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.

it was twenty-eight years ago today

Twenty-eight years ago today I got married. It was a shockingly brief courtship. You might say I am a person who has sudden realizations about people and I realized within a handful of days that the person I had just one or two dates with should be my husband. I told him by the end of the week that we should get an apartment together asap. He took it in stride, hesitated not at all and by the end of the day we were engaged.

Oh, what a marriage! The love of my life, the friend I so needed.

We traveled everywhere together and I mean that in the broadest sense. He went along on my wild rides to distant places until the internal brakes set him to remain more and more focused on meeting family needs.

I learned most everything about adult life with him by my side. I went from being a twenty-three year old ninny* to a fifty-two year old ninny and not a day passed where I did not measure something about my life with him in my mind’s eye to guide me to a better (or at least different!) resolution.

His address is in Chicago now and mine is in Madison, but we are connected forever in the most profound way. I am as sure today as I was twenty-eight years ago that I am destined always to be his friend and ally and that our care and concern for each other will endure, transcending daily issues and worthless petty details of daily life.

To you, ILYAFA, from me.

* a student nickname, acquired during a not too sober card game

Warning: …”with the abandonment of a dervish”

I am entering a spin of all spins as the next week promises a rapid fire movement through classes, as well as the official move into my new loft. I am not accountable for the type of posts that will follow. They will not be sane because the week will not be sane.

And perhaps I should include last night in this period of insanity because truly, I have only the haziest of ideas about it, or, for that matter, about the entire day.
I do want to issue several thank yous:

First, to the kind stranger who paid for my dinner at the Hot Tomatoes – thank you. I am sorry I talked without making sense, truly I am. I was spinning even before a single pink drink crossed my path. Exceptional circumstances, I promise!



dinner at New Haven's Hot Tomatoes


Second, to Tonya who told me categorically that I should not feel responsible for getting the house packed for the big move/storage bonanza next week. She advised me to find packers if I am in the position of having not enough packing help. Valid. Absolutely correct. A load has been lifted. Expensive? Perhaps, but what can you do: it is indeed inconceivable that I could manage packing thirty years’ worth of stuff on my own in three days.

Third, to the passenger who sat next to me this morning on the 6am flight, for not complaining about my bedraggled state. I am not positive that I have perfect recall of the events of last evening but I do know that one of the many things that slipped my mind was the setting of an alarm clock. Or finding a bed to sleep in. No, no, I was not in the gutter! Just not exactly set for a night of good repose.

Fourth, to my new landlord for promising to promptly take care of the falling beam slivers, brick dust and tar flecks. It is a relief that I can count on them not winding up in my soup bowl the day I cook my first pot of soup at the loft.

Fifth, to all good people who indeed are such good people – thanks for all your good words and kind thoughts.

(from New England, unfortunately) it pays to carry around a spare set of underwear.

Wouldn’t you take me on board your plane, even if it was over-booked and I was, through a tremendous set of errors (whose my mistakes? – mostly my own) not on the list of passengers scheduled to take off?

Of course you would! I travel light, I did not eat lunch, I am a safe bet.

So why am I sitting at the world’s smallest airport thinking that the pilot will issue a big fat no any minute and my planned return to Madison tonight will not happen? Why do I think that?

Because they’re sensing that I am a pushover and if it’s me or some needy needy passenger, I’ll probably not make a fuss, because I hate fusses and I’ll surrender and not fight and go back to town with the tail down and tears swelling and there you have it – a nice beginning to the month, don’t you think?

LATER: Bingo! My predictions were right. I first got put on the flight, then dragged off out of my rear seat, like some kind of high-risk suspect or at the very least someone caught stashing drugs in her suitcase.

And I didn’t even get reimbursed for my cab fare.

Ah, Polish grit! One needs to regroup and consider the options.

First step: go back to Starbucks and blog your troubles right onto the screen.

Second step: go for a walk to get that caffeine out of your system.

Third step: find a daughter and beg for floor space. Or something.

Fourth step: there’s always crying over spilt beer, especially since this situation begs for beers, to be drunk alone in huge amounts. (Can no longer justify Cosmos given the nice way dollars are just flying from my pocket today.)

(from New England) fresh and honest

September 1st. Moving on to new places, new ways of doing things.

I left Cambridge this morning. My image of Boston remains that of a city under construction. Oh sure, there’s this, at the border of the North End:




But even more so, I see it as a city that remains weirdly symbolic for me of changes in my attitude toward my surroundings (see post below), a city that forces me to examine my own behaviors as a result. It’s odd how cities can do that – how they can be places where you reach some new understanding of how you are as a person. Some people hit high peaks in the Rockies, or even better – the Himalayan Mountains, hoping against hope to get to some greater level of self-awareness. Me, I walk along Newbury Street and hit a gallery and there you have it – I am ready to make all necessary adjustments.

Or maybe it’s being around Cambridge that drives one to sift and sort constantly, repeatedly, until one gets it right (or at least closer to some honest rendition of your given reality). It’s a town that takes itself seriously. Step aside, New Haven, this is Cambridge – it asserts in its bullish ways. We are brainy, we are edgy, we are demanding!


(Harvard Square)

Ah, New Haven. My work in Cambridge is complete. My Boston interlude is behind me, I am moving forward. Hi New Haven! I’ve missed you.

(from the East Coast) please come to Boston

In the course of my New York childhood, my parents never took me to Boston. They were crazy about roadtrips and we took many, across the country, in a Chevy with vinyl seats, often during the hottest days of summer.

But no Boston.

My first trip here was when I was a nanny to a New York family at the end of my college days. The family decided on a week-end in Boston. My charge, being totally into her nanny, was excited the entire drive up. We were given our own room at the Ritz-Carleton, overlooking the Public Gardens. Her mom, though, always wanting me to branch out and meet real American kids my own age, suggested that they take their little one to their room and I go visit (and stay with) my charge’s older sister who was living in Sommerville.

My charge sobbed long and hard in deep protest. I was torn – should I please my employer, the mom, or please the little girl? I chose the former. It was the first time that I recall having deliberately disappointed a little child.

My second trip to Boston came when I just graduated from college and my friend, also a recent graduate, moved into her own apartment in the North End. She made me a dinner of chicken and peach halves. I remember nothing else about the visit.

My third and all subsequent trips came when I was already a mother, with children either with me or waiting for me. Most often we’d stay in Cambridge and take the Red Line into town, venturing out on long walks through parks, along twisty streets, trying to understand the heart of the city as best as we could in the few days we would give it during any single visit.

So today I returned to Boston proper. It was a trip that was destined to pull things together for me. Not surprisingly, I started with the North End, the Ritz being just one of those sad memories that’s best forgotten (so I told myself).

To me, New York’s Little Italy loses big time to Boston’s North End. It’s understandable. The exodus hasn’t happened here and you see evidence aplenty of the old community that my college friend said frowned on outsiders as it sought to protect its own.

The streets looked vaguely familiar, though honestly, I was most drawn to the foods and the cafés.


marzipan



lemon and chocolate cream filled



the best cappuccino this side of the ocean

I could have spent more hours there, but I was on a mission. I wanted that Boston heart to finally come forward and make itself evident. And so I walked – down the hill, through the Public Gardens, taking it all in, as the rain doused the vast green spaces and people took shelter anywhere they could.


ducklings and others



a child with hope, and a bird


I ended up on a commercial street and I walked into a gallery. With paintings. I was interested.
I had done a lot of picture hanging this past week and I have even more ahead of me. Picture hanging is sort of symbolic. It’s the last thing you do when you move into a new place.

So too, this gallery was a kind of ending. Literally – it came at the end of my walk, on this last day of August. And figuratively, as I thought there about the way I had disappointed people, ever since that first trip to Boston and all the way through to now, and how often that happens in spite of our best intentions.

(from the East Coast) gotta get on board now, oh yeah!

You’re done with the nuts and blots of the New Haven move-in. You’ve got your return ticket home, but it’s not for a couple of days yet. What do you do? Get on that Metro Line and head south to NY, or on the Amtrak line and head north to Providence or Boston. There are trains. They'll take you places. Yesss!

Don’t know anyone in Providence. Do know someone who is currently in dire straights in Boston –moving in and overwhelmed. So easy to hop on a train and do a spin up to where the seafood is legal.


at dinner: all seafood, all legal

I am setting up a company upon my return to Madison: Moving Madness. CEO/CFO/CeverythingO NLC. You yelp, I help.

The thing about paying attention to others and their moving issues is that it takes the mind off of one’s own. So that if I can boss around another with instructions on where to pound nails for the various wall hanging projects, then I do not have to remember that I have INSURMOUNTABLE picture hanging issues awaiting me back in Madison [as in: how do you even begin to mount pictures on a thirty foot wall? In steps? Gradations? Several layers? One layer? How?].

Okay, yesterday I was giving a critical assessment of my little one’s living space. Today was all about the Cambridge acclimatization of another. Tomorrow? Tomorrow I say ah, you’re all doing well in your new places. They are fantastically beautiful. You did a splendid job! My plan is to now head out and do some serious town-browsing. I've missed that.

(from the East Coast) when the “to do” list is so long that it doesn’t fit on a single page...

What then? Get up early and get to it.

I worked my tail off yesterday. No, really, we both did. On a hot, steamy (yes steamy, damn it, as in full of steam and humidity) day, we built, carried, purchased, shuffled and generally did everything necessary to bring this move-in project to a completion.

And it’s almost done. So much so, that I am about to retreat and let her finish it on her own. She (my little one) has already basically taken ownership of the project. Independence is a good thing.

HOWEVER:

On the road to success there are many tripping (if not tipping) points.

I’ll give just one example.

Those beautiful Matisse prints that I had agreed to ship to New Haven, why did they have to come wrapped in one thousand Styrofoam bubbles? Why, when I opened the box, did they all have to spill out on the sidewalk and street, leaving me vulnerable and likely to be arrested for defacing public spaces?

The village green was sprinkled with a fine layer of Styrofoam snow and I was left with a choice of either staying behind and waging a futile war with the dancing debris, or running in the other direction, with the prints carried high over my head like some kind of a sail of a thief who couldn’t quite handle the mast lines.

BUT THEN:

At some point, the two of us threw up our hands and said let’s Roomba!




You had to be there. Roomba is arguably New Haven’s best eatery (this in a town of dozens of fine eateries). It’s special: sleek, casual (no tablecloths, simple settings) and totally creative Latin cuisine.

Even though Roomba doesn’t require it, people treat going there as a big culinary deal. They take care with their appearance.

My little one and I went from unpacking boxes and building furniture to wiping grease and dirt as best we could so that we could present ourselves in this place of all places without causing a stir.

The food – ahhh the food. I’d never been there before. Somehow I saw it as belonging to the category of places you go to when you have both a birthday, an anniversary and a letter announcing your biggest promotion ever, all coming together on the same day. So it is fitting that we went there on the day when we simply needed a break from building a living space for the year.

talapia with the works

(from the East Coast) reflections

I’m typing at the desk in the hotel room and, as is often the case in these places, I am staring right into a large mirror, positioned directly in front of me.

I look up and I see waxed eyebrows (first waxing: March 05) and a toned and moisturized face (first concerted effort to look after it: August 05). Plus a few other interesting changes that I wont mention here.

As of last night, I am caught up with the New Yorkers. (First subscription to the New Yorker: August 74; first time caught up with the New Yorkers: August 05.) True, I have mounting pressures back home – a move, the beginning of a new semester, important personal issues to resolve – yet I could allow myself an evening of reading New Yorkers.

I am wondering why suddenly I am alerted to the pleasure of reading late and moisturizing early. Why it never struck me that this was a possibility, that indeed, many around me wax, moisturize, read New Yorkers, do pedicures and manicures (I have never had either), go for massages, listen to lectures on esoteric topics.

I had a vague idea that I should take care of my skin and I could read endless stories in magazines, but (apart from work and family obligations that everyone, of course, also has to worry about – some to a far greater extent than I) I was so busy chasing down projects and conniving how next to get the family over to Europe, that this other stuff just passed me by.

Small indulgence of self. It still seems sinful somehow, be it of mind or body. I remember being shocked when my man Jason told me five years ago that 87% of women my age color their hair. (He’s a persuasive fellow and so I broke down under his steady gaze). Really?

I had wondered if my inattentiveness here was the result of my being raised in post-war Poland. I don’t think so though. I am sure that every one of my women friends back in Warsaw moisturizes twice as much and as often as my friends here. People in Poland worry about their skin. And they read magazines (of the literary-cultural-political type) obsessively.

It’s me. I’m diffused and dilettantish and focused on a hundred different things in any given hour. If I indulge anything, it’s my inability to sit still. Taking care of skin and catching up on your subscriptions requires one to sit still.

It’s a wonder that I keep a blog – arguably the greatest of self-indulgences. Of course, blog birth: January 04. A recent addition to my daily routines. Right up there with very soft skin. God, does my skin look and feel soft and toned!

(from the East Coast) compensation

In the course of one of the many ascents of this moving project, I stopped to catch my breath. Looking out the stairwell window, I was reminded that there is a distinct beauty to this place.



At dusk, a table outside offered still another reminder that New Haven is indeed a cosmopolitan town.

(from the East Coast) notes and observations

Two college friends run into each other after a summer away: each on his and her cell phone, they don’t pause in their respective conversations. They embrace with their free arm, give wide grins, mouth “how have you been?” then “fine,” all the while continuing their cell chats, point apologetically to their phones, wave and move on.

~~~~~

Conversation in cosmetics store:
I only need body lotion… forgot mine at home…
Ah. Grapefruit – go with the grapefruit one. But wait until you see what it does to your skin if you put it on after exfoliating.
I love all those products, but I always forget to use them. They wind up drying out in their dust-covered containers.
Well, at least for your face: exfoliate, tone, seal. Three steps. Surely you take them?
No, not really…
Here, let me show you (pretending the hand is just like a face, she begins to exfoliate, then tone then seal). Where are you from, btw?
Wisconsin. I’m supposed to do this how often?
Three times a week. Daily, you just use your cleanser, right?
I don’t really use a cleanser...
What?? How do you clean your face?
With water. [Guilt and panic set in as imagination conjures up weeks, nay months of accumulated environmental pollutants.]
Oh! You are so cute! With water! That’s so charming!
You think I should use special cleanser, don’t you?
(Two women in store nod heads vigorously.)
You know, one’s skin changes over the years. I prefer being happy with those changes than throwing products at them.
You color your hair, don't you?
My man Jason simply brings it to its natural shade and pristine glow, sort of what it was like at its peak -- at age 6.
(no comment necessary)
Okay, okay, tonight: after I finish lifting a couple more boxes up and down flights of stairs, I'll exfoliate, tone and seal already.
(smiles all around)

~~~~~

At Staples: Three rolls of carpet. We need three rolls. Can we borrow the cart to wheel them to their destination? We do not have a car.
Yes, leave a photo ID.
You know, we could use this cart for the rest of the day to move around other things.
How will it look to push around a Staples cart all over New Haven? It will look like we stole it. (weigh usefulness of cart against dorkiness of using it all day)
Okay, back it goes.

~~~~~

This year’s look: sexiness continues to follow a downward direction as exposed lower torsos still catch the eye.

~~~~~


New haven, CT

(from the East coast) movin’ on up

(or: how to help a little one move into her college space given that I do not have the Arms of Arnold nor the stamina of a camel; I do have one thing though: HPPS* and mule-like stubborness, driving me to Get Things Done)

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

My hands are killing me. Not my arms, not my bicycled legs. My hands cannot hold another heavy box and clumsily, awkwardly, help lift it up another flight of stairs.

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

A quick run to Ikea. Nearby, but not walking distance. Yet another chatty cabbie. I PAY for good cheer. They're rakin' it in from me today.

A lamp, two lamps. [I wonder if they have a shower curtain I could take back home with me to Madison? Seriously, does anyone know where I can get an interesting shower curtain back home? Don’t say Linens ‘n Things. Not interesting. Wait, we're takin' about a different move. Back to this one:]

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

We need to stop. Hi, Dean of College. How come this year’s reception is for class of ’09 parents only? Aren’t class of ’07 parent(s) good enough? I could have used those catered snacks. I haven’t eaten since yesterday, having declined an invitation to eat pizza and drink wine at 10:30 am.

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

Oh thank you, storage area for closing at 10! Thank you so much.

We are ahead of schedule (when in the last three months have you heard me say that?) We are tired but happy (ditto). We make faces in the mirror across from our table at Cosi, order salads and toast marshmallows and graham crackers over a little burner. Heavy work, light heart.
* you can't be an Ocean reader and not know this: Hearty Polish Peasant Stock

(from the East Coast) oh hi! oh hi! oh.

…or, more accurately, waiting to get there. In Cincinnati. At an airport that feels colder than Poland on a mid-January morning (the type of morning without much sunlight and with a prickly drizzle of ice falling on your nose, adding to the discomfort).

This is the first time I am flying into New Haven (not there yet!) as it is the first year that Delta decided to branch out and include Connecticut on its East Coast circuit. Yay Delta. All previous trips have been via New York or Hartford.

I cannot emphasize how On The Map it makes me feel, with both Madison (my home) and New Haven (the most frequently visited by me destination) linked in this way.

I am traveling with one of a very small handful of people who are, for me, the easiest to move around with – people who are ready to find pleasure in everything, including a sign that reads “Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky airport,” and who allow me to lean my head on their shoulder when I attempt to take a nap. Maybe these are not your criteria, but they most certainly are mine. Taking the arm in camaraderie and affection is also up there, but it is not as important as the first two items listed herein. Besides, this little one obliges me with the arm as well.

Perhaps I ought to work on my reputation though. At the airport, she coaxes me to take her to Moe’s – a pub where you can pretend that the pizza you’re eating crosses over nicely from breakfast to lunch. I’m reluctant. It’s only 10:30 Madison time. Oh please, she says – look! You can get a glass of wine!

Let it be known here that I never drink wine for breakfast. Never. Okay, fine, champagne brunch, but that’s different.

Just to prove my point, I drank water and ate nothing.

More later…

Late (for my take off)

...but ever reliable in keeing Ocean afloat.

If departures were easy, too many people would leave and there would be no one left at the home base to mind the ship.

My next post will be less nautical in nature. It will, however, be late, very late and from New Haven.

Have I got everything? Am I ready to go?

(ha! you thought I would miss a day of posting, didn't you? fools!)

Is it gonna be wild, is it gonna be the best time
Or am I just a-saying so?Am I ready to go?
What do I hear when I say I hear the call of the road?

Why wouldn’t I quote lyrics when they are apt (especially since they happen to be on the only available decent tape to listen to in the car, as we spin, my daughters and I, for one last time through the neighborhood where they grew up)?

Posting is moving into difficult mode.

No no no, I am NOT having a mental crisis here, I am off tomorrow to the East Coast for the better part of the week. My littlest one is starting her next to last year of college and , like each Fall, I get to be the mover-facillitator. Posting will have to be on the sly, done in quick trips to erratically functional cafés, on the pretence that I have to dash down to check out the latest free trade blends.

Am I too old for this? (Not the posting, the moving in of daughters.)

I did it for the first time six years ago, when my oldest was first going off to college (same town, same college; the only thing that’s changed is the emergence of the BLOG!). I was 46 then. I remember going up to the Dean of the college and saying to her something like: “hey, look, miss. I am glad you got a good operation going here. But I am getting too old to be carrying boxes and building furniture for my kid.”

What do I say now, at 52? (Probably: so how come you ran out of the good snacks at this year's reception? You know, we take all the free food we can, giving that your college has sucked out every last penny from us in the past years.)

The residential college dean has never warmed up to me since, even though I have been going back regularly.

Six years later: I am still about to move boxes and furniture, painting walls as needed, pounding nails into walls that are too sensitive for that sort of thing.

But right now, I am in the midst of our last evening as a family in the home that is in every way our family home. You know, the one I pushed to put on the market. You know, the one I signed away today. I’m sure I am popular. Actually, it’s not about me. This night belongs to the daughters. And their childhoods here.

P.S. I feel like such a failure as a parent. They have no idea what Wonderama is.

pause for a station identification

Remember those words from your childhood? Because these days, I don't hear them much. Pause. Exhale. It's time to identify your station. WQXR (ding! guess what that was? c'mon New Yorkers of my generation, what kind of a station was it?), for example.

It's a chance to reflect on what you're listening to and where you are in life.

My recounts of events of this week-of-high-drama (the title of the next popular reality show!) have irked some wise and some foolish people. When I went back with the tail more or less between my legs and asked still others if indeed I had been so annoying as to be insufferable and vile, they were baffled.

But truth is, it takes one wise person to discover that the earth is round. So I must go with the sage and leave the rest rubbing their chins in puzzlement.

I apologize.

To those who thought I was coming down hard against them: I am sorry. [Caveat: I am not sorry for coming down hard against those who in their lives do not treat their past, present or future loved ones with kindness and compassion.]

To those who thought I was batty at the least and about to jump into an abyss of neuro-psychotic illness (is it a disease? it sounds scary, hence the choice of words): I am sorry.

To those who hated the choice of instrument of torture for the home buyer ( a cannonball) --and there were many of you! --I am sorry.

Most of all, to the buyers who came back with a reasonable counter offer just five minutes ago, leading us to contemplate small sums of money instead of big cataclysmic outcomes: I am so so sorry. I know you love the house. Your letter is eloquent and genuine. May you have as many happy memories in this place as I did.

P.S. Yo, you home buyers: did you or did you not read this blog? fess up!

UPDATE: Coincidentally, today a friend sent me this image of an instrument of torture (had it been in my files earlier, I may have bypassed the cannonball idea):

And people are just too much for me to face…

And therefore, placing a particular house-purchasing family in a cannonball and firing it skywards seems just about perfect! [And I do not care if they are reading this. Go ahead, write your lower offer based on an exaggerated defect because, dudes, I am not going to accept it! Think you are so smart – reading my blog perhaps? I am fed up, I no longer want to sell you the house, I even take back my kind offer of the New York Times from this morning. My personal crises notwithstanding, I am not going to be drawn into this nightmare sale by house-buying transactional stubborness!]

…I climb up on the top of the stairs And all my cares Just drift right into space

Like hell they do. Type in correction: none of my cares are drifting into space. They are piling on rapidly and my plate was already full before this week even started. Prognosis: no relief in sight.

On the roof is peaceful as can be And there the world below can’t bother me…

Oh it bothers me plenty. Plenty. Thanks a lot world, for sucking it to me again and again. Thanks for last night as well (sorry, friend, for standing you up for drinks last night; I was quite incapacitated).

When I come home feeling tired and beat I go up where the air is fresh and sweet…

Where would that be? The fresh and sweet air I mean? In the crawlspace that the engineer came to inspect this morning? Is that it? Seemed fine up there. This is a forty year old house, damn it! You want a new property – here I’ll show you some houses farther west. Add a couple hundred thou and you can have all the brand new roof tiles you want!

Oh, did I hear that you registered your child for the local elementary school already? Well forget it! Tell junior mommy and daddy were forced out of the house by VERY ANGRY SELLER! I have no patience, no remorse, no oomph, no stamina left! Go pick on someone else, buttheads.

No more mr. nice-guy from me, ever. I tell you, it doesn’t pay! It DOES NOT PAY!

UPDATE: In case the buyers do not understand blogs, I am compelled to remind all that Ocean is a blog that believes in looking at tense moments with humor. I did modify the text a teeny tiny bit so as to not appear totally wacky. Which I am not.

* lyrics: my commenter was right. Peter belts it out, but Carole King wrote it

straw

Everyone has a camel and a straw. Mine came tonight. Back broken. No comments necessary! Really. No sympathy, no, nothing please. It will do no good. Make a donation to your favorite charity, give money to GOODWILL, please, give them a boost. Because really, there is not enough of goodwill in this world. Not nearly.

And then, after you've written a check, sit back and reflect on how easy it is to do right by people who are important to your past and present -- even if not necessarily your future. Think how easy it is to wish them well. How simple not to break them. If you are parting with someone who, upon refelction, saved you in small and big ways once upon a time, remember those small and big gestures. Remember how once the person really truly was your best friend.

Don't screw your past best friends, even if they no longer are that. Don't trip them up. Look, look hard at their eyes and note their pleading wistfulness, their great desire to do the right thing even if you don't believe it is the right thing.

When this old world starts getting me down And people are just to much for me to face*…

…I climb up on the top of the stairs And all my cares Just drift right into space
On the roof is peaceful as can be And there the world below can’t bother me…

Hello, Nina?
Yeah…

The roofers are going to inspect your house as per buyer request, okay?
Do I have a choice? No I do not.

I’ll come over as well and listen to what is being said about it.
Swell.

When I come home feeling tired and beat I go up where the air is fresh and sweet…

Hey there, do you know that there are a bunch of people outside, children running around, some men on the roof, some below?
Yeah…

Shouldn’t we do something? Like go out there and talk to them?
No, leave them alone. They’re looking for defects.

Oh. Well I already talked to them. They don’t want to be bothered with a roof replacement when they move in.
And I don’t want to be bothered with a buyer replacement, so just let them be.

On the roof the only place I know Where you just have to wish to make it so

I wish I would not feel like I am near the end of my period of sanity, where I am about to cross over and enter a terrain heretofore unentered, even during most trying past circumstances…
What are you talking about? Stay calm, stay calm.

I cannot. Excuse me, while I take this call…

...I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble proof And if the world starts getting you down There’s room enough for two up on the roof…

If it has a couple of more good years left, then how is it a defect? Damn it, I did not go to law school for nothing! I know my rights.
There’s time to argue whether this is technically a defect.

I am tired of arguing. I am tired tired tired of everyone arguing! Why does everything, everything have to be resolved through argument? I don’t want it! Purge it from my life already!
You could always give in. In all aspects of your life, just give it up. Let it go. Ignore the injustice of it all! You could always just take what's handed out and shrug your shoulders. Give in, given in.

Yeah…

...And all my cares just drift right into space Up on the Roof...

* On the Roof lyrics by Peter Cincotti

Jumping with a bungee cord

There are people who walk cautiously through life. They take a step, pause, contemplate the possible consequences, retreat, move to the side, resume even more slowly and eventually they make progress. Really they do.

I am not like that. In all matters relating to my personal life, I plunged. Friends became intensely close, boyfriends were instantly candidates for soulmate status. I reeled in a world of dizzying love for people, for events, for activities that I discovered afresh each year.

My little one and I were talking earlier today. She remarked how I never just connected to a person, I super charged the connection and with excitement and found all the nuance and beauty that made a person completely stellar. Best of breed, so to speak. Best of the best.

At 52, as I now proceed to distance myself from a significant chunk of my past, I think, I really think this – I think I was wrong to be so headstrong.

To all you blog readers who are younger than me, take heed. The world does not belong to the bold, it does not reward you for your efforts, it will not smile kindly at your generosities.

Forget the visions of eternal love, of eternal friendship; not even that: forget the belief in a solid strong anything. It’s fleeting – all of it, it’s fleeting and mostly terribly unkind.

I took a stack of old books to a used book place tonight. Books, just books, useless books, books that I had no room for in the new loft. Before handing them over, I flipped through some of them. I came across an inscription, written by someone who, some years back, promised undying friendship and eternal devotion. I pulled the book out of the reject pile, as a reminder of how completely ridiculous the idea was.

trippin' up at the finish line

I held it together when the house was not selling and, for legal reasons, it needed to sell or else.

I held it together when changes were taking place in my life, changes that would rock even the most solid, stoic of characters.

I held it together when moving everything everywhere wrenched my back, and the holding it together was not tarnished by the fact that I still have a vast amount of moving ahead of me.

I held it together when I found that I needed to buy new furniture for the new apartment -- great fun! great expense!

I held it together when the very same van that I was treating with kid gloves started flashing "low oil" lights today, even though I had just changed the oil last month and had put on perhaps 55 miles since.

I held it together when my robust exercise schedule faltered -- the first major casualty of a hell schedule.

I held it together as I sat on the landing steps of my loft at the wee hours of the morning today, looked outside and noticed a solitary person walking, one prong at a time, on the railroad tracks. He looked lonely and sad.

I held it together through sadnesses and worries of others, which make me sad and worried for them in addition to making it absolutely impossible to look up with pleading eyes and ask for much hand-holding.

I held it together when my daughters were shaken out of bed because, unexpectedly, the realtor with the new buyers and their little children showed up at our doorstep and informed me that they expected to spend the morning here, overseeing the engineering inspection, giving me five minutes, FIVE FREAGIN' MINUTES to get the place in order for their peering eyes (and I don't care if they read my blog, so there!) and leave them to their devices.

I held it together when I came back well into the afternoon, loaded down with groceries and who knows what and they were all still there, discussing why the outside door downstairs was sticking and why the furnace was rattling. I have a furnace that was purchased within our tenure here, damn it, go pick on somebody else's furnace!

I even held it together when the purchasing wife said she would be back this Thursday along with the engineering crew, because they still needed to pry open the crawlspace and had no time to do it today.

But when I got a call saying that they were sending out a roofing contractor who would do an inch-by-inch analysis of the roof and would I mind? -- I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried.

...and the day ran away with the spoon

...and the knife and fork and a bunch of kitchen-ey items, as I got the loft ready for a small group of evening visitors.

Or, maybe I shouldn't call them mere visitors. My recollections this morning are foggy, but I distinctly remember looking toward the loft windows and seeing two chairs positioned in front. On those two charis were not exactly nine ladies dancing, but definitely at least two. Through the windows, the dome of the Capitol looked on. As did I.

It began as an evening of celebration. A daughter with a job offer was reason enough to go order some rainbow drinks along with the much beloved Ahi tuna, downtown, at the Crave.





Back at the loft, food was not the centerpiece. Or was it? I once said that if I had only a handful of foods available to me and I could pick my handful, it would include bread, cheese and chocolate.




At midnight, someone who does not stop just because it is midnight, proposed more revelry and music. Truth is, no one could keep up with her. I vaguely remember thinking I should stay up and post. I fell asleep thinking I should post.

bargain with the blogger in me...

...if I promise to post after midnight and show pictures of turtles, fish and marble stone, will you still like me?

...if I tell you that I am only now by a computer and I only have five minutes, will you forgive me?

...if I tell you that this morning, I had time, but no interest in writing, because nothing, really nothing happens before noon -- nothing at all worth blogging about, will you understand?

Thank you.

Would you spend hours cleaning the house for the mother-in-law of a complete stranger?

I did. Today, the soon-to-be-owners of our house asked to bring their parents for a special visit. You know, so they could say –“look ma & pa, look what we bought yesterday!”

I ran into the whole lot of them as I was getting the last piece of garbage into the van outside. The place was, of course, immaculate.

Why bother? We have an accepted offer. It’s not as if I am going to go home and there’ll be a ding-a-ling-a-ling and it will be them saying – forget it, slobs*, we do not want your piece of junk!”

Why do we do the things we do? Why do we bother, when it makes no difference, creates not even a small increment of pleasure?

I don’t know.

* incidentally, if they called us slobs, they’d be the first

inch by inch, row by row, gonna make my garden grow...or not.

Five years ago if you had asked me about my non-academic interests, I would have talked about traveling, writing, cooking and, yes, gardening.

Serious about my perennials, I planted hundreds upon hundreds of them. I pored over White Flower Farm catalogues in February and was there each April for the first hours of the Flower Factory's opening week-end. Dirt on my hands, strained muscles from digging -- all blissful reminders of my Hearty Polish Peasant Stock.

Then, like an unfaithful lover, a season or two ago, I got tired of it. My attention drifted. Overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of garden space (the yard here is huge), by the rabbits that constantly chomped at my dianthus, by the phlox mildew and the spit-bugs and the drought and the weeds, I took one look and walked away.

The forces of nature retaliated. The perennial beds grew with wild abandon. Screw you, they seemed to say, we will multiply and spread and with great promiscuity, we will welcome weeds and everything and anything that wants to take part in this wild fling with nature. We'll show you how hot and alive we are! -- they told me.

But it was like the last wail of a scorned lover. I gave a small "there, there" pat, pulled a weed or two and turned away. The lure of the downtown, of my writing, of my camera, of new faces and new spaces was too great.

So, good-bye garden. Once I loved you to death. Now you are just a sweet memory of a damp soil and fresh new shoots in spring. Tucked away with all other sweet memories of past loves and passionate indulgences.