Christmas arrows

Back in the day – when I used to travel a lot – I liked to book flights departing on Christmas. Doing so typically meant cheaper tickets, avoiding the pre- and post-Christmas rush, and complimentary in-flight champagne (thank you British Airways).  Of course, if you happen to celebrate Christmas, this deal’s probably not for you.

Christmas 2009 may have just put a sock in my ‘Fly on Christmas, it’s the Best!’ campaign.

The 289 folks on Delta/Northwest flight 253 likely agree. On December 25, 2009, they went from being regular people travelling on Christmas to being survivors. Had the aspiring suicide bomber Umar Abdulmutallab been successful in his mission, their plane would have exploded over the Atlantic, lock stock and barrel.

Abdulmutallab was reportedly working for Al Qaeda. I wonder why they chose Christmas? Greater chance of lax security? check. Greater publicity because everyone’s at home with the TV on in the background? check. Better targeting because Jews (like me) like to fly on Christmas? check…but it’s not like Muslims refrain from flying on the 25th…half a check.

I find terrorist attacks, averted or otherwise, unfathomable. I can’t believe it happened. Not here. Not there. Admittedly, there is the initial element of post-9/11-era numbness. Repetition numbs. This is not a new idea. Andy Warhol commented on numbness to violence and tragedy by showing image after image of the same car wreck. Lars Von Trier tries to penetrate contemporary numbness by dreaming up unthinkable scenarios and making raw documentary-style films about human interaction that are quite painful to watch. That is his point and purpose, to make his viewers feel deeply, have visceral gut reactions, despite the fact that we are in the era of non-feeling, the era in which we have seen it all and nothing has the power to shock.

That it is possible to feel unfeeling in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack is in itself surprising, worrying, horrifying. But horror and the inability to fathom follow quickly, hand in hand, as soon as I start to think in any real way about what has just happened/has been narrowly escaped.  Once I engage in a genuine effort to fathom, and realise I cannot, cannot put myself in the shoes of the perpetrators, the victims, the victims’ immediate families, cannot grasp the magnitude of what man has done to man, I am truly taken aback.

How is it possible not to be able to fathom something that happens all the time? Because I deem it to be inhuman? But obviously in some sense it is very human. A very human aberration. Because it is happening (or almost happening) all the time. Happening to the point that it numbs. According to the report the White House released reviewing the Christmas day incident, attacks just like it are being averted by the U.S. intelligence community all the time. These attempts, the American public will never be privy to. The intelligence analyst who didn’t catch young Abdulmutallab, has caught umpteen others, and saved hundreds of thousands of people’s lives. How many times have I almost died in a terrorist attack? How many times have I been saved?

We’re living in a war zone. But from this perspective it feels oddly like a fairy-tale, a distant story, because everyone and everything still goes on. Flies, movies, birthdays, parties, gifts, dinners, drinks, dates, work, family. It seems war has always been present, and now is no exception. And the U.S. – safe though it may feel most of the time – is really just another bullseye. And our airplanes the arrows.

Dreaming the Holocaust

There’s nothing like Holocaust dreams to ensure uneasy slumber. I know a recent graduate who wrote her senior thesis on art by Holocaust survivors. She interviewed several. Like most seniors, she was extremely relieved when she turned in the paper, but mostly because its completion promised an end to the Holocaust nightmares it had brought on — frequent, vivid and horrific.

One recent restless night, I was at a train station in the middle of blackened Europe, with my family, hiding out. The platforms on either side of the tracks were lined with storage rooms, about 8′ x 8′, and my family was in one of them. It was cold. My father was elsewhere, trying to get information that would keep us safe. The Nazis were expected any moment – including Hitler himself – they were going to inspect the rooms one by one. The door was locked. The inspectors hadn’t arrived yet, but in my dream, I envisioned the knob rattling from the outside and a gruff decision being made to return to our door at the end of the rounds. I also envisioned guns raised, prepped to pepper the wooden door with bullets sure to kill everything and everyone inside. Coal-darkened, shivering, anxious, I decided to leave the cell in search of my father…

That’s all I remember, but I continued to drift in and out of sleep, dropping and picking up the thread of the story, whose remainder escapes me.

The only dream I can remember from childhood was a Holocaust-related nightmare. In my small attic room with pink-heart wallpaper and pink wall-to-wall carpeting, I woke up terrorized.

My recent dream was characterized more by nagging anxiety than by terror (perhaps because I was aware it was just a dream), but in the morning, I couldn’t for the life of me think what had brought it on. I’d watched Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds a few weeks prior, obviously the source of some of the dream’s imagery, but had there been a more recent trigger?

Back at work the next day, I continued working on a post for an international law blog that I’d started the previous evening. Aha. An Appeals Court in the U.S. rules that it does not have jurisdiction in a lawsuit brought against the Vatican Bank by Holocaust survivors. One trigger, which reminded me of others:

The previous day, a friend spoke about her Netflix-generated recommendation list, and how it had been permanently affected by a trip to Germany a while back, before which she had sought a quick history lesson from a range of WWII films.

I had also read in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section a blurb on the failure to find an adequate name for the first decade of the 21st century. One quickly-discarded suggestion was ‘the era of 9/11.’ As typically happens when I read or hear mention of 9/11, an image of two planes striking two towers and flames and people jumping to their deaths flashes through my mind. Quickly followed by the thought of all the people who lost people, and all the people suffering from 9/11-related medical conditions. Then comes a very genuine disbelief: I can’t believe it actually happened. I can’t believe it actually happened here, during my lifetime. And another, which follows seamlessly: I can’t believe the Holocaust actually happened. Only 65 years ago. All this happens very quickly. And then it’s my stop and I get off the subway, and I haven’t finished reading the page-long article in the Talk of the Town, and I stop thinking about 9/11 and the Holocaust, but I guess my brain doesn’t.

So Inglourious Basterds aside, within the span of a normal average run-of-the-mill day, I’d thought about the Holocaust on three separate occasions, without even realizing consciously at the end of the day, that I’d thought about it at all. Maybe ‘Never Forget’ is implicit – you may forget, but your brain won’t.

But if dreams are what the PBS Nova documentary I recently watched say they are, during non-REM sleep, they’re an attempt to problem solve in one’s present/current waking life, and during REM sleep, they’re an attempt to problem solve in fictitious scenarios that you anticipate having to deal with in the future. Obviously the dreams need not be representational, but is another Holocaust really such a stretch? (Think 9/11, Iran, Al Qaeda). Was I practicing for what the future may bring?

A few words on Inglourious Basterds. I think all the Jews watching that film thought: 1. A Jew would never have made this movie. 2. But if feels kinda good to watch it.

I’ll add: 3. How do I get my Holocaust dreams to feel like that? 4. I bet some ridiculously ignorant people left that movie thinking that’s how it all went down.

My inner child

I recently attended a wedding in Colombia and had my hair blown straight for the occasion. In broken Spanish, I managed to express that I wanted the ends to curve inward, but my successful communication of this request was met by disbelieving eyes and a certain frown.

But that will make you look too serious – that’s how old women get their hair done! protested the hairdresser.

But I am a serious person, I countered. Check out my glasses…(They scream librarian).

All the more reason for the hair to curve outward. It’s young and fun, the hairdresser said with decisive finality.

I shrugged my shoulders ok — I didn’t really mind either way. But I did start wondering about my seriousness.

When I was 23 and brand new to my first serious job, everyone had me pegged at 28, 29, 30. Which I suppose has its benefits if you’re trying to give the impression that you know what you’re doing! But I began to wonder if the 5+ years had to do with the onset of premature wrinkling. I was assured not. It’s just that you’re so serious and mature. Ugh for fun. But great for work.

Now that I’m much closer to 28 than 23, and have re-embraced roller coasters, dancing in the gush of a burst fire hydrant at 4am and trying scary things like horseback riding for the first time without much guidance (I was thrown off but have not been deterred from getting back on)…no one’s telling me I look like 21,22,23

My mother tells me I was a serious child. Very responsible, thoughtful, informative, exacting. But she also tells me I had a happy go lucky joie de vivre. The two descriptions don’t seem to go hand in hand, which works out ok, as I’m a gemini and expected to have opposing personality traits.

On this front, I haven’t changed much. Infinitely serious person. With a very playful streak. But if anything, I’ve become less serious and exacting with time, age, infinite wisdom. Does that mean my inner child’s the serious one?!

I see bed bugs…

everywhere.

I guess the folks over at the mattress cover company didn’t think the subway ads were sufficient:

Walking west on 23rd, 12/12/2009

3-month hiatus

I’ll tell you what happened. Every New Yorker’s nightmare. Bed bugs. Also known as (per my roommate’s metaphoric genius) house herpes.

Not that it’s taken 3 months to rid my apartment of them, but the experience left me traumatized. I knew I had to write a ‘good riddance to the bugs’ post, but my PBBTSS (post bed bug traumatic stress syndrome) seems to have restricted me from writing about the critters…and just about everything else!

So this is it. The time has come to take the bugs by the antennae, and get over this writer’s (that would be me) block. I’m not a very superstitious person, but somehow a fear of jinxing myself and securing the nightmare’s recurrence turned into somewhat of an insurmountable obstacle to regular blogging. Of course, I should have just skipped the bug post instead of allowing my blog to stagnate, but I just couldn’t. The bug post had to be the gateway. Inexplicably.

But now I’m avoiding the subject again. Basically, this post is about making it. Making it and moving on. Making it through my first New York City summer. Which doesn’t seem very difficult at all (given the good weather, free events, great vibe), until you are covered with very itchy bites despite having crossed the path of very few mosquitoes.

One dreaded Thursday evening mid-August, a professional exterminator inspection confirmed my fears, and I spent Friday night, Saturday and Sunday washing and tumble drying everything fabric in my apartment (clothes, curtains, canvas bags, cushion covers) and inspecting/bagging/labeling everything else.

The exterminators came Monday and $700 (2x mattress bed bug proof cover, 2x box spring bed bug proof cover, 1 extermination) and a couple of follow-up inspections later, we were supposedly in the clear, but certainly not psychologically. For weeks after I had the phantom sensation that bugs were crawling all over me, all the time. My roommate suffered sleepless nights until she sprinkled a homeopathic remedy all over the apartment in an attempt to regain her sanity and slumber.

The good news? If you rent in NYC, your landlord’s responsible for covering the cost of the extermination (though not the mattress covers). The bad news? I’m already starting to get a little itchy penning this post!

I still cross to the other side of the street when I see a discarded mattress on the sidewalk. (You all saw ‘The Bug Apple’ Metro cover this fall.) And I will never shop in a vintage clothing story again. But with hope, this post will do away with the bug writing hex, as I’m itching to write about regaining childhood fearlessness, the jaded traveler, online dating, the magic of marge and hibernating tattoos. Fingers crossed!

My TV debut

When I visited Mumbai for a weekend in the summer of 2007, I did so with the hope — albeit slim — of being picked up at the Gate of India by a Bollywood lackey casting extras. Though I was asked to be the token whitey in a few Indian family pics (standard occurrence when visiting monuments in India), I sadly did not get whisked off to the extravagant sets of Bollywood and lasting fame.

But two years later, I finally got my go as an extra…on the set of the last episode of the first season of ”Bartender Wars” – coming soon to the Fine Living Network.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. What’s the point of being an extra if no one’s ever going to see the show? Fine Living Network? Nope, I hadn’t heard of it either.

So the point? [a] to get behind the scenes and see how it’s done, and [b] free drinks. all night. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?

Our filming time was 7:30 to 10pm. We showed up right on time, but the crew was running late and we didn’t actually get into the holding dock (bare bones bar, snacks: cheese balls, almonds, some sort of strange dorito mix and hot dogs…mmm…) until 9ish. An hour and some later, our numbers finally get called and we’re ushered up the stairs and onto the bar set. Light, cameras, action!

A slim, tanned girl in a slinky white dress and fashion-conscious cork wedges spins the bartender wars challenge wheel, and we all cheer (as instructed) for a pre-determined outcome. Her flash of a smile is awkward but the show moves right along (she’s only a pretty extra, can’t expect perfection).

Take-aways: It’s all fake. The female bartenders’ boobs included. Ok fine, that you already knew. But the extras are actually drunk. You can’t fake that sh*t. You will be made to do stupid stuff. Especially if you’re an extra in a show devoted to drinking. We all (that would be six of us, sitting on stools lining the bar) were conned into doing lemon drop shots whose main (and by main I mean only) ingredient was pickle juice. (It’s ok, we’re New Yorkers, we heart pickle juice, but we did feel rather silly falling for Lisa’s trickery…first a round of jack to mask that briny-sour pickly smell).

When not competing, Lisa mixes at the W Hotel in Hoboken and apparently makes killer Mango mojitos. W Hotel patrons who favor their drinks ‘dirty,’ beware.

Missed connections

Everyone’s got their ‘I need a 10-minute break’ websites. The New York Times, Gawker, ESPN, the BBC, Facebook, Gothamist. The list, of course, goes on. One of my personal internet-abetted procrastination favorites used to be Craigslist NYC missed connections…until someone emphasized the ‘missed’ bit.

For the most part, the posts are really sweet (e.g. Brunette with parrot umbrella, reading Anna Karenina on the downtown 6 Saturday night; we had a moment – want to meet for coffee? or Indian girl with sweet smile at the laundromat on the corner of Meserole and Leonard last Sunday…your keds were soaked from the rain). The posts strike a chord with me because they embody what I’ve always imagined must be the most romantic way to meet a lover: Someone singles you out of a crowd when you’re not doing anything out of the ordinary (just reading a book on the subway, say), and thinks to him/herself There’s something special about that one.

In the ‘most romantic way to meet a lover’ scenario, though, the person doing the noticing has the balls to approach the one he’s singled out as special, and make a move. Missed connections is all about dropping the ball, meeting your ‘love at first sight,’ and letting her (or him) slip through your fingers. Which is, admittedly, rather deflating. The posts I had originally scrolled through with a smile on my face, because they suggested that my ‘most romantic way to meet a lover’ scenario actually happens, are in actuality indicative of just the opposite.

Because, who, in reality, scrolls through missed connections searching for a reference to themselves? A friend’s friend told me a little while ago of a friend who had had a missed connection with a TV repair man, found him via Craigslist missed connections, and proceeded to engage him in a casual encounter. Not exactly the romantic lover scenario I had been envisioning, nor terribly reliable…everyone knows someone who knows someone who…

The good news is that – and this I share with utmost confidence in my sources – sometimes, on rare occasion, the subway connection ball does not get dropped.

Two female friends have picked up men on the subway – for one, the connection was speaking French; for the other, I forget, but later that night, a connection was certainly made

More recently, a male friend was approached while he was on the platform waiting for the train, just standing there with his earphones in. He’s a bit spacey at the best of times, so I can imagine that when he’s waiting for the subway on his own, tunes in, he’s probably oblivious to the world.

So he’s waiting for the train, and a girl taps him on the shoulder, out of his underground reverie, and he takes out his earphones and turns to her. She’s noticed him around, she says, at school (graduate) and just wanted to say hello. He says oh, hey, nice to meet you. They chat for a bit, and he’s about to bid her farewell, when she decides she has the balls to say, “Do you mind if I call you sometime? Can I have your number?”

He’s shocked – not because he doesn’t get any – but because he’s being picked up on the subway. By a random girl. Who noticed him when he was just standing there, doing nothing out of the ordinary. He’s flattered and impressed – the girl’s got guts. He doesn’t think he’s interested, but he does meet up with her for drink. He seemed to think she had earned it.

None of these stories are perfect — no subway pick ups turned happily ever afters yet, but it’s a start. If you — lusting after the same guy you’ve been noticing on your commute for the last three years — don’t say anything, it’s just another missed connection (writes the girl who would never ever approach a random guy on the subway).

Point being though, missed connections is no longer on my procrastination list. I’ve found it’s preferable to ask folks about their subway pick up stories rather than read all the subway i-wanted-to-pick-you-up-but-didn’t stories that go down in this town.

(Mis)placed lettuce

Some people are talking about the two-part Siberia piece in The New Yorker. The vast tract of land isn’t exactly on the must-see list of the average New Yorker, nor the particularly well-travelled one, but the tale of someone who’s traversed it from one end to the other certainly appeals to those curious about the unknown.

I would like to point out, however, that in the various conversations I’ve had and overheard about the two-part Siberia article (clearly ‘various’ is a poetic exaggeration employed here for effect), no one seems to have found the inclusion of this photograph somewhat incongruous. Not exactly offensive, but nonetheless, a little out of place in a story of a harsh, uninviting land, rich both in minerals and refuse.

A little too Austin Powers, if you will.

I’m genuinely surprised that none of the editors chose to nix it; I have to assume someone thought to. Perhaps they figured the exact size and positioning of the icebergs would go unnoticed given the engaging text. Or that readers would read this photo as they do the cartoons – quick glance, inside smile, back to the meaty body of text.

Folks, am I reading too much into this? Surely not. It’s just too obvious to be unintentional…

Keeping it together

About six years ago, I went to Six Flags St. Louis with a friend who adores roller coasters. Growing up, she used to pour over roller coaster books and memorize roller coaster stats. She would spend time thinking about whether, physics-wise, it was more thrilling for one’s body to sit in the very first car or the very last. I like roller coasters ok, but I’m definitely not into sitting in the most thrilling car, whichever it happens to be.

As a kid, it was all about bravado. I remember pretending I wasn’t scared at all because I didn’t want to be the type of girl who would be. I genuinely did want to go on the rides — for the rush, the unfettered screaming (as the only girl born between two brothers I was exceptionally good at screaming, a skill my parents could have done without) — but I was still terrified, although I never let on. I reasoned, if I don’t like it, all I have to do is shut my eyes real tight and it’ll be over in 2 seconds anyhow.

Not surprisingly, by the time I got to Six Flags St. Louis, my roller coaster approach had changed. Not only had my risk radar made some progress over the course of a decade, but I’d spent part of a summer internship at Child magazine researching the U.S.’s shocking lack of standard safety regulations for amusement parks. Sure, the ride could be over in 2 seconds, but it could also all be over in 2 seconds. The odds of dying on the highway on the way over were heaps greater, but theme park accidents did happen. I’d done the research.

As a result, what I enjoyed most about our big day out at Six Flags — well maybe after the pirate boat and mint skittles — was the old-school photo booth.  The traditional ones were hard to find at the time, at least in Manhattan. Urban Outfitters had a sticker booth (think your friends on a shiny adhesive surrounded by floating hello kitty heads) and passport photo booths spat out a square of 4 (all identical) instead of a progressive strip. That evening, my roller-coaster crazy friend and I drove home, dodging 18-wheelers, very pleased with our take-away: a little souvenir strip of four happy, sepia-toned snaps, somewhat frizzy hair/sun-blushed cheeks, to remind us of the day’s amusements. A brief, but satisfying, 4-frame story.

We thought about snipping the strip in two (we weren’t roommates at the time and would be heading to different cities post-graduation), but after much deliberation, decided against it. Not quite on the level of wise King Solomon’s maternity test, but as a baby cut in two is no baby, a 4-photo strip cut in two is well, no 4-photo strip.

In a sweet, spontaneous (and soon forgotten) gesture between two good college friends, we agreed to pass the souvenir back and forth — we assumed perhaps once a year, once every couple of years, depending on how often our paths would cross after St. Louis ceased to be the physical anchor of our friendship. The baton may have exchanged hands once or twice — I remember keeping it tucked safely inside a red notebook for a while. But I don’t believe it’s still in my possession. In any case, it hasn’t swapped hands in years — not for lack of opportunities; there have been meet ups in Italy, the Greek Islands, Thailand and more recently — Boston and New York.

To be honest, I’d forgotten the photo souvenir (along with the day it recalled) even existed until last weekend, when, after roasting my very first whole chicken for friends willing to indulge me in my quest for test subjects, we headed over to Union Pool for après-dinner drinks. Time flew by a rather intricate conversation about dreams, and before we knew it, we were all being herded out of the courtyard, towards the exit. We, however, slipped into the old-school photo booth, typically obstructed by a long line of bathroom goers. It bought us an extra 4 minutes at Union Pool (1 for maneuvering us all in, inserting money and clicking, and 3 waiting for the pics). When, after what seemed an eternity, with every Union Pool employee asking us to leave at least once, we had the photos in hand — I remembered!

Where was that strip from Six Flags?

I immediately suggested a similar rotation arrangement (we all live in Williamsburg/Greenpoint, so no probs), but Meredith – a woman of the times – had us over for a 4am nightcap, scanned the strip and voilà, now we all have it. Instant gratification. No sharing, no waiting. But also, unlike the Six Flags strip, something that will likely never come up again in conversation.

Do you have it?

Do I have it?

That was a fun night.

A photo of a baby is no baby, but a photo of a photo, well it’s still a photo. But is a clone of a baby still the same baby? I do realize this parallel continues to be absurd, but my point is that scan or no scan, there’s still value to the rotation. To the sharing of tangible items (items in the cloud don’t count even if you can print them out) that come to represent experiences. I didn’t take any photos of my first roast chicken dinner (a veritable rite of passage in my family – check out the pic my brother took of his), so these are effectively, my chicken dinner pics. And my apartment definitely wants some face time with the originals.

Same with the Six Flags ones. Laura, where are they? It’s my turn. That was a fun day. And I am still a little apprehensive about roller coasters.

Dog-eared

Some folks always read with a pen at the ready to underline, circle, square and star, scribble notes in the column, question mark and even cross out. Not me. But every so often I do dog-ear (tsk, tsk).

Some folks record the especially moving/touching/thought-provoking/well put phrases in hardcover notebooks. Others type them up, print them out and tack them to their bedside walls. I (when I remember to) write them here:

Edith Wharton was born in the century before last; she spent much of her youth in Europe and then her teen/young adult years in New York. As an adult she heads dreamily back to Europe, but ultimately returns home to the United States. I don’t know about my ‘ultimately’ yet, but thus far our trajectories (insofar as continental geographic location is concerned) are similar. It turns out, so were our feelings about returning to the U.S. as adults – strikingly similar:

“In 1896, she spoke with resignation of their planned return to the United States: ‘Time was, as you know, when I should have been glad to make my home in Europe, but it was made in America, & I have fitted myself into it tant bien que mal, & taken its creases more than I realized until I left it again.”

(From “The Age of Innocence” by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker)

Another gem that struck me as reassurance to anyone trying to figure out what is up with guys (er, besides that) in their 20s and early 30s – ok, fine, all the 30s, and maybe some of their 40s too:

“‘It’s interesting when you have boys,’ she said. ‘Because boys are so sweet. Little boys, they are just great, and it was completely fascinating to me to see that. But the problem with men is not whether they’re nice or not. It’s that it’s hard for them at a certain point in their lives to stay true. It just is. It’s almost not their fault. But it feels like it’s their fault if you are involved with any of them. And then you get older and almost all of the men I know just seem as sweet as the boys I once had.’”

(From “Nora Knows What to Do” by Ariel Levy, The New Yorker)

For a woman whose 1st husband cheated on her when she was 7 months pregnant with their second child, Nora Ephron really seems to have made her peace. Guess there’s been a lot of public venting. I’m not crazy about the fact that she (almost) lets them off the hook, but I like the cyclicality. There’s more depth here (not to mention uplift) than the standard “Men are pigs!”