NYC, what is it about you?

Oh, the food, always the food!

For instance, skate in vanilla sauce, over seared greens at the Porcupine:





…followed by a pastry selection. This is not easy. Too many choices along Bleecker Street.






This will take care of the chocolate urge:



The skies clear, it’s Sunday, park day. So many little tykes, especially in and around the Zoo. Their food choices steer toward drippy, creamy cones and bars.



Still others take to the boats, looking for calm waters and quiet moments.



Outside the park, at the Museum of Natural History, an exhibit celebrating my blog:



Oh fine. I admit it. I visit Zabar’s with the same enthusiasm that others reserve for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Just the blue cheeses alone fill a photo.



I wanted to zoom in on the varieties of smoked salmon, but they insisted that the photo was about them.



More food thoughts: two randomly selected judges sample bagels from the “best bagel store in the world.” Great stuff. No complaints.





Ending the afternoon with a slice of the real thing: thin crust, New York pizza.



I am on the train now, heading for New Haven for a dinner with daughters. Sunday meals should never be eaten alone.

why would anyone not be drawn to New York?

I have not time to write now... I'm here with a small bunch of Madison and ex-Madison bloggers and they, especially one of them, the one who Intends To See Everything, keep me on the run.

I did take some photos and I am hoping that they will suffice for now. It's Saturday, a slow day for blog reading anyway.

My 24 hours, in a nutshell:


there's always something slightly off about New York



and just the other day, while still in Madison, I reflected on how steamy the city is,



it seems to rise from many sources and it envelops you, so that you float with it, reaching new heights of steaminess,



a city of reflections,



and maybe it's the Central Park lakes that make even ex-Madisonians feel right at home,



me, I love the food (in the Village: black pasta with pink fish)...



it's worth pausing a diet for a slice of New York cheesecake;



after that meal, she swore she would never leave the city



others are really drawn to the sights,



indeed, there are many sights...



me, I cannot pass on a latte, at Soho's Cafe Cafe



Oscar pointed out that JFW and Ocean appeared, well, sort of similar today;



in the early evening we finally reached the tip of the island. the breeze was magnificent. a New York haze, a low sun, the once busy harbor quiet now.

why would anyone go to New Jersey?

...to get to the other side.
of the river.

Last night, I watched the pink tones of a sunset outside my Madison loft window.





Today, I took the scenic road from Newark Airport to NYC. (Yes, it's the Empire State Building nicely framed by NJ industrial parks.)




When I was young and lived in New York, there were only two reasons to ever go to New Jersey: to splash in the bahtub of a pool with a million other kids at Bare Mountain on a hot Sunday, or to hold your nose and zip on the NJ Turnpike to D.C. I never ever went to New Jersey for any other reason that I remember. I crossed the river to Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, Connecticut -- any place, any place at all. But not New Jersey. Somehow Manhattanites had a thing for that state.

So it is no surprise that I have never in my life flown into Newark.

Today I am declaring a new affection: Newark, I love you. While planes are circling over troubled (weather-wise) La Guardia, I came in smoothly, early, without a glitch.

Oh, New York, New York! So crowded, muggy, loud. It's great to be here.

mai oh mai

Or: how to succeed in business without really trying.

If you haven’t guessed it as yet, I have been somewhat overwhelmed these past weeks. Work, packing, moving, clearing the house – all have taken their toll.

So I tell myself: oh, what the hell. Let me give my nonfitting clothes over to Mai. Mai will put up my pants, take in the tuck where a tuck is needed, she will do it well and she will do it cheaply. She has saved me before when my inclination was not to sew.

On Monday I take things to her little shop around the corner from where I once lived.

You have to be careful how you approach Mai. She has a million ongoing sewing projects. Like anyone on this planet, she does not like being told what to do. What you want to avoid saying is: please fix these by the end of the week. Instead, you say: is it okay if I ask you something? Then she will look at you with great doubt spreading to every pore of her beautiful face and you can push forward with your request. And tell her that you will amply reward her for her efforts. Then take out the bills and lay them down flat on the counter.

It’s worked before.

We agreed on Wednesday as the pick up day.

On Wednesday, I come by in the late afternoon. It’s dark inside. No sign of life. She must have closed earlier than her usual early hour. Okay, tomorrow I will come even earlier.

And so today I brush off students, write the most nonsensical, hasty emails on the planet and head west.

By now, people have pasted angry notes on the door begging for their clothes. I thought of the trip I am going on tomorrow at dawn and of my teaching needs for the next week. What good are angry notes when she is not there to read them? Calling her landlord proves futile. He notes that she had disconnected (temporarily? permanently?) her phone and his lawyer told him to stay out of her store (thank you, random and unhelpful lawyer).

Inside, her store appears even darker than before. And yet, I can see the parrot that keeps her company all day long (it flies loose, and I always check my clothes to make sure somewhere in their folds their isn’t a bit of parrot dropping). She may have gone off and left our clothes behind, but she would not have abandoned her parrot.

Or would she have?

I drive home wondering if a daily dose of jeans for the next three weeks would be noticed.

I sit down to write a post about Mai – about how beautiful she is and how I wished her beauty would make its way to Mai’s Tailor shop and open the door for me to retrieve all that I hold precious.

The phone rings. It is Mai.

Nina? I’m in the shop. Do you want your clothes? I am here for only five minutes.

I live downtown, no longer around the corner, but I promise her I’ll be there in ten. And I am, give or take ten additional ones.

She is standing there in the dark shop, not wishing to be seen by anyone, holding onto my clothes.

Are you sick? I ask her.
I thought I was. I do have an appointment in a few minutes.

I feel bad that I am keeping her from the doctor that she so needs to see. And yet, I note that she is standing in a full length black dress with sparkles sewn in throughout. Her hair is down around her shoulders. She is wearing make up. Her beauty, though no longer youthful, is especially palpable.

I stare at her unrevealing, unflustered face. Thank you, Mai. I tell her. You saved me.

She smiles. It is the only time I have ever seen her smile.

…a decent home

Michele Norris talked to some of the children displaced by hurricane Katrina and fragments of these interviews aired on NPR today.

I have often felt that living in the States induces an unmanageable amount of guilt for people like me. I never felt that way in Poland. At the time that I was growing up there, I witnessed levels of poverty as well as privilege that were nothing I would likely ever encounter in my own life. But this was rare. The vast majority of families were sort of in the same heap together and if it wasn’t a fantastically inspiring heap, it was, nonetheless, a heap.

Then I came here. I set myself up in a Fifth Avenue apartment in NY (the home of my employer – I was a nanny) and I attend a private college (paid for by my employer). And I kept moving up in life, so that by the time I settled in Madison, I found myself living among doctors and lawyers in a suburb where the yard was so big that it was beyond my ability to tend to it.

And when, for reasons of economics (but also preference), when I switched homes, I moved this week to a downtown loft that is a rental unit, but one with nifty track lighting and my very own washer and dryer.

So that when I hear a young girl on the radio, talking about what she feverishly hopes for herself fifteen years from now and she answers simply: a decent home, my heart breaks.

if these boots aren’t made for walking, then I’ll chuck them. the walking stays.

Although I have not yet come to class late (I am talking about my morning Tuesday/Thursday class) I pretty much come in at 9:30 and 59 seconds (it is scheduled for 9:30).

It’s not that I sleep in. On work days I am up and moving so early as to be able to watch with total fascination the night beat squad car meandering in the back lot, right by the railroad tracks. It appears to always finish the night in the same spot, causing me to wonder if this is a high-crime area between 4 and 6 a.m. or whether it’s just a good spot to tune out and doze off.

My near-late arrivals have more to do with the walk to work. It’s getting longer. I used to be able to pull it off in 22 minutes, door to door. Now I am closer to 40.

What’s happening?

1. It's the shoes, damn it. I am discovering that my teaching shoes are not walking shoes. I have never had to walk in them before! Yesterday I paused right there in front of Fraboni’s Deli, took off my shoes and contemplated sending a nasty letter to the manufacturer about the folly of using plastic lining in sensitive areas. Cars passed, people gawked, I stood with a shoe in each hand thinking evil thoughts about women’s footwear. Eventually I moved on, but it took time to motivate myself.

2. Then, there’s my utter fascination with the things I pass. When you drive, you are locked in your own little bubble of thoughts, occasionally waking yourself to maneuver the car in some assertive way to show your dominance and control. When you walk through a city you notice the world.

In Madison, that world seems to be all about construction right now. When you drive, construction is more than a headache. It is a nightmare. When you walk, it becomes all about people building things.

In New York, street corners are forever steaming and drills are pounding at the flawed pavements. The racket is fantastic! It adds bounce to your step.

Turns out that in Madison, we have the steam and the racket too.



And we have the crane invasion:




And of course, I cannot resist it all. I stop, I watch, I take an occasional photo.

I know I have to speed up or leave earlier. I know that. I’m not even going to mention my walk home, via State Street, then veering off into the Bassett belly: it’s even longer, with double points awarded for fascinating structures and scenes to consider along the way. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. So what will happen when I do? I wont make it home until 4 am, at which point I can stop and chat to the cop in the squad car.

Don’t wait a minute more, downtown

I don’t think there has been a single time when I have mentioned (to suburban friends) that I am moving downtown that I haven’t gotten some version of the “I’m so jealous” response. I truly believe our cities have been abandoned by hoards of reluctant sheep following some powerful force that drags them from vibrant urban communities to the stripped of any heart and soul suburbs.

And I am not even talking about leaving behind the downtowns of Manhattan or Chicago. I’ve moved to Madison’s downtown which, forgive me, little city, is hardly the epicenter of urban buzz. But it does have a buzz.

It’s for the kids that we leave all this, isn’t it? We buy houses with gardens and we let the children make loud noises because there are no neighbors above or below. We learn how to tend to tomatoes and flowerbeds and the kids go to proximate schools and have neighborhood friends to kick a ball around. They splash in wading pools while their dads grill meats on Sunday evenings.

Until we find that we need a new roof and the tomatoes rot and the kids have to drive everywhere and you hope they avoid intoxicated friends who incidentally are also horrid drivers. One year we take a long hard look at the four walls that we call home and we find that they’re, well, crumbling. And at night it’s quiet. Very quiet. Six-feet-under-type of quiet.

Downtown. Walking with crowds again, to and from work, looking at store windows, smelling not the roses but the coffee. Stopping to drink it. Getting home late, waking early. Watching construction workers leave their trucks in a vacant lot and move with their huge lunch coolers toward the newest condo project a few blocks up.

I was in my mid twenties before I set foot in a suburban house. Honest – I had never been in one before.

I’ll never forget the feeling when I woke up for the first time in our own house. One small daughter, another on the way, two cherry trees planted by me, next to each other, a yard where I put in coreopsis and campanulas (yellow and blue). It seemed right then. Almost like playing house.

Downtown. Bright lights and promises.

ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies

I am at the wine store, taking back a couple of bottles of booze that I had in the house, ones that were never used and will never be opened. A random bottle of scotch (I am so much not a scotch drinker). Gin from unmade martinis. Recent acquisitions, made in anticipation of neighborhood gatherings that were to combat somber times and bleak winter nights.

Returning unused alcohol has this wonderful effect of clearing irrelevant nonessentials and restoring nice sums of cash into your wallet. It's very forward looking. It’s as if you’re saying – damn it, I am not all about martinis you know. I am selective! That was then, this is now. It's summer edging into fall. Different times, different moods.

Joe, the owner (yes yes, it’s Steve’s Liquor Store) is an old friend of mine. We have known each other for almost twenty years. He looks at me, my handful of bottles, my receipts and says: you know I have been away in France for a while. So what’s going on in your life anyway?

Don’t you just hate this? Three people behind you in line (listening?) and you get asked “what’s happening in your life?”

He gets my thirty second version of the events of the year (as, therefore, do the others in line; it's awfully quiet at Steve's Liquor). I suppose there is some pleasure in crafting a response that leaves the person gaping and scrambling for an appropriate reply. People are used to "nothing much" and "fine, how about you."

I remember a year ago when I ran into Joe and he described for me the ordeal of taking his aging father to get retested for a driver's license. Life cycle events, marking the passage of time. Sometimes the events are tame, other times -- not so much.

how is it that my life’s dilemmas are best summarized in an ad for an automobile?

One of the last things that I removed in the course of packing up bedroom things yesterday was a magazine ad, pasted to the inside of the closet door.

I don’t remember who put it there – probably me. At the bottom some other soul stuck a label with my name on it, as if it wasn’t clear already that the captions were all about me.

I took it to the loft with the intention of putting it again on the inside of a closet door. Unfortunately, all loft closet doors are of the sliding type. Is this fate telling me that I have resolved these particular dilemmas and should not ponder them anymore?

Fly me to the moon…

Last night, neighbors – or, I suppose I should call them now old neighborhood friends – brought out a large telescope and we took turns pouring beers from a keg and picking out craters from the orange half-circle, plainly visible, awesome.

…and let me play among the stars…

I am not much of a star gazer, but every once in a while I pause and take note.

A year ago I sat with these same people outside and we talked politics and religion late into the night. It was the year for that. For me, it was a year for a lot more, too.

…let me know what spring is like
on Jupiter and Mars…

People who know me well understand the significance of spring for me. This year, though, spring was only in one way a standout season. The other seasons would have to compete for being equally loaded and of course, summer had the highest drama quotient, ending finally with this week’s hauling of the remains of my suburban life over downtown.

In the mornings and afternoons, yesterday and today, my two pillars of moving support, Susanne and Sarah worked their garage sale magic efficiently, optimistically. Today we finished by handing over to two last stragglers car-loads of stuff for free. The older woman especially could not believe her luck: china, silver, even my never-worn gardening straw hat (I do not know what possessed me – I am so not the gardening straw hat type) – all suddenly hers. Antique plates and silver dishes, packed gently into cardboard boxes, appreciated again.

…In other words, hold my hand…

Friends. How would this week have looked without them?

What stands out for me about yesterday and today was the laughter – S & S are caustically funny and an afternoon latte at MoFools with bloggers was equally tearful – of the mirth type.

At dusk, Madeline and I did our evening drink & laugh routine as we caught up at Crave, and the day ended with the outdoor moon-gazing & beer sloshing -- a good and solid reprieve from hauling boxes.

Ah, the move, the move.

I’m done recounting the details of it.I know I’ve been tediously obsessive in my posts here. To be honest, I kinda had fun sifting and sorting through the events surrounding the transfer of residences. But it’s just about done now. Time to move Ocean forward.

Just let me say one more thing. My back is completely killing me. The only people who have seen and handled as many cardboard boxes as I have this month, work for places like Two Men and a Truck. Who can point me to someone with solid back rubbing skills?

pensive

Why did I once have a framed page from Gleason’s Pictorial? It was snatched at the garage sale today by someone who wanted to give it to a friend whose last name was Gleason.

Why did virtually everyone at the sale examine the plaster heads of Polish kings, decorative and very fanciful, not a little weird, inherited from my family?

Why did people come at 6:45 to a garage sale that officially began at 7? (S & S bailed me out yet again by showing up in time to let them in.)

Why is it so damn hot today? Why don’t I remember people’s names? Why was this past year so turbulent? Why is the house still not empty of garbage? Why do people say and do the things they say and do and not say and do other things?

A calm day, a pensive day, a Saturday... with several terrific daytime lattes and evening even-more-pensiveness-inducing beverages. More later, I'm late.

Why am I always late these days?

Morning becomes electric

Garage sale, at the unpopular time of 3 to 6! Today!
Not.
The newspaper ad did not appear yesterday, nor today.

Why didn’t you run my ad? You sent me an email confirmation!
Did you open the email from us? It said we needed credit card confirmation.
Crap.

New garage sale times: Saturday 7 – 11 and Sunday 8 – 12.
Come and take it all! Price greatly reduced: I pay, you take.

My Two Men and a Truck are a dream. FUW*s: No problem!
It takes them only two hours to clear out the house.




Favorite moment of the morning (and the commencement of the Ocean author's upswing): when Susanne D comes and lays out this in front of me:

food, latte, Onion


Least favorite moment: it’s a toss up: when I take a hammer to my daughter’s bed to get it out of the room, or when I leave Susanne and Sarah to deal with the mountain of rejects and garbage and garage sale items while I follow the truckers to our various destinations.

Second favorite moment: when I return to the house and find that S & S have single-handedly cleared most of the recyclables and refuse out of the house.

Most communal moment: when the neighborhood kids and their parents converge in my driveway and look through my loot, buying some of it and just enjoying playing around. In truth, they are the best neighbors ever. Hard to leave you guys, really hard.

Susanne and two of my favorite boys on the block


Julie and Anne (sob; oh I do hate leaving you)

The surprising moment of the day: a stranger comes over, looks at the plant “shelves” that I have loved (from Smith Hawken, for those who value snot appeal), goes away, comes back, buys all three and says “good bye and good luck, Ocean.” Whaaaat? [Turns out he is a reader (thus he would know about the garage sale even as the rest of the world does not) – a regular one at that (hi again). He promised photos of how his plants will look on my gorgeous tiered stands. I’ll link, for sure.]

We finished late, Susanne, Sarah and I. So tired – I am so tired. But brimming with gratitude. Happy gratitude. You heard it here – the Ocean author is out of her hell hole.

P.S. I got some fantastic news today. What, you want to know? Check in on October 21st14th.

*Frequently Uttered Words

the hours

4 pm: university hearings finally end. I walk briskly to the loft and hide $1000 under the mattress. I drive recklessly. Sarah K and Susanne D are waiting. Goal: finish getting everything ready for tomorrow’s movers.

5pm: one or the other are endlessly picking up bundles of cardboard boxes at U-Haul as I discover closet after closet of , well, stuff. I probably owe them $1000 for cardboard boxes and tape alone.

6pm: I know now that my booked storage unit is not nearly large enough for all these boxes. Me trying to find another, larger yet not more expensive spot is bloggable in its own right. Sarah and Susanne are not raising eyebrows as choice words come pouring out in frustration.

7pm: I open a beer and drink it straight down on an empty stomach.

8pm: I contemplate finishing off all the vodka in the house. There is a lot of vodka in the house. Sarah and Susanne are calm and steady. I am 100% spinning random thoughts, words, curses. I alternate between throwing things against the wall and sitting down and staring into space. They keep making up boxes, taping, filling, labeling – without a pause, without complaint. I pull out two old books that I want to take back to the loft with me tonight. I am drawn to them, I cannot let them go.

9pm: we pause for a minute.
Nina, have you ever done a garage sale before?
No, well, yes, like when the block was doing one and I had two items to unload.

Why is it that I’m not surprised…Do you have lots of change for tomorrow?
No, but I have lots and lots of twenties.

I’ll bring change for you.
Bring $1000 worth of change.

How is it that you are going to be here for the sale given that the movers are taking your stuff to the loft/storage?
I don’t know…

Can I tell you something?

Must you?

Please do not be surprised if no one comes tomorrow. People do not go to garage sales on a Friday afternoon.
I had no choice, I had no choice…

Just hope that some enterprising thief will break in tonight and cart your loot away.

10pm: Still packing. No time to bag garbage. Discards are thrown in one huge mountain that is reaching the ceiling.

11pm: I check my email. Message from my old law school friend:
When [we] were in Madison last month, you should have told us that if we were real friends, we would have come back for moving week.
Knowing that is in itself a treasure. I know I have been one pathetic specimen this past week. Indeed, I have never ever so shamelessly relied on the strength of others before. To all of you – your offers and your notes totally disarm me. To Sarah and Susanne, who are coming over tomorrow morning and staying for the day to keep me steady: What oh what can I do to show my gratitude?

Midnight: finally, Ocean time.

now is your chance to point a gun at me

...because I am soooooo loaded!

Notes from my day:

Snag in walking-to-work routine: I push the clock and wind up running out the door with wet hair and no print-out of my lecture notes, thereby making myself almost late for class.
Remedy: it's obvious, but not in character. Give myself more time in the morning. Yeah, sure.

Snag in dealing with an afternoon of chairing university hearings: need lotsa coffee to keep alert.
Remedy: get a large latte before hearings.

Snag in getting large latte before hearings: have no cash on hand.
Remedy: go to UBS ATM and get cash.

Snag in getting cash while in a hurry to get coffee to make it to the hearings on time: I press too many zeros on the ATM machine. I should not have shouted out for the world to hear: hey, I pressed too many zeros on the ATM machine! Tip: no, there seems to be no limit to the thousands you can pick up at the UBS ATM machine.
Remedy: thank God there's overdraft protection.

The day is young, I am on break from hearings and have a full night of house-packing ahead, before tomorrow's movers and the garage sale. Your stealing money from me at this second is the least of my problems. Go ahead, point a gun, take the cash. Just don't pull the trigger. I may implode anyway.

This may turn into a long Oscars-like speech and there’s no one to play the music that would shut me up

How can I not acknowledge someone (Sir Ed) who sacrificed herself and was willing to make do with a lunch from the Polish deli just so she could spend the better part of the day helping me get ready for tomorrow’s garage sale?

You think food from the Polish deli is no big sacrifice? If you think that, you’ve been duped by this post and are indiscriminately jumping on the “food is great” bandwagon. There is nothing sexy about having to swallow this:



(no lettuce, no tomato, no mayo, no flavor)

Sir Ed belongs on my list of saintly types. Can she ever crank out the tags and arrange the junk! Plus she found dishes and appliances that I had never even taken out of their original container. (Want a crock pot from 1977? a set of onion soup bowls? Twenty silver serving spoons? Come to the sale of all sales! Virtually every item is priced at a $1. I’m thinking I may adjust the bike price – no no, Mr. B and I are still on good terms, it’s his younger cousin that’s up for grabs – but the rest, well, it’s all about recycling goods and moving them onto someone else’s property.)

My neighbors are there as well – all six of you saintly types who helped me make the Katrina donation by lifting and U-hauling boxes and boxes of kitchen stuff, and of course, roomfuls of the heaviest pieces of furniture in the world. (There’s a reason so many of the pieces were in the basement – they sunk there and no one has had the strength to heave them out.)

The Bozzo-Lees are there in saint-dom too, though I have to say that the late-night martini wiped me out. I fell asleep somewhere between the front door and the bed.

If there was one tiny wrinkle in yesterday's March of the Saintly Types, it had to do with Tonya. She called with such sadness in her voice that it near-broke my heart. Why haven’t I turned to her in my hours of need, she wanted to know (as if she hasn’t boosted my spirits endlessly with messages and calls on an hourly basis for three months running now). She tells me she is a terrific packer, labeler, mover, etc. But trying to find a window in her busy social schedule is like attempting to book Dave Matthews for your private little shindig. So, since she is all about binding legal documents, witness, please, that I AM BOOKING HER SERVICES FOR MY MOVE TO THE RETIREMENT VILLAGE ON SEPTMEBER 1st, 2045. Signed on this day, September 8th, 2005 by Nina L. Camic.

Oh when the saintly friends come marching in…

So many good and kind people have volunteered their help and support with this move and I am grateful. Whether or not I take you up on your offer depends almost entirely on the degree of weakness and panic your email/call finds me in.

Sarah’s email reached me in the middle of the night. How could I sleep – I knew that I had myself a hell of a problem with the house. True, the Chicago-bound movers would eliminate two rooms worth of furniture, but the junk would remain. Decades of junk (others call it “things of sentimental value” and I do admit that junk can have tons of sentimental value).

Magic words, uttered well after midnight as I sat staring at my computer screen, incapable of crafting let alone implementing a solution to the junk problem: what can I do to help?

They showed up this afternoon after I got home from work – Sarah K and Susanne D – with halos dangling somewhere between their heads and heaven. They took in the chaos and set to work, attacking a basement filled to the brim with … junk, a garage, oozing … junk, and various rooms containing more …junk.

I am beyond feeling guilty. I could never repay them for their help.
[my lame attempt to do so: hey, when your lives fall apart and you decide to break up your own families, I’ll be there! I’ll pack boxes and help you move!]

I admit, I am confused, disoriented and overwhelmed by it all. A batch goes to the loft, another to permanent storage (like, until I die or something), another to loft storage, another to Goodwill, still another to the recycling center, another to the garage sale and the last – probably the biggest, with several rooms’ worth of furniture and miscellanea – to the residences of hurricane victims moving to Wisconsin in the weeks ahead.

I have so much dirt underneath my fingernails right now that I may as well be a laborer with no intention of ever working a desk job. I am spent. And it’s not clear if all will be finished in time. I put on my brightest tone and say “it’ll get done, it’ll get done” and am greeted penetrating stares and gritty silences.

I think I talk and move as if I were on speed because occasionally, through clouds of dust and dirt, I catch Sarah peering at me in the way that one does when you think your friend is about to crumble in a heap and refuse to ever get up again. I think I am not convincing enough when I respond to the question “are you alright?” Perhaps next time I’ll cut my answer from the current 852 words to just one.

Did I say thank you? My God, let me not forget: Thank you.

And now the transition has occurred: I am about to experience my first night at the loft. So, good-bye to views like this one, greeting me yesterday afternoon as I sat dowstairs at my computer.





To be replaced soon with something very different.

spinning through Monday, Tuesday

So many boxes to pack! Dust everywhere.

Why those deep sighs? You are picking up a habit of mine. I sigh all the time now.
It's the dust. Can't get enough clean air into my lungs. I feel I'm back to smoking three packs a day.

Working frantically to get as much done before morning movers come. These will be the Madison to Chicago movers. Local guys will come Thursday to help me fix some broken pieces of furniture and shift stuff over to the loft, still others will come Friday to move hundreds (it seems) of boxes into storage. At the same time that a garage sale will be (if I did this right) in progress.

I sent myself the lecture text to work on for Tuesday's classes. What a relief to get the mind focused on textbook problems of domestic relations law!

Most every good restaurant is closed for Labor Day.
Magnus? Harvest?
All closed. Delmonico's?
Never been there. [...] Oh, nice! Candles, they need candles and then it will be perfect.

I take photos. At home, I have lost the cord to the computer. No photos can appear here without the cord. The missing cord is driving me nuts. How could I misplace a cord? I am way too anxious over that cord. I think about it nonstop.

Beef Wellington. When was the last time we ordered Beef Wellington?
That's easy: September 3rd, 1977.

Twenty-eight years ago: a small group, seated around a long table in a wonderful French restaurant in Chicago (it has long gone out of business, but it was sweet). Beef Wellington and champagne. People ate beef without reservation then. No one thought to provide a vegetarian alternative. No one was a vegetarian and if they were, it would be regarded weird enough that you did not have to accommodate it.

At the loft now:

So nice, it is so nice here! Add the striped armchair! You'll love having it in this spot.
Yes, okay, I'll do that.

At home, evening rolls into night rolls into morning. Boxes, dust. Keeping order, making sure everything is marked well. So complicated: Chicago, loft, storage, garage sale, Goodwill. Separate piles, diverging destinations. I need to leave for class. Or, to take the car to the loft from where I'll walk to class. When I come back late in the afternoon, the house will still have debris, many boxes, dust, and a chunk of furniture, but it will be, for all intents and purposes, empty.

Dazed days

Strip the years of days where sickness, death and other forms of human tragedy made their way into our lives, take stock of what remains and pick the day, okay two days that you’d like to reward with the label of the hardest to get through and I’ll give you today and tomorrow

(Forgive me, but aren't you indulging yourself here with heavy doses of unnecessary drama?
Nope.)

For months I knew they were coming – the last day within, and the first day without.

Each morning I had been taking apart bits and pieces of the structure we created for ourselves for decades (house and not house related) and now I am left with just the core. And there is no pulling back – the core has to be dismantled.

(It takes more than a day to dismantle a core. You've been chipping away at it for years.
Thanks, you're too kind.)

There are people who have done this under similar circumstances and lived to tell stories, punctuating memories with a smile even. All I can say is that they are either tougher, angrier, or more indifferent than I am.

There are times when my grittiness pushes me forward with a steady pace while others around me topple. I am used to facing change, to switching gears, I am used to starting from the beginning, scrambling to find alternatives when current realities are unpalatable.

(I know, I know! Hearty Polish Peasant Stock!
Did I ever mention the Polish peasant from the village where I lived? You know, the one who started each morning with a pint of vodka, wound up in the ditch by noon and had to be force-fed because he seemed not capable of getting it enough together even to put food in his mouth? Just thought I'd mention how gloriously diversified that stock of peasants really is.)

But I am not used to being the one who has to take apart the final pieces of a life-long project and waking up the next day to find only a pile of debris, all semblance of the structure gone. Everything in a state of disarray.

So, hello Monday, hello Tuesday. I knew you’d get here soon enough. Puffy eyes complementing Slavic puffy cheeks, torn jeans, raggy t-shirt -- I feel like I ought to post a picture here, except there may be new students reading Ocean. One doesn't want to give the appearance of being too discombobulated at the beginning of the semester.

Dancing the night away

Blogger Ang slaps down the “one right person” myth in her post here.

As well she should. But I do want to put in a plug for one right frame of mind. Because really, relationships take off on their own momentum. Someone asks you to dance and you are in the mood for a tango lesson and you respond. You swell the first person with hope, elevating him or her to a higher level of infatuation and this back and forth propels each of you, in turn, to places others had never gone with you. You both want to be excited and are looking for signs that the other is as well and the validation of your feverish hope pushes you right into an ocean of good feeling.

All that is perhaps obvious. What is deserving of more thought is why relationships – those very same ones that hit new heights – why they falter and ultimately fail.

On the top of the list I have to place intentional or unintentional inattentiveness. It is impossible to sustain a tango if someone has stopped dancing, or is distracted and steps on your toes again and again. Imagine this:

Hey, you’re stepping on my toes!
huh? No I’m not. Quit complaining.
I’m only pointing out that blood is oozing from my pinky toe.
Hope it feels better soon!
Okay, I need to rest now. My toes can’t take it anymore.
Jesus, have I been stepping on your toes? I’m sorry! I’ve been trying to distract myself from the fact that your fingernails are digging into my skin. Hey, where are you anyway? Are you there? No? Hey!

It could be that the distracted one never intended to drift off. Maybe one person got stuck in a routinized set of steps and stopped paying attention, while the other wanted to add new configurations. But most likely, one of the dancers got lazy.

The hell with all this work! I’d rather read comic books. Leave me alone already!

Only they did not understand that being left alone would ultimately lead them to really be left alone.

Distraction, self-absorption, relational laziness – they are the killers of tango, or of any other dance. You go ask the ones who really are well into these movements: don’t they demand of themselves a higher concentration? Hard work, isn't it?

It is, indeed, impossible to sustain a dance if someone is not in step. (Love may endure, but it becomes a vacuous emotion without a base.) And once a dance is reversed, once the music starts slowing down, gradually the dancers feed off of each others’ apathy and distraction (in the same way that they once fed off of each others’ enthusiasm) until someone finally takes the bold (tired) step and says – okay, enough, we’re not dancing anymore, I’m ready to call it a night.

Can they pick themselves up and start dancing again? The cruel answer, I think, is this: most likely they can not. Because it is even harder the second time and here you're talking about people who didn't even have the energy to give it even a first successful go-round.

Hope, that essential ingredient, requires a suspension of fear. It once allowed you plunge ahead, even make a fool of yourself, because you believed in and more often than not, you did experience a completely gratifying response. How can you plunge anew if you now know better? If you know that this dance had an end, that you suffered disengagement? What devilish force would lead you to let go of your fears and anxieties all over again?

The biggest optimists, believers in fantastic relationships (I include myself here) ultimately become the world’s biggest pessimists when faced with the question of another dance. Prove me wrong, world, go ahead, prove me wrong!

colors

Red, the color of anger, passion, fear, heat. Blue, the color of sadness, vastness, peace, ice.

Which is your inclination? Which color flashes before you when you’re barraged with provocative actions and statements?

Red hot lover, blue velvet; spicy red tomatoes, mellow blueberries. Which one?


Madison Farmers' Market, September 3rd



Madison Farmers' Market, September 3rd

Someone asked me recently why the events of my recent weeks have not left me feeling angry. Why should they? I can feel anger at politicians and decision makers who affect the lives of others, but what grave harm has befallen me?

Everyone tries with their available resources to make a go of it. People around me are well-intentioned good souls who sometimes don’t quite connect the dots and so the result becomes strangely distorted.

It produces no anger in me at all. Just sadness that this is the way life has to play itself out, that in wanting goodness we so often fail at getting near it. So, blue. My color remains Ocean blue -- the color of sadness, peace, vast spaces.