvs). we were listening to a bunch of music that i had brought for felix and then their friend put on some song he made and it reminded me so much of the horrid ‘music’ my ex used to listen to while i was confined to his tiny bedroom and i left the apartment and went outside and gnawed on a chunk of valrhona chocolate i’d gotten at whole foods earlier. i came back in and sat next to amanda and she asked me to rub her hand which i did, me- who won’t so much as hug my parents unless i really have to- but it was a really sweet bonding moment and it’s been a long time since i’ve met a new person that i like as much as her. the next day my flight ended up being delayed for a few hours so we got to spend extra time together, driving around trying to find a place to get sushi before they dropped me off at the airport. i didn’t even notice how sleep deprived i was until i checked in and got through security, i bought coffee and crouched down in a quiet spot and suddenly felt like i had been beaten up. fortunately on my return flight there was also a troupe of loud skanks in the row in front of me so i pragmatically worried about getting enough sleep, rather than how sad i was to once again be leaving beloved friends behind.
november, austin part deux- i went back to austin and shit happened that turned me into a petulant teenager, there was a lot of pouting. but also a lot of vodka and ritas and lone star and dancing to ccr and good food and being an idiot. also of course only i would look forward to going to texas for the weather in november and then in chicago it is a freakishly warm 75 degrees all weekend i’m gone. and in austin it rained the whole day on sunday, the day we planned on getting all you can eat chicken and waffles but instead we got up early (me, after only sleeping about 3 hours) and went to vespaio and i had a cappuccino and a bowl of bread. a basket of bread with tiny housemade croissants and muffins with marmalade and nutella that i needed to soak up the sake i drank the previous night. when earlier, in the foulest of moods, i walked down 12th street to emily’s bar and told the guy at the door my name and he said, ‘you’re the one they said wouldn’t show up!’, and i smiled at him but was secretly mad to know that’s how people think i am. there was some terrible band playing and inside the bar it was that sticky kind of hotness so we went outside and emily asked me if i wanted a drink and i said, water? and she gave me a look of death and shook her head sternly and poured vodka and a little can of cranberry juice into a plastic cup and thrust it toward me. i drank it fast, because even though i just wanted water i knew that i needed to be drunk. i sat at the picnic tables and i wasn’t even cold at all, at midnight in november. like a drink fairy, emily brought me more and i downed them quickly and was soon in that ecstatic drunken state when everything seems like a good idea. which explains how we decided to bail on the bar and drive downtown for private karaoke at 2am. when we got to silhouette they gave us the giantest room because it was so late and i guess the guy working liked our faces. there was eight of us but only really four who were singing. we did ‘landslide’ twice and after emily got a 100% score on ’since u been gone’ we decided to do it again but couldn’t match it. we drank sake and ate edamame out of a styrofoam container and sang other mostly ridiculous stuff and we didn’t get home until five in the morning. that was the second night i only got a few hours of sleep, the first night we went to a show at trailer space and i was so looking forward to seeing harlem and woven bones and i ended up missing almost all the bands. beforehand we went to a liquor store and emily and i bought a small bottle of grey goose and before we drained it i managed to watch sex advice play (sidenote: last summer they ended up sleeping in my basement after we couldn’t find them another place to stay after their show at the gasthaus, and in the morning i made blueberry muffins for everyone and took them to breakfast at colonial so you can see how i have a bit of a maternal feeling for them, additionally the drummer is a character who was christened ‘babyshambles’ by erin because he had wild edward scissorhands-like hair and walked around the whole night with no shirt and jean shorts on like he was some kind of never-nude, and even lindsay came up to me while they were playing and leaned over and yelled in her adorable drawl, babyshambles! which pretty much made my day. but i digress) and the bad sports, during which muffy and the elgin crew showed up which made me so stoked that i went outside and spent the rest of the show talking to them. they left and then we went to someone’s house and hung out more, i don’t have very many memories other than a bunch of dudes trying to talk to me and me being too drunk to be mean to them. we came back to emily’s and hung out on the porch a little bit and listened to the new harlem album and everyone was talking about football and i was nodding off so i went to emily’s house and laid down and went to sleep. when i woke up the next morning the sun was shining and i was buzzing from a wonderful evening and i went to take up danielle and pazi and we all got ready and went for brunch. we sat outside in the sun and i think i had french toast and a bunch of fries and then we went to a farmers market where they had kumquat trees (!!) and then we got hibiscus iced tea and sat on the lawn of the capitol building for hours. later we went to the japanese botanical garden but only for a short time because they were closing. then we went to trudy’s and had margaritas and a million baskets of chips and queso and salsa and i had something called flaquities that i could barely eat once they arrived. we went back to emily’s house and decided to have a drink at the liberty before emily had to go to work, which is when i got pouty because i was shooting the worst pool and i decided i didn’t want to go to this show that i had previously committed to. i went anyway and it ended up being really good, but my pride was still a bit hurt from not getting my way which is perhaps why i was so ornery when the guy told me everyone thought i wouldn’t show up. like i said, it rained all day sunday, it started when we went to max’s for chicken and waffles but as soon as we got there i felt like i needed to have a burger and so that is what i got and i ate the whole thing because i am a professional and i really think it gave me colon cancer, it was so big and greasy. it probably did not help that afterwards we went to central market (my favorite place EVER, it is like heaven on earth for me, i could spend hours there) and i bought assorted food: black garlic, lentils du puy, black sea salt, some raspberries that we ate the next morning, a bottle of something called ‘bitch bubbly’ champagne that i thought was funny, a jar of lemon curd that i stupidly did not put in my checked bag that the TSA dude made me throw away (MASSIVE SADFACE), and some gelato that i ate immediately and it made me feel so full and sick that i guess that was my punishment for forgetting to pay for it. we went to a neat vintage store and then decided to go over to waterloo park to see if we could maybe sneak in to see harlem play. we drove by the stage they were supposed to be playing and, wouldn’t you know it, heard them playing and got all excited and tried to look for a parking spot and of course there wasn’t any. we kept driving in a loop past the stage and hearing them play and finally emily remembered a secret church lot so we parked there and all got out and ran over in the pouring ran and when we got there harlem was done. but we walked right past security over to the backstage, except danielle and pazi weren’t fast enough so by the time they made it the security broad was ice grillin them and they were stuck beyond the barrier. we were getting soaked anyway so we went back to the car. my two consecutive nights of 3 hours of sleep were catching up to me, as well as all the gross food i’d consumed that day, and i started to feel sort of terrible so we went back to emily’s house and i decided to take a nap, and decision i don’t regret even though everyone else managed to go back to fun fun fun fest and sneak in to see danzig, and gza. emily called me to say that king khan was playing an show after so we went back downtown for that, i decided that i was going to have to stay sober, otherwise i would probably not make it back to work on tuesday, so we watched about two minutes of king khan and then decided to go outside because the jerks behind us were yelping like monkeys and dumping beer on us. we went outside and i spotted ian svenonius and freaked out because he is the most dapper. all the weekend’s partying was catching up with us all, and we got home pretty early and it wasn’t too much of a struggle to get up the next morning to bring danielle to an interview appointment she made with some UT professor who never showed but it ended up being fine because it was at a bakery were i got a massive cappuccino and equally massive cinnamon roll. we went back to emily’s and checked out the mexican american cultural center, killing time before meeting a friend of hers for lunch (more mexican food). our bellies full of more queso and tacos, we dropped emily off at home and made our way to the airport, i forgot to mention this whole time i felt pretty miserable, because while the first time i was in austin i was just constantly deliriously happy, this time i knew that i would be nothing but sad afterwards but being sad didn’t wait to come until afterwards. the whole time i felt like i wans’t making the most of it, whatever i thought that entailed. perhaps it was too short of a time. perhaps i was trying too hard all at once to make so many different people happy. but by the time we made it to the airport and they told me i couldn’t carry on my exorbitantly expensive jar of lemon curd, i walked to my gate a good ten feet ahead of my sister and pazi, all sullen and adolescent. i perked up a little bit after i found a ritter sport bar i packed that i forgot about, but even up until now i haven’t been able to shake this feeling of unrest that i felt, and there’s less than three months until i go back, but i want it to be now.
next week i will make my final trip of the year, i will ring in the new year in san diego. i am so glad that i will get to see both oceans in 2009, i am so glad i will get to spend the first few days of 2010 with jenn, whose departure from chicago last summer left a hole in my heart and was one of the major bummers of the year. i can’t wait to have more stories, of california, of christmas trees and the flightpath and obscure 60s nederbeat 45s and lobster tacos. driving home from work today i got it in my head that we should rent a convertible and drive out to the desert and listen to ‘don’t like to me’. a strange fantasy, let’s make it happen.
ps, if you read this whole thing, you get a cookie.
mostly muddled
god, remember when i said that 2009 was going to be the year of absurdity? it has been the exact opposite, the other night while walking through the fucking mall i said out loud: i didn’t think the torpidity of 2008 could ever be surpassed, but i guess i was wrong. i have amassed a lot of stories about bars and plans i didn’t follow through on and people i’ve only met once and become smitten with and moby grape posters on stranger’s walls and paying tolls and buying more plane tickets on credit and sitting on couches next to boys with lovely disheveled curls who will never remember my name. there’s two and a half months left in the year and i am excited about what they will bring, but i still can’t remember the last time i went to a show and danced. my room only has four walls for me to put my head up against, my town only has four bridges for me to jump off of, i need a change.
only once this summer did i go walking on my lunch hour, most of the time it is not enough to simply cruise through suburban banality at 30 miles per hour, i need to steep myself in it, traversing the sidewalks. near my office there was a road work sign and below it a interstate shield for I-90, and i thought, that is low enough that i could take it. i would probably have to get a drill, but i could come back in the middle of the night when there would be no traffic and just unscrew and make off with it. i have covered enough miles on that road, i deserve that sign, like a girl scout badge. i can reach up a few feet.
driving again on that road, suddenly i realized that i have no idea how to say ‘i am lonely’ in german. i can say ‘i’m homesick’, or ‘i’m tired’. i have told the whole world about germany, but not texas. that is fresh, i drove 700 miles over the smallest consequential swath of austin, i memorized the idiosyncrasies of I-35’s exit ramps, when i left i always knew where to turn. i bid adieu, as always, cursing my delicate heart. i climbed over cemetery fences, and came out the other side with black and blue bruises on my inner thighs, wounded kneecaps and gashes on my palms. i bombarded my liver with all manner of libations, smoked a freshly rolled cigarette that wasn’t mine, sang out loud in front of strangers, the things i always do when i am gone. the curse is that i start to believe a place can change everything. i begin to like the mask of grit and aplomb i wear when i’m stumbling around. i started to think, i wonder when garbage day is down here? what would my area code be? i fell asleep smiling, i think, and woke up with bloodshot eyes, so i was told.
and then it hit me: ich bin einsam. i knew it after all.
time and distance, making a wreck out of me
it is really annoying how i feel so intensely for people in a way that they will never reciprocate. i hate that i’m always after such deep bonds, for once i would just like to have something for a split second and forget about it. i sort of did that, it was an exercise, spurred while sitting in stacey’s kitchen and smoking grape cigarillos and being told that i need to meet people. so, already drunk we walked over to the bar and within minutes were invited to a table of young men who seemed to think we were interesting enough. one coaxed me into the photo booth to take pictures and i remember each frame we would switch sides, and all the pictures came out terrible. i carried the strip around with me for a few days afterwards, at first a hilarious reminder of a drunken encounter most young people have in a city, then they became this thing. i had to decide if i would keep it, to be stored in my box of postcards and polaroids and mementos, or to dispose of it somehow. i vacillated back and forth, well maybe i might want to be reminded of this when i am older. or: i will never see this person again, and i am not interested to. ultimately the latter seemed to be the most reasonable, and i decided to throw it away. except i cut it up, into little pieces, like tiny snipped ashes they went, into my office trash bin.
i am often admonished for not giving people chances- well, under the umbrella of ‘you’re mean,’ under which that is intimated. but i can just feel when a person is worth my time, and there is no room for indifference with me. i have gotten really good at acting aloof because underneath it i feel so much love for certain people so acutely, so much that i spend hours of my week just missing people, going through my mental list of things i find endearing about the people i love, cursing separation and the space between us. three weeks ago i flew down to florida for the weekend, and in the weeks leading up to it i would groan to friends about having to go to florida, ugh, isn’t it full of old people and the hogans?, full of disdain the way people who live in an area where for over half the year it is almost unbearable to even be outside have to be. while driving on I-95 with the windows down and perfect evening air whipping through the car, i was asked what i thought of florida, and i had to reply, i guess it is not so bad, and that any place can be great when your friends are there, which is of course a trite sentiment. florida, germany, new zealand, california, texas, i want to bring them all to me right now. if only adoration could buy plane tickets.
i fell in love with the first boy to ever approach my porch, and me sitting down on the front step, my grade schools knees bare for him to see. yet i can’t recall the face of that biblically-named kid who used to come to my house, and once told me he was dressing up like kiss for halloween and i pretended to know what that meant. he would walk around the block several times a day, i thought he was waiting for me to come outside, i didn’t think he would call me the next day with excuses. that was before i had ever touched anyone, back then i didn’t catalog the body parts of boys i found intriguing. i guess, the first hand i ever held: it must have been seventh grade- when i thought being asked to dance meant something. when i would almost miss the bus after school just to catch a glimpse of my first guitar-playing infatuation, to fuel my sanguine daydreams. when did i start expecting the implausible? that mask of hope must have vaporized into the halls of my high school, or maybe when i realized that everyone who told me i was beautiful in seventh grade did it as a pointless joke. i gave up for eight years. in my twenties, i fell in love with the first boy who laid on the driveway and gazed at the stars with me. he had graceful looking fingers, like they should be used for something frivolous rather than pragmatic, like playing the piano instead of holding a steering wheel. i never told him these things when we sat on the concrete and wrote on it with chalk, when it was dark outside. but i knew, i could feel it the first time he grabbed my hand underneath the topsheet. i am so glad it never went farther than that, i have these lucid flashbacks of forearms and earlobes that haven’t been muddled by sorrow or transgression. my heart is still young, i still believe that one day he will come walking up my street and the next day, he will be ruining my life.
