teeth soup

a pox on the NYS legislature

Despite this incredibly moving testimony from New York State Senator Diane Savino, our state legislature yesterday saw fit to protect discrimination and bigotry rather than stand up for equality.

moving on, or, going to court and what you can find there

I've been told that it takes half the time you were in a relationship to fully recover from it once it comes crashing to an end (depending, I suppose, on which side you're on, on whether you are the one leaving or the one left). I can't attest to the truth of this maxim as a general guideline, but in this, as in so many things, I have been slow (and with a relationship of just over five years, well, you see where this is going).

I was heading home this evening from the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Federal Courthouse after attending Jerry Lynch's induction ceremony to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. It was an experience to be sure, and I'm glad that I went, but there was something unnervingly sad about being an outsider, a mere spectator, at an event I might once have attended as his family, the girlfriend or fiancee or wife of his son.

After the ceremony various members of his family came up to say hello, giving me hugs, one of them holding my hand and telling me about the recent death of a family member, another whispering to me, "Emily, I've missed you so much."

Truth be told, I miss them too, and that whole world, that whole life I was once so intrinsically a part of.

But all of that was warm and good and nice, even if a little bit awkward, and even if a little bit sad. And it was good to see Jerry and Karen, his wife, even if only long enough to hug them and wish them well.

It wasn't until I was heading to the elevators that I ran into the old boyfriend, Jerry's son, standing in a doorway talking to a man in yet another suit (a courthouse full of suits, and there I was in my pink shawl sticking out like a sore thumb!). I wasn't sure what to do, given that I'd just found out he'd just passed the California bar, that his grandmother passed away yesterday, that his father is an even bigger bigwig than before. I wanted to congratulate and console and commiserate and applaud and make it be three years ago, five years ago, my arm again linked through his.

I paused and smiled, almost reaching out to him, and then kept on going when he continued his conversation with the suited man, feeling abruptly as if all the air had been sucked out of that seemingly endless hallway, and willing with all my might, all my being, for him to come after me (this is so often what we did). I took the elevator down to street level, crammed in between half a dozen important-looking men in business attire, pushed my way out into the dark and rain and headed across town toward the train, all the while wanting to curl up in a ball, sobbing, gasping for air I couldn't seem to find, waiting for him to come comfort me (this is so often what we did).

It took the walk to the subway station, and a long train ride north, and a text message from my new sweet boy wondering how the evening had gone before it fully hit me -- that this, these overwhelming feelings of sadness and loss and doom, this was how I often felt during those five years that he and I were together. That what I was feeling tonight on that walk, and have felt every time I've seen him since he left so abruptly almost three years ago, wasn't because of his absence, wasn't because of missing him so very much, or so desperately wanting him back, but rather was inherent to what our relationship was.

And it hit me, too, that I don't need to feel that way, and that that space we created together, that space so often full to the brim with need and dependency and rage (and yes of course, in its way, love), is not a space I inhabit anymore.

I got home, powered up my computer, spent an hour or so chatting with my boy on the far side of the world, and had some soup. Now it's time to head off to bed and I imagine, I have no doubt, that I will sleep much more soundly tonight than I have in awhile.

'everybody's a superhero, everybody's a captain kirk...'

(Nina, 99 Luftballons)

going home, 11.27.09

ari & patrick & the hudson

bus drivers

I take the M4 bus quite a bit -- most week days to get to work in the morning and every so often on weekends. I don't know any of the bus drivers' names, or where they live, or whether they have families or not, but I know some of them by the way they say good morning, or don't, and by the way they smile, or don't.

It hadn't occurred to me that any of them would know me.

One morning not long after I shaved my head back in the spring of 2006, I got on the bus and the driver glanced up and a look of horror crossed his face. He was one of the friendlier drivers, a man I'd been exchanging good mornings with almost daily the previous year, but whom I had not seen in awhile.

He looked at me, aghast, and said, "Oh sweetheart, I am so sorry... are you feeling okay?" It took me a moment to understand, and then I quickly explained that no, I did not have cancer, but had merely shaved my head. He grinned, greatly relieved, and I grinned, somewhat embarrassed.

One year on Thanksgiving, Nathan and Chris and Jill and I were taking the bus down to Chris' parents' place for dinner. Traffic was backed up from the George Washington Bridge and the bus was crawling south on Fort Washington Avenue. The four of us were the only passengers and clearly frustrated. The bus driver, also clearly frustrated and probably wanting to get home to his family himself, went rogue. He spun a left on 181st Street, careening down the hill towards Saint Nicholas Avenue, gleefully exclaiming, "I'll get you where you need to go!"

His shift ended at 135th Street, but before he left I ran up and gave him one of the black-bottomed cupcakes I'd brought for dessert. He grinned, crammed it into his mouth in one fell swoop, and jumped off the bus. And we got to where we needed to go just in time for dinner.

I like taking the bus.

'it's a golden prison...'

"It's a golden prison. The light on my hair
cries for memory, for anything
to weigh it down. All this time
I've been hanging, the secret tides
of my body staying high."

(Larissa Szporluk, from Menace of the Skies)

this & that

This makes me hungry and almost (but not quite) wishing I had a cold.

Also my landlord in the news (again). (Thanks, Andrew!)

Also, this quote: "A good Roald Dahl sentence is a physical event: It can leave a child literally writhing with glee." -James Parker, Outfoxed

So very true.

shameless promotion

Need holiday gift ideas for your nearest & dearest? A couple friends of mine are doing some pretty amazing things.

Chris Beidel, former library colleague turned woodworker extraordinaire, makes beautiful and unique pieces at Pernt Studios.

Josh Siegel, dear friend and artist and musician, designs awesome "graphic mutant" prints, available for order here.

Jeof & Zach opened their games store a couple weeks ago at Bryant Park, but have also now gone online at The Games Place.

And of course there's always me, still doing that whole yarn thing.

miso sweet potato soup

Erica brought me a bag of CSA goodies last weekend, which I put in the fridge and promptly forgot about until yesterday, when I was scrounging around at lunch time for something to eat other than the rest of the bag of Trader Joe's Thai chili cashews I've been munching on all week. This is what I came up with.

quick & easy miso sweet potato soup

coarsely chop 1/2 an onion and a few garlic cloves
cook over medium heat in some olive oil, along with a dash of red pepper flakes, until soft (10 minutes?), in a 2-quart saucepan
in the meantime, dice 2-3 smallish sweet potatoes and add to pot
stir in 1 tablespoon or so of miso paste
add enough broth to cover the potatoes and let simmer for about 20 minutes
blend with stick blender
salt & pepper to taste

I added a dollop of homemade yogurt to my first bowl, and a spoonful of coconut milk to the second bowl. Delicious both ways.

welcome to bahamas

tripping

I was listening to The Cure's Like Cockatoos on my walk to the subway this morning and feeling like a 16-year-old bad ass, until I tripped on the sidewalk and was reminded yet again that I have never been a bad ass at any age. Alas.

pictures, scary people, long lost friends

Jessica was telling me recently about one of her favorite photographers: a war photographer, a photojournalist by the name of Ron Haviv. She was talking specifically about his Blood & Honey collection, a photo essay of the chaos that overtook Yugoslavia following the end of the Cold War.

Funny that she should mention him now, given the world's (and my own) preoccupation these last few weeks with the end of the Cold War. It is easy to forget that the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, for all their badness, kept certain horrifying nationalistic, ethnic-cleansing, tendencies in check. (Such a horrific term, 'ethnic cleansing.' Honestly I can't imagine a more horrific term, for all its mundane connotation of purification.)

I've been looking at these pictures (can't seem to stop looking at these pictures) and feeling a little overwhelmed by our capacity to inflict pain upon one other. They make me think of the Rwandan genocide, and how I was old enough in 1994 to have known what was going on, and yet I did not, any more than I understood what was going on in Eastern Europe. I was old enough that I should have known was was going on, but I wasn't paying attention. Five years later, during the summer of 1999, I was house sitting for a friend and read his copy of Philip Gourveitch's We Wish To Inform You. I spent much of the rest of that summer reading about Rwanda, trying late at night to understand the hatred and rage that must have been percolating beneath the surface of that country before the Hutus rose up, spurred on by Radio Rwanda, and slaughtered 500,000 Tutsis. (And not with the systematic, horrific coldness of the gas chambers, or even with the physical distance of guns, but rather largely with machetes. Can you imagine the force it must take to cut someone down with a machete?)

Looking at Haviv's pictures brings up similar feelings of not quite despair, but an incredibly uncomfortable mix of fascination and frustration, sadness and fury and impotence -- how is it that we continue to do this to ourselves?

And I've been thinking about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's pending arrival here in New York City, epicenter to his frightening hatred of this country I can't help but love. I've been thinking about Jerry, who until recently served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Mohammed will be put on trial. I remember how, in the days following 9/11, the courts reopened and Jerry couldn't seem to shake a sore throat and a hoarse voice. I remember how this sore throat and hoarseness dragged on and on, after days and weeks and months of breathing in Ground Zero smoke and dust and ash.

And I've been thinking about our own homegrown extremists, the ones who begin to balance out the Khalid Shaikh Mohammeds of the Middle East, at least in rage and hatred if not yet in action. I'm remembering last August's controversial DHS report on the recent rise of rightwing extremism, and of the man who thought it was okay to bring a loaded rifle to a Presidential event, and of the man now sitting in jail after having gunned down Dr. Tiller in the foyer of his church, and of the hordes of teabaggers with their "Obama is a Nazi" rhetoric and their overblown sense of self-righteousness and self-pity. I'm thinking of the recent poll indicating that nearly 1 in 3 conservatives in New Jersey either believe or don't know whether they believe that Obama is the Antichrist. I'm thinking of the Secret Service's report that the number of death threats against our current president is unprecedented, and how when George W. Bush was in office and we left-wingers were fit to be tied, the most extreme of us was a bereaved mother camped outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. I'm thinking of Fox News and Glen Beck joking about killing our Democratic leaders. And I'm thinking about our current Republican leadership standing by these people with the guns, these people arguing that our duly elected president is not American or is the Antichrist or is a Communist, that he's going to steal our children and kill our grandmas, that his attempt at health care reform is another Final Solution.

I've been reading Chaim Potok's The Promise, and am reminded of Reuven Malter's rage against the extremists in his yeshiva, and his frustration that all extremists sound so much alike. And I am reminded of Rachel Maddow's recent interview with Frank Schaeffer, former rightwinger and religious leader turned apostate, during which he says, "What surprises me is that responsible Republican leadership and the editors of some of these Christian magazines do not stand up in holy horror and denounce this. You know, they're always asking, 'Where is the Islamic leadership denouncing terrorism? Why aren't the moderates speaking out?" Well I'd challenge the folks who I used to work with, and I would say to them, 'Where the hell are you? This is not funny anymore.'"

On another note, I recently reconnected with a girl I met in Paris twenty years ago, and for whom I babysat regularly during the months our families overlapped there. She was a wonderful girl, smart and adventurous and kind, and I still remember fondly recommending books for her to read, cooking dinner for us (boiled spaghetti and jarred tomato sauce and boiled broccoli, probably), listening to her practice the violin, spending New Year's Eve together with our families.

Turns out she's still smart and adventurous and kind, and a writer! This piece, published earlier this fall, moved me almost to tears.